The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [164]
Andy’s at the other end of the table. He looks at me: “Bob, your call, I think.”
I sigh. “You think?” I glance at the pager display. Oops, so it is. “’Scuse me folks, something’s come up.”
“Go on.” Lucy glares at me halfheartedly from behind her lucky charms. “I’ll minute you.”
“Sure.” And I’m out, almost an hour before lunch. Wow, so interns are useful for something. Just as long as he hasn’t gotten himself killed.
I trot back to Slug’s office. Peter-Fred is sitting in his chair, with his back to the door.
“Pete?” I ask.
No reply. But his laptop’s open and running, and I can hear its fan chugging away. “Uh-huh.” And the disc wallet is lying open on my side of the desk.
I edge towards the computer carefully, taking pains to stay out of eyeshot of the screen. When I get a good look at Peter-Fred I see that his mouth’s ajar and his eyes are closed; he’s drooling slightly. “Pete?” I say, and poke his shoulder. He doesn’t move. Probably a good thing, I tell myself. Okay, so he isn’t conventionally possessed . . .
When I’m close enough, I filch a sheet of paper from the ink-jet printer, turn the lights out, and angle the paper in front of the laptop. Very faintly I can see reflected colors, but nothing particularly scary. “Right,” I mutter. I slide my hands in front of the keyboard—still careful not to look directly at the screen—and hit the key combination to bring up the interactive debugger in the game I’m afraid he’s running. Trip an object dump, hit the keystrokes for quick save, and quit, and I can breathe a sigh of relief and look at the screen shot.
It takes me several seconds to figure out what I’m looking at. “Oh you stupid, stupid arse!” It’s Peter-Fred, of course. He installed NWN and the other stuff I threw at him: the Laundry-issue hack pack and DM tools, and the creation toolkit. Then he went and did exactly what I told him not to do: he connected to Bosch. That’s him in the screenshot between the two half-orc mercenaries in the tavern, looking very afraid.
TWO HOURS LATER BRAINS AND PINKY ARE BABY-SITTING Pete’s supine body (we don’t dare move it yet), Bosch is locked down and frozen, and I’m sitting on the wrong side of Angleton’s desk, sweating bullets. “Summarize, boy,” he rumbles, fixing me with one yellowing, rheumy eye. “Keep it simple. None of your jargon, life’s too short.”
“He’s fallen into a game and he can’t get out.” I cross my arms. “I told him precisely what not to do, and he went ahead and did it. Not my fault.”
Angleton makes a wheezing noise, like a boiler threatening to explode. After a moment I recognize it as two-thousand-year-old laughter, mummified and out for revenge. Then he stops wheezing. Oops, I think. “I believe you, boy. Thousands wouldn’t. But you’re going to have to get him out. You’re responsible.”
I’m responsible? I’m about to tell the old man what I think when a second thought screeches into the pileup at the back of my tongue and I bite my lip. I suppose I am responsible, technically. I mean, Pete’s my intern, isn’t he? I’m a management grade, after all, and if he’s been assigned to me, that makes me his manager, even if it’s a post that comes with loads of responsibility and no actual power to, like, stop him doing something really foolish. I’m in loco parentis, or maybe just plain loco. I whistle quietly. “What would you suggest?”
Angleton wheezes again. “Not my field, boy, I wouldn’t know one end of one of those newfangled Babbage machine contraptions from the other.” He fixes me with a gimlet stare. “But feel free to draw on HR’s budget line. I will make enquiries on the other side to see what’s going on. But if you don’t bring him back, I’ll make you explain what happened to him to his mother.”
“His mother?” I’m puzzled. “You mean she’s one of us?”
“Yes. Didn’t Andrew tell you? Mrs. Young is the deputy director in charge of Human Resources. So you’d better get him