The Cassandra Complex

by Brian Stableford

  Even Kenneally knew that Keeper Pan’s last cry was the cue for a chant, and he tried to get in the way.

  “That’s not possible,” he said, raising his voice to make sure everyone could hear him. “That simply isn’t possible.”

  “Yes, it is,” Eagle shouted back. “It’s not just possible, it’s easy. All you have to do is let the animals go.”

  Haifa million mice! Lisa thought. Well, maybe we should. Give them the half-million mice, and the cats—not to mention the rabbits—and let them carry their prizes away, while smooth-talking them into refraining from killing one another. If only Ed and Morgan had a pride of lions and a flock of lambs! How these fools could educate us then in the art of the possible!

  That was when the eggs started to fall on the police line. The “Rioters’ Handbook” on the net advised all demonstrators to start with eggs, because eggs were messy without threatening real injury. The tactic was supposed to put the police at a PR disadvantage, because passing out riot shields in response to half a dozen eggs would always look like over-reaction when the videotapes were studied. Every policeman and newsreader in the land had read the “Rioters’ Handbook,” of course—but that didn’t make the gambit any easier to counter.

  Kenneally didn’t hestitate. He signaled for a second line of officers to move in front of the existing line, so that the men with the helmets and shields could be seen to be protecting their defenseless colleagues. As soon as the shields were in place, however, the hail of eggs intensified, smearing the sheets of transparent plastic with an opaque mess. At least one in ten of the eggs was rotten, and the stench of hydrogen sulfide filled the air. The volley was aimed primarily at the helmetless officers, but Lisa and Kenneally were too close to the line to avoid it—and there was no further point in their staying put, given that Eagle, Jude, and Keeper Pan had melted back into the crowd. Lisa didn’t wait for an order before turning on her heel and running back to the command vehicle.

  As if her flight were the cue that the demonstrators had been waiting for, a hundred voices took up Keeper Pan’s suggested chant—and the hundred increased as the bystanders began to join in with the fun.

  As soon as he was back in the command vehicle, hot on Lisa’s heels, Kenneally ordered up the reserves. He instructed them to move into flanking positions, formed up for a baton charge.

  “What kind of gas?” a uniformed inspector demanded.

  How nice to have a choice, Lisa thought. Once upon a time, it all had to end in tears, but now we have an entire spectrum of specialist smokes,

  “No gas!” Kenneally told him. “They’re just kids, mostly. Let the batons give them pause for thought, then move forward—walking, not running. No head-breaking.”

  If only the demonstrators had been working to the same sporting assumptions, all might have been well—but the new kinds of gas were advertised on the net, and the best efforts of His Majesty’s Customs & Excise were inadequate to prevent deliveries to eager customers. The reservists hardly had to to take up their formations when the gas grenades began to break them up again—and when they charged, they charged, raggedly but with violent effect. If they refrained from head-breaking, it was only because their training had taught them well enough the tactics of jab-and-slash. They went for bellies, balls, and kneecaps, and cut down the opposition with far more effect than random blows to hard heads could ever have achieved.

  The protesters didn’t panic, but the bystanders did—and somehow, the least-careful bystanders now seemed to be in the front Unes to the right and the left, if not yet in the center.

  Lisa and Chan observed the chaos dutifully from the command vehicle, each with a conscientiously clinical eye.

  “You were right, Miss,” the security man observed, as if it were cause for surprise.

  Lisa knew long before the official announcement came, twenty-four hours later, what the outcome of the riot would be. The university authorities undertook to comply with the spirit as well as the letter of the 2000 Act, banning all current and future experiments on dogs, unconditionally.

  The ALF claimed yet another famous victory, and wisely refrained from returning to the fray on behalf of the rats and mice. Eagle and Jude were arrested but released without charge; Keeper Pan was the only real catch among those against whom there was sufficient video evidence to bring charges of assault. Under her birth name, Pamela Hardiston, she was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, but was removed from Warminster Open after seven days on medical grounds. She was credited with five more weeks of theoretical jail time at the Royal United, served under the joint supervision of Group Four and Bristol Cityplex Social Services, before being released on parole.

  Lisa had faced at least a hundred perpetrators of serious crimes in various courtrooms before she finally ran up against one, in 2019, who was crazy enough to swear that he would come back and kill her when he was released. She was mildly surprised that it had taken so long, given the extreme reluctance of the vast majority of serious offenders to accept any responsibility for their own deeds. It always seemed to be somebody else’s fault, and police scientists in general were no less unpopular among the criminal classes than detectives, but detectives received far more threats of vengeance—though not, of course, as many as innocent bystanders who happened to be eyewitnesses and therefore seemed to be universally regarded as legitimate targets.

  The man who broke precedent by threatening Lisa was a serial rapist named Victor Leverer, who appeared utterly convinced of his innocence of any wrongdoing in spite of his frequent use of a knife. He seemed to regard the fact that none of the slashes he inflicted were mortal—even though some of them were far from trivial—as proof of his loving intent, and he offered an impassioned speech in his own defense in which he claimed that the minority of his accusers with whom he had actually had intercourse had been more than willing, and that the only reason they had subsequently turned against him was that they had been pressured by lesbian radfems convinced that all heterosexual intercourse was rape. Lisa, he claimed, was at the core of a radfem conspiracy, and she had fabricated the evidence linking him to those incidents in which he still denied any involvement at all. Strangely enough, there was no detectable pattern to his loudest denials—they were not the most serious assaults, nor the accusations whose evidential support was weakest.

  “Don’t worry about it, Lis,” Mike Grundy said after the judge had delayed sentence so that a psychiatric report could be compiled. “He’s just putting on a mad act before he goes to the shrink. It’s only a ploy.”

  “The problem with that kind of ploy,” Lisa told him glumly, “is that the people who try it sometimes fall for their own patter. If he pretends hard enough that I’m the Antichrist who stitched him up on behalf of Lesbians Incorporated, he might end up believing it, and even if the shrinks tell the judge to throw the book at him, he’ll be out in seven—ten at the most. That’s plenty long enough for the grievance to fester, but not so long that I needn’t worry about it till I’m old.”

  “These things never come to anything,” Mike told her. “Real life’s not like TV and the movies. He’ll have other things on his mind once he’s sent down. He’ll forget all about you inside of a year.”

  “Real life is getting more like TV and the movies every day,” she countered with a sigh. “Where else can people find their role models now that the family’s completely broken down and nobody reads books anymore?”

  “The family hasn’t broken down,” he assured her. “And people still read. It’s only TV that says otherwise.”

  In Mike Grundy’s view, he and Helen still constituted a family of sorts in 2019, even though he’d accepted Helen’s decision not to have children. On the other hand, while Mike and Helen were alike in hardly ever opening a book for other than strictly functional reasons, Lisa was a committed reader.

  “Well,” she said philosophically, “I suppose it goes with the territory. I suppose anyone who retires from the force without accumulating a whole f
ootball team of ugly monsters who’ve threatened to chop them into little pieces at the first opportunity obviously hasn’t made sufficient impact on the Empire of Evil.”

  Oddly enough, it was the fallout from the Leverer case that first brought Lisa into contact with the Real Women, whose movement was still visible and fairly buoyant. She had often seen members of the clique working out in the gym she had been using for the last seven months, and had taken note of the fact that they were becoming gradually more numerous, but it wasn’t until Leverer’s threats hit the headlines that any of them tried to recruit her, or even to test out her credentials as a fellow traveler.

  Two of them approached her one evening as she came out of the showers after finishing her routine.

  “Lisa Friemann?” said the taller of the two—a dark-eyed woman who had taken the trouble not merely to shave but to permanently depilate her head. “I’m Arachne West. This is Delia Vertue.” Arachne West’s shorter companion, whose still-abundant hair was flagrantly dyed a peculiar shade of blue-black, nodded. “We read about what happened in court.”

  “It happens,” Lisa said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Maybe not,” the bald woman said, “but it reflects on us all when people begin spouting that kind of hate. There are too many willing ears about. You five alone, don’t you?”

  Lisa blinked. “What makes you think so?” she asked warily. She was trying to edge away and terminate the conversation, but the two Real Women followed her into the dressing room.

  “We haven’t been digging,” Arachne West assured her. “No reason why it should be a secret, is there? We can give you some numbers, if you like. Support, in case of trouble.” She held up a small card, but Lisa could see only one phone number on it.

  “I’m a police officer,” Lisa said disbelievingly. “We got support.”

  “Yeah—but sometimes there’s support, and then there’s support. We have policewomen in the movement, and they don’t always seem to feel that their male colleagues are as supportive as they might be. Things do change, but they change slowly, and appearance doesn’t always match reality.”

  “I’m fine,” Lisa assured them. “Really.”

  They should have gone away then, but they didn’t. “You really should get rid of those dead clothes,” Delia Vertue observed. “It makes good sense to keep up with the technology—for the sake of safety, not of fashion.”

  “What do you mean?” Lisa asked, taken somewhat aback by the woman’s presumption.

  “We Uve in a plague culture,” Arachne West informed her. “You can steer clear of pricks, but steering clear of STDs is harder. Soon everyone will need a whole second skin.”

  “But not yet,” Lisa pointed out.

  “Soon,” the bald woman repeated with perfect confidence. “Health is our most precious possession, and it gets even more precious as you get older. Keeping fit is only part of the answer. If you’d like to come to a meeting, we’d be very glad to see you. If you want to talk in private, that’s okay too. Call me.”

  Lisa accepted the makeshift card but she didn’t call. The sin of omission didn’t offend Arachne West sufficiently to make her stop greeting Lisa when she saw her in the gym, often taking time out to exchange a few friendly words, but the Real Women didn’t press their case any harder than that. They never offered to supply her with any body-building advice, but they presumably figured that a genetic analyst probably had access to any legitimate somatic modifiers she might need or desire.

  In the course of the next couple of years, Lisa’s chats with Arachne West grew gradually longer. Although she always thought of the Real Woman’s theories and ideals as slightly crazy, she couldn’t help but find them intriguing and mildly amusing.

  “You might think that we protest a little too much,” the strong-woman told her, “but that’s because you haven’t realized the depth of feeling that’s wrapped up in the continuing backlash. Feminist analyses of the mechanics of male domination didn’t just serve to educate women. They also educated men in the sly art of holding on to their most cherished privileges while making slow concessions in other areas. The iron fist wears a velvet glove nowadays, but it’s still an iron fist. When it comes to the crunch, it’s all about power, and men aren’t going to let it go easily. This is one cold war that won’t end in collapse and surrender.”

  “Oddly enough,” Lisa told her, “I know a man who says much the same thing.”

  “Don’t be beguiled by that kind of tactical honesty. It’s a gambit. Never underestimate male hatred of womankind, or the lengths men will go to in serving that hatred. Know your enemy—and fear your friend.”

  “I value my male friends too much to fear them,” Lisa said dismissively, “and I’m not entirely convinced that you have sufficient experience of the male of the species to qualify you to tell me to discount my own.”

  One of Arachne West’s better points was that she was capable of laughing at barbs of that kind. “You’re a treasure, Lisa,” she said. “I bet your friends think so too. I hope you’ll never be disappointed. But you really should get rid of those old clothes. Think smart, lady—always think smart.”

  “You might be eager to acquire a second skin,” Lisa replied, “but I’m not. Too claustrophobic.”

  “It’s a claustrophobic world,” the Real Woman reminded her. “Crowds are germ Utopia, and the whole world is one big crowd struggling to get through the aisles of the Megacorp Mall. Smart insulation is the only thing that can keep you safe in the conflicts to come.”

  “Claustrophobia isn’t just a matter of crowding,” Lisa said, quoting Morgan Miller. “It’s also a matter of continuity. Nobody panics in a crowded elevator while it’s moving, but when it stops …”

  “Not relevant,” Arachne informed her loftily. “All continuities come to their end. When crowd fever finally comes your way, little Lisa, you’ll need those smart fibers for a shield—all the more so if you haven’t got us to back you up. Invest now, and keep on investing. It’s the only way.”

  In time, though, Arachne West seemed to give up on Lisa, and as the Real Woman movement waned, her attendance at the gym dropped off. Lisa didn’t miss her much, because she figured that she’d already heard all her best Unes, but she did recognize the loss as one more stage in a developing pattern of isolation. Some of the things Arachne had said about her existential inertia continued to rankle, and when Victor Leverer’s release date rolled around, she paused more than once to wonder whether the backup she had on call was really the best available.

  Fortunately, Leverer never came looking for her. The next woman he attacked was a mere slip of a thing, not yet out of her teens, but she was also a member of the ALF and she had studied the “Self-Defense Handbook” as carefully as the “Rioters’ Handbook.” She cut his hamstrings and his Achilles tendons with his own knife and he didn’t walk again until the NHS got to the very bottom of the waiting list for new-generation prosthetics.

  Lisa never had any confrontational dealings with apocalyptic cultists or hobbyist terrorists. She was occasionally called upon to sift through the debris of an explosion in search of complex organic material, but she never turned up any evidence that was crucial to a prosecution. No amateur biological weapons—or, for that matter, amateur chemical weapons—were deployed in the vicinity of the Bristol cityplex while she was stationed there. She was co-opted to assist with the investigation of the London Underground incident of 2019 and the Eurostar incident of 2026, but her part in each operation was minor and she was not required to appear at either trial. For her, therefore, what the tabloids called “the creeping chaos” remained part of life’s background. It seemed ever-present on the TV news and in newspaper headlines, but it never became personal. It was a mere phenomenon, and as such, could be discussed in a perfectly dispassionate manner with everyone she knew.

  TV researchers and tabloid reporters sometimes visited Mouseworld in search of a hook on which to hang their latest story, but they received no encourag
ement from any of the staff. Chan Kwai Keung would not repeat in their presence the kinds of argument that he was still, on occasion, prepared to lay before Lisa.

  “Of course the world continues to mirror Mouseworld,” Chan told her in the aftermath of the Eurostar incident. “How could it be otherwise? The cities continue to mock us by setting an example that is by no means good but is nevertheless measurably better than our own. The H Block continues to pile up its tangled record of failed experiments, obsolete stratagems, and forgotten secrets. Morgan’s incessant declarations about the redundancy of the entire operation ring more true with every year that passes—and the same emotional sickness resonates in the hearts of millions of people. It is as ludicrous an oversimplification to group all the tiny explosions of wrath together as symptoms of stress disease as it is to regard them as facets of a mysterious chaos emanating from the depths of Hell. The violent effects may be depressingly similar, but the motive forces are much more various than anyone will allow.”

  “Failed experiments, obsolete stratagems, and forgotten secrets?” Lisa echoed.

  “Precisely,” he said. “How else can the majority of people see themselves nowadays? How else can they explain their unhappiness, their loneliness, their futility? Accelerating progress robs them of expertise and wisdom more rapidly than education can equip them, leaving them intellectually and imaginatively stranded from the moment they reach adulthood, castaways whose plight can only deteriorate. How can they help hating a world that treats them with such casual abandon? How can they bottle up their frustration indefinitely, when they can see only too clearly that there is no possibility of rescue or relief?”

  “Who are the we that your they excludes, Chan?” Lisa wanted to know. “Are we the citizen mice, adapted to intolerable circumstances? How do we get by without going postal?”

  “I wish I could say with greater certainty that we are,” Chan said dolefully. “But I fear that only habit makes me speak in terms of they rather than an all-inclusive we. Even you and I would surely be reckoned failed experiments or obsolete stratagems were we viewed by a coldly objective eye.”