The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [136]
“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?”
“He’s a pro, Helen. He wouldn’t bargain with you if he didn’t have to—and he wouldn’t have to, even if you had something to sell. Which you don’t. All you’re doing here is letting your side down and trying to foul things up even worse than they are already.”
Helen’s wild eyes were growing even wilder. She had obviously realized that Lisa wasn’t going to hand anything over, whether she had anything to hand or not. The script that she’d formulated in anticipation of the confrontation had let her down, and she didn’t know what to do. In the movies, the people holding the guns always got the respect they deserved, and if the people who were on the wrong end of the barrel were slow to cooperate, the people with the guns simply knocked them about a bit more and rummaged through their pockets and pouches until they found what they were looking for—but Helen Grundy had already cottoned on to the fact that Lisa wasn’t going to make any effort to oblige her. She was afraid that if she tried to carry forward the fight with anything less than a bullet, Lisa would win—and no matter what she thought about the amount of pleasure it would give her to shoot her ex-husband’s good and loyal friend, she was exactly the kind of person to whom the logic of rational deterrence applied. She was trying to get out of trouble, not deeper in—and she knew, even if she couldn’t quite admit it to herself, that she wasn’t going to get out. No matter what she did, she was in trouble. She had been reckless in running up her moral debts, and now the account was due for payment.
That, at least, was the way Lisa calculated the situation—so the fact that Helen actually fired the gun caused her considerable annoyance as well as a horrid thrill of pure terror.
Fortunately, the analysis had been fundamentally correct, and Helen had been careful to raise the barrel of the gun before firing, so that the bullet went over Lisa’s head and smashed into the lintel above the door to Morgan Miller’s prison.
“Leland probably heard that,” Lisa observed when her nerves were calm enough to permit speech. “If he didn’t figure out where we went before, he will now.”
Leland wasn’t the only one who had heard the shot. The door through which Lisa had come hadn’t closed again, although it had swung back so that it stood ajar. Now it opened wide again, and Arachne West came through it with her own gun raised and ready to fire.
The Real Woman had pressed the barrel of her weapon to the back of Helen Grundy’s neck before she realized who it was that she was covering. Her command to drop the gun was overtaken by a disgusted curse, which emerged in a form that was semi-articulate at best.
Helen dropped her gun anyway. She seemed relieved to be required to do it, although she had to know what an admission of failure it was.
“Like some rat or lemming the day after the crash begins,” Lisa observed drily. “Running this way and that, going nowhere, lashing out at anything within range. No direction at all. Self-destruction born of panic.”
“You haven’t even started!” Arachne West accused her.
“No,” Lisa admitted. “I didn’t even get to start.” She reached into the pocket