Angleton’s thin smile tells me exactly what he thinks of the world wide web.
“Not exactly. They were just redeployed in support of a higher mission.”
I remember the blue-glowing instrument panel lighting up the hangar from behind canvas screens, and shudder. “What kind of . . . ?”
“They’re part of the contingency planning for CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, boy.” He looks momentarily annoyed, as if the impending end of the world as we know it is a minor inconvenience. “Bystanders,” he murmurs: “Whatever will they think of next?”
“The white elephant,” I prompt, but I’m too late.
“Never mind that now, boy, you can go back and look at it later.” He looks at me, concern and irritation wrinkling his face further, and this time he’s actually looking, studying me with those merciless washed-out eyes as if I’m a sample on a dissection tray: “Hmm. If Iris told you to take the rest of the week off, I suppose you ought to do as she says. A bystander, eh? What was a bystander doing there?”
“She was a volunteer at the museum—she was bringing us tea.”
Angleton’s eyes narrow. “Was she indeed?” He picks up a pen and a pad and scrawls a list of numbers on it. “Well, when you feel like getting back to work, you might want to go down to the stacks and retrieve these documents from the dead file store. I think you’ll find them very interesting.” He signs the note and slides it across the table at me. The document references are just catalog numbers identifying files by their shelf location, no actual codewords referring to named projects. Typical of Angleton, to be so elliptical about things. “And I’d like you to deputize for me on the BLOODY BARON committee.”
“Iris is putting me on light administrative duties,” I protest.
Angleton smiles humorlessly. “Then you’ll have something to do when you’re bored,” he says. “Be off with you!”
3.
THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE DAYLIGHT
I EMERGE FROM THE STAFF ENTRANCE TO THE C&A ON THE high street, blinking like a groundhog caught in the headlights of an onrushing Hummer.
It is a Wednesday, just before the lunchtime rush, and the pavements are full of shoppers and people with nowhere better to go. A herd of buses rumble past, farting clouds of sulphurous biodiesel and lunging at cyclists. But I am not at work. Something is wrong with the world, something is broken: a wire has come loose in my soul.
I start to walk.
I don’t want to go home just yet: it’s sixty to seventy minutes of riding on two buses, but then I’ll have nothing to do but sit staring at the walls for the rest of the afternoon. If it was a normal summer’s day I could go for a walk on Wandsworth Common—it’s only about a mile or two from here—but the sky is overcast and gray, threatening rain later on. Or I could go into town. Maybe get the tube to Euston and visit the British Library. I’ve got a reader’s card, and there are some interesting manuscripts I’ve been meaning to look at for a while, relevant to the job . . . No, I can hear Iris ticking me off in the back of my head, telling me that’s not what I ought to be doing when I’m on medical leave.
In the end, I walk to the next bus stop just in time to see the tail end of the herd vanishing round the corner, and wait nearly ten minutes for the next bunch of buses to arrive, with only my iPod for company—that, and a couple of students, a pensioner pushing a shopping bag on wheels, and an Uncle Fester type in a dirty trench coat who is pointedly not making eye contact with anyone.
I sit on the top deck for forty minutes as it slowly migrates towards Victoria, then hop off and head for an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet for lunch. It’s stowed out, as you can imagine, because I’ve hit peak lunch time; but it makes a welcome change from the dismal little pie shop round the corner from the New Annexe. I emerge into daylight with a full stomach and my sense of well-being marginally restored. It’s trying to rain, lonely drips spattering the pavement and evaporating before they can join up. I shuffle along with the tourists and foreign language students and shirking office workers, staring into shop windows and feeling faintly wistful, something nagging at the back of my mind.
The penny drops. My PDA! Okay, it’s Laundry-issue. But it’s toast! Sure I have a cheap, dumb mobile phone as well, but I relied on that PDA; it had my life embedded in its contacts and calendar. Yes, there’s a backup, but it’s on my office PC, which is most definitely not a laptop and most definitely not allowed to go home with me—the last thing the Laundry needs is headlines like CIVIL SERVANT LOSES LAPTOP: ENTIRE POPULATION OF TOWER HAMLETS EATEN BY GIBBERING HORRORS
FROM BEYOND SPACETIME—so for the time being, I’m adrift. If Mo called me right now I genuinely couldn’t phone Pete and Sandy. Help, it’s a crisis! Well okay, it’s a minor crisis, but I rationalize: obsessing over my lost address book is a lot healthier than obsessing over a blinding purple flash and an imploding face—
Besides, shopping is therapeutic. Right?
I pull out my phone and look at it in distaste. It’s a cheap Motorola jobbie with a pay-as-you-go SIM, and its major virtues are that it’s small and it makes phone calls. I bought it a year and a half ago when word went round that IT Services were threatening to inflict Arseberries on us along with a centralized work directory, and start billing for personal calls. The rumor turned out to be unfounded but I kept the phone (and the PDA I wangled Andy into signing off on) because between them they did a better job than the old Treo, and besides, all smartphones are shit these days. It’s the one industry where progress is going backwards in high gear, because the yakking masses would rather use their phones as car navigation systems and cameras than actually make phone calls or read email.
About the only smartphone that doesn’t stink like goose shit is the JesusPhone. But I’ve steadfastly refused to join the Cult of Jobs ever since I first saw the happy-clappy revival tent launch; it brought back painful memories of a junior management training course the late and unlamented Bridget sent me on a few years ago. Nothing can possibly be that good, even though the specifications look rather nice on paper, right?
You know how this is going to end . . .
I spend an hour shuffling around mobile phone shops, comparing specifications and feeling my brains gently melting, which confirms what I already knew: all mobile phones are shit this year. Then I allow my feet to carry me into the O2 shop and plant me in front of an austerely minimalist display stand where halogen lights play their spotlight beams across the polished fascia of a JesusPhone, a halo of purity gleaming above it.
“Can I help you, sir?” beams one of the sales staff.
“That thing.” My finger points at the JesusPhone as if drawn to it by a powerful geas. “How much?” (That’s the only question that matters, you see: I’ve already memorized its specifications.)
“The 64Gb model, sir? On an eighteen-month contract—”
The JesusPhone, I swear it is smiling at me: Come to me, come to me and be saved. The luscious curves, the polished glissade of the icons in the multi-touch interface—whoever designed that thing is an intuitive illusionist, I realize fuzzily as my fingertip closes in on the screen: That’s at least a class five glamour.
The next thing I think is, I shouldn’t have let myself get so close. But by then I’m on my way out of the store, clutching a carrier bag and a receipt that says I’ve put a dent in my bank balance big enough that Mo’s going to have something new to swear about this month, to the benefit of Apple’s shareholders.