The Apocalypse Codex Read Online Free PDF Page A

depths of a most peculiar and unpleasant kind. I generally have terrible luck with managers—except for Angleton, who isn’t a manager exactly (he just scares the crap out of everyone who tries to use him as a chess piece). Sitting uneasily somewhere outside the regular org chart, off to one side, doing special projects for Mahogany Row, he hardly counts.
    “You’re wrong,” Mo says crisply, and pours a goodly dollop of pinot noir into my glass. “If they tried to turn you into another pointy-haired clone they’d destroy your utility to the organization—and beating swords into plowshares is not in the game plan. They’re gearing up to fight a shooting war.” She tops up her own glass. “Here’s to your imminent officer’s commission, love.”
    “They’ll make me wear a tie!” I protest.
    “No they won’t.” She pauses to reconsider. “Well, if they’re sending you on regular civil service training courses at the National School of Government you probably ought to dress the part, but there’s no need to go over the top.” She looks at me appraisingly, and there’s something very professional about her gaze. Like me, my wife works for the Laundry; unlike me, she keeps one foot in the outside world, holding down a part-time lectureship in Philosophy of Mathematics at King’s College. (Maintaining that much contact with everyday life is central to keeping Agent CANDID sane—I’ve seen what the other half of her job does to her, and it’s heartbreaking.) “You’re going there as a student so you can probably get away with business casual, especially at your grade and given a technical specialty as a background.”
    “Huh.” I finally raise my glass and take a sip of wine. “But I’m going to be stuck there for a whole week. Stranded in deepest Ruralshire without you. There’s on-site accommodation, run by some god-awful outsourcing partnership; there probably isn’t even a pub within a fifteen kilometer radius.”
    “Nonsense. It’s suburbia; you can get into town of an evening, there’s a bus service, and there are bars and restaurants on campus.”
    The kitchen timer goes off right then, yammering until she walks over and silences it, then opens the oven door. That’s my cue to stand up and start hauling out plates and serving spoons. Dinner is a for-two curry set from Tesco, and we’ve been married long enough to have worked out the division of labor thing: you know the drill.
    (It’s funny how, despite the yawning abyss that has opened up beneath the foundations of reality, we cling desperately to the everyday rituals of domestic life. Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt…)
    Mo tugs at the frayed edges of my management-phobia over the wreckage of a passable saag gosht and a stack of parathas. “Sending you on a course on leadership and people skills sounds like a really good idea to me,” she says. Tearing off a piece of the bread and wrapping it around a lump of lamb and spinach: “They’re not saddling you with stuff like public administration, procurement policy, or PRINCE2. That’s significant, Bob: you’re getting a very odd take on management from this one.” She chews thoughtfully. “Leadership and people skills. Next thing you know they’ll be whisking you off to the Joint Services Command and Staff College.”
    “I am so not cut out for that.”
    “Oh. Really?” She raises an eyebrow.
    “Marching around in uniform, spit and polish and exercise and healthy outdoor living, that kind of thing.” I’m making excuses. We’ve both worked as civilian auxiliaries with the police and military on occasion. I chase a chunk of spinach around my plate with a fork, not meeting her eyes. “I don’t get it. This particular training schedule, I mean. There’s a lot of work I should be doing, and there are courses at the Village”—Dunwich, our very own not-on-the-map training and R&R facility—“that I could be auditing. Stuff that really will improve my survival