I wrote the stories in this collection between 1998 and 2008. Some of them were purportedly written for money—at least, an editor approached me, and said, “Would you like to write me a story about Subject X? I’ll pay!”—but none of them was cost-effective; the money was just the excuse. They span the spectrum from the short-short “MAXOS” all the way up to “Palimpsest” and “Missile Gap,” novellas that bump up close to the complexity and depth associated with novels. Some of them were written in response to a specific challenge from an editor (“Unwirer,” for example, had to fit a theme anthology’s remit—tales in which the developmental history of science and technology had followed a different path) while some were written in response to challenges from within (“Snowball’s Chance” because an imp of the perverse taunted me to write a traditional Pact with the Devil story). Some were stylistic experiments (“Trunk and Disorderly” might, had things gone differently, become the opening of a novel; instead, I settled for the easier technique of Saturn’s Children) while others were exercises in a familiar key (“Down on the Farm,” for example, is one of a piece with my other Laundry stories, collected in The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue).
What they’ve all got in common, however, is that they’re a communication channel. Hello, are you receiving? Over.
Missile Gap
BOMB SCARE
Gregor is feeding pigeons down in the park when the sirens go off.
A stoop-shouldered fortysomething male in a dark suit, pale-skinned and thin, he pays no attention at first: the birds hold his attention. He stands at the side of a tarmac path, surrounded by damp grass that appears to have been sprayed with concrete dust, and digs into the outer pocket of his raincoat for a final handful of stale bread crumbs. Filthy, soot-blackened city pigeons with malformed feet jostle with plump white-collared wood pigeons, pecking and lunging for morsels. Gregor doesn’t smile. What to him is a handful of stale bread is a deadly business for the birds: a matter of survival. The avian struggle for survival runs parallel to the human condition, he thinks. It’s all a matter of limited resources and critical positioning. Of intervention by agencies beyond their bird-brained understanding, dropping treats for them to fight over. Then the air-raid sirens start up.
The pigeons scatter for the treetops with a clatter of wings. Gregor straightens and looks round. It’s not just one siren, and not just a test: a policeman is pedaling his bicycle along the path toward him, waving one-handed. “You there! Take cover!”
Gregor turns and presents his identity card. “Where is the nearest shelter?”
The constable points toward a public convenience thirty yards away. “The basement there. If you can’t make it inside, you’ll have to take cover behind the east wall—if you’re caught in the open, just duck and cover in the nearest low spot. Now go!” The cop hops back on his black boneshaker and is off down the footpath before Gregor can frame a reply. Shaking his head, he walks toward the public toilet and goes inside.
It’s early spring, a weekday morning, and the toilet attendant seems to be taking the emergency as a personal comment on the cleanliness of his porcelain. He jumps up and down agitatedly as he shoves Gregor down the spiral staircase into the shelter, like a short troll in a blue uniform stocking his larder. “Three minutes!” shouts the troll. “Hold fast in three minutes!” So many people in London are wearing uniforms these days, Gregor reflects; it’s almost as if they believe that if they play their wartime role properly, the ineffable will constrain itself to their expectations of a humanly comprehensible enemy.
A double bang splits the air above the park and echoes down the stairwell. It’ll be RAF or USAF interceptors outbound from the big fighter base near Hanworth. Gregor glances round: a couple of oafish gardeners sit on the wooden benches inside the concrete tunnel of the shelter, and a louche City type in a suit leans against the wall, irritably fiddling with an unlit cigarette and glaring at the NO SMOKING signs. “Bloody nuisance, eh?” he snarls in Gregor’s direction.
Gregor composes his face in a thin smile. “I couldn’t possibly comment,” he says, his Hungarian accent betraying his status as a refugee. (Another sonic boom rattles the urinals, signaling the passage of yet more fighters.) The louche businessman will be his contact, Goldsmith. He glances at