The Cassandra Complex Part 16

"I'm truly sorry," Morgan said, letting his voice fall to a whisper again. "But Chan was right about that that, if nothing else. You were a police officer. It wouldn't have been right to let you in on anything that would have compromised your integrity. Maybe it was only a technical offense, but it was an offense nevertheless. You were so entranced by that stupid experiment that I was never sure of how you'd react to the news that I'd already subverted it. As time went by, it became harder and harder to confess that I'd been keeping the secret for so long. I never told Chan either-and he was too trusting to ever suspect that the real reason I wouldn't let him introduce his experimental mice into two of the mouse cities was that I'd already introduced mine into London and Rome. Anyway, there really are secrets so nasty that the only safe place to keep them is the one between your ears."

"But you offered to give it to Ahasuerus and the Algenists. You couldn't trust Chan or me, but you could trust Goldfarb and Geyer?"

Morgan sighed. The furrows on his brow bore witness to the force with which her arguments were striking into his conscience. "It's science science, Lisa. It was always a matter of time. Eventually somebody else was bound to come up with the same gimmick, with the same built-in mantrap. I spent forty years trying to iron out the bug-forty years, Lisa. I wasn't prepared to let it out with the two sides of the coin so tightly welded together. I wanted to knock out the defect first-but I never could. I had to pa.s.s the work on to somebody else. I might have given it to Chan if he hadn't become so heavily involved with Ed's defense work, but the one thing I daren't risk was handing it over to the MOD while the whole world was gearing up for war. If peace had ever broken out... but you and I know well enough that there's always always been a war on, and always will be till the big crash finally comes. I thought that if I could just figure out how to eliminate the downside, it would all be good ... and it seemed so been a war on, and always will be till the big crash finally comes. I thought that if I could just figure out how to eliminate the downside, it would all be good ... and it seemed so simple simple, so ... Lisa, you have no idea no idea of how sorry I am. I thought I could straighten it out, but all I did was f.u.c.k it up. I had no idea it would take forty years, and if I'd ever dreamed that forty years wouldn't be of how sorry I am. I thought I could straighten it out, but all I did was f.u.c.k it up. I had no idea it would take forty years, and if I'd ever dreamed that forty years wouldn't be enough enough ..." ..."

"Pull yourself together, Morgan," Lisa said, surprised by her own coldness. "Anyone would think you were still under torture. Just tell me the truth, from the beginning. I don't know anything, remember-and like poor little Stella, I still can't figure out why even a misogynistic b.a.s.t.a.r.d like you would want to keep a longevity treatment quiet just because it only works on women."

Morgan actually contrived to laugh at that. "If that's all you've figured out," he said, "I can understand why you're so p.i.s.sed."

"So tell me all of it," Lisa said impatiently.

"Okay," he said, settling back onto the pillow. "Here goes-again. It started in 1999, three years before I met you. It was locked up tight in my skull before you ever clapped eyes on me, and it would have taken a lot to break the seal, so don't be too hard on yourself for not being able to. The production of transgenic animals was in its infancy then-even sheep could make headlines. Almost all successful transformation was done mechanically, using tiny hypodermics to inject new DNA into eggs held still by suction on the end of a micropipette. It was ludicrously inefficient, and everybody knew it was just a stopgap, that some kind of vector would soon be devised that would make the whole business cleaner and sweeter. Viruses were the hot candidates-nature's very own genetic engineers. The first ma.s.s transformations of eggs stripped from bovine wombs in the slaughterhouse had just been carried out with retroviruses, so everybody knew that it was possible, but we needed viruses that were better equipped for the job than anything nature had. Nature's viruses have their own agenda, and a talent for turning nasty. Everybody with an atom of foresight knew in 1999 that it was only a matter of time before artificial viruses could be developed that would specialize in our agendas, but n.o.body knew for how long ... and that was only half the problem. It started in 1999, three years before I met you. It was locked up tight in my skull before you ever clapped eyes on me, and it would have taken a lot to break the seal, so don't be too hard on yourself for not being able to. The production of transgenic animals was in its infancy then-even sheep could make headlines. Almost all successful transformation was done mechanically, using tiny hypodermics to inject new DNA into eggs held still by suction on the end of a micropipette. It was ludicrously inefficient, and everybody knew it was just a stopgap, that some kind of vector would soon be devised that would make the whole business cleaner and sweeter. Viruses were the hot candidates-nature's very own genetic engineers. The first ma.s.s transformations of eggs stripped from bovine wombs in the slaughterhouse had just been carried out with retroviruses, so everybody knew that it was possible, but we needed viruses that were better equipped for the job than anything nature had. Nature's viruses have their own agenda, and a talent for turning nasty. Everybody with an atom of foresight knew in 1999 that it was only a matter of time before artificial viruses could be developed that would specialize in our agendas, but n.o.body knew for how long ... and that was only half the problem.

"It was difficult in those days to build up self-sustaining populations of transgenic animals. Cloning technology was in its infancy, and experiments with sheep, cattle, and pigs were limited by the long life cycles of the animals. In 1999, the vast majority of transgenic strains were mice, simply because mice have such a short breeding cycle. They were the only livestock we had that was prolific enough to allow us to use the bacterial engineer's favorite tactic-transform a few and kill the rest. Plant engineers were still shooting new DNA into leaves from guns, selecting out the few dozen successfully transformed cells from the thousands that were destroyed or unaffected with herbicide, then cloning away like crazy-but you can't regenerate a whole animal from a handful of cells, and even if you grow a transgenic animal from a transformed egg, you still need another exactly like it to mate it with before you can start a dynasty. s.e.x-the root of all the world's frustrations-was the animal engineer's great stumbling block.

"Mice were a lot more convenient to work with in '99 than anything bigger, but they were far from perfect. The process still took too much time, and it was all very hit-and-miss-but when I read about the ma.s.s transformation of bovine ova by retroviruses, I figured it was a method that could be taken to its logical extreme."

He paused, but Lisa wasn't about to play guessing games now that the tale was underway. She contented herself with a mere prompt. "Which was?"

"Well, I figured that if you could transform eggs stripped from a slaughterhouse organ, you ought to be able to transform them in situ-in the ovaries of a living animal. At first I figured that the best kind of living animal to use was a fetus-because eggs, unlike sperm, aren't produced continuously throughout an animal's lifetime. By the time a female animal is born, she's already lost most of the egg cells she had when her tissues first differentiated, and she keeps on losing them before and after she reaches p.u.b.erty. Not many animals survive to menopause, of course, but humans display the far end of the spectrum. A woman your age has no viable eggs left at all, having lost all but a tiny few before she ever reached breeding age."

Unless, of course, Lisa thought, she had her remaining stock taken out while she was in her twenties and stored in liquid nitrogen. she had her remaining stock taken out while she was in her twenties and stored in liquid nitrogen.

"What I tried to do," Morgan went on, "was to introduce retroviruses into pregnant mice, aiming them specifically at the eggs within the fetal ovaries. The idea was to secure a vast collection of ready-transformed pre-oocytes, which could then be extracted from the aborted fetus. It would have been authentic ma.s.s production, on a time scale measurable in days rather than weeks, let alone the years it takes to bring transformed sheep and cows to adulthood. You can see what a boon a system like that would have been to my search for the ideal addressable vector.

"Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy as it sounded. Nature's genetic engineers are unreliable slaves-they have their own agendas, and a lot of those agendas are what the man in the street calls diseases: colds, colics, and cancers. The womb has it own agenda too. It has a system programmed into it, and when you have wombs within wombs, things can get very complicated. I couldn't get effective transmission across the placenta. I had to switch my attention to newboms, although it seemed like a terrible waste. So many eggs have already gone by the time a mouse is born, and the rest are dying in droves day by day. I thought it might at least be possible to do something about the latter problem, so I modified my retroviruses yet again, incorporating a control gene that was supposed to stop the oocytes from committing suicide.

"That one worked. In fact, it worked far better than I'd hoped. In coupling it with the rest of the package, I'd somehow contrived to produce a synergistic effect-one of those million-to-one shots of which I'd always been so flagrantly contemptuous. When you have a hundred thousand genetic engineers trying out hundreds of novel gene combinations every year, though, the laws of probability will give you a million-to-one shot every month. Mine was the only one I ever got in forty years of trying, but it was a big one.

"In those days, we were only beginning to get used to the first principle of genetic engineering-you can never do just one one thing-so I hadn't figured multiplicity of effect into my plans, let alone synergy, but they sure as h.e.l.l came out in my results. Do you ever come across genetic mosaics in your police work?" thing-so I hadn't figured multiplicity of effect into my plans, let alone synergy, but they sure as h.e.l.l came out in my results. Do you ever come across genetic mosaics in your police work?"

"Occasionally," Lisa confirmed. Mosaics had first attracted attention when biologists contrived to fuse the embryos of two different species. The first sheep/goat hybrids had been produced in the 1990s, and the revelation had prompted people to wonder how often the same thing happened in nature. Whenever a single fertilized egg divided into two to produce identical twins, the result was obvious, but when two fertilized eggs fused to produce a single individual, there was no easy way of telling that the resultant individual was a mosaic. Until DNA a.n.a.lysis came along, there was no way of knowing how many cows in the bam or people walking the streets were actually patchworks of two distinct but closely related genomes. Human mosaics were even rarer than pairs of identical twins, but a world of nine billion people had to contain millions. Lisa had run across half a dozen human mosaics while conducting DNA a.n.a.lyses in the police lab.

"In that case, you probably know that animal mosaics were often created mechanically back in the 1990s. It was an early alternative to cloning that lost fas.h.i.+onability when nuclear-transfer techniques improved. The mosaics I created with the aid of my trusty retroviruses were a kind that nature had never contrived, though. My retroviruses produced a strain of mice whose egg-filled ovaries became benign cancers-not merely benign in the accepted sense that the cancers were harmless, but in a much stronger sense. The transformed eggs became capable of fusing with one another to produce zygote-like bodies that then began to grow, but not like fetuses, and not like commonplace tumors. What they did was to emit a slow but steady stream of new stem cells that could be-and were-distributed throughout the body and gradually integrated into the organs of the mothers. The mothers became, in consequence, a complex mosaic. Their complexity didn't show up readily in the kinds of DNA a.n.a.lysis that Ed and I taught you to do, because the sum total of all the pesudezygote types was delimited by the original female genotype. I didn't figure out exactly what was happening for quite a while, and I might have missed it altogether if I hadn't started working with newborns, but that made it obvious enough that something very weird was happening.

"The long and the short of it is that the process of mosaic reconstruction stopped the aging process in its tracks. The transgenic mice were rejuvenating themselves. Initially, of course, that did my specimens more harm than good because the newborns, which remained newborns by virtue of their new power of self-renewal, couldn't survive the interruption of their developmental processes. They died of superabundant youth. Once I'd figured out what was going on, though, I soon found out that the retrovirus could also be used to infect adults. Although the effects were variable, some of the inoculated adults were stabilized by the transformation. Their life spans were dramatically extended-and I'm not talking thirty or forty percent. In time, I found that a substantial minority were living ten or twenty times as long as their parents. A few lived a hundred times as long-and the current record holders were still extending the multiplier two days ago. Were the angels of wrath telling the truth when they said they'd torched Mouseworld?"

"Yes, they were," Lisa confirmed.

Morgan Miller sighed again, but this time there was an element of theatre in the sigh. "It was a long time, of course, before I was convinced that even a few of the mice were authentically emortal, but the cream of the crop has stayed stable, fit, and healthy for forty years. A few were sterile, but not all. The real champions didn't cannibalize all the fused oocytes; every now and again they gave birth to litters of daughters. Most of the offspring failed to develop, like the newborns I'd transformed myself, but a few grew to maturity before stabilizing. The selective regime progressed by degrees to the inevitable terminus: a population of emortal female mice whose daughters were likewise emortal. It took time, but when the potential's there and the regime is stern, natural selection is no slouch.

"Long before I was convinced they were authentically emortal, I'd begun introducing the mice to the cities, for exactly the same reason that Chan wanted to introduce his augmented specimens: to see how they'd fare in a stressful and compet.i.tive situation. Mine did a little better than his-obviously, or Stella would never have found the transformed mice-but not that that much better, and not for a long time. When you came along in 2002,1 only had half a dozen potentially emortal mice, and nineteen of the twenty offspring they had so far produced had died paradoxical deaths of superabundant youth. By the time I moved on to experiment with other species in '09 or thereabouts, I had a hundred adult mice and the survival rate among the new litters was up to one in three. Even then, you see, I couldn't be much better, and not for a long time. When you came along in 2002,1 only had half a dozen potentially emortal mice, and nineteen of the twenty offspring they had so far produced had died paradoxical deaths of superabundant youth. By the time I moved on to experiment with other species in '09 or thereabouts, I had a hundred adult mice and the survival rate among the new litters was up to one in three. Even then, you see, I couldn't be sure sure they'd live significantly longer than normal. If I had been, I might have told you ... maybe. they'd live significantly longer than normal. If I had been, I might have told you ... maybe.

"It was all so gradual, so uncertain, so surprising. You should be able to imagine how tentative my conclusions were when I first knew you, how much more needed to be done before I could be confident. Stella came in on the hind end of things, when everything was set and fixed, and she never tried to imagine how it must have been in the long and confusing beginning. All she saw, when she tumbled to what was going on in London and Rome, was a secret that I had kept for forty years. And all she cared about was the obvious-she and her friends didn't pause long enough to wonder whether there was more."

"They discovered that you'd found a technology of longevity," Lisa said. "A technology that might be just as applicable to humans as to mice if the retrovirus could be tweaked. A technology that you had discovered at the turn of the century, and didn't tell anyone else about until 2041, at which point you approached Dr. Goldfarb and Herr Geyer: both male, and both representative of secretive inst.i.tutions with hidden agendas. I can understand why Helen Grundy, Arachne West, and other a.s.sorted backlash theorists thought that all their worst nightmares had come true. I can even understand why they started using the blowtorch when you tried to persuade them there was a catch that made it all worthless. There is is a catch, isn't there?" a catch, isn't there?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "The catch to end all catches. I thought I might be able to work around it somehow, but I couldn't. Maybe no one can."

"An army would have stood a better chance than a lone hero," Lisa pointed out. "That's what science is supposed to be all about, isn't it? Many hands make enlightenment work."

"An army might have," Morgan agreed. "What worried me was that an army might have liked the problem better than the solution. What's good for mice isn't necessarily good for humans-or dogs, come to that. We found out soon enough, way back at the turn of the century, that mouse models of human diseases had their limitations, because mice can tolerate some conditions that humans can't. Mice may seem primitive and stupid to us, but there are some things they can tolerate that cleverer and more sophisticated mammals can't."

"Like emortality?"

"Like rejuvenation. People our age think of rejuvenation in terms of getting back to twenty-one and staying there forever. But what if the stopping point isn't twenty-one? What if the stopping point is one? My survivor mice got past the point at which they were producing offspring that stabilized at a physical physical age estimable in days, but body and mind each have their own aging processes. Mice are creatures of instinct, Lisa-they're born with ninety percent of what they need to know hardwired into their brains. The little they need to learn can be learned over and over again without too much inconvenience. Even a rat needs to be cleverer than that, and a dog needs to be age estimable in days, but body and mind each have their own aging processes. Mice are creatures of instinct, Lisa-they're born with ninety percent of what they need to know hardwired into their brains. The little they need to learn can be learned over and over again without too much inconvenience. Even a rat needs to be cleverer than that, and a dog needs to be much much cleverer. You might not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but a young dog has to be able to learn a lot and hold on to it all. The problem with the kind of rejuvenation my mice go in for is that it rejuvenates the brain as well as all the other parts of the body. It wipes out learning almost as fast as the learning goes in. cleverer. You might not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but a young dog has to be able to learn a lot and hold on to it all. The problem with the kind of rejuvenation my mice go in for is that it rejuvenates the brain as well as all the other parts of the body. It wipes out learning almost as fast as the learning goes in.

"What my retrovirus produces, even at the farthest end of the selection process, is emortal mice that are physically mature but mentally infantile. By introducing them into the Mouseworld cities, I eventually managed to prove that mice can live like that, even among their own mortal kind, because they can keep on learning the things they need to learn over and over again. The catch is that they're probably the most advanced creatures that can."

"The dogs," Lisa said remembering. "The dogs on that stupid video the ALF circulated. Their voice-over claimed that the first lot they showed had been primed to produce an autoimmune reaction modeling mad cow disease, but they hadn't. I knew they hadn't-but I never thought to find out what had had been done to them. They were yours, weren't they? Another project you hadn't referred to the Ethics Committee-another breach of the law. You'd rejuvenated them-and the rejuvenation had wiped their minds clean of anything faintly resembling a personality." been done to them. They were yours, weren't they? Another project you hadn't referred to the Ethics Committee-another breach of the law. You'd rejuvenated them-and the rejuvenation had wiped their minds clean of anything faintly resembling a personality."

"If whoever filmed them hadn't been in such a rush to get the product out, they'd have seen far worse," Morgan admitted. "Are you still interested in taking the treatment, Lisa?"

"Emortality and murder all wrapped up in one little retrovirus," she said. "The body lives forever but the human being becomes ... not quite a vegetable, but not much more than a mouse. A zombie. Worse than a zombie."

"That's about the size of it," he confirmed. "Not that I've tried any human experiments, of course. If I've missed my chance to have my little discovery enshrined in the textbooks as the Miller Effect, I'll just have to take my place in the ranks of the historically anonymous. You can understand now why it didn't seem like a good idea to share it, can't you? Your friends couldn't, and that's part of the reason they wouldn't believe me, but you you can." can."

"We live in a plague culture," Lisa said, more for Arachne West's benefit than Morgan Miller's. "Any tuppenny-ha'penny Ca.s.sandra with half a brain has been able to see for fifty years and more that World War Three would be fought with biological weapons. These days, even hobbyist terrorists use biological weapons if they can get them, in spite of all the problems they pose, because they're so very modern modern, so very twenty-first century. twenty-first century. And you've devised a biological weapon that works only on women-a biological weapon that has no rebound problem, provided that it's deployed by uncaring males." And you've devised a biological weapon that works only on women-a biological weapon that has no rebound problem, provided that it's deployed by uncaring males."

"A nonlethal weapon that would turn most premenopausal women into zombies," Miller added. "Zombies with the minds of mice."

"Oh, s.h.i.+t," Lisa murmured as the corollaries continued to unravel in her imagination. "And Arachne West Arachne West refused to believe that? The perfect Real Woman wasn't cynical enough to think that such a thing could exist? Or that there wouldn't be people queuing up to use it if they knew it existed? Or armies avid to research the possibility, as soon as they knew it refused to believe that? The perfect Real Woman wasn't cynical enough to think that such a thing could exist? Or that there wouldn't be people queuing up to use it if they knew it existed? Or armies avid to research the possibility, as soon as they knew it could could be done?" be done?"

The irony in Morgan Miller's smile was ghastly. "It's far more probable," he said, his voice sinking back to a whisper, "that what they couldn't bring themselves to believe was that if that was really what I had, I'd kept quiet about it. They thought I was just trying to put them off."

TWENTY-TWO.

When Lisa eventually left the room, Morgan Miller stayed on the bed, content to wait. It wasn't like him to be content to wait, but he didn't seem to have the strength left to do anything else. He hadn't been imprisoned very long, and the injuries inflicted by the blowtorch weren't life threatening in themselves, but he was an old man. The shock to his system had been profound.

When Lisa came through the door, Arachne West commanded her to shut it behind her. She obeyed, but not because of the pistol the Real Woman was pa.s.sing carelessly from hand to hand.

"You didn't ask him the big question," the bald woman observed.

Lisa was mildly surprised, having been more than impressed by the magnitude of the revelations she had obtained. For a moment or two, she thought that Arachne might have "Is it infectious?" in mind, not having been able to follow the details of Morgan's concluding technical discourse about species-specific variant designs and attachment-mechanism disarmament, but then she realized that she was being stupid.

The big question in Arachne West's mind was still: "Where's the backup?"

The members of Stella Filisetti's hastily contrived conspiracy still hadn't found a record of the experiments or a map of the primal retrovirus. They had the mice, and the researchers who eventually obtained custody of the mice would be able to work back painstakingly from there, but Morgan Miller still had at least one neatly wrapped package of vital information stashed away, hidden somewhere among the disks, wafers, and sequins they hadn't been able to remove from his house because their sheer quant.i.ty had made it impractical.

"He'll tell me if I ask," Lisa a.s.sured the Real Woman, "but we need to work out a deal first."

"Sure," Arachne said, too willingly to be entirely plausible. "Whatever he wants. As you're so fond of pointing out, I've nothing left to bargain with." But she was still pa.s.sing the pistol from hand to hand.

"It is is true," Lisa said. "What he told me just now. I'm sure of it." true," Lisa said. "What he told me just now. I'm sure of it."

"It's only a couple of hours since you were equally sure he couldn't possibly have kept a secret from you for the last thirty-nine years," the Real Woman pointed out. "But that's a cheap shot. I know it's true. I was prepared to believe it as soon as he came out with it. It was so horribly plausible-and I mean horribly horribly plausible." plausible."

"So why did you start burning him?"

Arachne shrugged. "You know how it is with committee decisions," she said. "There's always some stupid f.u.c.ker who won't fall in with the party line. Collective responsibility always gives birth to collective irresponsibility. It wasn't vindictiveness, Lisa-not on my part, anyhow. If I'd been running the show ... but you know how the spirit of sisterhood works. Discussion good, hierarchy bad. Result: confusion decaying into chaos. I knew we'd lost the plot the moment he opened his mouth. You know what? I actually think he was right. I think he did the right thing right thing, at least up to a point. There really are some things that man was not meant to know. Never thought I'd say that. Could I get anyone else to see it the same way, though? Could I f.u.c.k. Crazy times, hey?"

"I don't," Lisa murmured.

"Don't what?"

"I don't think he did the right thing. Not even up to a point. He should have let other people in. Not necessarily me, but somebody. Ed Burdillon or Chan. It's not just collective responsibility that mothers irresponsibility if you don't take precautions."

Arachne West shook her head slightly, but there wasn't the least hint of a smile about her forceful features. "'Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive,'" she quoted. "Always been one of my favorites. So why'd you do it, Lisa? Have your ova stripped and frozen, I mean. That looked very very suspicious. Could even have got you killed if Stella and the other loose cannons had blasted off a few broadsides." She obviously didn't know how close she was to the truth. suspicious. Could even have got you killed if Stella and the other loose cannons had blasted off a few broadsides." She obviously didn't know how close she was to the truth.

Lisa sat down on the edge of the desk. "It was one of the things I used to debate with Morgan, back in the days when we were as close as close could be. Although he admitted that one of the major causes of the population explosion was the clause in the UN's Charter of Human Rights that guaranteed everyone the right to found a family, he wasn't opposed to it, and he didn't altogether approve of the Chinese approach limiting family size by legislation. What was really needed, he always argued, was for people to accept the responsibility that went with the right: to exercise the right in a conscientious fas.h.i.+on, according to circ.u.mstance.

"There had been times in the past, he said, and might be times in the future, when the conscientious thing to do was to have as many children as possible as quickly as possible-but in the very different circ.u.mstances pertaining in the early years of the twenty-first century, the conscientious thing to do was to postpone having children for as long as possible. To refuse to exercise the right to found a family was, in his opinion, a bad move, because human rights are too precious to be surrendered so meekly. His solution to the problem had been to make a deposit in a sperm bank, with the proviso that it shouldn't be used until after he was dead.

"I decided, in the end, to do likewise-but there was a slight technical hitch. Donor sperm was easy to acquire and by no means in short supply, but the procedure to remove eggs from a woman's ovaries is much more invasive. Eggs were in such short supply that there was no provision in the contract for the kind of delay clause Morgan inserted. A donation was supposed to be a donation, and that was that-but the bank was prepared to make an informal compromise and agree to leave my eggs on long-term deposit unless the need became urgent. I figured that the principle remained the same, so I settled for that. It had nothing to do with Morgan's emortality research."

"Are you sure?" the Real Woman asked.

Lisa saw immediately what Arachne was getting at. Morgan had persuaded her to make the deposit. The arguments he had used were good ones, but in view of what she now knew, they probably had not been the ones foremost in his mind. Back in the first decade of the new millennium, he must have hoped that all the problems he'd so far encountered with his new technology were soluble. He must have hoped that he might one day be able to make human women emortal-always provided that they had enough eggs left in their ovaries-or eggs available that could be replaced therein.

No wonder it looked so suspicious, she thought. No wonder Stella Filisetti took it as proof that I knew. No wonder Stella Filisetti took it as proof that I knew.

"Tangled webs," Arachne observed. "Wish I could spin 'em like that."

"You don't seem to be in any great hurry to get the answer to your big question," Lisa observed.

"No," the Real Woman admitted. "As a matter of fact, what I was instructed to do-or would have been if we were allowed to use words like 'instructed'-was simply to keep you here as long as possible. There's no way for me to avoid implication in the kidnapping, or for Helen, but the rest of the girls have scattered to the four points of the compa.s.s and they have to figure that they have a chance to get away. How many mice do you suppose Stella managed to get out before the bombers went in? Anybody's guess, isn't it? Your colleagues will intercept a few, but they won't get them all. The committee figured that was the fallback position that we had to protect at all costs. As far as they're concerned, my only utility now is to hold back the hounds as long as possible-which means, the way they see it, preventing you from unleas.h.i.+ng the pack prematurely. I'm supposed to shoot you, if necessary."

"And Morgan?"

"Him too. Some of them even think I might do it. I have this tough image, you see. Some people bl.u.s.ter and threaten but never shoot, and some don't but do. Then there are the Stellas, who shouldn't ever be trusted with fireworks at all. We started out with the intention of not killing anyone, and I'd rather finish the same way if I can, but you shouldn't take too much for granted. I have no idea of what I might be capable of if the situation becomes desperate. G.o.d, listen to me. If If the situation becomes desperate! By nightfall, the men at the Ministry of Defence will know that there's a really neat weapon whose specifications are hidden somewhere in Morgan Miller's house. And unlike us, they have all the time in the world to search for it. How many other the situation becomes desperate! By nightfall, the men at the Ministry of Defence will know that there's a really neat weapon whose specifications are hidden somewhere in Morgan Miller's house. And unlike us, they have all the time in the world to search for it. How many other men men will get to hear about it, do you suppose?" will get to hear about it, do you suppose?"

"Your people will get at least some of the mice," Lisa pointed out. "Stella and Helen have seen to that. Once they have the mice, it's only a matter of time before they get the retrovirus. It's just a virus. A vaccine can be developed, given time-but it would save time if your people had the gene map."

"It's all all a matter of time now," Arachne agreed, "and there's never been enough of it. I don't much feel like following orders, given that I'm the one who's left holding the baby. I'd prefer to get a hold of the data, if I can-on any terms you care to offer, although I don't have much to offer now I've already told you that I'm not going to kill anybody. I'd also like a chance to run. I probably won't get far, but sisterhood has its advantages. So-if you ask Miller the big question, will he give you the big answer? And if he does, what will a matter of time now," Arachne agreed, "and there's never been enough of it. I don't much feel like following orders, given that I'm the one who's left holding the baby. I'd prefer to get a hold of the data, if I can-on any terms you care to offer, although I don't have much to offer now I've already told you that I'm not going to kill anybody. I'd also like a chance to run. I probably won't get far, but sisterhood has its advantages. So-if you ask Miller the big question, will he give you the big answer? And if he does, what will you you do with it?" do with it?"

"We might not have time to do anything with it," Lisa pointed out. "By now, Smith's people will probably have purged the phone records. They'll be after Helen and everyone they suspect of involvement. They were already looking for you."

"That'll tie up a lot of manpower," Arachne observed. "Everybody running this way and that, far too busy to stop and count the daisies. I suppose Miller's house is under guard?"

Lisa nodded slowly. "Twice over, probably," she said. "The MOD will have people there, as will the police."

"I'd never get in, would I?" the Real Woman asked. "Even if I knew what I was looking for, I'd have no chance. A police officer who's been seconded to the MOD team would be a different matter. You may be AWOL, but you're still on the case."

"And you're still trying to recruit me," Lisa said, although she knew she was merely stating the obvious. "Even after all these years."

"And you're still playing coy. Why would I have let Helen invite you here if I didn't think you could be turned? And why would you have volunteered to come if you weren't finally ripe for turning?"

"I just wanted to know what the h.e.l.l was going on," Lisa told her. "I didn't realize you'd already figured it out. If I had-"

"You'd have come anyway. And now you do know what's going on. Even Miller knew the time had come to hand his vile secret on to somebody-but I happen to think that his list of candidates stinks, and the Ministry of Defence is potentially even worse. You and I might find some better guardians, don't you think?"

Another piece of the puzzle slotted into place in Lisa's mind. In Morgan's mind, the most significant thing that Ahasuerus and the Algenists had in common hadn't, after all, been the fact that they each had an interest in longevity technology. It was that both organizations had a fundamental commitment to pacifism. Morgan had been trying to find someone to carry on his work who wouldn't be interested in the weaponry potential of the imperfect retrovirus. No wonder he had been coy about telling Goldfarb and Geyer exactly what he had while he was probing the seriousness of their mission statements.

Why didn't he come to me instead? she wondered. But she knew the answer to that. It wasn't because she was a police officer-although that must have played a part-it was because she was sixty-one years old. At best, she'd have been a caretaker, and he was looking for a long-term arrangement. But now, like Arachne West, she was on the spot and on her own. If she asked him, Morgan would probably tell her where the information was, and if she moved quickly enough, she might be able to get it out of Morgan's house before Peter Grimmett Smith found out what was at stake and let loose a whole army of a.s.siduous searchers. She wouldn't be stealing anything except time-but in a situation where time was of the essence, any margin of opportunity was a valuable commodity. Even if Arachne West was mistaken in her harsh judgment of Goldfarb and Geyer, there were undoubtedly other potential recipients of the new wisdom who would be far more interested in neutralizing its weaponry potential than exploiting it. she wondered. But she knew the answer to that. It wasn't because she was a police officer-although that must have played a part-it was because she was sixty-one years old. At best, she'd have been a caretaker, and he was looking for a long-term arrangement. But now, like Arachne West, she was on the spot and on her own. If she asked him, Morgan would probably tell her where the information was, and if she moved quickly enough, she might be able to get it out of Morgan's house before Peter Grimmett Smith found out what was at stake and let loose a whole army of a.s.siduous searchers. She wouldn't be stealing anything except time-but in a situation where time was of the essence, any margin of opportunity was a valuable commodity. Even if Arachne West was mistaken in her harsh judgment of Goldfarb and Geyer, there were undoubtedly other potential recipients of the new wisdom who would be far more interested in neutralizing its weaponry potential than exploiting it.

Lisa reminded herself that she was sixty-one years old and that her career was already in ruins. If Arachne West was willing to let her act, she was still in a position to do so, and even if the big woman-hunt were already underway, she probably still had time to play her own hand.

"Are you in?" Arachne West asked her.

"Of course I'm in," Lisa said. "As you so rightly pointed out, why else would I be here?"

TWENTY-THREE.

Lisa could hardly believe the change to which Arachne West was subjected by a conservative Salomey suit and a smart wig. The elaborate superstructure of the suit wrought a remarkable transformation of her mannish figure, while the hairpiece-in combination with a pair of ornamental eyegla.s.ses with tinted lenses-altered the context of her features so drastically that Lisa could have pa.s.sed her in the street without a flicker of recognition.

"My G.o.d," Lisa muttered sardonically. "You could have been beautiful all along-what a waste."

"Clothes maketh the woman, they say," Arachne replied, "but it's all lies. I was always beautiful."

"If Helen and the others have altered their appearance to the same startling extent," Lisa observed thoughtfully, "it won't be easy to pick them out on digicam footage. If they have clever smart-cards-and they obviously do-they might actually get away."

"The police have never fully understood the potential of smart fabrics," Arachne observed. "It's one of the penalties of clinging so hard to inst.i.tutional masculinity."

The once Real but now conspicuously Artificial Woman led Lisa away through the maze of subterranean corridors that extended beneath the mall. They eventually came to a door that gave them access to the staffs garage. The car in the slot directly to the left of the door was a modest blue Nissan, whose locks sprang open in response to the b.u.t.ton on Arachne's key ring.

Before getting into the Nissan, Lisa glanced back at the door that had closed behind them. She didn't like leaving Morgan Miller imprisoned, even with his wounds properly dressed. Arachne had a.s.sured her that he would be released whatever happened, but Lisa wasn't certain that the gatekeepers in Salomey could be trusted. Discipline within the ranks of Stella Filisetti's hastily formulated conspiracy seemed to have broken down in the face of adversity, and there might be conspirators left behind who wouldn't take kindly to Arachne West's decision to take matters into her own hands. Lisa had to remind herself that no one had been killed yet, and that anyone who still had ready access to the hideaway would be foolish indeed to break that precedent now.

Arachne eased the Nissan out of the exit on the east side of the mall, turning left on to Pulteney Road. The cloud that had made the early morning seem bleak had been carried away by the west wind. It was not yet noon and the sun was making stately progress from east to south above the invisible expanse of Salisbury Plain. Its strengthening light stained the cloudless sky an unusually deep shade of blue. Royal blue Royal blue, Lisa thought. Fading to navy blue. Or did navy blue go out with the twentieth century? Even when I was a kid, they'd started calling it Trafalgar blue. What is it now, I wonder. Fading to navy blue. Or did navy blue go out with the twentieth century? Even when I was a kid, they'd started calling it Trafalgar blue. What is it now, I wonder.

"Did it ever occur to you," she said to Arachne West, "that we might both be more paranoid than the situation actually warrants? When you think about it, ultimate weapons of one kind and another have been around for more than a century, but no one's ever been eager to deploy them. Sure, they used atom bombs to finish World War Two-but they hadn't used poison gas in Europe even when whole fleets of aircraft were committed to blitzkrieg tactics. The notions of chivalry and gallantry may have been ninety-percent illusion even in their heyday, but they lingered for a long time in social etiquette. Even hobbyist terrorists have standards. Maybe we're falling prey to the yuck yuck factor here-zombie women with the minds of mice! Maybe n.o.body would want to do it. It's possible that everyone would agree that this is a weapon too dreadful to use." factor here-zombie women with the minds of mice! Maybe n.o.body would want to do it. It's possible that everyone would agree that this is a weapon too dreadful to use."

"It's possible," Arachne agreed. "But if I had the choice, I'd like to have a reliable defense, just in case. Wouldn't you?"

"Maybe there already is one," Lisa said speculatively. "The men who run the global economy may not have have been interested in the same range of potential as the women who run Salomey, but if their messenger boy can be believed, they have smart fabrics ready for deployment that can hold any any virus attack at bay Remember what Morgan said about being unable to transform the eggs in ovaries within a womb because he couldn't get it across the placenta? Just because Chan's versatile antibody-packaging system failed, it doesn't mean the newer versions will." virus attack at bay Remember what Morgan said about being unable to transform the eggs in ovaries within a womb because he couldn't get it across the placenta? Just because Chan's versatile antibody-packaging system failed, it doesn't mean the newer versions will."

"All that could be true," Arachne admitted as she steered the Nissan carefully around the first of the mini roundabout series that would take them up Sydney Place to Bathwick Street. "We got used to thinking of the future of fas.h.i.+on in terms of second skins, but the return-to-the-womb a.n.a.logy has its charms. I really would like to believe that even the craziest hobbyist terrorist would think of Miller's retrovirus as an unconscionable horror rather than a neat trick, and that no government on earth would ever countenance its use under any circ.u.mstances-but I can't. Morgan Miller didn't believe it either. Okay, so he's way down the dark end of the paranoia spectrum too, thanks to this bee he's got in his bonnet about overpopulation being the ultimate evil-but that's the world we live in, isn't it? Maybe everything will be fine if we just sit back and do nothing, but even if it turned out that way, would you be happy to be set down in history as someone who'd been prepared to sit back and trust everybody else in the world to be reasonable? I wouldn't."