A Colder War

Publication history

The story originally appeared in Spectrum SF No. 3 in 2000, being later reprinted in Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction #18 and in Stross' collections Toast: And Other Rusted Futures (in 2002) and Wireless (2009). In late 2011 it appeared in two Cthulhu-themed anthologies: The Book of Cthulhu by Night Shade Books (ISBN 1597802328) and New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird by Prime Books (ISBN 1607012898).

Plot synopsis

The main viewpoint character, Roger Jourgensen, is a CIA analyst who writes up a report on the state of both the US and Soviet governments' occult research for incoming president Reagan. This report attracts the attention of "the colonel" (Oliver North), who arranges for Jourgensen's transfer and for him to work on a variant of the Iran–Contra affair - secret dealings between the US and the Islamic Republic of Iran to counter Iran's rival Saddam Hussein, frustrate the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, as well as arrange the freeing of hostages in Lebanon.

In the Cold War, NATO and the United States lags the Soviet Union in mastery of the dark arts, and relies on nuclear missiles as their main countermeasure. The Soviets stole the bulk of useful material from Nazi Germany; the Nazis moved a sleeping entity from an underwater city in the Baltic Sea to East Germany, and the Soviets have since contained it at Chernobyl. Research and weapons from it are referred to as Project Koschei. The Soviets have also deployed smaller weapons called servitors, unstoppable robot-like beings found from the original Antarctic Pabodie expedition and in the Kitab Al-Azif. Satellite reconnaissance shows that the servitors may have been deployed in Afghanistan, which would violate the Dresden Agreemen - a secret multinational treaty signed in 1931 after the Pabodie expedition to a strange Antarctic plateau that appears on no maps. Even Adolf Hitler adhered to the treaty, which prohibits the use of these alien entities in war. The United States' countermeasures for Koschei include 300 megatons of nuclear weapons and a continuity of government base hundreds of light years from Earth, connected via a gate in Washington. The CIA also uses the gates to other planets as roundabout ways to transport arms to the Afghani mujahadeen, and drugs back.

Stephen Jay Gould briefs the CIA on the evolutionary implications of the alien life forms discovered on other planets and at Antarctica, confirming they come from no Earthly source. Other nations emulate the superpowers; Iran and Israel plan a nuclear defence against Iraq's attempts to open a gate to the stars. Eventually, the Colonel's dealings are leaked, and Jourgensen has to testify before a Congressional committee. A Congressman, horrified by the accounts of the Colonel's dabbling, inquires about the Great Filter: why no aliens have openly stopped by to visit humanity, and only relics and servants remain. He points out that meddling with with relics of the elder ones would be a good explanation for why other intelligent life has been exterminated before it could visit.

Saddam Hussein stabilises the gate of Yog-Sothoth, destroying opposing tribes in Iraq, which the Iranians respond by nuking Iraq. The timing unfortunately lines up with a joke by President Reagan; the Soviets and their leader Yegor Ligachev retaliate, with a nuclear war destroying the Middle East and much of the United States and Soviet Union. More worryingly, the entity behind Project Koschei, Cthulhu, has somehow been loosed, whether intentionally or not; the US nuclear strike does not appear to slow it down as it heads west across the Atlantic Ocean. Jourgensen and other U.S personnel retreat to a hidden constructed colony on a distant dying planet, codenamed XK Masada. There, riven by phantom voices; Jourgensen contemplates suicide. He decides against it, as death would be no escape if he has been devoured by Cthulhu already, as he suspects.