The Nightmare Stacks: A Laundry Files novel by Charles Stross Page B

Bridgewater Place, rises a mere thirty-two stories above the city center.
    Alex heads into the pedestrianized shopping maze between Lower Briggate and Call Lane, works his way round to Neon Cactus, and dives into the back room. He finds a table as far from the daylight as he can get. It’s still early, and he’s hungry. (He’s always hungry, thanks to the V-parasites, but at least he’s learned to distinguish between the need to eat and the need for a more recondite repast.) He orders chimichangas and a decaf, then he pulls out his tablet and starts to catch up on his unclassified reading. He doesn’t keep work documents on his personal tablet, but he likes to fantasize that he still has a working life outside the Laundry, and there are plenty of interesting preprints in higher-dimensional topology to keep his delusion fed.
    He’s two pages in when his phone rings. It’s the family-SOS tone.
Damn,
he thinks, pulling it out. “Yes?”
    “Alex?”
    It is not his mother – or his father – for which he is grateful, but it’s still family: Sarah, his kid sister. “I’m in a restaurant. Where are you?”
    “I’m in the student union bar at uni. Listen, Mum says you’re coming to dinner the Saturday after next. Is that right?”
    Something about her tone clues him in that this is not a casual call. “I don’t know. Did I agree to that?” he asks warily.
    “Well, that’s what
she
told
me
, and you know what she’s like? If you don’t come she’ll be ever so disappointed. And I wanted to ask you a favor? I mean, you’re in Leeds right now, aren’t you? Is the bank moving you there?”
    “Not – not exactly.” Alex chickens out. He knows that if he had any sense he’d use Sarah as a back-channel, confess that he doesn’t work for the bank anymore and that his new employer wants him in Leeds full-time. Sarah would then fill in the mater and the pater and they’d get their disappointment out of the way by proxy, long before the uncomfortable silence over dinner… but Alex is a wimp. “I’m in Leeds for a, a course. Mum phoned yesterday to invite me to dinner and I” –
I can make that Saturday,
his memory replays him saying, not entirely helpfully – “I didn’t say ‘no’ in time.”
    “Oh.” There is silence on the line for a moment, during which the waiter – check shirt with buttoned collar, tidily barbered full-set beard/mustache, the ends of an intricate tattoo peeping out from his shirt-cuffs – plants a latte featuring a neatly drawn teddy-bear’s face in front of Alex, checks him out for signs of approval, and departs, disappointed. “Well, um. Are you going?”
    “Mum said something about —” Something in Alex’s memory short-circuits and dredges a traitor phrase to the surface. “You have a friend? Mack? Are you bringing —”
    “Yes, that’s why I was calling.” Now it’s Sarah’s turn to sound evasive. “I’m bringing Mack to dinner and, well, I was hoping you’d be around? You know how awkward it is, introducing —”
    No I don’t.
Alex cringes reflexively. “I guess so. Um. So you want backup. Right?”
    “Right,” she says, a husky note of gratitude bubbling up.
    “Oh my, this is serious, isn’t it?”
    “Yes. Yes, I guess we’re serious, you could say that.” A pause. “You were worried about Mum and Dad leaning on you, weren’t you? Are you seeing anyone, Alex?”
    “N-no.” Somehow it’s easier to confess this personal failing to his kid sister. “Not right now. How long have you known Mack?”
    “Oh, we met in fresher’s week, but we only got serious around the end of last year’s summer term.”
    Alex does the numbers and his eyes bulge. “You’ve been hiding it from the folks for nearly a year?”
    “Not
hiding
, exactly: I just didn’t know what Mum and Dad would make of… It’s different for boys.”
    Alex takes a deep breath. As he does so, he spots the waiter returning, bearing an overflowing plate. “Food’s coming, got