power of life and death over her, the ability to bind and release her, to issue orders she cannot refuse. There's stuff she doesn't want to talk about — but if he suspects she's holding out on him it'll be a lot worse for her than confessing to everything. Best to give him something, just hope it's not enough to raise more suspicions than it allays: 'Not entirely,' she admits. 'I don't understand why we're letting TLA's chief executive run riot in the Caribbean. I don't understand why the Brits are involved in this, or what the hell TLA think they're doing. I mean — ' she pats her shoulder bag ' — I read it all, but I don't understand it. Just what's supposed to be going on'
This is the point at which McMurray can — if he's suspicious — make her mouth open without her willing it, and spill her deepest secrets and most personal hopes and fears.
Just considering the possibility makes her feel small and contemptibly weak. But McMurray doesn't seem to notice her discomfort. He nods and looks thoughtful. 'I'm not sure anybody knows everything,' he says ruefully.
A rueful apology? From a controlling agent? Stop jerking me around, Ramona prays, a cold knot of fear congealing in her stomach. But McMurray doesn't raise his left hand in a sigil of command; nor does he pronounce any words of dread.
He just nods in false amity and gestures once again at the stairs.
'It's a mess,' he explains. 'Billington's a big campaign donor and word is, we're not supposed to rock the boat. Not under this administration, anyway. It would embarrass certain folks if he were exposed — at least on our soil. And just in case anyone gets any ideas about going around Control's back, he doesn't set foot on land these days. He's got the whole thing set up for remote management from extraterritorial waters. We'd have to send the Coast Guard or the Navy after him, and that would be too public.'
'Too public and two bucks will get you a coffee,' Ramona says acidly; then, fearful that she might have gone too far, adds: 'But why did you need to bring me out here? Is it part of the briefing'
She realizes too late that this was the wrong thing to say.
McMurray fixes her with a penetrating stare. 'Why else do you think you might have been ordered to the Ranch?' he asks, deceptively mildly. 'Is there something I should know, agent Random'
A huge fist grips her around the ribs, squeezing gently.
'Nuh — no, sir!' she gasps, terrified.
Merely annoying McMurray can have enormous, terrible consequences for her: there's nothing subtle about the degree of control the Black Chamber exercises over its subjects, or the consequences of error. The Chamber has a secret ruling from the Supreme Court that citizenship rights only apply to human beings: Ramona's kin are barely able to pass with the aid of a glamour. For failure, the punishment can be special rendition to jurisdictions where the very concept of pain is considered a fascinating research topic by the natives. But he merely stares at her for a moment with watery blue eyes, then nods very slightly, relaxing the constraint binding. The pressure recedes like the backwash of an imagined cardiac arrest.
'Very good.' McMurray turns and begins to descend the staircase at the end of the room. Ramona follows him, eager to get away from the things in the pickle jars behind the glass display panels. 'I'm glad to see that you've still got a ... sense of humor, agent Random. Unfortunately this is no laughing matter.' He pauses at the bottom step. 'I believe you've been here before.'
Ramona's hand tightens on the stair rail until her knuckles turn white. 'Yes. Sir.'
'Then I won't have to explain.' He smiles frighteningly, then walks down the corridor toward one of the display rooms. 'I brought you here to see just the one exhibit, this time.'
Ramona forces herself to follow him. She feels as if she's walking through molasses, her chest tight with an almost palpable sense of dread. It's not as if anything here is aimed at me, she tries to tell herself. It's all dead, already. But that's not strictly true.
Most advanced military organizations maintain libraries of weapons, depositories like armories that store one of everything — every handgun, artillery round, mine, grenade, knife — used by any other army that they might face in battle. The exhibits are stored in full working order, with specialist armorers trained in caring for them. Associated with their staff colleges, these depots are a vital resource when training special forces, briefing officers tasked with facing a given enemy, or merely researching future requirements.
The Black Chamber is no different: like the Army repository at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, they maintain their own collection. There is a subtle difference, however.
The Black Chamber's archive of reality-warping occult countermeasures is partially alive. Here lie unquiet roadside graves dug by ghoulish reanimators. Over there is a cupboard full of mandrakes, next door to a summoning grid that's been live for thirty years, the unquiet corpse of its victim dancing an eternal jig within the green-glowing circle, on legs long since worn down to blood-encrusted ivory stumps.
You can die if you get too close to some of the exhibits in the Ranch. And then they'll add you to the collection.
McMurray knows his way through the corridors and passages of the repository. He threads his way rapidly past doorways opening onto vistas that make Ramona's hair stand on end, then through a gallery lined with glass exhibit cases, some of them covered by protective velvet cloths. Finally he comes to a small side room and stops, beckoning Ramona toward a glass-topped cabinet.
'You asked about Billington,' he says, his tone thoughtful.
Yes, sir.'
'You can cut the 'sir' bit; call me Pat.' He half-smiles. 'As I was saying. Billington's current actions worry the Dark Commissioners. In fact, they're extremely concerned that his motive for purchasing the Explorer and moving it to the Bahamas is to make a retrieval attempt on the eastern JENNIFER MORGUE site — that was in your briefing pack, yes?
Good. If it turns out that JENNIFER MORGUE is a chthonian artifact, then an attempted retrieval operation could place us — that is, the United States government, not to mention the human species — in breach of the Third Benthic Treaty. That would be a bad place to go. On the other hand, the rewards to be reaped from such an artifact are huge. And your cousins have a very limited presence in the Caribbean.
They prefer the deep ocean. It's possible that they're not even aware of the location of the artifact.' McMurray turns to stare at the glass-topped cabinet.
'Billington's not doing this for the good of the nation, needless to say. We're not sure just what he plans to do with JENNIFER MORGUE if he gets his hands on it, but frankly, CenCom isn't keen to find out. He needs to be stopped. Which is where we run into an embarrassing problem.
He already figured we'd take steps to interdict him, so he's preempted us.' He glances at Ramona, and her blood freezes at his expression.
'Sir'
McMurray gestures at the cabinet. 'Look at this.'
Ramona peers through the glass warily. She sees a wooden tabletop: perfectly mundane, but for a strange diorama positioned in its center. It seems to consist of a pair of dolls, male and female, wearing wedding clothes; adjacent to them are a pair of engagement rings and a model of a stepped wedding cake. The whole diorama is enclosed within a Mobius-loop design in conductive ink, connected to a breadboard analog-digital converter and an elderly PC.
'This is probably the least dangerous exhibit you'll find here,' McMurray says calmly, his momentary anger stilled.
'You're looking at a hardware circuit designed to implement a love geas using vodoun protocols and a modified Jellinek-Wirth geometry engine.' His finger traces out the Mobius loop below. 'Symbolic representations of the entities to be influenced are placed within a geometry engine controlled by a clocked recursive invocation. There are less visible signifiers here — the skin and hair samples, necessary for DNA affinity matching, and concealed within the dolls — but the intent should be obvious. The two individuals linked by this particular grid have been happily married for sixteen years at this point. It's a reinforcing loop; the more the subjects work within the framework, the stronger the feedback frame becomes. The geas itself extends its influence by altering the probability gauge metric associated with the subjects' interactions: outcomes that reinforce the condition are simply rendered more likely to occur while the circuit is operational.'
Ramona blinks. 'I don't understand.'
'Obviously.' McMurray steps back, then crosses his arms.
'Try to get your head around the fact that it's a contagion spell that generates compliant behavior. This
