The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [135]
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 out 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