The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files)

by Charles Stross

  “Excuse me —” I say, but as Graham finishes chewing, he leans towards Jim.

  “But surely you’ll be wanting training standards officers and cadre who already have front-line experience?”

  It’s as if I’m not even here. I give up and stir my salad listlessly with my fork. “Gentlemen,” I say quietly, “don’t mind me. Feel free to pretend I’m not here —”

  “You’d have to ask my director,” Jim replies to Graham. “She’s in charge of all senior staffing decisions, although she defers on them to her head of HR.” He doesn’t look at me. It’s like he’s forgotten I’m here. He smiles ingratiatingly: “You could ask her.”

  “Maybe later.” Graham goes back to ploughing through his lunch.

  “The real problem, it seems to me” – Chris Norton speaks quietly, almost inaudible against the background chatter and the sound of canteen cutlery – “is the overall trajectory of the epidemic. We have to assert control now, before the structures we rely on for the reinforcement of societal consent break down.”

  “Which structures in particular?” Jim asks, in a mild tone of voice I’ve come to recognize as his Socratic sucker-bait.

  “Authority,” Chris states. “Yes, yes, Peelian principles are all very well. We police by consent, the public are the police and the police are the public, and so forth. But that growth curve you showed us is troubling. It seems to me that if we have a major ongoing outbreak of superpowers, the entire structure of public consent may be dangerously weakened. We rely on most people obeying the law of the land most of the time because it’s the right thing to do – and when that fails, we rely on them obeying because they must, because we can always out-escalate them. But superpowers will undermine that. If it’s just a handful, we can muddle through with backup from TPCF and good intelligence. But heaven help us if it hits ten percent of the population and the hard core of regular troublemakers cut loose.”

  “We’re going to need a bigger stick,” Graham agrees, dabbing at his lips with a napkin.

  “So where’s the bigger stick?” Chris asks Jim, disarmingly candidly. “One team of extraordinary PCSOs isn’t going to cut it, if you don’t mind me saying. We really need something better. The Met should provide leadership on this one.”

  “We’re working on it,” Jim says defensively. “There are plans afoot.” His gaze flickers past me as if he’s forgotten I’m here. “But nothing I can really discuss in public yet.”

  Chris puts his knife and fork down. His plate is as spotless as his uniform. “Well, I just hope it’s ready when we need it.” He smiles. “Well, gentlemen: we have fifteen minutes until the next session starts. If you’ll excuse me?” He rises to leave; Graham Walton follows his example. Jim watches them leave.

  “Well, that was illuminating,” I mutter.

  Jim glances at me, then suddenly twitches as if seeing me for the first time. “What?” he asks, eyebrows raised in surprise.

  “What indeed?” I look at him. He looks slightly flustered. Embarrassed, even.

  “Uh, Dr. O’Brien, I’m sorry, I didn’t —”

  “Oh, don’t mind me.” I smile, thin-lipped. “I can handle it. Canteen culture, eh?”

  He nods. “Canteen culture.” But I have an inkling that it’s something more than that.

  I barely notice the rest of the week, I’m so busy. I’m bogged down in a sea of minutiae, fully occupied juggling a huge brief: team recruitment operations, budget estimates, our continuing research into individual cases and general superpower threat projections. I don’t have time to be upset or angry about the way the ACPO delegates virtually ignored me, as if I were invisible. Developing invisibility as my superpower: wouldn’t that be something? (Something hellishly annoying, if you couldn’t control it…)

  Our failure to find Freudstein is eating away at me. I’ve also got a horrible feeling of near futility, coupled with a sense that I’m spinning my wheels, that however hard I run I’m not gaining on our workload, that CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is closing in, and that a tidal wave of horror is surging towards us, still unseen, just beyond the horizon —

  Let’s just say I’m not sleeping very well.

  I continue to hope HR will deliver something more about Jim’s background. I try to be patient, but if Alison can’t get results within a week, I’m going to have to escalate my enquiries. I put this to Dr. Armstrong at our Friday morning confessional in the New Annex, and he gives me absolution. “I understand your concerns, Mo. I believe you’ve taken the correct action with respect to Jim. Under the circumstances, it would be indiscreet to enquire too openly about his capabilities. As for Bee, Torch, and the others —”

  “They’re a known quantity,” I point out. “I can refer them to Dr. Wills directly, get them checked out weekly if necessary. We’ve got protocols for dealing with K syndrome. My real concern is that Jim is a special case. As you yourself said. Anyway, where did that armor come from?”

  The SA is imperturbable. “You might as well ask where Ramona’s vessel came from.”

  “BLUE HADES, but —” I stop dead. “I first met Jim at the reception during the treaty negotiation sessions up north.”

  “Jolly good.” The SA nods.

  “Is that why you’re suspicious of him? You think BLUE HADES gave him the armor? Why would they do that?”

  “Why would they loan us Ramona and her chariot?” He raises an eyebrow expectantly.

  “Somebody asked?”

  “Yes, somebody asked. In the case of Ramona, somebody asked if they knew anything about the superpower problem: that’s when they offered to send us a liaison officer and some specialized equipment. The trouble with dealing with the Deep Ones is that sometimes something is lost in translation…”

  “So they sent Ramona as a message. A very clear one: ‘Mess with us and we have the capability to make you very sorry indeed. Meanwhile, have a nice day fighting crime.’ But Officer Friendly…”

  “Also fights crime,” the SA reminds me gently. “And works for ACPO. But please remember that it’s a mistake to base an analysis on insufficient data.”

  “Or on a posteriori reasoning, don’t teach your grandmother to – sorry. But. Why Jim?” I take a deep breath. “Null hypothesis: Jim was just there. Assigned to Fisheries and cleared to liaise with our people so he was probably a Person Of Interest to whatever passes for BLUE HADES’ HUMINT people – Ramona’s employers – when his superpowers manifested themselves. Either BLUE HADES gave him the suit, or someone else did, or he made it himself – but he’s a cop, not a Mad Science Corporate Executive!”

  “That’s a reasonable assumption. In the absence of evidence that there’s anything more to it, Occam’s razor suggests it’s the most likely explanation. But it’s a bad idea to rely on the razor for too close a shave: sometimes you get cut.” Dr. Armstrong unlocks a drawer in his desk. “You haven’t seen these.” He pulls out a slim display folio and hands it to me. “I am not showing you this because it does not exist. Officially.”

  “What —”

  The cover bears the BAe Systems logo, subtitled Computational Invocation Applications Group. I open it. It contains a bunch of presentation folders, with glossy promotional renderings. I blink a couple of times to clear my eyes because I’m not entirely sure what I’m looking at. The first few pages look like Mhari’s proposed “protective overalls,” complete with helmets, except they’re in British Army Brown and the wearers are carrying L85 rifles with Very Scary Electronic Sights bolted on top and choppers hovering menacingly in the background. Then I flip a page and come face to face with something familiar. Take Officer Friendly’s outfit, swap out the frankly theatrical helmet for something that looks like a cross between a praying mantis’s head and a gas mask, and color it Army: you get something called the Future Battle Environment Suit. This time the L85 is just a carrier for a pair of side-by-side ruggedized cameras, a Joint Line-Of-Sight Vitrification Weapon according to the caption. A basilisk gun, in other words.

  “J
esus,” I mutter.

  Dr. Armstrong removes the promotional brochure from my nerveless fingers. “Power-assisted chameleon suits with tactical displays, mesh networking, armor, and strength amplification,” he says. “A triumph of our new strategic technology transfer program. Some of this stuff did come from BLUE HADES, in return for certain… services. Chicken feed by their standards, but highly useful to us nevertheless. Their approach to CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN seems to be to give the natives muskets while keeping the Gatling guns for themselves.” His expression is disapproving. “The Army think it’s just the ticket for when the stars come right. It’s not as revolutionary as you think: the Americans have been working on something similar since the late 1980s, the Future Force Warrior program. It’s all a bit pricey in today’s austere climate, though. One might consider the possibility that a certain large corporation has chosen to demonstrate some of the less sensitive aspects of their new toy chest by painting it blue and loaning it to ACPO as cover for one of their less well-understood capabilities.”

  “Ah.” It would certainly explain a lot. ACPO suddenly acquire a super-cop: How to protect his identity and make best use of his capabilities? Throw in a serendipitous marketing approach… “Tell me they weren’t also looking into selling this as next-generation riot kit?”

  “I’m disappointed in you, Mo: How could you imagine that the militarization of the police might be seen as a huge potential growth market by defense contractors?”

  “How indeed.” A thought strikes me. “Can I get my hands on some of this stuff for my team? Not the basilisk gear, but the power-assisted armor? So far, Mhari’s come up with unpowered body armor with helmet-mounted communications kit, but the strength amplification…”

  “Would you trust your trainee team with it?” askss the SA. “That’s a serious question.”

  “If I can’t trust them with it, they don’t belong on the team.”

  “That’s the right answer.” He nods thoughtfully. “Tell Mhari to talk to me directly. I’ll point her at someone who may be able to help.”

  And that’s another Friday morning confessional over: stick a fork in me, I’m done.

  That Friday afternoon’s highlight is a personnel review with Mhari and Ramona. Our next two recruits have finally been cleared by CRB, and we are on course to induct them next Monday. They’re a bit mundane if you stack them up against Officer Friendly, but they’re squeaky-clean role models, and that’s actually more important in my opinion. Mhari delivers the HR smackdown:

  “First up: Lollipop Bill. Aged sixty-four, former ambulance paramedic, retired at sixty. For the past few years he’s been working part-time as a school crossing attendant.” Wearing a hi-vis coat and wielding a fluorescent sign, he’s one of the army of unsung heroes and heroines whose very important job is to walk out into a main road and bring the traffic to a screeching halt when the primary school kids are chucking out, in order to stop the oblivious yummy mummies and white-van men from mowing down bairns like ninepins. “He came to our attention two months ago when he had an argument over right of way with a courier firm Ford Transit – and won. Bill saved a bunch of six-year-olds from being maimed or killed, and incidentally discovered that he’s got lightning reflexes and super-strength. He’s not as fast as Bee and not as strong as Jim, but he used to be fully certificated in first aid, and we could do with a paramedic on the team. Oh, and the guy behind the wheel was charged with texting while driving.”

  Bill is an affable-looking sixty-something in good shape – he could pass for a decade younger – with a salt-and-pepper beard and neatly trimmed hair. Born in Jamaica, emigrated with his parents when he was three, naturalized citizen, three kids and six grandchildren, he’s a genuine good-natured public servant and all around British hero with an ethnic spin: exactly what we need.

  “Okay.” I nod. “And the other, Captain Mahvelous —”

  Mhari pulls up his file. “Eric Talbot. Aged thirty-eight, software developer, civil partnership, works in banking.”

  “Why isn’t he one of yours?”

  She sniffs. “Obviously he isn’t bright enough.” Ramona clears her throat. Mhari shakes her head. “Want me to continue?”

  “Sure, let’s get this over.”

  She gives me a tight little smile. Smug, even. “Origin story: He and his hubby were on their annual boys’ day out for London Pride this year and decided to head over to Old Compton Street for some clubbing after the march. Halfway there they ran into a group of gang-bangers who were looking for trouble, or maybe some easy wallets to lift: your traditional queer-bashing ensued. Or rather, your traditional queer-bashing was attempted. That’s when Captain Mahvelous discovered his hitherto unknown talent for telekinesis, and his affinity for dumpsters. And then, in short order, the joy of introducing would-be queer-bashers to said dumpsters. He hospitalized two of them – broken ribs – but the entire incident was captured on CCTV, and as it was six against two and the bad guys had knives, it was an open-and-shut case of self-defense.”

  “Okay. Any history of violent affray?”

  “He’s clean – his total police record prior to the incident consisted of two speeding tickets.”

  Ramona clears her throat again. “So, let’s see. We have a three-to-one gender profile, which is bad, but balanced against it we have one LGBT and one feminist activist, one ethnic minority, one pensioner, two youths. Which makes it almost but not exactly off-target for the team makeup you were handed by head office, but at least the poor oppressed male trolls won’t have an excuse to go all rage face because it has too many girl cooties. If we can downplay the LGBT, ethnic, and pensioner angles, it’s almost what we’ve been told to procure… are we missing anything?”

  “No – sorry – no wheelchairs or missing limbs. No religious minorities either.”

  “I don’t believe your current Home Secretary will care too much about that,” she says drily.

  “Your?”

  “Okay, our.” She shrugs. “While I’m on land: after all, you people were good enough to give me a passport, so I suppose that means I’ve got dual nationality…”

  Mhari makes a cutting gesture. “Ancient history. The point is, they meet our brief for a team, and we can probably tap-dance our way around the diversity angle: it’s hard to form a group as badly balanced as the brief we were given without actually practicing illegal discrimination. At least this bunch look reasonably tractable, leaving us to get on with the heavy lifting in the background. Two super-speed, two super-strength, one pyro, one telekinetic. Can we work with that?”

  I lean back and think. “We need to get them into Hendon ASAP,” I say finally. “And devise some training-wheel exercises. Sorting out uniforms is now a higher priority – Ramona, can you take your latest spec and get us some provisional costings on it? Budget to equip eight in the field, three sets of protective kit per person, we’ll worry about some kind of dress uniform later. Then it’s time to get our public relations hat on and work on a media relations strategy.”

  “You think?” Mhari asks, with wholly unnecessary (in my opinion) ironic emphasis.

  I sit up. “We’re management. Finally we’ve got a superhero team to manage!” Just as long as the job doesn’t nibble their brains into lethal lacework, my inner conscience nags me. “So all we need to do now is sort out training and medical support, then brief the PR firm and the scriptwriters you’ve got lined up and see what they can come up with.”

  “Indeed.” Mhari mirrors my mannerism, sitting up and looking attentive.

  I can’t always tell when she’s taking the piss, and it’s mildly upsetting – but not enough to justify reprimanding her. “Just remember the first law of management,” I tell them.

  “What’s that?” asks Ramona, walking straight into it.

  “Being management means having to hold your hands behind your back while your inexperienced junior staff crap all over a job you could have done in five seconds – and then taking their mess right on the chin.”


  Maybe it’s a full stomach and an emotional unwind after a week of attempted karoshi, or possibly it’s because I park Lecter’s case too damned close to the bed, or perhaps it’s just the phase of the moon: but I go to sleep, perchance to dream, and what I dream is this:

  I’m dancing through the ruins of an ancient city.

  Two moons ride high and full above me in a cloudless night sky, drenching the scene around me with blue-gray twilight. Beneath my feet, the lime flagstones are worn smooth by the passage of time; to either side, decaying classical frontages and columns rise roofless amidst piles of rubble, like the bones of Whitehall a thousand years after the extinction of London. There are few trees here and less grass, but rose bushes curl thorny tendrils around the tombstone relics of the city. Their flowers are black as velvet night in the gloaming.

  I’m wearing a long white tunic, not unlike an ancient Greek chiton; my feet aren’t bare, but my sandals are so thin that I can feel every crack and abrasion on the stones. The music —

  — It’s ghostly, it’s wild, and it teeters on the edge of arrhythmia: a skirling mournful howl of tormented strings, the distant moaning of a tied-down giant whose vocal cords are being bowed by malign Lilliputian tormentors, intent on turning his every attempt at spoken communication into a vehicle for an inhuman melody. It keeps me on my toes against my will, even though my muscles are burning and tired – for I anticipate the imminent arrival of the soprano and baritone leads.

  As I spin past a half-tumbled wall, I spy a milestone. The word Carcosa is engraved on it in Roman letters, but the number below is indistinct.

  I look up, glancing away from the alien moons (one seemingly larger than Earth’s, the other smaller but still showing a visible disk). The stars are bright, but there are too many of them, harsh and pitiless and untwinkling – a smear splashed halfway across the sky like the Milky Way, only far denser and brighter. This isn’t the world of the Sleeper in the Pyramid, unless it’s a view of an earlier time: but that’s no cause for celebration. My feet carry me along a broad curving boulevard. There are side streets through the rubble and wreckage of this magnificent city, and as I pass them I catch glimpses in the distance of a lake, of terraced hillsides looming in the darkness at the edge of town. There is motion on the other boulevards, a swirling of bone-white dancing bodies making their processional way towards a common destination where all roads converge.