Charles Stross - The Atrocity Archives

She glances at the nurse. "Up to him." She nods at me, then some misplaced piece of Metropolitan Police customer relations training kicks in on autopilot: "Have a nice day, now."

I CHECK INTO THE LAUNDRY VIA THE BACK DOOR. It's three in the afternoon and a light rain is falling: mild breeze from the southeast, cloud cover at 90 percent, a beautiful match for my mood. I head for my cubicle and find it unchanged from when I was last here, more than a week ago: there's a coffee cup containing some amazingly dead dregs, a pile of unread unclassified memos, and a bunch of yellowing Post-it notes saying SEE ME plastered all over my terminal and keyboard.

I drop into the chair in front of the terminal and poke listlessly at the decaying hayrick of email that's cluttering up my user account. Oddly, there doesn't seem to be a lot from more than one day into the trip. That's kind of strange: I should be deluged with stupid nonsense from HR, requests for software upgrades from the losers in Accounting, and peremptory reports for the GDP of Outer Mongolia in 1928 from Angleton-well, not the latter.

I kick back for a moment and stare at the ceiling. There are a couple of coffee-coloured stains up there, relics of who-knows-what mishap, deep in the Precambrian era of Laundry history. Rorschach-like, they call up the texture of Alan's skin: brown, loose, looking burned from the inside out. I glance away. For a moment even the fossil Post-it notes are preferable to thinking about what I have to do next.

Then the door opens. "Robert!" I look round. It's Harriet, and I know something's wrong because Bridget is lurking behind her, face a contemplative middle-management mask, and she's clutching a bunch of blue-covered files. "Where've you been hiding? We've been looking for you for days."

"I don't know if you're cleared," I respond wearily. I think I can see what's coming.

"Would you please come with us?" says Bridget, voicing the order as a request. "We have some things to talk about."

Harriet backs out of the cramped doorway and I haul myself upright and let them march me down the corridor and up the stairs to a vacant conference room, all dusty pine veneer and dead flies trapped between perpetually closed Venetian blinds. "Have a seat." There are four chairs at the table, and as I glance round I notice that we seem to have picked up an escort: Eric the Ancient Security Officer, a dried-up prune of a former RAF sergeant whose job is to lock doors, confiscate papers left lying on unoccupied desks, and generally make a pestilential nuisance of himself-a sinecure for the irreformably officious.

"What's this about?" I place both hands palms-down on the table.

"It's about several things, as a matter of fact," begins Harriet. "Your controller and I have been worried for some months now about your timekeeping." She plonks a thin blue file down on the table. "We note that you're seldom in the department before 10 A.M., and your observance of core hours falls short of the standard expected of an employee."

Bridget picks up the tag-team prosecution: "Now, we understand that you're used to working occasional off-shift hours, being called out on those odd occasions when there's a problem with one of the servers. But you haven't been filling out variance form R-70 each time you've put in these hours, and without an audit trail I'm afraid we can't automatically accept requests for time off in lieu. According to our records you've been taking off an average of two unscheduled days per month-which could get us, your supervisors, into serious trouble if Audit Bureau were to get interested."

Harriet clears her throat. "Simply put, we can't cover for you anymore. In fact-"

Bridget is shaking her head. "This latest escapade is unacceptable, too. You've absented yourself from work for five consecutive working days without following either the approved sick/leave-of-absence procedure or applying to your department head for a holiday variance or even compassionate leave. This sort of thing is not only antisocial-think of the additional work you've made for everybody else who's been covering your absence!-but it's a gross violation of procedures." She pronounces the last phrase with the sort of distaste usually reserved by the tabloid press for ministers caught soliciting on Hampstead Heath. "We simply cannot overlook this."

Harriet nods. "And then there's what Eric found in your mailbox."

By this time my neck is aching as I try to keep my eyes on all three of them at the same time. What the hell's going on? Harriet and Bridget administering a procedural mugging is all very well, and I'm damned if I'll let them plant a written warning on my personnel file without an appeal. But Eric's the departmental security officer. What's he in here for?

"Very bad indeed, young fellow," he quavers. And now Bridget barely tries to conceal a triumphant, somewhat feral grin as she plants a raw printout of an email message on the tabletop. "Subject: Some Notes Toward a Proof of Polynomial Completeness in Hamiltonian Networks." My mind goes blank for a moment, then I remember the black-bag job, Croxley Industrial Estate, the hum of servers at midnight and security guards hiding under their desks. And my stomach goes icy cold.

"What's this about?" asks Bridget.

"I think you've got some explaining to do," opines Eric, peering at me with watery blue eyes like an elderly vulture contemplating a wildebeest that's just made the terminal mistake of drinking from a poisoned watering hole.

My stomach feels like ice, but the sense of gathering outrage at the back of my head is like a red-hot band. As I see them watching me with varied degrees of expectancy I feel a flash of raw anger: I press my hands down on the tabletop because I really feel like punching somebody in the face, and that wouldn't be the right way to handle this situation.

"You have no need to know," I say as firmly as possible.

Harriet's smile slips first. "I'm your team leader," she says sternly. "You aren't in a position to tell me what I need to know."

" Fuck that." I stand up. "Minute this, if you're going to start writing it down: I want it noted that I deny all accusations, that my actions are justified. I am not going to be party to a procedural lynch mob held on spurious grounds. You don't have need to know and I don't have permission to tell you. If you want to take this further I insist that you take it up with Angleton."

"Angleton-" Now Bridget's smile has slipped, too. Eric is blinking rapidly, confused. I pick on him.

"Let's put this on Angleton's desk," I say soothingly. "He'll know what to do with it."

"If you say so-" Eric looks uncertain. He's been around so long that he doesn't have to imagine the reasons behind Angleton's mystique: he knows. He almost looks afraid.

"Come on."

I grab the papers off the table, yank the door open and march out. Behind me, Bridget protests: "You can't!"

"I bloody can," I snarl over my shoulder, speeding up to a trot as I head for his basement lair. "You bloody see if I can!" I've got a fistful of accusations and a startled Harriet flapping after me: that's all I need. Fucking departmental politics, see where it gets you.

Angleton's outer vestibule; the door gapes open. I barge right in, startling the spotty young geek who's threading microfilm between the Memex's rollers. "Boss!" I call.

The inner door swings open. "Howard. We were just discussing you. Enter."

I slide to a halt on the green carpet, in front of the great olive-coloured metal desk. I hold up the papers. "Bridget and Harriet," I say. "Oh, and Eric."

Andy leans against the wall next to Angleton's desk and whistles quietly. "You sure know how to make friends and influence people."

"Silence, please." Angleton leans forward, "Ms. Brody. May I ask what you're trying to pin on our young friend here?"