The Cassandra Complex

by Brian Stableford

  “A nonlethal weapon that would turn most premenopausal women into zombies,” Miller added. “Zombies with the minds of mice.”

  “Oh, shit,” Lisa murmured as the corollaries continued to unravel in her imagination. “And Arachne West refused to believe that? The perfect Real Woman wasn’t cynical enough to think that such a thing could exist? Or that there wouldn’t be people queuing up to use it if they knew it existed? Or armies avid to research the possibility, as soon as they knew it could be done?”

  The irony in Morgan Miller’s smile was ghastly. “It’s far more probable,” he said, his voice sinking back to a whisper, “that what they couldn’t bring themselves to believe was that if that was really what I had, I’d kept quiet about it. They thought I was just trying to put them off.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  When Lisa eventually left the room, Morgan Miller stayed on the bed, content to wait. It wasn’t like him to be content to wait, but he didn’t seem to have the strength left to do anything else. He hadn’t been imprisoned very long, and the injuries inflicted by the blowtorch weren’t life threatening in themselves, but he was an old man. The shock to his system had been profound.

  When Lisa came through the door, Arachne West commanded her to shut it behind her. She obeyed, but not because of the pistol the Real Woman was passing carelessly from hand to hand.

  “You didn’t ask him the big question,” the bald woman observed.

  Lisa was mildly surprised, having been more than impressed by the magnitude of the revelations she had obtained. For a moment or two, she thought that Arachne might have “Is it infectious?” in mind, not having been able to follow the details of Morgan’s concluding technical discourse about species-specific variant designs and attachment-mechanism disarmament, but then she realized that she was being stupid.

  The big question in Arachne West’s mind was still: “Where’s the backup?”

  The members of Stella Filisetti’s hastily contrived conspiracy still hadn’t found a record of the experiments or a map of the primal retrovirus. They had the mice, and the researchers who eventually obtained custody of the mice would be able to work back painstakingly from there, but Morgan Miller still had at least one neatly wrapped package of vital information stashed away, hidden somewhere among the disks, wafers, and sequins they hadn’t been able to remove from his house because their sheer quantity had made it impractical.

  “He’ll tell me if I ask,” Lisa assured the Real Woman, “but we need to work out a deal first.”

  “Sure,” Arachne said, too willingly to be entirely plausible. “Whatever he wants. As you’re so fond of pointing out, I’ve nothing left to bargain with.” But she was still passing the pistol from hand to hand.

  “It is true,” Lisa said. “What he told me just now. I’m sure of it.”

  “It’s only a couple of hours since you were equally sure he couldn’t possibly have kept a secret from you for the last thirty-nine years,” the Real Woman pointed out. “But that’s a cheap shot. I know it’s true. I was prepared to believe it as soon as he came out with it. It was so horribly plausible—and I mean horribly plausible.”

  “So why did you start burning him?”

  Arachne shrugged. “You know how it is with committee decisions,” she said. “There’s always some stupid fucker who won’t fall in with the party line. Collective responsibility always gives birth to collective irresponsibility. It wasn’t vindictiveness, Lisa—not on my part, anyhow. If I’d been running the show … but you know how the spirit of sisterhood works. Discussion good, hierarchy bad. Result: confusion decaying into chaos. I knew we’d lost the plot the moment he opened his mouth. You know what? I actually think he was right. I think he did the right thing, at least up to a point. There really are some things that man was not meant to know. Never thought I’d say that. Could I get anyone else to see it the same way, though? Could I fuck. Crazy times, hey?”

  “I don’t,” Lisa murmured.

  “Don’t what?”

  “I don’t think he did the right thing. Not even up to a point. He should have let other people in. Not necessarily me, but somebody. Ed Burdillon or Chan. It’s not just collective responsibility that mothers irresponsibility if you don’t take precautions.”

  Arachne West shook her head slightly, but there wasn’t the least hint of a smile about her forceful features. “‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive,’” she quoted. “Always been one of my favorites. So why’d you do it, Lisa? Have your ova stripped and frozen, I mean. That looked very suspicious. Could even have got you killed if Stella and the other loose cannons had blasted off a few broadsides.” She obviously didn’t know how close she was to the truth.

  Lisa sat down on the edge of the desk. “It was one of the things I used to debate with Morgan, back in the days when we were as close as close could be. Although he admitted that one of the major causes of the population explosion was the clause in the UN’s Charter of Human Rights that guaranteed everyone the right to found a family, he wasn’t opposed to it, and he didn’t altogether approve of the Chinese approach limiting family size by legislation. What was really needed, he always argued, was for people to accept the responsibility that went with the right: to exercise the right in a conscientious fashion, according to circumstance.

  “There had been times in the past, he said, and might be times in the future, when the conscientious thing to do was to have as many children as possible as quickly as possible—but in the very different circumstances pertaining in the early years of the twenty-first century, the conscientious thing to do was to postpone having children for as long as possible. To refuse to exercise the right to found a family was, in his opinion, a bad move, because human rights are too precious to be surrendered so meekly. His solution to the problem had been to make a deposit in a sperm bank, with the proviso that it shouldn’t be used until after he was dead.

  “I decided, in the end, to do likewise—but there was a slight technical hitch. Donor sperm was easy to acquire and by no means in short supply, but the procedure to remove eggs from a woman’s ovaries is much more invasive. Eggs were in such short supply that there was no provision in the contract for the kind of delay clause Morgan inserted. A donation was supposed to be a donation, and that was that—but the bank was prepared to make an informal compromise and agree to leave my eggs on long-term deposit unless the need became urgent. I figured that the principle remained the same, so I settled for that. It had nothing to do with Morgan’s emortality research.”

  “Are you sure?” the Real Woman asked.

  Lisa saw immediately what Arachne was getting at. Morgan had persuaded her to make the deposit. The arguments he had used were good ones, but in view of what she now knew, they probably had not been the ones foremost in his mind. Back in the first decade of the new millennium, he must have hoped that all the problems he’d so far encountered with his new technology were soluble. He must have hoped that he might one day be able to make human women emortal—always provided that they had enough eggs left in their ovaries—or eggs available that could be replaced therein.

  No wonder it looked so suspicious, she thought. No wonder Stella Filisetti took it as proof that I knew.

  “Tangled webs,” Arachne observed. “Wish I could spin ’em like that.”

  “You don’t seem to be in any great hurry to get the answer to your big question,” Lisa observed.

  “No,” the Real Woman admitted. “As a matter of fact, what I was instructed to do—or would have been if we were allowed to use words like ‘instructed’—was simply to keep you here as long as possible. There’s no way for me to avoid implication in the kidnapping, or for Helen, but the rest of the girls have scattered to the four points of the compass and they have to figure that they have a chance to get away. How many mice do you suppose Stella managed to get out before the bombers went in? Anybody’s guess, isn’t it? Your colleagues will intercept a few, but they won’t get them all. The commit
tee figured that was the fallback position that we had to protect at all costs. As far as they’re concerned, my only utility now is to hold back the hounds as long as possible—which means, the way they see it, preventing you from unleashing the pack prematurely. I’m supposed to shoot you, if necessary.”

  “And Morgan?”

  “Him too. Some of them even think I might do it. I have this tough image, you see. Some people bluster and threaten but never shoot, and some don’t but do. Then there are the Stellas, who shouldn’t ever be trusted with fireworks at all. We started out with the intention of not killing anyone, and I’d rather finish the same way if I can, but you shouldn’t take too much for granted. I have no idea of what I might be capable of if the situation becomes desperate. God, listen to me. If the situation becomes desperate! By nightfall, the men at the Ministry of Defence will know that there’s a really neat weapon whose specifications are hidden somewhere in Morgan Miller’s house. And unlike us, they have all the time in the world to search for it. How many other men will get to hear about it, do you suppose?”

  “Your people will get at least some of the mice,” Lisa pointed out. “Stella and Helen have seen to that. Once they have the mice, it’s only a matter of time before they get the retrovirus. It’s just a virus. A vaccine can be developed, given time—but it would save time if your people had the gene map.”

  “It’s all a matter of time now,” Arachne agreed, “and there’s never been enough of it. I don’t much feel like following orders, given that I’m the one who’s left holding the baby. I’d prefer to get a hold of the data, if I can—on any terms you care to offer, although I don’t have much to offer now I’ve already told you that I’m not going to kill anybody. I’d also like a chance to run. I probably won’t get far, but sisterhood has its advantages. So—if you ask Miller the big question, will he give you the big answer? And if he does, what will you do with it?”

  “We might not have time to do anything with it,” Lisa pointed out. “By now, Smith’s people will probably have purged the phone records. They’ll be after Helen and everyone they suspect of involvement. They were already looking for you.”

  “That’ll tie up a lot of manpower,” Arachne observed. “Everybody running this way and that, far too busy to stop and count the daisies. I suppose Miller’s house is under guard?”

  Lisa nodded slowly. “Twice over, probably,” she said. “The MOD will have people there, as will the police.”

  “I’d never get in, would I?” the Real Woman asked. “Even if I knew what I was looking for, I’d have no chance. A police officer who’s been seconded to the MOD team would be a different matter. You may be AWOL, but you’re still on the case.”

  “And you’re still trying to recruit me,” Lisa said, although she knew she was merely stating the obvious. “Even after all these years.”

  “And you’re still playing coy. Why would I have let Helen invite you here if I didn’t think you could be turned? And why would you have volunteered to come if you weren’t finally ripe for turning?”

  “I just wanted to know what the hell was going on,” Lisa told her. “I didn’t realize you’d already figured it out. If I had—”

  “You’d have come anyway. And now you do know what’s going on. Even Miller knew the time had come to hand his vile secret on to somebody—but I happen to think that his list of candidates stinks, and the Ministry of Defence is potentially even worse. You and I might find some better guardians, don’t you think?”

  Another piece of the puzzle slotted into place in Lisa’s mind. In Morgan’s mind, the most significant thing that Ahasuerus and the Algenists had in common hadn’t, after all, been the fact that they each had an interest in longevity technology. It was that both organizations had a fundamental commitment to pacifism. Morgan had been trying to find someone to carry on his work who wouldn’t be interested in the weaponry potential of the imperfect retrovirus. No wonder he had been coy about telling Goldfarb and Geyer exactly what he had while he was probing the seriousness of their mission statements.

  Why didn’t he come to me instead? she wondered. But she knew the answer to that. It wasn’t because she was a police officer—although that must have played a part—it was because she was sixty-one years old. At best, she’d have been a caretaker, and he was looking for a long-term arrangement. But now, like Arachne West, she was on the spot and on her own. If she asked him, Morgan would probably tell her where the information was, and if she moved quickly enough, she might be able to get it out of Morgan’s house before Peter Grimmett Smith found out what was at stake and let loose a whole army of assiduous searchers. She wouldn’t be stealing anything except time—but in a situation where time was of the essence, any margin of opportunity was a valuable commodity. Even if Arachne West was mistaken in her harsh judgment of Goldfarb and Geyer, there were undoubtedly other potential recipients of the new wisdom who would be far more interested in neutralizing its weaponry potential than exploiting it.

  Lisa reminded herself that she was sixty-one years old and that her career was already in ruins. If Arachne West was willing to let her act, she was still in a position to do so, and even if the big woman-hunt were already underway, she probably still had time to play her own hand.

  “Are you in?” Arachne West asked her.

  “Of course I’m in,” Lisa said. “As you so rightly pointed out, why else would I be here?”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Lisa could hardly believe the change to which Arachne West was subjected by a conservative Salomey suit and a smart wig. The elaborate superstructure of the suit wrought a remarkable transformation of her mannish figure, while the hairpiece—in combination with a pair of ornamental eyeglasses with tinted lenses—altered the context of her features so drastically that Lisa could have passed her in the street without a flicker of recognition.

  “My God,” Lisa muttered sardonically. “You could have been beautiful all along—what a waste.”

  “Clothes maketh the woman, they say,” Arachne replied, “but it’s all lies. I was always beautiful.”

  “If Helen and the others have altered their appearance to the same startling extent,” Lisa observed thoughtfully, “it won’t be easy to pick them out on digicam footage. If they have clever smart-cards—and they obviously do—they might actually get away.”

  “The police have never fully understood the potential of smart fabrics,” Arachne observed. “It’s one of the penalties of clinging so hard to institutional masculinity.”

  The once Real but now conspicuously Artificial Woman led Lisa away through the maze of subterranean corridors that extended beneath the mall. They eventually came to a door that gave them access to the staffs garage. The car in the slot directly to the left of the door was a modest blue Nissan, whose locks sprang open in response to the button on Arachne’s key ring.

  Before getting into the Nissan, Lisa glanced back at the door that had closed behind them. She didn’t like leaving Morgan Miller imprisoned, even with his wounds properly dressed. Arachne had assured her that he would be released whatever happened, but Lisa wasn’t certain that the gatekeepers in Salomey could be trusted. Discipline within the ranks of Stella Filisetti’s hastily formulated conspiracy seemed to have broken down in the face of adversity, and there might be conspirators left behind who wouldn’t take kindly to Arachne West’s decision to take matters into her own hands. Lisa had to remind herself that no one had been killed yet, and that anyone who still had ready access to the hideaway would be foolish indeed to break that precedent now.

  Arachne eased the Nissan out of the exit on the east side of the mall, turning left on to Pulteney Road. The cloud that had made the early morning seem bleak had been carried away by the west wind. It was not yet noon and the sun was making stately progress from east to south above the invisible expanse of Salisbury Plain. Its strengthening light stained the cloudless sky an unusually deep shade of blue. Royal blue, Lisa thought. Fading to navy blue. Or did navy blue go ou
t with the twentieth century? Even when I was a kid, they’d started calling it Trafalgar blue. What is it now, I wonder.

  “Did it ever occur to you,” she said to Arachne West, “that we might both be more paranoid than the situation actually warrants? When you think about it, ultimate weapons of one kind and another have been around for more than a century, but no one’s ever been eager to deploy them. Sure, they used atom bombs to finish World War Two—but they hadn’t used poison gas in Europe even when whole fleets of aircraft were committed to blitzkrieg tactics. The notions of chivalry and gallantry may have been ninety-percent illusion even in their heyday, but they lingered for a long time in social etiquette. Even hobbyist terrorists have standards. Maybe we’re falling prey to the yuck factor here—zombie women with the minds of mice! Maybe nobody would want to do it. It’s possible that everyone would agree that this is a weapon too dreadful to use.”

  “It’s possible,” Arachne agreed. “But if I had the choice, I’d like to have a reliable defense, just in case. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Maybe there already is one,” Lisa said speculatively. “The men who run the global economy may not have have been interested in the same range of potential as the women who run Salomey, but if their messenger boy can be believed, they have smart fabrics ready for deployment that can hold any virus attack at bay Remember what Morgan said about being unable to transform the eggs in ovaries within a womb because he couldn’t get it across the placenta? Just because Chan’s versatile antibody-packaging system failed, it doesn’t mean the newer versions will.”

  “All that could be true,” Arachne admitted as she steered the Nissan carefully around the first of the mini roundabout series that would take them up Sydney Place to Bathwick Street. “We got used to thinking of the future of fashion in terms of second skins, but the return-to-the-womb analogy has its charms. I really would like to believe that even the craziest hobbyist terrorist would think of Miller’s retrovirus as an unconscionable horror rather than a neat trick, and that no government on earth would ever countenance its use under any circumstances—but I can’t. Morgan Miller didn’t believe it either. Okay, so he’s way down the dark end of the paranoia spectrum too, thanks to this bee he’s got in his bonnet about overpopulation being the ultimate evil—but that’s the world we live in, isn’t it? Maybe everything will be fine if we just sit back and do nothing, but even if it turned out that way, would you be happy to be set down in history as someone who’d been prepared to sit back and trust everybody else in the world to be reasonable? I wouldn’t.”