Charles Stross - The Fuller Memorandum

It doesn’t take me long to find out: the icon that looks like a tumble drier is a bit of a giveaway, come to think of it. I groan and stab the thing with my thumb, and a whole bunch of new icons show up. What the fuck…? I swear quietly: there’s a lot more to this than just evaluation work. Those of us who do fieldwork have a whole suite of specialized software tools we need to carry about-most of them don’t require any particular hardware, they just need a general-purpose processor that can do some rather unusual number-intensive calculations, and the new phone’s got plenty of grunt in that department. This looks like a first pass at porting the entire Occult Field Countermeasures Utility Trunk to run native on JesusPhone, which means I can forget about returning it to the shop, for starters.

Brains has unintentionally taken a huge stinking shit all over our security frontline, installing classified software on an unapproved and unauthorized device. It was just an obvious misunderstanding and no harm’s come about, and as soon as I can smuggle the phone back into the New Annexe and get him to wipe the fucking thing back to factory condition we can pretend it never happened; but until then, I’m going to have to carry the thing on my person at all times and defend it with my life. Well, that or I can set Operational Oversight on him-but my life doesn’t need the excitement of being the subject of two simultaneous boards of enquiry.

“Jesus, Brains,” I murmur. “Is it something in the water?” I poke at the Options set up in OFCUT admiringly. He’s done a thorough job of porting it-this is almost as tightly integrated as the old version I used to have on my Treo, before they pulled it because it violated our RoHS waste disposal statement.

HALF AN HOUR LATER, MY OLD AND UNWANTED MOTOROLA rings. I pick it up and see WITHHELD on the display. Which means one of two things: a telemarketer, or work, because I’ve put my unclassified desk phone on call divert.

“Yes?”

“Bob?” It’s Andy, my onetime manager. Nice guy, when he’s not stabbing you in the back.

“What’s up? You know I’m on-”

“Yes, Bob. Er, it’s about Mo. ” I sit down hard. “She’s flying into London City from Amsterdam on KL 1557”-my heart starts up again-“and I think it would be a really good idea if you were to meet her in. She’s due to land around nine, you can just get there if you leave in the next ten minutes-”

“What’s happened to her?” I realize I’m gripping the phone too hard and force myself to open my fist. It wouldn’t do to break the bloody thing before I’ve ported my number across-

“Nothing,” he says, too quickly. “Look, will you just-”

“I’m going! I’m going! I’m dragging myself from my sickbed groaning and limping in my nightgown to the airport, okay?” I look round, trying to locate my shoes: I dumped them in the hall the night before-“Are you sure she’s okay?”

“Not entirely,” he says quietly, and hangs up.

I’m dressed and out of the house like a greased whippet, round the corner to the tube station and the train to Bank and then the DLR line to London City Airport, out in the east end near Canary Wharf. I remember to grab the JesusPhone at the last minute, shoveling it into an inside zippered pocket in my fishing vest. I’m at the DLR platform waiting for a train before I realize I’ve forgotten to shave. If Andy is yanking my chain…

All doubts fade when I get to Arrivals at ten to eleven and see KL 1557 on the board, on schedule for fifteen minutes hence. If she’s hurt-

But she won’t be. At least, not physically. In her line of work, if something goes wrong, it’s probably fatal; at best she’d be clogging up a hospital high dependency unit, and I’d be on my way out to see her with many hand-wringing apologetics and a complimentary budget-price ticket from Human Resources.

Hanging around in an airport Arrivals hall is not a good thing to do if you’re nervous. I can feel the cops’ eyes on the back of my neck, wondering what the unshaven agitated guy who can’t keep his feet still is doing. The minutes and seconds trickle by with glacial, infuriating slowness. Then the Arrivals board changes the flight status to arrived, and-

There she is. Coming out of the door from baggage claim in the middle of a clot of suits, violin case slung over her shoulder. Freckled skin stretched over high cheekbones, long red hair tied back out of her face, uncharacteristically dressed in office drag: that’s unusual, must be urban camouflage for whatever she’s been sent to do. Something about her gait, or the set of her shoulders, tells me she’s bone-deep weary. I wave: she sees me and changes course and I move towards her and we collide in a deep embrace that ends in a kiss.

She pulls back after a couple of seconds. “Get me home. Please.” She sounds-low.

“Andy said-”

“Andy is a wee bawbag and we’re going home. Taxi. Right now.” She’s leaning on me, swaying slightly.

“Mo? What’s wrong?”

“Later.” She draws a deep, shuddering breath. “Right now, let’s go home.”

“Can you walk?” She nods. “Okay, we’ll get a taxi.” It’ll be about twenty quid: I can’t afford to make a habit of it. But scratch worrying about money for the time being. If she feels too crap to face the tube…

We ride home in silence, wincing in synchrony as we bump over speed pillows and sway through chicanes and suffer all the other traffic-annoying measures that slow down ambulances and cost lives and triple the price of a simple taxi ride. I pay the driver and hold the door open for her and then we’re inside our front hall again, the door shut behind us, and she slumps against the wall as if she’s just run a marathon. “Coffee, tea, or something stronger?” I ask.

“Coffee.” She pauses. “With something stronger.” After a moment she levers herself up and shuffles into the living room, then collapses on the overstuffed sofa we inherited from her sister Liz when she emigrated.

I hurry back into the kitchen and refill the caff, then add a generous shot of cooking whisky to her mug. When I get back to the living room she’s still on the sofa, her violin case sitting on the pile of magazines on the coffee table. She seems to be shaking at first, in silent laughter: then I realize she’s crying.

I put the coffee mugs on the table and sit down next to her. After a moment she shuffles round and I pull her against my shoulder, so that her tears trickle down the base of my neck.

Mo cries helplessly, almost silently, pausing every few seconds to take a little hiccuping gasp of air. She’s so quiet-almost as if she’s afraid to make a sound. I hold her gently, and murmur inanities over the top of her head, stroking her shoulders. I’m angry at my own helplessness: I’ve seen her upset before, but never anything like this-

“What happened?” I ask, eventually, after the shudders give way to an occasional twitch.

“You don’t need to know.” She sniffles. “God, I’m a mess. Fetch the tissues?” We disentangle and I go in search of something for her to wipe her nose on. When I get back she’s sitting up, clutching her coffee mug and staring at the brick-surround fireplace we’ve been meaning to get rid of ever since we moved in, with eyes like wrecking balls.

I put the tissues in front of her on the table. She ignores them. “Was it wet?” I ask.

“You have no need to-” She shudders slightly, puts the mug down, and grabs a tissue. I notice her hands are a mess, reddish-brown grime ingrained around her nail beds: Jonathan Hoag territory. Holding the kleenex to her face she blows her nose once, twice: a peal of bloody trumpets. “It was ghastly. They made me-I think I can say this-Bob, remember the Plumbers?”