Rule 34 - Charles Stross [122]
Perplexed, you pull up a voice call. “Hello? Is that Dr., uh, MacDonald? I’m Inspector Kavanaugh. We have an appointment? I’m downstairs right now—how do I—okay, thanks, bye.” You hang up and glance at Kemal, who is looking around with wrinkled brow, as if he’s just smelled something bad. “Dr. MacDonald will come down and let us in,” you tell him. “There’s an access-control system.” Now you know to look for it, the discreet box by the door tells you all you need to know. Receptionists are too expensive for universities in these straitened times.
In fact, it’s not just the Appleton Tower lobby that’s showing signs of wear and tear; half the buildings on Bristo Square are closed or boarded, one or two blinking LEASE AVAILABLE flags in your specs. For a couple of decades tuition fees rose faster than inflation, until the inevitable happened and the bubble burst. The collapse catalysed by the first of the top-tier universities rolling out their distance-learning products in the middle of a recession sent the higher-education industry into a tailspin. Ed Uni has always been one of the top double-handful, and is still viable: But times are harsh and full-time undergraduate students are an endangered species.
You’re beginning to get impatient by the time you spot a sign of life through the window. At first, you think it’s a homeless vagrant who’s managed to sneak inside, but as he approaches the front door with a determined shuffle you realize that he’s looking for you. He’s bald on top, with a round head, stubby nose, and tiny, angryish eyes. With his tattered denim overalls and grubby coat, he looks like a member of the chorus from Deliverance: The Musical. You wonder: Is there some mistake? despite a nagging sense that you’ve seen him somewhere before. Then he opens the door, and speaks with an ultraposh Morningside accent: “Inspector Kavanaugh? I’m Dr. MacDonald. You’ll be following me, please.”
You wave Kemal inside hastily. “Certainly. Do you know why we’re here?”
MacDonald sniffs, then gestures towards a darkened tunnel between lift doors. “I’m sure you’ll tell me in your own good time,” he says unctuously. “We can talk in my office.”
The lift is battered and has clearly seen better days: It squeaks between floors, bumping and jolting to a stop on the ninth. “We don’t use the bottom two floors at present,” MacDonald tells you, punching buttons on an access-control keypad. “This way . . .”
Here, at least, there’s fresh paint on the walls, and the thin carpet isn’t worn through. And there is a receptionist at a desk in an open area of corridor, her head bent over a pad. Fading print-outs pinned to corkboards on the walls and the gawky-looking student staring blankly at them tell you that you are, in fact, stuck in a time warp from the noughties, or maybe on the set of a documentary video about the rise and fall of higher education.
MacDonald pushes open a beige door and ushers you into a cramped office. There’s a huge, old-fashioned-looking monitor on his desk, and a glass-fronted bookcase holding a small, dog-eared collection of journals and books. Judging from the dust and the yellowing corners, they haven’t been read in a while. Trophy copies of his papers, you assume. He flops down into a cheap swivel chair, and gestures at the two fabric-padded bucket seats in front of his desk. “Make yourselves at home. I’m sorry I can’t offer you any hospitality—our coffee machine’s broken again, and the corporate hospitality budget is somewhat lacking this decade.”
“Thanks,” you manage. The sense of déjà vu resolves itself: You have seen him before. In a pub, somewhere in town? Brain cells grind into action, and you recite a memorized script. “We’re here to gather information which may be of use to us in