The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [63]
“You can’t do this,” the younger woman said, with little conviction.
“Yes, we can,” Lisa retorted, figuring that she might as well go with the flow now that she had turned on the tap. “You know full well that anything that could motivate you to pull off this crazy stunt has to be important enough to motivate us to do what it takes to prize it out of your hands. It’s driven you to the brink of committing murder, although I doubt that you had any inclination in that direction beforehand, so you can imagine well enough how far it might drive us. It’s time to give it up and save yourself—and we can arrange that too. Just tell us what we need to know while there’s still time and you can walk away.”
“I don’t know where Morgan is,” Stella replied swiftly. “They thought it best that I didn’t, just in case …”
Was it too glib? Lisa wondered. It would, after all, have been a sensible precaution to keep Morgan’s location secret even from their own field troops—but these conspirators had not so far shown much sign of being sensible people. Even by the standards of a crazy world, they seemed seriously deranged.
“I don’t believe you,” Lisa said when she’d paused long enough. “The stupid thing is, Stella, that your scruples have led you astray. It was all a scam—a trap. Morgan seems to have fallen into it too, but he always did like to be out there ahead of the field, didn’t he? Never a team player, alas, even while he was playing for the greatest team of all in the cause of progress. Heroic individualists can be so seductive, don’t you think? Well, of course you do. I know exactly how you feel, because I’ve been a victim too—for forty years. Imagine that! I know exactly how you feel, Stella, because I’ve been up and down the same escalator half a dozen times. I know exactly how seductive Morgan can be, and exactly how deceptive—but I love him anyway. I always have. I love him enough to do whatever’s necessary to save him from his own recklessness. So I’d be very grateful if you could just tell me where he’s being held. It’s over anyway. You must see that. You don’t have the data, and time’s already run out.”
All the time she had been speaking, Lisa had been moving her face closer to Stella Filisetti’s, flaring her nostrils slightly and widening her eyes so that the whites would be visible all around the irises. As mad acts went, it lacked all subtlety, but subtlety didn’t seem to be an issue anymore.
It didn’t work. It wasn’t, as far as Lisa could judge, that the younger woman didn’t seem convinced. It was more a matter of the conviction being woefully insufficient to break her resistance.
“Okay, Dr. Friemann,” said Leland, his voice lowered almost to basso profundo. “That’s enough of the threats. I warned you, didn’t I? Now get the hell out of here so I can have a sensible conversation with the young lady.”
Lisa winced inwardly, not so much at the “young lady” bit as at the realization that Leland had obviously learned his good cop/bad cop routine from classic movies that Stella Filisetti had probably seen and laughed at while she was in her teens. Lisa had no alternative, though, but to keep on going with the flow and hope that the oldest tricks were still the best. She stood up and stalked out of the room, closing the door behind her before pausing and gluing her ear to the ancient hardboard panel.
“She’s upset,” Leland explained to his prisoner, his deep voice clearly audible through the door. “She doesn’t understand modern commerce. The police tend to have a very jaundiced view of the way the economy works—but that’s necessary to the way they play their role. They’re obliged to regard most forms of private enterprise as evil, and they don’t have to recognize or face up to the fact that if they weren’t necessary evils, they wouldn’t exist. Personally, I’m a pragmatist. No ax to grind. To me, it’s just a matter of fixing a price.”
“It’s