The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross

Author:Charles Stross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

SEVEN

CRITICAL-PATH DEPENDENCIES

Pete has learned many things in his four years of working with the Laundry. He’s seen a lot, including some things that he would never have voluntarily signed up for, the sort of horrors that make ex-soldiers sit bolt upright from their sleep, weeping inconsolably. But his former day job—he is still a vicar, and his bishop is remarkably reluctant to raise a fuss about his apparent conscription by a secret government agency devoted to issues which can best be described as ungodly (or worse, wrong godly)—taught him a lot about helping people. And he’s had a lot of practice helping families suffering from experiences that are simultaneously mundane and far more horrifying than anything in a movie: deaths from cancer and dementia, the loss of babies and young children, that sort of thing.

All things considered, he’s coped pretty well. But the cracks are beginning to show in his self-assurance, for he is close to certain that they are all damned. Pete is no biblical literalist, but he can’t ignore the metaphorical stench of brimstone that dogs the Prime Minister’s footsteps. God is gone and Heaven has fallen: Who do you pitch in with, Beelzebub or Satan? He has struggled with this question privately, but can find no better answer than the Senior Auditor’s: We fight on so that something that remembers being human might survive. But now he finds himself riding shotgun while Brains drives through a land overshadowed by amnesia, trying to find common ground with an alfär vampire with autism-spectrum disorder who is hosting a magically induced secondary personality. And the first word that springs to mind for his condition is godforsaken.

“This sacrifice we’re supposed to retrieve,” he says, thinking hard before he continues. “Are they a person? And are we rescuing them from being a sacrifice?” Don’t ask about the Door or the Forgotten Emperor, he thinks uneasily, just take it one step at a time. It’s pretty clear from her intermittent repetitive actions and gaze avoidance that Jon is stressed out. Whoever thought it was a good idea to stick her on a commercial flight to a foreign country on her own was—well, he’ll write them a stiffly worded memo when he gets home, with copious references to the Disability Discrimination Act. Maybe set HR on them about enforcing policy. With the shreds of the Jonquil persona peeling away from the irrefrangible bedrock of Yarisol, the emergent Jon chimera is worryingly fragile. Maybe he’s overly pessimistic and Jon will cohere, but right now the most likely outcome he can see is the PHANG in the back seat going into a noisy meltdown. And the prospect is making the skin on the back of his neck crawl.

“Sacrifice,” echoes Jon, tapping her fingers on the center armrest. “Radio.”

“It’s all right,” Pete says, as calmly as he can with a stressed-out vampire fifty centimeters behind his throat. “Brains, I’m going to try to figure out how the radio works. Jon, there are going to be some loud noises for a minute or so, but I’ll make everything all right.

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