Charles Stross - The Atrocity Archives

I nod silently: this isn't good news. It means that someone, somewhere, thinks Mo is a strategic asset- special treatment, kid gloves, do not let this one out of your sight. We do similar things, sometimes: I'm not allowed to go on vacation outside the EU without written permission from my head of department. But that's because I do secret work for the government. Mo is just a professor, isn't she? I wish she'd be a bit more specific, and say which bit of the Pentagon is giving her grief, rather than just using it as a generic category for big government.

"When did the trouble start?" I ask.

She laughs. "Which trouble?"

Me and my big mouth. "Uh, the current batch. I'm sorry; nobody briefed me."

She looks at me oddly. "Just what kind of Foreign Office employee are you?"

I shrug. "If you don't ask me any questions, I won't have to tell you any lies. I'm sorry, but I can't discuss my work. Let's just say that when you started complaining someone with a bit more clout than the consulate was listening. They sent me to see if there's anything we can do for you. All right?"

"Bizarre." She looks askance at me. "Let's walk." She turns, and I follow her back toward the road. There's a footpath leading out of town, shaded by trees; we take it. "The trouble started in Miskatonic," she says. "David and I-we're divorced, now-well, it didn't work out. I didn't play the politics right; Miskatonic is really bad for internal backbiting. When it was obvious they weren't going to open the tenure track up any time soon, I got a feeler from someone at UCSC. Nice research grant, an interesting field close to my own, and a promise of the fast track if I got results."

Tenured professorship is the academic holy grail: a job for life, supposedly to let first-class researchers poke into any corner they feel like, regardless of how popular it is with the administration. Which is, of course, why they're trying to abolish it. "How did it go?"

"I flew over for the interview. I got the job. Only there was a lot of paper to sign. David is a lawyer, but by then-" She falls silent. I can fill in some of the gaps, I think.

We're walking uphill now, and the path narrows. Dappled patterns of light and shade ripple across the dusty track. It's mid-afternoon and the day is hot and bright. A couple of surf dudes wander past and look at us curiously. "How did you get into your current field of research?" I ask.

"Oh, it was a natural progression. In Edinburgh I was working on inferential reasoning. When I got the job in Arkham I started out doing more of the same, but the belief systems field has been undersubscribed for years, and it seemed like a good place to stake my claim, especially given the interesting closed archives in their stacks: Arkham has a really unique library, you know? I began publishing papers, and that's about when the shit began happening inside the department. Maybe it was departmental politics, but now I'm beginning to wonder."

"They've got long tentacles, not to mention other nameless organs. It would help if I could see the documents you signed."

"They're at the office. I can go in and pick them up later." We're on a steep slope now, going uphill and I'm breathing hard. Mo has long legs and evidently walks a lot. Exercise or habit?

"Your research," I say. "You're certain it's not about any specific military applications?"

I know immediately that I've made a mistake. Mo stops and glares at me. "I'm a philosopher, with a sideline in folk history," she hisses angrily. "What do you take me for?"

"I'm sorry." I take a step back. "I've got to make sure. That's all."

"I shan't be offended then." I get a creepy feeling that she means exactly what she says. "No. It's just, I'm certain-no, positive, in the exact meaning of the word-that it's not that. A calculus of belief, a theory for deriving confidence limits in statements of unsubstantiated faith, can't have any military applications, can it?"

"Did you say faith ?" I ask, hot and cold chills running up and down my spine. "Specifically, you can analyse the validity of a belief, without-" I stop.

"Let's not get too technical without a whiteboard, hmm?"

"Faith can mean several things, depending on who uses the word," I say. "A theologian and a scientist mean different things by it, for example. And 'unsubstantiated' has a dismayingly technical ring to it. But let's take a hypothetical example. Suppose I assert that I believe in flying pigs. I haven't seen any, but I have reason to believe that flying peccaries, a related species, exist. You're saying you could place confidence limits on my belief? Quantify the probability of those porcine aviators existing?"

"It works." She shrugs. "The numbers are out there. It's a platonic universe; all we can see are the shadows on the wall of the cave, but there are real numbers out there, they have an existence in and of themselves. I just began looking into probabilistic metrics that can be applied to assertions of a theological nature. There are some interesting documents in the Wilmarth folklore collection at Miskatonic…"

"Aha." We round a corner and there's an odd little clearing ahead, ringed with trees, with a hillside rising from the far end. "So we're back to the old idea of a real universe, and an observable one, and all we know about is what we can observe. So the department of strategic folklore in the Pentagon was concerned about you showing other people where to find their high-altitude hams?"

She stops and looks at me, frankly sizing me up. She comes to some sort of decision because after a moment she answers: "I think they were more worried about the creatures that cast the shadows on the walls. In particular, the ones that ate the USS Thresher and a certain Russian Whisky -class hunter-killer about thirty years ago…"

WHEN I RETURN TO MY MOTEL ROOM THAT EVENING the man in the plaid shirt from the bar is waiting for me. He's got a federal ID card, a warrant, and an attitude problem.

"Sit down, shut up, and listen," he begins. "I'm going to say this once, and once only. Then you're going to get the hell out of town because if you're still on this continent in twenty-four hours I'm going to have you arrested."

I drop my jacket on the back of my chair. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"I said shaddup." He produces a laminated card and I make a show of looking at it. It says, basically, that someone who may or may not be in front of me works for the Office of Naval Intelligence-assuming I'd know an ONI pass if I tripped over one by accident. I think for a moment that he's unusually trusting for a law enforcement officer-they usually make with the guns before they go in-then I realise why and stifle a shudder. His eyes are dead, and there's a funny-looking scar on his forehead, which means the mind animating the body is probably in a bunker miles away. "As far as I'm concerned, today you are a tourist. If you're still here tomorrow I will have to investigate the possibility that you are a foreign national engaged in activities detrimental to the security of this nation. But unless you tell me you're working for the Laundry right here and now, I don't have to act on that information until eighteen hundred hours tomorrow. Am I making myself clear?"

"What's the Laundry?" I ask, doing my best to look puzzled.

He snorts. "Wise guy, huh? Get this through your head-we have wards and sensoids and watchers. We know who you people are, we've got you covered. We know where you live; we know where your dog goes to school. Get it?"

I shrug. "I think you're making a mistake."

"Well." He tries the number four Marine Sergeant glare again, but it bounces off me. "You're wrong. We don't make mistakes. You've just spent the past two hours speaking to a national security asset and we don't like that, Mr. Howard, we don't like it at all. Normally we'd just pull her security clearance and sling her ass on the next flight out, but the piece you've been talking to may be carrying around some items in her head that are not going to be allowed out of this country. Understand? The matter is under review. And if you happen to have overheard anything you shouldn't have, we're not going to let you out either. Luckily for you we happen to know she didn't tell you anything important. Now make yourself a history of not being here, and you'll be all right."