The Cassandra Complex

by Brian Stableford

  “The people who sit back and do nothing don’t go down in history at all,” Lisa pointed out. “Their anonymity remains inviolable—but people who make mistakes are always remembered. I don’t think Morgan needs to worry about losing the credit for discovering the Miller Effect, because I can’t believe that there’ll be an eager crowd of alternative claimants. If you and I figure in the story at all, it’ll probably be because we’ve fucked up.”

  “So who’s too paranoid now?” Arachne wanted to know. She turned left onto London Road before taking the right fork to cut across to Lansdown Road. Her onboard computer censured her for not sticking to the arterial road, but she didn’t even mutter a reply. “Your boss might call this ‘dereliction of duty,’ but we know better, and history will side with us. When the final score is calculated, we’ll be the heroes. Unless, of course, we somehow end up as zombies with the minds of mice. Then we’ll be numbered among the martyrs. Either way, we’ll have done what we could.”

  Arachne parked the car behind the derelict church just above the fork where Lansdown Road and Richmond Road diverged. It was nearly a five-minute walk to Morgan’s house, but to go any closer would have risked exposure to the surveillance umbrella.

  There was no conspicuous police presence in evidence as Lisa approached the house, but a quick scan of the unmarked cars parked in the street revealed a familiar face: the sergeant who had been in Thomas Sweet’s office reviewing the security tapes on the night of the Mouseworld holocaust. Lisa headed straight for him, and he wound down his window.

  “Sergeant Hapgood, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Dr. Friemann,” he replied. “I thought you’d gone over to the other side.”

  Her heart lurched slightly before his smile tipped her off to the fact that he meant the MOD. “Worse than that,” she said. “I’m running every which way under two separate commands. Chief Inspector Kenna wanted me to cast an eye over the scene to see if I could help with a list of what’s been taken from the house, but this is the first chance I’ve had. When I haven’t been busy getting shot at, Mr. Smith has had me on the go. Can’t get into my own place yet—had to buy a new outfit. I haven’t even got my belt—I feel half naked without it.”

  “I heard about you getting darted and carted,” Hapgood said. “Some rent-a-cop sticking his oar in, wasn’t it? As if we didn’t have enough trouble falling over the feet of the Ministry men. Where do they dig these guys up? The Civil Service Senior Citizens’ Club?” He realized his mistake almost immediately and said: “No offense.”

  “None taken,” she assured him. “Have you seen Mike today?”

  “No. While the suspects are flowing into custody, he’ll be up to his eyes. Did you hear about his ex? He got out before she flipped, but that might not be enough to save him. Kenna won’t back him if she thinks any of the dirt might rub off on her. You knew the ex, I suppose?”

  “Only slightly,” Lisa replied. “There’ll be plenty of time to be embarrassed about it when we’re not chasing our tails so hard. For now, I’ve got to get through my list of things to do as quickly as I can.”

  “Do you want me to come in with you?” Hapgood asked.

  “You don’t have to” Lisa said, “but I’d be obliged if you’d walk to the door with me and introduce me formally to the Ministry men. I haven’t met any of them yet except for Smith, and he’s not the one who sent me here.”

  “Sure.” Hapgood seemed glad of the opportunity to stretch his legs. “Your new outfit looks okay, by the way—the high street makes the so-called new uniforms look a bit scabby, don’t you think? I’m glad I’m in CID.” His own suit looked brand new, but it was probably trying to pass itself off as something smarter than it really was. Shallow people always choose clothes that reflect their personalities, Lisa thought, even when they don’t realize what they’re giving away.

  “It’s a bit flashy for lab wear,” Lisa countered. “But then, I’m not in the lab, am I?”

  Hapgood walked her to the front door and waited until it was opened. The man who peered through the gap did indeed look like some ancient reservist recalled to active service because of the emergency.

  “Inspector Friemann, Forensics,” Hapgood explained. “She’s one of ours. The chief inspector asked her to look around.”

  “Our own forensic staff has gone over the site,” the Ministry man said dubiously.

  “The inspector knew Professor Miller. She’s better placed than anyone else to assess what might be missing,” Hapgood said, letting a trace of resentment show. “It’s our investigation too, remember. We’re all supposed to be on the same side.”

  Lisa suppressed a smile. “Mr. Smith co-opted me to help him out at Ahasuerus and the Institute of Algeny,” she said apologetically. “I was with him most of yesterday and last night. This is the first chance I’ve had to get out here.”

  The door finally swung open.

  “Thanks, Jerry,” Lisa said dismissively.

  “You’re welcome,” Hapgood assured her, presumably having taken some small satisfaction in exercising his meager authority upon the invaders from London.

  “We’re very busy,” the man from the Ministry informed Lisa as soon as he had reclosed the door.

  “That’s all right,” Lisa told him. “I know my way around. That’s the whole point of my being here. I won’t get in your way. You’ll hardly know I’m here.”

  It would have been a good deal easier to follow Morgan’s instructions if she’d had his study to herself, but that, inevitably, was where the majority of the Ministry men were busy. There were three of them. She had to make a show of prowling around, studying the dust patterns on the desk where Morgan’s oldest surviving PC had stood for thirty-some years and pushing objects back and forth to expose similar traces on the unevenly cluttered shelves. Eventually she convinced herself that the operatives engaged in methodically copying wafers and sequins into their own equipment were so used to her presence that they had stopped paying attention to what she was doing, and it was at that point that she began to look for what she actually wanted.

  Morgan had never set aside his twentieth-century habits. He had always taken it for granted that although burglars would plunder electronic-storage devices with alacrity, because they were so easily portable, they would never bother with books. He wasn’t vandal enough to to make a safe by cutting the centers out of the pages of a book, no matter how disposable the text might be, but he regarded the space within a reference book’s spine as the kind of repository that no one would ever think to investigate.

  In order to get the wafer out, Lisa had not only to pick up volume M-Z of Morgan’s Webster’s New International Dictionary, but to let the pages fall open far enough to get her fingers into the opened crack. The cut between her thumb and finger hadn’t bothered her for some time, but the maneuver tested the flexibility of the sealant to the limit. She had to fight hard to maintain the appearance of a purely fortuitous movement. Fortunately, none of the Ministry men paid the slightest heed. The youngest of them was forty-five and the oldest must have been eight or ten years older than Lisa, but that didn’t prevent their deciding, consciously or unconsciously, that she was too old to be worth looking at.

  When the wafer was safely lodged in a hidden pocket, Lisa continued her charade, dutifully pretending that she really was making a mental list of missing objects. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that Judith Kenna would one day ask her for exactly such a report. She gave the job an extra five minutes before deciding that enough was enough. She didn’t bother to announce that she was leaving, although she did favor the man who’d let her in with a slight nod when he looked up to take note of her departure. No one challenged her on the way to the front door. She simply walked straight out—but it seemed unwise to treat Jerry Hapgood quite so loftily, so she walked over to his car.

  “I can’t give you a lift, Dr. Friemann,” he said before she had opened her mouth. “Got to stay here.”

  “That’s okay
,” she said. “My car’s only a couple of minutes away. If you see Mike back at the station, tell him I’ll catch him when I can. Have to get back to my other boss now—no rest for the wicked.”

  “Sure,” he said with a tolerantly patronizing smile. Lisa knew perfectly well that nobody of his generation ever declared that there was no rest for the wicked—but what the hell did he know?

  She was back at Arachne West’s Nissan within four minutes, although she was careful not to look like a woman in a hurry. Arachne West wasn’t so concerned about appearances; the Nissan’s computer served her with a voice warning and a visual alarm as soon as she pulled onto the busy road. “Fuck off,” she replied automatically. Then, to Lisa, she said: “I wasn’t sure you’d be back, you know. I really wasn’t sure.”

  “I want a copy for myself,” Lisa said.

  “I knew that” the Real Woman replied. “I want lots of copies. Now that the secret’s out, we have to make sure it reaches as many of the right people as possible and hope the opposition will keep it under a tighter rein. Do you know anyone who owns a big black van built like a battle cruiser?”

  “Oh, shit,” said Lisa, swinging around to look through the rear window at the traffic behind them. The van in question had no distinguishing marks, but she knew that its presence on their tail couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. “How did he get on to us?”

  “It’s the mercenary, right?”

  “I assume so. His name’s Leland. Last time he butted in, it was blind luck. I thought I’d got rid of all the bugs he planted on me. So did Smith.”

  “You probably did,” Arachne told her philosophically. “He’s put his own watch on Miller’s place, of course, and he probably has the details of this car too. He’ll have traced Min—she’s the one I set to baby-sit Filisetti—before your people did. Mrs. Grundy used her ex’s passwords to play merry hell with the police computer, but she couldn’t do much about the mall moguls, so Leland’s probably way ahead of the crowd. This whole operation was put together in too much of a hurry. It’s a pity I had to park the car for so long—it gave him a chance to get to us.”

  “Sorry,” Lisa said. “If I’d left any sooner, even the Ministry’s third reserve eleven might have gotten suspicious. We’re not going to be able to lose him, are we?”

  “Not in this traffic. I daren’t even try—I’ve got so many violations stored up that the watchdog would probably shut the engine down if I made a U-turn or ran a red light. Back on home ground, it might be a different story, though. I’ll drop you in Great Pulteney Street on my way back to the parking lot. The crowds will be swelled with lunch-hour shoppers. Run down William Street and turn right to the Pulteney Mews entrance of the mall. Don’t mess about—just go straight to Salomey and tell them we’re out of rope. I’ll dodge into the underworld as soon as I’m out of his sight and join you in the office. Don’t wait for me, though. Start copying. I have only three people left on-site, but they’re all bona-fide mall staff. They have friends and they know hiding places. Okay?”

  “Okay. Leland won’t come after us with anything too heavy—he won’t even want to use the sleepy gas he deployed at Ahasuerus. While he doesn’t know what we know, his first priority is to get information.”

  “I can look after myself,” Arachne assured her. “And let’s face it—I really don’t look dangerous in this getup, do I?”

  “You’re too tall to look entirely harmless,” Lisa told her. “But that’s okay. Just smile at him—and keep the gun behind your back.”

  They had already come off Lansdown Road into Broad Street, joining the queue for the turn that would take them on to Pulteney Bridge. The black van was two vehicles behind. Lisa could have seen Leland’s face if the windows of the van hadn’t been privacy-protected, and the fact that he could probably see hers as she turned wasn’t reassuring. Once they had taken the turn, however, it was just a matter of waiting for the traffic flow to carry them through the roundabout and into Great Pulteney Street. Arachne had no alternative but to drop Lisa on the wrong side of the street, but she didn’t leave her to stand there while the van caught up; she kept her foot on the brake until Lisa had crossed in front of her.

  Unfortunately, bringing the traffic to a halt allowed ample time for the passenger door of the black van to slide back. Jeff must have been driving, because it was Leland who got down. How or why he had decided she was the primary target, Lisa didn’t know, but there was no point in pretending she was a shopper. She ran, and was delighted to see from the corner of her eye that Leland’s first attempt to dodge through the traffic and follow her into William Street was frustrated. Her view of him was immediately cut off by the corner, but she glanced back again as she turned into Pulteney Mews and saw him lengthening his stride as he rounded the previous corner.

  As Arachne had anticipated, the crowds had thickened considerably because of the lunch hour, but no one got in Lisa’s way as she raced through the automatic doors and into the side concourse. There was no hope of concealing the fact that she had gone into Salomey, but once inside the store, the racks came to her aid, and she was able to duck out of sight while she made her way to the dressing room. When she took a peek between two pair of trousers hanging on a rack, she saw Leland still poised on the threshold, hesitating—not so much over the injunction on the door as because he was uncertain of whether to go left, right, or straight ahead.

  When she reached the dressing room, the guide who’d taken her down into the bowels of the mall before was sitting on a chair, trying unsuccessfully to look bored.

  “Trouble,” Lisa said. “The man following me is a mercenary. We have to make sure the doors down below are all shut tight.”

  The woman didn’t waste time asking questions. She had the trapdoor open in a matter of seconds, and she lowered it again as soon as she and Lisa had passed through.

  “Where’s Arachne?” she asked as she led the way to the first door.

  “She’ll make her own way. The mercenary’s hireling is following the car. We’ll need couriers, but the first priority is to distract the opposition.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” the woman promised. “It’s open, but you’d better knock.”

  The last sentence referred to the door to the anteroom of Morgan Miller’s cell, and was spoken as the guide turned on her heel to retrace her steps.

  Lisa did as she was told. When she knocked on the door, she was admitted without delay—but she hardly had time to enjoy the swift reflexive surge of relief before she was clumsily struck down from behind.

  The blow was glancing, but it had been made by a heavy metal object. Lisa was momentarily blinded by the pain as she stumbled, falling to her knees. Anticipating a second blow, she ducked and scrambled away on all fours toward the inner door, uncomfortably aware that the reaction must seem extremely ungainly to whoever it was that had hit her.

  The second blow never came, and Lisa was able to turn around, raising herself to a kneeling position while clasping her hand to the sore spot at the back of her skull.

  She found herself looking up reproachfully into the hostile eyes of Helen Grundy. The gun with which Lisa had been inefficiently struck was now aimed directly at her heart.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  What was that for?” Lisa complained bitterly. “I’m trying to help you, you stupid cow!”

  “Just give me the data,” Helen said grimly. It was the tone rather than the content that communicated the wrongness of the situation to Lisa’s dizzied brain. She remembered then that Helen was supposed to be long gone, bearing mouse models of useless emortality to some distant destination.

  “Do you even know who you’re double-crossing and why?” Lisa asked, coming slowly to her feet. “Or have you lost track too?”

  “I can’t afford to give it away,” Helen told her. “I’ve too much stacked up against me. I used Mike’s passwords to hack into the police computer and foul up the precious databases, not to mention stealing the security codes that let us black ou
t half the town. He won’t care about the others, but he’ll make bloody sure they throw the book at me. So give me the wafer, Lisa—or an excuse to shoot you.”

  “Got too hot for you, did it?” Lisa said. “Arachne did mention that the weaker-kneed members of the team lost their nerve when they figured out exactly what kind of a snake you had by the tail.” While she said it, though, she glanced back anxiously at the inner door, wondering just how bad the situation had gone.

  “He’s all right,” Helen said. “I don’t have anything against him.”

  “You don’t have anything against me either, did you but know it,” Lisa said with a sigh. “Arachne has the wafer. I jumped out of the car to draw the head mercenary away while Arachne took care of his henchman. It wouldn’t do you any good if I did have it. Leland got as far as Salomey before he lost me, so we’re cornered. We just have to hope that Arachne gets away with the goods.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Helen said. “Anyway, if it’s only the mercenary who’s on to you, he can’t possibly have enough backup to seal a maze with as many exits as this one has. Give me the wafer, Lisa. It really would be just as nice to shoot you instead—all that’s stopping me is the possibility that I might still be able to make a deal. Leland, did you say his name is?”