The rhesus chart, p.23
The Rhesus Chart, page 23
“Good day, Mr. Menendez.” Emma MacDougal smiles from behind the armor of her Dior-framed specs, carefully not showing him her dental work. “Mhari has been filling me in on your people.”
“Yes.” Oscar sits down without being invited, taking the comfortable armchair opposite Emma’s desk as his of right. “We’ve got a number of rather unusual requirements. And while I appreciate your organization’s need to identify and evaluate new talent and find a pigeonhole to file everyone in, the trading arm of one of our nation’s three largest financial institutions depends on the system my team is responsible for developing and supporting. So I hope you can agree that it would be in everybody’s best interests to expedite our in-processing and let us get back to our critical roles as soon as—”
“Mr. Menendez.” Emma’s smile widens, revealing her teeth. They’re not filed to points, but judging by Oscar’s reaction they might as well be. Emma has switched from sanguine to sanguinary in a matter of seconds, and in Oscar’s experience that’s not supposed to happen; but then, Oscar is not as proficient at manipulating minds as his previous successes have led him to believe. And Oscar has never before tried to use his power of conviction to twist the thoughts of a woman who is wearing a discreet Laundry ward on a silver chain under her blouse. Much less a Laundry Human Resources manager to whom attempts at mind control are as routine as arbitration requests over gender or ethnic harassment allegations. “Stop that at once!”
“Stop what?”
The velvet-skinned smile slips, revealing a glimpse of the steely skull within: “You know perfectly well what you’re doing, Mr. Menendez. You’re new here but you should be aware that it is at a minimum a disciplinary offense, and at worst grounds for prosecution for common assault. We take a very dim view of using a glamour to obtain consent for unlawful activities, and furthermore we are prepared for and defended against it. So I advise you to drop it right now and refrain from doing it ever again in my presence. Do I make myself clear?”
Oscar’s face is a perfect death mask of shock, every muscle hanging slack. “But you, I mean, I didn’t—”
“Oscar,” Emma hisses. “Drop it. I’ve got your number. You can’t win this fight.” Her ward is hot against her skin and she’s having to work hard to contain her anger. “You do not walk in here as a new recruit and try to roll your manager. Am I making myself understood?”
Oscar finally manages to nod, jerkily.
“Good. And in answer to your other point: we’re the government, and we are engaged in a, a covert state of hostilities. If you would prefer me not to mince words, we’re at war. This country abolished military conscription for the conventional services in 1960, but an exemption clause in the Act authorizes us to co-opt without limitation individuals who meet certain criteria, set by ourselves but principally defined by their awareness of and ability to program or control metaphysical phenomena.
“Now, the healthy functioning of the organization for which you used to work”—Emma does not miss the startled microexpression that flickers across Oscar’s face—“is clearly aligned with the interests of the State, but as I mentioned, we are at war. It’s a secret conflict, a wizard war if you like, but we are under threat of invasion by entities and agencies from beyond spacetime, ancient horrors that would make your toes curl and your hair turn gray overnight if you met them and were lucky enough to survive the experience. And not losing that war is vastly more important to the nation than ensuring the bottom line of an investment bank. Even if your annual bonus is at stake. Am I making myself clear?”
“But I—” Oscar swallows it. “I see,” he says slowly, “that you believe there’s a war on. And you have emergency regulations out of the 1940s to help you fight it. But is all this strictly necessary?” He hand-waves around the office, as if to encapsulate the dusty warrens and cubicle farms of the New Annex beyond. “Has anyone tried talking to these, ah, ancient horrors? Investigated what, if anything, they are after and looked for a compromise solution that would allow us to get on with business as usual? Your organization is—”
“Stop right there, Mr. Menendez, it’s your organization now. You’re subject to its lawful authority and subordinate to its goals. If we decide to let you go, you can go back to your bank. Until then, it’s my job—one of my jobs—to evaluate the extent of the contribution you can make to the defense of the realm. As to your question, we’re several steps ahead of you. Now, I will admit”—she pats the cardboard folder, so fresh it’s barely dog-eared, that sits beside her monitor—“I’m a little perplexed. Some of my colleagues opine that your team, um, ruck, um—”
“Scrum?”
“Scrum—I’m afraid rugby was never my strong point—contains individuals who exhibit highly useful abilities in the areas of higher mathematics and necromancy, but the medical side effects of your condition present us with something of a conundrum. And then there’s an irritatingly large community of our co-workers who refuse to believe that people like you can possibly exist in the first place. I’m afraid decades of being the go-to monster for second-rate Hammer Horror movies and the like have not predisposed the public to be accepting of persons of hemophagy. So for the time being you and your friends”—(Emma’s deliberate mischaracterization of Oscar’s relationship with his staff causes him to bristle satisfactorily)—“are going to have to pretend to a slightly different status. We have a cover story: you’ve been infected by a virus transmitted by an annoyingly biocompatible extradimensional intrusion which causes you to be photophobic and to succumb to sunburn and skin cancer in daylight. Your actual status is classified as confidential, and you should not discuss it with people who do not have the codeword clearance OPERA CAPE unless there’s an emergency, such as needing to evacuate a burning building during hours of daylight. Do you understand?”
“Oh for—” Oscar’s exasperation boils over. “What do you expect me to do?” he snaps. “I thought this induction was a formality! Over in two weeks and we could all get back to work. Instead we’re stuck in a bad 1960s situation comedy, while my line managers will be expecting a report on the first week trading results of our new investment account, which is currently completely adrift. It could be in the hole for millions, for all I know, and I’ll be held responsible!”
“You won’t be.” Emma MacDougal speaks with complete assurance. “Your head of quantitative trading is Sir David Finch. One of our people will have a quiet word with him. The bank may have bought back most of the shares that HMG acquired during the distressed trading a few years ago, but the Treasury is still into them for a sum that can be offset against any reasonable losses that your unit’s experimental trading account can run up in a few weeks.
“As for how we’re going to use you—well, that depends. You’re familiar with the Territorial Army, or the Army Reserves as they’re being renamed? In all probability, once we’ve assessed your capabilities and come up with a tailored action plan and general orientation package, you’ll be conditionally discharged back into civilian life. You will remain liable for activation at short notice and will be expected to spend a month a year operating for us whatever else happens, but as far as the bank is concerned . . . you’ll all be in the TA. It’s a serious criminal offense to dismiss an employee for taking time out for TA service, and we can take steps to stagger your duty cycle so that there is minimal disruption to your business unit’s operations. But all of this depends on your willing cooperation. If it isn’t forthcoming, I’m afraid we may have to deal with you severely, Mr. Menendez. Do you understand?”
“I understand that this is blackmail.”
“No, Mr. Menendez, this is war. It’s a shame we had to have this conversation, and so soon in our relationship, but I think it’s best that we know where we stand, don’t you?”
Oscar inclines his head, not meeting her eyes.
“Well then.” Emma smiles again. “Reading your file I notice that among other things, you’ve had some dealings with commercial intelligence services; at least, you’ve been paying STRATFOR an awful lot of money if all you were getting for it was their weekly newsletter. So. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
• • •
“GOOD MORNING, MR. SCHWARTZ!” SAYS THE TRAINER. “I haven’t seen you around before. I assume that means this is all new to you, and probably a bit confusing. So what are you expecting?”
Alex shuffles his feet uneasily. “I don’t know. I was just told to come to room 118B after lunch for some sort of evaluation. This is room 118B, right?” Somehow he resists the urge to add, Is this the room for an argument? While there is something Pythonesque about the terribly old-fashioned British ambiance of this organization, something tells him that displaying inappropriate and irreverent humor could get him misfiled, drastically and permanently.
He is, truth be told, confused and apprehensive about the whole secret government agency thing that Mhari and Oscar pulled on the Scrum with no advance warning to speak of. At first it seemed to make sense, after a fashion: once you’ve swallowed one unpalatable fact before your metaphorical breakfast—vampires exist, oh, and by the way, tag you’re it—then it is a short hop, skip, and a jump to accept that of course the government is aware of this inconvenient truthiness and has a secret agency for keeping it under wraps.
That Mhari used to work for this agency in her pre-banking days is perhaps an anomalous coincidence, but the revelation that magic is a branch of higher dimensional algebraic group theory is just plausible enough to explain why she ended up in Oscar’s circle, and why the PHANG syndrome emerged from the particular algorithms Alex and the pigs had been told to work on, like an exotic poisonous spider tumbling from a box of bananas on a supermarket shelf.
The past several days have been a trial and an ordeal for Alex, even though the institutional feel of the organization he’s been drafted into gives him persistent déjà vu flashbacks to encounters with the more arcane nooks and crannies of university administration.
“I’m Donald Paulson, and I’m part of our in-house professional skills development wing—staff training, if you like, or perhaps more accurately in-house higher education.” Paulson has an indefinable air about him that instantly puts Alex in mind of staff common rooms and polite but distant quizzing by his dissertation supervisor’s sanity monitors. Paulson smiles, apparently in an attempt to put Alex at his ease, but Alex finds the pulsing of his carotid artery too distracting. “I asked you here because as part of all staff induction processing we’re required to administer a set of aptitude tests.”
“Oh? What for?” Alex asks, leaning forward slightly, interested despite himself. “I mean, what traits are you examining?”
Paulson coughs into his fist. “Well, as an agency tasked with providing intelligence and countermeasures against paranormal threats, obviously we take a keen interest in computational demonology, inductive oneiromantic ontology, and the geometry of Riemannian manifolds, to say nothing of the applications of Kolmogorov complexity theory to topological . . .”
Alex realizes that Paulson is closely watching his expression while he reels off a list of everyday topics of discussion over the Scrum’s coffee machine. So Alex nods, encouragingly. “And?”
“Well, I need to ask you to take a couple of multiple-choice tests. To see if you have an aptitude for the necessary abstract reasoning skills that we’d need to develop in order to train you up as an, ah, magician.”
“Oh, that’s all right then!” Alex says brightly. Alex likes puzzle challenges. “Out of curiosity, if your tests show I’ve got what it takes, what happens then?”
“Well, then we send you on a six-week training course. It’s actually fun, if you’re into that kind of thing; it’s a boot camp for higher mathematics, taught by some of our brightest people. They start with an introduction to set theory and first order predicate calculus, then tackle the lambda calculus and the halting problem. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them—”
Alex blinks. Words are coming out, but they don’t make sense. This is training-wheels stuff, taken for granted at his level. “You’re talking about a first-year undergraduate curriculum, yes?”
Paulson focusses on him. “Really?”
Alex blinks again. He said the necessary abstract reasoning skills for magic, he realizes. Kid’s stuff. The flash of insight is devastating: All I need is an entrypoint and I can probably figure this stuff out for myself . . . “Yes, of course.” He rubs his hands together. They’re very cold, and he’s been feeling hungry pretty much continuously ever since that Howard guy zapped him with the taser, but for the first time in days he barely notices the discomfort. “I’m ready for the tests, Mr. Paulson. Bring them on.”
• • •
“I CAN’T BELIEVE WHAT THAT BITCH DID!”
“Which bitch? Or witch bitch? Are we still talking about Emma Dearest?”
Oscar fumes quietly in one corner of the black leather sofa in the living room of the hotel suite. “Fucking bitch.”
“You’re the one who’s always telling everyone to quantify.” Mhari is coolly unsympathetic. She walks over to the sideboard and twists off the cap of the complimentary bottle of pinot noir, pours two generous glasses, and carries them across to the sofa. Her heels sink into the thick carpet; she hands one of the glasses to Oscar, then carefully kicks off her shoes. “What are your losses?”
“Which ones?” He laughs bitterly for a moment. “Nine point two million down on trading as of close today. We can probably still make it up this quarter if I can get us up and running again by the end of next month, but that all depends on having a full hand of pigs sniffing for truffles, doesn’t it? And that bitch intends to keep us on a tight leash, I’m sure of it.” He looks morose. “There goes my end-of-year target. I’ll be lucky to get a bent paper clip and a shirt button for a bonus. You, too, for that matter.”
Mhari sits down next to him, smoothing her pencil skirt. She sips at the wine, pulls a face: it tastes flat, lifeless and flavorless even though it’s nearly the color of venous blood. “Remember why we’re doing it.”
“Remind me again?”
“You need one of these.” She puts her glass down on the coffee table, then pops her clutch open and pulls out a slim wallet. Flips it open and shows him a photo-ID card within. “A warrant card. This is mine.”
“But that’s—” Oscar pauses thoughtfully. “A warrant card?”
“You tried to tell Emma Dearest what to do, didn’t you?” Mhari smiles sympathetically. “I’m surprised she didn’t shoot you. Oscar, you don’t do that to Laundry personnel. They’re all warded, anyway. But when—if—you’ve got one of these, it’s like the you-gotta-believe-me thing, only better. You can tell someone you work for the government, any department at all, and they’ll simply believe you. I’ve seen their people march into police crime scenes and tell the detectives they work for the Home Office and be believed. Or into military bases. You could tell people you work for the SFO and, well, you saw Mr. Howard, didn’t you?”
“Huh. Didn’t think much of him.”
Mhari leans against Oscar; he raises his arm to make room for her. She compares her memories to the warm and dynamic presence beside her: the idiot ex comes off infinitely worse. “Neither do I, frankly. I don’t know what I saw in him. But he’s going to come in useful along the way, I think. The point is, once the Laundry have us pegged as working for them they’re not going to consider the other possibilities until it’s much too late. They place too much trust in trust—they assume their people are loyal, or at least rendered incapable of rebelling by their coercive geases. You know, the binding oath they made you swear. Do you feel any different?”
Oscar tenses for a moment. “Loyalty has always seemed to be a two-way street to me,” he murmurs, which is music to her ears because it’s exactly what he ought to be saying at this point, even though she’s pretty sure that he doesn’t mean it. Oscar sometimes seems blind to his own mildly suppressed sociopathic tendencies. “By my estimate they owe me at least ten million. If they really wanted my loyalty . . .”
“Exactly.” She turns and nibbles on his earlobe, extracting a sharp intake of breath. “How are Pippa and the kids doing, anyway?”
“How are—? I don’t know and don’t care, frankly. She took them off to the Bahamas for a couple of weeks, something about seeing they spent some time with their grandfather. He refuses to set foot in the UK until it leaves the EU for some reason.” She feels his free hand working its way around her shoulder, outlining her bra strap. “So I’m free for a while. Listen, I’m thirsty and this grape piss simply isn’t cutting the mustard. How about you?”
“I could kill for a drink,” she says wistfully. They’ve been dry for over a week at this point.
“Well then, why don’t we? There are plenty of homeless people out round the back of the hotel who won’t miss a couple of tubes full.”
“I think that’s a great idea. Okay, let’s nip out for a midnight snack. And then . . .”
He stands, rising smoothly to his feet, and offers her a hand. “And then?” He raises an eyebrow.
“Mammals, Discovery Channel, you know the Bloodhound Gang song.” Mhari grins, alive with anticipation, and slides her stockinged feet back into her heels. There’s nothing like a bit of glam to make people let you get close enough to strike, she thinks. That goes for institutions as well as individuals.
“And then,” Oscar slides an arm around her waist as they head towards the door, “we should talk exit strategies.”
12.
GREEN LIME
LIFE GOES ON.
Over the next week, Mo gradually recovers some of her usual humor and level-headedness: a couple of visits to the security-cleared therapist are approved, and a discreet prescription or two. I try to do the supportive husband thing, with mixed results: I also request my own visits with the security-cleared therapist. Meanwhile, back in the office, I throw myself into the mundane administrivia of life: mentoring Pete (who in turn is mentoring Alex), minuting meetings of COBWEB MAZE and BLOODY BARON, helping Andy fill out the forms necessary to justify assigning him a permanent new office, writing up critical reports on the proposed network infrastructure of the Dansey House redevelopment,* and trying to find time to schedule my annual training workload in the middle of all this.
