Free The Fuller Memorandum by Stross Charles Page A

short range, you grab the slide by laying your hand on top of the barrel and pushing back to stop the breech closing, which is a great secret agent stunt if you’re not lying on the floor of your own front hall with one arm trapped under you and blood trickling down your face.
    “Do you speak English?” I ask.
    Uncle Fester looks annoyed. “Waar is ze?”
    I look him in the eyes and feel my guts freeze. I’ve been here before, staring at the luminous green worms swirling behind the glazed surface of his eyes, writhing in the muddy waters of a mind that’s been sucked into a place where human consciousness melts like grease on a hot frying pan—
    There is a noise behind me like a cat the size of a bus yowling rage and defiance at a rival who has dared to enter his territory.
    Uncle Fester (or whatever it is that wears the mortal skin of a dead man walking) raises his gun to bear on the staircase. My left arm twists almost without me willing it and I push at his right leg just above the ankle, shoving as hard as I can at his trousers don’t think about what happens if you touch his flesh because that would be as bad as not forcing him off balance while he’s aiming at Mo—
    And he topples across me.
    These things are never terribly good at coordinating a tensegrity structure like a mammalian musculoskeletal system: even when they’re in the driving seat they’re trying to work a manual transmission with automatic-only training. His gun bangs, a curiously muffled thudding sound as the feedback howl from the top of the staircase rises to a pitch that makes my teeth ache and overflows into an ear-numbingly harsh chord, music to snap necks to.
    Uncle Fester goes abruptly limp as he falls on my legs. There’s a horrid sigh and a smell I don’t want to think about as unlife and animation departs.
    “Bob?” Her voice is small and terrified.
    “I’m okay!” I call. “Are you?”
    Pause . “Check.” She advances down the stairs, instrument raised and bow poised, wearing an intent, emotionless expression utterly at odds with her voice. As she comes closer I see a trickle of blood emerging from her fingertips where she grips the neck of the bone-colored violin. There’s always a cost to being entrusted with such instruments, and she’s half-past overdrawn at the bank of life, her hands spidering twitchily as she stalks the house room by room, confirming that Uncle Fester was alone.
    My forehead’s damp and I feel sick. I reach out to push myself up so I can shut the front door in case a curious neighbor sees something that might damage their house valuation, and my vision blurs again. I try to wipe my face and my hand comes away red and sticky. That’s odd, I tell myself, I’ve never been shot before . Then everything gets very hazy and far away for a while.

4.
    PROMPT CRITICAL

    HOSPITALS ARE BORING PLACES: MY ADVICE IS TO AVOID THEM wherever possible, unless you happen to work there. Unfortunately I’m not always good at taking my own advice, which is why I spend three hours in the A&E unit, having my head bolted back together.
    Actually, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It’s just a bash and a scrape to my scalp: but head wounds bleed like crazy and they wanted to make sure I wasn’t concussed and didn’t have a fractured skull or a subdural hematoma or something. Then it was time for about a million butterfly sutures and I’m told I may never be able to take the paper bag off in public again, but that’s okay because they let me go home with Mo and the nice folks from Plumbing who look like extras from The Matrix .
    Being attacked by a demonically possessed Russian with a silenced pistol is unusual but not exceptional in my line of work; sloppy of me not to have replaced my ward, though, or to have checked the spy lens in the door before opening up. Inexcusable not to have noticed that Andy’s messenger was at least half an hour early, too . . . but in my defense, I wasn’t exactly expecting to be