The Cassandra Complex

by Brian Stableford

  “I can find it on my own,” Lisa assured her.

  “I’m going the same way,” the younger woman pointed out. “The helicopter from London should be here soon, and I need to make sure there’s enough clearance in the parking area to let it land.”

  As they walked out of the building into the cold dawn air, Lisa said: “You don’t really think I had anything to do with this, do you?”

  “I certainly don’t think you’re allied with the perpetrators,” Kenna assured her. “But the fact that they decided to include you in their set of targets suggests that you do have something to do with it, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Everyone is supposed to keep important data backed up at a remote location,” Lisa said. “I’m one of Morgan Miller’s oldest friends. Maybe they just assumed that he’d keep backups at my place—not realizing, I guess, that Morgan doesn’t do very many of the things that everyone’s supposed to do.”

  “Perhaps they did,” the chief inspector admitted.

  They had drawn level with the small ambulance that had trailed the fire engines; its two staff were sitting inside looking bored, having not had a single significant case of smoke-inhalation to treat. The young woman who leaped out in response to Lisa’s gesture with her towel-enshrouded hand seemed glad of the opportunity to do something.

  Judith Kenna looked carefully around while the paramedic unwrapped the bloodstained dressing and peeled back the sleeve of Lisa’s undershirt, tut-tutting all the while.

  “I know it probably said ‘Sterile’ on the package,” the paramedic said, “but this patch must be thirty years old. You really ought to get a modern medical kit—and the fabric of this undershirt isn’t nearly smart enough to cope with gashes like these. There are much better ones on the market nowadays.”

  “Dr. Friemann was at home,” the chief inspector put in, anxious to deflect any implied criticism of the facilities at her station. “You know how it is with home kits—you never replace them until you use them up. And I don’t suppose responsiveness to injury was uppermost in her mind when she bought the undergarment.”

  Lisa grit her teeth and said nothing.

  The paramedic tut-tutted again over the various wounds before reaching for a tube of sealant. “You’ll never get the stain out of that tunic,” she observed. Her own uniform, unlike Judith Kenna’s, was made of ultramodern fibers that were presumably as expert at mopping up blood as they were at mopping up sweat and tears.

  Lisa tried to take the criticism as stoically as she was taking the treatment, although the anesthetic effect of the sealant couldn’t offer much protection to her self-esteem. In the hope of deflecting the censorious gaze of Judith Kenna’s eyes from her hand, she said: “On the other hand, if the kidnappers were just guessing where Morgan might have kept his backup wafers, they probably wouldn’t have contented themselves with raiding my place. If Morgan had found something recently, they might have been more likely to look for it at Stella Filisetti’s place.” She was fishing, to find out whether Kenna knew whether or not Morgan had been screwing his research assistant. When Kenna didn’t bite, Lisa added: “Unless, of course, it was Stella who told them my flat was the more likely hiding place.”

  “How well do you know Stella Filisetti?” Kenna was quick to ask.

  “Hardly at all,” Lisa admitted. “I’ve only met her a couple of times. Morgan never told me anything about her, except for a few passing remarks about her radfem sympathies.”

  “Some of the nicest people I know are radfems,” the chief inspector commented mildly. “None of them pose any threat to national security.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that he disapproved,” Lisa said swiftly.

  “You have radfem acquaintances yourself, I believe,” Kenna added.

  Lisa had to stop herself from asking the chief inspector where that tidbit of information had come from. Instead, she said: “I’ve known one or two.” Her first assumption was that Kenna must be talking about Arachne West—but then she remembered that she had had more recent and much longer-enduring contact with another proud wearer of the label, and wondered how significant the chief inspector’s choice of the word “acquaintances” had been. Arachne West had almost qualified as a friend once—but Helen Grundy never had.

  If Helen was numbered by Kenna as one of those radfems who were “among the nicest people I know,” Lisa thought, that might go a long way to explain why she was so down on Mike—and why she might disapprove so strongly of Lisa’s having taken Mike in for a while after Helen threw him out.

  “All done,” said the paramedic brightly. “None of the cuts is bad enough to need syntheflesh—just peel off the sealant in three or four days. How’d you do it?”

  “Somebody shot a telephone receiver out of my hand,” Lisa said laconically. “It could have been worse—at least the shooter waited until I’d taken it away from my ear.”

  The young woman grinned as if it were a joke, then went back to join her partner.

  “Is Stella Filisetti a suspect?” Lisa asked the chief inspector.

  “We’re treating everyone as a suspect until we know otherwise,” Kenna replied predictably, “including your friend Sweet. Security people usually have ways of accumulating information on people with whom they come into regular contact.”

  “He’s another casual acquaintance,” Lisa said. “But it would take a master of disguise to seem that stupid if he were actually the criminal mastermind who planned all this.”

  Kenna was still watching her closely, speculatively, if not actually suspiciously. The chief inspector was obviously not convinced that Morgan Miller hadn’t entrusted her with a precious backup wafer, perhaps containing the secret of the Ultimate Weapon of Biowarfare. Lisa realized that it might not be easy to persuade Kenna that the burglars had simply made a mistake—understandably enough, given that she couldn’t quite convince herself that they had simply made a mistake.

  If a mistake had been made—and it had been, Lisa silently insisted—it couldn’t have been simple. The reasoning that had led the would-be burglars to her must be as convoluted as it was powerful. The fact that she was Morgan’s oldest friend wasn’t enough. Nor was the fact that she had once been his mistress. There had to be something else. But if they suspected that she and Morgan had discovered a biowarfare weapon together, when were the two of them supposed to have done it? Surely nothing that they had worked on back in the first decade of the century could possibly have any relevance to the hyperflu epidemic, or whatever agent of the apocalypse would follow in its train.

  Or could it?

  Lisa was grateful to realize that Judith Kenna was no longer looking at her. The chief inspector had been distracted by the distant sound of a helicopter’s throbbing engine.

  “That’ll be your Mr. Smith,” Lisa observed, hoping her relief didn’t show too clearly. “He’s made good time.”

  “Yes, he has,” the chief inspector agreed, her tone finely balanced between satisfaction and regret. “I’ll have to brief him. You’d better wait with DI Grundy.”

  All but one of the fire engines had now been withdrawn, so there was plenty of space in the parking lot for the chopper to set down. Lisa watched four men climb down from the belly of the aircraft. They were all wearing black overcoats, which seemed as distinctive as a uniform—much more so, in fact, than the relatively casual shell-suits of the paramedics, let alone Mike’s plainclothesmen.

  Lisa had had contact with MOD field operatives on numerous occasions, but she didn’t recognize any of these men. She couldn’t even guess which of the many available sets of cryptic initials might be used to identify their department. They looked like businessmen, but that wasn’t inappropriate to the kind of work they would be routinely engaged in. The government for which they worked was not one of those conventionally regarded as a mere puppet of the megacorps, but its supposed independence meant that its dealings with the corps were all the more intricate and challenging. The only way to compete with crocodiles, or eve
n to avoid becoming crocodile food, was to cultivate crocodilean habits.

  Lisa thought she identified Peter Grimmett Smith even at a distance, and her guess was confirmed when she saw him shake Judith Kenna’s hand. He was a tall, dark-haired individual, handsome in a stately sort of way. He seemed to be tired and fractious. Lisa was perversely pleased to note that he must be in his sixties, easily old enough to be the chief inspector’s father.

  Poor Judith, she thought. Just can’t get away from the older generation. Mike, me, Sweet, the senior fireman, and now the man from the Ministry. Is his expertise past its use-by date too, I wonder? Is this his last mission before he retires to the old bee farm? If he’s waving the flag for gray power, he’s really going to jangle her nerves, especially if he succeeds in getting to the bottom of all this while she’s still flummoxed.

  She wondered briefly whether the spook’s name really was Smith, but decided that it probably was. No one used Smith as a nom de guerre anymore; it was too twentieth century. The Grimmett, which presumably served to distinguish him from all the other Peter Smiths on the civil-service roster, was a bit of a giveaway.

  Lisa was tempted to hang around and watch, but the advent of daylight hadn’t banished the relentless wind and she’d neglected to put on her own black overcoat before leaving home. She retreated into the building and went back to Sweet’s office, where Mike Grundy’s men were still impatiently gathering information and trying to judge its significance. Sweet had rejoined them, but no one seemed to be restricting their conversation in case he might be an enemy keeping tabs on their progress.

  “They’ve got to be local,” Jerry Hapgood was saying. “The blackout proves that.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Mike told him. “The blackout only proves that they were clever enough to know they couldn’t transport Miller crosscountry without being tracked, unless they could work a concealed switch. We don’t know that they didn’t bring him out of the blackout before Powergen got its act together—and even if they bring him out now in the trunk of some commuter’s car or the back of a pickup, we don’t stand the slightest chance of intercepting him, even with real containment measures about to come into force.”

  “This whole containment thing’s a joke,” once of the PC’s observed. “It’ll all be show no matter how far it goes, so that the government can pretend they’re doing something. When hyperflu arrives, if it hasn’t already, there’ll be no way to pin it down. If we don’t have a cure soon, it’ll run riot.”

  Lisa knew that the PC was right. Even the strictest imaginable containment strategy would leave far too many loopholes where a cityplex like Greater Bristol was concerned. The inhabitants of the Outer Hebrides might manage to control traffic between the islands and the mainland carefully enough to keep out viruses, but Britain was far too overcrowded and far too busy. If the First Plague War really were shaping up to be World War Three—and it was difficult to see how the viruses could be offset before the epidemic was worldwide—then the Bristol cityplex would eventually find itself in the front line. So-called pre-containment measures couldn’t keep Morgan Miller in the East Central area any more than they could keep hyperflu out of it if his well-organized captors wanted to remove him.

  “The men from the Ministry are here,” Lisa said, although she knew they must have heard the helicopter. “They’ll be taking over the thinking and planning.”

  “Doesn’t mean they’ll carry the can if Miller slips through the net,” Hapgood pointed out. “Always blame the messenger—isn’t that the thinking?”

  “Better not let the chief inspector hear you talking like that,” Mike Grundy observed as he moved away from the group to stand closer to Lisa. “Okay, Lis?” he asked, nodding toward her sealed cuts.

  “Fine,” she told him. “Numb now. Did you manage to get a team out to my place?”

  “Yes. Nothing yet. The burglars’ vehicle was parked on the school grounds, but there’s nothing there that might help us to identify it. Your neighbors say they didn’t hear anything until the shots were fired, and they didn’t come out of hiding in time to see anything. The paint on the door might have trapped a fiber or two, but it looks as if the bullets they fired into your equipment might be our best bet. Together with the dart in Burdillon’s body, they’re the only solid evidence we have. If we can trace either one of the handguns, we’re away … but how far we’ll get without the telephone records, I wouldn’t like to say. You look tired. You can’t go home, but you should get some sleep—can I return the favor you did me when I was between residences?”

  “Kenna wants us both here, at least until Smith says we can go,” Lisa told him. “Anyway, given her attitude, it might not be a good idea for me to stay at your place. Does she know Helen?”

  “God, I hope not,” Mike said. “Why?”

  “Just something she said. Stella Filisetti has radfem connections.”

  “She might know Helen, then,” Grundy observed. “I doubt that Kenna would get involved with any kind of organization or movement outside the force, however respectable—and with people like your old friend Ms. West still around, radfem isn’t respectable yet. Kenna’s far too principled to associate with the Arachne Wests of this world, and getting palsy-walsy with Helen would be only one step removed. No matter how determined she might be to persuade me to retire quietly, I doubt that she’d go to Helen for ammunition. Anyway, that’s all water under the bridge. Do you think Filisetti’s the insider? Any particular reason, apart from the fact that she’s not at home?” He didn’t add: and probably screwing your old boyfriend. He was too scrupulous.

  “If Morgan discovered something interesting,” Lisa observed, “Stella would be in the best position to know about it. If he took precautions to conceal it from her, that might have made her all the more curious. The only flaw in the theory is that Morgan couldn’t have discovered some state-of-the-art biological weapon by accident. That’s the stuff of cheap technothrillers—and he wasn’t doing that kind of work. If it really is cloak-and-dagger business, we’d do better to focus our attention on Ed Burdillon and Chan. Do the security wafers indicate how Ed became aware of their presence?”

  “No. Do you think he might have been the inside man? They could have arranged to knock him over to give him an alibi of sorts.”

  “No,” said Lisa. “Ed’s straight. So’s Morgan. Neither of them would have tried to hide something useful to national security, or even something valuable in purely commercial terms.”

  “Unless they had a good reason,” Mike pointed out, “or the temptation was so great that even an honest man could be corrupted. Everyone has his price.”

  “Not Morgan. And it’s still the stuff of cheap technothrillers.”

  “It’s their script, not ours,” Mike reminded her. “If they’re crazy enough, they probably think like a cheap technothriller. Anyway, remember what you said earlier about the Cassandra Complex. Morgan Miller has spent fifty years preaching that a population crash is inevitable, even though everyone with half a brain can see that we can’t carry on increasing our numbers without completely fucking up the ecosphere. He’s been suffering all the while from feelings of impotence and bitter frustration. Just suppose that after those fifty years, he suddenly found there was, after all, a way that he could do something. If Morgan were offered a way to stop playing Cassandra, couldn’t he be tempted? If he were offered a means of taking a hand, mightn’t the chance to set aside that awful feeling of futility have been irresistible?”

  “Morgan’s not behind this,” Lisa assured him. “I’d know.”

  “Would you?” he asked, so softly that the other men might not have been able to hear him even if they were listening hard, “or is it just that you can’t stand the thought that you might not… that he’d let Stella Filisetti in on it, but not you?”

  “There were two women,” Lisa reminded him grimly. “And that’s just here. Maybe all of them were women—the fact that Sweet’s convinced that no woman could have dragged Ed Bur
dillon away from Mouseworld at a trot only means that he never met Arachne West, or any other Real Woman. If you think it might have been Morgan or anyone working for him who shot the phone out of my hand, wait till you hear the tape from my living room. The way he—or she—spoke Morgan’s name is enough in itself to establish that he’s a victim.”

  “Don’t rule anything out, Lisa,” Mike urged in the same low tone. “Just think about it. We need this result, you and I. If we can get one over on Kenna while the MOD man’s watching, we’ll have arms and armor—but if we come out of it looking bad, we’ll both be on the scrap heap in no time.”

  “Morgan’s a victim, not a conspirator,” Lisa insisted frostily. “As am I. Not to mention half a million mice. Which is, if you care to think about it, the oddest thing of all. Why kill the mice, Mike? If there was some amazing secret hidden in Mouseworld, why not simply steal the mice that contained it? Why kill them all?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Grundy whispered—and for the first time, Lisa realized just how frightened he had become. “I can’t make sense of any of it yet. I can see Kenna’s ax coming down on my neck, but I can’t see any way off the block. How’s that for a Cassandra Complex? The only one who can get us out of this with our careers intact is you, Lis. Even if the fools who came to your flat had it completely wrong, they think you know what’s going on. They must have a reason to think that, and you’re the only one who stands a chance of figuring out what it is. Whatever it is, Lis, you have to get to the bottom of it—and you have to face up to whatever it turns out to be. All I’m asking is that you don’t leave any stone unturned, no matter how uncomfortable it might be—not just for your sake, or mine, but for Morgan’s. If he isn’t behind it, they’re going to kill him as soon as they have what they want—and the longer he holds out on them, the worse they’ll hurt him.”

  Lisa was tempted to tell Mike that he couldn’t have it both ways—that she couldn’t consider the possibility that Morgan might be responsible for this mad caper while simultaneously motivating herself with the thought that he might be in mortal danger—but the complaint died on her lips. Whichever one of the two possibilities was right, she did have to solve the puzzle as quickly as was humanly possible, and she was the person best placed to do so. If she failed, everybody might suffer.