Authors: Charles Stross
Jennifer Morgue (8 page)
"Bob."
I blink in confusion. It's Brains. He looms over me, out of his grounded pentacle. "Can you hear me"
"Yuh, yeah." I try to swallow, feeling the sensation of venom sacs throbbing urgently inside my cheeks begin to fade. I shudder. There's a trailing wisp of wistfulness from Ramona, and a malicious giggle: she doesn't have fangs, she just has a really good somatic imagination. ''Let me get my head together,'' I tell her, and then try to do the invisible v pink elephant thing in her general direction.
"How do you feel?" asks Brains. He sounds curious.
"How the fuck do you think you'd feel?" I snarl. "Jesus fuck, give me ibuprofen or give me a straight razor. My head is killing me." Then I realize something else. "And cut me loose from here. Someone's got to go next door and release Ramona, and I don't think any of you guys want to get within spitting range of her without a chair, a whip, and a can of pepper spray."
I remember the shape of her anger at her employers and shiver again. Working with Ramona is going to be like riding sidesaddle on a black mamba. And that's before I get to tell Mo, "Honey, they partnered me with a demon."
3: TANGLED UP IN GRUE
THEY WAIT FOR THE IBUPROFEN TO START WORKING before they untie me from the chair, which is extremely prudent of them.
"Right," I say, leaning against the back of the chair and breathing deeply. "Boris, what the fuck is this about"
"It is to be stopping her from killing you." Boris glowers at me. He's annoyed about something, which makes two of us. "And to be creating an untappable communication, for mission which you have not be briefed on because — " He gestures at the laptop and I realize why he's so irritated: they weren't joking when they said the briefing would selfdestruct.
"Here are your ticket for flight, is open for next available seat. Will continue the briefing in Saint Martin."
He shoves a booklet of flight vouchers at me.
"Where?" I nearly drop them.
"They're sending us to the Caribbean!" It's Pinky. He's almost turning handstands. "Sun! Sand! And skullduggery!
And we've got great toys to play with!" Brains is methodically packing up the entanglement rig, which breaks down into a big rolling suitcase. He seems amused by something.
I try to catch Boris's eye: Boris is staring at Pinky in either deep fascination, pity, or something in between. "Where in the Caribbean?" I ask.
Boris shakes himself. "Is joint operation," he explains. "Is European territory, joint Franco-Dutch government — they ask us to operate in there. But Caribbean is American sea. So L Black Chamber send Ramona to be working with you."
I wince. "Tell me you're joking."
Another voice interrupts, inaudible to everyone else: ''Hey, Bob! I'm still stuck here. A girl could get bored waiting.'' I have a feeling that a bored Ramona would be a very bad girl indeed, in a your-life-insurance-policy-just-expired kind of way.
"Am not joking. This is joint operation. Lots of shit to spread all round." He carefully picks up his dead laptop and drops it into an open briefcase. "Go to committee meeting tomorrow, take memos, then go to airport and fly out. Can file liaison report later, after save the universe."
"Uh-huh. First I better go unlock Ramona from that containment you stuck her in." ''I'm coming,'' I send her way.
"How trustworthy is she, really"
Boris smiles thinly. "How trustworthy is rattlesnake"
I excuse myself and stagger out into the corridor, my head still throbbing and the world crinkling slightly at the edges. I guess I now know what that spike of entropy change was. I pause at the door to my room but the handle is no longer dewed with liquid nitrogen, and is merely cold to the touch.
Ramona is sitting in an armchair opposite the wall with the holes in it. She smiles at me, but the expression doesn't reach her eyes. ''Bob. Get me out of this.'' This is the pentacle someone has stenciled on the carpet around her chair and plugged into a compact, blue, noise generator. It's still running — Brains didn't hook it up to his remote. ''Give me a moment.'' I sit down on the bed opposite her, kick off my trainers, and rub my head. ''If I let you go, what are you going to do?'' Her smile broadens. ''Well, personally — '' she glances at the door '' — nothing much.'' I get a momentary flicker of unpleasantness involving extremely sharp knives and gouts of arterial blood, then she clamps down on it, with an almost regretful edge, and I realize she's just daydreaming about someone else, someone a very long way away. ''Honest.''
''Second question. Who's your real target?''
''Are you going to let me go once we get through this game of twenty questions? Or do you have something else in mind?'' She crosses her legs, watching me alertly. Every guy I've ever slept with died less than twenty-four hours later, I recall.
''I wasn't joking,'' she adds, defensively.
''I didn't think you were. I just want to know who your real target is.'' She sniffs. ''Ellis Billington. What's your problem?''
''I'm not sure. Bear with me for one last test?''
''What?'' She half stands as I get off the bed, but the constraining field prohibits her from reaching me: ''Hey!
Ow! You bastard!'' It brings tears to my eyes. I clutch my right foot and wait for the pain to subside from where I kicked the bed-base.
Ramona is bent over, hugging her foot as well. ''Okay,'' I mumble, then kneel down and switch off the signal generator.
I don't particularly want to switch it off — I feel a hell of a lot safer with Ramona trapped inside a pentacle; the idea of setting her free makes my skin crawl — but the flip side of the entanglement is fairly clear: not only can we talk without being overheard, there are other (and drastically less pleasant) side effects.
''You're not a masochist, are you?'' she asks tightly as she hobbles towards the bathroom.
''No ''
''Good.'' She slams the door shut. A few seconds later I clutch at my crotch in horror as I feel the unmistakable sensation of a full bladder emptying. It takes me seconds to realize it's not mine. My fingers are dry.
''Bitch!'' Two can play at that game.
''It's your fault for keeping me waiting for ages.'' I breathe deeply. ''Look. I didn't ask for this — ''
''Me neither!''
'' — so why don't we call it a truce?'' Silence, punctuated by a sharp sense of impatience.
''Took you long enough, monkey-boy.''
''What's with the monkey-boy business?'' I complain.
''What's with the abhuman-bloodsucking-demon-whore imagery?'' she responds acidly. ''Try to keep your gibbering religious bigotry out of my head and I'll leave your bladder alone. Deal?''
''Deal — hey! How the hell am I a gibbering religious bigot? I'm an atheist!''
''Yeah, and the horse you rode in on is a member of the College of Cardinals.'' I hear the toilet flush through the door, a sudden reminder that we're not actually talking.
''You may not believe in God but you still believe in Hell.
And you think it's where people like me belong.''
''But isn't that where you come from ...?'' The door opens. Her glamour's as strong as ever: she looks like she just stepped out of a cocktail party to powder her nose.
''We can go over it some other time, Bob. You can just call room service if you want to eat, I have to make more elaborate arrangements. See you tomorrow.'' With that, she picks up her evening bag from the bedside table and departs in a snit.
"Mo"
"Hi! Where are — hold on a moment — Bob? You still there? I was about to jump in the bath. How's it going"
Gulp. "About a ton of horse manure just landed on me.
Have you seen Angleton this week"
"No, they've billeted me in the Monkfish Motel again and it's really dull — you know what the night life in Dunwich is like. So what's Angleton up to now"
"I, uh, well, I got here — Darmstadt — to find — " I double-check my phone to confirm we're in secure mode " — new orders waiting for me, care of Boris and the two mad mice.
Almost got run off the autobahn on the way in and, well — "
"Car accident"
"Sort of. Anyway, I'm being shunted off on a side trip instead of coming home. So I won't be back for the weekend."
"Shit."
"My thoughts exactly."
"Where are they sending you"
"To Saint Martin, in the Caribbean."
"The — "
"And it gets worse."
"Do I want to hear this, love"
"Probably not." Pause. "Okay. I'm sitting down."
"It's a joint operation. They've inflicted a minder from the Black Chamber on me."
"But — Bob! That's crazy! It just doesn't happen! Nobody even knows what the Black Chamber is really called! 'No Such Agency' meets 'Destroy Before Reading.' Are you telling me ..." "I haven't been fully briefed. But I figure it's going to be extremely ungood, for, like, Amsterdam values of ungood." I shudder. Our little weekend trip to Amsterdam involved more trouble than you can shake a shitty stick at. "I guess you know the Chamber specializes in taking the HUM out of HUMINT? Golems and remote viewing and so forth, never send a human agent to do a job a zombie can do? Anyway, the minder they've sent me is, you know, existentially challenged.
They've sicced a demon on me."
"Jesus, Bob."
"Yeah, well, He isn't answering the phone."
"I can't believe it. The bastards."
"Listen, I've got a feeling there's more to this than meets the eye and I need someone watching my back who isn't just looking for a good spot to sink their fangs into. Can you do some discreet digging when you get back to the office? Ask Andy, perhaps? This is under Angleton, by the way."
"Angleton." Mo's voice goes flat and cold, and the hair on the back of my neck rises. She blames Angleton for a lot of things, and it could turn very ugly if she decides to let it all hang out. "I should have guessed. It's about time that bastard faced the music."
"Don't go after him!" I say urgently. "You're not meant to know this. Remember, all you know is I've been sent off somewhere to do a job."
"But you want me to keep my ear to the ground and listen for oncoming train wrecks."
"That's about the size of it. I'm missing you."
"Love you, too." A pause. "What is it about this spook that's got you so upset"
Whoops. I'm no good at hiding things from her, am I?
"For starters she's crazier than a legful of ferrets. She's seriously bad magic, wearing a perpetual glamour — level three, if I'm any judge of such things. The only thing keeping her on track is the geas that ate Montana. She's not a free actor.
Actress."
"Uh-huh. What else"
I lick my lips. "Boris, um, applied some sort of destinyentanglement protocol to us. I didn't run away fast enough."
"Destiny — what? Entanglement? What's that"
I take a deep breath. "I'm not sure, but I'd appreciate it if you could find out and tell me. Because whatever it is, it's scaring me."
It's still early in the evening, but my encounter with Ramona has shaken me, and I don't much want to run into Pinky and Brains again (if they haven't already packed up and left: there's quite a lot of banging coming from next door). I decide to hole up in my room and lick my wounded dignity, so I order up a cardboard cheeseburger from room service, have a long soak under the shower, watch an infinitely forgettable movie on cable, and turn in for the night.
I don't usually remember my dreams because they're mostly surreal and/or incomprehensible — two-headed camels stealing my hovercraft, bat-winged squid gods explaining why I ought to accept job offers from Microsoft, that sort of thing — so what makes this one stand out is its sheer gritty realism. Dreaming that I'm me is fine. So is dreaming that I'm an employee of a vast software multinational, damned and enslaved by an ancient evil. But dreaming that I'm an overweight fifty-something German sales executive from an engineering firm in Dusseldorf is so far off the map that if I wasn't asleep I'd pinch myself. I'm at a regional sales convention and I've been drinking and living large. I like these conferences: I can get away from Hilda and cut loose party like a young thing again. The awards dinner is over and I split off with a couple of younger fellows I know vaguely, which is how we end up in the casino. I don't usually gamble much but I'm on a winning streak at the wheel, and all the ladies love a winning streak; between the brandy, the Cohiba panatelas, and the babe who's attached herself to my shoulder — a call girl, naturlich but classy — I'm having the time of my life. She leans against me and suggests I might cash in my winnings, and this strikes me as a good idea. After all, if I keep gambling, my streak will end sooner or later, won't it? Let it pay for her tonight.
We're in the lift, heading up to my room on the fourteenth floor, and she's nuzzling up against me. I haven't felt smooth flesh like this in ... too long. Hilda was never like that and since the kids the only side of her body she's shown me is the sharp edge of her tongue: serves her right if I enjoy myself once in a while. The babe's got her arms around me inside my jacket and I can feel her body through her dress.
Wow. This has been a day to remember! We cuddle some more and I lead her to my room, tiptoeing — she's giggling quietly, telling me not to make a noise, not to disturb the neighbors — and I get the door open and she tells me to go wait in the bathroom while she gets ready. How much does she want? I ask. She shakes her head and says, Two hundred but only if I'm happy. Well, how can I refuse an offer like that?
In the bathroom I take my shoes off, remove my jacket and tie — enough. She calls to say she's ready, and I open the door. She's lying on the bed, in a provocative position that still allows her to see me. She's taken off her dress: smooth, stocking-clad thighs and a waterfall of pure corn-silk hair, blue eyes like ice diamonds that I can fall into and drown.
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