The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [0]
Inherit the Earth
Architects of Emortality
The Fountains of Youth
The Cassandra Complex
The Cassandra
Complex
BRIAN STABLEFORD
A Tom Doherty Associates Book • New York
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
THE CASSANDRA COMPLEX
Copyright © 2001 by Brian Stableford
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Edited by David G. Hartwell
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty
Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stableford, Brian M.
The Cassandra complex / Brian Stableford.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN: 978-0-312-87773-6
ISBN: 0-312-87773-0
1. Twenty-first century—Fiction. 2. Forensic scientists—Fiction. 3. Missing persons—Fiction. 4. Biotechnology—Fiction. I. Title
PR6069.T17C375 2001
823’.914—dc21 00-048018
First Edition: March 2001
Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Jane, and all victims of the Cassandra Complex
Acknowledgment
The plot of this novel is loosely based on a short story entitled “The Magic Bullet” that appeared in Interzone 29 in 1989. I am grateful to David Pringle for publishing that story, and to Gardner Dozois and the late Don Wollheim for reprinting it in their respective annual collections of the Year’s Best Science Fiction.
I should also like to thank Jane Stableford for proofreading services and helpful commentary, and the late Claire Russell and her husband, Bill, for their great kindness and for the part their ideas played in shaping the background of the story.
The book by Claire and W. M. S. Russell to which the text refers, Population Crises and Population Cycles, was published by the Gal-ton Institute in 1999. The book by Garrett Hardin to which the text refers, The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia, was published by Oxford University Press in 1999.
PART ONE
The Mouseworld Holocaust
ONE
When Lisa first heard the noise, she wasn’t sure whether it was real or not. She didn’t think she’d been asleep, but she couldn’t be certain. Sometimes, like all confirmed insomniacs, she fell asleep without realizing she had done so—and sometimes she dreamed without actually falling properly asleep.
If the sound had been one of breaking glass or splintering wood, she would have sat up immediately to reach for the phone, but what she had heard—or thought she had heard—was the noise of the front door opening without any force applied to it. That should have been impossible. Both locks had combination triggers as well as swipe slots, and they were supposed to be unhackable. Lisa lived alone, and was not inclined to trust the combinations to anyone else. A member of the police force had to take such precautions very seriously, even if she was a lab-bound forensic scientist who ought to count herself lucky to be clinging on to limited duties now that she was past the official retirement date.
Because it seemed so unlikely that she had heard what she thought she did, Lisa remained quite still, straining her ears for further evidence. She let four or five seconds pass before she even opened her eyes to take a sideways glance at the luminous display on the screen beside her bed. The timer told her it was five minutes to four: the darkest and quietest period of the cold October night.
Then a second noise drew her eyes to the door of her bedroom. There was a certain amount of light filtering through the closed curtains, but she lived on the third floor, too far above the level of the streetlights to obtain much benefit from their yellow glow. The door was shadowed, and she couldn’t tell for sure whether it was opening until she saw the pencil-thin beam of light sneaking through the widening crack—the beam that was guiding the person