In contrast, computational magic does work reliably, for pretty much anyone who can punch a keyboard and follow a checklist, because eaters don’t seem to have a taste for silicon or germanium, which is why it’s the go-to discipline for organizations.
Mahogany Row, the successor to the Invisible College, continues to this day to keep track of and provide a framework for the high-level unique practitioners. However, the rest of the Laundry is an ant farm full of computational demonologists and IT managers. Indeed most staff, to the extent that they’re aware of Mahogany Row, think it’s just a senior management stratum—even though the organization as a whole exists to support it. Because a big chunk of the Laundry’s postwar mission was to keep the lid on the mere existence of algorithmic thaumaturgy, we ended up with a bloated head count—we’d spent decades giving everybody who stumbled on the truth a job where we could keep an eye on them. (Or, more accurately, where they could keep an eye on each other.) The iron law of bureaucracy doesn’t help: everybody working to ensure that the organization continues to pay them a salary, rather than necessarily achieving its objectives. So it has become progressively harder to keep the ball rolling, with the result that we finally and unambiguously lost the plot in Leeds.
You can hush up a massacre in an office park or a hideous manifestation at the Albert Hall with DA-Notices and dark muttering about terrorist attacks and hallucinogenic gas. But it’s impossible to cover up airliners being shot down, an invading army rampaging through the suburbs of a major city, and a traffic jam of main battle tanks on the nation’s motorways. Once the situation escalated to COBRA, the Cabinet Office emergency committee, and the government invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty (calling for support from NATO forces following an attack on a member nation), the mess in Leeds became the number one global rolling news headline and still hasn’t died down. It even beat out an eighty-meter-tall daikaiju that invaded the Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise theme park and duked it out with the Japanese Self-Defense Agency, as a result of the incursion at Puroland that I was sent to help deal with—
Nope, the events in Leeds aren’t going back in the closet any time soon.
Nor has the aftermath gone unnoticed. There are smoking craters all over Yorkshire, an anime convention full of collateral damage in pointy ears, and the remains of a heavy cavalry brigade mounted on unicorns (shudder) corralled behind razor wire on Dartmoor, eating their heads off under the guns of half the army’s remaining Challenger MBTs. (And don’t ask me about the, ahem, “dragons.”) They’re arranging a snap summit meeting of all the heads of NATO member states later this month, and that’s something that simply does not happen. A large segment of the press and public are baying for blood, calling on the government to nuke the bastards, convene a war crimes tribunal, or arrest them for terrorism. Only the inconvenient fact that the current All-Highest is pleading for asylum from something even worse is giving anybody pause for concern.
*
I come out of the Newsnight studio feeling like SpongeBob SquarePants after a trip through the dishwasher: wrung out but still somewhat moist. Mhari and Boris are waiting for me. “Am being impressed,” Boris rumbles once we’re out of the glass doors and into the passage leading to the lifts. “Jeremy are not eated despite copious provocation.”
“This way,” Mhari says tensely. Her heels click as she walks into the lift and holds the door for us. “That could have gone worse.”
I lean against the wall and close my eyes as the floor sinks beneath me. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“No! I mean it.” I open my eyes as she shrugs. Her jacket shoulder pads rise and fall stiffly. “You spend time in the piranha tank, you’ve got to expect to get bitten.”
“Piranhas am not biting fishes; reputation undeserved,” Boris says pedantically.
“Doesn’t matter.” Mhari raises a finger. “But I’m calling it a qualified success. For starters, Bob managed to avoid looking rumpled for almost fifteen minutes. I think that’s a personal best.” My hand unconsciously moves to loosen the knot of my tie and she bats it away; we’re still in Broadcasting House, there must be a dress code or something. Another finger rises. “Two, he went five rounds with the Newsnight rottweiler without wetting himself, babbling state secrets, or losing his temper and eating Paxo’s soul.”
I frown. “I wouldn’t have done that; it’s far too stringy and bitter.”
Mhari raises a third finger. “Three: now we know for sure that someone’s briefing against us. Which means—”
“Wait,” I interrupt, “you thought someone was briefing against us earlier? And didn’t warn me?”
Mhari gives me a look. “In the current clusterfuck, who the hell knows?” she asks. I have to admit she’s got a point: in the past four weeks there have been three ministerial resignations and a vote of confidence in the Commons that the government barely won by the skin of its teeth, there’s been one mini-cabinet reshuffle already (with rumors of more to come), and the Scottish Independence referendum has been postponed until next year. In other words, politics has gone nonlinear and nobody seems to know what’s happening anymore. “But now the Auditors have reasonable cause to start investigating,” she concludes. “So that’s something.”
Her expression wavers somewhere between uncertainty and fear: nobody likes being carpeted by the Auditors, even if they’re not under suspicion themselves. But before she can continue the lift hits bottom, and she stops talking because there’s no telling who might overhear us in the BBC headquarters’ lobby.
“Drinks am on you,” Boris reminds her as we head towards the doors at the front of the atrium. I don’t dignify this with a reply and neither does Mhari. We’re both gloomily silent. I can’t speak for her, but I’m keeping my thoughts to myself because I’m brooding and irritable. I’m coming down from the adrenaline high of being grilled live on the nation’s flagship TV news program, and the crash is something special.
It’s spitting with rain, so Boris valiantly steps forward to flag down a taxi while we wait on the plaza out front. Finally, I glance at Mhari. “Babbling state secrets?”
She stares into the nighttime London traffic, eyebrows lowered in a minute frown, as if trying to decipher messages encoded in the flicker of passing headlights. “There’s a ten-second delay on the live broadcast loop. That’s why I was there: to hit the red button if you fucked up, and cover for you if they spotted you planting the bug.”
“Thank you for that vote of confidence.”
“You didn’t need me.” She hugs herself against the after-dark chill: she seems to be shaking. In front of us, in the rain, Boris has lowered his head and is speaking through a cab’s open side-window. Mhari’s cheek twitches slightly as an ivory fang’s sharp point pushes against her plumped lower lip. “Eater of soles. Heh. Well done!” After a moment I realize she’s laughing silently.
“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”