“Thank you, that’s very good, Debbie!” Dr. Tring has the baton again. “Next, if you’d like to fill us in on your background, Mr.—”
“Bevan, Andrew Bevan.” Andrew has a Midlands accent, positively Mancunian, and although he’s another suit-wearer, his is brown tweed. “Hi, everyone, I’m with the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, and I’m really excited to be part of the Olympic Delivery Authority’s Post-Event Assets Realization Team! As you know, the Olympics went swimmingly and were a big hit for Britain, but even though the games are over the administrative issues raised by hosting the Olympics are still with us—”
And I’m gone again (four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire), held prisoner in a stateroom aboard a luxury yacht—a thinly disguised ex-Soviet guided missile destroyer—with a silver-plated keel and a crew of jump-suited, mirrorshade-wearing minions, cruising the Caribbean under the orders of a madman who is trying to raise a dead horror from the Abyss (and though the holes were rather small, they had to count them all)—
I pull myself back to the present just as Mr. Bevan explains the urgent necessity of documenting best practices for monetizing tangible assets including but not limited to new-build Crown estate properties in order to write down the balance sheet deficit left by the games.
“Thank you, Mr. Bevan, for that fascinating peek inside the invaluable work of the DCMS. Ah, and now you, Mr., ah, Howard, is it?”
I blink back to the here and now, open my mouth, and freeze.
What I was about to say was something like this: “Hi, I’m Bob Howard. I’m a computational demonologist and senior field agent working for an organization you don’t know exists. My job involves a wide range of tasks, including: writing specifications for structured cabling runs in departmental offices; diving through holes in spacetime that lead to dead worlds and fighting off the things with too many tentacles and mouths that I find there; liaising with procurement officers to draft the functional requirements for our new classified document processing architecture; exorcising haunted jet fighters; ensuring departmental compliance with service backup policy; engaging in gunfights with the inbred cannibal worshippers of undead alien gods; and sitting in committee meetings.”
All of which is entirely true, and utterly, impossibly inadmissible: if I actually said it smoke would come out of my ears and my hair would catch fire long before I died, thanks to the oath of office I have sworn and the geas under which Crown authority is vested in me.
“Mr. Howard?” I snap into focus. Dr. Tring is peering at me, an expression of faint concern on his face.
“Sorry, must be something I ate.” Quick, pull yourself together, Bob! “The name’s Howard, Bob Howard. I work in IT security for, uh, the Highways Agency, in Leeds. My job involves a wide range of tasks, including: writing specifications for structured cabling runs in departmental offices; liaising with procurement officers to draft the functional requirements for our new automatic numberplate recognition-based road pricing scheme’s penalty ticket management system; ensuring departmental compliance with service backup policy; and sitting in committee meetings.”
I blink. They’re all staring at me as if I’ve grown a second head, or coughed to being a senior field agent in a highly classified security organization.
“That’s the system for handing out automatic fines to people who exceed the speed limit between cameras anywhere on the road network, isn’t it?” Debbie from DFID chirps, bright and menacing.
“Um, yes?” Living as we do in central London, inside the Congestion Charge Zone, Mo and I don’t own a car.
“My mum got one of them,” observes Andrew from the Olympics. “She was driving my dad to the A&E unit, he swore blind ’e’d just got indigestion, but ’e’d already ’ad one heart attack—” The dropped aitches are coming out; the mob of angry peasants with the pitchforks and torches will be along in a moment.
“I think they’re stupid, too,” I say, perhaps a trifle too desperately; Dr. Tring is focusing on me with the expressionless gaze of a zombie assassin—don’t think about those things, you’re in public. “But it’s part of the integrated transport safety policy.” I hunch my back and roll my eyes as disarmingly as any semi-professional Igor to the Transport Secretary’s Frankenstein, but they’re not buying it. “Speed kills,” I squeak. From the way they stare at me, you’d think I’d confessed to eating babies.
“That’s enough,” says Dr. Tring, finally condescending to drag the seminar back on course. “Ah, Ms. Steele, if you don’t mind telling us a little about your specialty, which would be managing an audit team for HMRC…?”
And Ms. Steele—thin-faced and serious as sudden death—launches straight into a series of adventures in carousel duty evasion and international reverse double-taxation law, during which I retreat into vindictive fantasies about setting my classmates’ cars on fire.
FOUR HOURS OF SOUL-DESTROYINGLY BANAL TEDIUM—VAPID nostrums about leadership values, stupid role-playing games involving pretending to be circus performers organizing a fantasy big top night, sly digs from the Ministry of Sport—pass me by in a blur. I go upstairs to my bedroom, force myself to shower and unkink my clenched jaw muscles, then dress again, and go downstairs.
They’ve set up a buffet in one of the meeting rooms. It’s piled high with tuna mayo sandwiches, cold chicken drumsticks, and greasy mini-samosas, evidently in a misplaced attempt to encourage us to mingle and network after working hours. Halfway across the campus there’s a bar, although the beer’s fizzy piss and the spirits are overpriced. I check the clock: it’s only six thirty. If I do the mingling thing they’ll start badgering me about their aunts’ speeding tickets, but the prospect of drinking on my own does not appeal.
I make the best of a bad deal and strike out across the campus to the nearest bar, where I order a pint of lemonade to calm my nerves and contemplate the menu without much enthusiasm. The ghastly truth is beginning to sink in when one of my fellow victims walks in and approaches the bar. At least I think he’s a victim; he might be staff. Three-piece suit, mid-fifties, distinguished gray hair and a salt-and-pepper mustache. Something about his bearing is familiar, then I realize where I’ve seen it before—ten to one he’s ex-military. As he taps the brass bell-push he catches me watching him and nods. “Ah, Mr. Howard.”
I stare at him. “That’s me. Who are you?” It’s rude, I know, but I’m not in a terribly good mood right now.
“I heard one of you young people would be here, and thought I ought to meet you.” The barman, who looks younger than most of the single malts behind the bar, sticks his head up. “Ah, that’ll be a Talisker, the sixteen-year-old, and”—he looks at me—“what’s your poison, Mr. Howard?”
“I’ll try the Glengoyne ten,” I say automatically.
“Bill it to my tab,” says my nameless benefactor. “No ice!” he adds, with an expression of mild horror as the barman reaches for the bucket. “That will be all.” The barman, to my surprise, makes himself scarce, leaving two tumblers of amber water-of-life atop the bar. “Make yourself comfortable,” he says, gesturing at a couple of armchairs beside the empty fireplace. He makes it sound like an order.
I sit down. He sits down opposite me. “You still haven’t introduced yourself,” I say.