The Labyrinth Index

by Charles Stross

  Jim stares at me for a whole minute before he shakes his head. “You’ve forgotten something.”

  “What?”

  “If you don’t turn me, I’m going to have to live the rest of my life in a containment grid.” His chest heaves and I have to force myself not to reach out towards him. “Forget about me for a bit, and ask yourself, what about Sally?” (Fuck, I think. I wasn’t ruthless and manipulative enough to go there myself, but he’s gotten to it without me.) “Don’t you think she deserves a father?” he adds, a little callously: “It’s not as if the New Management doesn’t have an involuntary donor program to keep PHANGs alive as long as they’re useful. You need me for this job, Mhari. Turning me is the best way to keep it on the rails. We can work out the rest after we get home.”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

  “Yes I do.” Seen by the twilight glow of the camping lantern, the planes and lines of his face are harsh. “The PM gave us a job. He expects us to do it by any means necessary, not chicken out halfway. What do you think He’ll do if we disobey him? How do you think He might punish me? Or you?”

  “You don’t think He’d—” A sick, ugly realization creeps over me.

  “Honey, do you really believe all the prisoners being executed to keep you PHANG people alive are guilty? Do you really think an ancient god-emperor who wants to build a fifty-story-high rack to hold His sacrifices’ skulls in the center of London will blink an eye at torturing our entire extended families to death just to set an example?” His eyes are hollow pools of fear. “Do you really think that helping the Americans out from under the glamour of an ancient nightmare automatically puts us on the side of the angels? You’re not that naive—”

  “I’m trying to save you, Jim!”

  He shakes his head. “You’re too late. We’re all too late. Do you really think disobedience is an option, this late in the game?”

  “No.”

  The next thing I know, his arms are around me, cradling me like I’m someone precious rather than a thing that belongs in an unmarked grave with a wooden stake through its heart. He pulls me close and hugs me, and I let him because I’m weak. “I’m not going to let you throw the mission away in a stupid attempt to save me from PHANG syndrome. Turn me and we’ll sort the rest out later.” He tucks his chin against my shoulder and whispers four fatal words into my ear: “I love you, Mhari.”

  “I love you, too,” I say with a shiver. And if he wants to imagine it’s because I’m happy, I’m content to let him. He doesn’t need the burden of knowing that every other man who’s ever said those words to me is dead.

  * * *

  In a hangar at Goose Bay airport, the RAF ground crew are prepping 302 Heavy for what might be its last flight.

  The RAF’s Concordes are somewhat different from the airliners that served Air France and British Airways for three decades—almost as different as the production airliners were from the flight-test prototypes. Built to the Concorde B specification two years after commercial production ended, they have wing leading edge modifications, improved engines, and extensive use of carbon fiber composites to reduce weight. Then the defense establishment got hold of them, and, as is the case with every major long-term procurement program with an unlimited black budget, succumbed to the impulse to tinker. The cost overruns spiraled, but were blamed on other projects—the Nimrod AEW and MRA4 programs didn’t exactly collapse under their own weight.

  Concorde was the first airliner built with a computerized fly-by-wire control system. During the 1980s, engineers from GEC and Ferranti upgraded the RAF airframes, ripping out the flight engineer’s station and replacing it with first-generation digital engine management computers. Then they used up all the weight savings they’d made—and then some—installing an in-flight refueling system. Concorde is a thirsty brute, and the designers opted for the flying boom system, which meant the RAF periodically had to borrow Dutch and Australian tankers until a suitably modified Airbus could be purchased. Concorde in high-speed trim has absolutely terrible out-of-cockpit visibility. Maneuvering close to other aircraft, and other operational requirements, necessitated the addition of high-definition cameras and in-cockpit screens. And some of the other modifications were even more peculiar: the summoning grid grounded to the airframe in the forward passenger compartment, for example. Or the instrument stations for the six thaumaturgists required to open an extradimensional portal big enough for an airliner to fly through. The TROC and OBC camera systems sourced from Fairchild and ITEK, more usually mounted on the SR-71 spy plane. And so on.

  The less said about the Gadget in the fuselage of 304 Heavy—the one we all hope will never fly—the better.

  A civilian Concorde takes seventy-two maintenance hours of attention on the ground for every hour it spends airborne. The military version is even worse, closer in its care-and-feeding requirements to a space shuttle than a regular plane. Like most British aircraft of a certain vintage, each aircraft is a unique, hand-finished artifact, and 302 Heavy has its fair share of eccentricities, one of which is the bail-out hatch.

  The original prototype Concordes had two hatches: one for the flight crew up front and one in the back, between the engine pods, for the test engineers. A tunnel surrounded by railings dropped straight down to the lower pressure hull of the aircraft. In an emergency, the crew were supposed to grab their ’chutes, drop down a fireman’s pole arrangement, and free fall away from the stricken airliner. This was always a fraught procedure, because the speed at which a Concorde falls out of the sky is not much lower than the speed at which the slipstream stops a parachutist exiting a plane—in fact, it was considered so risky that nobody ever tried it to see if it was survivable. Nobody was crazy enough. Until now.

  302 Heavy differs from airframes 301 and 303 in that it has only a single hatch in the lower fuselage, near the rear of the passenger cabin. But this hatch is larger than the original ones, is surrounded by high-visibility markings, can be illuminated, and retracts inwards so that it can be re-sealed after use. There’s also a cable winch. Because, at a cost of more millions of pounds than I care to think about, 302 Heavy has been modified to trail a trapeze and capture net in flight …

  * * *

  It’s past midnight before Brains pulls back into the parking lot of the motel. Bone weary, he parks the big SUV nose out, straddling two spaces in front of the doors to the rooms they’ve taken. Sitting in the front passenger seat, Pete’s face is a mask of shadows cast by the distant streetlights. “I’ll take the sofa in your room,” he says, pre-empting debate. “Jon can have my bed.”

  Brains nods, momentarily ashamed of his instinctive assumption that Pete would be more twitchy about sharing with him than with Jon. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  Jon, who has been leaning against the headrest, yawns and sits up. “Are we there yet?” she chirps.

  “Yes, we’re there,” Pete replies. Brains feels a stab of guilty relief. The former vicar is unconsciously reassuring. He shows no outward sign of unease as Jon opens her door and hops down. “Here’s my room key,” Pete says, handing her a gigantic plastic key ring. “Are you going to be all right on your own?”

  “It’s a—” Jon looks momentarily baffled, then her expression clears. “—a hotel room?”

  “A motel,” Pete explains. “Like a hotel, except all the suites have separate doors that open onto this car park. Look, there’s your front door. We’ll see you tomorrow, at eight.”

  Jon nods. “A motel. Like a hotel. I can do this.” She strides over to the room, her steps oddly jerky, but opens the door and goes inside without any fuss. A moment later the light comes on and the curtains twitch shut.

  Brains climbs down from the driver’s seat in time to see Pete vent a sigh of relief. “Everything okay?” he asks.

  Pete nods at the door to Jon’s room. “I’m fine. And I think she’ll be fine now.”

  “What’s up with her?”

  “A patchy memory overlay, I think. Yaris
ol—the person under the memories—is totally unequipped to deal with everyday life, both because she’s alfär and her culture is wildly alien to ours. Also, she’s non-neurotypical even by alfär standards. So she’s relying on Jonquil’s memories as a guidebook. It works most of the time, but whenever she falls off the edge of Jonquil’s map she falls back on alfär rules. Whatever they happen to be. Hence the business on the lakeshore.” Pete swallows queasily.

  “Yeah, that.” Brains gestures: “Inside.” Pete follows him into the motel room and draws the curtains and shuts the door. Brains continues: “What she did back there. How safe do you think we are?”

  Pete drops his bag on the tan corduroy sofa and shrugs off his coat. “She’s an alfär mage. Safety isn’t the word that springs to mind … but for what it’s worth, I don’t think she means to do ill by us.” He pokes at the coffee machine on the sideboard next to the elderly looking TV. “I’m more worried about her overloading in public and disengaging.”

  “Disengaging?” Brains raises an eyebrow.

  “Come on, you must have met people with a touch of Asperger’s before?” Brains blinks, taken aback. Pete is perceptive about that sort of thing, part of the counseling side of his job, Brains thinks. Or maybe it’s just that he, himself, isn’t. There’s something odd about Pete’s expression, although he can’t quite put his finger on it, so he nods tentatively. “Jon finds people hard to read and unfamiliar situations alarming, but she only took action when somebody tried to shoot us. I think, under the circumstances, we should be grateful, shouldn’t we?”

  Brains shudders. “She’s a gorgon. Or able to emulate gorgonism.” Brains has been dealing with basilisk weapons for well over a decade, and he’s read the background history. The medusa gaze is a—thankfully rare—symptom of a particularly unpleasant brain tumor. Victims tend to go mad long before the cancer kills them; watching everyone you love explode in red-hot cinders must be ghastly. But normally gorgonism is uncontrollable. “Jon did it deliberately.”

  “She’s a blood-mage. Anyway, I got an email while you were driving. The real reason we picked her up is she’s our ride out during Phase Three. Tomorrow morning.” Pete fiddles with the sofa until he works out how to unfold the top cushions into a slightly lumpy mattress. “Where’s the spare bedding—”

  Brains retreats to the back of the suite and raids the closet for a spare pillow and a quilt. He finds himself yawning. “I don’t get how she did it,” he complains as he delivers the supplies to Pete. “I don’t like it.”

  “Just tape a sign to her back saying OTHER END TOWARDS ENEMY,” Pete says, a trifle tetchy. He’s not had enough sleep either, Brains realizes.

  “I’m going to bed.”

  “You do that.” Pete yawns. “I’ll set an alarm for seven thirty. Then we should bring everything in from the car and clear the front room so Jon can do her stuff.”

  NINE

  MHARI’S BIG DAY

  Mission start time T minus six days.

  I’m twitchy about taking time out this close to D-day, but if there’s one unforgivable sin in any organization, it’s forgetting to keep your manager informed. The Prime Minister—damn Him for meddling—wants to be in direct control of the revamped and rebooted Special Operations Executive. Which means I have to visit Downing Street to brief Him in person on progress towards YELLOW OLYMPIC, invariably during daylight hours. Can I just say “fuck my life” and leave it at that? No? Didn’t think so.

  Of course there’s more to the new SOE than YELLOW OLYMPIC. It’s a small but significant stakeholder in the national security infrastructure that the PM is revamping in preparation for the Umbral Defense Review later this year, so I have to sit through an hour and a half of activity reports delivered by a variety of other departments before I can contribute my own three-minute summary of how the organizational rollout is progressing (TLDR version: I have delegated it to Colonel Lockhart, he knows what he’s doing). The projects being reported on range from the tedious1 to the gruesome.2 But at the end of the regular reports, when the meeting is over and everyone rises to leave, the PM tips me the nod. “Baroness, if you’d care to join me, please? You, too,” He adds to Iris.

  We follow His Majesty through the warren to His private office, where tea and scones are waiting, the Black Pharaoh having lately displayed an unexpected sweet tooth. I perch on the edge of the sofa beside Iris and sip my tea tensely, wondering if they’ve seen through me. I’m feeling very much out of my depth.

  “According to Forecasting Ops, right now you’re wondering if I can see right through you,” the PM tells me.

  I return my cup to its saucer with only a slight betraying rattle. “I suppose if they say so, it must be true,” I bluff. “So busted.”

  The Mandate laughs delightedly. “Capital, Baroness! Your double-bluff was a low-weighted probability,” He confides. “I believe you win this round—on points.”

  “What round?” I ask, irritated and slightly frightened. “Are you playing games with me?”

  “Yes,” He says, with evident amusement.

  Iris, however, glances at her watch with thinly veiled impatience. “Treasury report in eighteen minutes, sir,” she reminds Him.

  “They’ll wait.” A languid wrist-twirl takes in the shuttered windows, beyond which lie the Downing Street gardens. The windows are bulletproof and the wooden panels conceal armored steel cores, the legacy of an IRA mortar attack in 1991. “This is much more important.”

  Oh crap, He thinks talking to me is more important than talking to the Treasury? “I find that hard to believe,” I manage to say.

  His Infernal Majesty leans towards me confidingly. “You have imposter syndrome,” He says, “but paradoxically, that’s often a sign of competence. Only people who understand their work well enough to be intimidated by it can be terrified by their own ignorance. It’s the opposite of Dunning-Kruger syndrome, where the miserably incompetent think they’re on top of the job because they don’t understand it.” He winks—I think—and adds: “It screws with precognition, you know. Almost as much as the DM’s dice. Makes you unpredictable.”

  Huh? What?

  I must shake my head or give some other sign of incomprehension because the PM takes it as His cue to monologue, slightly patronizingly. “True clairvoyance is probabilistic, and depends for its effectiveness on the pettifogging determinism of the incompetent. Any idiot can execute a detailed plan—and by sticking to the plan even when things have begun to tilt off true, they make it easier for an adversary’s predictive assets to pin them down. But I’ve pushed you out of your comfort zone by placing full responsibility for this new agency on your shoulders. You will have to make momentous decisions with inadequate preparation, and follow through on them.” His smile reveals a flash of something like shark teeth, or perhaps a dental bridge made out of razor wire. (I shudder and abruptly forget the details, losing everything except a disturbing memory of whiteness.) “You will have to make up your own mind and improvise on the fly, in the field.” His smile-like expression widens alarmingly. “And that will make it much harder for the adversary to anticipate you.”

  I lick my lips. They’re dry. “What if I just stick to Plan A?” I ask.

  “That would be extremely foolish of you, and I don’t believe you’re that stupid, Baroness. Although I expect the view from atop the Marble Arch Tzompantli would be quite spectacular.” His smile gapes like an Aztec trophy skull.

  Did He just threaten me with—yes He did. I swallow. “First you give me a set of conflicting goals, now you’re telling me to make my own assessment of which ones to prioritize—and if I get it wrong I’m dead?”

  “I have complete confidence in you, Baroness. Ah, that is to say, the government has complete confidence in your ability to negotiate at the highest level with foreign powers. To identify with Our goals and plot a course towards the optimal outcome of these negotiations. And an essential element of negotiations is not to show your hand too soon. Now here are your real inst
ructions—”

  He blathers on for a bit and I zone out, my attention sliding off-kilter to the soothing drone of His voice. It’s just verbal wallpaper, adding nothing and signifying naught: in one ear and out the other. His words are as instantly forgettable as His face, and I lose my memory of them as soon as He stops.

  “You trust me to negotiate with the President?” I ask. First you wanted to know if Cthulhu had awakened yet, then you wanted me to bring the President back here, now you want me to negotiate with him? Make up your bloody mind! I want to shout.

  “If I let you recall what I want, then the Nazgûl’s seers will know, too.” Something about that last bit doesn’t quite make sense to me, but before I can ask Him to clarify, Iris taps her watch. The PM nods, then rises. “Alas, I have to go to my Treasury committee meeting, Baroness. No rest for the wicked! I’ve given you a toy box, and I expect you to pleasantly surprise me. Confusion to the enemy!” He taps two fingers to His forehead as I stand, and He shakes my hand, with a sensation like thousands of tiny stinging insects running over my future grave.

  And then we’re done.

  * * *

  The besetting vice of high office is the temptation to micromanage, to take direct control of a small, concrete, easily understood subsidiary operation and start issuing orders, to the detriment of the chain of command (and the neglect of the big picture). The reason micromanagement is a vice is that it’s a temptation to self-indulgence: it’s too easy to get carried away. Taking on a low-level coordinating role while retaining the full executive authority and fiscal responsibilities of senior rank is like playing a game you’ve mastered on the lowest difficulty level. DeeDee knows it’s naughty but the Lord of Sleep himself has ordered her to do this thing so her ass is totally covered, and the prospect of getting her hands dirty is irresistible.