Charles Stross - The Atrocity Archives

"Fine, fine." He passes me a somewhat shop-soiled video camera manual. "Give this a read. And this." He hands me a bundle of typed pages with bright red SECRET headers, then passes me the lash-up. I look it over dubiously: there's an arrow on top of the neural network box with the caption THIS SIDE TOWARD ENEMY, and a flat-panel camcorder viewfinder on the back so you can pretend it's just a computer game you're playing with while you kill people.

What this gadget does violates the second law of thermodynamics: nobody's quite sure why it's so specific, but the medusa effect seems to be some kind of observationally mediated quantum tunnelling process. It turns out that something like 0.01 percent of all the atomic nuclei of carbon in the target zone acquire eight extra protons and a balancing number of neutrons, turning 'em into highly electronegative silicon ions. A roughly balancing proportion of carbon nuclei just seem to vanish, wrecking whatever bonds they were part of.

"How much damage can this thing do to a person?" I ask.

"How much damage will a stubby shotgun do?" Pike responds. "Enough. Silicon-hydrogen bonds aren't stable. Don't point it at anyone and don't switch it on and most of all don't hit the OBSERVE button unless I tell you to. Which I won't, unless you are very, very unlucky. Or unless you decide to blow your feet off by accident, which is your own lookout."

"Understood." I switch off the viewfinder and power down both cameras then gingerly put the gadget down. "You aren't expecting trouble by any chance?"

Pike stares at me. "No, it's my job to see that you don't get into trouble," he says. I take a second to recognise the expression: he's wondering if I'm going to be a liability.

"Tell me what to do and I'll do it," I say. "You're the expert on this."

"Am I?" He looks sceptical. "You're the occult specialist, you tell me what we're up against." He bends down, picks up a rebreather regulator, begins stripping off the insulation panels in an absent-minded sort of way. "I mean it. What are you expecting to find on the other side of this gate?"

Something clicks in my mind: "You've gone through gates before, right?"

He glances at me. "Maybe. Maybe not." I realise that he isn't looking at the rebreather as he strips it: he's got it down to a set of motions he can run through in total darkness. Then it hits me: I'm going to be hopelessly dependent on these guys for just about everything more challenging than breathing. Liability, me? Maybe I don't know what I'm getting myself into after all. But it's a bit late to back out now.

"Well." I lick my suddenly dry lips. "This one, we hope the only things waiting for us are a bunch of superannuated Nazis who've kidnapped one of our scientists. Trouble is, this bunch sent someone through to California, and London, and maybe to Rotterdam, who isn't too superannuated to be banging heads. So I'll take a rain check on the predictions, if you don't mind-expect the worst and hope you're disappointed."

"Indeed." His tone is dry as he adds, "I love these bastard colostomy-fucking reconnaissance jobs, I really do."

THEY FORCE ME TO CATCH A COUPLE OR THREE hours sleep by sticking a needle full of phenobarbitone into my left arm and making me count backward from ten. I never make it past five; then there's a pain in my other arm and Pike is shaking my shoulder. "Wake up," he says. "Briefing in five minutes, action in half an hour."

"Euurgh," I say, or something equally coherent. He passes me a mug full of something that might be mislabelled as coffee and I sit up and try to drink it while he disposes of the used antidote syrette. I have a vague memory of dreams: eyes with luminous worms swimming in them, eyes like a friendly death staring at me across an electrodynamic summoning trap. I shudder as a little rat-faced guy sits down opposite me and opens up a zippered and incongruously expensive-looking golf bag.

Pike takes it upon himself to introduce us. "Bob, this is Lance-Corporal Blevins. Roland, this is Bob Howard, a Laundry necromancer."

Rat-face looks at me and grins, baring unfeasibly large and yellow incisors. "Pleased ter meet yer," he says, pulling an iron out of his golf bag-one with telescopic sights and thick foam insulation over most of the visible surfaces. Vacuum-adapted, I realise: these guys have been exploring gates before. "Allus nice ter 'ave a bit of animal with us."

"Animal?"

"Magic," Pike explains. "Listen, you stay close to me or Roland unless I tell you otherwise. He's the squadron backup: what this means is, he'll either be in the rear or deployed to cover a quick in-and-out. He'll park you somewhere safe and keep an eyeball on you if I'm too busy to nursemaid."

"Diamond geezer, mate," Blevins says, winking horribly, then he pulls out a bunch of jeweller's screwdrivers and goes to work on his gun, fiddling with the sights.

What I think is, You guys really know how to make someone feel wanted, but I end up saying nothing because, once I get my ego out of the way, Pike is right. I am not a soldier, I know nothing about what to do and what not to do, and I'm not even in good physical condition. Fundamentally, I guess I am a liability to these guys, except for my specialist expertise. It's not a very pleasant thought, but they're not going out of their way to rub it in, so the least I can do is be polite. And hope Mo is all right.

"Wot you fink I should load up on?" Roland asks. "I got silver bullets in seven point sixty-two, but they tend to tumble in low pressure regimes like wot's on the other side of this gate-"

"Briefing first," Pike says. "Let's go."

The hotel bar is barely recognisable. Scaffolding and jacks in every corner support a protective raft just under the ceiling; there's a nest of wiring and monitors on the bar top, and some sort of stair-climbing robot camera waiting just inside the doorway. Alan-Captain Barnes-is waiting next to a woman who's sort of slumped all over the robot's control panel, muttering to it and twiddling a circuit tester in a meaningful way. A dozen other men in pressure suits and camouflage overalls are leaning against the walls or sitting down: half of them have backpacks and full face-covering helmets to hand, but there's a surprising shortage of guns and I'm the only one in the room without a notepad-until I pull out my palmtop, which I've been carrying in a pocket more or less continuously since I was ejected from my bedroom.

There's not much idle chatter: the mood in the room is pretty sombre, and Alan gets down to business at once, like a headmaster conducting a staff meeting. "The situation we're facing is an open gate, class four, with unknown-but undesirable-parties on the other side. They've snatched one of our scientists. A secondary mission goal is to get her back alive. But the primary goal is to identify the parties responsible and, if they are who we think they are, neutralise them and then withdraw, ensuring the gate closes behind us. Let me stress that we are not 100 percent certain who we're up against, so identification and threat characterisation are our first tasks. This isn't as clear-cut a job as we'd like, so I want you all to focus on it and give it a bit of thought. First, the situation. Derek?"

Derek from the Laundry, Derek the dried-up old accountancy clerk, stands up and delivers a terse, comprehensive sitrep as if he's done it a thousand times before. Who'd have thought it? "Ahnenerbe werewolf colony left over from Himmler's last stand." Mumble. "Mukhabarat." Cough. "Republican guard." Mutter. "Kidnapped scientist." Mumble. I don't need to take notes; near as I can tell I've heard it all before. Glancing round I try to catch Angleton's eye-just in time to see him slipping out the back. Then Derek finishes. "Back to you, Captain."

"Our mission is to take a look on the other side of the hill," says Alan. "Bringing back kidnapped scientists and neutralising undesirables are tactical tasks, but our number one strategic priority is to do a full threat evaluation and ensure word gets back home. So, step one is to send through a crawler and make sure there isn't a welcome party waiting for us on the other side. If it's clear, we insert. Step two"-he pauses-"we secure the other side, emplace the demolition package in case things go to pieces on us, then improvise depending on what we find." He grins, briefly. "I love surprises. Don't you?"