Rhesus Chart (9780698140288)

by Stross, Charles

  The cop turns on me. He’s something senior, inspector maybe. “You wait your—” he begins, then I make eye contact and his tongue freezes.

  “I need a ride,” I say, reaching deep inside myself for the power and authority that goes with my new job. “Do not make me repeat myself.”

  “Uh. Um . . .” The inspector reels and looks at me like I’m the Grim Reaper: maybe I need to dial it down a notch or two.

  “He needs a ride,” Scary says, not unkindly, “and he’s my boss. I reckon you should give him a ride. It’s the easiest way to get rid of him.”

  “Uh, right. Where do you need to go, sir?”

  I give him the New Annex’s address. I hope to hell I’m not too late.

  If a motorbike or scooter is the second fastest way to get around London, then a police armed response car with blues and twos comes a pretty close third. Unfortunately there’s no room for a chopper to set down by the New Annex or I’d requisition one, and fuck the budget. I spend the next twenty minutes in a weird hypnogogic state, eyes registering the blue highlights reflecting off the shut shop windows to either side as we hurtle along high streets like the proverbial chiropteroid making its exit from Tartarus. My mind’s a million miles away. All I can think is, Someone killed Angleton, which means they need me because I’m the next in line. Or maybe they need Mo with her instrument, but she’s in the North Sea right now. Funny: whatever killed Angleton will probably make short work of me. So she won’t even get to yell at me for getting myself killed—

  My driver begins to slow down, and I realize I recognize the roads. We’re nearly there. Then I see more flashing lights, red and blue and white (which is worse), and we round the corner to see a small herd of ambulances drawn up, more police cars, and another OCCULUS truck setting up a mobile command center, outside a building with strange lights in one of the second-floor windows that make the skin in the small of my back try to crawl off and hide . . .

  . . . And stop.

  I’m clearly too late, which means I’m going to get to live a little longer.

  Somehow it feels wrong.

  • • •

  IT’S THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING IN THE BACK OF THE OCCULUS truck parked outside the alleyway at the back of the New Annex. It’s chilly and winter-damp in the back of the truck. I’m cross-eyed with exhaustion as the Senior Auditor turns to me and clears his throat. There are bluish-purple bags under his eyes, highlighted by the flickering overhead neon tubes. I’ve never seen him look so frighteningly mortal before. “Nothing more to do here,” he says. “You should go home.”

  “Thanks,” I say, then pause. “You’re sure?”

  He stretches tiredly. “Colonel Lockhart will come in early, in about another half hour.”

  “Lockhart’s a stuffed shirt.”

  “Yes, but he can handle mop-up. And that’s what we’re down to. My colleagues will take over in the morning. You’ve done your bit, you’re covered in”—he hesitates momentarily—“stuff, you’re bone-tired, and you should get some sleep. We will be conducting debriefings all day tomorrow. Don’t come in until you’ve had at least six hours’ sleep. Preferably twelve.”

  “Is that an order?” I jab.

  He looks at me without the customary twinkle in his eyes. “You know better than to ask, Mr. Howard.”

  Oh great. I stifle a yawn. “Okay, six hours’ sleep before the fatal incident enquiry. Check.”

  Angleton is dead. Andy . . . Andy’s dead, too, and that’s worse, in a way. In a lot of ways. Angleton was an ancient monster, but Andy was just another guy, with a wife and kids trying to kick his smoking habit and learn something new for his ten-percenter project. And now he’s dead, and some poor bloody cop is sitting up late with Andy’s wife and children and wondering how the hell to make a decent withdrawal. Maybe if I hadn’t volunteered to help him he’d still be alive. Then again, if I hadn’t volunteered to lend a hand he was all set to zap himself on that stupid summoning rig he was working on . . . I don’t know. I’ll never know. And the terrible part is that right now I’m so tired that I’d rather get some sleep than stay up an extra hour to find out the truth, if that was somehow possible. The SA is right. I need to go home.

  I stand up. “See you tomorrow afternoon,” I say. I strip off my filthy overalls, then stumble down the steps from the back of the OCCULUS truck, shivering in a tee shirt and jeans. I’ve got an app for a local minicab firm on my phone, and even though the shattered glass screen crackles when I touch it, it’s just about usable—I’ve got my home address and the New Annex bookmarked, and at this time of night there’s not much competition for fares.

  • • •

  I LET MYSELF INTO THE DARKENED HALLWAY OF MY OWN HOME like a thief in the night, skulking and shivering in unshod feet.

  I’m tired, with a bone-deep fatigue to which is added a layer of despair and depression. I’ve lost co-workers and, dare I say it, friends tonight. To start with: Howe. Well no, he wasn’t a friend. But I’ve ridden along with him a number of times, from that crazy hole in reality that opened in Amsterdam to training sessions on Dartmoor. He’s helped pull my nuts out of the fire more than once. Now he’s gone, just a smelly stain on my damaged-beyond-cleaning Google tee shirt to remember him by. And my life is smaller as a result.

  I shuffle through into the kitchen and switch on the lights on the cooker extractor hood—dim enough not to hurt my eyes or wake up the neighbors. I am a mess. I shrug out of my clothes in the middle of the kitchen floor. There’s a basket of clean laundry next to the washer-dryer, and I begin to rummage through it for something clean to wear against my skin for the long trudge upstairs when—

  “Bob?”

  I spin round: “Oh! Hi. You startled me.”

  It’s Mhari. Hair tousled, still fully dressed. She’s staring at my hands, which are the only things between her eyes and my wedding tackle. She yawns, puffy-eyed. “What is this?”

  “Would you wait outside for a mo?” I turn my back and bend over the laundry basket again, trying to pretend I’m not bare-ass naked. “I fell in someone. I’m filthy.”

  “Why didn’t you say? Wait a second!” She turns and hoofs it up the stairs, and returns while I’m hopping around with one leg in a pair of boxer shorts, clutching a bath sheet. “Shower. Now. You’ll feel ever so much better for it.” She throws the big towel over me, then gets a good look at my dirties. “Eew. You’ll have to tell me all about it!”

  “Why so lively?” I complain, fighting back another yawn. “Can’t it wait?”

  “I was dozing on the sofa, with Spooky. Who has been demanding unconditional love and complaining about your absence all day. I was waiting up for you.” She’s flittering about, casting shadows, getting on my tits. I can’t cope with people who are bouncy at four o’clock in the morning. “What happened?” she chirps.

  “Ops clusterfuck.” I turn and head upstairs, climbing slowly. “There’s going to be a fatal incident enquiry tomorrow. I need to get some sleep first.”

  “Ops? Oh. Oh dear. Anyone I know?”

  I bite back the urge to snarl probably and close the bathroom door. I lean my forehead against the inside of the door with my eyes shut for a minute, but push myself upright when I feel myself beginning to slide. She’s right about the shower. I shed the boxers and towel and step inside, then turn it on from cold. The water warms up quickly enough but the initial icy shock is positively painful, and goes a long way towards temporarily descrambling my brain.

  After a couple of minutes I’m done: squeaky-clean but exhausted. I step out of the shower, towel myself dry, then wrap the bath sheet around me and step out onto the landing. “I’m going to bed now,” I tell the airspace above the staircase. “Help yourself to tea and coffee.” I turn the landing light off, shuffle into the bedroom, then drop the towel and slide into my regular side of the bed, which is clammy in the predawn chill. My eyelid
s slam shut as my head hits the pillow—

  Delicate fingers form a cup around my balls, as a lithe, warm body spoons up behind me, flattening her breasts against my spine and sliding a knee across my hip. “Gotcha!” She breathes in my ear.

  I’m so drained I barely twitch. “Not funny. I want to sleep. Go ’way,” I grunt. It’s Mhari, of course. Who is no less unprincipled than ever, if somewhat more single-minded and a lot less obviously crazy—vampiredom suits her down to the ground. But she’s always had a hotline to my libido, and she’s rather good with her hands: I may be sleepy, but my wedding tackle isn’t.

  Mhari squeezes, and I groan quietly. “Not cool,” I say. I can feel her presence, both with my skin and with an inner sense—the inner eye, dark-adapted and far more penetrating than before. And I can see what she is, the dim red spirals in the void behind her eyes. I begin to struggle, finally waking up and resisting: “No, seriously, I want you to stop now.”

  Her hand stops moving. “Bob, what’s wrong?” she asks, sounding confused.

  I want to say, I’m married and unavailable. And I want to say, What we had has been over for years. It’d be better to say, I think you misunderstood the context of my invitation, but that’s too complicated a construction for me right now. What comes out is, “I’m exhausted and a bunch of my friends are dead and I don’t want this.”

  “Poor Bob—”

  “And my wife gets home tomorrow, and it’s nearly tomorrow already.” I yawn. “And yesterday I killed a vampire-hunting psychopath and then an ancient and powerful vampire, and I feel ill. Mental indigestion.”

  “You killed . . .” She pauses. “Oh my. God. Bob.” She’s shaking; I can feel it through my misery. “What have they done to you? What have they turned you into?”

  “We can’t go back. Can’t rewind and become what we might have been if we’d done the last decade differently. Please get out of my bed, Mhari. The thing that wanted you dead is gone. You’re safe. You should go home now. It’s not safe for you to be here. Make sure you get under cover before dawn. If you don’t go you’ll be stuck here all day tomorrow.”

  A moment passes, then she lets go of me. I feel the covers peel back, and she climbs across me. I feel her brief, cool kiss on my forehead before she leaves. Then darkness descends, leaving me alone in the night with my despair and the memory of her lost humanity.

  Even if I wasn’t married, I don’t think I could sleep with her now.

  Something in the back of my head thinks she’s the sort of thing I eat.

  • • •

  DOORS SLAM: “HI, HONEY, I’M HOME!”

  I open my eyes on darkness. The bedside alarm says it’s six o’clock; thanks to Mhari I’ve had only two hours of sleep. I try and shake my head to clear the cobwebs, then blink painfully. My eyes are sore. “Hi?” I call out, rolling over towards the edge of the bed. I tend to sprawl in the middle when I’m alone. Except I’m not alone: something warm and furry chirps indignantly and jumps out of the way. Blasted cat. At least Spooky doesn’t seem to be a face-hugger. (Mum’s old cat used to do that: sneak into the bedroom and sleep on my pillow. Sometimes she’d fart in my face.) “I’m up here,” I add.

  I get my feet on the floor and sit up, then nearly double over in pain. There’s a clattering thump from downstairs, and a muffled scream, and the base of my right middle finger throbs painfully. It’s the counterpart to the signaling ring I gave Mhari. An uncanny musical tone wobbles up from below, clawing at my eardrums.

  “No!” I yell. I make a dive for the staircase and slap my hand on the light switch. The note dies away to a distant hum. But it leaves a metallic stink in the air, like high-voltage switchgear, or an electric chair just before it is switched on.

  Mo stands in the hall, just in front of the porch, the ivory-hue violin braced between chin and shoulder, bow resting lightly across the strings. It’s aimed like a gun at Mhari, who is crouched in the living room doorway. She’s half-dressed, and in the green-tinged light from the CFL bulb she looks as pale as the violin. Lithe and bone-white, her canines extended, she cringes away from Mo, whose posture reminds me of a junkyard dog on the edge of exploding in a murderous frenzy of biting and clawing.

  “Stand down!” I shout. Instinct makes me duck back round the bedroom door, grab the dressing gown hanging on the back of it, and throw it around myself before I set foot to stair. The foot of the staircase is between the living room door and the kitchen. I reach the bottom and turn. We make an odd triptych: me, in dressing gown and bare feet; Mhari, huddling in the living room doorway with something between a snarl and an ingratiating simper on her face; and my wife, the avenging angel, red hair and gunsight eyes staring over the bridge of her weapon.

  But she’s not moving the bow across the glowing, barely visible superstrings that thread her instrument. Not yet.

  I try to keep my voice level, speaking clearly and slowly, to be as unthreatening and unsuspicious as possible. “We had an internal threat. I told her she could stay here. The threat situation was resolved about three hours ago at the New Annex. She’s about to leave.”

  Mo says nothing. But her eyes narrow, almost imperceptibly, and I see her tighten her grip on the violin.

  “It’s true,” Mhari says, words tumbling out: “there was an elder inside the Laundry he was sending a vampire hunter to murder all the PHANGs Bob said he must have access to the personnel records this would be the last place a vampire hunter would look for me I’ve been using the living room I’ll just get my stuff and be going—”

  Mo breaks eye contact with Mhari and looks at me. There is death in her fingertips. “Is. This. True?”

  Behind my back, I cross my fingers. “Yes,” I say firmly. Because it is true. (Even though a suspicious little corner of my mind is reminding me that I didn’t offer Mhari the living room sofa, I offered her the spare bedroom, and what is she doing still here? You invited a vampire into your home, it nudges, you deserve the consequences.) It’s not the whole truth, but it’s the truth, and the full truth will have to wait until the weapons are safed and the tempers are tamed.

  Mhari shuffles backwards into the living room and from Mo’s disinterest and the rustling sounds I gather she’s pulling her clothes together in a hurry.

  Mo continues to watch me. “You didn’t email,” she says, deceptively calmly.

  “I thought you were on a—” My eyes involuntarily track towards the living room door. (Mhari has no need to know.) “Out of contact.”

  “That’s not the point,” Mo says, her voice even and controlled. She’s at her most dangerous when she’s like this: chilly and judgmental and poised and calm. Like an angel of vengeance. “You invited that—thing—into our house.” The violin turns away from me, facing into the living room. The ring around my finger throbs: I think even the brief note Mo drew before I shouted at her to stop may have injured Mhari. She whimpers quietly, afraid.

  “She’s a member of non-operational staff who has contracted an unfortunate but controllable medical condition, Mo. We have a duty to look after our own.”

  “Yes well, I can see exactly how important that is to you.” Mo abruptly glances away from me. “You,” she hisses. The bow rests lightly across the violin. She tweaks gently, between two fingers. The instrument moans like a soul in torment, shivering very quietly. “Keep away from him, you bitch.” Another note, another moan—this one from Mhari. The ring throbs, fiery pain that feels as if my finger’s about to fall off. My skin crawls and my hair begins to lift. Static electricity everywhere.

  “Stop hurting her,” I hear myself saying.

  Mo’s fingers continue to move. She looks puzzled.

  “Stop,” I say, and step towards her.

  “I can’t—” The bow drags slowly across the strings, and Mo’s left fingertips begin to bleed. The strings are glowing now, and Mhari screams in pain. Mo’s eyes widen. “It won’t let me!
” The bow is dragging her hand: she fights back but she can’t let go.

  I reach deep inside myself and speak again, dredging up a memory of an ancient language that I didn’t know I had: “Stop.” As I say it I reach out and grab Mo’s right elbow, pinching it right around the nerve plexus. I’m terrified; terrified for Mhari, terrified for Mo, terrified for me: but most of all I’m terrified of the violin. To touch it is death. To hear it is death. And it wants to feed.

  A gust of chilly winter air blows in from the living room: there’s a thudding rattle as Mhari bails out of the front window. She’s obviously had second thoughts about being trapped in the middle of a domestic argument between the Eater of Souls and a blood-cursed instrument. (Hopefully she’s taken all her stuff.)

  The scroll at the end of the violin turns towards me, dragging Mo’s hands with it.

  “Stop,” I repeat in Old Enochian, looking Mo in the eyes.

  The pale red glow begins to fade from them, but the violin still quivers, hungry for blood. I close my eyes and look at it with my inner vision. Now I can see it for what it is: a ghastly, filthy, cursed thing, a vampire of the second order. Exactly the thing Basil warned us about. Why couldn’t it be a blancmange? I could eat a blancmange. But then I’d inherit the curse . . . a part of me is babbling inanely.

  “You’re hurting me,” she says, distantly.

  “I’m sorry.” I relax my grip on her elbow, but I don’t let go. I don’t want to give the violin a chance to take over again.

  “Did you have sex with her?” she asks.

  “No.”

  Her fingers, nerveless, release the bow. It clatters to the floor angrily, but separated into its two halves the instrument can’t stop her from lowering its body. Blood trickles down its neck, across the pegbox, pooling above the scroll.

  “You’re bleeding,” I say. “Let me get a towel.” She nods, and I hurry to the kitchen and grab the kitchen roll. By the time I get back she’s laid the violin on top of its open box, so similar in shape to a coffin. I tear off a couple of sheets and she wraps them around her hand. The violin is spotless already. I glare at it: it’s difficult to be sure, but I have a feeling it’s watching me the way a hungry lion watches its prey. “Kitchen,” I add.