The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross Page A

Dr. O’Brien. Transferring you now . . .”
    â€œGood morning, Mo.” I recognize Gerry Lockhart’s gravelly voice. “What’s going on?”
    I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “We have a major incident going on in Trafalgar Square and you’re asking
me
? Something is stripping tourists naked and building a pile of bodies on the Fourth Plinth. Paralyzing them, too. The police have no idea and they’re on the edgeof—” Sudden shouting distracts me: I hunch my head over to hold my phone against my shoulder and turn to see what’s going on. “Oh
fuck
it just escalated. Got to go, I’ll call you back.”
    Another body is floating upwards. He’s hanging on to his trademark bicycle by the handlebars, legs pedaling furiously in mid-air. Portly, his suit rumpled and his mass of unkempt hair flopping across his forehead, he is instantly recognizable as the Mayor of London.
    â€œOh dear fucking Christ on a crutch,” mouths Josephine, her eyes round with horror. I wince and nod in sympathy.
“Get him!”
she shouts.
    Cops are already converging on the levitating Mayor like a pack of hounds in pursuit of a fox—the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable. He floats above them, calling for help. One of them jumps high enough to grab the rear wheel of the bike, but dangles for barely a second before it slips from the Mayor’s grip. He lands with a crash and the Mayor floats higher.
    I ring off, then fumble through the phone’s confusing mass of icons until I get into the OFCUT suite—occult sensors and countermeasures, yes, we do indeed have an app for that. I raise the phone, and slowly pan it across the square. The Mayor’s struggles are limned in green, the contours of the thaum field outlined by the phone’s modified camera chip. The bodies atop the plinth also glow . . .
    Aha!
    I tap Josephine’s shoulder to get her attention. She whirls: “Yes?” she demands.
    â€œDon’t be too obvious about it,” I say, keeping my voice quiet and conversational, “but our merry prankster appears to be human.” (Which is a huge relief because human problems, however exotic, usually have human solutions. The alternatives are all much, much worse.) “He’s chilling out on the northeast plinth, between the legs of the horse.” His silhouette is lit up like a laser-backlit emerald in my phone’s display, but when I try to look at him with my mark one peepers, they just don’t seem to want to see him—it’s far too easy to focus on the horse’s head or the stone plinth beneath it. “He’s gotsome kind of invisibility field, but he’s definitely responsible.” Shimmering green contrails link his swooping hands to the body of his current victim.
    â€œCharming.” She grins savagely. “Let’s lift him—”
    â€œNo.” I slide my phone back into my jacket pocket, then collect Lecter from the van. “We have no idea of his full capabilities. So far he’s given us telekinesis, paralysis, and observation-avoidance. That’s quite a hat trick, isn’t it? But we don’t know it’s all he’s capable of. And there are his victims to consider.” Her smile vanishes. “If we take him down, does the paralysis suddenly wear off? If so, they’re lying naked on top of a four-meter-high platform above flagstones. Someone
is
going to fall and break something if they start moving.”
    â€œDamn. And there’s the motivation issue to consider.”
    â€œYes.” I pause. “Do you have any ideas?”
    Above the plinth, the Mayor of London is twirling around his long axis like a plucked chicken on a rotisserie. His coat has taken flight and is flapping around the top of Nelson’s Column like a demented raven; his shoes pop off like champagne corks as our prankster prepares to debag the old