The Nightmare Stacks: A Laundry Files novel by Charles Stross

Author:Charles Stross
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780356505350
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2016-06-22T21:00:00+00:00

12: LA CAGE AUX FOLLES

Alex stands in the open front doorway. Cassie squats on the front lawn, clutching her knees, her back tense. They are serenaded by distant traffic and barking dogs. For a moment he’s torn. He ought to help out with the mess indoors, make sure Mum is all right and that Mack (who is clearly having a terrible time) isn’t traumatized. But he has a horrible feeling that if he doesn’t talk to Cassie right now he’ll be making a huge mistake.

He comes up behind her and kneels. “You’re not human, are you?” he says.

“No. Are you?”

“I’m —” He stops dead, rephrases what he was about to say. “I used to be.”

“Well then. What would you do if I said I’m trying to be? I mean, I like it here. Only I’m not very good at faking being one of you.”

“You’re good enough for me,” he says, carefully feeling his way through the swamp of assumptions.

“Oh, you poor fool,” she murmurs sadly, leaning back against him.

Alex thinks very hard for a few seconds. Then he asks, “Why are you here?” Meaning, Why are we having this conversation?

She is silent for a few seconds. “Alex, when I asked you to come with me to meet my family I did not mean you ill. But I have to take you, do you understand? I am forced to do so. An obligation – I’m not sure that’s the right word? A compulsion that I can’t break, perhaps.” She falls silent again. Then, just as he’s about to ask her to explain, she continues: “I don’t like my father, and my stepmother hates me and wants me dead. At best they will try to use you against me, or me against you. Do you understand?”

Alex understands let’s-you-and-him-fight games all too well, but something about Cassie’s vehemence scares him. “Not really. Why do you have to introduce me if they’re so bad?”

“Because he’s my —” She shakes her head and half-turns towards him. Her expression is one of mute misery. Alex wraps his arms around her and she tucks her chin into the side of his neck. Her ears quiver like a frightened rabbit’s. She’s warm, and he can feel her heartbeat, hear the hiss and sigh of blood in her arteries, the ebb and flow of air in her lungs.

She’s not human, he thinks. But neither am I. And he’s torn in multiple directions by his own ignorance and the urgent sense of impending crisis. How did she find him? Why did she find him? (Because he can’t kid himself that this is nothing to do with work.) What is she, and have her kind been living in the shadows all along, or – did she come here from somewhere else? What— He stops. There’s no safe way out of this. “What kind of person are you?” he asks, half-afraid of what she’ll tell him.

“I’m a—” She pulls back slightly, frowning faintly. “I’m of the People. That’s how our name for our own kind translates into your tongue: not very helpful, is it?” He nods encouragingly.

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