The Annihilation Score

by Charles Stross

  He takes another sip. I notice that the skin on the backs of his hands is wrinkled with age, and liver-spotted: they are shaking slightly, and I realize that not once has he looked directly at Lecter’s case. I open the packet and shake a silver chain and a small bangle into my hand.

  “What happened?” I ask, running the chain through my fingers.

  “That’s a story for another time,” he says. “For now, just hang on to that. When you can’t bear it anymore, call me and I’ll come. But that’s not why I invited you here today: what I really want is for you to tell me about your suspicions. What do you think is wrong?”

  I take a deep breath and try to relax. It’s the wrong move: I shudder, transfixed by a sudden irrational fear that we’re being listened in on by Mhari. “It, it’s the staff assignments coming from HR.” I take a mouthful of raw spirit, disrespectfully fast, choke on it, and start to cough. He says nothing but simply waits me out. He recognizes a delaying tactic when he sees one, damn it. “I have a problem with the violin.”

  He nods encouragement.

  I laugh, shakily. “Bob is convinced it wants to eat him.”

  Armstrong looks understanding. “Yes, I can understand that.”

  I shiver. “Bob and I are, are living apart. While we sort things out. There’ve been incidents. Problems. You know he’s the Eater of Souls now. The violin and the hungry ghost do not see eye-to-eye.”

  A pause, then: “I understand.” He speaks in the distant, respectful tones of an undertaker.

  “Emma MacDougal sent me a brilliantly qualified deputy director. On paper, she’s absolutely the best possible pick. Management fast-track, MBA, extremely ambitious and motivated, a real self-starter. Only she, she, she’s Mhari Murphy.”

  “Do you have a problem with Ms. Murphy?” Armstrong asks sympathetically.

  “She’s Bob’s ex! And she’s a PHANG, and the last time we met before she was assigned to me, she was sleeping in my living room—Bob had invited her, it was the night of the Code Red and he said she needed a safe house to stay where nobody would think to look for her—and we, we—” I swallow. “Lecter tried to murder her.”

  “Lecter.” He raises an eyebrow. “Also known as Dracula?”

  I nod.

  “Well then, I can see why you might have a problem,” he says soothingly. “But she’s still on your organization chart? Have you . . . ?”

  “No.” I swallow. “As I said, she’s superbly suited for the job: it’d be a disaster to lose her over something so, so stupid. So we came to a working agreement. I don’t know if it’ll hold.” I take another sip of whisky. “I trust her as far as I can throw her. She’s a vampire and an ambitious bitch besides, and I still get panic attacks when she comes up behind me. But she’s scared of me, too. Or she’s scared of Lecter. Balance of terror in the boardroom: what an innovative and ingenious way to run a department, got to keep the directors on their toes . . .” I stop, because I’m babbling again.

  “Aside from Ms. Murphy, who as you note is superbly qualified for the job, do you have any other problems?” he asks.

  “Yes! Emma sent me a personnel manager who shouldn’t even be in the organization at all! Do you know the background to JENNIFER MORGUE?” He nods. “BLUE HADES have come over all helpful. Two weeks ago, at the treaty birds-of-a-feather, I ran into Ramona Random. Purely at random, of course, except it wasn’t and you can’t convince me it’s any kind of accident that they sent her to us as a liaison body and HR sent her to me to babysit. Tell me, what kind of circus are we running that a rival firm can inject a known operative into our organization and we’re expected to babysit them? It’s worse than crazy, it’s against OPSEC doctrine! Hell, it’s a photographic negative of OPSEC doctrine!” I realize my voice has risen to a shrill whine when he winces, and I shut it down quick.

  “Well, that’s a very interesting coincidence indeed,” he says knowingly. (Which is when I realize I’ve been set up.) “Is there anything else you want me to know about?”

  I roll my eyes. “What, like a certain Chief Superintendent of Police who works for the Association of Chief Police Officers, who just happens to be cleared to work with us? And who in another life just happens to also be a four-sigma superhero, Officer Friendly? And who just happened to turn up in time for the Freudstein debacle at the library a couple of days ago, and who is due to turn up in my office tomorrow to discuss how he’s going to run the official government superhero team for me? And speaking of Freudstein, did you know he’s been stealing violin scores?”

  “Hmm. That all sounds extremely interesting,” the SA says brightly. I take another sip of whisky as he continues: “What a fascinating barrage of coincidences! It must be amazingly convenient for you to have such a high-powered team to work with.”

  I cough whisky halfway across the room. “You’re kidding,” I croak.

  “Not at all.” He smiles beatifically. “I see you’re off to a flying start.”

  I put my empty tumbler down on the edge of his desk, hoping he won’t move to refill it. “Wh-what?”

  “Dr. O’Brien.” He leans back and rests one ankle atop the other. “Your brief is to operate the official Government superhero team.”

  “Yes?”

  “So. Look at it from our point of view.” He takes another sip of whisky and looks contemplative. “In the next few days you will receive confirmation that your funding is in the pipeline and the HomeSec has approved your Phase One mission goals. Your next job will be to recruit and train a team of superpowers. Three- or four-sigma superheroes, to be precise. Volunteers who have the right attitude—supporters of law and order. Which, in this context, means you’re going to be overrun by Daily Mail readers who can hurl lightning bolts and grow tentacles.”

  “Wait—”

  I must look horrified because he gives an avuncular little chuckle as he twinkles at me. “What sort of fool goes out and buys a Lycra body stocking and cape, then beats up on bank robbers for their jollies? They’re not like you and I. ‘Normal for Norfolk,’ maybe, but not likely to pass our background checks and personality profiling under regular conditions. They’re also going to be three- or four-sigma types who are already visible to the public. A certain level of narcissistic personality disorder goes with the territory, as does a predisposition towards authoritarianism, and a naive belief in playing cops and robbers. Charming people. So we need someone to keep them in line, and that someone is you.”

  “Oh hell.” I’m doomed. Utterly doomed. His logic is completely, unassailably right. We’re going to be inundated with numbskulls who have acquired the power to vent their existential rage on a complex multicultural society that they don’t understand. We’re going to end up with UKIP in a pervert suit. “But we’re going to have to comply with gender, ethnicity, and disability non-discrimination law—”

  He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but the official Home Office superhero team is going to have to conform to public expectations of what a superhero team should look like, or it’s not really going to work terribly well. There’s room for one person of color, one female or LGBT, and one disability in a core team of four—if you push it beyond that ratio it’ll lose credibility with the crucial sixteen to twenty-four male target demographic, by deviating too far from their expectations. Remember, reasonable people who acquire superpowers are not our target. This is a propaganda operation aimed at the unreasonable ones: disturbed hero-worshiping nerd-bigots who, if they accidentally acquire superpowers, will go on a Macht Recht spree unless they’re held in check by firm guidance and a role model to channel them in less destructive directions.”

  “But, but, you’re telling me I’m going to be managing a team of four-sigma assholes in capes! How am I supposed to keep them in line?” The SA smiles again, and now I realize that he’s taking delight in my dismay. “That’s impossible!”

  “No it isn’t, Dr. O’Brien.” H
e sits up and leans towards me, confidingly: “You see, I was the one who instructed Emma to send you the people you’re talking about.”

  “You—what?”

  “For the real Home Office superhero team, Dr. O’Brien, the management superhero team. The ones who will stay discreetly in the background and organize the paperwork and the logistics and do all the heavy lifting, while the Incorrigibles arrest supervillains and take credit for everything and preen in front of the television cameras. For the real team who will yank the Incorrigibles’ choke chain if they get out of hand. The team I’ve very carefully spent the past month recruiting and assembling for you.” He begins raising fingers: “First, the Met offered us the use of Officer Friendly, who, as a four-sigma superhero in his own right, also happens to be one of the three highest-ranking police officers cleared for Laundry liaison operations. Abilities: super-strength, flight, night vision, powers of arrest and paperwork, and a master’s degree in criminal psychology. We’d be idiots to turn him down, even if they think he’s there to keep his line managers fully informed of our activities: he’s a perfect fit for the team.

  “Secondly: I asked BLUE HADES if we could borrow Ramona Random. She’s a retired occult clandestine operations officer and a highly experienced intelligence analyst. She can operate underwater, in which environment she has unparalleled flexibility; you might also have noticed that she is able to project an extremely powerful glamour. She’s a rather powerful necromancer as well, thanks to a not-dissimilar entanglement process to the one that gifted your husband with the powers of the Eater of Souls. Oh, and BLUE HADES kindly agreed to loan us—and train her in operating—a rather interesting piece of high-technology equipment that will come in handy when you need to move the team around. Think of her as your Science backup.” He pauses to pick up the bottle of Scotch and tips a finger into my glass.

  “Thirdly: we come to Ms. Mhari Murphy. Who needs no introduction, except to say, she’s a PHANG: a person of hemophagous anagathic neurodegeneracy. Otherwise known as a vampire, complete with super-strength, mind control, inability to see herself in mirrors, and a tendency to catch fire in sunlight. The usual, in other words. Yes, she’s a blood-sucking fiend. But she’s also a superbly competent administrator and has an MBA which I think you’ll agree makes up for a lot of sins: speaking of which, you do remember that she and your husband were over practically before you met him? High-level managers often have to work with highly competent officers who they do not like, but do so in a professional and even-handed manner. Think of it as a test of your resilience, if you want.

  “And finally, there’s you, Doctor. Combat epistemologist, lecturer in paradimensional harmonic summonings, highly competent magus, and entangled with—sorry, bearer of—the Pale Violin.”

  I watch, horrified, as he reaches for the decanter once more: “Together,” he declares as he wraps my nerveless fingers around the refilled tumbler, “you will fight crime!”

  * * *

  It is only on my way back to my desk after lunch—the SA insists on taking me to his club for a celebratory meal—that I realize I never got to discuss the vexatious Professor Freudstein and his curious musicological obsession with him.

  * * *

  When I finally get back to my office I am rattled to find Officer Friendly cooling his heels in the lobby, just as Dr. Armstrong promised. He’s in mufti—wearing a suit, not a Police uniform—but everything about him screams cop.

  I manage to fake a smile, even though my stomach is leaden and acid indigestion threatens. “Good afternoon, Chief Superintendent. Are you a Jim or a James?”

  He rises. “Jim is fine,” he purrs. We shake hands: his grip is reassuringly solid. “I gather you’ve been in a meeting with the, ah, Senior Auditor—”

  “Dr. Armstrong, yes. He told me to expect you.” I hold up a finger. “Let’s talk in my office.”

  Office furniture conveys relative status: I park myself on my throne and Jim responds adroitly by moving his seat off to one side so the desk isn’t between us. “My grand-boss put him in touch with me a month ago,” he says, sounding utterly unapologetic. “He told me not to tip you the wink prematurely.”

  Jesus, how high up does this go? “Well. Welcome aboard. I guess you’re our official Police liaison, coming at this from the SS side of the table.” I shrug. “Where are you desking on the Police side?”

  “In a Portakabin in the car park round the back of Belgravia nick.” He looks crestfallen. “We’re ridiculously short on office space in central London these days, since they sold the old Yard off because they thought that moving everybody over to hot desking and smartphones would save floor space. On the other hand, all I need on that side is an analyst and a pair of bodies to handle contacts and paperwork until we’ve got a team ready to deploy. About which . . .” He glances at the doorway expectantly.

  “Yes, that. Wait one.” I pick up my phone and make a couple of brief calls. By the time I put the handset down, the first invitee is slipping in the door. “Mhari? I’d like you to meet Chief Superintendent Jim Grey, from the Met. Jim is on secondment to ACPO, and he’s going to be our point of contact with the Police. You’ve already met his alter-ego.”

  “How do you do.” Mhari shakes hands with Jim and peers into his eyes. They both flinch: “Ouch!”

  “Charmed.” Jim smiles thinly.

  Mhari frowns and tucks her gloved hand behind her. “Pleased to meet you, too,” she says darkly.

  I try to make sense of this as the door opens and Ramona wheels in. “Gang’s all here,” I announce. “Jim, this is Ramona . . .” More introductions: this time nobody tries for a psychic beat-down. “If you’d like to grab chairs and gather round?”

  “Yes, well, what’s”—Mhari’s eyes slide towards Jim—“this all about?”

  “We’ve been set up!” I announce cheerily. “The culprit confessed, which is the good news.”

  “What kind of setup?” Mhari’s eyes narrow.

  “A logical one.” I nod at Officer Friendly. “Jim is the final corner of our tent. It’s all Dr. Armstrong’s fault: he decided to assemble a team without telling its prospective members, which is why I’ve been looking over my shoulder this whole time. I’m supposed to set strategy. Mhari, you’re on execution of policy. Ramona, you’re in charge of human resources and logistics. And Jim, you’re here for liaison and forward intelligence. It was absolutely a setup, but our puppet master believes in giving his proxies enough free will to tangle up their own strings.”

  “Oh hell—” Mhari begins, just as Jim tries to say something. “What?”

  “It’s Thursday afternoon,” I tell them. “So, the SA tells me that next Monday HR are going to send round our third wave of recruits. We’ve got tomorrow to read résumés and filter out the obvious no-hopers; next week we get to interview the survivors. Our job is to pick four of them and mold them into a public superhero team, complete with uniforms, origin stories, the whole Marvel/DC public relations package.” I glance round the room. “Sort of like us, actually, only younger, more photogenic, and willing to get beaten up by supervillains on BBC News 24. We just have to handle the paperwork and run the office. Nothing, really.”

  That gets a chuckle, except from Jim, who has presumably spent so many years collaring miscreants that the joke’s worn thin.

  “Great,” says Ramona. “That explains the rumbling from HR about a pile of CVs they’re going to drop on us this evening.”

  “Can you all clear tomorrow afternoon from your calendars, so we can go over them together?” I ask.

  “I’ve got a meeting at two with my Divisional Commander,” says Jim. “It’s to sign off on the resources I need for this project, so it really can’t wait.”

  “But can you be over here by five?” I ask. He hesitates for a moment, then nods. “Great. Well then, the rest of us will get stuck in beforehand. And then, well, I was thinking about adjourning f
or a team-building exercise at seven.”

  “What do you have in mind?” asks Mhari.

  “Any cuisine we all like, as long as it doesn’t include calamari.” I keep an eye on Ramona, but she doesn’t even twitch.

  “I know a decent trattoria that’s not far away,” Jim volunteers. “Want me to make a reservation?”

  “That would be great.” I stand. “I should have laid in some bubbly for this, shouldn’t I? Anyway, here’s to teamwork!” And for some reason they all stand and we end up in some kind of four-way handshake, and for a moment I have a very odd feeling that an invisible caped figure larger than any of us is looming over all our shoulders and nodding its approval.

  10.

  GREAT PAY AND BENEFITS! APPLY HERE!

  It is Monday afternoon. Jim and I are in my office, interviewing the third job applicant of the day, while Ramona and Mhari tackle candidate number four. It is not looking good.

  “So, Mr., ah, Human,” says Jim, “do you have any practical experience of community policing?”

  The Human Cowboy snorts bullishly and paws the carpet with one cloven hoof. “Nope,” he grunts. All his replies are monosyllables: I’m not sure he’d recognize a compound noun phrase if it tugged on his tail. He has impressive presence, not to mention gravitas—it’s hard not to when you’re two and a half meters tall, have the head of a bull, and your horns leave grooves in the ceiling tiles—but he’s not going to go down a storm with interviewers. To be honest, he’s not going down a storm with us, either, but at least he doesn’t have a disqualifying prior unspent criminal conviction like applicant #1. (And the less said about applicant #2, the better.)

  “Any experience of dealing with law enforcement issues at all?” Jim asks, overly optimistically in my opinion.