The Atrocity Archives (9 page)

"That's"—I shake my head—"logical, but weird."
No
weirder than what they pay me to do.

She snorts. "It's not exceptional. Did you know
that for the past twenty years they've been spending a couple of
million a year on research into antimatter weapons?"

"Antimatter?" I shake my head again: I'm going
to get a stiff neck at this rate. "If someone figured out how to make
it in bulk they'd be in a position to—"

"Exactly," she says, and looks at me with a
curiously satisfied expression. Why do I have a feeling she's seen
right through me?

(Antimatter isn't the most exotic thing DARPA
has been spending research money on by a long way, but it's exotic
enough for the average college professor; especially a philosopher who,
reading between the lines, has any number of reasons for being cheesed
off with the military-academic complex.)

"I'd like to talk about this some more," I
venture, "but maybe this isn't the right place?" I take a mouthful of
beer. "How about a walk? When do you have to get back to your office?"

"I have a lecture to deliver at nine tomorrow,
if that's what you're asking." She pauses, delicately, tongue slightly
extended: "You're thinking about coming to work here, why don't I show
you some of the sights?"

"That would be great." We finish our drinks and
leave the bar—and the bugs, real or imagined—behind.

I can be a good listener
when I try. Mo—a diminutive of Dominique, I gather, which is why
I couldn't find her on the university's staff roster—is a good talker,
or at least she is when she has a lot to unload.
Which is why we walk until I have blisters.

Seal Point is a grassy headland that abruptly
turns into a cliff, falling straight down to the Pacific breakers. Some
lunatics in wet-suits are trying to surf down there; I wouldn't want to
underwrite their life insurance policies. About fifty feet away there's
a rocky outcrop carpeted in sea lions. Their barking carries faintly
over the crash of the surf. "My mistake was in signing the
nondisclosure agreements the university gave me without getting my own
lawyer to check them out." She stares out to sea. "I thought they were
routine academic application agreements, saying basically the faculty
would get a cut from any commercial spin-offs from inventions I made
while employed by them. I didn't read the small print closely enough."

"How bad was it?" I ask, shifting from one foot
to another.

"I didn't find out until I wanted to go visit my
aunt in Aberdeen." So much for my ear for accents. "She was sick; they
wouldn't give me a visa. Would you believe it, an exit visa from the
USA? I was turned back at the security gate."

"They're usually more worried about people
trying to immigrate," I say. "Isn't that the case?"

"I'm not a US citizen; I've got British
citizenship and a green card residence permit. I just happen to work
here because, well, there aren't a lot of research posts in my
speciality elsewhere. If I'd stayed with my ex-husband I'd be eligible
for Israeli citizenship, too. But they won't let me leave. I didn't
realise it would be like this." She falls silent for a moment;
seabirds
squawk overhead. "When the Immigration Service made trouble the
Pentagon sorted them out, can you believe it? Told them to get off my
case."

I nod silently: this isn't good news. It means
that someone, somewhere, thinks Mo is a strategic asset—
special
treatment, kid gloves, do
not
let this one out of your sight.
We do similar things, sometimes: I'm not allowed to go on vacation
outside the EU without written permission from my head of department.
But that's because I do secret work for the
government. Mo is just a professor, isn't she? I wish she'd be a bit
more specific, and say which bit of the Pentagon is giving her grief,
rather than just using it as a generic category for big government.

"When did the trouble start?" I ask.

She laughs. "Which trouble?"

Me and my big mouth.
"Uh, the current
batch. I'm sorry; nobody briefed me."

She looks at me oddly. "Just what kind of
Foreign Office employee are you?"

I shrug. "If you don't ask me any questions, I
won't have to tell you any lies. I'm sorry, but I can't discuss my
work. Let's just say that when you started complaining someone with a
bit more clout than the consulate was listening. They sent me to see if
there's anything we can do for you. All right?"

"Bizarre." She looks askance at me. "Let's
walk." She turns, and I follow her back toward the road. There's a
footpath leading out of town, shaded by trees; we take it. "The trouble
started in Miskatonic," she says. "David and I—we're divorced,
now—well, it didn't work out. I didn't play the politics right;
Miskatonic is really bad for internal backbiting. When it was obvious
they weren't going to open the tenure track up any time soon, I got a
feeler from someone at UCSC. Nice research grant, an interesting field
close to my own, and a promise of the fast track if I got results."

Tenured professorship is the academic holy
grail: a job for life, supposedly to let first-class researchers poke
into any corner they feel like, regardless of how popular it is with
the administration. Which is, of course, why they're trying to abolish
it. "How did it go?"

"I flew over for the interview. I got the job.
Only there was a lot of paper to sign. David is a lawyer, but by
then—"
She falls silent. I can fill in some of the gaps, I think.

We're walking uphill now, and the path narrows.
Dappled patterns of light and shade ripple across the dusty track. It's
mid-afternoon and the day is hot and
bright. A couple of surf dudes wander past and look at us curiously.
"How did you get into your current field of research?" I ask.

"Oh, it was a natural progression. In Edinburgh
I was working on inferential reasoning. When I got the job in Arkham I
started out doing more of the same, but the belief systems field has
been undersubscribed for years, and it seemed like a good place to
stake my claim, especially given the interesting closed archives in
their stacks: Arkham has a really unique library, you know? I began
publishing papers, and that's about when the shit began happening
inside the department. Maybe it was departmental politics, but now I'm
beginning to wonder."

"They've got long tentacles, not to mention
other nameless organs. It would help if I could see the documents you
signed."

"They're at the office. I can go in and pick
them up later." We're on a steep slope now, going uphill and I'm
breathing hard. Mo has long legs and evidently walks a lot. Exercise or
habit?

"Your research," I say. "You're certain it's not
about any specific military applications?"

I know immediately that I've made a mistake. Mo
stops and glares at me. "I'm a philosopher, with a sideline in folk
history," she hisses angrily. "What do you take me for?"

"I'm sorry." I take a step back. "I've got to
make sure. That's all."

"I shan't be offended then." I get a creepy
feeling that she means exactly what she says. "No. It's just, I'm
certain—no, positive, in the exact meaning of the word—that it's not
that. A calculus of belief, a theory for deriving confidence limits in
statements of unsubstantiated faith, can't have any military
applications, can it?"

"Did you say
faith
?" I ask, hot and cold
chills running up and down my spine. "Specifically, you can analyse the
validity of a belief, without—" I stop.

"Let's not get too technical without a
whiteboard, hmm?"

"Faith can mean several things, depending on who
uses the word," I say. "A theologian and a scientist mean different
things by it, for example. And 'unsubstantiated' has a dismayingly
technical ring to it. But let's take a hypothetical example. Suppose I
assert that I believe in flying pigs. I haven't seen any, but I have
reason to believe that flying peccaries, a related species, exist.
You're saying you could place confidence limits on my belief? Quantify
the probability of those porcine aviators existing?"

"It works." She shrugs. "The numbers are out
there. It's a platonic universe; all we can see are the shadows on the
wall of the cave, but there are real numbers out there, they have an
existence in and of themselves. I just began looking into probabilistic
metrics that can be applied to assertions of a theological nature.
There are some interesting documents in the Wilmarth folklore
collection at Miskatonic … "

"Aha." We round a corner and there's an odd
little clearing ahead, ringed with trees, with a hillside rising from
the far end. "So we're back to the old idea of a real universe, and an
observable one, and all we know about is what we can observe. So the
department of strategic folklore in the Pentagon was concerned about
you showing other people where to find their high-altitude hams?"

She stops and looks at me, frankly sizing me up.
She comes to some sort of decision because after a moment she answers:
"I think they were more worried about the creatures that cast the
shadows on the walls. In particular, the ones that ate the USS
Thresher
and a certain Russian
Whisky
-class hunter-killer about thirty
years ago … "

When I return to my motel
room that evening the man in the plaid shirt from the bar is
waiting for me. He's got a federal ID card, a warrant, and an attitude
problem.

"Sit down, shut up, and listen," he begins. "I'm
going to say this once, and once only. Then you're going to get the
hell out of town because if you're still on this
continent in twenty-four hours I'm going to have you arrested."

I drop my jacket on the back of my chair. "Who
are you and what are you doing here?"

"I said shaddup." He produces a laminated card
and I make a show of looking at it. It says, basically, that someone
who may or may not be in front of me works for the Office of Naval
Intelligence—assuming I'd know an ONI pass if I tripped over one by
accident. I think for a moment that he's unusually trusting for a law
enforcement officer—they usually make with the guns before they go
in—then I realise why and stifle a shudder. His eyes are dead, and
there's a funny-looking scar on his forehead, which means the mind
animating the body is probably in a bunker miles away. "As far as I'm
concerned, today you are a tourist. If you're still here tomorrow I
will have to investigate the possibility that you are a foreign
national engaged in activities detrimental to the security of this
nation. But unless you tell me you're working for the Laundry right
here and now, I don't have to act on that information until eighteen
hundred hours tomorrow. Am I making myself clear?"

"What's the Laundry?" I ask, doing my best to
look puzzled.

He snorts. "Wise guy, huh? Get this through your
head—we have wards and sensoids and watchers. We know who you people
are, we've got you covered. We know where you live; we know where your
dog goes to school. Get it?"

I shrug. "I think you're making a mistake."

"Well." He tries the number four Marine Sergeant
glare again, but it bounces off me. "You're
wrong.
We don't
make mistakes. You've just spent the past two hours speaking to a
national security asset and we don't like that, Mr. Howard, we don't
like it at all. Normally we'd just pull her security clearance and
sling her ass on the next flight out, but the piece you've been talking
to may be carrying around some items in her head that are not going to
be allowed out of this country. Understand? The matter is under review.
And if you happen to have overheard anything you
shouldn't have, we're not going to let you out either. Luckily for you
we happen to know she didn't tell you anything important. Now make
yourself a history of not being here, and you'll be all right."

I sit down and start taking my trainers off. "Is
that all you've got to say?" I ask.

Plaid Shirt snorts again: "Is that all?" He
walks over to the door. "Yeah buddy, that's all," he says, and opens
it. Then there's a wet slapping sound and he falls over backward,
leaking blood onto the carpet from both ears.

I roll sideways, out of the line of sight of the
door, and grab for the small monkey's paw I wear on a leather thong
round my neck. Electricity jolts the palm of my hand as the ward
activates. ("Try not to get yourself killed on friendly territory,"
said Andy: Some joke
that
turned out to be!) Plaid Shirt is
blocking the suite door from closing and this is one of those
California motels where all the doors open off balconies. I steady my
nerves, then get myself turned round behind the bathroom sidewall and
make a grab for his nearest arm.

They never tell you how heavy a corpse is in
training school. I lean forward thoughtlessly to take a two-handed grip
under his shoulder and that's when a mule punches my exposed shoulder.
I fall over backward, dragging Plaid Shirt behind me, and the door
swings shut.

The pool of blood is growing, but I have to be
sure; the bullet hole is somewhere above his hairline. I force myself
to look closer—

There are faint letters inscribed on his
forehead in an ancient alphabet. They glow briefly then fade as I watch.

I do not feel good about sharing a motel room
with a ballistically decommissioned intelligence agency spy.
Unfortunately there appears to be a lunatic with a rifle waiting for me
outside. I have an edgy feeling that the other shoe is about to drop
within the next ninety seconds, and if I don't get out of here I'm
going to be answering some pointed questions. Of
course, I'm not really meant to last that long—or am I? Did they know
about the standard-issue ward? Maybe if I'm lucky the ward will keep on
working; they don't like taking direct hits, but they lose efficacy bit
by bit, not all at once.