Charles Stross - The Jennifer Morgue

"School's out." I race for the door, piling into Ramona as I yank the handle open. **Got her?**

**Yes. Grab her other arm and move!** Sophie is kicking and writhing wordlessly but Ramona and I drag her through the doorway and I yank it shut behind us. The latch clicks, and Sophie goes limp. **Hey.** I look sideways. **What's — ** Ramona lets go of her other arm and I stagger. **Well isn't that a surprise,** she comments, looking down at Sophie, who sprawls on the hotel carpet in front of the door.

**She's dead, Jim.**

**Bob,** I correct automatically. **What do you mean, she's dead?**

**Poison-pill programming, I think.** I lean against the wall, dizzy and nauseated. **Wie've got to go back! The others are still in there. Can we break it? The control link, I mean. If it's just a transient override — ** Ramona winces and stares at me. **Will you stop that?

It's not a transient and there's nothing we can do for them.**

**But she's dead! We've got to do something! And they're — **

**They're dead, too.** Ramona stares at me in obvious concern. **Did you hit your head or something? No, I'd have felt that. You're squeamish, aren't you?**

**We could have saved them! You knew what was going to happen! You could have warned us! If you hadn't been so fucking curious to know what was buried in the presentation — shit, why didn't you just snarf a copy and edit it yourself? This isn't the first time it's happened, is it?" She lets me rant for a minute or so, until I run down.

**Bob, Bob. This is the first time this has happened. At least, the first time anyone's gotten out of one of these presentations alive.**

**Jesus. Then why do you keep having them?** I realize I'm waving my arms around but I'm too upset to stop. I have a terrible feeling that if I'd just given in to my first impulse to yank the cord on the projector — **lt's murder! Letting it go ahead like that — **

**We don't. My department — doesn't. TLA is selling hard outside the US, Bob. They sell in places like Malaysia or Kazakhstan or Peru, and in places that aren't quite on the map, if you follow me. We've heard rumors about this. We've seen some of the ... fallout. But this is the first time we've gotten in on the ground floor. Sophie Frank was fingered by your people, if you must know. Your Andy Newstrom raised the flag. She's been behaving oddly for the past couple of months. You were sent because, unlike Newstrom, you're trained for this category of operation. But nobody else took the warnings sufficiently seriously — except for your department, and mine.**

**But what about the others?** She stares at me grimly. **Blame Ellis Billington, Bob.

Remember, if he wasn't into the hard sell, this wouldn't have happened.** Then she turns and stalks away, leaving me alone and shaking in the corridor, with a corpse and a locked conference room full of middle-management zombies to explain.

MY CHECKOUT IS EVER SO SLIGHTLY DELAYED. I spend about eight hours at the nearest police station being questioned by one GSA desk pilot after another. At first I think they're going to arrest me — shoot the messenger is a well-known parlor game in spook circles — but after a few fraught hours there's a change in the tone of the interrogation.

Someone higher up has obviously got a handle on events and is smoothing my path. "It is best for you to leave the country tomorrow," says Gerhardt from Frankfurt, not smiling. "Later we will have questions, but not now." He shakes his head. "If you should happen to see Ms. Random, please explain that we have questions for her also." A taciturn cop drives me back to the hotel, where a GSA cleaning team has replaced the conference room door with a blank stretch of brand-new wall. I walk past it without quite losing my shit, then retreat to my shielded bedroom and spend a sleepless night trying to second guess myself. But not only is the past another country, it's one that doesn't issue visas; and so, first thing in the morning, I head downstairs to collect the hire car.

A tech support nightmare is waiting for me down in the garage. Pinky is goose-stepping around with a clipboard, trying to look officious while Brains is elbow-deep in the trunk with a circuit tester and a roll of gaffer tape.

"What. The. Fuck?" I manage to say, then lean against a concrete pillar.

"We've been modifying this Smart car for you!" Pinky says excitedly. "You need to know how to use all its special features."

I rub my eyes in disbelief. "Listen guys, I've been attacked by brain-eating zombies and I'm due on a flight to Saint Martin tonight. This isn't the right time to show me your toys. I just want to get home — "

"Impossible," Brains mutters around a mouthful of oily bolts that look suspiciously as if they've just come out of the engine manifold.

"Angleton told us not to let you go until you'd finished your briefing!" Pinky exclaims.

There's no escape. "Okay." I yawn. "You just put those bolts back and I'll be going."

"Look in the boot, here. What our American friends would call the trunk. Careful, mind that pipe! Good. Now pay attention, Bob. We've added a Bluetooth host under the driver's seat, and a repurposed personal video player running Linux. Peripheral screens at all five cardinal points, five grams of graveyard dust mixed with oil of Bergamot and tongue of newt in the cigarette lighter socket, and a fully connected Dee-Hamilton circuit glued to the underside of the body shell. As long as the ignition is running, you're safe from possession attempts. If you need to dispose of a zombie in the passenger seat, just punch in the lighter button and wait for the magic smoke. You've got a mobile phone, yes?

With Bluetooth and a Java sandbox? Great, I'll email you an applet — run it, pair your phone with the car's hub, and all you have to do is dial 6-6-6 and the car will come to you, wherever you are. There's another applet to remotely trigger all the car's countermeasures, just in case someone's sneaked a surprise into it."

I shake my head, but it won't stop spinning. "Zombie smoke in the lighter socket, Dee-Hamilton circuit in the body shell, and the car comes when I summon it. Okay. Hey, what's — "

He slaps my hand as I reach for the boxy lump fastened to the gearshift with duct tape. "Don't touch that button, Bob!"

"Why? What happens if I touch that button, Pinky"

"The car ejects!"

"Don't you mean, the passenger seat ejects?" I ask sarcastically.

I've had just about enough of this nonsense.

"No, Bob, you've been watching too many movies. The car ejects." He reaches across the back of my seat and pats the fat pipe occupying the center of the luggage area.

I swallow. "Isn't that a little ... dangerous"

"Where you're going you'll need all the help you can get."

He frowns at me. "The tube contains a rocket motor and a cable spool bolted to the chassis. The airbags in the wheel hubs blow when the accelerometer figures you've hit apogee, if you haven't already used them in amphibious pursuit mode. Whatever you do don't push that button while you're in a tunnel or under cover." I glance up at the concrete roof of the car park and shudder. "The airbags are securely fastened, if you land on water you can just drive away." He notices my fixed, skeptical stare and pats the rocket tube.

"It's perfectly safe — they've been using these on helicopter gunships for nearly five years!"

"Jesus." I close my eyes and lean back. "It's still a fucking Smart car. Range Rovers carry them as lifeboats. Couldn't you get me an Aston Martin or something"

"What makes you think we'd give you an Aston Martin, even if we could afford one? Anyway, Angleton says to remind you that it's on lease from one of our private sector partners. Don't bend it, or you'll answer to the Chrysler Corporation. You've already exceeded our consumables budget, totalling that Compaq in the meeting — there's a new one waiting for you in the case in the boot, by the way. This is serious business: you're representing the Laundry in front of the Black Chamber and some very big defense contractors, old school tie and all that."