Charles Stross - The Jennifer Morgue

I really hope Mo finds out that this entanglement thing is reversible. Because if it isn't, the next time she and I go to bed together — Let's not think about that right now.

I spend an uneasy night tossing and turning between damp sheets despite the dream catcher Screensaver I leave running on my tablet PC. By dawn I've just about worried myself into a mild nervous breakdown: if it's not trying to avoid thinking about invisible pink elephants (subtype: maneaters), it's what Angleton's got in mind for me in Saint Martin. I don't even know where the place is on a map.

Meanwhile, the committee meeting is another unwelcome distraction. How am I supposed to represent my organization when I'm terrified of falling asleep?

I somehow manage to fumble my way into my suit — an uncomfortable imposition required for overseas junkets — then shamble downstairs to the dining room for breakfast.

Coffee, I need coffee. And a copy of the Independent, imported from London on an overnight flight. The restaurant is a model of German efficiency and the staff mostly leave me alone, for which I'm grateful I'm just about feeling human again by a quarter to nine, the meeting's optimistically scheduled to start in another fifteen minutes, but at a guess half the delegates will still be working on their breakfasts. So I wander over to the lobby where there's free WiFi, to see if there are any messages for me, and that's when I run into Franz.

"Bob? Is that you"

I blink stupidly. "Franz"

"Bob!" We do the handshake thing, feinting around our centers of gravity with briefcases held out to either side, like a pair of nervous chickens sizing each other up in a farmyard.

I haven't seen Franz in a suit before, and he hasn't seen me in one either. I met him on a training seminar about six months ago when he was over from Den Haag. He's very tall and very Dutch, which means his accent is a lot more BBC-perfect than mine. "Fancy meeting you here."

"I guess you must be on the joint-session list"

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," he jokes. "I was just looking for a postcard before I go upstairs ... will you wait"

"Sure." I relax slightly. "Have you done one of these before"

"No." He spins the rack idly, looking at the picturesque gingerbread castles one by one. "Have you"

"I've done one, period. Shouldn't talk about it outside class, but what the hell."

Franz finds a postcard showing a beaming buxom German barmaid clutching a pair of highly suggestive jugs. "I'll have this one." He attracts the attention of the nearest sales clerk and rattles something off in what sounds to me like flawless German. My tablet finishes checking for mail, bins the spam, and dings at me to put it away. I rub my head and glance at Franz enviously I bet he wouldn't have any problems with Ramona: he's scarily bright, good-natured, incisive, handsome, cultured, and all-round competent. Not to mention being able to out-drink me and charm the socks off everyone who meets him. He's clearly on his way up the ladder of the ATVD's occult counterintelligence division, and he'll make deputy director while I'm still polishing Angleton's filing cabinet.

"Ready?" he asks.

"Guess so."

We head for the lift to the conference room. It's on the fourth floor. Lest you think this is an altogether too casual approach to confidential business, the hotel is security certified and our hosts have block-booked the adjacent rooms and the suites immediately above and below. It's not as if we're going to be discussing matters of national security, either.

Franz and I are early. There's a coffee urn and cups in place on the sideboard, an LCD projector and screen next to the boardroom table, and comfortable leather-lined swivel chairs to fall asleep in. I claim one corner of the table, opposite the windows with their daydream-friendly view of downtown Darmstadt, and plunk my tablet down on the leather place mat beside the hotel notepad. "Coffee?" asks Franz.

"Yes, please. Milk, no sugar." I pick up the agenda and carry it over.

"What's the routine?" he asks. He actually sounds interested.

"Well. We show each other our authorizations first. Then the chair orders the doors sealed." I wave at the far end of the suite: "Rest room's through there. Chair this time is — " I riffle the sheets " — Italy, which means Anna, unless she's ill and they send a replacement. She'll keep things tight, I think. Then we get down to business."

"I see. And the minutes ..."

"Everyone who's got a presentation is supposed to bring copies on CD-ROM. The host organization[6 The Geheime Sicherheit Abteilung to their mothers, although everyone else calls them the Faust Force.] provides a secretarial service, that's the GSA's job this time."

Franz's brow wrinkles. "Excuse me for saying, but this sounds as if the meeting itself is ... unnecessary? We could take it to email."

I shrug. "Yup. But then we wouldn't get to do the real business, over coffee and biscuits."

His expression clears. "Ah, now I see — "

The door opens. "Ciao, guys!" It's Anna, short and bubbly and (I suspect) a little hung-over, judging from her eyes.

"Oh, my head. Where is everybody? Let us keep this short, shall we"

She makes a beeline for the coffee pot. "Tell Andrew he is a naughty, naughty man," she chides me.

"What's he done now?" I ask, steeling myself.

"He got my birthday wrong!" Flashing eyes, toothy grin.

"A, what is it, a fencepost error."

"Oh, uh, yeah, I'll do that." I shrug. I'm still uncomfortable in this type of situation. Most of the people here were grades above me until six months ago, and half of them still are, I'm very much the junior delegate and Andy — who used to be one of my managers — is the guy into whose boots I've stepped. "Last time I saw him he was kind of busy. Overworked dealing with fallout from — " I clear my throat.

"Oh, say no more." She pats me on the arm and moves on to say hello to the other delegates who're letting themselves in. We ought to have a full house of security management types from Spain Brussels, and parts east within NATO, but for some reason attendance today looks unusually light.

Delegates are beginning to arrive, so I head back towards my seat. "Who's that?" Franz asks me quietly, with a nod at the door. I glance round and do a double-take: it's Ramona.

She's almost unrecognizable in a business suit with her hair up, but being this close to her still makes the skin crawl in the small of my back.

"That's, Um, Ms. Random. An observer. We're privileged to have her here." My cheek twitches and Franz stares at me from behind his rimless spectacles.

"I see. I was unaware that we had that type of guest present."

I get the feeling he sees a whole lot more than I told him, but there's not a lot I can say.

**Hello, darling, slept well?** she asks. I start: then I realize she's still on the other side of the room, coolly pouring herself a cup of coffee and smiling at Anna.

**No thanks to you,** I think at her.

I hear a rude noise. **A girl's got to eat sometime.**

**Yes, but midnight snacking — ** Invisible pink elephants.

Think of invisible pink elephants, Bob. Think of invisible pink throbbing elephants in the night — no, cancel the throbbing — I sit down dizzily. "Is something wrong?" asks Franz.

"Supper disagreed with me," I say weakly. Ramona's supper, that is: pfai de gros ingenieur. "I'll be okay if I sit down." A hot flush is trying to follow the shivers up and down my spine. I glance at her across the room and she looks back at me, blank-faced.

People are heading towards the table, apparently following my lead. To my annoyance Ramona oozes into the chair next to me then stares sharply at Anna's end of the table.

"Ciao everybody. I see a lot of vacant seats and new faces today! This meeting will now commence. Badges on the table, please." Anna looks up and down the table pointedly as clusters of conversation die down.