The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [122]
“It’s okay, Morgan.”
“They still won’t believe it, Lisa. Your being here won’t make any difference. They won’t believe that I did what I did for the reasons I did it. They’re too paranoid.”
“There’s a war on,” Lisa reminded him. “The fact that the government won’t admit it yet only makes it that much more terrifying—and the fact that the MOD is ten or twenty years behind the new cutting edge of defense research doesn’t help. If you know why Chan’s versatile-packaging system was a nonstarter, you’re in a better position than I am to guess whether the new systems will fare any better, but the likes of Helen Grundy and Arachne West don’t have any reason to believe that they’re high on anyone’s list of defense priorities. They’re entitled to their paranoia—and it wasn’t just Stella’s prying that made you into a plausible target. You should have told me, Morgan. This farce has trashed my life. All the gray power in England couldn’t save me from the scrap heap now. Whatever it is, you should have told me.”
“I know that now,” he said. He was speaking a little more comfortably; the painkillers administered by the smart dressing had restored what remained of his equilibrium. He was even able to raise his head from the pillow again and prop himself up on his left elbow. “The smartsuit’s a mistake, though,” he added. “It’s nice, but it’s not your
“You wouldn’t know,” she said bitterly. “So concentrate on what you do know. Stella and Helen might not have been able to recognize the truth when they heard it from your lying lips, but I can. Tell me the truth. Explain to me how come I’ve known you for thirty-nine years without ever being able to see what a sly hypocrite you are.”
“I’m truly sorry,” Morgan said, letting his voice fall to a whisper again. “But Chan was right about that, if nothing else. You were a police officer. It wouldn’t have been right to let you in on anything that would have compromised your integrity. Maybe it was only a technical offense, but it was an offense nevertheless. You were so entranced by that stupid experiment that I was never sure of how you’d react to the news that I’d already subverted it. As time went by, it became harder and harder to confess that I’d been keeping the secret for so long. I never told Chan either—and he was too trusting to ever suspect that the real reason I wouldn’t let him introduce his experimental mice into two of the mouse cities was that I’d already introduced mine into London and Rome. Anyway, there really are secrets so nasty that the only safe place to keep them is the one between your ears.”
“But you offered to give it to Ahasuerus and the Algenists. You couldn’t trust Chan or me, but you could trust Goldfarb and Geyer?”
Morgan sighed. The furrows on his brow bore witness to the force with which her arguments were striking into his conscience. “It’s science, Lisa. It was always a matter of time. Eventually somebody else was bound to come up with the same gimmick, with the same built-in mantrap. I spent forty years trying to iron out the bug—forty years, Lisa. I wasn’t prepared to let it out with the two sides of the coin so tightly welded together. I wanted to knock out the defect first—but I never could. I had to pass the work on to somebody else. I might have given it to Chan if he hadn’t become so heavily involved with Ed’s defense work, but the one thing I daren’t risk was handing it over to the MOD while the whole world was gearing up for war. If peace had ever broken out… but you and I know well enough that there’s always been a war on, and always will be till the big crash finally comes. I thought that if I could just figure out how to eliminate the downside, it would all be good … and it seemed so simple, so … Lisa, you have no idea of how sorry I am. I thought I could straighten it out, but all I did was fuck it up. I