The prelude to this little drama took place the day before yesterday in Angleton's office. I was sitting in the cheap plastic visitor's seat he keeps on the other side of his desk, my line of sight partially blocked by the bulky green-enameled flank of his Memex, trying to hold my shit together. Up until this point I'd been doing a reasonable job aided by Angleton going out of his way to explain how we were going to clear my entirely unreasonable expense claims with the Auditors: but then he decided to try and get all human on my ass. 'You'll be able to see her whenever you want,' he said, right out of the blue, without any warning.
'Fuck it! What makes you think — '
'Look at me, boy.' There's a tone of voice he uses that reaches into the back of your head and pulls the control wires, grating and harsh and impossible to ignore: it got my attention.
I looked directly at him. 'I am sick and tired of everyone tiptoeing around me as if I'm going to explode,' I heard myself say. 'Apologizing won't help: what's done is done, there's no going back on it. It was a successful mission and the ends, at least in this case, justify the means. However underhanded they were.'
'If you believe that, you're a bigger fool than I thought.' Angleton closed the cover of the accounts folder and put his pen down. Then he caught my gaze. 'Don't be a fool, son.'
Angleton's not his real name — real names confer power, which is why we always, all of us, use pseudonyms — nor is it the only thing about him that doesn't ring true: I saw the photographs in his dream-briefing, and if he was that old when he was along for the ride on Operation JENNIFER, he can't be a day under seventy today. (I've also seen an eerily similar face in the background of certain archival photographs dating from the 1940s, but let's not go there.) 'Is this where you give me the benefit of your copious decades of experience? Stiff upper lip, the game's the thing, they also serve who whatever-the-hell-the-saying goes'
'Yes.' His cheek twitched. 'But you're missing something.'
'Huh. And what's that?' I hunker down in my chair, resigned to having to sit through a sanctimonious lecture about wounded pride or something.
'We fucked with your head, boy. And you're right, it is just another successful operation, but that doesn't mean we don't owe you an apology and an explanation.'
'Great.' I crossed my arms defensively. He picked up his pen again, scratching notes on his desk pad. Two weeks' compassionate leave. I can stretch it to a month if you need it, but beyond that, we'll need a medical evaluation.'
Scribble, scribble. 'That goes for both of you. Counseling, too.'
'What about Ramona?' The words hung in the air like lead balloons .
'Separate arrangements apply.' He glanced up again, fixing me with a wintry blue stare. 'I'm also recommending that you spend the next week at the Village.'
'Why?' I demanded. 'Because that's where Predictive Branch says you need to go, boy. Did you want fries with that'
'Fucking hell. What do they have to do with things'
'If you'd ever studied knife fighting, one of the things your instructors would have drilled into you is that you always clean your blade after using it, and if possible sharpen and lubricate it, before you put it away. Because if you want j to use it again some time, you don't want to find it stuck to the scabbard, or blunt, or rusted. When you use a tool, you take care to maintain it, boy, that's common sense. From the organization's point of view ... well, you're not just an interchangeable part, a human resource: we can't go to the nearest employment center and hire a replacement for you just like that. You've got a unique skill mix that would be very difficult to locate — but don't let it go to your head just yet — which is why we're willing to take some pains to help you get over it. We used you, it's true. And we used Dr. O'Brien, and you're both going to have to get used to it, and what's more important to you right now — because you expect to be used for certain types of jobs now and again — is that we didn't use you the way you expected to be used. Am I right?' I spluttered for a moment. 'Oh, sure, that's everything! In a nutshell! I see the light now, it's just in my nature to be all offended about having my masculinity impugned by being cast in the role of the Good Bond Babe, hero-attractor and love interest for Mo in her capacity as the big- swinging-dick secret agent man with the gun, I mean, violin, and the license to kill. Right? It's just vanity. So I guess I'd better go powder my nose and dry my tears so I can look glamorous and loving for the closing romantic- interest scene, huh'
'Pretty much.' Angleton nodded. His lip quirked oddly.
A suppressed smile?
'Jesus fucking Christ, Angleton, that's leaving just a little bit out. Not to mention Ramona. If you think you could tie our brains together like the Kilkenny cats, then just cut us loose — it doesn't work that way, you know'
'Yes.' He nodded again. 'And that's why you need to go to the Village,' he said briskly. 'Talk to her. Settle where you both stand, in your own mind.' He picked up his papers and looked away, an implicit dismissal. I rose to my feet.
'Oh, and one other thing,' he added.
'What'
'While you're about it, remember to talk to Dr. O'Brien as well. You both need to sort things out — and sooner, rather than later.'
'He made it an order.' She shrugs. 'So here I am.' Looking as if she'd rather be anywhere else on the planet.
'Enjoying yourself?' I ask. It's the sort of stilted, stupid question you ask when you're trying to make small talk but walking on eggshells in case the other person explodes at you. Which is what I'm half-expecting — this situation is a minefield.
'No,' she says with forced levity. 'The weather sucks, the beer's warm, the sea's too cold for swimming, and every time I look at it ...' She stalls, the thin glaze of collectedness cracking. 'Can I sit down'
I pat the sofa beside me. 'Be my guest.'
She sits down in the opposite corner, an arm's length away.
'You're acting like you're mad at me.' I glance at the book on the table. 'I'm not mad at you.' I try to figure out what to say next: 'I'm mad at the way the circumstances made things turn out. Ate you still mad at her'
'At her?' She chuckles, startled. 'I don't think she had any more choice in it than you did. Why should I be mad at her?' I pick up my glass and take a long mouthful of beer.
'Because we slept together?'
'Because you — what?' A waspish tone creeps into her, voice: 'But I thought you said you hadn't!'
I put my glass down. 'We didn't.' I meet her eye. 'In the Bill Clinton sense of things, I can honestly say I have not had sexual intercourse with that woman. You know what t h Black Chamber did to her? If I had slept with her I'd be dead.'
'But how can you — ' Mo is confused. 'Her monster had to feed. Before you came and unbound** it, it had to feed. She had to feed it, or it would have eaten her. I was along for the ride.'
Enlightenment dawns. 'But now she's there — ' a wave i the vague direction of the drowned village of Dunwich, a mile out to sea, where the Laundry maintains its outpost ' — and you're here. And you're both safe.'
Acid indigestion. 'Safe from what?' I ask, watching her sidelong.
'Safe from — ' She stops. 'Why are you looking at me'
'She's undergoing the change, you know that? They can usually hold it off, but in her case it's looking irreversible.'
Mo nods, reluctantly.
'Probably it was triggered by the deep-diving excursion,'
I add. 'Although proximity to certain thaumic resonances can bring it on prematurely.' Which you would be in a position to know all about, I don't say. It's a horrible thing to suspect of anyone, especially your partner who you've been sharing a house with for enough years that it's getting to be a habit. 'I gather they expect her to make it, with her mind intact.'
'That's good,' Mo says automatically. A double take: 'Isn't it'
'I don't know. Is it a good thing?' I ask.
'That's not a question I'd have expected you to ask.'
I sigh. None of this is straightforward. 'Mo, you could have warned me they were training you in deep-cover
