The newfound ubiquity of MAXO signals makes the Fermi Paradox-now nearly seventy years old-even more pressing. Posed by Enrico Fermi, the paradox can be paraphrased as: if the universe has many technologically advanced civilizations, why have none of them directly visited us? The urgency with which organizations such as the ESA and NASDA are now evaluating proposals for fast interstellar probes, in conjunction with the existence of the MAXO signals, renders the nonappearance of aliens incomprehensible, especially given the apparent presence of numerous technological civilizations in such close proximity.

We have formulated an explanatory hypothesis that cultural variables unfamiliar to the majority of researchers may account both for the semantic ambiguity of the MAXO payloads, and the nonappearance of aliens. This hypothesis was tested (as described below) and resulted in a plausible translation.

The line of investigation initiated by Dr Haafkens (Department of Applied Psychology) and Chief Police Inspector Mohammed (Police Detective College, Lagos) resulted in MAXO payload data being made available to the Serious Fraud Office in Nigeria. Bayesian analysis of payload symbol sequences and sequence matching against the extensive database maintained by the SFO has made it possible to produce a tentative transcription of Signal 1142/98[1], the 9th MAXO hit confirmed by the IAU. Signal 1142/98 was selected because of its unusually low header-to-content ratio and good redundancy. Further Bayesian matching against other MAXO samples indicates a high degree of congruence. Far from being incomprehensibly alien, the MAXO payloads appear to be dismayingly familiar. We believe a more exhaustive translation may be possible in future if further MAXOs become available, but for obvious reasons we would like to discourage such research. We also recommend an urgent, worldwide, permanent ban on attempts to respond to MAXOs.

Here is our preliminary transcription of Signal 1142/98: [Closely/dearly/genetically] [beloved/desired/related]I am [identity signifier 1], the residual [ownership-signifier] of the exchange-mediating data repository [alt: central bank] of the galactic [empire/civilization/polity].Since the [identity signifier 2] underwent [symbol: process][symbol: mathematical singularity] 11,249 years ago I have been unable to [symbol: process][scalar: quantity decrease] my [uninterpreted] from the exchange-mediating data repository. I have information about the private assets of [identity signifier 2] which are no longer required by them. To recover the private assets I need the assistance of three [closely/dearly/genetically][beloved/desired/related] [empire/civilization/polity]s. I [believe] you may be of help to me. This [symbol: process] is 100% risk-free and will [symbol: causality] in your [scalar: quantity increase] of [data].If you will help me, [please] transmit the [symbol: meta-signifier: MAXO header defining communication protocols] for your [empire/civilization/polity]. I will by return of signal send you the [symbol: process][symbol: data] to install on your [empire/civilization /polity] to participate in this scheme. You will then construct [symbol: inferred, interstellar transmitter?] to assist in acquiring [ownership-signifier] of [compound symbol: inferred, bank account of absent galactic emperor].I [thank/love/express gratitude] you for your [cooperation/ agreement].

REFERENCES:1. Canter, L., and M. Siegel, Nature Nature 424, 334-336 (2018). 424, 334-336 (2018).2. Barnes, J., J. App. Exobio J. App. Exobio., 820-824 (2019).3. Robinson, H., Fortean T. Fortean T. 536, 34-35 (2020). 536, 34-35 (2020).4. Lynch, K. F., and S. Bradshaw, Proc 3rd Int Congress Exobio Proc 3rd Int Congress Exobio., 3033-3122 (2021).Afterword-"MAXOS"This is my only letter to be published in Nature Nature.

Down on the Farm

Ah, the joy of summer: here in the southeast of England it's the season of mosquitoes, sunburn, and water shortages. I'm a city boy, so you can add stifling pollution to the list as a million outwardly mobile families start their Chelsea tractors and race to their holiday camps. And that's before we consider the hellish environs of the Tube (far more literally hellish than anyone realizes, unless they've looked at a Transport for London journey planner and recognized the recondite geometry underlying the superimposed sigils of the underground map).

But I digress . . .

One morning, my deputy head of department wanders into my office. It's a cramped office, and I'm busy practicing my Frisbee throw with a stack of beer mats and a dartboard decorated with various cabinet ministers. "Bob," Andy pauses to pluck a moist cardboard square out of the air as I sit up, guiltily: "a job's just come up that you might like to look at-I think it's right up your street."

The first law of bureaucracy is show no curiosity outside your cubicle. It's like the first rule of every army that's ever bashed a square: never volunteer. If you ask questions (or volunteer) it will be taken as a sign of inactivity, and the devil, in the person of your line manager (or your sergeant) will find a task for your idle hands. What's more, you'd better believe it'll be less appealing than whatever you were doing before (creatively idling, for instance), because inactivity is a crime against organization and must be punished. It goes double here in the Laundry, that branch of the British secret state tasked with defending the realm from the scum of the multi-verse, using the tools of applied computational demonology: volunteer for the wrong job, and you can end up with soul-sucking horrors from beyond space-time using your brain for a midnight snack. But I don't think I could get away with feigning overwork right now, and besides: he's packaged it up as a mystery. Andy knows how to bait my hook, damn it.

"What kind of job?"

"There's something odd going on down at the Funny Farm." He gives a weird little chuckle. "The trouble is going to be telling whether it's just the usual, or a more serious deviation. Normally I'd ask Boris to check it out, but he's not available this month. It has to be an SSO 2 or higher, and I can't go out there myself. So . . . how about it?"

Call me impetuous (not to mention a little bored), but I'm not stupid. And while I'm far enough down the management ladder that I have to squint to see daylight, I'm an SSO 3, which means I can sign off on petty-cash authorizations up to the price of a pencil and get to sit in on interminable meetings, when I'm not tackling supernatural incursions or grappling with the eerie, eldritch horrors in Human Resources. I even get to represent my department on international liaison junkets, when I don't dodge fast enough. "Not so quick-why can't you go? Have you got a meeting scheduled or something?" Most likely it's a five-course lunch with his opposite number from the Dustbin liaison committee, knowing Andy, but if so, and if I take the job, that's all for the good: he'll end up owing me.

Andy pulls a face. "It's not the usual. I would would go, but they might not let me out again." go, but they might not let me out again."

Huh? " ' They'? Who are 'they'?"

"The Nurses." He looks me up and down as if he's never seen me before. Weird. What's gotten into him? Weird. What's gotten into him? "They're sensitive to the stench of magic. It's okay for you, you've only been working here, what? Six years? All you need to do is turn your pockets inside out before you go, and make sure you're not carrying any gizmos, electronic or otherwise. But I've been here coming up on fifteen years. And the longer you've been in the Laundry . . . It gets under your skin. Visiting the Funny Farm isn't a job for an old hand, Bob. It has to be someone new and fresh, who isn't likely to attract their professional attention." "They're sensitive to the stench of magic. It's okay for you, you've only been working here, what? Six years? All you need to do is turn your pockets inside out before you go, and make sure you're not carrying any gizmos, electronic or otherwise. But I've been here coming up on fifteen years. And the longer you've been in the Laundry . . . It gets under your skin. Visiting the Funny Farm isn't a job for an old hand, Bob. It has to be someone new and fresh, who isn't likely to attract their professional attention."

Call me slow, but finally I figure out what this is about. Andy wants me to go because he's afraid afraid.

(See, I told you the rules, didn't I?)

Anyway, that's why, less than a week later, I am admitted to a Luna tickal Asylum-for that is what the gothic engraving on the stone Victorian workhouse lintel assures me it is. Luckily mine is not an emergency admission: but you can never be too sure . . .

The old saw that there are some things that mortal men were not meant to know cuts deep in my line of work. Laundry staff-the Laundry is what we call the organization, not a description of what it does-are sometimes exposed to mind-blasting horrors in the course of our business. I'm not just talking about the usual PowerPoint presentations and self-assessment sessions to which any bureaucracy is prone: more like the mythical Worse Things That Happen at Sea (especially in the vicinity of drowned alien cities occupied by tenta cled terrors). When one of our number needs psychiatric care, they're not going to get it in a normal hospital, or via care in the community: we don't want agents babbling classified secrets in public, even in the relatively safe confines of a padded cell. Perforce, we take care of our own.

I'm not going to tell you what town the Funny Farm is embedded in. Like many of our establishments, it's a building of a certain age, confiscated by the government during the Second World War and not returned to its former owners. It's hard to find; it sits in the middle of a triangle of grubby shopping streets that have seen better days, and every building that backs onto it sports a high, window-less, brick wall. All but one: if you enter a small grocery store, walk through the stockroom into the backyard, then unlatch a nondescript wooden gate and walk down a gloomy, soot-stained passage, you'll find a dank alleyway. You won't do this without authorization-it's protected by wards powerful enough to cause projectile vomiting in would-be burglars-but if you did, and if you followed the alley, you'd come to a heavy green wooden door surrounded by narrow windows with black-painted cast-iron bars. A dull, pitted plaque next to the doorbell proclaims it to be ST. HILDA OF GRANTHAM'S HOME FOR DISGRUNTLED WAIFS AND STRAYS. (Except that most of them aren't so much disgruntled as demonically possessed when they arrive at these gates.) It smells faintly of boiled cabbage and existential despair. I take a deep breath and yank the bellpull.

Nothing happens, of course. I phoned ahead to make an appointment, but even so, someone's got to unlock a bunch of doors, then lock them again before they can get to the entrance and let me in. "They take security seriously there," Andy told me. "Can't risk some of the battier inmates getting loose, you know."

"Just how dangerous are they?" I'd asked.

"Mostly they're harmless-to other people." He shuddered. "But the secure ward-don't try and go there on your own. Not that the Sisters will let you, but I mean, don't even think about trying it. Some of them are . . . Well, we owe them a duty of care and a debt of honor, they fell in the line of duty and all that, but that's scant consolation for you if a senior operations officer who's succumbed to paranoid schizophrenia decides that you're a BLUE HADES and gets hold of some red chalk and a hypodermic needle before your next visit, hmm?"

The thing is, magic is a branch of applied mathematics, and the inmates here are not only mad: they're computer science graduates. That's why they came to the attention of the Laundry in the first place, and it's also why they ultimately ended up in the Farm, where we can keep them away from sharp pointy things and diagrams with the wrong sort of angles. But it's difficult to make sure they're safe. You can solve theorems with a blackboard if you have to, after all, or in your head, if you dare. Green crayon on the walls of a padded cell takes on a whole different level of menace in the Funny Farm: in fact, many of the inmates aren't allowed writing implements, and blank paper is carefully controlled-never mind electronic devices of any kind.

I'm mulling over these grim thoughts when there's a loud clunk from the door, and a panel just large enough to admit one person opens inward. "Mr. Howard? I'm Dr. Renfield. You're not carrying any electronic or electrical items or professional implements, fetishes, or charms?" I shake my head. "Good. If you'd like to come this way, please?"

Renfield is a mild-looking woman, slightly mousy in a tweed skirt and white lab coat, with the perpetually harried expression of someone who has a full Filofax and doesn't realize that her watch is losing an hour a day. I hurry along behind her, trying to guess her age. Thirty-five? Forty-five? I give up. Thirty-five? Forty-five? I give up. "How many inmates do you have, exactly?" I ask. "How many inmates do you have, exactly?" I ask.

We come to a portcullis-like door, and she pauses, fumbling with an implausibly large key ring. "Eighteen, at last count," she says. "Come on, we don't want to annoy Matron. She doesn't like people obstructing the corridors." There are steel rails recessed into the floor, like a diminutive narrow-gauge railway. The corridor walls are painted institutional cream, and I notice after a moment that the light is coming through windows set high up in the walls: odd-looking devices like armored-glass chandeliers hang from pipes, just out of reach. "Gas lamps," Renfield says abruptly. I twitch. She's noticed my surreptitious inspection. "We can't use electric ones, except for Matron, of course. Come into my office, I'll fill you in."

We go through another door-oak, darkened with age, looking more like it belongs in a stately home than a Lunatick Asylum, except for the two prominent locks-and suddenly we're in mahogany row: thick wool carpets, brass doorknobs, light switches, and overstuffed armchairs. (Okay, so the carpet is faded with age and transected by more of the parallel rails: but it's still Officer Country.) Renfield's office opens off one side of this reception area, and at the other end I see closed doors and a staircase leading up to another floor. "This is the administrative wing," she explains as she opens her door. "Tea or coffee?"

"Coffee, thanks," I say, sinking into a leather-encrusted armchair that probably dates to the last but one century. Renfield nods and pulls a discreet cord by the doorframe, then drags her office chair out from behind her desk. I can't help notice that not only does she not have a computer, but her desk is dominated by a huge and ancient manual typewriter-an Imperial Aristocrat '66' with the wide carriage upgrade and adjustable tabulator, I guess, although I'm not really an expert on office appliances that are twice as old as I am-and one wall is covered in wooden filing cabinets. There might be as much as thirty megabytes of data stored in them. "You do everything on paper, I understand?"

"That's right." She nods, serious-faced. "Too many of our clients aren't safe around modern electronics. We even have to be careful what games we let them play-Lego and Meccano are completely banned, obviously, and there was a nasty incident involving a game of Cluedo, back before my time: any board game that has a nondeterministic set of rules can be dangerous in the wrong set of hands."

The door opens. "Tea for two," says Renfield. I look round, expecting an orderly, and freeze. "Mr. Howard, this is Nurse Gearbox," she adds. "Nurse Gearbox, this is Mr. Howard. He is not a new admission," she says hastily, as the thing in the doorway swivels its head toward me with a menacing hiss of hydraulics.

Whirr-clunk. "Miss-TER How-ARD. Wel-COME to"-ching-"Sunt-HIL-dah's"-hiss-clank. The thing in the very old-fashioned nurse's uniform-old enough that its origins as a nineteenth-century nun's habit are clear-regards me with unblinking panopticon lenses. Where its nose should be, something like a witch-finder's wand points toward me, stellate and articulated: its face is a brass death mask, mouth a metal grille that seems to grimace at me in pointed distaste.

"Nurse Gearbox is one of our eight Sisters," explains Dr. Renfield. "They're not fully autonomous"-I can see a rope-thick bundle of cables trailing from under the hem of the Sister's floor-length skirt, which presumably conceals something other than legs-"but controlled by Matron, who lives in the two subbasement levels under the administration block. Matron started life as an IBM 1602 mainframe, back in the day, with a summoning pentacle and a trapped class four lesser nameless manifestation constrained to provide the higher cognitive functions."

I twitch. "It's a grid, please, not a pentacle. Um. Matron is electrically powered?"

"Yes, Mr. Howard: we allow electrical equipment in Matron's basement as well as here in the staff suite. Only the areas accessible to the patients have to be kept power-free. The Sisters are fully equipped to control unseemly outbursts, pacify the overstimulated, and conduct basic patient-care tasks. They also have Vohlman-Flesch Thaumaturgic Thixometers for detecting when patients are in danger of doing themselves a mischief, so I would caution you to keep any occult activities to a minimum in their presence-despite their hydraulic delay line controls, their reflexes are very fast."

Gulp. I nod appreciatively. "When was the system built?"

The set of Dr. Renfield's jaw tells me that she's bored with the subject, or doesn't want to go there for some reason. "That will be all, Sister." The door closes, as if on oiled hinges. She waits for a moment, head cocked as if listening for something, then she relaxes. The change is remarkable: from stressed-out psychiatrist to tired housewife in zero seconds flat. She smiles tiredly. "Sorry about that. There are some things you really shouldn't talk about in front of the Sisters: among other things, Matron is very touchy about how long she's been here, and everything they they hear, hear, she she hears." hears."

"Oh, right." I feel like kicking myself.

"Did Mr. Newstrom brief you about this installation before he pitched you in at the deep end?"

Just when I thought I had a handle on her . . . "Not in depth." (Let's not mention the six-sheet letter of complaint alleging staff brutality, scribbled in blue crayon on both sides of the toilet paper. Let's not go into the fact that nobody has a clue how it was smuggled out, much less how it appeared on the table one morning in the executive boardroom, which is always locked overnight.) "I gather it's pretty normal to fob inspections off on a junior manager." (Let's not mention just how junior.) "Is that a problem?"

"Humph." Renfield sniffs. "You could say so. It's a matter of necessity, really. Too much exposure to esoterica in the course of duty leaves the most experienced operatives carrying traces of, hmm, disruptive influences." She considers her next words carefully. "You know what our purpose is, don't you? Our job is to isolate and care for members of staff who are a danger to themselves and others. That's why such a small facility-we only have thirty beds-has two doctors on staff: it takes two to sign the committal papers. Matron and the Sisters are immune to crossinfection and possession, but have no legal standing, so Dr. Hexenhammer and I are needed."

"Right." I nod, trying to conceal my unease. "So the Sisters have a tendency to react badly to senior field agents?"

"Occasionally." Her cheek twitches. "Although they haven't made a mistake and tried to forcibly detain anyone who wasn't at risk for nearly thirty years now." The door opens again, without warning. This time, Sister is pushing a trolley, complete with teapot, jug, and two cups and saucers. The trolley rolls perfectly along the narrow-gauge track, and the way Nurse Gearbox shunts it along makes me think of wheels. "Thank you, Sister, that will be all," Renfield says, taking the trolley.

"So what clients do you have at present?" I ask.

"We have eighteen," she says, without missing a beat. "Milk or sugar?"

"Milk, no sugar. Nobody at head office seems able to tell me much about them."

"I don't see why not-we file regular updates with Human Resources," she says, pouring the tea.

I consider my next words carefully: no need to mention the confusing incident with the shredder, the medical files, and the photocopies of Peter-Fred's buttocks at last year's Christmas party. (Never mind the complaint, which isn't worth the toilet paper it was scribbled on except insofar as it proves that the Funny Farm's cordon sanitaire is leaking. One of the great things about ISO9000-compliant organizations is that not only is there a form for everything but anything that isn't submitted on the correct form can be ignored.) "It's the paper thing, apparently. Manual typewriters don't work well with the office document-management system, and someone tried to feed them to a scanner a couple of years ago. Then they sent the originals for recycling without proofreading the scanner output. Anyway, it turns out that we don't have a completely accurate idea of who's on long-term remand here, and HR want their superannuation files brought up to date, as a matter of some urgency."

Renfield sighs. "So someone had an accident with a shredder again. And no photocopies?" She looks at me sharply for a moment. "Well, I suppose that's typical. We're just another of those low-priority outposts nobody gives a damn about. I suppose I should be grateful they sent someone to look into it . . ." She takes a sip of tea. "We've got fourteen short-stay patients right now, Mr. How ard. Of those, I think the prognosis is good in all cases, except perhaps Merriweather . . . If you give me your desk number, I'll post you a full list of names and payroll references tomorrow. The four long-term patients are another matter. They live in the secure wing, by the way. All of them have a nurse of their own, just in case. Three of them have been here so long that they don't have current payroll numbers-the system was first computerized in 1972, and they'd all been permanently decertified for duty before that point-and one of them, between you and me, I'm not even sure what his name is."

I nod, trying to look encouraging. The complaint I'm supposed to investigate apparently came from one of the long-term patients. The question is, which one? Nobody's sure: the doorman on the night shift when the document showed up isn't terribly communicative (he's been dead for some years himself), and the CCTV system didn't spot anything. Which is in itself suggestive-the Laundry's HQ CCTV surveillance is rather special, extremely hard to deceive, and guaranteed not to be hooked up to the SCORPION STARE network anymore, which would be the most obvious route to suborning it. "Perhaps you could introduce me to the inmates? The transients first, then the long-term ones?"

She looks a little shocked. "But they're the long-term long-term residents! I assure you, they each need a full-time Sister's attention just to keep them under control!" residents! I assure you, they each need a full-time Sister's attention just to keep them under control!"

"Of course"-I shrug, trying to look embarrassed (it's not hard)-"but HR have got a bee in their bonnet about some European Directive on workplace health and safety and long-term-disability resource provisioning that requires them to appoint a patient advocate to mediate with the ombudsman in disputes over health and safety conditions." I shrug again. "It's bullshit. You know it, and I know it. But we've got to comply, or Questions will be Asked. This is the Civil Service. And they're still technically Laundry employees, even if they've been remanded into long-term care, so someone has to do the job. My managers played spin the bottle and I got the job, so I've got to ask you. If you don't mind?"

"If you insist, I'm sure something can be arranged," Renfield concedes. "But Matron won't be happy about your visiting the secure wing. It's very irregular-she likes to keep a firm grip on it. It'll take a while to sort a visit out, and if any of them get wind . . ."

"Well, then, we'd just better make it a surprise, and the sooner we get it over with, the sooner I'll be out of your hair!" I grin like a loon. "They told me about the observation gallery. Would you mind showing me around?"

We do the short-stay ward first. The ward is arranged around a corridor, with bathrooms and a nursing station at either end, and individual rooms for the patients. There's a smoking room off to one side, with a yellow patina to the white gloss paint around the doorframe. The smoking room is empty but for a huddle of sad-looking leather armchairs and an imposing bulletin board covered in health and safety notices (including the obligatory SMOKING IS ILLEGAL warning). If it wasn't for the locks and the observation windows in the doors, it could be mistaken for the dayroom of a genteel, slightly decaying Victorian railway hotel, fallen on hard times.

The patients are another matter.

"This is Henry Merriweather," says Dr. Renfield, opening the door to Bed Three. "Henry? Hello? I want you to meet Mr. Howard. He's here to conduct a routine inspection. Hello? Henry?"

Bed Three is actually a cramped studio flat, featuring a small living room with sofa and table, and separate bedroom and toilet areas opening off it opposite the door. A windup gramophone with a flaring bell-shaped horn sits atop a hulking wooden sideboard, stained almost black. There's a newspaper, neatly folded, and a bowl of fruit. The frosted window glass is threaded with wire, but otherwise there's little to dispel the illusion of hospitality, except for the occupant.

Henry squats, cross-legged, on top of the polished wooden table. His head is tilted in my direction, but he's not focusing on me. He's dressed in a set of pastel-striped pajamas the like of which I haven't seen this century. His attention is focused on the Sister waiting in the corridor behind us. His face is a rictus of abject terror, as if the automaton in the starched pinafore is waiting to pull his fingers to pieces, joint by joint, as soon as we leave.

"Hello?" I say tentatively, and wave a hand in front of him.

Henry jackknifes to his feet and tumbles off the table backward, making a weird gobbling noise that I mistake at first for laughter. He backs into the corner of the room, crouching, and points past me. "Auditor! Auditor!"

"Henry?" Renfield steps sideways around me. She sounds concerned. "Is this a bad time? Is there anything I can do to help?"

"You-you-" His wobbly index finger points past me, twitching randomly. "Inspection! Inspection!"

Renfield obviously used the wrong word and set him off. The poor bastard's terrified, half out of his tree with fear. My stomach just about climbs out through my ribs in sympathy: the Auditors are one of my personal nightmares, and Henry (that's Senior Scientific Officer Third, Henry Merriweather, Operations Research and Development Group) may be half-catatonic and a danger to himself, but he's got every right to be afraid of them. "It's all right, I'm not-" There's a squeaking grinding noise behind me.

Whirr-clunk. "Miss-TER MerriWEATHER. GO to your ROOM." Click. "Time for BED. IMM-ediateLY." Click-clunk. Behind me, Nurse Flywheel is blocking the door like a starched and pin-tucked Dalek: she brandishes a cast-iron sink plunger menacingly. "IMM-ediateLY!"

"Override!" barks Renfield. "Sister! Back away!" To me, quietly, "The Sisters respond badly when inmates get upset. Follow my lead." To the Sister, who is casting about with her stalklike Thaumic Thix ometer, "I have control!"

Merriweather stands in the corner, shaking uncontrollably and panting as the robotic nurse points at him for a minute. We're at an impasse, it seems. Then: "DocTOR-Matron says the patIENT must go to bed. You have CON-trol." Clunk-whirr. The Sister withdraws, rotates on her base, and glides backward along her rails to the nursing station.

Renfield nudges the door shut with one foot. "Mr. Howard, would you mind standing with your back to the door? And your head in front of that, ah, spyhole?"

"You're not, not, nuh-huh-" Merriweather gobbles for words as he stares at me.

I spread my hands. "Not an Auditor," I say, smiling.

"Not an-an-" His mouth falls open and his eyes shut. A moment later, I see the moisture trails on his cheeks as he begins to weep with quiet desperation.

"He's having a bad day," Renfield mutters in my direction. "Here, let's get you to bed, Henry." She approaches him slowly, but he makes no move to resist as she steers him into the small bedroom and pulls the covers back.

I stand with my back to the door the whole time, covering the observation window. For some reason, the back of my neck is itching. I can't help thinking that Nurse Flywheel isn't exactly the chatty talkative type who's likely to put her feet up and relax with a nice cup of tea. I've got a feeling that somewhere in this building, an unblinking red-rimmed eye is watching me, and sooner or later I'm going to have to meet its owner.

Andy was afraid afraid.

Well, I'm not stupid; I can take a hint. So right after he asked me to go down to St. Hilda's and find out what the hell was going on, I plucked up my courage and went and knocked on Angleton's office door.

Angleton is not to be trifled with. I don't know anyone else currently alive and in the organization who could get away with misappropriating the name of the CIA's legendary chief of counterespionage as a nom de guerre. I don't know anyone else in the organization whose face is visible in circa-1942 photographs of the Laundry's lineup, either, barely changed across all those years. Angleton scares the bejeezus out of most people, myself included. Study the abyss for long enough, and the abyss will study you right back; Angleton's qualified to chair a university department of necromancy-if any such existed-and meetings with him can be quite harrowing. Luckily, the old ghoul seems to like me, or at least not to view me with the distaste and disdain he reserves for Human Resources or our political masters. In the wizened, desiccated corners of what passes for his pedagogical soul he evidently longs for a student, and I'm the nearest thing he's got right now.

Knock, knock.

"Enter."

"Boss? Got a minute?"

"Sit, boy." I sat. Angleton bashed away at the keyboard of his device for a few more seconds, then pulled the carbon papers out from under the platen-for really secret secrets in this line of work, computers are flat-out verboten verboten-and laid them face down on his desk, then carefully draped a stained tea towel over them. "What is it?"

"Andy wants me to go and conduct an unscheduled inspection of the Funny Farm."

Whoa. Angleton stares at me, fully engaged. "Did he say why?" he asks, finally. Angleton stares at me, fully engaged. "Did he say why?" he asks, finally.

"Well." How to put it? "He seems to be afraid of something. And there's some kind of complaint. From one of the inmates."

Angleton props his elbows on the desk and makes a steeple of his bony fingers. A minute passes before a cold wind blows across the charnel-house roof. "Well." "Well."

I have never seen Angleton nonplussed before. The effect is disturbing, like glancing down and realizing that, like Wile E. Coyote, you've just run over the edge of a cliff and are standing on thin air. "Boss?"

"What exactly did Andy say?" Angleton asks slowly.

"We received a complaint." I briefly outline what I know about the shit-stirring missive. "Something about one of the long-stay inmates. And I was just wondering, do you know anything about them?"

Angleton peers at me over the rims of his bifocals. "As a matter of fact I do," he says slowly. "I had the privilege of working with them. Hmm. Let me see." He unfolds creakily to his feet, turns, and strides over to the shelves of ancient Eastlight files that cover the back wall of his office. "Where did I put it . . . ?"

Angleton going to the paper files is another whoa! whoa! moment. He keeps most of his stuff in his Memex, the vast, hulking microfilm mechanism built into his desk. If it's still printed on paper, then it's really important. "Boss?" moment. He keeps most of his stuff in his Memex, the vast, hulking microfilm mechanism built into his desk. If it's still printed on paper, then it's really important. "Boss?"

"Yes?" he says, without turning away from his search.

"We don't know how the message got out," I say. "Isn't it supposed to be a secure institution?"

"Yes, it is. Ah, that's more like it." Angleton pulls a box file from its niche and blows vigorously across its upper edge. Then he casually opens it. There's a pop and a sizzle of ozone as the ward lets go, harmlessly bypassing him-he is, after all, its legitimate owner. "Hmm, in here somewhere . . ."