I walk alongside, resting one hand on the file cart at all times. Doors open and close. Using my free hand, I produce my warrant card and orders, then hold them clenched before me. We walk down whitewashed brick-lined passages like the catacombs beneath a recondite order’s monastery, dimly lit by yellowing bulbs. A cool breeze blows endlessly towards my face, into the depths of the MailRail tunnels.
A twist in the passage brings us to another pair of riveted iron doors, painted battleship gray. It’s probably their original wartime livery. I’m close to lost by this point, for I’ve never been in the lower depths of the stacks before: all my dealings have been with the front desk staff on the upper levels. The lead zombie places a claw- fingered hand on the door and pushes, seemingly effortlessly. The door swings open onto a different shade of darkness, a nocturnal gloom that raises gooseflesh on my neck. I tighten my grip on the cart and swear at myself silently.
As my bearer walks forward I thumb-tap the all-seeing eye into view and bring the phone’s camera to bear. What I see does not fill me with joy: the dark on the other side of the portal isn’t just due to an absence of light, it’s the result of a very powerful ward. Being of a nasty and suspicious disposition it strikes me as likely that it’s part of a security cordon—after all, this is a secret document repository I’m trying to break into, isn’t it? And I know what I’d plant just inside the back door if I was in charge of security: Shelob, or a good emulation thereof, the better to trap intruders in my sticky web.
It’s time to break from my assigned shelf space so, not entirely regretfully, I let go of the document cart. Before the dead man walking can take me in hand again, I remove the papers from my mouth, then lick the ink on my wrist and frantically rub it on my jacket. “Not a document!” I crow, showing my smeary skin to the walking corpse. “No need to push, file, stamp, index, brief, debrief, or number me!”
It stands still for a moment, rocking gently on the balls of its feet, and I can almost see the exception handler triggering in the buggy necrosymbolic script that animates and guides its behavior. A sudden thought strikes me and I raise my warrant card. “Command override!” I bark. “Command override!”
The zombie freezes again, its claws centimeters from my throat.
“In the name of the Counter-Possession Unit, on the official business of Her Majesty’s Occult Service, I override you,” I say, very slowly. A harsh blue light from my warrant card shows me more of its death mask than I have any desire to remember. The next bit is hard: my Enochian is rusty, and I’m told I have an abominable accent, but I manage to pull together the ritual phrases I need. These residual human resources are minimally script-able, as long as you’ve got the access permissions and know what you’re doing. The consequences of getting it wrong are admittedly drastic, but I find that the prospect of a syntax error getting your brains gnawed out through a hole in your skull concentrates the mind wonderfully. (If only we could convince Microsoft to port Windows to run on zombies—although knowing how government IT sector outsourcing is run, that’s probably redundant.) “Accept new program parameters. Subroutine start . . .” Or words to that effect, in questionable medieval cod-Latin gibberspeak.
After fifteen minutes of chanting I’m cold with sweat and shaking with tension. My audience are displaying no signs of acquiring a taste for
The Hand of Glory has seen better days—the thumb is worn right down to the base of the big joint, and only two of the fingers still have unburned knuckles—but it’ll have to do. “Do we have ignition, do we have
There’s a tunnel out of nightmares in the library in the underside of the world. I’m not sure I can quite describe what happens in there: cold air, moist, the dankness and silence of the crypt broken only by the squeaking of the overloaded wheels of my cart. A sense of being watched, of a mindless and terrible focus sweeping across me, averted by the skin of the Hand of Glory’s burning fingertips. A rigor fit to still the heart of heroes, and only the faint pulsing ward-heart of my phone to bring me through it with QRS complex intact. There is a reason they use residual human resources to run the files to and from the MailRail system: you don’t need to be dead to work here, but it
I’m in the darkness for only ten or fifteen seconds, but when I come out I am in soul-deep pain, my heart pounding and my skin clammy, as if on the edge of a heart attack. Everything is gray and grainy and there is a buzzing in my ears, as of a monstrous swarm of flies. It disperses slowly as the light returns.
I blink, trying to get a grip, and I realize that the handcart has stopped moving. Shivering, I sit up and somehow slither over the edge of the cart without tipping the thing over. There’s carpet on the floor, thin, beige, institutional—I’m back in the land of the living. I look round. There’s a wooden table, three doors, a bunch of battered filing cabinets, and another door through which the mailmen are disappearing—black painted wood, with a motto engraved above the lintel: ABANDON HOPE. Trying to remember what I actually saw in there sends my mind skittering around the inside of my skull like a frightened mouse, so I give up. I’m still clutching the Hand of Glory. I hold it up to look at the flames. They’ve burned down deep, and there’s little left but calcined bones. Regretfully, I blow them out one by one, then dispose of the relic in the recycling bin at one side of the table.
No mailmen, but no librarians either. It’s all very Back Office, just as Angleton described it. I head for the nearest door, just as it opens in front of me.
“Hey—”
I blink. “Hello?” I ask.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he says, annoyed if not outright cross. “Visitors are restricted to levels five and six only. You could do yourself a mischief, wandering around the subbasement!” In his shirt and tie and M&S suit he’s like an intrusion from another, more banal, universe. I could kiss him just for existing, but I’m not out of the woods yet.
“Sorry,” I say contritely. “I was sent to ask for a new document that’s supposed to have come in this morning . . . ?”
“Well, you’d better come with me, then. Let me see your ID, please.”
I show him my warrant card and he nods. “All right. What is it you’re after?”
“A file.” I show him the slip of paper on which I’ve written down Mo’s document reference. “It’s new, it should have come in this morning.”
“Follow me.” He leads me through a door, to a lift, up four levels and along a corridor to a waiting room with a desk and half a dozen cheap powder-blue chairs: I vaguely recognize it from a previous visit. “Give me that and wait here.”
I sit down and wait. Ten minutes later he’s back, frowning. “Are you sure this is right?” he asks.
Annoyed, I think back. “Yes,” I say. I read the number back to Mo, didn’t I? “It’s a new file, deposited last night.”
“Well, it’s not here yet.” He shrugs. “It may still be waiting to be allocated a shelf, you know. That happens sometimes, if adding a new file triggers a shelf overflow.”
“Oh.” Mo won’t be happy, I guess, but it establishes my cover. “Well, can you flag it for me when it comes in?”
“Certainly. If you can show me your card again?” I do so, and he takes a note of my name and departmental assignment. “Okay, Mr. Howard, I’ll send you an email when the file comes into stock. Is that everything?”
“Yes, thanks, you’ve been very helpful.” I smile. He turns to go. “Er, can you remind me the way out . . . ?”
He waves a hand at one of the doors. “Go down there, second door on the left, you can’t miss it.” Then he leaves.
