The Nightmare Stacks

by Charles Stross

  “He is a magus of their kind, an initiate of the blood-feeding brood, touched by power but left uncut and whole. I am unsure how they control him, but presumably they hold their magi in thrall through other means. I met him at dusk on the steps of the theater beside the regional palace of the hidden overlords, beneath the shadow of the steel spire. I am in the process of learning his background and gaining his trust: this is, perforce, not a process that can be hurried. Once obtained I intend to enter the palace under cover of his office, to seek those who rule from the shadows. I shall report further on their identity so that the Host shall be aware of their true nature and location, and I will then proceed as ordered . . .”

  All-Highest is aware of his wife’s pensive frown as his attention drifts from the prisoner’s halting monologue. “What troubles you, fairest?” he asks idly, reaching to take her scale-gloved hand in his.

  Her fingers curl into a tight fist, betraying tension. “I dislike the gamble thy Host is drifting towards,” she says—the word for gamble in the High Tongue refers to wagers on natural outcomes, not games of skill, for no wager on a game of skill can be truly free from the risk of interference. “That one’s report is vacuous and lazy, a work of purest imagination scribed to cover a lack of diligence. The urük prisoner”—she gestures at the subject—“is clearly a useless mouth, a serf so ignorant of authority that it seems to this one that Agent First deliberately chose her in mockery of thy instructions. Her account of an empire ruled from the shadows, with neither will-to-power nor an immediate descent into anarchy, is a fairy tale to frighten infants. It adds naught to our understanding of the enemy. That we gain nothing from this is a sign that there is nothing to be understood in the first place: it is a sign of treachery, not of insight. If All-Highest will permit this one to send her task group to examine the territory from above, we will rapidly learn the truth about this so-called civilization without mana or authority.”

  She smiles at him fiercely. It is an expression of shared complicity and ambition that fills him with pride. “We will review the matter on the morrow,” he replies. “How many of your wing are available to fly?”

  “Two can take wing immediately; the other six can be awakened at your command. All we await is word that the road has been widened sufficiently to accommodate them.”

  All-Highest makes a snap decision: “Then you must make haste to awaken all your riders. Of their mounts, prepare two for flight as soon as the shadow road is ready—Second of Magi shall serve as your guide. Hold the rest in reserve, ready to awaken and support the Host when we are ready to ride forth together. It would please us if you were to prepare terrain maps of the target city that Agent First spoke of, assuming it exists outside her imagination. If it is not simple confabulation, then it will be an ideal target for our first thrust: we will find the urük leaders there, and use Agent First to open a traitor’s gate so that we may bring them to the path of obedience through stealth while the Host holds their attention.”

  His gaze turns back towards the prisoner on the limestone throne. “Return this one to her cell.”

  * * *

  DEAR DIARY:

  There is a department on the fourth floor of the New Annex that does not exist.

  Or rather, it exists conditionally, paradoxically. Sometimes it’s there; at other times it has never been occupied. Until two years ago, its state of neverness was localized on Dansey House, the Laundry’s former headquarters building—now a bulldozed sinkhole of thaumaturgic contamination surrounded by construction hoardings. More recently it has migrated without authorization to another building. And it is a vital part of the agency, for all that many people don’t believe it’s even real.

  This is the Forecasting Operations Department, where one is supposed to imagine that crystal-ball gazing precognitives may or may not tickle the tummy of Schrödinger’s cat while juggling ampoules full of hydrogen cyanide and giggling madly at the whirling fogbank of the uncertain future.

  I’ve never visited Forecasting Ops, but I’ve been given a backgrounder about what they do, and it’s fascinating stuff when it isn’t boring. Fascinatingly boring, in fact. On the one hand, they claim to be able to foretell the future. That, on the face of it, is insane. It would allow them to create and operate a Turing Oracle, an abstract function that can resolve undecidable problems (including the Halting Problem) in O(n) time. NP-complete? No problem! P-Space- and P-Time-complete functions? Trivially soluble. Put me in charge of Forecasting Ops for a month and I’ll cure my annoying V-parasite infestation in one easy computational step—and break any public/private key pair you care to point me at for an encore. But no: they’re not interested in curing Krantzberg syndrome or its relatives. They’re just in the wholly mundane business of predicting the future.

  I find this deeply, offensively foolish. As if the future is predictable at that level! But abusing the Oracle is a political imperative, or so I am informed. They send reports around on a regular basis, discussing the most mundane matters with a lamentable lack of abstract insight. Mostly they make for terribly dull reading (“status is green: no existential threats anticipated”). Sometimes they’re just perplexing (“the rain of fish over York Minster next Thursday lunchtime has been cancelled”). And sometimes Forecasting Ops doesn’t exist—this is apparently a rare but critical paradox that emerges when the existence of Forecasting Ops will itself lead to a detrimental outcome, resulting in the department retroactively cancelling its own establishment until the threat is past.

  (I am not convinced by the underlying metalogic of this proposition; it appears to be undecidable even in P-Time. But that’s what you get for playing with Turing Oracles, I guess.)

  It is Wednesday, and I am back in the windowless office at the Headingley Arndale Centre, catching up on my paperwork. I will confess I am finding it somewhat difficult to concentrate: I have a date this evening and I am not sure what I’m supposed to do—Wikipedia is maddeningly uninformative on the subject, and other sources range from unreliable (citation needed!) to actively misleading. However I am conditionally confident of the accuracy of the advice Pete gave me, which was to treat any behavior showcased by the male lead in a Hollywood romantic comedy as dangerously abusive. (Do not: follow her home; break into her house to watch her sleep; put spyware on her computer or phone; send giant bouquets of flowers signed YOUR SECRET ADMIRER; boil her family’s pet rabbit; and so on.) I am therefore using paperwork as a distraction from life, rather than vice versa. And that’s why the weekly update from Forecasting Ops catches my attention:

  FORECAST: PERIOD BEGINNING MARCH 29TH

  SEVERITY: RED

  CONFIDENCE LEVEL: HIGH

  SPECIFICITY: LOW

  An extremely low probability front is incoming from the northeast-unseen, dimensionality approximately Re(1.026 * 10-16), associated with a high-level thaumotropic phase transition from high density to medium density.

  Intrusions from a variant parallel reality are possible within a 50/50 confidence radius of approximately 25Km around Huddersfield town center. The intrusions may include, but are not limited to:

  Outbreaks of idiopathic macroscopic cryptobiotic infestation

  Outbreaks of paranormal enhancements up to an order of magnitude more frequent than normal background level, including 3–4 sigma power spectrum deviations from normal

  Statistically significant anomalies in probabilistic outcomes

  Thaum flux variations in ley lines throughout the region

  There is a low-to-medium (<20%) probability of a major extradimensional intrusion occurring at this time. In event of intrusion taking place, severity of outcome is estimated as medium to high.

  Recommendations:

  First responder assets within a 40Km radius of the epicenter should be placed on major incident alert for the period March 29th to April 2nd.

  Precautionary deployment of an OCCULUS unit and associa
ted personnel to a suitable location within 60-minute deployment of the epicenter should be considered, unless high-probability/high-severity incidents in progress elsewhere demand all available response capacity.

  Notify regular emergency services to cooperate with OCCULUS unit on deployment, provide cover story referencing “possible hallucinogenic chemwar agent leak” or similar.

  I find these recommendations troubling.

  I’ve worked with an OCCULUS unit before—six months ago, during the debacle at the MAGIC CIRCLE OF SAFETY storage warehouse in Watford—and the idea that Forecasting Ops think it would be a good idea to deploy one within sixty minutes of Huddersfield makes my skin crawl. Huddersfield is just down the road from here (along the M62 motorway). It’s part of the western extremity of the West Yorkshire conurbation which peters out in the foothills of the Pennines, just before the motorway crosses the border into Lancashire.

  I’m not sure quite what a “major extradimensional intrusion” means when it’s translated from the FO jargon, but if Forecasting Ops are suggesting that an armed response unit equipped with heavy thaumaturgic firepower ought to be deployed on our doorstep, it can’t be anything good.

  I wonder if this has got something to do with the urgent requirement to reinforce the security wards around Quarry Hill this week?

  9.

  ALEX IN LOVE

  Alex’s experience of dating is similar to his experience of string theory: abstract, intense, and entirely theoretical due to the absence of time and opportunities for probing such high-energy phenomena. He is therefore understandably nervous when he walks into the Playhouse bar after work and looks around for Cassie.

  Unbeknownst to Alex, Agent First’s experience of dating is no more extensive than his own. The original Cassiopeia Brewer has indeed been dating since secondary school and spent her first eight months at university partying, drinking, and sharing a bed with one of her classmates (then the next eight months pretending not to know him and the former BFF whose bed he had switched to). But the original Cassiopeia Brewer considerably outstrips both Alex and Agent First in terms of sexual experience. Casual sex is common among the People, but courtship tends to be abrupt if not invariably brutal, and longer-term relationships are cold-blooded political alliances. The idea of approaching the subject gradually, bonding over dinner and dialog and shared experiences, is perplexing. On the other hand, such an approach serves Agent First’s needs perfectly well.

  Agent First started a secret diary in the back of a Moleskine notebook right after she met Alex for the second time, on the Playhouse steps. She has a to-do list: Get to know the urük mage’s mind. Ask about his liege and his responsibilities. She records her notes using the cramped syllabary of the High Tongue, her handwriting spiky and somewhat hesitant. Knowing nobody else in this world can read them is reassuring. Discover what he knows of the High Tongue and who taught him, she notes. (It is inconceivable that a magus of his evident power can function without a working knowledge of the metagrammar that permits the direct manipulation of reality.) She writes in pale violet ink, using a gold and lacquer fountain pen she fell in love with in a shop window. (The proprietor gave it to her spontaneously, thanking her for her role in some film she had never heard of.) And that part of her which is forever Cassie adorns the margins with pictures of daisies and elder signs.

  Agent First is nearly as nervous as Alex when she walks into the Playhouse bar. She pulls Cassie tight around her shoulders like an invisible security blanket as she looks around. Alex is perched on a stool at one of the bar-style tables alongside the back wall of the room, eyes swiveling restlessly. In a desperate attempt to psych himself up, he ordered a medium cappuccino; he has nearly finished it already, and he’s wired.

  “Eee!” Cassie squeaks. With Cassie’s fashion sense, Agent First sees that he is dressed extraordinarily badly. It’s not just a matter of drab ill-matched colors or poorly fitting office-casual: it takes hard work to clash that loudly. From the ankle-skimming cuffs of his navy blue M&S chinos to the randomly cut tips of his hair, by way of his brown tweed sports jacket and button-down shirt, no single aspect of his ensemble is remotely flattering. On the other hand, his will-to-power washes over her like a blast of heat from an open furnace door. To Agent First’s inner eye he’d seem like an emperor even if he was wearing a grocery sack. “You look great!” she half-lies.

  Alex’s smile goes goofily up to eleven. “Hi!” he manages. He regains control of his larynx and repeats himself, in a lower register: “Hi. You’re just as beautiful,” he says, then his tongue stops working and his cheeks flush as his brain catches up with his mouth. “Er . . . nice dress?”

  Cassie tries not to jump out of her skin. “I want one of those,” she says, looking pointedly at his coffee. Some raptorial instinct prompts her to bat her eyelashes at him as she climbs onto the bar stool opposite. “Get me one! And another for yourself, please,” she adds, clamping down on the glamour with a frisson of fright. (It’s dangerous to use glamour on a magus: they can sense the flow of mana, and she doesn’t want to discover the consequences of being caught trying to suborn a blood sorcerer. If it provokes anything similar to the reaction it would get from one of her father’s magi she can expect it to be drastic and probably fatal.)

  But Alex doesn’t notice her momentary slip. He looks befuddled for a moment, or perhaps star-struck. “Okay, I’ll be back in a minute,” he says nervously. “Don’t go anywhere?” He gets up and heads towards the counter at the front of the room, moving like a sleepwalker.

  Cassie watches his receding back, captivated and terrified. He likes me! she realizes, trying the idea on for size. On the one hand, this is as it should be: after all, Agent First wanted to get his attention, and what Agent First wants she usually gets. But on the other hand, becoming an object of fascination for an urük magus might be a bit too much of a good thing. The skin on her neck and wrists prickles and the tips of her ears stand on end, for she can feel the strength wrapped around the armature of his will, just as she did at their last meeting. Alex is remarkably unassuming for one with such vast potential. In the empire, he would be a Magus of the First Rank, terrible and puissant, his ambitions held in check only by the geas of a powerful noble and the enforced tranquility of castration. But she will eat her diary, card covers and all, if Alex is a eunuch. She crosses her legs restlessly at the idea of a virile male blood-mage. Such a thing would never be permitted in the empire: it brings visions from Cassie’s bookish fantasy habit to life, uncomfortably detailed visions, unaccountably attractive. How do their rulers control them? she asks herself, desperate for something to distract her from the fruits of Cassie’s overheated imagination. She racks her brain: but Cassie has no memory of ritual castration as a tool of management in this place, unless it’s symbolized by the neck-wrappings many male urük wear as part of their uniforms.

  Alex takes a couple of minutes to get served, during which time Agent First calms down enough to be mildly perplexed. Perhaps his failure to use his power to demand obedience from the servants is a sign of compliance to whatever directive of secrecy requires him to hide his light under a bushel? It strikes her as sweet but faintly ridiculous. At home, any duke or baron with such a powerful magus among their retinue would parade them around in their robes of office, accompanied at all times by an armed retinue of bodyguards, to trumpet their own wealth and power. But the rules are different among the urük, and while Alex is pretending to be a humble desk-bound bureaucrat, Agent First manages to settle her apprehension, regains her outward poise, and allows Cassie to quickly check her lipstick in a compact mirror.

  Alex returns to the table, bearing two cups of cappuccino: they clatter as he sets them down, one of them splashing into its saucer. “I don’t normally drink this stuff,” he says apologetically, “caffeine doesn’t agree with me.”

  “Really?” Cassie bubbles, despite his downbeat tone: she can’t help herself. “Then we wo
n’t be able to hang out here all evening! Did you have anything particular in mind for later?” Her heart pounds. Dating, with its conventions of multiple social encounters as a prelude to fucking, seems absurdly complex to her, like cooking your own food rather than having servants and poison-testers prepare it for you.

  “I was thinking, um, I don’t know, what movies are worth seeing? Have you eaten? Or we could find a pub—”

  “Movies.” Cassie blanks for a moment. This is a date and people on dates often go and watch movies together, at least among the urük. She has only warped second-hand memories of motion pictures, none of them her own. It seems like a fantastically unproductive use of her time with Alex, staring vacantly at an elaborate visual lie. At this point, if he were one of the People they’d already be getting down to business.

  But he persists: “Would you like to see a movie?”

  The penny drops: This is one of those bonding experiences, isn’t it? “YesYes! That’d be great!”

  “But, um, the Odeon is half a mile uphill from here—” He takes a mouthful of coffee, pulls a face as it burns his mouth. “Yes well, we could do that. Um. But um there’s this problem I have um caffeine doesn’t agree with me and c-can we wait until sunset?” he asks.

  “Sunset?” His pupils are dilated, and she fancies she can hear his heart pounding. Caffeine doesn’t agree with me seems like a massive understatement. She smiles encouragingly: “I can wait. Do they sell beer here?”

  Two gassy pints of Tetley’s Bitter take the edge off Alex’s jitters and relax Cassie pleasantly, then it’s time to go. Theatergoers are arriving for tonight’s production and the bar is filling up behind them.

  They end up at the Odeon. Most of the smaller screens are running anime and other cartoon movies in the run-up to the comics festival down by the dock, but one of them is showing a movie that’s on Cassie’s hit-list: a Jim Jarmusch romantic comedy starring Tilda Swinton against Tom Hiddleston, vamping it up as a pair of immortal star-crossed lovers. To her surprise Agent First enjoys it, although she is certain that she’s missing some of the sardonic jokes. She’s acutely aware of Alex’s presence in the seat next to her, even as her eyes and ears drink in the lights and sounds that dance across the screen in front of them. He twitches a couple of times during the blood-drinking scenes, almost as if it makes him uneasy, which is perplexing. (If he can’t cope with a little bloodletting why did he become a magus?)