Read Online The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross - Free Book Online
Authors: Charles Stross
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demands.
"Daydreaming, mostly." What's going on? I can't
seem to stop myself answering everything they ask, however
embarrassing. "I can't sleep in lecture theatres and you can't read a
book when there are only eight students. I kept an ear open in case he
said something interesting but mostly—"
"Did you bear Frederick Ironsides any ill will?"
My mouth is moving before I can get control: "Yes. Fred was a
fuckwit. He kept asking me stupid questions, was too
dumb to learn from his own mistakes, made work for other people to mop
up after him, and held a number of opinions too tiresome to list. He
shouldn't have been in the course and I told him to tell Dr. Vohlman,
but he didn't listen. Fred was a waste of airspace and one of the most
powerful bogon emitters in the Laundry."
"Bogons?"
"Hypothetical particles of cluelessness. Idiots
emit bogons, causing machinery to malfunction in their presence. System
administrators absorb bogons, letting the machinery work again. Hacker
folklore—"
"Did you kill Frederick Ironsides?"
"Not deliberately—yes—you've got my
tongue—no—dammit, he did it himself! Damn fool shorted out the
containment wards during a practical so I hit him with the
extinguisher, but only after he was possessed.
Self-defence. What kind of spell is this?"
"No opinions, Robert, facts only and just the
facts, please. Did you hit Frederick Ironsides with the fire
extinguisher because you hated him?"
"No, because I was scared shitless that the
thing in his head was going to kill us all. I don't hate him—he's just
a bore but that isn't a capital offence. Usually."
The woman on his right makes a note on her pad.
My inquisitor nods: I can feel chains of invisible silver holding my
tongue still, chains binding me to the star chamber carpet I stand
upon. "Good. Just one more question, then. Of the students on your
training course, who least belonged there?"
"Me." Before I can bite my tongue, the
compulsion forces me to finish the sentence: "I could have been
teaching it."
The sea crashes on the shore
endlessly, a grey continuum of churning water that meets the sky
halfway to infinity. Shingle crunches as I walk along what passes for a
beach here, past the decaying graveyard that topples gently down the
slope to the waters below. (Every year the water claims another foot
off the headland; Dunwich is slowly sinking beneath the waves, until
finally the church bells will toll with the tide.)
Seagulls scream and whirl and snap in the air
above me like dervishes.
I came here on foot to get away from the
dormitory and the training units and the debriefing offices built from
what used to be two rows of ramshackle cottages and a big farmhouse.
There are no roads in or out of Dunwich; the Ministry of Defence took
over the entire village back in 1940 and redirected the local lanes,
erasing it from the map and the collective consciousness of Norfolk as
if it never existed. Ramblers are repulsed by the thick hedges that
surround us on two sides and the cliff that protects its third flank.
When the Laundry inherited Dunwich from MI5, they
added subtler wards; anyone approaching cross-country will begin to
develop a deep sense of unease a mile or so outside the perimeter. As
it is, the only way in or out is by boat—and our watery friends will
take care of any unwelcome visitors smaller than a nuclear submarine.
I need space to think. I've got a lot to think
about.
The Board of Enquiry found that I was not
responsible for the accident. What's more, they approved my transfer to
active status, granted my course completion certificate, and blew
through the department like a hot desert wind driving stinging
sand-grains of truth before it. With their silver-tongue bindings and
executive authority the old broom swept clean and left everything
behind tidy—if a little shaky, with all the nasty unwashed linen
exposed to the cold-eyed view of authority. I would not have liked to
answer to their jackal-headed servitors if
"Daydreaming, mostly." What's going on? I can't
seem to stop myself answering everything they ask, however
embarrassing. "I can't sleep in lecture theatres and you can't read a
book when there are only eight students. I kept an ear open in case he
said something interesting but mostly—"
"Did you bear Frederick Ironsides any ill will?"
My mouth is moving before I can get control: "Yes. Fred was a
fuckwit. He kept asking me stupid questions, was too
dumb to learn from his own mistakes, made work for other people to mop
up after him, and held a number of opinions too tiresome to list. He
shouldn't have been in the course and I told him to tell Dr. Vohlman,
but he didn't listen. Fred was a waste of airspace and one of the most
powerful bogon emitters in the Laundry."
"Bogons?"
"Hypothetical particles of cluelessness. Idiots
emit bogons, causing machinery to malfunction in their presence. System
administrators absorb bogons, letting the machinery work again. Hacker
folklore—"
"Did you kill Frederick Ironsides?"
"Not deliberately—yes—you've got my
tongue—no—dammit, he did it himself! Damn fool shorted out the
containment wards during a practical so I hit him with the
extinguisher, but only after he was possessed.
Self-defence. What kind of spell is this?"
"No opinions, Robert, facts only and just the
facts, please. Did you hit Frederick Ironsides with the fire
extinguisher because you hated him?"
"No, because I was scared shitless that the
thing in his head was going to kill us all. I don't hate him—he's just
a bore but that isn't a capital offence. Usually."
The woman on his right makes a note on her pad.
My inquisitor nods: I can feel chains of invisible silver holding my
tongue still, chains binding me to the star chamber carpet I stand
upon. "Good. Just one more question, then. Of the students on your
training course, who least belonged there?"
"Me." Before I can bite my tongue, the
compulsion forces me to finish the sentence: "I could have been
teaching it."
The sea crashes on the shore
endlessly, a grey continuum of churning water that meets the sky
halfway to infinity. Shingle crunches as I walk along what passes for a
beach here, past the decaying graveyard that topples gently down the
slope to the waters below. (Every year the water claims another foot
off the headland; Dunwich is slowly sinking beneath the waves, until
finally the church bells will toll with the tide.)
Seagulls scream and whirl and snap in the air
above me like dervishes.
I came here on foot to get away from the
dormitory and the training units and the debriefing offices built from
what used to be two rows of ramshackle cottages and a big farmhouse.
There are no roads in or out of Dunwich; the Ministry of Defence took
over the entire village back in 1940 and redirected the local lanes,
erasing it from the map and the collective consciousness of Norfolk as
if it never existed. Ramblers are repulsed by the thick hedges that
surround us on two sides and the cliff that protects its third flank.
When the Laundry inherited Dunwich from MI5, they
added subtler wards; anyone approaching cross-country will begin to
develop a deep sense of unease a mile or so outside the perimeter. As
it is, the only way in or out is by boat—and our watery friends will
take care of any unwelcome visitors smaller than a nuclear submarine.
I need space to think. I've got a lot to think
about.
The Board of Enquiry found that I was not
responsible for the accident. What's more, they approved my transfer to
active status, granted my course completion certificate, and blew
through the department like a hot desert wind driving stinging
sand-grains of truth before it. With their silver-tongue bindings and
executive authority the old broom swept clean and left everything
behind tidy—if a little shaky, with all the nasty unwashed linen
exposed to the cold-eyed view of authority. I would not have liked to
answer to their jackal-headed servitors if
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