by Heide Goody
“The, um, Venislarn Material Reclamation Centre. In Nechells. North of the city.”
“But this is where Dr Ingrid Spence worked?” said Cattress.
“Yes,” said Morag, suspecting instantly where this line of conversation was going. “They’re interviewing for her replacement this week.”
“Yes,” he said. “Did you know her well?”
“No,” said Morag.
“But you were present when she died.”
Bingo. This was what it was about. This was why he wanted to speak to her.
“I was there,” she said. “Do you want to know what happened?”
“I am more interested in the whys and wherefores, the sequence of events that led to her death.”
“It was about funding,” said Morag honestly. “Money. Regional bodies receive their funding in line with the perceived need.”
“This is the ToHo formula I’ve heard mentioned.”
“Correct,” she said. “The more incursions we have, the more money we get. Ingrid knew that we were underfunded and took the logical but mad-as-a-bag-of-spanners decision to engineer two incursions in the city. The first resulted in a lot of collateral damage and there were fatalities. The second claimed Ingrid’s life.”
“Yes, yes,” said Cattress, intrigued. “There are these so-called ‘incursions’... By which you mean what?”
“Attacks by the Venislarn.”
“Yes. And this Venislarn. I’ve never got a comprehensive grasp on it. All the boffins talk about it in code. I appreciate that they represent a threat but they do – do correct me if I’m wrong – come in a variety of different flavours, yes?”
“Flavours. I suppose so. Don’t touch that.”
He withdrew his hand sharply.
“Is it fragile?” he said.
“It’s the Unapproachable Stone of Msgoto.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t think it’s wise to approach it.”
Cattress stared at the stone. Morag gestured for them to walk on.
“So,” he said in the tones of one going back to square one, “there are these Venislarn incursions. And it’s your job to stop them?”
“Hardly ever. We’re not permitted to interfere.”
“Right. That’s some sort of causality issue.”
“No,” she said patiently, because the alternative to patience was worry. “We don’t interfere because the Venislarn will punish us if we do.”
“Punish?” He wagged a finger at her. “It’s that kind of obfuscation that I’m struggling with. I understand that your organisation detects these apparent incursions, which I assume occur on some sort of quantum level, and then, even though they are patently dangerous, your role is to simply monitor them until the wave function collapses or whatever.”
Morag stopped amid a cluster of cabinets containing the skin casings of a Kobashi at each of its four life stages.
“Time out,” she said. “We need to straighten this out.”
“Absolutely,” said Cattress.
“What is it that you think we do here?”
“Well, that’s what I’m trying to understand. I know you deal with hypothetical matters beyond the ken of empirical science. I’ve heard a lot of talk about otherworldly forces and intangibles and I’ve always pictured it as being a bit like those clever eggs over in CERN, looking through a quantum microscope for their theoretical Higgs Bosun and wotnot.”
Morag shook her head.
“How long have you worked for the Foreign Office, Jonathan?”
“Three years. Why?”
“And who briefed you on the Venislarn?”
He laughed confidently. “Oh, our lot prefer to throw us all in at the deep end and see who sinks and who swims.”
She could feel her face paling.
“You’ve not been told.”
“I’ve been told enough. I’m a quick learner, I assure you.”
“Oh, the fucking gallus cuntweasels,” she whispered.
“In the FCO, one might be hosting Japanese dignitaries one day, exploring the intricacies of Azeri cultural politics the next and dealing with a sticky issue with a British arms dealer who’s sailed too close to the wind on the day after that.”
She looked about her as though they had suddenly been transported from a malevolently occult storage facility and into a cage of tigers. Actually, a cage of tigers might have been marginally safer. She was in the middle of the Vault with an over-qualified and under-educated Etonian man-child who had no knowledge of the Venislarn and an Abyssal Rating of zero.
“Gods,” she said. “We deal with gods.”
“The god particle,” he nodded, determined to be on board the train of conversation.
“No,” she said firmly. “Gods. Not metaphorical. Not hypothetical. Not theoretical. Gods.”
He scoffed and tossed his floppy fringe.
“You are trying to play me for a fool, Ms Murray.”
She shook her head.
“I think this pre-inspection inspection is over, Mr Cattress. Let’s get you back upstairs at once. This way, please.”
Nina entered the response team office with a fat bunch of flowers in her hands and, inexplicably, found Vivian leading an alert-looking collie up and down a grid of papers she had set out on the floor.
The dog worked its way along the rows and the columns, casually sniffing and then sat down next to a pile.
“Good boy, Ruffles!” said Vivian in a joyous and enthusiastic tone that was entirely at odds with her usual character and which unnerved Nina more deeply than she could say.
Vivian picked up the pile, momentarily inspected the name at the top and then tossed it in the bin.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Nina. “What’s going on?”
“Interview candidate selection,” said Vivian. “I would have thought that was obvious.”
“It really wasn’t,” said Nina.
Vivian encouraged Ruffles to do another circuit of the papers.
“Drugs sniffer dog?” said Nina. “Checking to see if any of the applicants are potheads.”
“There are many kinds of sniffer dog, Miss Seth. Drugs. Explosives. Cancer. Diabetes.”
“So, you’re using Ruffles to do illegal medical profiling. Cool.”
“I did not say what kind of detection dog he is. What are those? You know I cannot abide flowers in the office.”
“Shame. They’re for you,” she said, weighing the monstrous bunch in her hands.
“For me?” said Vivian disgusted. “They’re not from the samakha boys in Fish Town, are they?”
“Where would they find flowers? No, these” – she read the card again – “are from Xerxes Mammon-Mammonson. ‘To a bold and courageous woman.’”
Vivian sniffed dismissively.
“Yes. You can put them in the bin,” she said. “And turn the lights out.”
“Why?”
“Everything is twenty questions with you, Miss Seth. I’d appreciate a little obedience.”
Nina turned the office lights off. With the blinds closed, the darkness was close to complete. An ultraviolet torch in Vivian’s hands played over the application forms on the floor. Three of them had smudges of luminous material on them. One of them was littered with luminous marks and fingerprints.
“I know people can get excited by their job prospects but did he have to jizz all over the form?” said Nina.
“It’s likely to be urine. Someone who doesn’t wash their hands. And it’s a she. Lights!”
Nina turned the lights on. Ruffles wagged his tail. Vivian tossed the three marked applications in the bin.
“The flowers,” said Vivian, offering Nina the bin.
“But they’re nice. Not as nice as cold hard cash, but it’s kinda cute that he likes you.”
“Xerxes Mammon-Mammonson does not like me,” said Vivian coldly. “He wishes to ingratiate himself with me because he thinks he can use me to further his cause. Those flowers are expensive, which mea
ns they are above the threshold of gifts we are allowed to receive. Additionally, the card called me bold and courageous which is a tautological redundancy. And that’s unforgiveable. Bin.”
As Nina binned the flowers. Vivian gathered up the final seven application forms and brought them to a desk.
“I need to narrow it down to four for interview on Thursday.”
Nina idly flicked through them.
“I might have to recheck their hobbies and interests,” said Vivian.
“This one is a… phil-a-te-list,” said Nina. “Does that mean she likes to sleep around?”
“No, it means she is a stamp collector.”
“Snoozeville.”
“You would rather we hired someone who was into mountain climbing and skydiving? No, a boring pair of hands is a safe pair of hands.”
Nina stopped at one of the forms.
“You’ve got to be adn-bhul kidding me, Vivian,” she said with a fierceness that made Ruffles look up.
“What is it?” Vivian looked over at the application form. “Yes. He applied.”
“Professor fucking Sheikh Omar?”
“His CV is quite impressive. Did you know he is the only person to survive an encounter with the Voor-D’yoi Lak on Shetland?”
“I don’t give a monkey’s.”
“And he was the first to establish the loci of Abyssal impact?”
“By forcing innocent undergrads to watch bhul-detar images of Venislarn! I know! I was there! He did it to me!”
“His methods are certainly unorthodox,” said Vivian.
Nina clicked her fingers in Vivian’s face.
“He is a torturer, a criminal and a planet-sized twat with a first-class degree from Twat University.”
“And possibly the best qualified person for our vacant role.”
Nina almost suppressed her scream of frustration.
“Can’t you see that I’m upset you’re even thinking of putting him forward for interview? God damn you, this dog has more human empathy than you do.”
“Well, of course he does. Ruffles is a clever dog, isn’t he?” she said, stroking the collie under the chin.
Nina pushed herself away from the desk, furious.
“Vivian. Look at me. If you put that man forward, you and I are no longer friends.”
“When were we friends?” asked Vivian but Nina was already storming out of the office.
Morag, who was always willing to hold Whitehall bureaucrats in low regard, imagined that Jonathan Cattress was not used to being told what to do, particularly by a Scotswoman in the ‘service’ industries. Apart from during an unpleasant spell as a fag at public school or during some homoerotic initiation rites at his Oxbridge college, he’d probably gone through his entire life never hearing ‘no’ for an answer.
“I’m not leaving this place until I have the answers I want, Ms Murray.”
Morag cast worried glances around the Vault.
“You can have all the answers you want once we’re the other side of the entrance and back in the lift.”
“Is there something you’re trying to hide?” he said.
“Yes! You! There are things in here that would suck your brain out through a straw if they knew what easy prey you are.”
“Oh, now you’re just talking nonsense, Ms Murray.”
Morag held her breath and rage.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to give you a crash course and then we’re leaving.”
Cattress simply looked at her, silently inviting her to go on.
“Scientists say the likelihood of there being life on other planets is a near certainty.”
“Aliens.”
“Who we’ve not met yet. And quantum physics tells us that there are an infinite number of universes, side by side, filled with slightly different versions of ourselves and goodness knows what else.”
“Parallel dimensions.”
“Well, the Venislarn are not from another galaxy or another dimension. They’re from somewhere else entirely. Yes, they’re not actually gods. There are no gods but it’s the best word we’ve got to describe them. Their power is limitless and their plans utterly unknowable. They are here. They have been here a long time. We think. They’ve certainly inserted themselves into our history but they’re not restricted by time in the way we are. They might have arrived fifty years ago, ten years ago. Maybe they will come here for the first time next week and then just insinuate themselves back in time to the present day. We don’t know. What we don’t know about them would fill a bloody big book.”
She took him by the elbow and pulled him a dozen feet towards a large metal safe that had the appearance of a deep sea diving pressure chamber. She pointed through the porthole at the large open tome on the pedestal within.
“That is the Bloody Big Book AKA the Wittgenstein Volume AKA the Book of Sand. It is a book with an infinite number of pages.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Cattress.
“Isn’t it? But it’s real. It details everything that ever has happened, is happening and will happen. It contains every other book ever written and translations of them all into every language known and unknown.”
“Why is it inside that chamber?”
“For a number of reasons, although the one I find most compelling is that it’s a monumental fire risk. Imagine what would happen if you set fire to an infinite quantity of paper.”
“Poppycock.”
“It’s just one of the thousands of Venislarn artefacts we end up collecting, the cultural cast-offs of an alien invasion force.”
“Oh, so we’re being invaded now?”
“Have been invaded. Past tense. We’re pigs in the slaughterhouse and will only realise it when they shut the door closed behind us.”
“This is nonsense.”
“Listen, pal, you’re in an Aladdin’s cave of magical wonders and you want to tell me that I’m just making it all up for a laugh. Look. Here. These are the Tiny Blue Innumerables.”
“What of them?” said Cattress, peering disdainfully at the smooth semi-precious stones in the display case.
“What of them? Count them.”
Cattress sighed petulantly. “Well, there’s obviously eight. No, I missed that one. There’s… not nine but…”
“‘Not nine’ is as close as you’ll get to an answer.”
“No, just wait a moment.” He put his finger to the glass as he counted. “Twelve, unless I’ve counted that one twice.”
“They’re innumerable, Jonathan. They can’t be counted.”
“But that’s preposterous.”
“It’s the Venislarn. Look, the one-sided coin of Ogdru Jahad. Look, the last extant copy of Ryngu’s The King in Crimson, the first act at least. Look, at these.” She gestured to shelves casually filled with artefacts that had arrived since Ingrid’s death. “Out of Place Artefacts, most of them. Impossible objects found in locations they couldn’t conceivably be found in. This cube was found inside solid rock. This pabash kaj doll was found inside a five-pound bowel cancer tumour.”
“A doll?”
Morag picked up the brown sackcloth effigy. “Burmese tribespeople used them to physically entrap their enemies in the body of the doll. All they needed to do was to get the person to step inside a tcho-tcho Loigor circle. I could draw one for you if you like.”
“Ridiculous,” said Cattress and then pointed. “And is this also some magical mumbo jumbo?”
“This? It was found buried beneath Iron Age ruins at Berry Mound near Shirley.”
Cattress looked at the vase. It was a simple receptacle in white clay, a rounded square that became squarer towards its fluted lip.
“It’s just a vase,” he said.
Morag could see that it didn’t appear impressive – if Tesco produced a Tesco’s Basics vase for £3.99, it would look like that – but she was annoyed now and determined to demonstrate the truth of the Venislarn occupation before marching Cattress out of there, straight back to his pa
rliamentary bosses and giving them a piece of her mind.
Morag picked up the item. It was unpleasantly light, like bird bones. A slow but ceaseless flow of warm air poured from its mouth.
“It’s the wrong age to be in an Iron Age fort. We call it a vase but that’s only us putting a shape to something we don’t understand,” she said. She took a pen out of her jacket pocket and dropped it in the vase. It landed with a hollow tap. She then tipped the vase up and two identical pens fell out onto the floor.
Cattress’s laugh was hollow and disbelieving.
“Very good.” He spun around. “And there are, I suppose, hidden cameras to record my astonishment.”
“Try it.”
Cattress patted his pockets and, finding nothing, removed one of his cufflinks and dropped it in the vase. Morag peered in and then upended the vase. Two cufflinks fell out into Cattress’s hand. His breath caught in his throat.
“A trick,” he said. He lifted the vase from Morag’s hands and inspected the base. “It’s not possible.”
“This is the world we deal with, Jonathan.”
“No, this is part of some ploy, an agenda that I don’t yet fully grasp.” He was struggling with his thoughts, barely had any confidence in his own words. “There’s a secret compartment…”
She reached out to take the vase back but Cattress stepped out of her reach.
“There has to be an explanation,” he said and tapped the vase hard against a shelf to dislodge whatever trickery was inside. Instead, the sharp blow punched a hole in the bottom edge of the vase.
“What the hell!” snapped Morag and snatched the vase from him but the damage was already done.
Whatever one placed in the Berry Mound vase was instantly multiplied and what Cattress had put in it was a hole.
Rod dressed, rolling up his shirt sleeves to hide the tattered cuff destroyed by Dinh’r mandibles, and went to find Kathy Kaur in the pathetic cubby hole that served as her office. She tapped at her computer keyboard.
“I had them here,” she said. “They’ve been deleted.”
“What have?”
“The CCTV footage files. I started downloading them and saving them after the first doorway went missing. And now the files have gone missing too.”
“Are you sure? Let’s have a gander.”