The Delirium Brief

by Charles Stross

  Cassie slithers along the wall like a human shadow, renewing some of her glamour to mimic Mo’s invisibility. She glides, feet not leaving the ground, and sways to avoid a stumbling body in the dark. Mo follows close behind, a trigger word ready on her tongue. There’s a sharp scream, suddenly cut off, from across the room as one of the few still-living humans succumbs to a feeder.

  They’re halfway across the room when Mo hears a crash from behind. She looks round and sees a side door banging open across the lounge: an emergency exit from the vestry room attached to the chapel. “Shit,” she mutters, then looks back just as Cassie comes face-to-face with another feeder. It begins to reach for her, and Mo’s heart hammers madly for a moment as Cassie leans into its killing embrace—then the glowing eyes go out and the dead body collapses at her feet. “Go,” she urges, “Schiller’s people are coming!”

  Men and women, mostly naked, are spilling into the lounge from the chapel. Mad-eyed and bloodied about the crotch, the men sport impossible, grotesque erections that writhe and squirm like elephantine trunks, cyclostomal mouths opening and closing in a crunch of needle-sharp teeth. The handmaids are maenads, blood spattering their legs, the engorged heads of their parasites peeping out between their thighs and gnashing at the air. They’re only recently inducted and not yet fully under the control of the Lord of the New Flesh, but they are far from mindless as they fan out into the room and work their way into the crowd of feeders, banishing them with a touch. Some of the feeders are aware enough to try to flee, and this leads to a crush at the entrance to the passage to the toilets—directly in Cassie’s path.

  Cassie scythes into the milling crowd of feeder-possessed bodies, cutting a path through them like a bowling ball through skittles. Mo hurries to keep up. Behind her she hears a cry: “Catch them!”

  “Go,” she urges.

  Cassie is slowing. “It stings, in my head,” she complains. “Like wasps!”

  “Well, fuck.” Mo swallows, then drops her invisibility and utters the macro to release another blast of banishment at the bodies crowding around them. She’s running out fast. “Coming through! Clear the toilet! Ladies first!”

  The remaining feeders shuffle aside, almost as if her urgency means something to their tiny, abhumanly hungry minds—then there’s a crack of gunfire, painfully loud in the confined space, and an answering wet thud and a spray of blood from one of the bodies. “RunRun!” Cassie shouts, and leaps forward. Mo hikes up her gown and kicks her shoes off as she scurries after, and the next shot goes wide, missing her shoulder. Then Cassie is at the end of the corridor and slams into the crash bar on the emergency exit, and Mo follows her onto a steep steel staircase and keeps going.

  The emergency stairs tops out in a small vestibule with another crash-barred door, this time warning that it’s alarmed. Mo grabs Cassie’s shoulder before she can open it. “Listen,” she says, panting, “we know what’s behind us; who’s in front?” Footsteps clang from the lower flight.

  “Don’t know don’t care just go.” Cassie is febrile, bouncing from foot to foot. “Follow me close!” And before Mo can say anything else she shoves through the exit.

  Mo’s earpiece begins to hiss as the door opens. “MADCAP to CANDID, hard contact with SO19! Shots exchanged! CANDID, respond!”

  “CANDID here, I’ve got Cassie, exiting via the kitchen block at rear.” Cassie is creeping along a narrow servants’ corridor, windows onto the back garden admitting a wan moonlight glow. “Bad guys in pursuit, shots fired. What’s your position?”

  “OCCULUS pinned down at front perimeter, active shooters engaged. Zero is round the back but not responding.”

  The corridor has evenly spaced doors, all closed. Cassie pauses between the second and third, then darts forward and shoves the third door open. It’s a pantry, walled-in, open-fronted cabinets displaying fine china. Mo closes the door behind them. “Come on!” Cassie hisses.

  “Coming”—she taps her earbud again—“we’re going to try and escape through the woods at the rear.”

  “We are?” Cassie squeaks as she stops dead again in a darkened, empty kitchen. “WaitWait—fuck, can’t go there!”

  “Why not?” Mo demands edgily.

  “We’re cut off! I can’t”—Cassie hyperventilates—“can’t feel my geasa! The Opener of the Way is also the Closer of Doors and owww—”

  Mo doesn’t have the senses of a strong ritual practitioner but she’s plugged into her oath of office and the more esoteric binding of the Auditors besides; she senses it as a stillness in the corner of her mind that is normally aware of her duties, and as a bubble of pressure expanding around her mind, like an airliner repressurizing during descent. “MADCAP to CANDID, do you copy? Some kind of ward just went up around the perimeter. Do you copy?”

  “CANDID here, I copy.” She licks suddenly dry lips. The stillness in her head is pounding like the absence of giant drums, an alien heartbeat coming closer. “Cassie just lost her mana stream. Are we cut off?”

  “Yes. Suggest you find Zero and the car and try to drive out; it’s shielded—”

  A brief stutter of gunfire some distance outside the building rattles the window panes. “Ri-ight,” Mo says slowly. Cassie is doubled over as if in pain. Mo hears footsteps beyond the pantry. “Move it!”

  She grabs Cassie and tugs her towards the big kitchen doors. These rooms are a trap, even with her natural invisibility. She hears a shout from behind as she throws herself against the door and sprawls through it into one of the side rooms, shoving up against a snowy linen-draped table bearing a half-eaten buffet of finger food. It’s part of a horseshoe surrounding the center of the room, the open side facing gaping French windows and a terrace open to the night and magic. Cassie moans as Mo drags her down under the tablecloth and crawls on hands and knees away from the doorway. “Shut up,” she whispers, and hunkers down, clutching the alfär woman. For a miracle, Cassie falls silent.

  Behind them, the kitchen door opens. Footsteps squeak on the polished parquet floor of the morning room. A man speaks, his tone dull and oddly atonal: “They are not here, Mistress.”

  A woman—Overholt, Mo thinks—replies, her voice ringing: “They ran up the stairs, they must have come out on this level! They have not crossed the boundary therefore they’re hiding. Find them! You, you, and you: take the function rooms. You two, search the service areas. Work front to back and flush them out into the pavilion. If you see them, know that our Lord does not require the service of their kind: you may shoot to kill.”

  * * *

  Heathrow is a big airport, but luckily the Transport Police are already here; most of them are lying on the ground or kneeling and variously groaning or throwing up, but Johnny knows what he’s looking for and takes the Airwave handset from a supine inspector, then calls up the dispatcher. He explains what we want using yet another bloody code word nobody has seen fit to confide in me—how the fuck was I to know that we have a backdoor liaison with them, and why didn’t the boys on the ground know about it in time to avoid this clusterfuck?—and then we get a fast ride in the back of an SUV driven by one of Captain Partridge’s men, right around the perimeter with blues and twos going.

  India 97 is already on approach when we arrive at the chopper terminal. It’s a twin-engine Airbus Helicopters H145 in police markings, a Nightsun and thermal imager slung beneath its nose like a gun turret. “C’mon,” Johnny says, and briskly shoves me out of the SUV.

  “The cops—they weren’t told about this target because the SA was afraid they’d been rooted by Schiller’s bunch? But we’re supposed to be their best homies now?” I ask incredulously.

  “Shaddup and run, kid, we can chew the cud later.” Johnny is unusually tense and I am increasingly pissed off at being kept in the dark about what seems to me to be an important aspect of an operation I’m supposed to be in charge of, sandbox or no sandbox. But the skids touch down just long enough for us to run across and climb on board—ducking instinctively even though the spinning
blades are too far overhead to be a problem—and then we’re off, climbing out and turning towards the center of the capital at low altitude until we clear controlled airspace.

  He passes me a headset. “We kept it quiet to avoid tipping our hand prematurely, but now Schiller knows something is up. Chris got through to the dinosaur’s head, but the tail was already knocking on the door.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah. Best laid plans ’n’ all that.”

  I hate being out of touch, but it’s too loud for a phone conversation in the back of the chopper. I propitiate my inner demons by sending the SA a stream of peevish instant messages, but he’s old school: it’s far from certain he’ll even read them today. I’m taken by surprise when a couple of minutes later he begins to update me on what’s going on. But then he sends me the photograph Mhari took in the bedroom, and I give up on the not-swearing thing—and when he gives me Mo’s latest sitrep on what she and Cassie are doing I learn the real meaning of fear.

  * * *

  Anneka Overholt is blazingly furious, and the splinter of the Lord’s soul that pierces her mind like one of the nails that joined Christ to the Cross burns with a painful echo of her rage.

  Things have been going well, almost too well: Father Ray’s plan has run as if on rails, and she has had reason to bask in the warm satisfaction of the Lord at a job well done. But Schiller is prideful and has allowed success to go to his head, thinking that he could take his time and that Elevating his own person could somehow be made part of the Lord’s plan for this apostate land. Anneka knows better and has tried to steer him towards the path of righteousness, but it hasn’t been fast, or easy, to get his attention, and now they are paying the price.

  Who were those women spying on the initiation ceremony at the back of the chapel? She barely noticed them at the time, her mind skittering away from them like a willful child avoiding her chores. Her initial suspicion that they are just confused partygoers, easy enough to silence, is clearly wrong, disproven by the shockingly rapid collapse into silence of the entire Middle Temple chorus (who have been a constant whisper of praise in the back of her mind ever since her own Elevation). They must be spies in the house of the Lord, hostile witnesses to the Gospel work. And then they ran towards the chaotic mass of feeders at the orgy (a messy and wasteful arrangement for cleaning up the leftovers, in Anneka’s opinion), and the feeders died. Black magic indeed! Anneka mustered the new initiates—barely serviceable, still suffering from blood loss and shock—then hastened after them, gathering the Lord’s power even as the ward around the estate powered up. But they’re devilishly hard to find, and at the back of her head she can hear Father Ray on the jittery edge of panic, shouting orders at the other congregants that barely make sense. He’s frightened, and he’s putting on an ugly display of cowardice in front of the flock, and Anneka is unsure whether she is more angry at him or the unwelcome intruders. Until the congregation grows large enough to open the way again and bring forth the Lord in all his majesty to fill the mortal vessel that is Raymond Schiller’s body he is, indeed, vulnerable to the infidels and heretics—and she, his chosen handmaid, is vulnerable beside him.

  Anneka storms back through the service corridors towards the Grand Hall at the front of the house. As she erupts from a concealed doorway she finds the premises in chaos. Guests are milling around aimlessly, demanding explanations from harried police officers who are trying to herd them away from the doors and windows. Other officers are taking up firing positions behind whatever cover comes to hand, as if expecting armed intruders. “What is the meaning of this?” she demands of the inspector in charge.

  “Get back, we have shooters—” The man barely looks at her other than to push her back with the rest of the flock.

  Furious, Anneka reaches out and touches him with the majesty of the Lord’s will. He stumbles and groans and she grabs his elbow, forcing him to stand. “Report. Obey,” she instructs him, nostrils flaring at the stink of burning skin and ash rising from the ward he’s wearing.

  “Urk—shooters on the loose, my men are deploying to defend—probably terrorists got wind of the PM and half the cabinet—”

  Anneka releases him and frees him from the attention of the Lord and he drops like a stone, soul torn. She bends down and scoops up his weapon, a Glock semiautomatic. Then she opens her senses wide and calls out to Father Ray. “There are armed intruders within the perimeter, Father. The police are confused and obstructive. I require support.”

  She senses his fear and confusion through the communion of the hosts, under his actual speech. “Take those you can and defend the front. We must leave no witnesses behind! I must flee as soon as the way is clear; the Lord warns that the old enemy is approaching, and if it catches me that will be a lesser ending—”

  He’s losing it, she can see, and she sniffs as she walls him out. Schiller is good when the going is good, but goes to pieces when faced with real opposition. Anneka considers herself to be made of sterner stuff. She spreads her awareness out across the grounds, taking stock. Up front, half a dozen armed police take aim from cover, waiting for the unseen hostiles who made their presence known barely two minutes ago to reveal themselves. (Presumably the hostiles are doing likewise, both sides engaged in a lethal game of hide-and-seek.) Back in the house she can feel her three brothers and sisters in the Lord sweeping cautiously through the access passages and service areas. They are debating extending the sweep to the upper floor, and she nudges approval at them. Out in the grounds she senses the other two swinging around the lawn and flower beds from the east, near the stable block. That is where her people are weakest. She signals her intention to join them, then stalks back towards the crowd of alarmed partygoers clogging up the ballroom behind the entrance, drawing a glamour around herself to hide her pistol and render the disarray of her robe unnoticeable. Behind her the dead police inspector’s body sprawls across the checkered tile floor, a trickle of blood leaking from ears and eyelids. He has gone to meet his maker, and in what little consideration Anneka holds for him she feels a brief, bitter stab of envy, for her Lord will know his own.

  * * *

  Mo waits, heart in mouth, as Overholt and her minions sweep through the morning room. She keeps a tight grip on Cassie’s ankle even as a shod foot kicks underneath the draped tablecloth, narrowly missing her. But the searchers are in too much of a hurry. They don’t systematically check under the furniture before they move on; or perhaps Mo’s invisibility is working in her favor. She hunkers down low, imagining herself into the semblance of a mouse that has wandered in from the garden, frightened and lost and frozen in place in its effort to avoid the attention of predators.

  It takes less than a minute but the wait for the Inner Temple initiates to leave feels like forever. Cassie quivers with fear or perhaps an unreleased, restless febrile energy. “We’re trapped,” she says quietly, voice pitched for Mo’s ears only. “There is a net-of-summoning around the palace, newly erected while we were below. What do we do?”

  Mo sits up under the tablecloth. She taps her earpiece. “CANDID to MADCAP, please copy.” She glances at the other woman. “It’s a defensive grid. Which means we’re winning—we just have to stay alive until our backup arrives. Whatever it is. CANDID, MADCAP, please copy.”

  “MADCAP, CANDID. Sitrep.”

  “Both in hiding indoors. Schiller’s got some kind of perimeter ward and his Inner Temple are searching the building and grounds for us. Tongue eaters are all down and there are a bunch of feeders in the night on the loose. If we make a break for the car we may be spotted. Please advise.”

  “Alex is in the driveway. As soon as the defensive ward drops he’ll be straight in. Your special backup is still on the way, got delayed in traffic. ETA twenty minutes, estimated. A chopper is en route to collect TEAPOT as well; confirmed ETA forty minutes. If you can hide out that long—”

  “CANDID, will comply. Over. Fuck,” she adds. “Good news and bad news,” she tells Cassie; “the seven
th cavalry is riding to the rescue, but they won’t get here for thirty to sixty minutes. We need to find somewhere to hide out.”

  Cassie shakes off her hand and crawls out from under the table. After a few seconds Mo follows her, wincing slightly; her knees aren’t happy about crawling over hardwood these days. Cassie is standing up, holding a tray of champagne flutes and Mo does a double take as she realizes the girl’s got her waitress glamour back in place. “One of us needs to find somewhere to hide out, YesYes?” Cassie winks at her.

  Mo thinks fast. If Schiller’s people decide things have gone irretrievably wrong they won’t leave any witnesses behind, but it’ll take the Sleeper cultists time to organize a large-scale conversion—or a massacre—without triggering a messy panic. If she and Cassie can blend in with the guests—“This will buy you ten or fifteen minutes, but it’s worth a try.” She takes stock of herself. Her hair’s a mess and she’s lost her shoes; she smooths down her dress and tucks a straying lock of hair back as she prepares to rejoin the party. “Let’s split. You go left, I’ll go right, they’re looking for two fugitives, not a waitress and a guest. Aim to meet me at the Bentley parked behind the stable block.”

  “YesYes, on my way.” Cassie taps her ear—Mo blinks as the tip twitches, then disappears from her vision again—and walks away in the direction of the French windows onto the terrace out back, tray held high. Mo wastes no time but heads for the side door opening into the ballroom.

  The instant she slips inside she realizes that something is very wrong. The band plays on in the pavilion on the lawn, but the guests aren’t dancing—they’re clumping in corners, agitated and upset. The doors to the Grand Hall are half-closed and an armed policeman stands in the open half, blocking the exit and shooing away anyone who approaches. More and more of the guests are drifting towards the terrace and the gardens beyond.