Charles Stross - The Jennifer Morgue

The closet door opens and Brains steps out. Unlike Pinky he's decently dressed, for leather club values of decency.

"Don't get overexcited, Bob," he says, winking at me: "I was just drilling holes in the walls."

"Holes — "

"To observe her. She's confined to the pentacle on your bedroom carpet; you don't need to worry about her getting loose and stealing your soul before we complete the circuit.

Hold still or this won't work."

"Who's in what pentacle in my bedroom?" I take a step back towards the door but he's approaching me, clutching a sterile needle.

"Your new partner. Here, hold out a hand, this won't hurt a bit — "i "Ouch!" I step backwards and bounce off the wall, and Brains manages to get his drop of blood while I'm wincing.

"Great, that'll let us complete the destiny lock. You know you're a lucky man? At least, I suppose you're lucky — if you're that way inclined — "

"Who is she, dammit"

"Your new partner? She's a changeling sent by the Black Chamber. Name of Ramona. And she is stacked, if that sort of thing matters to you." He pulls an amused face, oh so tolerant of my heterosexual ways.

"But I didn't — "

A toilet flushes, then the bathroom door opens and Boris steps out. And that's when I know I'm in deep shit, because Boris is not my normal line manager: Boris is the guy they send out when something has gone terribly wrong in the field and stuff needs to be cleaned up by any means necessary.

Boris acts like a cut-rate extra in a Cold War spy thriller — right down to the hokey fake accent and the shaven bullethead — although he's about as English as I am. The speech thing is a leftover from a cerebral infarction, courtesy of a field invocation that went pear-shaped.

"Bob." He doesn't smile. "Welcome to Darmstadt. You come for joint-liaison framework. You are attending meeting tomorrow as planned: but are also being cleared for AZORIAN BLUE HADES as of now. Are here to brief, introduce you to support team, and make sure you bond with your, your, associate. Without to be eated."

"Eaten?" I ask. I must look a trifle tense because even Boris manages to pull an apologetic expression from somewhere.

"What is this job, exactly? I didn't volunteer for a field mission — "

"Know you do not. We are truly sorry to put this on you,"

says Boris, running a hand over his bald head in a gesture that gives the lie to the sentiment, "but not having time for histrionics." He glances at Brains and gives a tiny nod. "First am giving briefing to you, then must complete destinyentanglement protocol with entity next door. After that — "

he checks his watch " — are being up to you, but estimating are only seven days to save Western civilization."

"What?" I know what my ears just heard but I'm not sure I believe them.

He stares at me grimly, then nods. "If is up to me, are not be relying on you. But time running out and is short on alternatives."

"Oh Jesus." I sit down on the sole available chair. "I'm not going to like this, am I"

"Nyet. Pinky, the DVD please. It is being time to expand Robert's horizons ..."

The river of time may wait for no man, but sometimes extreme stress causes it to run shallow. Cast the fly back four weeks and see what you catch, reeling in the month-old memories ...

IT'S LATE ON A RAINY SATURDAY MORNING IN February, and Mo and I are drinking the remains of the breakfast coffee while talking about holidays. Or rather, she's talking about holidays while I'm nose-deep in a big, fat book, reacquainting myself with the classics. To tell the truth, each interruption breaks my concentration, so I'm barely paying attention. Besides, I'm not really keen on-the idea of forking out money for two weeks in self-catering accommodations somewhere hot. We're supposed to be saving up the deposit for a mortgage, after all.

"How about Crete?" she asks from the kitchen table, drawing a careful red circle around three column-inches of newsprint.

"Won't you burn?" (Mo's got classic redhead skin and freckles.) "We in the developed world have this advanced technology called sunblock. You may have heard of it." Mo glares at me.

"You're not paying attention, are you"

I sigh and put the book down. Damn it, why now? Just as I'm getting to Tanenbaum's masterful and witty takedown of the OSI protocol stack ... "Guilty as charged."

"Why not?" She leans forwards, arms crossed, staring at me intently.

"Good book," I admit.

"Oh. Well that makes it all right," she snorts. "You can always take it to the beach, but you'll be kicking yourself if we wait too long and the cheap packages are all over-booked and we're left with choosing between the dregs of the Club 18-30 stuff, or paying through the nose, or one of us gets sent on detached duty again because we didn't notify HR of our vacation plans in time. Right"

"I'm sorry. I guess I'm just not that enthusiastic right now."

"Yes, well, I just paid my Christmas credit card bill, too, love. Face it, by May we're both going to be needing a vacation, and they'll be twice as expensive if you leave booking it too late."

I look Mo in the eyes and realize she's got me metaphorically surrounded. She's older than I am — at least, a couple of years older — and more responsible, and as for what she sees in me ... well. If there's one disadvantage to living with her it's that she's got a tendency to organize me. "But.

Crete"

"Crete, Island of. Home of the high Minoan civilization, probably collapsed due to rapid climactic change or the explosion of the volcano on Thera — Santorini — depending who you read. Loads of glorious frescos and palace ruins, wonderful beaches, and moussaka to die for. Grilled octopus, too: I know all about your thing for eating food with tentacles.

If we aim for late May we'll beat the sunbathing masses.

I was thinking we should book some side tours — I'm reading up on the archaeology — and a self-catering apartment, where we can chill for two weeks, soak up some sun before the temperature goes into the high thirties and everything bakes ...

How does that sound to you? I can practice the fiddle while you burn."

"It sounds — " I stop. "Hang on. What's the archaeology thing about"

"Judith's had me reading up on the history of the littoral civilizations lately," she says. "I thought it'd be nice to take a look." Judith is deputy head of aquatic affairs at work. She spends about half her time out at the Laundry training facility in Dunwich and the other half up at Loch Ness.

"Ah." I hunt around for a scrap of kitchen roll to use as a bookmark. "So this is work, really."

"No, it's not!" Mo closes the newspaper section then picks it up and begins to shake the pages into order. She won't stop until she's got them perfectly aligned and smooth enough to sell all over again: it's one of her nervous tics. "I'm just curious.

I've been reading so much about the Minoans and the precedent case law behind the human/Deep One treaties that it just caught my interest. Besides which, I last went on holiday to Greece about twenty years ago, on a school trip. It's about time to go back there, and I thought it'd be a nice place to relax. Sun, sex, and squid, with a side order of archaeology."

I know when I'm defeated, but I'm not completely stupid: it's time to change the subject. "What's Judith got you working on, anyway?" I ask. "I didn't think she had any call for your approach to, well ... whatever." (It's best not to mention specifics: the house we share is subsidized accommodation, provided by the Laundry for employees like us — otherwise there's no way we could honestly afford to live in Central London on two civil service salaries — and the flip-side of this arrangement is that if we start discussing state secrets the walls grow ears.) "Judith's got problems you aren't briefed on." She picks up her coffee mug, peers into it, and pulls a face. "I'm beginning to find out about them and I don't like them."