The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [80]
As she’d intended, the question took Stella entirely by surprise. For a moment, the younger woman hesitated in confusion, obviously unsure as to whether or not she’d made a mistake, and whether or not it was recoverable. “The detective inspector,” she said, smoothly enough but rather belatedly. “You’re screwing him, aren’t you?”
“Who told you?”
The hesitation was minute, but perceptible. “Nobody,” she said. “We’ve been keeping a close eye on you. We know far more about you than you might think.”
“The keys to all my locks, for instance,” Lisa retorted. “Were you the one who sprayed Traitor’ on my door? I know you weren’t the one who shot the phone out of my hand, because you couldn’t shoot that straight, but you could have been the furtive one who went through my desk so ineptly. Or were you at the university, making sure that the mice were all burned up? That was pointless, by the way—a stupid, meaningless gesture. You should have been content with the ones you’d already sneaked out, the ones whose absence you were trying to cover up. Torching the room was sheer mindless vandalism. Surely you could have covered your tracks without burning the cities and nearly killing poor Ed Burdillon.”
“The cities had gone on far too long,” the woman told her coldly. “They were a living lie. The Crisis is already here, and the population of all the real cities on Earth is about to take a steep fall. You know it, I know it—and everyone involved in the making and distribution of hyperflu certainly knows it.”
“Is that why you burned them?” Lisa asked, unable to believe it. “Because they were a living lie?”
“Weren’t they always supposed to be a parable? That’s how Morgan puts it, at any rate. Well, now they’re a parable of the coming holocaust. That’s why we did it.”
Lisa didn’t believe her. Presumably, Stella had persuaded her fellow conspirators that it was necessary to destroy the H Block to cover up the fact that some mice were missing, and to prevent them from being identified. They had burned it to prevent anyone who investigated from figuring out which ones had been removed by surveying the remaining DNA patterns. Did that mean there might be other library specimens tucked way in a forgotten corner of some other institution’s Mouseworld? Probably not—but it wasn’t something to discuss out loud in any case, given that Leland was bound to be listening. The longer it took him to figure out what this was really about, the more time Lisa would have to find Arachne West and persuade her that she had to let Morgan go.
“It’s not too late,” Stella Filisetti told her. “You could still throw in your lot with us. If we don’t manage to get the data files, you might turn out to be the last hope of the cause. I know how you kept your options open when Miller first discovered the emortal mice. They’re still open. It’s not too late to change your mind.”
“I could say the same to you,” Lisa pointed out—but she turned to look out the window as she heard the distant wail of a siren. The bright headlights and the stroboscopic blue flash of a police cruiser were just visible on the road that wound through Chew Valley, several miles to the north. The headlights flickered as they were briefly interrupted by leaf-laden trees. The leaves were all brown by now, but they were still awaiting the Atlantic front, whose swirling winds would whip them from the branches.
Then Lisa caught sight of the internally lit helicopter that was moving effortlessly past the car, fifty or sixty meters overhead. She calculated that it would arrive several minutes earlier. Peter Grimmett Smith had obviously decided, after waking up from his enforced nap, that time was now far too pressing to permit him the luxury of road travel. In any case, he probably wanted to make sure that Lisa talked to him before—and perhaps instead of—reporting to her own people.
“You’ve stepped over the line here,” Stella Filisetti whispered. “You should have made that call an hour ago.