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

the calendar’s wrong.” Mrs. Knight reminds Alex of a particularly uncooperative type of university administrator he’s met before, a kind he’s never really been able to get a handle on, so he buys time by glancing around. Over the past few months he’s gotten used to the make-do-and-mend ambiance of the New Annex, but even so, this is a distinct step down. “Have you been briefed on OPERA CAPE?” he asks. She nods, almost imperceptibly. “I’m one of them,” he says briskly.
Deal with it.
“So I work nights. Someone obviously cocked up the meeting slot, that’s all.”
    To her credit, Mrs. Knight doesn’t blanch, recoil, or reach for a crucifix. Alex finds this interesting, and starts to pay more attention. She’s in her late forties or early fifties, with tightly permed graying hair. She wears her office suit like a uniform. Ex-military, he guesses, or otherwise accustomed to disciplined austerity. She’s clearly made of stern stuff. Her office fixtures and fittings are beyond shabby, but everything is clean and tidy. “You’re part of Facilities, aren’t you?” he asks. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
    “Oh Lord, they didn’t brief you either, did they?”
Now
the eye-roll comes out to play in earnest. “You’re the second today – do you know a Dr. Russell? He was through here earlier, I think Jack is still sorting out his desk —”
    “He’s a vicar, not a doctor,” Alex says absent-mindedly. “Yes, Pete’s my official mentor. Is he still —”
    “Well then,” she interrupts, standing up, “let’s go find him, grab a meeting room, and hear what you think of the bunker.”
    The Arndale office has a conference room. To Alex’s eye it looks like it was once a store cupboard, or maybe a stock room. Now it’s filled by an outsized boardroom table so large that there is only room for chairs along two edges. A row of mildewed lever arch files slowly collapses on a sagging chipboard shelf on the wall above the far side of the table: Alex makes out the runic inscription
ACCOUNTS PAYABLE 88-89
on the spine of one of the binders. Mrs. Knight parks him at the end farthest from the door with a mug of institutional coffee that is almost exactly the same shade of beige as the carpet, then goes in search of Pete. She doesn’t take long to find him: they’re back almost before Alex has time to zone out.
    “The bunker,” Mrs. Knight begins expectantly. “What did you make of it?”
    Alex cuts to the chase. “Why hasn’t it been condemned? The basement’s flooded, it’s about thirty years overdue for maintenance, and it’s in the middle of nowhere.”
    “Dr. Schwartz, the Civil Service doesn’t simply
abandon
everything it can no longer think of a use for.” She smiles at him, experimentally, and the temperature in the room drops a few degrees. “If it did, your kind would get short shrift, wouldn’t they?” Pete raises a hand as Alex bristles, but she pushes on regardless: “We don’t abandon people – like you – or
things
. The bunker has been underutilized for twenty-three years, but it has certain advantages. Besides being blast-proof, it’s fireproof and has daylight-proof accommodation, doesn’t it? It’s just off the ring road, on a major artery running right into the city center. One might even speculate that with a little modernization to bring it up to scratch it’d make excellent accommodation for photophobic employees?” Her smile is as bright as the dawn.
    “But —” Alex feels unaccountably panicky. The bunker is terrifyingly close to a certain suburban estate near Adel that Alex is desperately trying to avoid – the one where his old bedroom lurks in wait – but there’s got to be more to it than that, hasn’t there?
    “Calm down, Alex.” Pete lays a palm on Alex’s forearm. Alex can feel himself twitching, the end of his biro rattling on the desktop as if he’s auditioning for a hair metal band’s spontaneous combustion spot. Pete