The Delirium Brief (Laundry Files #8)
Charles Stross
In memory of David G. Hartwell, 1941–2016
Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
—Prince Otto von Bismarck
PART I
GOD GAME INDIGO
ONE
THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN
It’s twenty past ten at night and I’m being escorted through the glass-fronted atrium of a certain office building in central London. I’m surrounded by a knot of soberly dressed civil servants who are marching shoulder to shoulder in lockstep to keep me from being recognized, or maybe to prevent me making a run for it if I lose my nerve. We are waved past nodding receptionists and security guards who hold the turnstiles open for me as if I am expected—because I am indeed expected. Unfortunately.
This afternoon my minders took me to a barber. They said I was overdue for a trim; protests about my male pattern baldness fell on deaf but determined ears. (I still think closing the shop, kicking everyone else out, and stationing guards inside the door was a bit excessive, though: who ever heard of a top secret haircut?) I’m wearing my funeral suit and tie, and my shoes are dazzlingly polished. (Just pretend you’re acting a role, she said, straightening my collar; concentrate and remember your talking points.) I look twenty years older than I feel, and I feel ten years older than usual—mostly due to jet lag. They emailed me a set of notes just before I caught my flight home, and I did my best to memorize them on the plane from Kansai. But right now I feel like it’s seven in the morning, and I’m yawning because I’m waking up, not going to sleep.
Minder number three—Boris, a tech-side middle management guy I used to do the odd job for; until today I hadn’t seen him in years—hits the button for the sixth floor. The glass-walled lift slides silently up into the lofty heights of Broadcasting House, rising past open-plan offices full of serious-faced journalists and program managers peering into computer screens. As we pass a coat of arms saying “Nation shall speak Peace unto Nation,” I go over points seventeen to twenty-two again, mumbling under my breath. Then I rub my sweaty palms on my woolen suit jacket.
I have got the Fear. Why the fuck couldn’t they find somebody else to do this?
I imagine Lockhart or the SA or some other drop-in authority figure explaining it to me calmly. “You know why it’s got to be you, Bob: it’s because of the scaling laws.” The threats the agency exists to deal with grow exponentially, doubling in scale on an eighteen-month cycle, like a nightmarish version of Moore’s Law. But our cohort of qualified senior staff only grows linearly. The clusterfuck at the New Annex a year ago killed a bunch of senior officers, and the disaster in Leeds has put so many others on paid leave pending hearings that everyone in the field is currently operating above their pay grade. We’re all taking on tasks we’re not trained for, often without backup or oversight.
As for this job, we’re a secret government agency: we don’t even have a public relations department. Which is why we’re scrambling to improvise tonight. When the order came down from on high that someone was to come here and do this thing, it ended up on my desk simply because I was senior enough, and available. (At least that’s the official explanation. Part of me can’t help thinking that a more rational explanation is that God or Management hates me and wants me to suffer.)
My handler clears her throat just behind my left shoulder, and I jump. “Try not to sweat so much, Bob, the makeup guy will want to redo everything.” I hate it when Mhari sneaks up on me like that. She makes me really uncomfortable: about 10 percent of it is knowing that she’s actually a vampire, and the rest of it is down to our uncomfortable personal history. The only consolation is knowing that having to work with me makes her even more uncomfortable, and only about 10 percent of it is because I’m a necromancer. At least we’re both trying to be professional about it, and we’re mostly succeeding. She reaches out briskly and brushes lint from my lapel, and I try not to flinch again.
When they went looking for someone to represent the agency in public and picked me, they weren’t just scraping the bottom of the barrel, they were fracking for oil in the basement. My biggest qualification for this job is that I haven’t stepped in any operational dog turds lately. I’m Mr. Clean: nobody’s going to blame me for the disaster in Leeds, I was out of the country at the time. So they briefed me and gave me talking points to memorize, and sent me videos of the Great Man toying with his prey, to watch as in-flight entertainment on the way home. Which, in hindsight, was probably a bad idea: I’m so keyed up I need the toilet again and I’m due on-air in about ten minutes.
“Remember, he only really takes the gloves off when he’s interviewing policy makers,” Mhari reassures me. “You’re a line manager, not an executive, so by sending you out like a sacrificial goat with a sign taped to your arse saying KICK ME we’re calling his bluff. He can’t crucify you on-air for setting policy without looking like a bully, so he’ll have to settle for asking you lots of hard questions to which you are expected to plead ignorance or pass the buck. He can’t even badger you until you change your story—remember the Iraqi WMD scandal and the way Dr. Kelly committed suicide when the press turned on him? So you’ll be fine. Just remember it’s not personal: he’s not interviewing you, he’s interviewing the organization.” She bares one delicately curved canine, ivory outlined against crimson lip gloss while I boggle at her appalling mixed metaphor. “I’m buying the drinks afterwards. Everyone okay? Boris?”
Boris nods lugubriously. “Am understanding there are good club late license around corner,” he slurs. (Boris has permanent damage to his speech center from one too many run-ins with the brain parasites that cause K syndrome.)
A couple of harried technicians glare at us for blocking the lift doors until Mhari smiles at them and sharply knuckles my spine to get me moving again. “Where are we going?” I ask. The level we’re on features lots of floor-to-ceiling beech and invisible recessed handles on doors that curve to match the walls. The carpet is eerily sound-deadening, but I can sense the murmur of many minds all around us, whispering and intensely focused.