The Atrocity Archives (8 page)

I stand up and lean over the thing. Yes, it's
starfish-shaped: radial symmetry, five-fold order. Seems to be a
fossil, some kind of greenish soapstone. Then I look closer. I know
that only two hundred miles away most of the nuclear reactors in Europe
are sitting on the Normandy coast, where the prevailing winds would
blow a fallout plume out toward us. (And you wonder why the British
government insists on keeping its nuclear weapons?) Nevertheless, this
is weirder than any radiation mutant has a right to be. Each tentacle
tip is slightly truncated; the whole thing looks like a cross-section
through a sea cucumber. It must be a representative of
an older order, a living fossil left over from some weird family of
organisms mostly rendered extinct by the Cambrian biodiversity
catastrophe—when the structures that lie buried two kilometres below a
nameless British Antarctic Survey base were built.

I stare at the fossil, because it seems like an
omen. A thing transported from its natural environment, washed up and
left to die on an alien beach beneath the gaze of creatures
incomprehensible to it: that's a good metaphor for humanity in this
age, the humanity that the Laundry is sworn to defend. Never mind the
panoply of state and secrecy, the cold-war trappings of village and
security cordon—what it's about, when you get down to it, is this: our
appalling vulnerability, collectively, before the onslaught of beings
we can barely comprehend. A lesser one, not even one of the great Old
Ones, would be enough to devastate a city; we play under the shadow of
forces so sinister that a momentary relaxation of vigilance would see
all that is human blotted out.

I can go back to London, and they will let me go
back to my desk and my stuffy cubicle and my job fixing broken office
machines. No recriminations, just a job for life and a pension in
thirty-years time in return for a promise of silence to the grave. Or I
can go back to the office in the village and sign the piece of paper
that says they can do whatever they like with me. Unthanked, possibly
fatal service, anywhere in the world: called on to do things which may
well be repugnant, and which I will never be able to talk about. Maybe
no pension at all, just an unmarked grave in some isolated defile on a
central Asian plateau, or a sock-shod foot washed up, unaccompanied, on
a Pacific beach one morning while the crabs dine heavy. Nobody ever
volunteered for field ops because of the pay and conditions. On the
other hand … 

I look at the starfish-thing and see eyes, human
eyes, with worms moving inside them, and I realise that there is no
choice. Really, there never was a choice.

Three months later to the
nearest minute I am loosely attached to the US desk, working on
my first field assignment. This would normally be an extremely
stressful point in my career, except that this is very much a
low-stress training mission, as Santa Cruz is one of the nicest parts
of California, and right now having my fingernails pulled out by the
Spanish Inquisition would be more pleasant than putting up with Mhari.
So I'm making the most of it, sitting in a tacky bar down on a seaside
pier, nursing a cold glass of Santa Cruz Brewing Company wheat beer,
and watching the pelicans practice their touch-'n'-gos on the railing
outside.

It's early summer and the temperature's in the
mid-twenties; the beach is covered in babes, boardwalk refugees, and
surf nazis. This being Santa Cruz I'm wearing cut-off jeans, a
psychedelic T-shirt, and a back-to-front baseball cap—but I can't kid
myself about passing for a native. I've got the classic geek
complexion—one a goth would kill for—and in Santa Cruz even the geeks
get out in the sun once in a while. Not to mention wearing more than
one earring.

My contact is a guy called Mo. Actually, I'm not
sure that isn't a pseudonym. Nobody seems to know very much about the
mysterious Mo, except he's an expatriate British academic, and he's
having trouble coming home. All of which makes me wonder why the
Laundry is involved at all, as opposed to the Consulate in San
Francisco.

A bit of background is in order; after all,
aren't the UK and the USA allies? Well, yes and no. No two countries
have identical interests, and the result is a blurred area where
self-interest causes erstwhile allies to act toward one another in a
less than friendly manner. Mossad spies on the CIA; in the 1970s,
Romania and Bulgaria spied on the Soviet Union. This doesn't mean their
leaders aren't slurping each other's cigars, but … 

In 1945 the UK and the USA signed a joint
intelligence-sharing treaty that opened their most secret institutions
to mutual inspection and exchange: at the time they were fighting a
desperate war against a common enemy. Not many people outside the
secret services understand just how close to the abyss we stood, even
as late as April 1945: there's nothing like facing a diabolical enemy
set on your complete destruction to cement an alliance at the highest
level … and for the first few postwar years, the
UK-USA treaty kept us singing from the same hymn book.

But UK-USA relations deteriorated over the
following decade. Partly this was a side effect of the Helsinki
Protocol; when even Molotov agreed that occult weapons of the type
envisaged by Hitler's Thule Society minions were too deadly to use, a
lot of the pressure came off the alliance. When it became apparent that
the British intelligence system was riddled with Russian spies, the CIA
turned the cold shoulder; thus, a background of shifting superpower
politics was established, in which the moth-eaten British lion was
unwillingly taught his place in the scheme of things by the new
ringmaster, Uncle Sam. I suppose you could blame the Suez crisis and
the Turing debacle, or Nixon's paranoia, but in 1958, when the UK
offered to extend the 1945 treaty to cover occult
intelligence, the US government refused.

My colleagues in GCHQ listen in on domestic US
phone calls, compile logs, and pass them across the desk to their NSA
liaisons—who are forbidden by charter from spying on domestic US
territory. In return, the NSA Echelon listening posts give GCHQ a
plausibly deniable way of monitoring every phone conversation in
western Europe—after all, they're not actually listening; they're just
reading transcripts prepared by someone else, aren't they? But in the
twilight world of occult intelligence, we aren't allowed to cooperate
overtly. I don't have a liaison here, any more than I'd have one in
Kabul or Belgrade: I'm technically an illegal, albeit on a tourist
visa. Any nasty reality excursions are strictly my problem.

On the other hand, the days of midnight
insertions—bailing out of the back door of a bomber by midnight and
trying not to hang your parachute up on the Iron Curtain—are gone for
good. Gone, too, are the days of show trials for captured spies: if I
get caught, the worst I can expect is to be questioned and put on the
first flight home. My way into the country was more prosaic than a
wartime parachute drop, too: I flew in on an American Airlines MD-11,
filled out the visa waiver declaration ("occupation: civil servant;
purpose of visit: work assignment," and no, I was not a member of the
German Nazi Party between 1933 and 1945), and entered via the arrival
hall at San Francisco Airport.

Which is how I find myself
watching the pelicans on the pier at Santa Cruz, sipping my beer
sparingly, waiting for Mo to manifest himself, and trying to figure out
just why a British academic should be having so much trouble coming
home as to need our help—not to mention why the Laundry might be
taking
him seriously.

I'm not the only customer in the bar, but I'm
the only one with a beer and a copy (unopened) of
Philosophical
Transactions on Uncertainty Theory
lying in front
of me. That's my cover; I'm meant to be a visiting postgrad student
come to talk to the prof about a possible teaching post. So when Mo
walks in he should have no difficulty identifying me. There are six
professors of philosophy at UCSC: one tenured, two assistant, and three
visiting. I wonder which of them he is?

I glance around idly, just in case he's already
here. There are two grunge metal skateboard types in the far corner,
drinking Bud-Miller-Coors and comparing body piercings; the town's
swarming with 'em, nothing to take note of. A gentleman in a plaid
shirt, chinos, and short haircut sits on a bar stool on his own, back
ramrod-straight, reading the
San Jose Mercury News.
(That dings
my suspicion-o-meter because he looks very Company in a casual-Friday
kind of way—but if they were tailing me why in hell would they make it
so obvious? He might equally well be an affluent local businessman.) A
trio of nrrrd grrrlzz with shaven scalps and unicorn forelocks compare
disposable tattoos and disappear into the toilet one by one, going in
glum and coming out giggly: must be a Bolivian marching powder
dispenser or a mendicant sin-eater or something in there. I shake my
head and sip my beer, then look up just as a rather amazing babe with
classic red hair leans over me.

"Mind if I take this chair?"

"Um—" I'm trying desperately to think of an
excuse, because my contact is looking for a single man with a copy of
PTUT
on the table in front of him. But she doesn't give me time:

"You can call me Mo. You would be Bob?"

"Yeah. Have a seat." I blink rapidly at her,
stuck for words. She sits down while I study her.

Mo is striking. She's a good six feet tall, for
starters. Strong features, high cheekbones, freckles, hair that looks
like you could wrap it in insulation and run the national grid through
it. She's got these big dangly silver earrings with glass eyeballs, and
she's wearing combat pants, a plain white top, and a jacket that is so
artfully casual that it probably costs more than I
earn in a month. Oh, and there's a copy of
Philosophical
Transactions on Uncertainty Theory
in her left hand, which she puts
down on top of mine. I can't estimate her age; early thirties? That
would make her a real high-flyer. She catches me staring at her and
stares back, challenging.

"Can I buy you a drink?" I ask.

She freezes for a moment then nods,
emphatically. "Pineapple juice." I wave at the bartender, feeling more
than a little flustered. Under her scrutiny I get the feeling that
there's something of the Martian about her: a vast, unsympathetic
intelligence from another world. I also get the feeling that she
doesn't suffer fools gladly.

"I'm sorry," I say, "nobody told me who to
expect." The local businessman looks across from his newspaper
expressionlessly: he sees me watching and turns back to the sports
pages.

"Not your problem." She relaxes a little. The
bartender appears and takes an order for a pineapple juice and another
beer—I can't seem to get used to these undersized pints—and vanishes
again.

"I'm interested in a teaching post," I find
myself saying, and hope her contact told her what the cover story is.
"I'm looking for somewhere to continue after my thesis. UCSC has a good
reputation, so … "

"Uh-huh. Nice climate too." She nods at the
pelicans outside the window. "Better than Miskatonic."

"Really? You were there?"

I must have asked too eagerly because she looks
at me bleakly and says, "Yes." I nearly bite my tongue. (Foreign
female
professor of philosophy in the snobbish halls of a New England college.
Worse: non-WASP, judging from the Irish accent.) "Some other time. What
was the topic of your thesis again?"

Is it my imagination or does she sound
half-amused? This isn't part of the script: we're meant to go for a
walk and talk about things where we can't be overheard, not ad-lib it
in a café. Plus, she thinks I'm from the Foreign
Office. What the hell does she expect me to say, early Latin
literature? "It's about"—I mentally cross my fingers—"a proof of
polynomial-time completeness in the traversal of Hamiltonian networks.
And its implications."

She sits up a bit straighter. "Oh,
right.
That's interesting."

I shrug. "It's what I do for a living. Among
other things. Where do your research interests lie?"

The businessman stands up, folds his newspaper,
and leaves.

"Reasoning under conditions of uncertainty." She
squints at me slightly. "Not prior probabilities stuff, Bayesian
reasoning based on statistics—but reasoning where there are no
evidential bases."

I play dumb: suddenly my heart is hammering
between my ribs. "And is this useful?"

She looks amused. "It pays the bills."

"Really?"

The amusement vanishes. "Eighty percent of the
philosophical logic research in this country is paid for by the
Pentagon, Bob. If you want to work here you'll need to get your head
around that fact."

"Eighty percent—" I must look dumbfounded,
because something goes
click
and she switches out of her
half-sardonic
Brief Encounter
mode and into full professorial
flow: "A philosophy professor earns about thirty thousand bucks and
costs maybe another five thousand a year in office space and chalk. A
marine earns around fifteen thousand bucks and costs maybe another
hundred thousand a year in barrack space, ammunition, transport, fuel,
weapons, VA expenses, and so on. Supporting all the philosophy
departments of the USA costs about as much as funding a single
battalion of marines." She looks wryly amused. "They're looking for a
breakthrough. Knowing how to deconstruct any opponent's ideological
infrastructure and derive self-propagating conceptual viruses based on
its blind spots, for example. That sort of thing would give them a real
strategic edge: their psych-ops people would be
able to make enemies surrender without firing a shot, and do so
reliably. Cybernetics and game theory won them the Cold War, so paying
for philosophers is militarily more sensible than paying for an extra
company of marines, don't you think?"