The Labyrinth Index

by Charles Stross

  “These things happen.” The PM shrugs. He raises his teacup—eighteenth-century Wedgewood—and blows gently across it. “What about the big picture?”

  “I did—I didn’t—” I flap, then take a deep breath: “We got the President aboard the transport and we rooted the entry-point system and I suppose that side of the mission worked perfectly, although I couldn’t bring him home for you.” I’ve seen the intel estimates. Right after his flight, almost a hundred and sixty million Americans were awake and aware that they’d lost their President for three months. It was tantalizingly close to a majority of the population. But then the numbers stalled, and ever since then they’ve been falling. It seems people don’t want to be awake these days. Apocalypses are easier slept through than experienced.

  “And the Mouthpiece?” I can’t focus on His face but I can imagine Him raising an eyebrow.

  “Well and truly punched.” But it doesn’t matter, because there’s a new Mouthpiece, and she’s probably pissed off at me for getting blood on her Armani. “For what it’s worth…”

  “Yes, well, we can’t have everything we want.” He puts his cup down. “I am mildly disappointed that you didn’t bring me the President, but even I can see that he is more useful leading the resistance than as a Christmas tree decoration.” I shudder. There are reports of burning cities on the Eastern Seaboard, where night and sleep had already fallen by the time 302 Heavy completed its mission. “And besides, you brought me such a lovely present!”

  Iris takes this as her cue to pick up my parcel and slice a thumbnail through the tape. She unfolds the paper and presents the contents to the Prime Minister for his appraisal. He glances at the chalice briefly, as if to confirm something, then looks at me.

  “Such an excellent gift! It will fit in perfectly with the other decorations at Marble Arch. You have excellent taste, Baroness, and whatever you may believe, I am not displeased by the outcome of your operation. On the contrary: your offer to resign is denied.”

  “My—my—”

  His savage grin reduces me to silence. “Your problem, Baroness, is that you pay too much attention to the brushstrokes and too little to the frame. I ignore your lesser flaws because you are a never-ending source of amusement, but your belief in your own helplessness grates after a while. Just remember who you work for and you’ll be fine.” His amusement vanishes as abruptly as a summer mist beneath the light of a supernova. “But do please keep in mind what happens to those who bite the feeding hand.” He rises, cradling Hitler’s skull in his left hand. “I shall have another little job for you to organize next Monday, but you might as well take the rest of the week off: you’ve earned it.”

  * * *

  The best thing about being a workaholic with a train-wreck for a personal life is never having to worry about finding something to do in your spare time.

  The worst thing about being a workaholic with a train-wreck for a personal life is what happens to you when you have too much spare time.

  I go home, shower, change into pajamas, eat, then sit on the futon and stare blankly at the wall for about an hour. I don’t dare turn on the TV: I might accidentally stumble across a news channel, and then I’d have to buy another TV after I finished punching it. The internet on my laptop is just as bad, all clickbait headlines—Ten Improvements Cthulhu’s Awakening Will Bring to American Politics (and you won’t believe number six!)—but the alternative is Facebook, and Dad forwarding Crazy Uncle conspiracy theories about the PM by way of his Pastor, or Jenny talking about her boring fiancée. If not that, she’ll be moaning on her wall in an attempt to guilt-trip me into being a bridesmaid, trying to rope me into her wedding plans, because that’s what big sisters are for, and she won’t take “I can’t show skin in daylight” for an answer. (She’s only doing it to annoy, with a side order of “my maid of honor is a baroness” thrown in, because who could resist?)

  Eventually the wall-staring gets to be too much for me, so I reach behind the futon and flail around in the Waitrose box. The first four wine bottles I touch are empty, but I his paydirt with number five, another Minervois. I pull it out and swig straight from the neck like an utter heathen. I hesitate briefly between my first mouthful and my second. Maybe if I hadn’t left my phone in a trash can in DC I could call some friends and go out for a night on the tiles instead of drinking alone, but when you’re forced back to the late 1990s laptop experience everything is unbearably cumbersome, so why bother? I take that second gulp, and then a third, and I’m halfway down the bottle before I hear a tapping at the window casement.

  I slide the glass door open, letting the cold in. His breath steams. He smells of stale blood and beer, maddeningly sexy and stale all at once. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” he replies. “I tried to call but you’re not answering. Do you have to invite me in, or is that another dumb myth?”

  I mash my lips against his mouth and hang on for dear life as he picks me up and carries me across the threshold. We surface for air in a heap on the futon. I accidentally kicked the wine bottle over on the carpet but that’s okay: it was already half-empty. The French window is still open and the wind blows the night and magic inside. My arms are full of Fuckboy and all is well with the world. “They let you go!” I squeak as I catch my breath.

  “They let everyone go, although the plane will probably never fly again.” He sends one hand on an expedition inside my pajama top and I wriggle happily. “They shipped us to Vancouver the day before yesterday and we flew home the long way, via Tokyo and Dubai.”

  “But the daylight—”

  “Special arrangements were made. Never joke about flying cattle-class ever again.”

  “You must be exhausted?”

  “I am.” But he came here all the same.

  “What about Sally?” His sixteen-year-old daughter.

  “She’s fine.” I feel his shrug. “She can drive Liz mad for another week.” Liz is Jim’s ex. “I haven’t figured out what to tell them yet. I was hoping you could help with that.”

  “Tell them about—” My brain freezes. “—about PHANG?” That’s still classified.

  “No, about us.” That’s even worse, I think, but then he pulls me tight and kisses me again. There’s nothing tentative about it: I can feel his erection through chinos and pajamas. I start to undress him while he continues, “I thought I’d lost you.”

  Me, too. “But you haven’t.”

  “I didn’t know”—my God, his hands are everywhere, it’s wonderful—“you’d made it until after we landed.” I move to straddle him as he continues: “I was so fucking scared, Mhari, you and Sally are why I’m still alive”—I kiss him but he won’t shut up—“please will you marry me?”

  “What?” The question blindsides me, although I should have seen it coming. I sit up, and he takes the opportunity to pull my top up and over my head, trapping my arms. It takes a huge effort of will not to moan and rub myself against him because I’m so turned on I’m flashing ivory.

  He holds out his hand and offers me a familiar-looking diamond-and-emerald engagement ring. I handed it back to the jeweler a couple of days ago, thinking that was the last time I’d see it. “Please will you—”

  “—Yes, yes, I heard you the first time.” My future life flashes before my eyes. Jenny being incredibly pissed off at me because she will see it as big sister trying to upstage her big day. Cow-eyed resentment from Sally for usurping her mum’s place in her father’s affections, even though that ship sailed years ago. The PM smiling horribly over tea and cake as He reminds me that all our tomorrows belong to Him and, oh, by the way, Jim and I are hostages against each other’s loyalty to the regime. My gut-gnawing terror of losing him on a mission. His gut-gnawing terror of losing me on a mission. Jim, a serial shagger, and me, commitment-phobic, expecting each other to change our spots. Lying awake hugging our survival guilt tight, talking shop at dead of night as we try to justify our continued right to exist and, by existing, to kill relentlessly. Two workaholics w
ith train wrecks for personal lives, entangled forever? “I’d have to be mad.”

  His face falls. “You don’t want to—”

  “Sanity can fuck right off,” I say, shrugging out of my pajama top. Then, before he can ask me whether that was a yes or a no, I add, “I’ll do it, on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You can break the news to my sister…”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank my agent, Caitlin Blasdell; all my editors who have worked on this series at various times (Marty Halpern, Andrew J. Wilson, Ginjer Buchanan, Rebecca Brewer, Jenni Hill, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and Theresa Nielsen Hayden); and various test readers and informants: K. B. Spangler, Seth Dickinson, Erik Olson, Genevieve Cogman, Sean Fagan, Stewart Wilson, Dan Ritter, Lynn Ann Morse, and many others.

  ALSO BY CHARLES STROSS

  Singularity Sky

  Iron Sunrise

  Accelerando

  Glasshouse

  Halting State

  Saturn’s Children

  Rule 34

  Scratch Monkey

  The Rapture of the Nerds

  (with Cory Doctorow)

  Neptune’s Blood

  THE MERCHANT PRINCES

  The Bloodline Feud

  (comprising The Family Trade and The Hidden Family)

  The Traders’ War

  (comprising The Clan Corporate and The Merchants’ War)

  The Revolution Trade

  (comprising The Revolution Business and The Trade of Queens)

  Empire Games

  Dark State

  THE LAUNDRY

  The Atrocity Archives

  The Jennifer Morgue

  The Fuller Memorandum

  The Apocalypse Codex

  The Rhesus Chart

  The Annihilation Score

  The Nightmare Stacks

  The Delirium Brief

  STORY COLLECTIONS

  Toast

  Wireless

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHARLES STROSS is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the author of seven Hugo-nominated novels and winner of three Hugo Awards for best novella (including Equoid, published by Tor.com), Stross’s works have been translated into more than twelve languages. His previous novel, Dark State, was published by Tor in January 2018.

  Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped catastrophes in the past, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stakeout) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing, he tried to change employer just as the bubble burst). Along the way he collected degrees in pharmacy and computer science, making him the world’s first officially qualified cyberpunk writer.

  You can visit his website at www.accelerando.org or follow him on Twitter at @cstross, or sign up for email updates here.

  Thank you for buying this

  Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  One: God Save the King

  Two: Morning in America

  Three: We’re only making plans for Jar-Jar

  Four: Awakenings

  Five: On Death Ground

  Six: Leviathan’s Representative

  Seven: Critical-Path Dependencies

  Eight: A game of vampires

  Nine: Mhari’s big day

  Ten: Flight Plan

  Eleven: A dead god did it and ran away

  Epilogue: Debrief

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Charles Stross

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE LABYRINTH INDEX

  Copyright © 2018 by Charles Stross

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

  Cover photographs by schankz and Winai Tepsuttinun/Shutterstock.com and Getty Images

  A Tor.com Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-19608-8 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-19607-1 (ebook)

  eISBN 9781250196071

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: October 2018

  1 To spend more time with her hatchlings, according to Private Eye.

  2 It was rebuilt after the great fire of 1834, and again after the Blitz, so it’s not actually much older than my mum.

  3 Scurrilous weekly investigative scandal sheet and thorn in the side of the British establishment, founded in 1961 and continuously published until its liquidation in late 2014, when they tried to blow the lid on what really happened at Nether Stowe House.

  4 I asked why we had to leave the EU, in one of those informal breakout sessions at Number 10. “Mm, need to get rid of the ECJ and the ECHR,” He mumbled around a crumpet. (The European Court of Justice and the European Convention on Human Rights.) “Why?” I asked.

  “Can’t bring back the death penalty without ditching the ECHR,” He replied. “Also, we need to get rid of free movement. Stop the blighters emigrating.”

  I couldn’t help myself: “Why the death penalty?” I persisted.

  He fixed me with a quelling stare: “There haven’t been enough human sacrifices of late, as you should know,” He said.

  1 That’s why His Eldritch Majesty packed them off to fight a colonial war in Syria, where the other side are so vile that nobody back home will object.

  1 This is not just a figure of speech: Dinah, Gaby’s full-sized French Poodle, does indeed go to obedience school.

  2 It sucks battery like crazy. Brains told me that it’s based on a thing you use to generate bitcoins, although I think he was messing with me—as if money-grubbing mathematics preferentially attracts soul-sucking parasites.

  1 Human beings are annoyingly unpredictable and susceptible to non-standard behavior, like emailing dick picks around the office, suing the boss for sexual harassment, or stealing terabytes of classified files before scampering off to Moscow.

  1 Specification and outsourcing procurement of an online food-rationing system: Is the contractor to use SAP, Oracle, or an open-source stack?

  2 The National Transplant Service is having difficulty procuring the materials for a symphony orchestra string section consisting of pale violins, cellos, and double basses. No, I don’t know why He wants such a thing. In fact, I don’t want to know.

  1 Non-destructively, I hope. We discussed the proposed mechanism at some length in a COBRA meeting. The phrase, “you cannot sacrifice the President” was uttered. Eventually the PM conceded that it would set a bad precedent for future international negotiations. But I’ve a nagging sense that he’d love nothing more than a VIP decoration for the top of his Tzompantli.

  2 There is a third missing piece of the puzzle: and that is what the SA told me under conditions of ultimate secrecy. (But you will not learn about the plans for Extended Continuity Operations from me: my tongue is locked—that pesky low-level geas—and if I tell you any more
I’ll die.)