The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [138]
“I’m probably a much better shot than you are,” Leland observed. “Even with a piece of crap like this. Don’t be fool enough to think you can shoot back before the drug takes effect. The dart would knock you over at this range. It might even kill you—do you know how many deaths are caused by supposedly nonlethal weaponry?”
“Of course I do,” said Lisa, “but the radfems have three more guns inside and they’re real marksmen. They consider me expendable. They know they’re cornered, but if you hang around too long, the police will be here, and getting all tangled up would be a really bad idea. One copy, and you leave. Go far and go fast.”
Leland shrugged. “Suits me,” he said. “I’m glad it’s you. I’m not sure I could trust anyone else not to hand me a blank.” If it was a threat, it was delicately couched.
Lisa, of course, had to trust Arachne West not to hand her a blank when she stuck her arm around the door. She passed the wafer she received to Leland without bothering to wonder.
“I’ll have to check it in the van,” Leland said as he took it. “If it looks okay, I’m gone. As you said, I was never even here.” He was already moving back into the subterranean maze. As he disappeared, he called back: “I’ll be in touch about that job.”
When Lisa stepped back inside, it was a resentful Helen Grundy who asked, “What job?”
“You cost me mine,” Lisa pointed out. “Maybe you ought to congratulate yourself for that. If I hadn’t been finished in the police force, I might not have been so nice when I phoned you or so pliable when I turned up here. Can Arachne assume that you’re back on board now that you have nothing left to rat her out with?”
“If that man works for a megacorp,” Mike Grundy’s ex-wife observed, “there’s no way anybody we can give it to will be able to work through the data before they do. They’ll have the weapon before we have a defense, and they’ll be halfway up the ladder to a workable emortality treatment before we’re clear of the first rung.”
“There is no workable emortality treatment, Helen,” Lisa informed her quietly. “Not by this route. If forty years of Morgan Miller’s ingenuity couldn’t get the merest glimpse of a fix, the resources of the vastest megacorp in the world won’t turn one up any time soon. He told Goldfarb and Geyer the simple truth. As a way of extending human life, it’s a dead end. Our personalities are formed by the closure of synapses, the withering of alternative pathways. Our memories are sculpted, not piled up. Rejuvenation of the brain wipes out everything but instinct. It’s a weapon, Helen—that and nothing more. It’s not the radfem Holy Grail. It’s just a poisoned chalice. I don’t believe anyone will ever use it, but I do believe that handing it over to Leland has further decreased the already slight probability. The people he works for are committed One Worlders. When they go to war—if they haven’t already—they’ll do so with that end in mind. They’ll use dirty tricks by the thousand, but I don’t believe they’ll use this one. It’s not compatible with their ultimate aim. If anyone else tries to use it, or threatens to use it, the Cabal will be better placed to put a stop to it than anyone else. Maybe I’m not paranoid enough, but that’s the way I see it. Even so, I’ll be even happier if those copies Arachne is making are delivered into as many sympathetic hands as possible. A solid defense is the best foundation for any campaign.”
“Can you get a job for Mike too?” Helen Grundy asked, using up her last reserves of malice. “He’ll be needing one, won’t he?”
“He can look after himself,” Lisa assured her. “But if I can help him, I will—just as I’ll help Arachne. I’ll even put in a good word for you, if you want me to.”
“Finished,” said Arachne West. “Here’s