The Fuller Memorandum l-4

by Charles Stross

  Angleton had the decency to scribble me a written order, and a good thing too, otherwise I would have thrown a strop. The librarians don’t appreciate unannounced visitors, much less informal withdrawals, and like so many of our more eccentric outposts they have their own inimitable and unspeakable ways of dealing with vandals and intruders. If they catch me, a signed order from a DSS ought to make them pause long enough to give me a fair hearing before they rip my lungs out; but, really and truly, it is usually best to just put in a request and wait for the little man with the cart.

  I try not to think too hard about everything that can go wrong with Angleton’s plan. Instead, I lie back and think of libraries.

  The Laundry keeps its archive stacks in a former tube tunnel. It was originally going to be a station, but during World War Two it was converted into an emergency bunker and in the end they never got around to connecting it up to the underground network. There are six levels rather than the usual three, two levels built into each half of a cylindrical tunnel eight meters in diameter and nearly a third of a kilometer long. That makes for a lot of shelves—not quite in the same league as the British Library, but close. And it’s not just books that occupy the stacks. We store microfiche cards in binders, row after row of them, and there are rooms full of filing cabinets full of CD-ROMs. There’s a lot of stuff down here, a lot of moldering secrets and fatal lies: a complete transcript of every numbers channel transmitted since 1932, the last words of every spy hanged during the Second World War, every sermon preached by a minister in the Church of Night—our minister—before his followers found out and tore him toe from nail . . .

  The train tilts so that my feet are raised, and the clattering rush begins to slow. I’ve only been here for three or four minutes but it feels like hours in the roaring dark. I cross my arms around my body, hugging myself, and try not to think about premature burials. Instead I try to remember more secrets and lies: such as the recordings of every spy and defector executed by Abu Nidal. (Famously paranoid, if he suspected a recruit of spying he had them buried in a coffin, fed through a tube while being interrogated: after which they would be executed by a bullet fired down the same pipe. I gather he killed more of his own followers than any hostile power.) The last confessions of every member of the Green Hand Sect arrested and interrogated by the Kripo in Saxony in the late 1930s. (Which led to secret and unsanctioned executions—which the Occupying Powers declined to investigate, after a brief, horrified review of the Nazi-era records.) There is even a sealed box of DVDs containing high-resolution scans of the mechanical blueprints from the Atrocity Archives. (That one was my own contribution to the stacks, I’m afraid.)

  The carriage squeals to a halt. A few seconds later, I hear the clatter of lids being raised. I take this as my cue and, bracing myself, I push against the roof.

  I sit up to find myself in another room, this time with a rounded tunnel-like roof and raw brick walls. It’s dimly lit by red lights set deep in shielded sockets; it smells of corruption and memories. A pair of residual human resources are lethargically unloading the wagon in front of me. I lever myself off the bench seat and clamber over the side of the carriage, trying not to bash my head on the low, curving ceiling. There are human-sized doors at either end of the platform, but I don’t dare try them at random—I’m pushing my luck just by being here. Instead, I approach one of the shambling human figures, and thrust my ink-stained forearm under what’s left of its rotting nose. “Document,” I say, stabbing my opposing index finger at the numbers: “File me!”

  Leathery fingers close lightly around my wrist and tug me towards a half-loaded handcart. I grab onto the edge of it and the hand drops away; I suppress a shudder. (One of the office unions is currently taking HR to court over the use of residuals, claiming it’s a violation of their human rights; HR’s argument is that once you’re dead you have no rights to violate, but the union’s lawyers have said that if they lose the case they’ll bring a counter-suit for interfering with corpses—either that, or they’ll demand equal pay for the undead.)

  After a couple of minutes, one of the working stiffs shuffles over to a control board on one wall and starts pulling handles. With a grumbling buzz of motors and the screech of steel wheels on rails, the mail train rolls forward into the next tunnel mouth, on its way back to the realm of worms and darkness. Then they take their handcarts and shamble slowly towards the farthest door.

  I walk alongside, resting one hand on the file cart at all times. Doors open and close. Using my free hand, I produce my warrant card and orders, then hold them clenched before me. We walk down whitewashed brick-lined passages like the catacombs beneath a recondite order’s monastery, dimly lit by yellowing bulbs. A cool breeze blows endlessly towards my face, into the depths of the MailRail tunnels.

  A twist in the passage brings us to another pair of riveted iron doors, painted battleship gray. It’s probably their original wartime livery. I’m close to lost by this point, for I’ve never been in the lower depths of the stacks before: all my dealings have been with the front desk staff on the upper levels. The lead zombie places a claw-fingered hand on the door and pushes, seemingly effortlessly. The door swings open onto a different shade of darkness, a nocturnal gloom that raises gooseflesh on my neck. I tighten my grip on the cart and swear at myself silently. I left my ward with Mo, didn’t I? I hastily raise my warrant card and orders and grip them with my teeth, then fumble for the NecronomiPod with my free hand. Should have replaced it . . .

  As my bearer walks forward I thumb-tap the all-seeing eye into view and bring the phone’s camera to bear. What I see does not fill me with joy: the dark on the other side of the portal isn’t just due to an absence of light, it’s the result of a very powerful ward. Being of a nasty and suspicious disposition it strikes me as likely that it’s part of a security cordon—after all, this is a secret document repository I’m trying to break into, isn’t it? And I know what I’d plant just inside the back door if I was in charge of security: Shelob, or a good emulation thereof, the better to trap intruders in my sticky web.

  It’s time to break from my assigned shelf space so, not entirely regretfully, I let go of the document cart. Before the dead man walking can take me in hand again, I remove the papers from my mouth, then lick the ink on my wrist and frantically rub it on my jacket. “Not a document!” I crow, showing my smeary skin to the walking corpse. “No need to push, file, stamp, index, brief, debrief, or number me!”

  It stands still for a moment, rocking gently on the balls of its feet, and I can almost see the exception handler triggering in the buggy necrosymbolic script that animates and guides its behavior. A sudden thought strikes me and I raise my warrant card. “Command override!” I bark. “Command override!”

  The zombie freezes again, its claws centimeters from my throat. “Overrr-ride,” it creaks. “Identify authorization.” The other zombie, standing behind it, hisses like a truck’s air brake.

  “In the name of the Counter-Possession Unit, on the official business of Her Majesty’s Occult Service, I override you,” I say, very slowly. A harsh blue light from my warrant card shows me more of its death mask than I have any desire to remember. The next bit is hard: my Enochian is rusty, and I’m told I have an abominable accent, but I manage to pull together the ritual phrases I need. These residual human resources are minimally script-able, as long as you’ve got the access permissions and know what you’re doing. The consequences of getting it wrong are admittedly drastic, but I find that the prospect of a syntax error getting your brains gnawed out through a hole in your skull concentrates the mind wonderfully. (If only we could convince Microsoft to port Windows to run on zombies—although knowing how government IT sector outsourcing is run, that’s probably redundant.) “Accept new program parameters. Subroutine start . . .” Or words to that effect, in questionable medieval cod-Latin gibberspeak.

  After fifteen minutes of chanting I’m cold with sweat and shaking with tension. My audience are displaying no si
gns of acquiring a taste for pâté de foie programmer, which is good, but if security is paranoid enough they’ll be flagged as overdue any minute now. “End subroutine, amen,” I intone. The zombies stand where they are. Oops, have I crashed them? I pull out my phone and fire up its poxy excuse for a personal ward, then stick it in my jacket’s breast pocket. There’s only one way to find out if this is going to work, isn’t there? I snap my fingers. “What are you waiting for?” I ask, reaching into one of my pockets again. “Let’s go to work.”

  The Hand of Glory has seen better days—the thumb is worn right down to the base of the big joint, and only two of the fingers still have unburned knuckles—but it’ll have to do. “Do we have ignition, do we have fucking ignition,” I snarl under my breath, and a faint blue glow like a guttering candle rises from each of the stumps. I climb into one of the document carts, carefully holding on to the waxy abomination, and the residual human resource gives me a tentative shove towards the dark.

  There’s a tunnel out of nightmares in the library in the underside of the world. I’m not sure I can quite describe what happens in there: cold air, moist, the dankness and silence of the crypt broken only by the squeaking of the overloaded wheels of my cart. A sense of being watched, of a mindless and terrible focus sweeping across me, averted by the skin of the Hand of Glory’s burning fingertips. A rigor fit to still the heart of heroes, and only the faint pulsing ward-heart of my phone to bring me through it with QRS complex intact. There is a reason they use residual human resources to run the files to and from the MailRail system: you don’t need to be dead to work here, but it really helps.

  I’m in the darkness for only ten or fifteen seconds, but when I come out I am in soul-deep pain, my heart pounding and my skin clammy, as if on the edge of a heart attack. Everything is gray and grainy and there is a buzzing in my ears, as of a monstrous swarm of flies. It disperses slowly as the light returns.

  I blink, trying to get a grip, and I realize that the handcart has stopped moving. Shivering, I sit up and somehow slither over the edge of the cart without tipping the thing over. There’s carpet on the floor, thin, beige, institutional—I’m back in the land of the living. I look round. There’s a wooden table, three doors, a bunch of battered filing cabinets, and another door through which the mailmen are disappearing—black painted wood, with a motto engraved above the lintel: ABANDON HOPE. Trying to remember what I actually saw in there sends my mind skittering around the inside of my skull like a frightened mouse, so I give up. I’m still clutching the Hand of Glory. I hold it up to look at the flames. They’ve burned down deep, and there’s little left but calcined bones. Regretfully, I blow them out one by one, then dispose of the relic in the recycling bin at one side of the table.

  No mailmen, but no librarians either. It’s all very Back Office, just as Angleton described it. I head for the nearest door, just as it opens in front of me.

  “Hey—”

  I blink. “Hello?” I ask.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” he says, annoyed if not outright cross. “Visitors are restricted to levels five and six only. You could do yourself a mischief, wandering around the subbasement!” In his shirt and tie and M&S suit he’s like an intrusion from another, more banal, universe. I could kiss him just for existing, but I’m not out of the woods yet.

  “Sorry,” I say contritely. “I was sent to ask for a new document that’s supposed to have come in this morning . . . ?”

  “Well, you’d better come with me, then. Let me see your ID, please.”

  I show him my warrant card and he nods. “All right. What is it you’re after?”

  “A file.” I show him the slip of paper on which I’ve written down Mo’s document reference. “It’s new, it should have come in this morning.”

  “Follow me.” He leads me through a door, to a lift, up four levels and along a corridor to a waiting room with a desk and half a dozen cheap powder-blue chairs: I vaguely recognize it from a previous visit. “Give me that and wait here.”

  I sit down and wait. Ten minutes later he’s back, frowning. “Are you sure this is right?” he asks.

  Annoyed, I think back. “Yes,” I say. I read the number back to Mo, didn’t I? “It’s a new file, deposited last night.”

  “Well, it’s not here yet.” He shrugs. “It may still be waiting to be allocated a shelf, you know. That happens sometimes, if adding a new file triggers a shelf overflow.”

  “Oh.” Mo won’t be happy, I guess, but it establishes my cover. “Well, can you flag it for me when it comes in?”

  “Certainly. If you can show me your card again?” I do so, and he takes a note of my name and departmental assignment. “Okay, Mr. Howard, I’ll send you an email when the file comes into stock. Is that everything?”

  “Yes, thanks, you’ve been very helpful.” I smile. He turns to go. “Er, can you remind me the way out . . . ?”

  He waves a hand at one of the doors. “Go down there, second door on the left, you can’t miss it.” Then he leaves.

  THE SECOND DOOR ON THE LEFT OPENS ONTO A SMOOTH-FLOORED tunnel lined in white glazed tiles and illuminated by overhead fluorescent tubes of a kind that are sufficiently familiar that, when I reach the end of the tunnel and step through the gray metal door (which locks behind me with a muffled click) I am unsurprised to find myself in a passage between two tube platforms.

  Half an hour and a change of line later, I swipe my Oyster card and surface, blinking at the afternoon sun. I pat the inside pocket where I secreted the sheaf of papers that Angleton gave me. And then I head back to my office in the New Annexe, where I very pointedly dial open my secure document safe and install those papers, then lock it and go home, secure in the knowledge of the first half of a job well done.

  (Like I said: fatal accidents never happen because of just one mistake.)

  11.

  CRIME SCENES

  I DON’T FUNCTION WELL IN THE SMALL HOURS OF THE MORNING. I sleep like a log, and I have difficulty pulling my wits about me if something wakes me in the pre-dawn dark.

  So it takes me a few seconds to sit up and grab the bedside phone when it begins to snarl for attention. I fumble the handset close to my face: “Whuuu—” I manage to drone, thinking, If this is a telesales call, I’ll plead justifiable homicide, as Mo spasms violently in a twist of the duvet and rolls over, pulling the bedding off me.

  “Bob.” I know that voice. It’s—“Jo here. Code Blue. How soon can you be ready for a pickup?”

  I am abruptly awake in an icy-cold drench of sweat. “Five minutes,” I croak. “What’s up?”

  “I want you in here stat, and I’m sending a car. Be ready in five minutes.” She sounds uncertain . . . afraid? “This line isn’t secure, so save your questions.”

  “Okay.” The phrase this had better be good doesn’t even reach my larynx: declaring Code Blue is the sort of thing that attracts the Auditors’ attention. “Bye.” I put the phone down.

  “What was that?” says Mo.

  “That was a Code Blue.” I swing my feet over the edge of the bed and fish for yesterday’s discarded socks. “There’s a car calling for me in five minutes.”

  “Shit . . .” Mo rolls over the other way and buries her face in a pillow. “Am I wanted?” Her voice, muffled, trails away.

  “Just me.” I paw through an open drawer for pants. “It’s Jo Sullivan. At four in the morning.”

  “She’s with Oscar-Oscar, isn’t she?”

  “Yup.” Pants: on. Tee shirt: on. Trousers: next in queue.

  “You’d better go.” She sounds serious. “Phone me the instant you hear something.”

  I glance at the alarm. “It’s twenty to five.”

  “I don’t mind.” She pulls the bedding into shape. “Take care.”

  “And you,” I say, as I head downstairs, carrying my holstered pistol.

  I’m standing in the front hall when blue and red strobes light up the window glass above the door. I open it in the face of a cop.
“Mr. Howard?” she asks.

  “That’s me.” I hold up my warrant card and her eyes age a little.

  “Come with me, please,” she says, and opens the rear door for me. I strap myself in and we’re off for another strobe-lit taxi ride through the wilds of South London, speeding alarmingly down narrow shuttered streets and careening around roundabouts in the gray pre-dawn light until, after a surprisingly short time, we pull up outside the staff entrance to a certain store.

  The door is open. Jo is waiting for me. One look at her face tells me it’s bad. Angleton warned me: This is where it starts. I tense. “What’s happened?” I ask.

  “Come this way.” Jo leads me up the stairwell. The lights are on, which is abnormal, and I hear footsteps—not the steady shuffle of the night staff, but boots and raised voices. Something in the air makes me think of a kicked anthill.

  We head past reception where a couple of blue-suited security men are standing guard over a stapler and six paper clips, then back along the corridor past Iris’s corner office, then round the bend to—

  “Fuck,” I say, unable to contain myself. My office door is closed. But I can see the interior, because there’s a gigantic hole in the door, as if someone hit it with a wrecking ball. (Except a wrecking ball would leave rough jagged edges of splintered wood, while the rim of this particular hole looks oddly melted.) The interior isn’t much better; an avalanche of paper and scraps of broken metal are strewn across half an overturned desk. A thin blue glow clings patchily to some of the wreckage, fading slowly even as I watch. “What happened?”

  “Am hoping you tell us.” It’s Boris, bags under his eyes and an expression as dark as midnight on the winter solstice. When did he get back? Wasn’t he doing something overseas connected with BLOODY BARON . . . ?