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Missile Gap

by Charles Stross

Chapter One: Bomb Scare

Gregor is feeding pigeons down in the park when the sirens go off.

A stoop-shouldered forty-something male in a dark suit, pale-skinned and thin, he pays no attention at first: the birds hold his attention. He stands at the side of a tarmac path, surrounded by damp grass that appears to have been sprayed with concrete dust, and digs into the outer pocket of his raincoat for a final handful of stale bread-crumbs. Filthy, soot-blackened city pigeons with malformed feet jostle with plump white-collared wood pigeons, pecking and lunging for morsels. Gregor doesn't smile. What to him is a handful of stale bread, is a deadly business for the birds: a matter of survival. The avian struggle for survival runs parallel to the human condition, he ponders. It's all a matter of limited resources and critical positioning. Of intervention by agencies beyond their bird-brained understanding, dropping treats for them to fight over. Then the air raid sirens start up.

The pigeons scatter for the treetops with a clatter of wings. Gregor straightens and looks round. It's not just one siren, and not just a test: a policeman is pedaling his bicycle along the path towards him, waving one-handed. "You there! Take cover!"

Gregor turns and presents his identity card. "Where is the nearest shelter?"

The constable points towards a public convenience thirty yards away. "The basement there. If you can't make it inside, you'll have to take cover behind the east wall — if you're caught in the open, just duck and cover in the nearest low spot. Now go!" The cop hops back on his black boneshaker and is off down the footpath before Gregor can frame a reply.

It's early spring, a weekday morning, and the toilet attendant seems to be taking the emergency as a personal comment on the cleanliness of his porcelain. He jumps up and down agitatedly as he shoves Gregor down the spiral staircase into the shelter, like a short troll in a blue uniform stocking his larder. "Three minutes!" shouts the troll. "Hold fast in three minutes!" So many people in London are wearing uniforms these days, Gregor reflects; it's almost as if they believe that if they play their wartime role properly the ineffable will constrain itself to their expectations of a humanly comprehensible enemy.

A double-bang splits the air above the park and echoes down the stairwell. It'll be RAF or USAF interceptors outbound from the big fighter base near Hanworth. Gregor glances round: A couple of oafish gardeners sit on the wooden benches inside the concrete tunnel of the shelter, and a louche City type in a suit leans against the wall, irritably fiddling with an unlit cigarette and glaring at the NO SMOKING signs. "Bloody nuisance, eh?" he snarls in Gregor's direction.

Gregor composes his face in a thin smile. "I couldn't possibly comment," he says, his Hungarian accent betraying his status as a refugee. (Another sonic boom rattles the urinals, signaling the passage of yet more fighters. ) The louche businessman will be his contact, Goldsmith. He glances at the shelter's counter. Its dial is twirling slowly, signaling the marked absence of radon and fallout. Time to make small-talk, verbal primate grooming: "Does it happen often?"