Charles Stross - The Atrocity Archives

"Is that in the FAQ?" I ask.

"I dunno; I don't pay much attention to breeder reproductive rituals," he says, fingering his moustache.

"Thank you, Pinky," I say heavily. He does a little wave and bow, then tips the contents of his glass down his throat. I spend the next minute or two helping save him from choking, and then we have another wee dram. The rest of the afternoon becomes a blur, but when I wake up in bed the next morning I have a stunning hangover, a vague memory of drunkenly talking things over with Mhari for hours on end until it blew up into a flaming row, and I'm on my own.

Situation normal: all fucked up.

TWO DAYS LATER, I AM BOOKED INTO AN ORIENTATION and Objectivity seminar at the Dustbin. Only God and Bridget-and possibly Boris, though he won't say anything-know why I'm booked into an O amp;O course three days after getting off the plane, but something dire will probably happen if I don't turn up.

The Dustbin isn't part of the Laundry, it's regular civil service, so I try to dig up a shirt that isn't too crumpled, and a tie. I own two ties-a Wile E. Coyote tie, and a Mandelbrot set tie that's particularly effective at inducing migraines-and a sports jacket that's going a bit threadbare at the cuffs. Don't want to look too out of place, do I? Someone might ask questions, and after the auto-da-fé I've just been through I do not want anyone mentioning my name in Bridget's vicinity for the next year. I'm halfway to the tube station before I remember that I forgot to shave, and I'm on the train before I notice that I'm wearing odd socks, one brown and one black. But what the hell, I made the effort; if I actually owned a suit I'd be wearing it.

The Dustbin is our name for a large, ornate postmodernist pile on the south bank of the Thames, with green glass curtain walls and a big, airy atrium and potted Swiss cheese plants everywhere there isn't a security camera. The Dustbin is occupied by a bureaucratic organisation famous for its three-hour lunches and impressive history of KGB alumni. This organisation is persistently and mistakenly referred to as MI5 by the popular media. As anyone in the business knows, MI5 was renamed DI5 about thirty years ago; like those Soviet-era maps that misplaced cities by about fifty miles in order to throw American bombers off course, DI5 is helpfully misnamed in order to direct freedom of information requests to the wrong address. (As it happens there is an organisation called MI5; it's in charge of ensuring that municipal waste collection contracts are outsourced to private bidders in a fair and legal manner. So when your Freedom of Information Act writ comes back saying they know nothing about you, they're telling the truth.)

The Dustbin cost approximately two hundred million pounds to construct, has a wonderful view of the Thames and the Houses of Parliament, and is full of rubbish that smells. Whereas we loyal servants of the crown and defenders of the human race against nameless gibbering horrors from beyond spacetime have to labour on in a Victorian rookery of cabbage-coloured plasterboard walls and wheezing steam pipes somewhere in Hackney. That's because the Laundry used to be part of an organisation called SOE-indeed, the Laundry is the sole division of SOE to have survived the bureaucratic postwar bloodletting of 1945-and the mutual loathing between SIS (aka DI6) and SOE is of legendary proportions.

I turn up at the Dustbin and enter via the tradesman's entrance, a windowless door in a fake-marble tunnel near the waterfront. A secretary who looks like she's made of fine bone china waves me through the biometric scanner, somehow manages to refrain from inhaling in my presence (you'd think I hailed from the Pestilence Division at Porton Down), and finally ushers me into a small cubicle furnished with a hard wooden bench (presumably to make me feel at home). The inner door opens and a big, short-haired guy in a white shirt and black tie clears his throat and says, "Robert Howard, this way please." I follow him and he drops one of those silly badge-chains over my head then pushes me through a metal detector and gives me a cursory going over with a wand, airport security style. I grit my teeth. They know exactly who I am and who I work for: they're just doing this to make a point.

He relieves me of my Leatherman multitool, my palmtop computer, my Maglite torch and pocket screwdriver set, the nifty folding keyboard, the MP3 walkman, the mobile phone, and a digital multimeter and patch cable set I'd forgotten about. "What's all this, then?" he asks.

"Do you guys ever go anywhere without your warrant card and handcuffs? Same difference."

"I'll give you a receipt for these," he says disapprovingly, and shoves them in a locker. "Stand on this side of the red line for now." I stand. Something about him makes my built-in police detector peg out; Special Branch acting as uniformed commissionaires? Yeah, right. "Present this on your way out to collect your stuff. You may now cross the red line. Follow me, do not, repeat not , open any closed doors or enter any areas where a red light is showing, and don't speak to anyone without my say-so."

I follow my minder through a maze of twisty little cubicle farms, all alike, then up three floors by elevator, then down a corridor where the Swiss cheese plants are turning yellow at the edges from lack of daylight, and finally to the door of what looks like a classroom. "You can talk now; everyone else in this class is cleared to at least your level," he says. "I'll come collect you at fifteen hundred hours. Meanwhile, go anywhere you want on this level-there's a canteen where you'll have lunch, toilet's round that corner there-but don't leave this floor under any circumstances."

"What if there's a fire?" I ask.

He looks at me witheringly: "We'd arrest it. I'll see you at three o'clock," he says. "And not before."

I enter the classroom, wondering if teacher is in yet.

"Ah, Bob, nice to see you. Have a seat. Hope you found us okay?"

I get a sinking feeling: it's Nick the Beard. "I'm fine, Nick," I say. "How's Cheltenham?" Nick is some sort of technical officer from CESG, based out at Cheltenham along with the other wiretap folks. He drops round the Laundry every so often to make sure all our software is licensed and we're only running validated COTS software purchased via approved suppliers. Which is why, whenever we get word that he's about to visit, I have to run around rebooting servers like crazy and loading the padded-cell environments we keep around purely to placate CESG so they don't blacklist our IT processes and get our budget lopped off at the knees. Despite that, Nick is basically okay, which is why I get the sinking feeling; I don't enjoy treating nice guys like they're agents of Satan or Microsoft salesmen.

"They moved me out of the hole on the map two months ago," he says. "I'm based here full-time now. Miriam's got a job in the city, so we're thinking of moving. Have you met Sophie? I think she's running this course today."

"Don't think so. Who else is coming? What do you know about, um, Sophie? Nobody even showed me a course synopsis; I'm not sure why I'm here."

"Oh, well then." He rummages in his brief case and pulls out a sheet of paper, hands it to me: Orientation and Objectivity 120.4: Overseas Liaison.

I start reading: This seminar is intended to provide inductees with the correct frame of mind for conducting negotiations with representatives of allied agencies. Common pitfalls are discussed with a view to inculcating a culture of best practice. A proactive approach to integrating operational agreements with extraterritorial parties is deprecated, and correct protocol for requesting diplomatic assistance is introduced. Status: completion of this seminar and associated coursework is mandatory for foreign postings in Category 2 (nonallied) positions.