The Labyrinth Index

by Charles Stross

  “But try and hang on for the Colorado team before you evacuate,” Jim adds thoughtfully. Then, to me, with a sardonic wink: “The game’s afoot.”

  * * *

  “What the fucking fuck is that?” Brains demands, momentarily losing his cool as Jon waves the that under his nose.

  “It’s a blood wand!” Jon tells him excitedly. “I made it overnight?! Say hello to blood wand!”

  The blood wand resembles an extremely regrettable cross between a toilet brush and a tampon, although Brains isn’t entirely sure about the latter (neither he nor his husband have much use for such things). The blood wand is of elephantine proportions, a handle bearing a cylindrical mass of compressed bloody cotton wool. As Brains recoils he realizes that the bloodstains seem to form some sort of grotesque design. Feeling slightly faint, he fans his face and hides behind the spirit of scientific enquiry: “What’s it for?” he asks.

  Pete grimaces and hides his face, shoulders shaking. (Brains assumes that, being of the heterosexual persuasion, Pete is more familiar with such objects.) “Presumably the period fairy uses it to banish the cramp demon?” he suggests, which Brains refuses to even attempt to understand. “Or maybe it’s a divining tool?”

  “Yes-good!” Jon nods vigorously. “Blood is a potent store of mana, the blood of magi in particular. Draw the portal diagram and I will open the way and lead you to She Who Is To Be Obeyed.”

  Brains frowns, racking his brains for movie references. “Ursula Andress?” he offers, before realizing that, of course, being a goddamn alien, Jon is a complete cinematic illiterate, so—“Wait, you mean Baroness Karnstein?”

  “Yes-yes!” Jon bounces up and down on the balls of her feet.

  “How much coffee did we have this morning?” Pete asks, suspicion dawning.

  “All of it!”

  Brains absorbs this fact slowly. The room he and Pete shared didn’t come with a filter machine, but there was an industrial-sized one in the motel lobby. If Jon drank the entire jug—

  “How many times did you refill it?” asks Pete.

  “Only three times! It kept running out!”

  Brains glances at the vicar. “Are we going to need a tranquilizer dart?” he murmurs.

  Pete shakes his head. “That’s really nice, Jon,” he says calmly. “Now, why don’t you sit down on the sofa while Brains and I take care of the portal setup? We’ll call you when we’re ready for you to energize it.” Then, in what Brains can only characterize as a stroke of genius, he adds, “Have you ever played Candy Crush Saga? No? Here, it’s on my phone, let me show you how…”

  It takes five minutes to get the vibrating alfär mage settled on the sofa bed with Pete’s smartphone, but pretty soon she’s hunched over the palmtop, mumbling angrily to herself as the game’s theme tune spills from the tinny speaker at a manic tempo. Pete makes eye contact with Brains. “Let’s get this show on the road,” he says, and Brains can only agree.

  Brains’s morning takes a turn for the better after that. He’s worked on grid layouts so many times that it’s almost automatic these days, but he keeps the schematic for this one to hand on his tablet and refers to it frequently, double-checking his work—if he gets any part of it wrong they could become horribly lost. There’s a checklist, too, and Pete talks him through it as calmly as he’d lead a Sunday service. In fact, he’s almost as soothing as Jon is disturbing. Between them they get the intricately nested circles and pentacles of the conductive diagram laid out in under an hour, during which time Jon blows right through Pete’s all-time high score in the game. Finally, Brains gets a text from DC to say that the receiver is ready for them.

  And then it’s time to go.

  * * *

  It’s an annoyingly bright day outside, but there’s enough overcast to keep it from frying me, and it’s cold enough that wearing opaque tights and gloves isn’t too unusual. Jim’s carrying a huge backpack. He’ll need it later if our contact is good to go with either Plan A or Plan B.

  We wait just inside the doorway for an Uber to the next-but-one nearest subway stop, then catch a train into town. The DC subway is an annoyingly sparse network compared to London or New York, but there are a couple of interchanges. We split up at L’Enfant Plaza and ride separate trains for a while, then meet up again at King Street and head for the rendezvous near Rosslyn. There are a bunch of buses and an airport interchange at the station so it’s both busy and has enough fan-in/fan-out to smudge our movement footprint. Jim confirms he’s not being followed before I meet him. I don’t spot anyone on my tail, either. (I wish PHANGs came with the traditional—alas, entirely fictional—vampire’s invisibility to cameras and mirrors, but all I’ve got is an inability to see my own reflection, which is just a nuisance.)

  The exit from the Metro station is overshadowed by bland concrete offices with underground parking. The middle of the street is a ramp leading down to an underpass. Jim and I proceed arm in arm towards the rendezvous near a garage entrance. We’re a few minutes late so I’m tense, a little nervous, when one of the ubiquitous Escalades with blacked-out rear windows pulls up beside us and the rear passenger window winds down. “Hello?” someone calls from the front seat. “Hello?”

  I turn, putting myself on the far side of the pavement from the car, with Jim between us. “Hey,” says Jim, then pauses. “You must be looking for—”

  “The Kennedy Memorial.” That’s the passphrase.

  “It’s in the cemetery. You can’t miss it,” Jim gives the counterphrase.

  “Want a ride?” The passenger-row door pops open.

  Jim clambers in first and slides sideways across the bench seat. I follow him into the walnut and leather interior, then shut the door. The green-tinted windows pleasantly dim the outside light. Our driver moves off without waiting for us to strap ourselves in, but he keeps his speed down. I don’t look round and don’t make any sudden moves, but carefully pull the seatbelt around me. Bodyguards with guns generally like it if the person in the row in front of them is strapped down.

  “Your papers, please,” says the man behind me.

  “I’m going to open my handbag,” I tell him, wait a few seconds, then withdraw my passport. Jim has his own in hand. He takes mine and passes them back.

  “James Grey, Mhari Murphy.” There is a pause. “Diplomatic cover—Baroness Karnstein? ‘Carmilla’? Really?”

  “House of Lords Special Forces,” Jim says drily.

  “I’m a member of the government,” I add. At least, until the PM decides otherwise. “Jim is here as my plus-one and PPO.” Personal Protection Officer.

  A momentary hitch, then: “Detective Chief Superintendent Grey, Special Branch—that’s the, uh, anti-terrorist police, isn’t it?”

  “I cover the metahuman beat.”

  “Meta—oh. I get it. What do you do to rate a Special as a bodyguard, Baroness?” Our passports reappear over the back of the seat and Jim accepts them.

  “You can look me up in Burke’s Peerage. Or Hansard.” Hah bloody hah. “The Prime Minister personally sent me with a message for the President. Ears only.”

  “You can deliver it now,” says the man with the gun.

  “Not until I see the President. I really must insist.”

  “Oh all right then,” says a different voice, laden with sardonic humor, and I can’t help myself: I look round and do a wide-eyed double-take, because sitting in the jump seat next to the man with the gun is another man, with a very famous face that keeps slipping out of focus whenever I try to look directly at him. “You can tell me anyway.”

  “That’s quite some glamour,” Jim says appreciatively while I’m still boggling. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Our friends in the Comstock Office have a few tricks up their sleeves. What can I say?” The President shrugs and flashes me a million-dollar smile. “We’ll take whatever help we can get. Now, what does Mr. Everyman have to say to me?”

  “What—” I lick my lips, temporarily flummoxed. Part of me can’
t help freezing up in an agony of disbelief: I’m riding around Washington DC in a limo, casually chatting with the President? Me? This is some kind of joke—I grab my imposter syndrome by the scruff of its neck and throw it out the window, because I’ve got a job to do and it’s getting in the way. Get a grip, Mhari—“Sorry. The short version is: we know about your problem. His Majesty doesn’t want the Operational Phenomenology Agency to take over the US government—that’s unvarnished national self-interest speaking, by the way. They scare the crap out of us. So we’ve set up an operation that will crack open their glamour and give you an opportunity to take back control. But it requires your active participation to work.” I smile, careful not to show him too much tooth. “You have questions. Yes?”

  Arthur frowns. “His Majesty?”

  “Let’s not mince words. Our Queen is just the ceremonial head of state, and she’s pushing ninety. She’s good for ribbon-cutting and after-dinner speeches, but not so much with the ass-kicking these days.” (She’s very good at playing the role of the Nation’s Favorite Grandmother, but the couple of times I’ve met her she struck me as being deeply unimpressed by the current century.) “The PM, in contrast, is around for the long haul, and upon Her Majesty’s death or abdication there may be some constitutional changes to recognize His peculiar suitability for leading the nation through this time of crisis.”

  The President’s frown deepens towards a scowl. “Mr. Everyman isn’t strictly human, Baroness. Nor, as I understand things, are you. What do you have to say about that?”

  I flap my jaw for a few seconds, processing, then Jim catches my eye. “With respect, Mr. President,” he interrupts smoothly, “the Baroness started out human, and if a cure for her unfortunate condition becomes available I’m certain she’ll take it in a second.” I nod vehemently. “On the other hand, the Prime Minister role-plays humanity as his chosen character class. And the OPA threw away their humanity and never looked back.”

  I swallow. “Most of them were never human to begin with. Or they’re thing-enablers. Whatever. The fact remains, it’s up to you to decide who you’re willing to make common cause with, or how broad a definition of human you’re willing to apply. I’d just like to observe that desperate times make for strange bedfellows.”

  After a few seconds Arthur nods. “What’s in it for you guys?”

  “We get to dodge the end of our world. That’s what the OPA are working towards—with the executive oversight tier out of the way, they’re free to pursue projects that will doom us all.” I hesitate. “The truth is … our PM needs worshippers. He’s an ancient horror, but He’s also a narcissist that’s adopted our species as His pet project. Sure, He enjoys tormenting us, some of us, some of the time—but if we go extinct, He won’t be able to do that any more. So He’s taken over the UK for His personal captive audience. In contrast, the thing the OPA want to summon doesn’t need anyone or any thing. Raising it might destroy our universe, but the people running the OPA don’t care because their religious framework tells them that this would be a good thing.” Who’s your homie going to be, Hitler or Stalin?

  Of course I can’t tell him that, or describe the New Management’s longer-term plans: the gleaming chrome-and-glass Tzompantli rising over the sacrifice terminals on Oxford Street, the blood foaming in the gutters beneath the obsidian sky. I can’t warn him about the vampire priests of the Morningstar Empire ascendant once more in Ultima Britannia, of the beginning of the end of human history. I can’t speak of an endless future of barrel-bodied, bat-winged dragons with dangling tentacles coasting silently above the heads of terrified serfs. Of cloning tanks and charnel factories and legions of the damned swarming east beneath the blood-encrusted banner of the Union Jack, cannibalizing Europe.

  Nor can I tell him—lest the SA’s command override cause my arterial blood vessels to burst and my eyeballs to catch fire—about Long-Term Continuity Operations and the Resistance. (A pity: that would probably sway him emphatically in our direction. But if I told him, word might leak out and get back to Downing Street, and then the PM might well decide, après moi le déluge.)

  It’s too bad that I have to keep the future to myself, because some nightmares cry out to be shared.

  “Tell me about this plan to break the OPA’s amnesia spell,” says the President, “and tell me what it’ll cost us. Then I’ll make up my mind.”

  So I tell him, in detail, which takes about half an hour as his security team drive us aimlessly around the conquered capital city.

  And then, God help us, he says “Yes.”

  * * *

  Pete steps inside the diagram Brains has drawn on the floor of the motel room, and watches as Jon bounces around outside it, twitching and making lip-smacking noises of approval as she shakes her bog brush. She seems to be checking it for correctness, but he isn’t entirely sure, which is more disturbing than he’s willing to admit. Brains sidles slightly closer. “Do you think this is entirely safe?” he asks.

  “Wait—” Jon has stopped pacing the perimeter. Now she steps inside the circle with them. A sudden flash of red and Pete recoils. “What! Hey, did you need to—”

  Jon squeezes her right fist over the head of the brush as blood trickles down her forearm from the razor-slash she just incised in her wrist. She grins toothily at Pete. “Hey-hey, we’re on our way!” she shouts, stabbing the blood wand at the cardinal points of the grid. With a sizzling flash of electric blue light, the world around them fades out.

  They stand on an infinite indigo plain, barely brighter than the not-sky overhead. A thin haze like clouds of diamond dust sparkles and glimmers across the night, curling and fading fractally across the pitch-black darkness beyond. Pete shivers. Something tells him that this is not a place where he can survive for long.

  “Come on-on!” Jon tells them, then skips away, waving her bloody tool from side to side.

  Brains freezes for a couple of seconds, then mutters something about elves under his breath. He charges after her. Pete glances over his shoulder briefly. The landscape behind is barren and trackless, and Jon and Brains are already dwindling, as with each step they recede a good fraction of a kilometer. A momentary terror of being lost sweeps over him and he hurries to catch up.

  There’s no obvious path, but Jon seems to know where she’s going. This must seem like a walk in the park compared to the ghost road the Host marched along when it came to its earthly exile, Pete realizes. His separation anxiety subsides as he catches up with the other two, but now a deeper, more enervating horror grips him. This is a realm without people, without gods, without life—but not inherently hostile, not like the vacuum of space. It’s a realm of potential, waiting to be filled by new creation. Or perhaps an infinity of creations. He’s heard of such interstitial places of course, but to find himself walking through one is skin-crawlingly disturbing. Even though Pete is too sophisticated for Biblical literalism, he has a sense of standing outside of creation. I can’t get out of here soon enough, he thinks, and glances at his smartwatch—a birthday present from his wife—only to see that it has crashed and frozen on reboot, mocking him with an image of the apple from the tree of knowledge, one bite down.

  “Numbers mean what I want them to mean in this place!” Jon announces gaily. “Come along, hippety-hop!”

  “How much further?” Brains demands.

  “Not far! Hippety-hop, hurry or the clowns will eat our toes!”

  “Clowns?”

  Pete notices that neither he nor Brains cast any kind of shadow, but a warped penumbra surrounds Jon’s feet. It moves, but only loosely matches time with her steps.

  “Clowns!”

  Jon points across the plain towards a distant flicker of electric blue. Another portal, Pete realizes. “Is that where we’re going?” he asks.

  “Yes-yes! Must outrun the clowns!” Jon trills, skipping along.

  “Clowns?” Brains sounds worried.

  “What clowns?” Pete asks.

  “Those clowns!”
<
br />   Jon points towards the distant flickering light. Which is flickering, Pete finally sees, because something is passing in front of it. Something humanoid a long way away that casts a terrible shadow.

  What kind of clowns live in an interstitial space? he wonders, then looks to Jon and realizes that perhaps her command of spoken English vocabulary is imperfect.

  “What are they?” Brains demands.

  “Clowns! Like me, only not-not because they belong to the Nazgûl!” She sounds happy. “We fight, yes-yes?”

  Oh dear Christ, Pete thinks dismally. They got between us and the anchor. As the oncoming magi in silver bodysuits race towards him, he realizes: We’re going to die.

  * * *

  The President has graciously agreed to the PM’s modest proposal. His man with a gun—a senior Secret Service officer called Mattingley—puts his pistol away, and our driver is running Jim and me across town towards a different Metro station, when a curious sense that we’re not alone steals over me.

  “We’ve picked up a shadow,” says Jim.

  “Can’t be—” Mattingley stops. “Cho?”

  The driver grunts assent. “Yeah, I see him. And the silver Prius that just turned in ahead of us. Two-car box tail, maybe more.”

  Rapid-fire jargon heavily infested with numbers and code-names is exchanged across us. I’m not the only one at a loss, judging from Arthur’s plaintive, “What’s happening?”

  “We’ve been made, sir. Sir and ma’am,” Mattingley adds to Jim and myself as an afterthought.

  “Well, our guests had better stay with us until it’s dealt with,” says the President. His voice is warm and reassuring. “I apologize for the inconvenience,” he adds, as if being mousetrapped by hostiles with guns is a routine irritation.

  “What’s your plan?” asks Jim. “Assume we’re along for the ride.”

  “Aim for the highway and get the hell out of town,” says Mattingley. “We’re in a KZ here. Cho? Hit it.”

  “Yes, sir.” The officer riding shotgun places an electronic gadget on the dash as the driver floors the accelerator. Ahead of us, stop- lights suddenly turn green as we shoot forward and swerve around the silver Prius. The Prius may be part of a tail, but if so they’re prudent enough to get out of the way of the monster truck we’re riding in. Seconds later we’re out of the junction and taking a hard right onto a six-lane highway, but there’s a distant chittering rumble at the back of my head and it’s clear that in breaking the box we’ve turned ourselves into a conspicuously visible target.