Charles Stross - The Jennifer Morgue

I try not to wilt too visibly. Okay, she's a player. That makes things easier — and harder, in a way. I swallow a mouthful of beer successfully this time. "So why don't you tell me who you are"

"I just did. I'm Ramona and I'm not going to sleep with you."

"Fine, Ramona-and-I'm-not-going-to-sleep-with-you.

What are you? I mean, are you human? I can't tell, what with that glamour you're wearing, and that kind of thing makes me nervous."

Sapphire eyes stare at me. "Keep guessing, monkey-boy."

Oh, for fuck's sake — "Okay, I mean, who do you work for"

"The Black Chamber. And I always wear this body on business. We've got a dress code, you know." The Black Chamber? My stomach lurches. I've had one runin with those guys, near the outset of my professional career, and everything I've learned since has taught me I was damned lucky to survive. "Who are you here to kill"

She makes a faint moue of distaste. "I'm supposed to be working with you. I wasn't sent here to kill anyone."

We're going in circles again. "Fine. You're going to work with me but you don't want to sleep with me in case I drop dead, Curse of the Mummy and all that. You're tooled up to vamp some poor bastard, but it's not me, and you seem to know who I am. Why don't you just cut the crap and explain what you're doing here, why the hell you're so jumpy, and what's going on"

"You really don't know?" She stares at me. "I was told you'd been briefed."

"Briefed?" I stare right back at her. "You've got to be kidding!

I'm here for a committee meeting, not a live-action role-playing game."

"Huh!" For a moment she looks puzzled. "You are here to attend the next session of the joint-liaison committee on cosmological incursions, aren't you"

I nod, very slightly. The Auditors don't usually ask you what you didn't say, they're more interested in what you did say, and who you said it to.[1 Blabbing secrets to beautiful femme fetale agents is frowned upon, especially when they're not necessarily human.] "You're not on my briefing sheet."

"I see." Ramona nods thoughtfully, then relaxes slightly.

"Sounds like a regular fuck-up, then. Like I said, I was told we're going to be working together on a joint activity, starting with this meeting. For the purposes of this session I'm an accredited delegate, by the way."

"You — " I bite my tongue, trying to imagine her in a committee room going over the seventy-six-page agenda.

"You're a what"

"I've got observer status. Tomorrow I'll show you my ward," she adds. (That clinches it. The wards are handed out to those of us who're assigned to the joint committee.) "You can show me yours. I'm sure you'll be briefed before that — afterward we'll have a lot more to talk about."

"Just what — " I swallow " — are we supposed to be working on"

She smiles. "Baccarat." She finishes her G&T and stands up with a swish of silk: "I'll be seeing you later, Robert.

Until tonight..."

I buy another beer to calm my rattled nerves and hunker down in a carnivorous leather sofa at the far side of the bar. When I'm sure the bartender isn't watching me I pull out my Treo, run a highly specialized program, and dial an office extension in London. The phone rings four times, then the voice mail picks it up. "Boss? Got a headache. A Black Chamber operative called Ramona showed up. She claims that we're supposed to be working together. What the hell's going on? I need to know." I hang up without bothering to wait for a reply. Angleton will be in around six o'clock London time, and then I'll get my answer. I sigh, which draws a dirty look from a pair of overdressed chancers at the next table. I guess they think I'm lowering the tone of the bar. A sense of acute loneliness comes crashing down. What am I doing here?

The superficial answer is that I'm here on Laundry business.

That's Capital Laundry Services to anyone who rings the front doorbell or cold-calls the switchboard, even though we haven't operated out of the old offices above the Chinese laundry in Soho since the end of the Second World War. The Laundry has a long memory. I work for the Laundry because they gave me a choice between doing so ... or not working for anyone, ever again. With 20/20 hindsight I can't say I blame them. Some people you just do not want to leave outside the tent pissing in, and in my early twenties, self-confident and naive, I was about as safe to leave lying around unsupervised as half a ton of sweating gelignite. These days I'm a trained computational demonologist, that species of occult practitioner who really can summon spirits from the vasty deep: or at least whatever corner of our local Calabi-Yau manifold they howl and gibber in, insane on the brane. And I'm a lot safer to have around these days — at least I know what precautions to use and what safety standards to obey: so call me a bunker full of smart bombs.

Most Laundry work consists of tediously bureaucratic form-filling and paper-pushing. About three years ago I got bored and asked if I could be assigned to active service. This was a mistake I've been regretting ever since, because it tends to go hand-in-hand with things like being rousted out of bed at four in the morning to go count the concrete cows in Milton Keynes, which sounds like a lot more fun than it actually is; especially when it leads to people shooting at you and lots more complicated forms to fill in and hearings in front of the Audit Committee. (About whom the less said the better.) But on the other hand, if I hadn't switched to active service status I wouldn't have met Mo, Dr. Dominique O'Brien — except she hates the Dominique bit — and from this remove I can barely imagine what life would be like without her.

At least, without her in principle. She's been on one training course or another for months on end lately, doing something hush-hush that she can't tell me about. This latest course has kept her down at the secure facility in Dunwich Village for four weeks now, and two weeks before that I had to go to the last liaison meeting, and frankly, I'm pining. I mentioned this to Pinky at the pub last week, and he snorted and accused me of carrying on like I was already married. I suppose he's right: I'm not used to having somebody wonderful and sane in my life, and I guess I'm a bit clingy. Maybe I should talk about it with Mo, but the subject of marriage is a bit touchy and I'm reluctant to raise it — her previous matrimonial experience wasn't a happy one.

I'm about halfway down my beer and thinking about calling Mo — if she's off work right now we could chat — when my phone rings. I glance at it and freeze: it's Angleton. I key the cone of silence then answer: "Bob here."

"Bob." Angleton's voice is papery-thin and cold, and the data compression inflicted by the telephone network and the security tunnel adds a hollow echo to it. "I got your message.

This Ramona person, I want you to describe her."

"I can't. She was wearing a glamour, level three at least — it nearly sent me cross-eyed. But she knows who I am and what I'm here for."

"All right, Bob, that's about what I expected. Now this is what I want you to do." Angleton pauses. I lick my suddenly dry lips. "I want you to finish your drink and go back to your room. However, rather than entering, I want you to proceed down the corridor to the next room along on the same side, one number up. Your support team should be checked in there already. They'll continue the briefing once you're in the secure suite. Do not enter your room for the time being. Do you understand?"

"I think so." I nod. "You've got a little surprise job lined up for me. Is that it"

"Yes," says Angleton, and hangs up abruptly.

I put my beer down, then stand up and glance round. I thought I was here for a routine committee meeting, but suddenly I find I'm standing on shifting sands, in possibly hostile territory. The middle-aged swingers glance disinterestedly at me, but my wards aren't tingling: they're just who they appear to be. Right. Go directly to bed, do not eat supper, do not collect... I shake my head and get moving.