Rhesus Chart (9780698140288)

by Stross, Charles

  “—Not in quite so many words—”

  “—so they exaggerated my—”

  “—but they were quite effusive about—”

  “—success what?”

  I grind to a halt, two doors past the gents, and take a deep breath.

  “I’m not James Bond, Pete. Just a bad occasional stunt-double. For the extras,” I add, before he gets the wrong end of the stick. “You know, the ones who get beaten up?” I cross my arms defensively, wrapping a hand around my upper right bicep, which has a curious rectangular dent in it. (Covered by a skin graft about ten centimeters long, a souvenir from some very unpleasant people I met a couple of years ago.) “It’s nothing like as romantic as movies or TV make it out to be. Or books, dammit.”

  “But you’re in the job of protecting us from . . .”

  “Yes, exactly.” I start walking again. Round the bend, then we come to the coffee station. “We tend to pool mugs here.” I grab a couple of chipped promotional beakers left over from a long-defunct minicomputer vendor and slop the evil-smelling brew into them. Milk, one sugar, I remember on Pete’s behalf. “Seriously, I didn’t want to trouble you with that stuff. But I was out of options and you were the only person I knew who stood a hope of delivering an interpretation in time. Looks like Upstairs agreed with me, unfortunately, which is why it’s entirely my fault you’re drinking London’s worst institutional coffee right now. I owe you a huge, groveling apology—”

  “No you don’t.”

  “What?”

  Pete waves his mug around, eyes gleaming: “This is amazing! It’s all real!”

  “Um?” His response is so enthusiastic, and so unexpected, that he’s reduced me to monosyllables. That’s a bad sign.

  “Bob. First of all, I like to think that the most important point of my vocation is helping people. Helping with grief, with love, with faith, with life’s challenges. You’ve given me a better way to help more people. Do you really expect me to object to that? And secondly, you’ve given me some pause for reappraisal. The demon business, the whole nightmare monsters from beyond spacetime thing, the zombies: yes, I can see why you might expect that to shake my faith in God’s love. But don’t you think that’s a little superficial? There’s another way of looking at them, which is as evidence that the supernatural exists and is important. Where God fits into all of this I can’t say, but I can say that these so-called elder gods don’t invalidate His existence. They don’t prove a negative. If anything they make God’s message of love more important, in a human context.”

  I take a mouthful of lukewarm bunker-oil-flavored cow piss and try not to gag as my Weltanschauung strips its gears. His optimism is sunny, invincible, and just slightly pitiable. I’m about to open my mouth and say something inadvisable when I realize that, actually, I don’t want to do that. I may be turning into a cynical old fart, but that’s no reason to drag down everyone around me at the same time. So I open my mouth and say something else instead: “I think I can agree with the sentiment, if not the details.” Then, moving swiftly on, “But they wouldn’t have dragged you in here just for a mug of coffee, would they?”

  “No. They said they want me to know where the archive stacks are, and how to access them. Then I’ve got what they called a ‘training wheels’ assignment, after which I go back in the box until they need me.” He sniffs, mildly disapproving. “It’s supposed to demonstrate competence with the library system, I gather. After I told them about my doctorate.”

  “Yeah, right.” I roll my eyes. “They’re big on that. Assuming the ‘they’ we are talking about is someone in Induction and Training . . . ?”

  “Does Ellen McQueen ring a bell?”

  “Yes, yes it does.” I shrug. “Did she give you a time scale or a classification level for this assignment?” I begin walking slowly back towards my office.

  “Yes: it’s open-ended and the material is intended for public dissemination when the time comes—meanwhile, it’s considered confidential. Is that . . . ?”

  “Huh. The confidential bit is reasonable; no offense, but we don’t hand secret materials to trainees, even if they’ve passed positive vetting. But open-ended?”

  “Apparently it’s expected to take some time. ‘You are not expected to finish this job,’ she said. Those were her exact words.”

  “What—?” I think for a moment. “That doesn’t make any kind of sense to me. What did she say you were to do?”

  “There was some sort of civil defense program from the 1970s called PROTECT AND SURVIVE, she said. That was back during the Cold War. It was a booklet and posters and a bunch of recorded radio and TV broadcasts about how to survive a nuclear attack, and in event of a war situation breaking out they were going to distribute the booklets and run the broadcasts. Sort of a public information thing, I gather, although the main effect was to drive graphic designers to suicide.” He chuckles.

  “Oh dear fricking . . .” What he’s telling me finally sinks in. “You mean the Laundry has a public information campaign stored up and ready to roll in event of CASE—sorry, in event of us being invaded by tentacle monsters from another dimension?”

  “Yes! That’s exactly it. Only it was last updated in 1983. ‘Take a look at it,’ she said, ‘and write a proposal for bringing it up to date.’”

  “Did it have a name, this project?”

  “Yes. The books and posters are called MAGIC CIRCLE OF SAFETY, but she said I’d find it in the stacks under a very strange reference—KGB.2.YA—what’s so funny? Bob? Are you choking? Bob? Bob? Do you need help?”

  Kiss Good-Bye 2 Your Ass: I love the Laundry sense of humor.

  “I’m okay,” I finally wheeze as I exhale the last of my half-lungful of coffee. “Let’s go check it out.”

  KGB.2.YA. How bad can it be?

  • • •

  IN THE END WE GO BACK TO MY OFFICE, WHEREUPON A COUPLE of emails and a phone call confirm that Pete has actually been sent an orientation pack (not arrived yet) and assigned to my guest chair for the next week. Doubtless this is my punishment for increasing the departmental headcount and simultaneously downsizing our office floorspace with Angleton’s help. (I gather Andy is still in full-on Office Flying Dutchman mode . . .) “Looks like we’re hot-desking or something,” I explain. “Let’s do lunch and I’ll take you to the archives afterwards.”

  The Dansey House refurbishment may be stalled, but the archive stacks, deep beneath the basement, are still in business. They’re built inside segments of deep-running tube tunnels that were excavated before and after the Second World War, to double as air raid shelters and blitz-proof government offices. Nuclear weapons made them obsolete for their original purpose and the London Underground never asked to have their tube station back, so we hung on to it and filled it with microfiche cards and, latterly, storage servers. You thought the gigantic new London water mains were installed to supply the capital with drinking water? Well, yes they were—but only after we’ve used them as a heat sink for our equipment racks.

  But we don’t end up in the deep stacks. Before lunch I take Pete to visit old Basil in Archives to ask for the shelf locator of KGB.2.YA. This is necessary because Basil is one of our pensioners—the ones who don’t retire so much as they subside into the furniture—and the most advanced technology he can operate reliably is his hearing aid (which whistles irritatingly, like a mosquito scraping its fingernails down a blackboard). He doesn’t answer his email, instant messaging might as well be rocket science, and a voice call is inevitably frustrated by the intermittently faulty induction loop on his desk phone. Luckily Basil is okay if you visit him in person, so I procure a map and a signed authorization chitty before taking Pete to the canteen for lunch (British Institutional Keg Curry and naan for me, beans on toast for him).

  Afterwards, back in my office: “You have got to be shitting . . . sorry.” I peer at the hand-scrawled carbon-copy a
gain, double-checking it. “You’re sure that was the right reference?”

  Pete rummages in the ring binder that Trish inflicted on him when he arrived. “Yes, that’s the one.”

  “Well, it’s in a warehouse in Watford, most of the way out to the M25. I didn’t even know we had a warehouse in Watford. It’ll take us three hours to get there and back by tube, so I suppose—”

  “I brought the Vespa.” Pete diffidently jangles a bunch of keys. “Can you ride pillion?”

  Vicars on vintage scooters; what is the world coming to? (I’m just glad I don’t have hemorrhoids.)

  Pete has parked in an alley round the back of the New Annex, between two dumpsters full of non-office waste. It’s raining, and I’m glad I decided to wear a parka to work, even though it makes me look like a dork. He passes me a spare helmet and I’m busy fiddling with the chin strap when I get a peculiar feeling that I’m being watched.

  I open an inner eye and whip my head around. There’s a startled hiss and a black bolt of lightning scoots under the nearer dumpster. It’s not a feeder, nor is it a human intruder. I gulp with relief. Green eyes flash at me from the shadows, then retreat into darkness.

  “What’s up?” Pete asks, noticing my startle reflex.

  “Just a stray cat.” Maybe feral. I need to stop jumping at shadows, I think. “Let’s go.”

  I have heard that the second fastest way to get around central London is on two wheels. Well, if your range needs to encompass the entire area within the M25 orbital motorway, you either need Lance Armstrong’s prescription cabinet or a motor. Pete gives me a demonstration of the latter. We make it out to Watford in less than half an hour, faster than I could have managed even given a bicycle and access to the ley-line paths of power that thread the capital’s disused railways and cuttings. Unfortunately I also discover that riding pillion in the rain without leathers is a great way to get soaked to the skin and chilled, and while I don’t get car-sick or plane-sick I am quite capable of getting nauseous on the back of a scooter.

  Nevertheless, Pete gets us there in miraculously short order. We dismount in a car park round the side of an anonymous-looking industrial unit with roll-ups, and I stumble dizzily towards the windowless door. There is a doorbell, and a small camera. I ring the bell and present my warrant card to the camera. After a moment, Pete remembers to pull out his shiny new ID. It doesn’t come with the special sauce yet, but at least it’ll get him in the door if he’s accompanied by an irresponsible adult.

  “’Ooozare?”

  “Bob Howard and Pete Wilson, Capital Laundry Services.”

  “C’min.”

  There’s a buzz, and I push the door open. The office inside is tiny, occupied by the middle-aged security guard who was playing solitaire on his phone when I interrupted his brilliantly exciting afternoon. “Yus?” he asks resentfully.

  “We called ahead.” I try not to look disapprovingly at his game: rule #1 of working at remote offices is never to piss off site security. “We need access to the stores.” I hold up the slightly rusty key ring I checked out from Archives Reception, and Pete produces a file from somewhere inside his bulky leather jacket and slides out an authorization form.

  “G’wan in. You gointa be long?”

  “Don’t know yet.” I glance at Pete, make eye contact, and nod infinitesimally. “We’ll let you know. When do you go off-shift?”

  “I gotta be out by five.”

  “Okay. If we’re still going, knock on the door ten minutes before you’re ready to leave and we’ll wrap up.”

  “Lemme see that badge again?”

  I show him my warrant card, and he scrawls something that might be cryptographically related to my name and departmental number on a dog-eared sheet clipped to a board hanging by the door. Then he goes back to his solitaire game.

  I turn the key, reach round the door to flick on the light switch, and together Pete and I enter the KGB.2.YA archive.

  • • •

  IT HAS BEEN SAID THAT HER MAJESTY’S GOVERNMENT FINDS IT extremely difficult to throw anything away. Like your mad old aunt who lives in a flat with sixteen commemorative Royal Family tea sets, thirty cubic meters of yellowing newspapers, and an incontinent dachshund, the government hangs on to stuff until long after it becomes obvious that it lacks any conceivable use:

  As late as 1982, they kept a strategic reserve of 160 steam locomotives in a vast underground complex at Corsham, near Bath, in case they had to rebuild the British railway network after a nuclear war. (They also kept a Second World War jeep factory, five million battery-powered radios, and twenty-three million body bags at the same depot.)

  The official Government Random Number Generator used for seeding new encryption keys is a thing of legend, running as it does on a type of punched paper tape that hasn’t been manufactured since the 1950s. (We had to invent some really neat hacks using digital cameras to read it into our oldest trailing-edge minicomputers in order to use those numbers . . .)

  And rumor has it that the Central Ammunition Depot hanging off Box Tunnel still contains two thousand barrels of iron-tipped English longbow arrows, in case it becomes urgently necessary to re-fight the Battle of Crécy.

  But these pale into insignificance compared to the glorious, pointless obsolescence that fills the MAGIC CIRCLE OF SAFETY warehouse.

  “Dear God,” whispers Pete, “it’s full of posters!”

  He’s not wrong. The warehouse is full of floor-to-ceiling, heavy-duty steel shelves, construction built to take timbers. The nearest aisle to us is not full of wood, though. Instead, every available niche is jammed with pallets laden with broadsheet-sized posters, stacked half a meter deep and strapped in place. I do some quick mental arithmetic and realize there has to be upwards of a hundred thousand public notices here. I really don’t want to risk any of the shelves falling on me.

  While the pallets are tagged for easy identification, someone has taken the trouble to hang a copy of each poster by the side of the shelves that hold the stock. The design values are classical, and not in a good way. Two-color printing on plain white paper: Here is the par-liamentary portcullis-and-crown symbol, sitting atop a perspective-flattened summoning grid, menaced by cartoonish green tentacles to ram home the message—STAY IN THE CIRCLE. And there is a symbolic nuclear family (tall male toilet-door figure, shorter female toilet-door figure, two small mini-me’s) gathered under an Elder Sign—CULTIST DANGER: WATCH YOUR NEIGHBOURS FOR THIS SIGN. I wince at this latter. (The next cultist I meet who can tell an Elder Sign from Transport for London’s new logo will be the first. And don’t get me started on the occult symbol they used for the Olympics . . .)

  I look down the aisle. Yes, there it is: PROTECT AND SURVIVE with added magic circle goodness. Tentacles replace mushroom clouds in the variant semiological design language of pants-wetting despair at imminent brain-eating catastrophe.

  “Is that,” Pete says in an awe-muffled voice, pointing, “a box of LPs?”

  I follow his aim. Yes, there is indeed some sort of ancient gramophone contraption sitting on one of the shelves, next to an open box containing black plastic disks about thirty centimeters in diameter. “You mean the things they used to use before compact discs?”

  “Yes, Bob. Surely you must remember—”

  Yes, I remember. (Just.) I walk towards the music player. There’s something wrong with these disks, they’re not quite the same as the ones my dad used to play. I get a bit closer before I can see properly. “They’re too thick.”

  “That’s bakelite, Bob, modern disks are made of vinyl. Ahem.” Pete carefully extracts one of the disks from the velvet-lined box they’re racked in. “Wow! Look, these are 16s.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You play them at 16 revolutions per minute, not 33 or 45. Lousy high-frequency response but great for speech, and they run for twice as long. I bet these were spec
ially mastered in the late sixties. They didn’t know how well magnetic tape would survive.”

  “But what would they do with them?”

  “Broadcast them, probably. From the emergency command and control bunkers they had set up for running the country in event of a nuclear war: they had radio transmitters, didn’t they? I saw a TV drama about it years ago, called Threads.” He looks at me, curiously: “Would public broadcasting still work after an invasion of wibbly-wobbly nasties? What about the internet?”

  I scuff my shoe on the bare concrete. “This stuff is useless. They haven’t blown the dust off it in thirty years!” I look around. “I mean, it’s useless except for kitsch value. Well, that’s not quite right. You might get the service museum curator excited. But I don’t see any of this junk going viral like KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.”

  “It lacks a certain je ne sais quoi,” Pete agrees. “But what am I going to do?”

  I shrug. “You’re going to dig out the original brief for the folks who came up with this stuff. I figure it’ll turn out to be ‘come up with a public information campaign’ or something along those lines. Then you’re going to write a proposal for how to update the brief for a new generation, so that the New Media hipsters can all point and laugh at us. It’ll get outsourced to a security-cleared agency, who in turn will pitch an iPhone app and a Facebook page, but by then you’ll be signed off the job, so tearing off their heads and shitting down their necks as you explain in words of one syllable that we can’t trust Apple or Facebook won’t be your problem.” I pause. “I can help you with that: it shouldn’t take more than a couple of days. On the other hand, I’ve got a little project of my own I’m working on, and I could do with some help. And a library researcher is exactly what I need. Are you up for it?”

  Thus I seal my fate.

  4.

  VAMPIRE START-UP

  “DUDES, THIS IS NOT WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR! WHERE ARE MY fangs? Why can’t I turn into a bat? This sucks!”