The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross Page B

self-defence when authorised on assignment to hazardous
duty. I take it that bullseye wasn't an accident?"
    I pick up the hand and remember to disarm it
this time. "Nope. You realise you don't need an anthropoid for this?
Ever wondered why there are so many one-legged pigeons in central
London?"
    Harry shakes his head. "You young 'uns. Back
when I was getting going we used to think the future would be all
lasers and food pills and rockets to Mars."
    "It's not that different," I remonstrate. "Look,
it's a science. You try using a limb from someone who died of motor
neurone disease or MS and you'll find out in a hurry! What we're doing
is setting up a microgrid that funnels in an information gate from
another contiguous continuum. Information gates are, like, easy; with a
bit more energy we can crank it open and bring mass through, but that's
more hazardous so we don't do it very often. The demonic
presences—okay, the extraterrestrial sapient fast-thinkers on the
other
side—try to grab control over the proprioceptive nerves they can sense
the layout of on the other side of the grid. The nerves are dead, like
the rest of the hand, but they still act as a useful channel. So the
result is an information pulse, raw information down around the Planck
level, that shows up to us as a phase-conjugated beam of coherent
light—"
    I point the hand at the downrange target. Two
smoking feet.
    "What will you do if you ever have to point that
thing at another human being?" Harry asks quietly.
    I put it back on the rack hastily. "I really
hope I'm never put in that position," I say.
    "That's not good enough. Say they were holding
your wife or kids hostage—"

    "The enquiry hasn't been held yet," I reply. "So
I don't know if I've still got a job. But I hope I never get put in
that kind of position again."
    I try to keep my hands from shaking as I padlock
the case and reactivate the ward field. Harry looks at me thoughtfully
and nods.
     
    "Committee of Enquiry will
come to order."
    I shuffle the papers in front of me, for no very
good reason other than to conceal my nervousness.
    It's a small conference room, walled in thick
oak panels and carpeted in royal blue. I've just been called in:
they're grilling people in order of who was there and who was
responsible, and after Vohlman I'm number two. (He was running the
course and conducted the summoning; I merely terminated it.) I don't
recognise the suits sitting behind the table, but they look senior, in
that indefinable way that somehow says, "I've got my KCMG; how long
until you get yours?" The third is a senior mage from the Auditors,
which would be enough to make my blood run cold if I were guilty of
anything worse than stealing paper clips.
    They ask me to stand on the centre of the crest
of arms in the carpet: sewn with gold thread, some kind of Latin motto,
very nice. I feel the hairs on my arms prickle with static and I know
it's live.
    "Please state your name and job title." There's
a recorder on the desk and its light is glowing red.
    "Bob Howard. Darkside hacker, er, Technical
Computing Officer grade 2."
    "Where were you on Thursday the nineteenth of
last month?"
    "Er, I was attending a training course:
Introduction to Applied Occult Computing 104, conducted by Dr.
Vohlman."
    The balding man in the middle makes a doodle on
his pad then fixes me with a cold stare. "Your
opinion of the course?"
    "My—er?" I freeze for a moment; this isn't in
the script. "I was bored silly—um, the course was fine, but it was a
bit basic. I was only there because Harriet was pissed off at me for
coming in late after putting in a twenty-hour shift. Dr. Vohlman did a
good job, but really it was insanely basic and I didn't learn anything
new and wasn't paying much attention—" Why am I saying this?
    The man in the middle looks at me again. It's
like being under a microscope; I feel the back of my neck burst out in
a cold, prickly sweat. "When you weren't paying attention, what were
you doing?" he