Read Online The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross - Free Book Online Page A

I were guilty. But, as Andy
pointed out, if being a smart-arse was an offence, the Laundry would
not exist in the first place.
    Mhari moved back into my room after the night of
the party and I haven't dared tell her to move back out again. So far
she hasn't thrown anything at me or threatened to slash her wrists, in
any particular order. (Two months ago, the last time she polled my
suicide interrupt queue, I was so pissed off I just said, "Down, not
across," using a fingernail to demonstrate. That's when she broke the
teapot over my head. I should have taken that as a warning sign.)
    What I've got to think about now is a lot
larger. The business with Fred was a real eye-opener. Do I still want
to put my name on the active service list? Join the Dry Cleaners, visit
strange countries, meet exotic people, and cast death spells at them?
I'm not sure anymore. I thought I was sure, but now I know it
amounts to shivering in a rainstorm most of the time and having to
watch people with worms waggling behind their eyes the rest of it. Is
this what I want to do with my life?
    Maybe. And then again, maybe not.

    There's a large boulder on the shingle ahead of
me; beyond it, a decaying upside-down boat marks the no-go border
within our security perimeter. This is as far away as I can get without
tripping alarms, drawing down security attention, and generally looking
stupid in public. I place a hand on the boulder; it's heavily weathered
and covered in lichen and barnacles. I sit on it and look back down the
beach, back toward Dunwich and the training complex. For a moment, the
world looks hideously solid and reliable, almost as if the comforting
myths of the nineteenth century were true, and everything runs on
clockwork in an orderly, unitary cosmos.
    Somewhere down in the village, Dr. Malcolm
Denver is undergoing induction briefings, orientation lectures,
shoesize measurements, pension adjustments, and being issued with his
departmental toothpaste tube and identification dog tags. He's probably
still a bit pissed off, the way I was four years ago when I was pulled
in after someone—they never told me who—caught me systematically
dumpster-diving through files that were off-limits but inadequately
guarded from network infiltration. It was really just a summer vacation
job between finishing my CS degree and starting postgrad work: making
ends meet doing contract work for the Department of Transport. I smelt
a rat in the woodpile and began to dig, never quite suspecting the full
magnitude of the rodent whose tail I had grabbed hold of. I was pissed
off at first, but over the following four years, spent immersed in the
Laundry Basket—our strange collective ghetto of secret knowledge—I
acquired the basics of this calling. Thaumaturgy is quite as
fascinating as number theory, thank you very much, the hermetic
disciplines descended from Trismegistus as engrossing as the sciences
he dabbled in. But do I want to dedicate myself to working in a secret
field for life?
    I can't very well go back to civvy street;
they'll let me if I ask nicely, but only as long as I agree to have
nothing to do with a wide range of occupations—including everything I
can possibly earn a living at. This will cause
problems, family problems as well as money problems—mum will probably
ignore me and dad will yell about slacking and layabout hippies. Having
a son in the civil service suits them down to the ground: they both get
to ignore the inconvenient evidence of their mistaken marriage and
carry on with their lives, secure in the knowledge that at least they
did the parental thing successfully. Meanwhile, I haven't served long
enough to earn a pension yet. I suppose I could stagnate in tech
support indefinitely, or mutate into management; a generous portion of
the Laundry's payroll is devoted to buying the silence of incompetent
lambs, manufacturing work for people who need something to fill the
time between their first, accidental exposure and final