The Cassandra Complex

by Brian Stableford

  “Do we?” Lisa queried.

  “They have to be Millenarians,” he said as he shut the fridge door and slumped down at the table with a can in each hand. “The end of the world is nigh, and anyone who wants to be saved has to follow the recipe, no matter how crazy. Anyone who stands in the way is an Antichrist in the direct employ of the Devil.” He offered the right-hand can to Lisa. According to the label, it was Szechuan pollen beer—highly nutritious but difficult to stomach. She shook her head and he shrugged, abandoning it on the tabletop so he could use his right forefinger to crack the seal on the other can.

  “What she actually said,” Lisa pointed out, “is that you and I are working for the Secret Masters. Which we are—you directly, me indirectly, at least as long as I let this farce continue. And she could well be right about the impending pandemic too. If the release of hyperflu was the first strike in a biowar—and nobody seriously thinks otherwise, no matter how closely we guard our tongues—then the war probably will kill billions rather than millions, and social structures really will collapse all over the world. Even if the Containment Commission can come up with measures that work, Britain is too closely integrated into the global economy to withstand the aftermath.”

  “I already told you we have that covered,” Leland reminded her uneasily.

  “So you did,” Lisa agreed. “But you also told me that the Cabal, not the government, would see to the distribution of the defense mechanism. That’s exactly what the Real Woman’s afraid of. She finds the idea of your friends selecting the survivors even harder to bear than the idea of ecocatastrophic collapse.”

  “My point exactly,” Leland came back. “She’s a Millenarian. The end is nigh, the New Order is yet to arise. You heard her. Filisetti must have found out about something Miller had fed in—or was intending to feed in—to Burdillon’s defense work. They want the antibody-packaging system for their own people. They probably came back for you because they thought they could use you as a lever to make Miller give it up, but the real key is Chan if he has the only backup not securely stashed on university or Ministry premises. How it must have burned them up to have to leave Burdillon behind at the university when they made their getaway! You were right—it is a wild goose chase. Whatever new wrinkle Miller brought, or intended to bring, to Burdillon’s inquiry, it can’t be as good as ours. We don’t need it—but that doesn’t mean I can let it go. If it’s really out there, I need a copy. A copy will do, but I can’t go back empty-handed. Got to justify my fee. I need to find Chan. We need to get Miller out too, of course, but I need to find Chan as well. Got to cover all the angles.”

  Lisa was tempted to tell Leland, merely for the sake of honesty, that he had jumped to the wrong conclusion, but she contented herself by asking a question. “Was she right when she said that the megacorps regard the biowar as the inevitable unfolding of the tragedy of the commons?”

  “Always the tragedy of the bloody commons,” Leland muttered. “You’d think we’d have forged a new cliche by now. Even the megacorp buccaneers who’ll fight the Hardinist label till they drop believe in that one. You’ve read the essay, I suppose?”

  “Oddly enough,” Lisa confessed, “I never did. Morgan explained the thesis to me, of course—and I did read The Ostrich Factor.”

  “That’s not so popular in the ranks of the so-called Secret Masters,” Leland told her. “That’s why half of them refuse point-blank to describe themselves as Hardinists. They hate the Russell Theorem. Remember the Russell Theorem?”

  Lisa remembered the Russell Theorem well enough. Given that two other Russells were numbered among Morgan Miller’s favorite sources, Morgan had always taken great care to point out that the Russell approvingly cited by Garrett Hardin was a different one: Bertrand Russell. What Hardin had called Russell’s Theorem was the proposition that social solidarity could be maintained only in collective opposition to some external enemy, and that any world state would inevitably fall apart for lack of one.

  “Why should the men who engineered the crash of ’25 hate the Russell Theorem?” Lisa asked, curious.

  “Because they’re One Worlders through and through, of course,” Leland said. “They’re happy to use Hardinist cant to justify the big steal—Oh, no, we aren’t taking over the world because we’re greedy bastards who love being richer than anyone can imagine; we’re merely humble and dutiful souls who’ve accepted the responsibility of protecting the ecosphere from the tragedy of the commons—but now that they have the world in their pocket, they don’t want to hear any argument that says they’ll never be able to hold it together. Some people, of course—including our guest, apparently—reckon that the men behind the coup are the common enemy of the remainder of mankind, and there are some among the world’s new owners who think that perception, however mistaken it may be in objective terms, might actually serve their purpose. Why else do you think they disseminate such terms as ‘Secret Masters’ and ‘Cabal’?”

  “Well,” said Lisa, “to judge by what we just heard, it’s working.”

  “Far too well,” Leland agreed, cracking open the second can of pollen beer. Lisa felt a momentary pang of regret as she swallowed and found her mouth still dry, but she told herself that she needed to keep a clear head if she were to stay abreast of the game.

  “Personally,” Leland continued, “I prefer the lunatics who just sit on mountaintops waiting for the flying saucers to come and carry them away to the new world. The ones who want to plant their own New Order in my backyard are a royal pain in the arse. Utopian socialists, Gaean freaks, pretend radfems … they’re all the bloody same.”

  ” ‘Pretend’ radfems?” Lisa queried. “Are you assuming that the radfem thing is just a cover—an overlay to conceal their real political interests?”

  “You heard the woman,” Leland reminded her. “How did it sound to you?”

  “Not quite as crazy as it sounded to you, obviously,” Lisa admitted. “But then, I had heard most of it before, from other Real Women. To me, she sounds like a classic case of the Cassandra Complex—someone who believes she’s seen the future and can’t stand the frustration of knowing she can’t do a damn thing about it. Someone who’d jump at the chance to make a difference, however slight. Maybe the person she’s taking orders from has filled her with a certain charismatic fervor, but it’s nowhere near as crazy as waiting for Jesus to arrive in a flying saucer. She’s not looking backward to ancient prophecies and obsolete commandments. She’s looking forward. I ought to call in the troops, by the way—I’ve already delayed too long.”

  “That’s okay,” Leland said. “Jeff should have everything packed by now and the engine running. Do you have any suggestions as to where I might start looking for Chan?”

  “He’s back from Birmingham,” Lisa said guardedly as she took her phone from its holster. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to track him down.”

  “No, it shouldn’t,” he said contemplatively—and then his expression changed. Lisa’s fingers froze before touching the buttons that would summon the cityplex police. Leland looked at her, reproachfully as well as quizzically.

  “He was there, wasn’t he?” he said softly. “They were after him, not you.”

  Lisa hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “He was there,” she admitted. “Chasing after me. I don’t know what happened to him—he probably skipped out through the hole your battle wagon made as soon you started lobbing gas grenades around. By now, with luck, he’ll have given over whatever he’s got to Smith.”

  “I really would have appreciated it if you’d seen fit to mention this before,” Leland complained, although his tone had as much admiration in it as resentment. “But I can understand why you kept it up your sleeve. You will remember, I hope, that I played fair with you—and if you ever need a job, get in touch. I can fix it.”

  Lisa couldn’t help feeling flattered. But Leland still had a hold of the wrong end of the stick. Did she really want to work with someone like that? Her fingers rela
xed again, and she picked out the number of Mike Grundy’s mobile.

  “Help yourself to the stuff in the fridge,” Leland said as he moved to the door. “Once they turn up, you’ll be as busy as I will—no time to snack. Wish me luck.”

  “You don’t need it,” Lisa assured him, not really caring whether he did or not.

  FOURTEEN

  Leland had left Lisa’s outer clothes behind, draped over the banister on he upper floor. They’d been washed, but not pressed. The black smartsuits the women had worn were there too, and their guns and helmets were in the kitchen cupboard. Lisa didn’t see any point in changing out of Jeff’s slightly ill-fitting shirt and trousers, even though she figured there had to be a clever bug lurking in one of the buttons. They’d almost certainly sneaked one into her own outfit too.

  As soon the van had driven away, she went back to the downstairs room where Stella Filisetti was secured.

  “A police vehicle is on the way,” she told her prisoner. “It’ll be about twenty minutes. We’re in the Mendips somewhere east of Winscombe. Sorry I can’t let you take a longer look at the view—it’s the last you’ll see till you’re my age, so you’d better make the most of it while they’re loading you up. Morgan might visit you if the prison’s not too far away, but I wouldn’t bank on it. Your friend reckons that it’ll be as good a place as any to sit out the end of civilization as we know it, but I’m not so sure. If you really did spot something in one of the library models that nobody else had noticed in forty years, you must be pretty good. It’s a pity to let ability like that go to waste, but it can’t be helped now. Who do you think will get the big prize—Leland or Peter Grimmett Smith? Either way, I suppose it’ll end up with the Secret Masters. If you’d only let Morgan alone, he’d probably have given it to Ahasuerus. Your intervention will almost certainly have the effect of bringing in a worse result than the one you’d have had if you’d let well enough alone.”

  “You can drop the act now,” the younger woman told her, although she surely wasn’t naive enough to think they were safe from electronic eavesdroppers. “I know you know, because I know Morgan. He wouldn’t have kept it from you. From everyone else maybe, but not from you. He trusted you to see it his way. And you did, didn’t you? You even consented to grow old—but I know how you kept your options open. You can fool that idiot cowboy, and your second-string boyfriend, and the secondhand spook from the MOD, but you can’t fool me. I know you know, so I know exactly how desperate you are to get Morgan back—but you can’t have him. There’s too much at stake.”

  “Maybe I don’t need him,” Lisa suggested blandly. “Maybe I already have everything I need. Maybe the only thing your friends will accomplish by killing Morgan is to make me the sole custodian of the big secret. It’s not on any of the wafers or sequins you took from my desk, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t have it hidden.”

  “Maybe you do,” Stella agreed. “Maybe the time will come when you’ll have to make up your mind what to do with it, without Morgan to seduce and tyrannize you. Maybe then you’ll realize that we’re in the right. You had radfem sympathies yourself once, I understand. If it hadn’t been for joining the police force, you might have been one of us.”

  Lisa continued staring out the window for half a minute longer, but then she turned to look down sternly at the woman on the bed. Instead of responding to Stella Filisetti’s provocations, she said, “You tried to shoot me. The original plan was not to let anyone get hurt, but you were shooting to kill.”

  “Was I?” was Stella’s only riposte.

  Lisa watched the half smile that spread across the younger woman’s lips. It looked like a smile of satisfaction. Even though Stella’s shot had missed, she was pleased that she had tried. She wasn’t going to admit it while eavesdroppers were hanging on her every word, but she didn’t care whether Lisa knew. Lisa felt compelled to retaliate. “What do you mean, ‘second-string boyfriend’?” she asked abruptly.

  As she’d intended, the question took Stella entirely by surprise. For a moment, the younger woman hesitated in confusion, obviously unsure as to whether or not she’d made a mistake, and whether or not it was recoverable. “The detective inspector,” she said, smoothly enough but rather belatedly. “You’re screwing him, aren’t you?”

  “Who told you?”

  The hesitation was minute, but perceptible. “Nobody,” she said. “We’ve been keeping a close eye on you. We know far more about you than you might think.”

  “The keys to all my locks, for instance,” Lisa retorted. “Were you the one who sprayed Traitor’ on my door? I know you weren’t the one who shot the phone out of my hand, because you couldn’t shoot that straight, but you could have been the furtive one who went through my desk so ineptly. Or were you at the university, making sure that the mice were all burned up? That was pointless, by the way—a stupid, meaningless gesture. You should have been content with the ones you’d already sneaked out, the ones whose absence you were trying to cover up. Torching the room was sheer mindless vandalism. Surely you could have covered your tracks without burning the cities and nearly killing poor Ed Burdillon.”

  “The cities had gone on far too long,” the woman told her coldly. “They were a living lie. The Crisis is already here, and the population of all the real cities on Earth is about to take a steep fall. You know it, I know it—and everyone involved in the making and distribution of hyperflu certainly knows it.”

  “Is that why you burned them?” Lisa asked, unable to believe it. “Because they were a living lie?”

  “Weren’t they always supposed to be a parable? That’s how Morgan puts it, at any rate. Well, now they’re a parable of the coming holocaust. That’s why we did it.”

  Lisa didn’t believe her. Presumably, Stella had persuaded her fellow conspirators that it was necessary to destroy the H Block to cover up the fact that some mice were missing, and to prevent them from being identified. They had burned it to prevent anyone who investigated from figuring out which ones had been removed by surveying the remaining DNA patterns. Did that mean there might be other library specimens tucked way in a forgotten corner of some other institution’s Mouseworld? Probably not—but it wasn’t something to discuss out loud in any case, given that Leland was bound to be listening. The longer it took him to figure out what this was really about, the more time Lisa would have to find Arachne West and persuade her that she had to let Morgan go.

  “It’s not too late,” Stella Filisetti told her. “You could still throw in your lot with us. If we don’t manage to get the data files, you might turn out to be the last hope of the cause. I know how you kept your options open when Miller first discovered the emortal mice. They’re still open. It’s not too late to change your mind.”

  “I could say the same to you,” Lisa pointed out—but she turned to look out the window as she heard the distant wail of a siren. The bright headlights and the stroboscopic blue flash of a police cruiser were just visible on the road that wound through Chew Valley, several miles to the north. The headlights flickered as they were briefly interrupted by leaf-laden trees. The leaves were all brown by now, but they were still awaiting the Atlantic front, whose swirling winds would whip them from the branches.

  Then Lisa caught sight of the internally lit helicopter that was moving effortlessly past the car, fifty or sixty meters overhead. She calculated that it would arrive several minutes earlier. Peter Grimmett Smith had obviously decided, after waking up from his enforced nap, that time was now far too pressing to permit him the luxury of road travel. In any case, he probably wanted to make sure that Lisa talked to him before—and perhaps instead of—reporting to her own people.

  “You’ve stepped over the line here,” Stella Filisetti whispered. “You should have made that call an hour ago. They’ll throw you out of the force. How old are you, Lisa? What choices have you got?”

  “I’m working for the MOD at present,” Lisa told her. “I have all the latitude I need—and all t
he information I need, thanks to your slack mouth. It’s over, Stella. I’ll have Morgan out before noon.”

  “Bitch,” the younger woman said in heartfelt fashion.

  “And you,” Lisa murmured.

  She went outside to meet the helicopter. The air was cold but still—there was mist in the meadow on the other side of the dirt road that led to the cottage. The cottage looked larger from the yard, but that was because the shadow gathered about the lighted windows was exaggerated by the steep pitch of the tiled roof.

  As she’d expected, Peter Grimmett Smith didn’t even bother to step down. He merely held the helicopter door open, inviting her to climb in before the rotor blades slowed to a halt. She ducked reflexively as she did so, although she wasn’t tall enough to be in any danger.

  Mercifully, the helicopter wasn’t one of those with a transparent cupola; its cabin was wide and deep and its sides were reassuringly opaque. The pilot was Ginny, but Lisa didn’t have time to ask after her health before Smith bundled her into the second rank of seats.

  “Radio the Swindon police,” Smith instructed his dutiful chauffeur. “Tell them that one of their cityplex colleagues needs a clean suit of clothes. Tell them to have it ready at the landing pad.”

  “Size twelve,” Lisa put in. “Ten if the goods are U.S.-originated. Did Chan make contact again?”

  “No, he didn’t. Who shot me?” Smith obviously had his own agenda, and wasn’t about to be sidetracked. As soon as Ginny had made the call, the copter raised itself from the ground again. The downdraft from its wings scattered newly fallen leaves in every direction, but the blizzard vanished into darkness as they gained height. It was surprisingly quiet inside the cabin, although the thrum of the motor rotating the copter’s blades extended an uncomfortable vibration throughout the body of the craft.

  “She wouldn’t give us a name,” Lisa told him. “Steve Forrester will find out, as soon as he can get a DNA sample. The other one was Stella Filisetti. She shot me too, by the way—I didn’t wake up until I was tucked up in the cottage. The men in the van came to our rescue, but they didn’t quite manage to arrive in the nick of time.”