The Apocalypse Codex (13 page)

I enter, and close the door behind me. Pinky—not his real name—is hunched over his computer’s screen, messing around with a digitizer pen. After a moment he blinks and looks up at me. “Bob?” He grins enormously and comes bounding out from behind the desk. “Bob!”

“Long time no—”

“Bob! You really must see this! It’s brilliant!” He zips across the room and begins sifting through a mountain of what looks at first sight like junk (but probably isn’t). “You’re going to love this,” he promises, turning round and offering me a slim box. After a second I recognize it.

“It’s a camera, right?” Digital, subtype: compact. I take it.

Of an instant, Pinky’s expression is all concern. “Hold on a minute! Don’t switch it on yet.”

I turn it over in my hands. “Huh.” There’s a legend on the front: Fuji FinePix Real 3D. Suddenly I remember the seagull gate guardians and my blood turns to ice. “Jesus, Pinky. Tell me this isn’t what I think it is?”

“I don’t know, Bob.” He cocks his head on one side. “What
do
you think it is?”

I lick my suddenly dry lips. “What happens if I turn it on?”

He shrugs. “It switches on.”

“And what happens if, say, I took a photograph of you?”

He shrugs again. “It takes a rather crappy 3D photograph. Why?”

“Where’s the special sauce?” I ask tensely.

“On this.” He produces an SD memory card with a flourish. “It’s just a 3D camera until you reflash it with this special firmware.”

“And then…” I lick my lips again. “Don’t tell me. It’s SCORPION STARE in a box that looks like a consumer digital camera. Right?”

“Yup.” And Pinky, the idiot, looks indecently pleased with himself. “Mo said you might be needing a personal defense weapon and, well, you’ve used a basilisk gun before? Only bigger, bulkier, and much crappier.”

You
could
put it that way.

Most of the magic we work with here in the Laundry is about using computational transforms to send messages that induce certain entities from outside our universe to sit up and pay attention. But sometimes there’s cruder stuff.

We’ve known for years that sometime soon we’ll be living through a crisis period; magic gets easier to perform the more people are around to perform it. It’s a computational, cognitive process and humans are cognitive machines…so are computers. We’ve got a population bubble, and a computing bubble, and they coincide. For the next few decades conditions are right for rupture and invasion by entities from outside our universe.

Some folks (ritual magicians) actually do the symbol-manipulation thing in their heads, risking death by Krantzberg syndrome and worse. It’s not an approach to defending the realm that scales, because you can’t take a random reasonably bright teenager and reliably turn them into a sorcerer. But you
can
turn some of them into computer scientists—and a whole lot more into IT support drones who can use a canned toolkit to perform a limited range of occult manipulations.

One of the weapons Her Majesty’s Government is developing to deal with the threat is the SCORPION STARE network. Two or more observing viewpoints—cameras—feeding the right kind of hardware/software network can, shall we say, impose their own viewpoint on whatever they’re looking at. In the case of SCORPION STARE, about ten percent of the carbon nuclei in the target are randomly transformed into silicon nuclei as if by magic. Messy pyrotechnics ensue: gamma radiation, short-lived muons, some really pretty high-energy chemistry, and
lots
of heat. We worked out how to do it by reverse-engineering basilisks and medusae—animals and unfortunate people suffering from a peculiar, and very rare, brain tumor. Now we’ve got defensive camera-emplacements on every high street, networked and ready to be controlled centrally when the balloon goes up. Street cleaning by CCTV-controlled flame thrower.

“What are its capabilities?” I ask Pinky, holding up the camera.

“Right now, it’s running the camera firmware,” he says. “Slide the lens cover down to switch it on. Point, shoot, it’s a camera.” I slide the lens cover down. As expected, the display back lights up. There’s a honking great gunsight frame superimposed over it. I turn it off hastily. “Load the basilisk firmware and you’ll see a gunsight. Point and shoot and instead of taking a snap, it sends a bang.”

“You’ve been practicing on the seagulls,” I accuse. “In Milton Keynes.”

“They’re vermin, Bob. They’ve been driven inland by over-fishing and now they’re spreading disease, attacking waste collections, keeping people awake in the small hours, and carrying away stray cats and small dogs. Next thing you know they’ll be cloning credit cards and planning bank robberies.”

“Yes, but…” I see no point in arguing; it’s not as if I
like
seagulls.

“It’s got an effective range of about a hundred meters, and enough juice to fire eighty times on a single battery charge,” Pinky adds. “It looks innocuous, which is more than you can say for a Glock; you can carry it on an airliner or through a security checkpoint, right?”

I sigh. “I
hate
these things.” Being shot at with them is a good enough reason, in my books.

“So use it wisely!” Pinky beams brightly. “Mo said you’d be calling, so I took the precaution of booking it out to you as a beta tester. Sign here…”

He’s learned from Brains’s mistake last year: he’s got the correct release forms in triplicate,
and
a memorandum of approval from the head of FSE,
and
a fearsome-looking end-user agreement that commands and compels me to ensure that the said device shall be returned to FSE, whether intact or in pieces, and all usage documented—this isn’t going to be a repeat of the JesusPhone fiasco.

“Okay.” I read the small print carefully and sign, repeatedly, in blood before he hands me the rest of the kit—charger, sync cables, spare SD card full of dodgy firmware, and a neck strap. By the time I leave his office, my suit pockets are bulging. But at least if any bad guys try to shoot me I can snap right back.

Interlude

ABSOLUTION

BREAKFAST AT NUMBER TEN.

Normally the Prime Minister and his family dine in the apartment upstairs, in the relative privacy of their home rather than the imposing wood-paneled rooms of state below. But today is different. The PM has invited four of his senior ministers, a handful of senior advisors, and a party of industry leaders to a breakfast meeting in the State Dining Room at 10 Downing Street, his official residence. It’s not a press-the-flesh session—all the invitees have met the PM before—so much as it is a promotional session for one of the PM’s pet hobby horses, the Caring Society initiative.

The Prime Minister is young, pinkly scrubbed and shaved, and privileged: a self-congratulatory scion of the upper social ranks of the Conservative party. He’s bright as a button and sharp as a razor, with a mesmeric oratorical ability that served him brilliantly in his political pre-history as a barrister. He’s an impressive performer—made it to the top of his party less than a decade after entering Parliament. And in no small part it’s because he’s clearly a man with a mission: to restore personal integrity, honesty, and humility to government (and to get government out of people’s private lives and pocket books along the way).

“Good morning,” says the PM, beaming and bobbing slightly as he shakes hands with the chief executive of a private academy trust with eight schools to his name: “Morning, Barry”—to the Home Secretary, an old war horse with pronounced progressive views about the value of rehabilitation over imprisonment (if only because it’s cheaper)—“have you met Raymond before? Barry Jennings, the reverend Raymond Schiller.”

“Can’t say I have.” The Home Secretary’s tone is avuncular, friendly. “Pleased to meet you.” He turns sideways, accepts the offered handshake, and stares into Schiller’s eyes:
So this is the god-botherer Jeremy keeps banging on about? Doesn’t look like much.
It’s always best to keep a weather eye on the PM’s joie du jour, however, lest one be caught out off-message by the carnivorous press. As Barry sizes up the preacher-man, Jeremy—the Prime Minister—keeps on with the grasp’n’greet routine. An aide behind him keeps the hand sanitizer ready.

Schiller smiles and stares right back at the Home Secretary. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr. Jennings,” he says, his voice deep and rich. “I gather we have a mutual interest in saving souls.”

Barry’s eyes crease slightly; then he smiles, slightly less warmly. Religious zeal is not a career asset in British politics; quite the opposite, in fact, and (like about half the members of the current cabinet) Barry’s church attendance is limited to weddings and funerals and affairs of state. “I’m sure you do,” he agrees, amiably enough. “But my job is more concerned with the here-and-now, I’m afraid. I can’t speak for the hereafter.”

“That’s perfectly all right,” Schiller agrees, baring his expensively whitened teeth. “The one generally goes before the other in my experience.”

Other breakfast guests are arriving: the chairman of the largest merchant bank still based in London, a columnist for News International’s leading broadsheet newspaper, the founder of a successful budget airline. Schiller turns his attention to them, working the influx discreetly and professionally. The Home Secretary pays brief attention. He always finds it informative to watch a high-level operator from a related profession at work, but something about Schiller irritates: a hangnail of the mind.

It’s not as if he particularly wants to be here—there are never enough hours in the day when you’re running the Home Office—but it’s the PM’s idea, and Barry has to admit that he’s got a point. Jeremy’s got this bee in his bonnet about enlisting community support for rehabilitation of minor offenders—nothing new there; the twist is that he’s trolling for corporate support. He wants the private sector to pay for uniforms so they can
take pride in their work
while they’re busy picking up the dog turds and used condoms: “building structure for empty lives” is what the PM calls it.
Workfare for chavs
according to the papers. It’s easy to mock, but Jeremy has the same messianic zeal as his last-but-two predecessor, the Vicar. And Barry needs to back him up visibly on this one (as well as discreetly riding herd), lest he and his faction look weak in front of the 1922 Committee and the restless natives encourage one of the Back Bench Neanderthals to mount a leadership challenge. Which would be bad for the party, bad for the country, and very bad indeed for the Home Secretary. So: breakfast for thirty with businessmen and sky pilot. Barry takes a deep breath, and collects himself; then turns to glad-hand the newspaper columnist.

Eventually everyone’s seated and greeted, the coffee is poured, the buffet is opened, and then—stomachs filled—the PM’s chief of staff rises and introduces the first guest speaker. Who is, predictably, the visiting American preacher. Barry sits back with his coffee and fakes up an expression of polite interest as Schiller gets fired up.

“Good morning, my friends.” Schiller beams. There is the usual pro forma boilerplate burble, thanking Jeremy and his staff for delivering unto him a captive audience. Barry can time it to the fractional second. Then Schiller gets the bit between his teeth and everything is somehow
different
. “I’m sure we’re all happy to be here, and grateful for the great spread and our host’s hospitality—and the company. But I think we ought to spare a thought for the unfortunates who aren’t here today, and who never will be: the homeless and the abused, the poor and the sick—and the young men and women with empty lives who every day face an uncaring society that looks away…”

Barry finds himself drifting off on a wave of—not boredom, exactly, which is odd, because boredom is what he would have expected—but euphoria.
How strange,
he thinks dazedly. Schiller, once he hits his groove, isn’t as annoying and preachy as he’d expected. Schiller’s got a vision, a vision of charity and joy that he wants to share with everybody. “Good works are central to faith,” he explains: “My creator wants me to do good, and rewards those who do good. And the best reward is another hard job. The job, my friends, is central, and our job here today is to work out how we’re going to raise tens of thousands of young people out of deprivation and debasement and lend new purpose to their shattered lives.”

Barry submerges again, diving in the torrent of words. Which he finds mildly astonishing because, as a sixty-year-old cynic (risen to the second-highest ministerial tier, but too old to raise his aim to the PM’s office itself) with no little experience in rhetoric himself, he has long considered himself immune to such blandishments. But they feel so
good
. Schiller is painting a picture of redemption, of a joyous coming-together in pursuit of the commonweal that reminds him momentarily of why he went into politics in the first place: the conviction that he can make a difference, change things for the better.

When Schiller finishes, he claps with the rest—then shakes his head, dazed. Schiller is obviously
right
about something. What is it? The Caring Society initiative? Or could it be something deeper? Barry finds it hard to think, because now the airline founder is standing up, striking a pose, outlining his plans to bootstrap a network of community-centric work exchanges to match up the needy with the jobs they so obviously desire—there’s no time to think about Schiller’s inspirational words, and by the time Mr. McGready is wrapping up his pitch the actual neon-limned words themselves have faded into rosy memories.