The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [163]
His eyes are wide in the shadows. “You mean, this is government work? Like in Deus Ex?”
I nod. “That’s it exactly, kid.” Actually it’s more like Doom 3 but I’m not ready to tell him that; he might start pestering me for a grenade launcher.
“So we’re going to, like, set up a LAN party and log onto lots of persistent realms and search ’n’ sweep them for demons and blow the demons away?” He’s almost panting with eagerness. “Wait’ll I tell my homies!”
“Pete, you can’t do that.”
“What, isn’t it allowed?”
“No, I didn’t say that.” I lead him back towards the well-lit corridors of the Ops wing and the coffee break room beyond. “I said you can’t do that. You’re under a geas. Section III of the Official Secrets Act says you can’t tell anyone who hasn’t signed the said act that Section III even exists, much less tell them anything about what it covers. The Laundry is one hundred percent under cover, Pete. You can’t talk about it to outsiders, you’d choke on your own purple tongue.”
“Eew.” He looks disappointed. “You mean, like, this is real secret stuff. Like Mum’s work.”
“Yes, Pete. It’s all really secret. Now let’s go get a coffee and pester somebody in Facilities for a mains extension bar and a computer.”
I SPEND THE REST OF THE DAY WANDERING FROM desk to desk, filing requisitions and ordering up supplies, with Pete snuffling and shambling after me like a supersized spaniel. The cleaners won’t be able to work over Johnson’s office until next Tuesday due to an unfortunate planetary conjunction, but I know a temporary fix I can sketch on the floor and plug into a repurposed pocket calculator that should hold “Slug” Johnson at bay until we can get him exorcised. Meanwhile, thanks to a piece of freakish luck, I discover a stash of elderly laptops nobody is using; someone in Catering mistyped their code in their Assets database last year, and thanks to the wonders of our ongoing ISO 9000 certification process, there is no legal procedure for reclassifying them as capital assets without triggering a visit by the Auditors. So I duly issue Pete with a 1.4 gigahertz Toshiba Sandwich Toaster, enlist his help in moving my stuff into the new office, nail a WiFi access point to the door like a tribal fetish or mezuzah (“this office now occupied by geeks who worship the great god GHz”), and park him on the other side of the spacious desk so I can keep an eye on him.
The next day I’ve got a staff meeting at 10:00 a.m. I spend the first half hour of my morning drinking coffee, making snide remarks in e-mail, reading Slashdot, and waiting for Pete to show up. He arrives at 9:35. “Here.” I chuck a fat wallet full of CD-Rs at him. “Install these on your laptop, get on the intranet, and download all the patches you need. Don’t, whatever you do, touch my computer or try to log onto my NWN server—it’s called Bosch, by the way. I’ll catch up with you after the meeting.”
“Why is it called Bosch?” he whines as I stand up and grab my security badge off the filing cabinet.
“Washing machines or Hieronymus machines, take your pick.” I head off to the conference room for the Ways and Means Committee meeting—to investigate new ways of being mean, as Bridget (may Nyarlathotep rest her soul) once explained it to me.
At first I’m moderately hopeful I’ll be able to stay awake through the meeting. But then Lucy, a bucktoothed goth from Facilities, gets the bit between her incisors. She’s going on in a giggly way about the need to outsource our administration of office sundries in order