The Atrocity Archives

by Charles Stross

  "Make one for me, too?"

  I nearly scald myself but control the kettle in time. "I didn't hear you come in."

  "That's okay." She moves a chair behind me. "I didn't hear you come in, either. Been back long?"

  "Back in the country?" I'm rummaging in the sink for another mug as my mouth freewheels without human intervention, seemingly autonomous, as if it isn't a part of me. "Only since this morning. I had to visit Alan in hospital first, then I went in to work for a couple of hours. Been in meetings. They've kept me in meetings ever since . . ."

  "Did they tell you not to talk about it–to anybody?" she asks. I detect a note of strain in her voice.

  "Not . . . exactly." I rinse the mug, drop a tea bag in it, pour on hot water, put it down, and turn round to face her. Mo looks the way I feel: hair askew, clothes slept-in, eyes haunted. "I can talk to you about it, if you like. You're cleared for this by default." I drag another chair out from the table. She drops into it without asking. "Did they tell you what was going on?"

  "I–" she shakes her head. "Tethered goat." She sounds faintly disgusted, but her face is a mask. "Is it over?"

  I sit down next to her. "Yes. Definitely and forever. It's not going to happen again." I can see her relaxing. "Is that what you wanted to hear?"

  She looks at me sharply. "As long as it's the truth."

  "It is." I look at the engine block gloomily. "Whose is this?"

  She sighs. "I think it belongs to Brains. He brought it home yesterday; I don't know where he got it from."

  "I'm going to have words with him."

  "Won't be necessary; he said he's going to take it away when he moves out."

  "What?"

  I must look puzzled, because she frowns: "I forgot. Pinky and Brains are moving out. By the end of the week. I only found out yesterday, when I got back."

  "Oh great." I glance at the collection of papers, pinned like butterflies to the corkboard: there's nothing like a change of flatmates to induce feelings of fear and loathing over the phone bill. "That's kind of short notice."

  "I think it's been brewing for some time," she says quietly. "He said something about your attitude . . ." She trails off. "Hard to live with, so they're going to leave you to your cosy domesticity, unquote." Her eyes sparkle for a moment, angry and hard. "Know any sensitivity training camps with watchtowers and armed guards? I think he could do with an enforced vacation."

  "Him and my line manager, both. At least, my old manager." The mugs of tea have been brewing long enough; I fish the bags out and add milk. "Here. You didn't tell me what else you've been doing."

  "Doing?" She stares at me. "I've been passed around in a pressurised plastic sack by a bunch of soldiers, poked and prodded by doctors, grilled by security officers, and packed off home like a naughty little girl. I haven't exactly done much doing, if you follow. In fact–" She shakes her head in disgust. "Forget it."

  "I can't." I can't meet her eyes, either. I'm staring at a cooling mug of tea, and all I can see are worms of pale light, writhing slowly. "I think this was important, Mo. To people other than us, people who'll sleep better at night now."

  "Why. Me." She's gritting her teeth; platitudes won't work.

  "Because you were there," I say tiredly. "Because someone in your town was trying to carry out a petty act of terrorism, and summoned up an ancient evil they couldn't control. Because you were close and were thinking the unthinkable on a regular, professional basis. A mind is a dangerous thing to taste, and sometimes–only sometimes–things come out of the woodwork that like the flavour of our thoughts. This particular thing was relying on our stupidity, or on our failure to recognise what it was, and used you as bait to sucker us in. We thought we were using you as bait, but all the time it was playing us like a fish on a line. In the end, at least five people died because of that mistake, and another is in hospital right now and maybe isn't going to make it."

  "Thanks." Her tone of voice is like granite. "Whose mistake was it?"

  "Committee decision." I put my mug down and look at her. "If we hadn't come after you, those other guys would still be alive. So I guess, from a purely utilitarian point of view everyone in the Laundry fucked up, all the way down the line, from start to finish. I shouldn't have come after you in Santa Cruz: end of story."

  "Is that what you really think?" she asks, wonderingly.

  I shake my head. "Sometimes we make mistakes for all the right reasons. If Angleton had run this according to the book, by our wonderful ISO-9000-compliant recipe for intelligence operations in the occult sphere, you'd be dead–and the ice giant would still have come through. We'd all have been dead, soon enough."

  "Angleton broke the rules? I didn't think he was the type. Dried-up old bureaucrat."

  "A vintage that sometimes isn't what it seems."

  She stands up. "Why were you there?" she asks.

  I shrug. "Did you expect me to leave you?"

  She looks at me for a moment that feels like eternity. "I didn't know you long enough to guess the answer to that, before. Funny what a crisis teaches you about other people." She holds out a hand. "Brains probably isn't going to get back until seven and I need to go back to my flat in half an hour; give me a hand moving this thing off the table?" She gestures at the engine block.

  "Guess so. Um, what are you planning on doing, if I may be so bold?"

  "Doing?" She pauses with one hand on the Kettenkrad engine block: "I'm moving the rest of my stuff into Brains's room once he's gone. You didn't think you could get rid of me that easily, did you?" She grins, suddenly. "Want to help me pack?"

  Chapter 11

  THE CONCRETE JUNGLE

  The death rattle of a mortally wounded telephone is a horrible thing to hear at four o'clock on a Tuesday morning. It's even worse when you're sleeping the sleep that follows a pitcher of iced margueritas in the basement of the Dog's Bollocks, with a chaser of nachos and a tequila slammer or three for dessert. I come to, sitting upright, bare-ass naked in the middle of the wooden floor, clutching the receiver with one hand and my head with the other–purely to prevent it from exploding, you understand–and moaning quietly. "Who is it?" I croak into the microphone.

  "Bob, get your ass down to the office right away. This line isn't secure." I recognize that voice: I have nightmares about it. That's because I work for its owner.

  "Whoa, I was asleep, boss. Can't it"–I gulp and look at the alarm clock–"wait until morning?"

  "No. I'm calling a code blue."

  "Jesus." The band of demons stomping around my skull strike up an encore with drums. "Okay, boss. Ready to leave in ten minutes. Can I bill a taxi fare?"

  "No, it can't wait. I'll have a car pick you up." He cuts the call, and that is when I start to get frightened because even Angleton, who occupies a lair deep in the bowels of the Laundry's Arcana Analysis Section–but does something far scarier than that anodyne title might suggest–is liable to think twice before authorising a car to pull in an employee at zero-dark o'clock.

  I manage to pull on a sweater and jeans, tie my shoelaces, and get my ass downstairs just before the blue and red strobes light up the window above the front door. On the way out I grab my emergency bag–an overnighter full of stuff that Andy suggested I should keep ready "just in case"–and slam and lock the door and turn around in time to find the cop waiting for me. "Are you Bob Howard?"

  "Yeah, that's me." I show him my card.

  "If you'll come with me, sir."

  Lucky me: I get to wake up on my way in to work four hours early, in the front passenger seat of a police car with strobes flashing and the driver doing his best to scare me into catatonia. Lucky London: the streets are nearly empty at this time of night, so we zip around the feral taxis and somnolent cleaning trucks without pause. A journey that would normally take an hour and a half takes fifteen minutes. (Of course, it comes at a price: Accounting exists in a state of perpetual warfare with the rest of the civil service over internal billing, and the Metropolitan Po
lice charge for their services as a taxi firm at a level that would make you think they provided limousines with wet bars. But Angleton has declared a code blue, so . . .)

  The dingy-looking warehouse in a side street, adjoining a closed former primary school, doesn't look too promising–but the door opens before I can raise a hand to knock on it. The grinning sallow face of Fred from Accounting looms out of the darkness in front of me and I recoil before I realise that it's all right–Fred's been dead for more than a year, which is why he's on the night shift. This isn't going to degenerate into plaintive requests for me to fix his spreadsheet. "Fred, I'm here to see Angleton," I say very clearly, then I whisper a special password to stop him from eating me. Fred retreats back to his security cubbyhole or coffin or whatever it is you call it, and I cross the threshold of the Laundry. It's dark–to save light bulbs, and damn the health and safety regs–but some kind soul has left a mouldering cardboard box of hand torches on the front desk. I pull the door shut behind me, pick up a torch, and head for Angleton's office.

  As I get to the top of the stairs I see that the lights are on in the corridor we call Mahogany Row. If the boss is running a crisis team then that's where I'll find him. So I divert into executive territory until I see a door with a red light glowing above it. There's a note taped to the door handle: BOB HOWARD ACCESS PERMITTED. So I "access permitted" and walk right in.

  As soon as the door opens Angleton looks up from the map spread across the boardroom table. The room smells of stale coffee, cheap cigarettes, and fear. "You're late," he says sharply.

  "Late," I echo, dumping my emergency bag under the fire extinguisher and leaning on the door. " 'Lo, Andy, Boris. Boss, I don't think the cop was taking his time. Any faster and he'd be billing you for brown stain removal from the upholstery." I yawn. "What's the picture?"

  "Milton Keynes," says Andy.

  "Are sending you there to investigate," explains Boris.

  "With extreme prejudice," Angleton one-ups them.

  "Milton Keynes?"

  It must be something in my expression; Andy turns away hastily and pours me a cup of Laundry coffee while Boris pretends it's none of his business. Angleton just looks as if he's bitten something unpleasant, which is par for the course.

  "We have a problem," Angleton explains, gesturing at the map. "There are too many concrete cows."

  "Concrete cows." I pull out a chair and flop down into it heavily, then rub my eyes. "This isn't a dream is it, by any chance? No? Shit."

  Boris glowers at me: "Not a joke." He rolls his eyes toward Angleton. "Boss?"

  "It's no joke, Bob," says Angleton. His normally skeletal features are even more drawn than usual, and there are dark hollows under his eyes. He looks as if he's been up all night. Angleton glances at Andy: "Has he been keeping his weapons certification up-to-date?"

  "I practice three times a week," I butt in, before Andy can get started on the intimate details of my personal file. "Why?"

  "Go down to the armoury right now, with Andy. Andy, self-defense kit for one, sign it out for him. Bob, don't shoot unless it's you or them." Angleton shoves a stack of papers and a pen across the table at me. "Sign the top and pass it back–you now have GAME ANDES REDSHIFT clearance. The files below are part of GAR–you're to keep them on your person at all times until you get back here, then check them in via Morag's office; you'll answer to the auditors if they go missing or get copied."

  "Huh?"

  I obviously still look confused because Angleton cracks an expression so frightening that it must be a smile and adds, "Shut your mouth, you're drooling on your collar. Now, go with Andy, check out your hot kit, let Andy set you up with a chopper, and read those papers. When you get to Milton Keynes, do what comes naturally. If you don't find anything, come back and tell me and we'll take things from there."

  "But what am I looking for?" I gulp down half my coffee in one go; it tastes of ashes, stale cigarette ends, and tinned instant left over from the Retreat from Moscow. "Dammit, what do you expect me to find?"

  "I don't expect anything," says Angleton. "Just go."

  "Come on," says Andy, opening the door, "you can leave the papers here for now."

  I follow him into the corridor, along to the darkened stairwell at the end, and down four flights of stairs into the basement. "Just what the fuck is this?" I demand, as Andy produces a key and unlocks the steel-barred gate in front of the security tunnel.

  "It's GAME ANDES REDSHIFT, kid," he says over his shoulder. I follow him into the security zone and the gate clanks shut behind me. Another key, another steel door–this time the outer vestibule of the armoury. "Listen, don't go too hard on Angleton, he knows what he's doing. If you go in with preconceptions about what you'll find and it turns out to be GAME ANDES REDSHIFT, you'll probably get yourself killed. But I reckon there's only about a 10 percent chance it's the real thing–more likely it's a drunken student prank."

  He uses another key, and a secret word that my ears refuse to hear, to open the inner armoury door. I follow Andy inside. One wall is racked with guns, another is walled with ammunition lockers, and the opposite wall is racked with more esoteric items. It's this that he turns to.

  "A prank," I echo, and yawn, against my better judgement. "Jesus, it's half past four in the morning and you got me out of bed because of a student prank?"

  "Listen." Andy stops and glares at me, irritated. "Remember how you came aboard? That was me getting out of bed at four in the morning because of a student prank."

  "Oh," is all I can say to him. Sorry springs to mind, but is probably inadequate; as they later pointed out to me, applied computational demonology and built-up areas don't mix very well. I thought I was just generating weird new fractals; they knew I was dangerously close to landscaping Wolverhampton with alien nightmares. "What kind of students?" I ask.

  "Architecture or alchemy. Nuclear physics for an outside straight." Another word of command and Andy opens the sliding glass case in front of some gruesome relics that positively throb with power. "Come on. Which of these would you like?"

  "I think I'll take this one, thanks." I reach in and carefully pick up a silver locket on a chain; there's a yellow-and-black thaumaturgy hazard trefoil on a label dangling from it, and NO PULL ribbons attached to the clasp.

  "Good choice." Andy watches me in silence as I add a Hand of Glory to my collection, and then a second, protective amulet. "That all?" he asks.

  "That's all," I say, and he nods and shuts the cupboard, then renews the seal on it.

  "Sure?" he asks.

  I look at him. Andy is a slightly built, forty-something guy; thin, wispy hair, tweed sports jacket with leather patches at the elbows, and a perpetually worried expression. Looking at him you'd think he was an Open University lecturer, not a managerial-level spook from the Laundry's active service division. But that goes for all of them, doesn't it? Angleton looks more like a Texan oil-company executive with tuberculosis than the legendary and terrifying head of the Counter-Possession Unit. And me, I look like a refugee from CodeCon or a dot-com startup's engineering department. Which just goes to show that appearances and a euro will get you a cup of coffee. "What does this code blue look like to you?" I ask.

  He sighs tiredly, then yawns. "Damn, it's infectious," he mutters. "Listen, if I tell you what it looks like to me, Angleton will have my head for a doorknob. Let's just say, read those files on the way over, okay? Keep your eyes open, count the concrete cows, then come back safe."

  "Count the cows. Come back safe. Check." I sign the clipboard, pick up my arsenal, and he opens the armoury door. "How am I getting there?"

  Andy cracks a lopsided grin. "By police helicopter. This is a code blue, remember?"

  * * * *

  I go up to the committee room, collect the papers, and then it's down to the front door, where the same police patrol car is waiting for me. More brown-pants motoring–this time the traffic is a little thicker, dawn is only an hour and a half away–and we end up in the nort
heast suburbs, following the roads to Lippitts Hill where the Police ASU keep their choppers. There's no messing around with check in and departure lounges; we drive round to a gate at one side of the complex, show our warrant cards, and my chauffeur takes me right out onto the heliport and parks next to the ready room, then hands me over to the flight crew before I realise what's happening.

  "You're Bob Howard?" asks the copilot. "Up here, hop in." He helps me into the back seat of the Twin Squirrel, sorts me out with the seat belt, then hands me a bulky headset and plugs it in. "We'll be there in half an hour," he says. "You just relax, try to get some sleep." He grins sardonically then shuts the door on me and climbs in up front.

  Funny. I've never been in a helicopter before. It's not quite as loud as I'd expected, especially with the headset on, but as I've been led to expect something like being rolled down a hill in an oil drum while maniacs whack on the sides with baseball bats, that isn't saying much. Get some sleep indeed; instead I bury my nose in the so-secret reports on GAME ANDES REDSHIFT and try not to upchuck as the predawn London landscape corkscrews around outside the huge glass windscreen and then starts to unroll beneath us.

  * * * *

  REPORT 1: Sunday September 4th, 1892

  CLASSIFIED MOST SECRET, Imperial War Ministry, September 11th, 1914

  RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET GAME ANDES, Ministry of War, July 2nd, 1940

  RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET REDSHIFT, Ministry of Defense, August 13th, 1988

  My dearest Nellie,

  In the week since I last wrote to you, I have to confess that I have become a different man. Experiences such as the ordeal I have just undergone must surely come but once in a lifetime; for if more often, how might man survive them? I have gazed upon the gorgon and lived to tell the tale, for which I am profoundly grateful (and I hasten to explain myself before you worry for my safety), although only the guiding hand of some angel of grace can account for my being in a position to put ink to paper with these words.