The Cassandra Complex

by Brian Stableford

  “Three of them. Heads inside helmets—purpose-built, not ordinary motorcycling helmets. Looked like they were pretending to be SAS commandos. Only one thing I could make out for sure.”

  “What was that?”

  “They were women. Two of them, at least. Third might have been a man—probably was, judging by the way he dragged the prof along the corridor like a sack of potatoes, but not the ones with dart guns. Doesn’t make much difference these days. Remember that evil bitch you banged up after the Dog Riots thirty years back? What was it she called herself?”

  “Keeper Pan,” Lisa said automatically, slightly surprised by the readiness of her memory.

  “Let her out again soon enough, though, didn’t they? Animal Liberation Front! Is this what they call liberation?”

  For the moment, Lisa thought, Animal Liberationists were probably the least likely suspects. Even in their heyday, animal libbers had used firebombs only against people. Mice were right at the bottom of their hierarchy of deserving species, way below pigs and rabbits, but they were innocents nevertheless. Keeper Pan and her friends would never have firebombed Mouseworld. Lisa did, however, pause to wonder whether the person who’d shot the phone out of her hand could possibly have been a woman. It had been too dark to judge the shape of the black shell-suit, but there might have been something else that would give her a clue, if only she could focus her memories….

  “He had a lot of stuff in here, didn’t he?” the security man went on. “Stuff from way back—been inoculating mice with voodoo for forty years, they say, trying to work magic. Never came to anything much, though, did it?”

  After a moment’s confusion, Lisa realized that the he in Sweet’s statement wasn’t Edgar Burdillon, but Morgan Miller.

  “Did they try to get into any of the other labs or offices?” she asked sharply.

  Sweet shook his head. “Came straight here,” he said. “Seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Didn’t go to the upper floors at all. Why would they want to burn Mouseworld, Miss Friemann?”

  “I don’t know,” Lisa said, marveling at the absurdity that the casual shooting of a once-eminent scientist did not seem bizarre at all by comparison with the destruction of a classic experiment in animal population dynamics. The fact that Ed Burdillon had been driven away in an ambulance, his life endangered by toxic fumes, hardly seemed to have registered with the old man.

  “I tried to call him,” said Sweet—still presumably referring to Morgan Miller. “So did the police. He isn’t answering his phone.”

  “Is he away?” Lisa asked.

  “Not that I know of,” the security guard replied, still shaking his head in disbelief. “I tried Stella too, but everyone sets their answer-phones these days, day and night alike. Too many nuisance calls, I guess.”

  Lisa knew that Stella Filisetti was Morgan Miller’s latest research assistant. She didn’t know if Morgan was screwing her, but she assumed that Sweet believed he was. It had been Morgan’s habit since time immemorial, and he wasn’t the kind of man to give up on his habits while there was still breath in his body.

  Morgan had been seventy-three years old on his last birthday, but the last time Lisa had seen him, he’d assured her that he was “as fit as a flea.” Seventy-three wasn’t old these days, no matter what Police Admin and the top men at Fire & Rescue might think. The university certainly hadn’t tried to force Morgan to retire, even though the younger members of the department were sometimes wont to say, with a sneer, that he hadn’t produced a single worthwhile result in thirty years.

  “I’m sorry, Miss,” Thomas Sweet went on. “Maybe I should’ve called you too, but I didn’t have your number. I dialed 999 to get the fire department and the police, then I tried Professor Burdillon’s office. Couldn’t get through, of course—I didn’t know then that he’d gone downstairs. I tried Dr. Miller and got no reply, so I tried Stella, then Dr. Chan. No reply from any of them. Not one.’9 He seemed deeply resentful of his failure, as if he suspected that he would be held responsible for it.

  Their conversation was interrupted by another new arrival: a woman in her mid-thirties, with short-cropped hair and a raptorial attitude. Lisa had been hoping to see Mike Grundy before Judith Kenna found her, but it was too late now.

  It didn’t seem to have occurred to the chief inspector that there were times when a professional smile, however sardonic, wasn’t entirely appropriate. “Mr. Sweet,” she said mildly, “DS Hapgood would like another word with you.”

  She waited for the security guard to go through the doorway before continuing. “It’s good of you to race out here to give us the benefit of your special expertise, Dr. Friemann, but you really should have remained at the other crime scene. Senior officers ought to set an example in procedural matters, don’t you think? I see that you’re hurt too. Is that a bandage on your hand? You really ought to have seen a doctor before rushing off like that—Detective Inspector Grundy seems to have been extremely irresponsible.”

  “Don’t blame Mike,” Lisa said frostily. “My home first-aid kit’s ancient, but the dressing will do the job just as well as a fancy sealant. It’s just a slight cut in an awkward place, plus a few scratches on my arm. There was nothing I could do at home but trample on evidence—and I do have special knowledge of this location and the victim. When the men from the Ministry of Defence get here, they’ll want to talk to me.”

  “I’m sure they will,” the chief inspector purred. “Have you formed any conclusions?”

  “Not yet,” Lisa admitted, wishing there were some vital clue in plain view whose significance she alone had been able to see. Desperate to even the score, she said: “Have you managed to figure out why they blacked out the center of town?”

  “I think so,” said Kenna, her smile becoming smug as well as sardonic. “I presume they did it partly to provide getaway cover for the vehicles carrying the bombers and your own intruders, but the main reason must have been to cloak the third—and probably most important—part of their scheme.”

  Lisa suppressed a curse and managed to sound completely neutral as she said: “Which was?”

  “The abduction of Dr. Morgan Miller,” the chief inspector informed her.

  FOUR

  You might have done better to go to that crime scene rather than this one, given that you’re familiar with his house,” the chief inspector went on while Lisa struggled to absorb the news. “As I said, DI Grundy seems to have acted rather recklessly in bringing you here without waiting to get a better view of the whole picture. You might still be able to advise the investigating officers as to what has been taken from Dr. Miller’s house, but it’s too late now to think of sending you over there before the MOD team arrives. The intruders destroyed his main homestation, just as they smashed yours, but they seem to have removed at least one obsolete machine. They haven’t taken all his sequins, wafers, and diskettes—but that’s probably because they’d have needed a van to transport them in.”

  “Abduction?” Lisa echoed, still fixated on the first sentence of Kenna’s little speech. “Morgan’s been kidnapped?”

  “I very much doubt that they intend to hold him for ransom,” the younger woman replied insouciantly. “I think it’s far more likely that they want him to tell them something before they kill him, don’t you? I don’t suppose that by any chance you have any idea of what it is they want to know?”

  “No,” said Lisa shortly, then realized she’d been wrong-footed again.

  “Well,” Kenna said, relishing the carefully hoarded line, “you obviously didn’t know him quite as well as you thought you did. And he evidently didn’t confide in you quite as much as the people who went after him thought he did. Mr. Smith will be disappointed.”

  “Who’s Mr. Smith?” was the only counter Lisa could improvise.

  “Peter Grimmett Smith is the MOD man who’ll be taking charge of the investigation. He’ll be working closely with us, of course. I daresay he’ll find plenty for DI Grundy to do. I’m not so
sure that we’ll need much more from you once you’ve been debriefed, though—unless you can exercise your memory sufficiently to remember some little secret you and Dr. Miller might have kept between you. One that might help to explain four firebombs, two burglaries, two cases of malicious wounding, and an abduction.” The professional smile had vanished now.

  It hadn’t occurred to Lisa until the conversation reached that pitch of sarcasm that Judith Kenna might honestly believe that she was concealing something. Nor had it occurred to her that the dislike Kenna had never tried to conceal might run deeper than mere irritation and ageism prejudice—but she considered the hypothesis now.

  Twenty years ago, Judith Kenna had served a brief term as one of Mike Grundy’s sergeants, and now she was his boss. Kenna had guessed, of course, that Mike must have told Lisa that he had screwed her way back when, but however embarrassed the chief inspector might be about that particular little secret, it surely wasn’t grounds for a serious hate campaign. Kenna had doubtless also guessed that while Mike had been sleeping on Lisa’s couch following the breakup of his marriage, he hadn’t always stayed on the couch—but what difference did that make? Lisa couldn’t believe that mere jealousy was a factor—but if not jealousy, what? Was it just that Lisa wouldn’t play ball when Kenna had begun trying to hasten her toward retirement? Or was it just that Kenna’s ego was so insecure that she didn’t want to have anyone around who was older, wiser, and independent-minded?

  Knowing that she had to say something, Lisa eventually said: “If there was any secret, it was between Morgan and Ed Burdillon. Are you sure he’s been abducted?”

  “Of course not,” the chief inspector replied. “There are signs of a struggle, but that would be easy enough to fake. Are you suggesting that Morgan Miller might be the man behind all this—the one who sent bombers to the university and burglars to raid your flat?”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Lisa retorted. “I was wondering if he might have been away when the burglars came to call. Have you got the abduction on tape?”

  “Probably not,” Kenna told her. “Unfortunately, Dr. Miller’s house doesn’t appear to have any security cameras, not even in the hallway or on the porch. It’s a very old house—and he’s a very old man. Twentieth-century habits die hard, as you obviously know. The street cams will have picked something up in spite of the blackout, but it won’t be much and they probably won’t prove anything one way or the other. Tracking the getaway will be very difficult indeed.”

  “This is crazy,” Lisa said helplessly. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It certainly doesn’t,” agreed the chief inspector. “But whoever did this had reason enough to send at least seven people to formulate a plan of extraordinary complexity. They think it makes sense—and we have to figure out what sense they think it makes. Continue your inquiries, Dr. Friemann—but don’t go back to the labs with Dr. Forrester. Mr. Smith will want you close at hand when he arrives, and for some time afterward. We’ll probably need you to look through Miller’s house in the hope that you can give us some information about the items that have been removed, but Mr. Smith will have to decide when. In the meantime, ask one of Fire and Rescue’s backup paramedics to treat your hand and arm.”

  Having given these instructions, Judith Kenna turned on her heel and left. Lisa watched the chief inspector walk back along the corridor, moving with quasimilitary rigidity. While she was still standing there, dumbly, the remaining firemen pushed past her, reeling up two flabby hoses as they went. It wasn’t until they’d all disappeared that Mike Grundy shuffled around the corner where he’d presumably been waiting out of sight.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t realize quite how much shit had hit the fan—the news about Miller’s house being turned over only just came through. What the hell’s going on, Lisa?”

  “I don’t know,” Lisa said, wishing that she did. You’ll work it out, the man—or woman—who’d shot her had said. If we don’t have what we need, we’ll be back, and next time.… Now Lisa wished that she’d heard the end of that sentence. There was another that seemed even more ominous in present retrospect. Nobody cares about you, you stupid bitch! the distorted voice had informed her. Miller never cared, and no matter what he promised you, you’ll be dead soon enough.

  But Morgan had never promised her anything: not love, not marriage, not partnership, not wealth, not even a substantial share of his meager wisdom.

  Whatever information she was supposed to have must still be safe and secure in Morgan Miller’s mind—but if his captors thought they were going to beat it out of him, they had another think coming. Lisa was convinced that if there was one man in the world who would never give in to pressure or temptation, it was Morgan Miller.

  “I suppose it isn’t likely to be personal,” Mike mused, carefully leaving out the inflection that would have made it into a question. “Whoever did this was attacking Applied Genetics, not Burdillon. Why else take the trouble to drag him clear of the fire? If their reason’s political, they’ll probably want to brag about it, but if not…” He trailed off temptingly, but Lisa had no other suggestion ready.

  She wondered if it was possible that the bombers had gone after Mouseworld simply because it was a classic experiment, a living legend. Extreme Gaeans, way out on the green end of the spectrum, might conceivably believe that hitting Mouseworld might help them make a point about the real London, Paris, New York, and Rome and their plight within the context of the other war that dare not speak its name: the war for the salvation of the ecosphere. But what, if so, was the motive for Morgan’s abduction?

  She recalled then that Thomas Sweet had told her that Chan Kwai Keung wasn’t answering his phone, and that he hadn’t been able to get a hold of Stella Filisetti either. It was possible that the register of crimes patiently listed by Judith Kenna would expand even further before daybreak. Chan lived way out in the country, so it would take time for Mike’s men to check out his address, but Stella Filisetti probably lived closer to the campus. The men sent to bring her in for questioning should be reporting shortly. The true magnitude of the crime would be evident soon enough.

  Mike was still waiting for a comment.

  “If their target really was the cities, and they’re doing it to make a point,” Lisa said hesitantly, “they’ll have to ram the point home somehow. Maybe Kenna was wrong about the ransom demand—maybe we’ll get one as soon as the TV news people wake up.”

  Mike immediately picked up the thread of the argument. “We have to be looking at some kind of organization with an inside connection,” he said. “They had a smartcard pass and the combinations of all the doors they needed to get through. In a way, than the weirdest thing about the whole operation. They got through your door, and Miller’s, just as easily. They also switched off the power to a substantial slice of the city, and they knew my mobile-phone number. That’s a lot of inside information, Lis—and it’s from at least three different insides, unless…”

  “Unless it’s our inside information,” Lisa finished for him. “They’re trying to set me up with this Traitor’ crap, aren’t they? Why would they do that, if not to distract attention from someone else?”

  “You don’t suppose it could be Ms. Kenna, do you?” He wasn’t serious. He had seen Lisa’s mood darken again, and he was trying to compensate.

  “No,” she said, for form’s sake. “Not her—but not Morgan, either. Not me and not you and not Ed Burdillon. But it has to be someone who knows more than he or she should about at least three of those five and the places where we live and work. If it’s not someone close to us, it must be one hell of a hacker. The Gaean Libs are rumored to have high-powered hackers in the ranks, but all the best poachers turn gamekeeper as soon as they can. If we’ve been hacked to that extent, it’s far more likely to be someone working for one of the megacorps. But what would convince a megacorps that a quiet backwater like the fourth campus of a provincial university has any secrets worth stealing? That would be one hell of
a mistake—if it is a mistake.”

  “If it is a megacorp op,” Mike observed glumly, “the MOD won’t get to the bottom of it. Not that they’d tell us if they did. Can’t be, though. Mayhem and kidnapping isn’t the megacorp way. They already own the whole fucking world, thanks to the big smash-and-grab raid that fucked up the Eubank, the Fed, and everybody’s pension funds. Their carpetbaggers can buy anyone they want for next to nothing, even out of a university. Especially out of a university. Where else can you and I go—if Kenna manages to ease us out—but straight into the pocket of the Cabal?”

  It was all true, Lisa conceded. Ever since the great stock-market bouleversement of ’25, a handful of megacorporations had gradually taken effective control of the world. The power of national governments had been on the wane for a century, but the engineered crisis had administered the coup de grâce. The “gray power” everyone talked about was just ballot-box power; no matter how it contrived to expand the legally sanctioned work opportunities of the over-fifties, it couldn’t conjure up any new employers. If you wanted to work, you had to take your begging bowl to the megacorps, and if you had a valuable secret of any kind, you had to sell it to the megacorps. It was no good trying to play one corp off against another, because they all worked as a team. The broadsheets called them “the Ultimate Cartel,” but that was just politeness; the tabloids were right to prefer “the Cabal.” Megacorp publicity claimed that the substitute term had arisen because tabloid editors were as illiterate as their readers, not because anyone had knowledge of an actual secret conspiracy, but everyone with half a brain took that as one more sign of their undoubted guilt.

  Mike Grundy’s gaze had wandered. Lisa followed it, tracking across the appalling blackness of the spoiled walls and the crude stumps of what had been the projecting sections of the central H Block. The stink was still appalling. No matter how hard the cold wind blew through the empty window frames, the foul odor kept on renewing itself, emanating with seemingly relentless fervor from the roasted fur of half a million mice.