The Nightmare Stacks: A Laundry Files novel by Charles Stross Read Free Book Online Page A

viciously to hang on to its status-symbol headquarters building.
    Meanwhile, the temporary Arndale Centre office makes the New Annex look like a five-star luxury hotel. Take an early 1970s British copy of an early 1960s American shopping mall – small, dingy, and with parking spaces sized for 1950s runabouts. Cycle it through four or five recessions and a couple of renovations – a real American mall would have been bulldozed and rebuilt three times already by now – then, as the most recent recession bites, turn the old stock rooms into cramped offices aimed at neckbeard-wearing, flat-white-swilling hipster wannabes who can’t cut it in London but oh so desperately want to be cool. Allow the offices to fester for three or four years while the hipster startups go bust, then rent them out as payday loan call centers and, finally, as overflow offices for the surviving rump of Her Majesty’s Civil Service – the bits that can’t be outsourced, and desperately need short-term lets.
    It’s all a bit of a come-down to Alex, who until recently studied in the Hogwartsesque ambiance of Oxford University, then toiled in a blue-chip investment bank’s opulent London headquarters. He grits his teeth and trudges up the scuffed concrete steps. They’re dimly lit by flickering fluorescent tubes. The lack of natural daylight is welcome in view of his peculiar condition, but it’s not exactly a luxurious affordance: quite the opposite, in fact.
    There is a front desk at the top of the stairs in front of the rat’s warren of windowless cubbyholes that pass for offices here. The security guard seated there startles as Alex opens the fire door, and reaches for a hidden button as he speaks. “Sir, you can’t wear that —”
    Alex raises the visor on his full-face motorcycle helmet. “Give me a sec,” he says irritably, fumbling with the chin strap. He rode here on a rattly old Honda moped with L-plates, which he’s left leaning against a concrete pillar in the rooftop car park. He bought it yesterday for the princely sum of five hundred pounds. It’ll probably fail its next MOT test, but it’s a great excuse for wearing a helmet between hotel and office. He pulls the offending item off. “Alex Schwartz, from the New Annex. I’m supposed to report to Mrs. Knight? I’m hot-desking here for the next two weeks…”
    Juggling helmet in arm, he worms a hand inside his jacket and pulls out his warrant card. The security jobsworth relaxes slightly, then frowns. “Sir? My list says you were supposed to be here for a meeting at nine?”
    Alex glances at the clock on the wall. It’s a quarter to three in the afternoon. “So? I’m just very, very early.”
    “Sir, it says here, nine a.m…”
    “Hang on.” Alex wishes for a moment that he had three hands: with some difficulty, he pulls out his phone. “Nope, that’s wrong, should be nine p.m. I don’t work mornings. Or daylight hours, for that matter. Is she still in?”
    “I don’t think she’s gone home yet, sir.” The security man looks distinctly perturbed. He thrusts a clipboard at Alex, who for the first time notices a pair of CCTV cameras mounted on a frame behind the guard’s shoulder. He suppresses a shudder. The guard continues: “Would you mind signing in, please?”
    Mrs. Knight has not gone home, and she’s still in her office when Alex knocks on the flimsy plywood door. “Yes?”
    “Alex Schwartz.” He pushes the door open. “I’m here for a meeting; there’s been a screw-up over the time, I only work nights.”
    “Oh, gracious.” She pushes her hair back – Alex is just about experienced enough to recognize a hastily suppressed eye-roll – and waves him into her visitor’s seat. (It’s armless, foam hangs out of one front seat corner, and a suspicious water stain decorates the back.) “Let me see – no, it says nine a.m. in the calendar.” She bats the ball brutally back into his half of the court, crosses her arms, and waits.
    “Well,