The Man with the Golden Torc

CHAPTER SIX Dangerous Lab Interns

So I went off to pay a visit to the family Armourer. Bit of a dry old stick, but there’s nothing he doesn’t know about weapons, devices, and things that go boom, whether scientific or magical in nature. In the more than likely event of something going horribly wrong on my new mission, it was clear I was going to need all the serious weaponry I could get my hands on, if I was to protect the Soul of Albion from all comers.

I wanted a new gun. A big gun. A really, really big gun. With atomic bullets.

The family armoury is situated a decent distance beneath the west wing, set even deeper in the bedrock than the War Room. That way when (rather than if) the whole armoury finally blows itself to hell, it won’t take the rest of the Hall with it. The Armourer and his staff, geniuses one and all though they may be, and enthusiastic to a fault, have always had a tendency towards the kick it and see what happens school of scientific enquiry. They also have unlimited access to guns, grimoires, and unstable chemicals. I’m amazed this part of England is still here.

The present armoury is set up in what used to be the old wine cellars, behind vast and heavy blast-proof doors. Designed to keep things in, rather than out. The cellars are basically a long series of connected stone chambers, with bare plastered walls and curving ceilings, all but buried under a multicoloured spaghetti of tacked-up electrical wiring. The fluorescent lighting was a sometime thing, and the huge air-conditioning system grumbled constantly to itself. The stone chambers were full to bursting with the Armourer’s extended staff: researchers, expediters, mechanics, weaponeers, and human guinea pigs. (Someone had to test each new device. This was decided by a lottery among the staff, and the loser was the one who wasn’t smart enough to fix the outcome in advance.)

The armoury is always coming up with new weapons devised, constructed, and tested right here in the labs. Which is why the place is always so appallingly noisy. I stood by the closed blast-proof doors awhile, waiting for my ears to adjust to the din. Men and women with earnest, preoccupied faces bustled back and forth, giving their whole attention to the latest generation of deadly devices they were producing for agents to use in the field. And hopefully getting all the bugs out in advance. I could still remember the explosive whoopee cushion, which didn’t, and the utterly impenetrable arm-mounted force shield, which wasn’t. No one paid me any attention at all, but I was getting used to that.

Lights flared brightly, shadows danced, and lightning crawled all over one wall like electric ivy. Sharp chemical stinks fought it out with the gentler aromas of crushed herbs, while molten metal flowed sluggishly into ceramic moulds, and smoke drifted gently on the air from the latest unfortunate incident. The armoury didn’t have a first-aid box; it had its own adjoining hospital ward. A hell of a lot of people crowded around test benches and futuristic lab equipment, alchemical retorts and silver-bullet moulds, and of course the ubiquitous computers and chalked pentagrams. Most of these very busy people were cursing loudly and emphatically as they tried to persuade their latest projects to do what they were supposed to without exploding, melting down, or turning the experimenter into something small and fluffy. Somebody close to me reached for a handy lump hammer, and I decided to go somewhere else.

I strolled through the labs, keeping an eye out for the Armourer. Doorways opened in midair, giving brief glimpses of faraway places, and a test animal imploded. A desperate young intern chased through the labs, flailing away with a butterfly net, trying to catch an oversized eyeball with its own fluttering bat wings. I’m sure it had looked perfectly reasonable at the drafting stage. No one paid any attention to these little disruptions, except to jump just a little, absentmindedly, at the latest bang. Just another day, in the armoury. When you’re working at the cutting edges of devious thinking, you have to expect and allow for the occasional setback, along with regular stinks, spatial inversions, and the odd unexpected transformation. Everyone who worked in the armoury was a volunteer drawn from a long list of applications, carefully selected from those in the family who had clearly demonstrated they had far more brains than was good for them. (Often accompanied by an unhealthy curiosity and a complete lack of self-preservation instincts.)

(The really dangerous thinkers were either rapidly promoted to purely theoretical projects or sent to alternate dimensions and told not to come back till they’d calmed down.)

The current crop of interns looked like science nerds everywhere, all heavy spectacles and plastic pocket protectors, except that some of them wore pointy wizard’s hats as well. A lot of them were wearing T-shirts under their lab coats, bearing the legend I Blow Things Up, Therefore I Am, Even If Someone Else Suddenly Isn’t. Science nerd humour. They all looked very earnest and very committed, and if they survived long enough would eventually be promoted to the somewhat safer environs of the research and development labs. It did seem to me though, as I wandered through the chaos in search of the Armourer, that the old place held a lot more people and projects, along with a greater general sense of urgency, than I remembered from my last visit, ten years ago.

Two of the more brawny types were sparring with electrified brass knuckles, sparks crackling and spitting fiercely on the air as they swung and parried. One girl had her head stuck deep in a fish tank, proving she could now breathe underwater. Impressive, but I couldn’t help thinking the gaping rows of gills on her neck would be a bit of a giveaway in polite society. Not far away, an unfortunate young man had stopped proving he could now breathe fire, because it had given him hiccoughs. Unpredictable and highly inflammable hiccoughs. Someone led him away to put an asbestos bag over his head. I didn’t see why they couldn’t just stick his head in the fish tank, next to the girl.

And someone had blown up the firing range again. There’s always someone trying to break the record for biggest and most powerful handgun.

I finally spotted the Armourer up ahead, striding back and forth through the caverns, keeping a stern eye on everyone and everything. He paused here and there to dispense advice, encouragement, and the occasional clip on the ear, where necessary. The Armourer was strict but fair. I waited until he came back and settled at his usual testing bench, and then I slipped in beside him. He glanced briefly at me, sniffed loudly, and went back to what he was working on. It takes a lot to surprise the Armourer.

A tall, middle-aged man with far too much nervous energy, he wore a permanently stained white lab coat over a T-shirt saying Guns Don’t Kill People; I Kill People. Two shocks of tufty white hair jutted out over his ears below a bulging bald pate, and under bushy white eyebrows his eyes were a steely gray. His expression rarely changed from an habitual scowl, and while he had once been tall and imposing, he was now bent over by a pronounced stoop, legacy of so many years spent leaning over workbenches and lab projects that always needed fixing in a hurry. Or maybe just from ducking a lot. I sat beside him for a while, waiting for him to say something, but as always it was up to me to tear his attention away from his latest project.

"Hello, Armourer. Good to see you again. The old place seems very busy, just at the moment. Are we preparing for a war?"

He sniffed loudly again. "Always, boy. Always."

He plugged a thick electrical cable into a socket, tripped half a dozen switches, and then looked expectantly at a computer monitor wrapped in mistletoe and strings of garlic. Nothing happened. The Armourer hit the computer with a hammer, and I quickly took it away from him.

"Give that back!" he said, scowling fiercely. "That’s my lucky hammer!"

"Lucky?" I said, holding it carefully out of reach.

"I’m still here, aren’t I?"

I put the hammer down at the opposite end of the bench. "What’s the problem, Armourer?"

He sighed as he realised he was going to have to talk to me after all.

"Seems like everyone in the Hall is trying to draw power from the Heart, all at the same time. Every damned department at once. I’m supposed to have priority, but it’s all I can do to elbow my way into the queue. If I have to go upstairs and complain, there’ll be tear gas and shrapnel flying through the common rooms…"

"Why is there so much demand for power?"

"Don’t ask me. Ask bloody Alistair!"

I recognised the tone. "All right; what’s Alistair done now?"

The Armourer gave me his best put-upon expression. "First the Matriarch increases my budget, and my workload, and tells me my projects have top priority until further notice; and then bloody Alistair comes poncing in here and announces he’s chosen the armoury as the best place to start his latest efficiency drive. So now not only has my workload gone through the roof, but I have to account for everything we do and use, in triplicate! If I’d wanted to spend half my life up to my elbows in paperwork, I’d have shot myself in the head. Better yet, I’d have shot bloody Alistair in the head, and it may yet come to that. So far I’ve taken to just ignoring the paperwork and using his increasingly distraught memos as toilet paper. And then sending them back to him."

I couldn’t help smiling and nodding. Typical Alistair: penny wise and pound foolish. Always trying to be useful in the worst possible way. Someone once suggested, well out of Grandmother’s hearing, that the best way to bring down our enemies would be to send them Alistair as a gift. I suddenly stopped smiling. Someone in the family was a traitor…and what better way to handicap the family than by undermining and disrupting the work in the armoury? I shook my head reluctantly. I really liked the idea of nailing Alistair as the traitor, but I knew for a fact he’d had to go through all kinds of security checks before the family would allow Martha to marry him. If there’d been even a hint of anything suspicious about him, they’d have found it. I looked around abruptly as the Armourer jabbed me warningly in the ribs, and there was Alexandra Drood, bearing down on me like a heat-seeking missile.

"What the hell are you doing down here, Eddie?"

"Hello, Alex," I said easily. "Good to see you again too. You’re looking deliciously stern, but then you usually do. Especially in certain dreams I’ve been having, involving you in leathers in a dungeon…Don’t look at me like that. I’m here to pick up something in the small but deadly line, for my next mission. What are you doing down here?"

She stood squarely before me, fists planted on her hips. "I run this place now. I’m in training to take over from the Armourer, when he retires."

I looked at the Armourer. "Retiring? You? Really?"

He shrugged uncomfortably. "Comes to us all, Eddie. I’m not getting any younger, despite all my experimenting in that area, and the family depends on the armoury for new ideas and new approaches, as well as new weapons. Maybe it is time for a change. I just oversee things, these days. Paperwork, remember? Alexandra takes care of all the day-to-day business. And does it very well."

He actually managed a real smile for her, which she ignored, her fierce glare fixed on me. I considered Alexandra thoughtfully. She was a cousin of mine, from the same year as me. We’d attended a lot of classes together, and she always was teacher’s pet. A first-class student, and the first to tell you so. Alexandra was tall and blond, with a balcony you could do Shakespeare from. Every inch the Aryan ideal, and twice as scary. Her lab coat had been starched to within an inch of its life and was dazzlingly white. She was pretty enough, in a totally intimidating sort of way, but she always gave the impression that she was about to lunge forward and bite you. And not necessarily in a good way. She glared at me with more than her usual ferocity, and I instinctively looked around for some raw meat to throw her. She prodded me hard in the chest with a forefinger.

"Careful, dear," I said. "In some cultures, that means we’re engaged."

"I am not your dear!"

"You have no idea how safe and secure that makes me feel, Alex."

She took a few deep breaths to steady herself, which did very interesting things to her balcony. I had to look away for a moment. When Alexandra spoke again, her voice was icily calm and controlled.

"I’d heard you were back, Eddie. I don’t know how you have the nerve to show your face in the Hall. You turned your back on the family, after everything they did for you."

"Because of everything they did to me. I still serve, but in my own way."

"There can be only one way! You betrayed the family trust; the old traditions of duty and responsibility. You ran away from the Hall. Away from me."

"I’d have died by inches if I stayed here, Alex. You know that."

"You should have stayed away. You have no place here any more. No one in the family wants you here. No one. Now get the hell out of my armoury before I have security throw you out."

"Ah, Alex; it’s good to see position and authority hasn’t mellowed you. How’s the work here going? Bitten the heads off any more white mice recently?"

"That was just the once! And it was a perfectly reasonable scientific experiment!"

"Of course it was, dear. You still cried like a girly when I had to give you all those rabies shots afterwards."

I couldn’t say I was all that surprised to discover Alexandra was the new Armourer in training. She always was ambitious. Not to mention almost viciously focused and driven to excel. Alexandra was hard-core family, utterly dedicated to the good fight, with no time at all for people on the edge, like me.

"I’m here to pick up some new weapons for my mission," I said, putting on my best let’s-all-be-calm-and-reasonable face. "I have a chitty, from the Matriarch."

Alexandra gave me a look that plainly said she didn’t believe a word of it, and stuck out a hand for the paperwork. I handed it over, and she made a point of scrutinising it very thoroughly, line by line, looking for some subclause she could use to turn me down. I favoured her with my most confident and beneficent smile, which made her scowl ever harder. She’d give herself a headache soon, if she wasn’t careful. In the end, she had no choice but to approve my chitty. It came direct from the Matriarch, with her seal and signature. Alexandra reluctantly put her initials in the space provided, and then thrust the papers ungraciously back at me.

"It all seems valid enough," she growled. "But I don’t want you in my armoury one moment longer than necessary, Eddie. You’re a troublemaker. You breed dissent, and you undermine proper authority. You stand for everything I disapprove of in the family. We should have eliminated you years ago. You’re a security risk, and you always will be."

I had to smile. "And to think I sent you a Valentine’s Day card, when we were both fourteen."

Her mouth twitched briefly. "So it was you. I did wonder."

At which interesting point, we were interrupted by the arrival of another field agent. It was Matthew Drood, and Alexandra was suddenly all smiles for him. Matthew was another cousin from my year, and everything the family had wanted me to be. He’d grown up to be everything I’d always thought he would: very slick, very smart, very smooth. And not half as good in the field as he liked to make out. I’d worked a few cases with him in London, and somehow he ended up with all the credit after I’d done all the real work. He stood casually before me in his expensively cut suit, everything a field agent shouldn’t be: tall, dark, and handsome, and effortlessly charming when he chose to be. Good luck trying to hide him in a crowd. (All right, Uncle James was all those things too, but James had style.)

Matthew worked mainly in business circles, keeping the City…if not actually honest, at least a lot more cautious. He also tended towards scorched-earth solutions to most problems, in which there was no such thing as an innocent bystander. Hard-core family, of course, which was why he and Alexandra got on so famously together. Matthew finally broke off being charming to her long enough to notice me.

"Ah, Eddie…Super to see you again, old thing. You’re looking very…urban. Back from exile so soon? What happened, old boy? Run into something you couldn’t handle? You should have called me; you know I’m always ready to sail in and save the day."

"Yeah," I said. "That’ll happen. Actually, the Matriarch summoned me back here to personally brief me on my next mission." I don’t normally stoop to one-upmanship, but Matthew always did bring out the worst in me. His pleasant smile started to look a bit forced, so I pushed things a little further. "I’m surprised you didn’t hear, Matthew. I always thought you were cleared for top-level discussions."

"Really?" he murmured. "A secret mission, you say? Do tell…I’m just dying to know what kind of top-level mission would demand someone of your…particular talents."

"Sorry," I said. "But it would appear you don’t have high enough clearance."

He stiffened perceptibly and turned abruptly away to bestow his most charming smile on Alexandra. "Lexxy, darling, I come to you in need. I’m afraid I just have to have another truth field generator. I absolutely wore the last one out, following paper trails through the City on that big Brazilian fraud case…"

"Of course, Matthew. Nothing but the best for the family’s golden boy. Come with me, and I’ll fix you right up."

They both turned their backs on me and strolled away arm in arm, laughing easily together. The Armourer and I looked after them.

"What that girl needs," said the Armourer, "is a right good—"

I quickly dropped my clapped-out portable door on the bench in front of him. "I need this recharged. And as soon as possible."

"I know, I know; I’ve read the chitty. Matriarch wants you fully equipped with the best we’ve got and out of here, on the double. Business as usual, these days." He called for one of his interns, who came and took the portable door away, holding it at arm’s length like a dead mouse. The Armourer lurched to his feet and fixed me with a penetrating stare. "You come with me, Eddie. And I’ll show you a few things that might just keep you alive when everyone else wants you dead."

He led me over to another testing bench, shooing away half a dozen interns, and picked up a large silver handgun. He weighed it thoughtfully in his hand, and then passed it over to me. I raised an eyebrow at how heavy it was, and he smiled proudly.

"That is a Colt Repeater. It never runs out of bullets, and it aims itself. All you have to do is point it in the right general direction, and the gun will take care of the rest. Even you should be able to manage that, Eddie."

"What about recoil?" I said, just to be picky.

"Since I made it with people like you in mind, none worth the mention. Try not to use it for too long at one time, or the binding spells will overheat, and the replacement bullets might not be able to find the gun."

"Why is it so heavy?"

He grinned nastily. "So if you do run out of bullets, you can club the buggers to death with it."

He tossed me a shoulder holster, and I struggled into it as he led me over to another bench. I hate shoulder holsters. How women manage with brassieres, I’ll never know. I’d got it more or less into place by the time the Armourer was ready to show me his next creation. It looked a whole lot like an ordinary wristwatch.

"It looks a whole lot like an ordinary wristwatch," I said.

"Well, you wouldn’t want one that shouted Look at me! I belong to a field agent!, would you? This is a reverse watch. Looks and works as normal, except for this button here. Don’t touch it, except when you mean to use it. Push it down hard, and the watch will reverse time, rewinding the last thirty seconds of your life. This will give you a second chance to undo your more serious mistakes. But be warned: any attempt to meddle with time is dangerous. Don’t use the reverse function too often; it might attract the attention of certain beings who take time disruption very seriously."

I accepted the watch gingerly. "How does it work?"

"You wouldn’t understand if I told you, so just put it on and pay attention to this."

I put the watch on, slipped my old Rolex into my jacket pocket, and looked at the compass the Armourer was holding. It looked a whole lot like an ordinary compass. The Armourer looked at me, but I just smiled politely. I hate to be predictable.

"This compass will show you the best way out of any situation, no matter how turned around you’ve got yourself. It’s preprogrammed to lock onto the nearest viable exit and take you there. Just follow where the needle points. The Matriarch specifically asked for something simple in this line, and this is so simple a dog could use it. Just keep it away from strong magnetic forces, or it gets confused. If it starts sticking, grease the works up with a little butter. Only the best butter, of course."

"Oh, of course."

"Now then, what else have I got for you? I had a really nice aboriginal pointing bone, but someone stirred their coffee with it, and it was never the same after that. Then there was the personality enhancer…Looked really good on the drawing board. The idea behind that one was that you’d use it to bring to the fore whatever part of your personality was best suited to deal with the situation you found yourself in."

"Do I gather something went wrong?"

"The enhancing part went fine. It was shutting the bloody things down afterwards that was the problem. So far we’re dealing with six cases of multiple personality disorder, and two cases of people refusing to talk to themselves. Further testing has been suspended. Ah! Yes; this is what I was looking for."

He presented me with a small blue-black lacquered box, not much bigger than a matchbox, with a big red button on top. I shook it to see if it would rattle, and the Armourer actually winced.

"Please don’t do that. What you’re holding is a prototype we haven’t finished testing yet, but the Matriarch said she wanted you supplied with the very best we could offer, so…That is a random teleport generator. Press the button, and the box will instantly send you somewhere else. And because it chooses each destination at random, no one will be able to trail you. Use it to escape from prison cells, blind alleys, death traps, that sort of thing. It works perfectly, except for the times when it doesn’t."

"What?"

"Which part of the word random do you need explained to you, Eddie? This box could send you anywhere, theoretically. It’s preprogrammed not to rematerialise you inside anything solid, but apart from that, all bets are off. You could end up at the North Pole. Or Death Valley. Or the Mariana Trench—"

"I get the idea. Think I’ll pass on this one."

I handed the box back to him very carefully. He shrugged and put the box down very carefully on the bench. "Suit yourself, boy."

"Maybe Matthew would like to test it."

"Now you’re just being nasty."

I grinned and nodded my thanks to the Armourer. He looked at me for a moment.

"You watch yourself out there, Eddie," he said gruffly. "It’s a lot scarier out in the world now, than it was in my day."

The Armourer had spent twenty years as a field agent. That was what made him such a fine Armourer. He always understood that his clever devices had to work in the real world, not just in the labs. Alexandra, on the other hand, had never been out in the field in her life.

"Don’t worry," I said. "I’ll be careful, Uncle Jack."

But he was already hard at work on something else. Two of his interns had brought him a large wooden case held together by half a dozen faded leather straps with heavy black iron buckles. He undid each one carefully, opened the lid, and rooted around in the packing material, before bringing out a large old-fashioned chest plate. He held it up to the light to study it, and I leaned over his shoulder. The dark scarlet metal was wafer thin and deeply scored with long lines of writing in Sanskrit. The Armourer placed the chest plate gently on the bench before him and screwed a jeweller’s loupe into one eye to study it close up. I was puzzled. If this piece of armour was as old as it seemed to be, it ought to be part of family history, and I ought to recognise it. But I’d never seen anything like this before.

"What is it?" I said, trying to sound just casually curious.

He grunted, not looking up, and not fooled for a moment. "This is part of a Juggernaut Jumpsuit. Not dissimilar to the armour we wear, except on a much higher level. This is the kind of thing you wear when you want to push a mountain over onto its side with one hand. And the reason you’ve never seen it before is because it’s a part of the Armageddon Codex."

I actually just stood there and gaped at him for a moment. "But…but…those are the forbidden weapons! The weapons too dangerous to be used, except when reality itself is threatened!"

"I do know that, Eddie."

"Then what the hell is something like that doing outside the Codex?"

"Matriarch’s orders. She wants all the forbidden weapons removed and examined, one at a time, and checked to make sure they’re operating at peak efficiency. Just in case they should be needed. She hasn’t actually ordered any testing yet; I don’t think the council would stand for that. But how bad must things be if we’re opening the Codex for the first time in centuries?"

I leaned in close for a better look at the scarlet metal chest plate. I’d never seen anything from the Armageddon Codex. I don’t think half a dozen people in the family have.

"No one else is supposed to know what this is," the Armourer said quietly. "It’s here under a code name. But I wanted someone to know. Someone I trusted."

"Not Alexandra?" I said, just as quietly.

"The Matriarch specifically said not to tell her. Not tell the Armourer in training? What does that say to you?"

"She thinks there’s a traitor in the family, Uncle Jack. And she’s not the only one…"

"A traitor? In the family? Dear God, what have we come to?" The Armourer shook his head slowly. "There was a time I would have said such a thing was unthinkable. Now…I just don’t know anymore."

"Do you know what my mission is?" I said. "What I’m carrying, and where I have to take it?"

"Of course. One of the few who do. You put it back, Eddie. It should never have been brought here in the first place."

"You didn’t ask for it?"

"Hell, no! That was the Matriarch’s orders again."

"This opening of the Codex," I said slowly. "Could it have something to do with the recent attacks on the Hall? And the Heart?"

The Armourer looked away, his shoulders sagging even farther than usual. And for the first time, he sounded…old. "I don’t know, Eddie. No one tells me anything anymore."