Charles Stross - Equoid

Bob! Are you busy right now? Id like a moment of your time.

Those thirteen words never bode wellalthough coming from my new manager, Iris, theyre less doom-laden than if they were falling from the lips of some others I could name. In the two months Ive been working for her Iris has turned out to be the sanest and most sensible manager Ive had in the past five years. Which is saying quite a lot, really, and Im eager to keep her happy while Ive got her.

Be with you in ten minutes, I call through the open door of my office; got a query from HR to answer first. Human Resources have teeth, here in the secretive branch of the British government known to its inmates as the Laundry; so when HR ask you to do their homeworkahem, provide ones opinion of an applicants suitability for a job openingyou give them priority over your regular work load. Even when its pretty obvious that theyre taking the piss.

I am certain that Mr. Lee would make an extremely able addition to the Office Equipment Procurement Team, I type, if he was not alreadyaccording to your own goddamn database, if youd bothered to check ita lieutenant in the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army Jiangshi Brigade. Who presumably filled out the shouldnt-have-been-published-on-the-internet job application on a drunken dare, or to test our vetting procedures, or something. Consequently I suspect that he would fail our mandatory security background check at the first hurdle. (As long as the vetting officer isnt also a PLA mole.)

I hit send and wander out into the neon tube overcast where Iris is tapping her toes. Your place or mine?

Mine, says Iris, beckoning me into her cramped corner office. Have a chair, Bob. Somethings come up, and I think its right up your street. She plants herself behind her desk, leans back in her chair, and preps her pitch. Itll get you out of the office for a bit, and if HR are using you to stomp all over the dreams of upwardly-mobile Chinese intelligence operatives it means youre

Underutilized. Yeah, whatever. I wave it off. But its true: since I sorted out the funny stuff in the basement at St. Hildas Ive been bored. The day-to-day occupation of the average secret agent mostly consists of hurry up and wait. In my case, that means filling in on annoying bits of administrative scutwork and handling upgrades to the departmental networkwhen Im not being called upon to slay multi-tentacled horrors from beyond spacetime. (Which doesnt happen very often, actually, for which I am profoundly grateful.) You said its out of the office?

Yes. She smiles; she knows shes planted the hook. A bit of fresh country air, Bobyoure too pallid. But tell me she leans forwardwhat do you know about horses?

The equine excursion takes me by surprise. Uh? I shake my head. Four legs, hooves, and a bad attitude? Iris shakes her head, so I try again: Go with a carriage like, er, love and marriage?

No, Bob, I was wonderingdid you ever learn to ride?

What, you meanwait, were not talking about bicycles here, right? From her reaction I dont think thats the answer she was looking for. Im a city boy. As the photographer said, you should never work with animals or small children if you can avoid it. Whats come up, a dressage emergency?

Not exactly. Her smile fades. Its a shame, it would have made this easier.

Made what easier?

I could have sworn HR said you could ride. She stares at me pensively. Never mind. Too late to worry about has-beens now. Hmm. Anyway, it probably doesnt matteryoure married, so I dont suppose youre a virgin, either. Are you?

Get away! Virgins? That particular myth is associated with unicorns, which dont exist, any more than vampires, dragons, or mummiesalthough I suppose if you wrapped a zombie in bandages youd get astop that. In my head, confused stories about Lady Godiva battle with media images of tweed-suited shotgun-wielding farmers. Do you need someone who can ride? Because I dont think I can learn in

No, Bob, I need you. Or rather, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs needs a liaison officer who just happens to have your background and proven track record in she waves her left handputting down infestations.

Do they? I do a double-take at putting down infestations. Are they sure thats what they need?

Yes, they are. Or rather, they know that when they spot certain signs, they call us. She pulls open a desk drawer and removes a slim folder, its cover bearing the Crowned Portcullis emblem beneath an elder sign. Take this back to your office and read it, she tells me. Return it to the stacks when youre done. Then you can spend the rest of the afternoon thinking of ways to politely tell HR to piss up a rope, because tomorrow morning youre getting on a train to Hove in order to lend a DEFRA inspector a helping hand.

Youre serious? I boggle at her. Youre sending me to do what? Inspect a farm?

I dont want to prejudice your investigation. Theres a livery stable. Just hook up with the man from The Archers, take a look around, and phone home if anything catches your attention.

She slides the file across my desk and I open the flyleaf. It starts with TOP SECRET and a date round about the battle of the Somme, crossed out and replaced with successively lower classifications until fifteen years ago it was marked down to MILDLY EMBARRASSING NO TABLOIDS. Then I flip the page and spot the title. Hang on

Shoo, she says, a wicked glint in her eyes. Have fun!

I shoo, smarting. I know a set-up when I see oneand Ive been conned.

To understand why I knew Id been tricked, you need to know who I am and what I do. Assuming youve read this far without your eyeballs boiling in your skull, its probably safe to tell you that my names Bob Howardat least, for operational purposes; true names have power, and we dont like to give extradimensional identity thieves the keys to our soulsand I work for a secret government agency known to its inmates as the Laundry. It morphed into its present form during the Second World War, ran the occult side of the conflict with the Thousand Year Reich, and survives to this day as an annoying blob somewhere off to the left on the org chart of the British intelligence services, funded out of the House of Lords black budget.

Magic is a branch of applied mathematics, and I started out studying computer science (which is no more about computers than astronomy is about building really big telescopes). These days I specialize in applied computational demonology and general dogsbody work around my department. The secret service has never really worked out how to deal with people like me, who arent admin personnel but didnt come up through the Oxbridge civil service fast-track route. In fact, I got into this line of work entirely by accident: if your dissertation topic leads you in the wrong direction youd better hope that the Laundry finds you and makes you a job offer you cant refuse before the things youve unintentionally summoned up get bored talking to you and terminate your viva voce with prejudice.

After a couple of years of death by bureaucratic snu-snu (too many committee meetings, too many tedious IT admin jobs) I volunteered for active duty, without any clear understanding that it would mean more years of death by boredom (too many committee meetings, too many tedious IT jobs) along with a side-order of mortal terror courtesy of tentacle monsters from beyond spacetime.

As I am now older and wiser, not to mention married and still in possession of my sanity, I prefer my work life to be boringly predictable these days. Which it is, as a rule, but then along come the nuisance jobsthe Laundry equivalent of the way the US Secret Service always has to drop round for coffee, a cake, and a brisk interrogation with idiots who boast about shooting the president on Yahoo! Chat.