The Labyrinth Index

by Charles Stross

  V-symbionts are a little different. They provide certain benefits to occult practitioners as long as their host feeds them blood samples from other people, on whom they feed via some kind of link—the law of sympathetic magic is apparently some kind of macroscopic quantum entanglement—but they ultimately cause much the same damage as K syndrome.

  There are macroscopic threats, too. Sharks. Big cats. Basilisks. Firewyrms (I refuse to dignify those things by calling them dragons; real dragons should be elegant reptilian predators, not sea slugs with wings that vomit acid). Hounds. Unicorns. (Don’t get me started on unicorns.)

  But threats on this level mostly only eat your body and soul, one or both at a time.

  About bodies: I am one, and I contain multitudes. It’s true: I consist of an ensemble of approximately thirty trillion cells, working in concert to sustain life, with roughly the same number of bacterial and fungal passengers along for the ride. The Republic of Mhari contains five thousand times more cells than there are humans on Earth, but is somehow both more and less than the sum of her parts. If all those cells die, then I am, by definition, dead. But the relationship between cell-citizens and the Republic of Me is less obvious than you might think.

  At any point in time some of my cells are dying and being replaced, and the me that exists today consists almost entirely of different cells from the me of a couple of years ago—although I’m still me. But if you were to separate all my cells and then keep them alive in a mad scientist’s test-tube collection, I’d be dead, though all my bits live on. The Republic of Self can be dissolved, or taken over in a coup, or drastically reformed. I harbor this illusion of unitary identity—but in reality I’m what biologists call a superorganism, a swarm, an ensemble entity. I am not me: I am Hobbes’s Leviathan, or Leviathan’s Representative.

  Oh, and that’s not all. Cells are complex things, full of intracellular machinery, much of it descended from free-living bacteria in the primordial whatever the hell we evolved from that swallowed one another and became symbionts. (Don’t ask me how: I’m not a microbiologist.) Each cell is, in fact, a micro-Republic of Cell, which makes my body a gigantic bickering United Nations; and as for the feeders in the night? That’s what happens when the alien mothership from Independence Day turns up and zaps the White House. V-parasites? Tiny evil Blood Nazis, occupying and regimenting and restructuring the body politic, making some of the trains run on time but imposing a state of permanent war—practicing genocide on other people.

  Which brings me to Fuckboy’s little accident.

  Our pursuers found a drop of his blood and fed it to one of their PHANGs. Maybe they took blood samples from everyone in the restaurant (they seem blasé about collateral damage). They probably got me, too, but as I already carry my own strain of V-parasites, I’m resistant to being hacked. Whatever the case, though, one of their PHANGs has now got a lock on him. And like good little Blood Nazis, they’re munching away on his gray matter, and they will continue to eat until he disintegrates, or more likely until a blood vessel gives way and he bleeds out inside his own skull.

  Like a state—like these United States—his body is being taken over in a cellular coup d’état so far below the level of his awareness that he’s powerless to do anything about it. The coup is in progress and insurgents are marching neurons into the sports arena and gunning them down. The gates of the capital are open and the tanks are rolling. He’s probably got a week left, two weeks, tops. Long enough to complete the mission. That’s all.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, at Filton Airport:

  As evening falls, the blackout curtains inside a hangar at the private airfield are pulled aside and the hangar main doors open. A small convoy of maintenance vehicles roll out, but most of the pre-flight work has been done indoors, out of view of spy satellites.

  Ground crew in RAF uniforms swarm around the doors, then withdraw. Half an hour passes. Finally, a tug noses into view, its towing arms clasped around a wheel, overshadowed by the big white bird’s droop nose. It casts a long shadow on the apron as it inches out of the hangar, turns onto the taxiway, and comes to a stop. The Concorde is closer to a spacecraft or a strategic bomber than a regular airliner. It takes days of painstaking maintenance to send one into the sky for a few brief hours, bellowing hoarsely on four afterburning engines that leave a faint smog trail.

  Back during the 1980s and 1990s, the RAF Concordes were painted in British Airways livery, with tail numbers that matched civilian aircraft. Their flight plans from the British Aerospace maintenance depot here at Filton were listed as test flights or civilian charter joyrides. While the RAF Concordes flew, the BA craft whose markings were duplicated remained tucked out of sight, providing an alibi. But the supersonic airliners retired from civilian service over a decade ago. Since then they’ve flown infrequently, and only at night, and there’s no point maintaining the pretense. So when Concorde 302 flies, it’s in plain white thermal paint, with a pale pink and blue fin flash, and an RAF serial number high and proud on its tail fin.

  Another ten minutes pass as the ground crew hook up a generator. Eventually a puff of smoke emerges from one of the inboard engines, and then the other engines spool up in sequence. Technicians scramble to detach the generator cart. Then the tug uncouples, and everyone clears the area as the pilots run through the last pre-takeoff checklists and the engines stabilize.

  For this flight, 302 is taking off with a full fuel load—over 98 tonnes—and only a relief crew for passengers. The two flying Concordes have limited passenger seating, most of their cabin being reserved for specialized cargo. There are no sorcerers on this flight, and the summoning grids spaced along the fuselage are de-energized. The flight plan on file with the destination airfield in Canada hilariously mis-describes the Concorde as a Russian heavy bomber paying a goodwill visit, but that’s okay. They’ll be arriving after nightfall, under tight security, and even so, the prospect of a Tupolev 160 dropping round for poutine is less preposterous than the truth.

  Canadian Forces Base Goose Bay, in the north of Labrador, doubles as Goose Bay Airport. It’s a port of entry, with border-services agents able to handle private flights carrying no more than fifteen passengers. It has a runway long enough and solid enough to take heavy military aircraft, and, more importantly, it has hosted the RAF in the past. There’s no permanent detachment there, but a hangar and barracks have been prepared and ground crew capable of turning around a Concorde flew in a week ago.

  “302 Heavy, you are cleared for takeoff.”

  Despite the resumption of funding for the program under the New Management, it has been nearly a year since a military Concorde last turned onto the runway at Filton, wound up its engines to full power, applied reheat, and launched itself into the Atlantic sunset. But 302 Heavy thunders down the runway and soars away as if it is all perfectly routine, leaving a medley of car alarms beeping in its wake. And the penultimate piece of the Prime Minister’s chess set finally moves into its position on the board, ready for the endgame.

  SEVEN

  CRITICAL-PATH DEPENDENCIES

  Pete has learned many things in his four years of working with the Laundry. He’s seen a lot, including some things that he would never have voluntarily signed up for, the sort of horrors that make ex-soldiers sit bolt upright from their sleep, weeping inconsolably. But his former day job—he is still a vicar, and his bishop is remarkably reluctant to raise a fuss about his apparent conscription by a secret government agency devoted to issues which can best be described as ungodly (or worse, wrong godly)—taught him a lot about helping people. And he’s had a lot of practice helping families suffering from experiences that are simultaneously mundane and far more horrifying than anything in a movie: deaths from cancer and dementia, the loss of babies and young children, that sort of thing.

  All things considered, he’s coped pretty well. But the cracks are beginning to show in his self-assurance, for he is close to certain that they are all damned. Pete is no biblical literali
st, but he can’t ignore the metaphorical stench of brimstone that dogs the Prime Minister’s footsteps. God is gone and Heaven has fallen: Who do you pitch in with, Beelzebub or Satan? He has struggled with this question privately, but can find no better answer than the Senior Auditor’s: We fight on so that something that remembers being human might survive. But now he finds himself riding shotgun while Brains drives through a land overshadowed by amnesia, trying to find common ground with an alfär vampire with autism-spectrum disorder who is hosting a magically induced secondary personality. And the first word that springs to mind for his condition is godforsaken.

  “This sacrifice we’re supposed to retrieve,” he says, thinking hard before he continues. “Are they a person? And are we rescuing them from being a sacrifice?” Don’t ask about the Door or the Forgotten Emperor, he thinks uneasily, just take it one step at a time. It’s pretty clear from her intermittent repetitive actions and gaze avoidance that Jon is stressed out. Whoever thought it was a good idea to stick her on a commercial flight to a foreign country on her own was—well, he’ll write them a stiffly worded memo when he gets home, with copious references to the Disability Discrimination Act. Maybe set HR on them about enforcing policy. With the shreds of the Jonquil persona peeling away from the irrefrangible bedrock of Yarisol, the emergent Jon chimera is worryingly fragile. Maybe he’s overly pessimistic and Jon will cohere, but right now the most likely outcome he can see is the PHANG in the back seat going into a noisy meltdown. And the prospect is making the skin on the back of his neck crawl.

  “Sacrifice,” echoes Jon, tapping her fingers on the center armrest. “Radio.”

  “It’s all right,” Pete says, as calmly as he can with a stressed-out vampire fifty centimeters behind his throat. “Brains, I’m going to try to figure out how the radio works. Jon, there are going to be some loud noises for a minute or so, but I’ll make everything all right.”

  Back home, Pete rides a Yamaha. His wife has an ancient VW camper. His exposure to modern in-car electronics has been roughly doubled by this trip. Nor is Brains any help. So Pete grapples for a few minutes with something called “Sirius XM” which, to British sensibilities, appears to originate from another star system. Eventually he works out how to turn it on and finds a channel broadcasting from the planet of the overexcited pizza salesmen. A few tentative button-presses later, he’s channel-hopping between the payday loan shark frequency and the Realtor™ network, who between them appear to own 60 percent of the channels on the satellite service. “Ah, I think I’m getting the hang of this,” he says, poking the “scan” button optimistically.

  “… coming to you on WOCZ with tonight’s episode of The Whatever Show in Crested Butte, Colorado, capitol of high weirdness in America. And we’re going to be talking with you about government conspiracies and coverups, Men in Black, and crashed UFOs…”

  “That’s it!” Pete exclaims, just as Jon says, “Sacrifice!”

  Brains swerves but manages to regain control without hitting anything. “What?” he complains.

  “Pull over,” says Pete, “I can’t google while you’re driving—autocorrect.”

  Brains grumbles under his breath but ferrets out a dirt driveway and gets the land yacht turned around. (The nearest actual parking spot is more than a mile behind them.) The eerie synth-backed warble of The Stranglers comes on-air. “How long is this going to take?” he asks.

  “Should be an hour-long slot,” Pete mumbles. He’s staring at a program listing on his phone. “It’s not loading. Can you get us somewhere with more signal? I’m trying to find the studio’s address.”

  “It’ll be a canned session,” Brains insists as he drives back towards town.

  “Not according to the home page. It’s a live radio call-in show, so … huh.”

  “What?”

  “Satnav.” Pete resorts to monosyllables when he’s preoccupied. Right now he’s dividing his attention between his smartphone screen and the SUV’s navigation system, which is as overblown and supersized as the rest of the vehicle. “It won’t let me enter a destination while we’re moving.”

  Brains stands on the brakes, provoking a squeak of distress from Jon. Moments later a horn blares and lights speed past. “Car park,” Pete says between gritted teeth. “Not the middle of the road.” He glances at the rearview mirror apprehensively. Jon is massaging the side of her neck where the seat belt tightened painfully.

  Five minutes later they blunder into a lay-by. Brains parks. Pete considers telling him that the right-hand wheels are on the curb, but reconsiders. Brains’s temper has been fraying, and the consequences of triggering an outburst with Jon in the back seat are not something Pete cares to contemplate. “Right,” he says, and punches in the address of the WOCZ-FM studio. “This should take us to the station’s HQ, assuming it’s not an admin building or a glorified post office box.”

  “You think we should go there.” Brains crosses his arms across the steering wheel.

  “I think—”

  “You must?” Jon breaks in breathily, a residuum of Jonquil’s personality reasserting itself. “Like, it’s important?”

  “Why?” Brains asks mulishly.

  “Because listen—”

  The music has been replaced by more chatter, a request for phone-in callers, a sponsored message from the Roofing Royalty®, then a couple of minutes’ chatter between someone called Gaby and a caller as drivelingly inane as the worst on Capital FM back home. Then there’s more music, and a call-in that raises the hair on the back of Pete’s neck. “… from the Circle of Friends of the Lord of Sleep, with a message about Billie Jean, who called earlier. There is a reason we don’t talk about the Man … you should keep your lips zipped unless you want to sleep with the fishes like Billie Jean up by Peanut Lake.…”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuuuuck—” says Brains, as Pete simultaneously says, “Drive!” And hits the “go” button on the navigation screen.

  “We will be in time?!” Jon interro-exclaims.

  “Does this mean what I think it means?” Brains asks, but Pete is fresh out of answers.

  Sticking within spitting distance of the speed limit—the last thing they need right now is the attention of local law enforcement—it takes Brains nearly twenty minutes to drag the SUV halfway across town. Their destination is one of a row of drab, windowless business premises. They could be anything from call centers or car showrooms to supervillain lairs or radio broadcasters—

  “Look on the roof?” says Jon. “It has satellite dishes?!” She gives the last two words an odd emphasis, as if she’s never seen such things before. Perhaps she hasn’t, Pete considers.

  Brains pulls over before they get to the building. “What now?”

  “We wait,” Jon says flatly.

  “Wait for what?”

  Pete’s scalp crawls. The radio is still playing but there are no more phone-in callers. It’s just ads alternating with canned music, like any other robot playlist channel. “Peanut Lake,” he says, drumming his fingers on the dash. He calls up the satnav again. “Brains, please kill the headlights.”

  Brains doesn’t argue. He reaches into the door pocket and pulls out the thaumic analyzer he assembled the day before. “I’m not picking up anything above background here.”

  Peanut Lake is a few miles out of town, up in the hills. They’re towering mountains by British standards. Pete sets up the satnav to guide them there. “Who the hell are the Friends of the Lord of Sleep? Are they a cult—”

  Lights come on behind the building. A few seconds later a big SUV, similar in size to the one they’re sitting in, peels out of the parking lot and drives past them.

  “Follow that car,” says Jon.

  “How do you know—”

  “Just do it,” says Pete. “If they’re not heading for Peanut Lake we’ll find out soon enough.” And I’ll eat the hat I’m not wearing right now, he adds silently.

  Brains drives off, keeping his headlights off. “This is really stupid,” he
points out. “I’d like to remind you that we’re unarmed in Middle America. They have guns here. You’ve seen The Matrix? Guns, lots of guns. Toddlers learn to clean their teeth with them instead of flossing. Oh, and we’re about to run out of street-lights so I’m going to have to light up and then they’ll see—”

  “One, you can hang back,” Pete tells him. “Look, they’re heading for Peanut Lake. And two, we’re not here to shoot anyone. We’re here to observe.”

  “Be observing, not be shooting,” Jon agrees. “Better way.”

  A mile out of town Brains opens the windows. They’re going relatively slowly—it’s dark, the road is narrow and unlit, and he’s trying not to overhaul the car in front—and the chilly breeze bears the scent of unfamiliar foliage. The reflected noise of their passage reverberates from the trees and embankment on either side.

  “About half a mile to go,” Pete reads off the screen. They’re rolling downhill now, and the road curves tightly as it narrows. “Lights out!” he says urgently. “Lights—”

  Brains kills the sidelights but keeps coasting forward. “Slow—”

  Pete briefly glimpses something out of the corner of his eye, back among the trees. Someone hiding? he wonders.

  Seconds later, the road widens and the trees vanish as they enter a broad open space at the side of a body of water. A pair of headlights switch on directly in front of them, blindingly bright, flanked by open vehicle doors. Jon squeals again and Brains stands on the brakes, hard. There’s a popcorn crack, then another. “Shooting!” Brains gasps, then throws the SUV into reverse gear and starts to back up. “Fuck!”