The Jennifer Morgue

by Charles Stross

  “Oh, that was no big deal.” Mo looks relieved. She smiles at me and my heart beats faster. “You know Brains has a sideline in cosmetology? Says some of his best friends are drag queens. Well, we’ve got enough surveillance background on Eileen to know what she looks like, so I got Brains out to the York to provide make-up services before the assault. Stick a class two glamour on top of the basics—a wig, the right clothes, some latex paint—and her own daughter wouldn’t make her. We used Pale Grace™ for the finishing touch; it might be bugged, but we made sure I wouldn’t see anything until I was aboard the ship. So I just headed for the control room using the maps we had on file from Angleton’s—”

  I raise a hand. “Hold it.”

  “What?” Mo stares at me.

  “Have you got your violin?” I whisper, hunkering down.

  “No, why—”

  Shit. “Our drinks are well overdue.”

  “And?”

  “And this plot was set up by a document that’s classified CASE BROCCOLI GOLDENEYE, Angleton said, and Predictive Branch said I needed to be here, and . . .”

  “And?”

  I kneel on the floor and pull my mobile phone out, flick the switch to silence it, then put it in camcorder mode. I sneak it out from behind the sofa, then pull it back and inspect the bar. There’s nobody there. I swear quietly, and call up my thaumic scratchpad application. Then I tip my glass upside down over the table, and draw my fingers through the resulting beer suds frantically, wishing I hadn’t downed the pint and left myself mere drops to work with.

  “Have you got that stupid piece of paper on you?”

  “What, the license to kill? It’s just a prop, it doesn’t mean anything—”

  “So pass it here, then. We haven’t had plot closure yet, and you’re not the only one who can use cosmetics and a class two glamour.

  “Shit,” Mo whispers back at me, and rolls forwards onto the floor. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

  “What, that we’ve been followed home by a manifestly evil mistress of disguise who is hankering for revenge because we got her husband stomped into pink slime by a chthonian war machine?”

  There’s a disturbingly solid click-chunk from the front door, like a Yale lock engaging.

  “Do you know the ending of Diamonds Are Forever? The movie version with Sean Connery?” I meet Mo’s eyes for a moment, and in a disturbing flash of clarity I realize that she means a whole lot more to me than the question of who she has or hasn’t been having sex with. Then she nods and rolls away from the floor in front of the sofa, and I hit the button on my phone just as there’s a flat percussive bang: not the ear-slamming concussion I expect from a pistol, but muffled, much quieter.

  I look round.

  The middle-aged barwoman is waving a pistol inexpertly around the room, the long tube of a silencer protruding from its muzzle: she looks subtly familiar this time. “Over here!” I call.

  She makes the classic mistake: she glances my way and blinks, gun muzzle wavering. “Come out where I can see you!” Eileen snaps querulously.

  “Why? So you can kill us more easily?” I’m ready to jump up and dive through the window if necessary, but she can’t see me—the concealment spell is still working, at least until the remaining beer evaporates. I go back to folding a paper airplane out of Mo’s license, my fingers shaking with tension.

  “That would be the idea,” she says. “A lovers’ quarrel, male agent kills partner then shoots self. It doesn’t have to hurt.”

  “No shit?” Mo asks. I squint and try to spot her, but one thing we’ve both got going for us is that pubs tend to be gloomy and poorly lit, and this one’s no exception.

  Eileen spins round through ninety degrees and unloads a bullet into the wall of optics behind the bar.

  I glance at the drying suds then roll to my hands and knees and creep around the sofa, trying to stay low. I think the paper plane’s balanced right—it had better be, I’m only going to get the one chance to use it. There are forms, and this is . . . well, it might work. If it doesn’t we’re trapped in a locked pub with a madwoman with a gun, and our invisibility spell has a half-life measured in seconds rather than minutes. There are two martini glasses on the bar, one of them half full: Maybe Eileen wanted to steady her nerves first? There’s probably an unconscious or dead bartender out back. What a mess: I don’t think an intruder’s ever penetrated the Village before. I doubt it would be possible without the blowback from the Hero trap to help.

  There’s a creak from a floorboard and another shot goes flying, to no apparent effect. Eileen looks spooked. She takes a step backwards towards the bar, gun muzzle questing about, and then another step. My heart’s pounding and I’m feeling lightheaded with anger—no, with rage—You think anyone would ever believe I’d hurt Mo? And then she’s at the bar.

  There’s a glassy chink.

  Eileen spins round, and pulls the trigger just as the half-full martini glass levitates and flies at her face. She manages to shoot the ceiling, then recoils. “Ow! Bitch!” I raise the paper dart and take aim. She wipes her eyes as she brings her gun down to bear on a faint distortion in the air, a snarl of satisfaction on her face: “I see you now!”

  I flick the Zippo’s wheel and then throw the flaming dart at her martini-irrigated head.

  AFTERWARDS, AS THE PARAMEDICS LOAD HER ONTO a stretcher and zip the body bag closed, and Internal Security removes the CCTV hard drives for evidence, I hold Mo in my arms. Or she holds me: my knees feel like jelly and it would be downright embarrassing if Mo wasn’t shuddering, too. “You’re all right,” I tell her, “you’re all right.”

  She laughs shakily. “No, you’re all right!” And she hugs me hard.

  “Come on. Let’s take a walk.”

  There’s a mess on the floor, fire extinguisher foam half-concealing the scorch marks, and we skirt it carefully on our way to the door. Security has placed us under a ward of compulsion and we’ll be seen by the Auditors tomorrow: but for the time being, we’ve got the run of the Village. Mo seems to want to head back to our quarters, but I pull back. “No, let’s go walk on the beach.” And she nods.

  “You knew that was coming,” she says as we jump down off the concrete wall and onto the rough pebbles.

  “I had an idea something bad was in the air.” The onshore breeze is blowing, and the sun is shining. “I didn’t know for sure, or I’d have been better prepared.”

  “Bullshit.” She punches me lightly on the arm, then puts an arm around my waist.

  “No, would I lie to you?” I protest. I stare out to sea. Somewhere out there Ramona is lying in a watery hostel, learning what she really is. A new life lies ahead of her: she won’t be able to come ashore after the change is complete. Hey, if I really was James Bond, I could have a girl in every port—even the drowned ones.

  “Bob. Would you have left me for her?”

  I shiver. “I don’t think so.” Actually, no. Which is not to say Ramona didn’t have glamour of the non-magical kind as well, but there’s something about what I have with Mo—

  “Well, then. And you’re cut up about the idea that I might have been cheating on you.”

  I consider this for a few seconds. “Surprised?”

  “Well.” She’s silent, too. “I was worried. And I’m still worried about the other thing.”

  “The other thing?”

  “The possibility that we’re going to be haunted by the ghost of James Bond.”

  “Oh, I dunno.” I kick a pebble towards the waterline, watch it skitter, alone. “We could always do something totally un-Bond-like, to break any remaining echoes of the geas.”

  “You think?” She smiles. “Got any ideas?”

  My mouth is dry. “Yeah—yes, as a matter-of-fact I do.” I take her in my arms and she puts her arms around me, and rests her face against the side of my neck. “If this was really the end of a Bond story, we’d go find a luxury hotel to hole up in, order a magnum of champagne, and fuck
each other senseless.”

  She tenses. “Ah, I hadn’t thought of that.” A moment later, and faintly: “Damn.”

  “Well. I’m not saying it’s impossible. But—” My heart is pounding again, and my knees are even weaker than they were when I realized Eileen hadn’t shot her. “We’ve got to do it in such a way that it’s completely incompatible with the geas.”

  “Okay, wise guy. So you’ve got a bright idea for an ending that simply wouldn’t work in a Bond book?”

  “Yes. See, the thing is, Bond’s creator—like Bond himself—was a snob. Upper-crust, old Etonian, terribly conventional. If he was around today he’d always be wearing a tailored suit, you’d never catch him in ripped jeans and a Nine Inch Nails tee shirt. And it goes deeper. He liked sex, but he was deeply ingrained with a particular view of gender relationships. Man of action, woman as bit of fluff on the side. So the one thing Bond would never expect one of his girls to say is—” it’s now or never “—will . . . will you marry me?” I can’t help it; my voice ends up a strangled squeak, as befits the romantic interest doing something as shockingly unconventional as proposing to the hero.

  “Oh, Bob!” She hugs me tighter: “Of course! Yes!” She’s squeaking, too, I realize dizzily: Is this normal? We kiss. “Especially if it means we can hole up in a luxury hotel, order in a magnum of champagne, and fuck each other senseless without being haunted by the ghost of James Bond. You’ve got a sick and twisted mind—that’s why I love you!”

  “I love you, too,” I add. And as we walk along the beach, holding hands and laughing, I realize that we’re free.

  PIMPF

  I HATE DAYS LIKE THIS.

  It’s a rainy Monday morning and I’m late in to work at the Laundry because of a technical fault on the Tube. When I get to my desk, the first thing I find is a note from Human Resources that says one of their management team wants to talk to me, soonest, about playing computer games at work. And to put the cherry on top of the shit-pie, the office’s coffee percolator is empty because none of the other inmates in this goddamn loony bin can be arsed refilling it. It’s enough to make me long for a high place and a rifle . . . but in the end I head for Human Resources to take the bull by the horns, decaffeinated and mean as only a decaffeinated Bob can be.

  Over in the dizzying heights of HR, the furniture is fresh and the windows recently cleaned. It’s a far cry from the dingy rats’ nest of Ops Division, where I normally spend my working time. But ours is not to wonder why (at least in public).

  “Ms. MacDougal will see you now,” says the receptionist on the front desk, looking down her nose at me pityingly. “Do try not to shed on the carpet, we had it steam cleaned this morning.” Bastards.

  I slouch across the thick, cream wool towards the inner sanctum of Emma MacDougal, senior vice-superintendent, Personnel Management (Operations), trying not to gawk like a resentful yokel at the luxuries on parade. It’s not the first time I’ve been here, but I can never shake the sense that I’m entering another world, graced by visitors of ministerial import and elevated budget. The dizzy heights of the real civil service, as opposed to us poor Morlocks in Ops Division who keep everything running.

  “Mr. Howard, do come in.” I straighten instinctively when Emma addresses me. She has that effect on most people—she was born to be a headmistress or a tax inspector, but unfortunately she ended up in Human Resources by mistake and she’s been letting us know about it ever since. “Have a seat.” The room reeks of quiet luxury by Laundry standards: my chair is big, comfortable, and hasn’t been bumped, scraped, and abraded into a pile of kindling by generations of visitors. The office is bright and airy, and the window is clean and has a row of attractively un-browned potted plants sitting before it. (The computer squatting on her desk is at least twice as expensive as anything I’ve been able to get my hands on via official channels, and it’s not even switched on.) “How good of you to make time to see me.” She smiles like a razor. I stifle a sigh; it’s going to be one of those sessions.

  “I’m a busy man.” Let’s see if deadpan will work, hmm?

  “I’m sure you are. Nevertheless.” She taps a piece of paper sitting on her blotter and I tense. “I’ve been hearing disturbing reports about you, Bob.”

  Oh, bollocks. “What kind of reports?” I ask warily.

  Her smile’s cold enough to frost glass. “Let me be blunt. I’ve had a report—I hesitate to say who from—about you playing computer games in the office.”

  Oh. That. “I see.”

  “According to this report you’ve been playing rather a lot of Neverwinter Nights recently.” She runs her finger down the printout with relish. “You’ve even sequestrated an old departmental server to run a persistent realm—a multiuser online dungeon.” She looks up, staring at me intently. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

  I shrug. What’s to say? She’s got me bang to rights. “Um.”

  “Um indeed.” She taps a finger on the page. “Last Tuesday you played Neverwinter Nights for four hours. This Monday you played it for two hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, staying on for an hour after your official flexitime shift ended. That’s six straight hours. What have you got to say for yourself?”

  “Only six?” I lean forwards.

  “Yes. Six hours.” She taps the memo again. “Bob. What are we paying you for?”

  I shrug. “To put the hack into hack-and-slay.”

  “Yes, Bob, we’re paying you to search online role-playing games for threats to national security. But you only averaged four hours a day last week . . . isn’t this rather a poor use of your time?”

  SAVE ME FROM AMBITIOUS BUREAUCRATS. THIS IS the Laundry, the last overmanned organization of the civil service in London, and they’re everywhere—trying to climb the greasy pole, playing snakes and ladders with the org chart, running esoteric counterespionage operations in the staff toilets, and rationing the civil service tea bags. I guess it serves Mahogany Row’s purposes to keep them running in circles and distracting one another, but sometimes it gets in the way. Emma MacDougal is by no means the worst of the lot: she’s just a starchy Human Resources manager on her way up, stymied by the full promotion ladder above her. But she’s trying to butt in and micromanage inside my department (that is, inside Angleton’s department), and just to show how efficient she is, she’s actually been reading my time sheets and trying to stick her oar in on what I should be doing.

  To get out of MacDougal’s office I had to explain three times that my antiquated workstation kept crashing and needed a system rebuild before she’d finally take the hint. Then she said something about sending me some sort of administrative assistant—an offer that I tried to decline without causing mortal offense. Sensing an opening, I asked if she could provide a budget line item for a new computer—but she spotted where I was coming from and cut me dead, saying that wasn’t in HR’s remit, and that was the end of it.

  ANYWAY, I’M NOW LOOKING AT MY WATCH AND IT turns out that it’s getting on for lunch. I’ve lost another morning’s prime gaming time. So I head back to my office, and just as I’m about to open the door I hear a rustling, crunching sound coming from behind it, like a giant hamster snacking down on trail mix. I can’t express how disturbing this is. Rodent menaces from beyond space-time aren’t supposed to show up during my meetings with HR, much less hole up in my office making disturbing noises. What’s going on?

  I rapidly consider my options, discarding the most extreme ones (Facilities takes a dim view of improvised ordnance discharges on Government premises), and finally do the obvious. I push the door open, lean against the battered beige filing cabinet with the jammed drawer, and ask, “Who are you and what are you doing to my computer?”

  I intend the last phrase to come out as an ominous growl, but it turns into a strangled squeak of rage. My visitor looks up at me from behind my monitor, eyes black and beady, and cheek-pouches stuffed with—ah, there’s an open can of Pringles sitting on my in-tray. “Yu
h?”

  “That’s my computer.” I’m breathing rapidly all of a sudden, and I carefully set my coffee mug down next to the light-sick petunia so that I don’t drop it by accident. “Back away from the keyboard, put down the mouse, and nobody needs to get hurt.” And most especially, my sixth-level cleric-sorcerer gets to keep all his experience points and gold pieces without some munchkin intruder selling them all on a dodgy auction site and re-skilling me as an exotic dancer with chloracne.

  It must be my face; he lifts up his hands and stares at me nervously, then swallows his cud of potato crisps. “You must be Mr. Howard?”

  I begin to get an inkling. “No, I’m the grim fucking reaper.” My eyes take in more telling details: his sallow skin, the acne and straggly goatee beard. Ye gods and little demons, it’s like looking in a time-traveling mirror. I grin nastily. “I asked you once and I won’t ask you again: Who are you?”

  He gulps. “I’m Pete. Uh, Pete Young. I was told to come here by Andy, uh, Mr. Newstrom. He says I’m your new intern.”

  “My new what . . . ?” I trail off. Andy, you’re a bastard! But I repeat myself. “Intern. Yeah, right. How long have you been here? In the Laundry, I mean.”

  He looks nervous. “Since last Monday morning.”

  “Well, this is the first anyone’s told me about an intern,” I explain carefully, trying to keep my voice level because blaming the messenger won’t help; anyway, if Pete’s telling the truth he’s so wet behind the ears I could use him to water the plants. “So now I’m going to have to go and confirm that. You just wait here.” I glance at my desktop. Hang on, what would I have done five or so years ago . . . ? “No, on second thoughts, come with me.”

  THE OPS WING IS A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGEWAYS, all alike. Cramped offices open off them, painted institutional green and illuminated by underpowered bulbs lightly dusted with cobwebs. It isn’t like this on Mahogany Row or over the road in Administration, but those of us who actually contribute to the bottom line get to mend and make do. (There’s a malicious, persistent rumor that this is because the Board wants to encourage a spirit of plucky us-against-the-world self-reliance in Ops, and the easiest way to do that is to make every requisition for a box of paper clips into a Herculean struggle. I subscribe to the other, less popular theory: they just don’t care.)