The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [74]
“Citizen mice,” Lisa said quietly.
“What?”
“That’s how the mice adapt—the ones that do. They accept the conditions of adversity. They accept the narrowing of their personal space. They accept the loss of their reproductive drive. They accept that the only thing to do is to stave off disaster and keep staving it off. They accept that there’s no virtue in being a competitive rat when competition only leads to ulceration and cannibalism and insanity.”
“We’re not mice, Lis. We’re people.”
“I know that,” Lisa told him, “but we have the same problems as mice, and some of us find the same solutions, while we look for all the others that we need and can’t quite find.”
“The bloody Cassandra Complex,” Mike observed in disgust. “Sometimes, you know, I could almost wish that you’d joined the Real Women when you had the chance. Arachne West and her chums might have been crazy as well as ugly, but she wasn’t as miserable as Morgan Miller and the comic-book Chinaman. Helen’s still in touch, I think, if you want to change your mind.”
“Citizen mice don’t change their minds,” Lisa told him. “They just keep on going with the flow.”
“Until it ends.”
“Until it ends,” she agreed.
PART THREE
The Morality of Algeny
THIRTEEN
The second captive was wide awake and wary by now. Jeff had taken no chances with the smartfiber bonds that secured her right hand and her left foot to the steel frame of the bed, but it was a collapsible bed and she could probably have broken it into pieces if she’d cared to exert herself. She hadn’t. She was still sipping meekly from a mug of tea when Lisa and Leland came in, but she set the mug down on the low formica-topped table that Jeff had placed conveniently close at hand. The way in which she looked up at her captors suggested that she had a better appreciation of the hopelessness of her situation than Stella Filisetti did, but her features were stubbornly firm.
“Okay,” Leland said without preamble, “this is the situation. My name’s Leland. I think you know Dr. Friemann, even though you’ve never been formally introduced. Not unnaturally, she’s eager to bring in her police colleagues and the MOD so you can be properly charged, tried, convicted, and put up for the next ten years or so, but she’s also anxious about the safety of Morgan Miller. I’ve managed to persuade her that we might get to him sooner if we make a deal with you, and she’s agreed to delay calling in her colleagues until we’ve explored that possibility. Time is pressing, and your window of opportunity won’t stay open for long. We’ve already had a chat with Ms. Filisetti, and to be perfectly honest, I can’t imagine how any sane and reasonable person—I’m prepared to assume for the moment that you can be included in that category—could possibly get involved in any scheme based on information obtained by a person like that. You must suspect by now that you’ve been led up the garden path right into the compost heap and that your only chance of getting out of this with your life intact is to dump the imbeciles who got you into it. So how about it?”
Lisa watched the Real Woman’s reaction carefully. The offer had to sound good, but only if the woman thought Leland could be trusted. For her own part, Lisa thought Leland could be trusted about as far as you could throw a feather into a headwind, but she still hadn’t called for help. Anything he got, she wanted to have too.
“I can’t do that,” the woman said flatly.
“Yes, you can,” Leland said mildly. “Hasn’t this thing gone far enough out of hand? It’s only a matter of time before one of your gun-toting friends shoots somebody dead. Amateurs, eh? I bet you were with the snatch squad that collected Miller—the only part of the operation that went smoothly. Did he get a chance to warn you that you were wasting your time before you put a dart in him?”
“Since you’re so concerned,” the woman replied, “I suppose I ought to take the opportunity to warn you that you’re wasting your time.”
“That operation