The Cassandra Complex Part 4

"After Calhoun's demonstration," Miller continued, "other researchers tried to repeat his experiment using mice, which were more convenient by virtue of their smaller size. McKendrick was one of those researchers. The other experiments duplicated Calhoun's findings, and so did some of McKendrick's populations, but McKendrick also found some exceptions. Some of his mouse populations didn't exhibit the standard boom/crash scenario. They adapted their behavior to a much higher population density than their wild cousins were used to. There was still a certain amount of nastiness, but they managed to limit their breeding without overmuch cannibalism, and the increase in mortality that helped bring the two into equilibrium was achieved without overmuch fighting."

"I get it," Lisa said. "Mice are meek, like snowshoe hares, while rats are more like lemmings."

"That's part of it," Miller agreed. "But it's not the whole story. Snowshoe hares may be meek, but they still go through boom-and-crash cycles. n.o.body knows for sure, but the more important distinction might be that when rat numbers explode in the wild, they're usually cut back by disease-as witness the Black Death. Calhoun's rats were flea-free, of course, so they didn't suffer the same check. Plagues of mice are more commonplace than plagues of rats, especially in limited s.p.a.ces, but there doesn't seem to be an external limiting factor that kicks in-not reliably, at any rate. For that reason, mice seem to have evolved their own internal limiting mechanisms. Because the mechanism is activated only under exceptional circ.u.mstances, which may occur only once in a hundred or a thousand generations, a lot of strains lose it to genetic drift-but enough retain it to gain a selective benefit when the conditions do arise. The same is true of some insects that became human commensals as soon as the first agriculturalists began cultivating wheat and rice. The grain beetles, for whom a field of wheat was Utopia and a granary Seventh Heaven, have relatively efficient internal mechanisms of population control, which can stabilize their populations and protect them from the devastations of boom/crash cycles.

"Storytellers in search of more rea.s.suring parables argued that if mice were smart enough to avoid the worst effects of overpopulation, ultrasmart humans ought to be able to do it too. They chose to ignore the fact that it wasn't intelligence that was enabling McKendrick's luckier mice to do what they did. They also chose to ignore the fact that humans haven't gone through nearly enough generations since the first human population crisis to begin to develop the kind of facultative response that the luckier mice possessed."

"And these are lucky mice?" Lisa asked, waving her hand in a broad semicircle to encompa.s.s as much of Mouseworld as she could.

"They are now," Miller confirmed. "To begin with, all four populations boomed and then crashed, and then went through the whole cycle again-but after the second crash, the more adaptable mice had come into their inheritance. Since then, all four populations have stabilized. Imagine that: London, Paris, Rome, and New York, all marching in step toward a common goal! Inspiring, in its way, but no real cause for congratulations. The mice have been intensively studied, of course, to see exactly how they work the physiological tricks that allow them to stabilize their populations, in the hope that science might provide for humans what natural selection probably hasn't-but given that we are are so smart, it seems ridiculous to try to duplicate the admittedly imperfect methods of mindless mice, don't you think?" so smart, it seems ridiculous to try to duplicate the admittedly imperfect methods of mindless mice, don't you think?"

"I don't know," Lisa said. "It depends. If intelligence produces a political solution to the problem, that would be a triumph. But if it doesn't ... mightn't it be a good idea to have a biological solution as backup?"

"If only it were that simple," Miller replied sadly-but he didn't seem in the least scornful of her suggestion. "Alas, if our intelligence is inadequate to facilitate a purely social solution, it can hardly be expected to facilitate the social application of a biological one. People who refuse to use contraception for the sake of the common good are hardly likely to accept inst.i.tutionally imposed sterilization, are they?"

"Actually," Lisa said, grateful that the training she'd recently undergone was useful for something, "that's not as obvious as it seems. People accept policing to the extent that they do because they admit the necessity of restraint and want it imposed uniformly and fairly. All motorists routinely break the speed limit and park their cars wherever they can, and they all get mad if they're caught by radar or ticketed by a traffic officer, but they all accept the fundamental necessity of speed limits and parking restrictions."

"That's a fair point," Miller conceded, "and the comparison is probably more relevant than it seems, given that so many people seem to care at least as much about their cars as their children. I can see that you'll be a considerable a.s.set to my seminars on the neoMalthusians. Maybe you can take them over next year. But you mustn't allow yourself to become too entranced with Mouseworld. Whatever its running costs may be, they're trivial compared to the time it can soak up. Whatever you do, don't volunteer to help with the counting or the data processing. As far as the production of interesting results is concerned, the cities ran into the law of diminis.h.i.+ng returns ten years ago. No matter how long they may continue, each hour invested in their observation will produce less and less reward as time goes by. You and I, Lisa, must concentrate our attention on events on a much smaller scale. DNA is the key to everything: all biological understanding and all bio technological possibility. Can we move on now?"

She couldn't help noticing that it was the first time he had spoken her name. She was slightly ashamed of herself for caring, but she figured that she could probably forgive herself, if the need arose.

In spite of Morgan Miller's advice, Lisa couldn't help being fascinated by Mouseworld. She was relieved to discover that she wasn't the only one and that its captivating influence wasn't confined to fledgling research students. Chan Kwai Keung was already in his second year of postdoctoral study, having committed himself to the long rite of pa.s.sage by which aspiring university scientists had to spend the early phases of their careers working on short-term contracts for derisory salaries. His stature was a little shorter than Morgan Miller's, and no slimmer than Lisa's, but he moved with an economical grace that made him seem far less obtrusive than either of them. He always had a book in his hand, but Lisa suspected that the habit had as much to do with an obsessive need to have a kind of retreat permanently available as with any desire to cultivate an image as the most studious apprentice in the department's junior ranks.

Chan, unusually, had already tried the more lucrative option of working for one of the big pharmaceutical companies in the field of animal transgenics, but had decided that he would rather work in the pub-He sector. Most of Lisa's fellow postgrads thought he was mad, and the fact that he loved to sit and read in a tubular-framed chair in a corner of Mouseworld greatly encouraged that opinion. When Lisa asked him why he had returned to the public sector, he murmured something about finding it difficult to breathe while wearing a gag, adding a gnomic comment to the effect that the air in Mouseworld was naturally bad, and therefore good, rather than unnaturally bad, and therefore worse. On the subject of Mouseworld itself, by contrast, his voice elevated itself to a normal conversational level and his manner became noticeably less self-effacing.

"Morgan has a jaundiced view of the experiment," Chan explained late one afternoon when Lisa contrived to distract him from his reading sufficiently to indulge in a long and languid conversation. "He considers that it has made its point and has no further utility, but that is because he has a very limited view of its achievements. He does not appreciate the true value of its spin-off."

"People do tend to be cynical about spin-off," Lisa pointed out. "I don't suppose it's true that the only spin-off the U.S. s.p.a.ce program ever generated was the nonstick frying pan and the stretch-fabric bra, but the fact that people say it's so is revealing in its way."

"I did not have that kind of technological spin-off in mind," Chan admitted, "but even in that arena, Mouseworld has made its contribution. Had its original designers only thought to patent the automatic feeding-and-cleaning system, they might now be on the threshold of a fortune. The apparatus recently built for harvesting human growth hormone from the urine of a population of transgenic mice is a straightforward modification of the architecture of Mouseworld."

"You're taking the p.i.s.s!" Lisa said, her suspicion tempered by pride in the quickness of her wit. "On an industrial scale?"

"Indeed not," Chan replied, although the faint grin playing at the corners of his mouth suggested that he was not a man who could always resist the temptation to improvise a straight-faced tall tale. "Sheep like Dolly and Polly and calves like Rosie may grab all the headlines, but milk is by no means the only bodily fluid that can be augmented with the aid of transplanted genes. The bladder has many advantages as a bioreactor, partly because urine is continually produced by male as well as female animals, but mainly because it is much less chemically complex than milk, thus making separation of the desired protein much easier.

"Although it is not yet fas.h.i.+onable, I believe that the urine of mice has greater potential as a pharmaceutical carrier than most of its rivals-certainly more than the s.e.m.e.n of pigs and probably more than the fluid secretions of rubber trees. Milk is, admittedly, in the running, but my belief is that it will prove to be too difficult and too time-consuming to produce breeding populations of transformed sheep, goats, and cattle. If milk ultimately wins out as the carrier of choice, the rabbits, whose use has been pioneered by the Dutch, will probably win out as producers; what they lack in terms of the prolific production of milk, they make up in terms of the prolific production of more rabbits. They too are kept in faculties whose architecture owes something to the inspiration of Mouseworld."

"Which the designers failed to patent?"

"Alas, yes. The world was very different then. The so-called 'Green Revolution' was planned and carried out by workers in the public sector, who published everything and ignored the niceties of intellectual property rights. The bio technological revolution, on the other hand, is being planned and carried out by employees of large corporations, which only publish ads and slogans and try very hard to claim intellectual property rights to everything-including their ads and their slogans. If you look with educated eyes, you can see it happening in Mouseworld, as the privileged inhabitants of the central H Block become increasingly anonymous and furtive, hiding secrets into which no one but each mouse's master manipulator is supposed to know. That is more the kind of spin-off I had in mind when I first raised the issue."

"Professor Miller doesn't seem to have much sympathy for the notion that the four cities are an accurate parable of the human predicament," Lisa told him.

"Perhaps he is insensitive to the deeper subtleties of the parable," Chan suggested. "He tends to think of the mice in the central block as something separate from the cities, so when he speaks of Mouseworld as a parable, he only has in mind the population problem, but the population problem is not all there is to Mouseworld, any more than it is all there is to the human world. I am not saying, of course, that every other aspect of the human world is mirrored in the confusion of that magical H-but I do say that those with the eyes to see it will find more mirrors there than they might expect."

"The models," Lisa said, to demonstrate that she was on the ball. "Around the walls, the more or less healthy ma.s.ses, but in the ghetto, the seriously sick."

In the wake of the Human Genome Project, there had been a boom in the use of transgenic mice as "models" of every known human genetic-deficiency disease. All kinds of gene-based diseases that were difficult to investigate in living human patients could be inflicted on "knockout mice" by deliberately damaging the relevant gene in mouse embryos, which could then produce true-breeding populations of mice, all of whose members were victims. Where variant forms of a still-functional gene were responsible for pathological symptoms, the variant forms could be transplanted from humans into mice in place of the deleted native version, with only a little less trouble. The development of the diseases could be tracked much more closely in model mice because specimens could be killed and dissected at every relevant stage, and the populations also provided valuable preliminary testing grounds for possible treatments and cures.

"That's right," said Chan, bowing his head slightly to acknowledge her alacrity. "But you must follow the a.n.a.logy farther."

She tried. The evening sun, which was s.h.i.+ning in a margin of clear sky but Ht abundant clouds from below, was filling the room with a peculiarly fiery light. Where it reflected from the transparent-plastic faces of the cages, it was more red than gold.

"You mean that the models are temporary residents in Mouseworld," she ventured eventually. "The business is booming now, but it'll be a short-term thing. As we find the treatments and the cures, the models will become obsolete-and in the human world too, the genetic-deficiency diseases will begin to disappear."

"If only it were that simple," Chan lamented. "Alas, we shall probably be required to keep the models long after their human a.n.a.logues have become mercifully extinct. Already there are redundant models mingled with the others, mere library specimens sustained in case they should someday become necessary again. Naturally enough, you are thinking of the most obvious applications of the new technology-the battle against Huntington's disease, d.u.c.h.enne muscular dystrophy, phenylketonuria, and all the other crippling conditions our new model armies will allow us to defeat. Those models are, of course, the ones that wear their names with pride. But what of the others?"

He paused so she could prompt him, but she was still distracted by the temporary play of the unusual light as it filtered through the few portals left to it by Mouseworld's architects. The pattern of the reflections that redirected the mellow beams into the corners of the vast room seemed quite amazing. Some of the compartments now had faces resembling rose-tinted lenses; others seemed to be ablaze with the glory of Armageddon.

The tenor of the conversation made it remarkably easy for Lisa to imagine Mouseworld as a human world writ small, its seething ma.s.ses confused by all kinds of myths and apocalyptic imaginings. People fixated on dates had become particularly agitated in December 1999, and again in December 2000, but the lack of any outrageously peculiar event on the thirty-first of either month had only made them look even harder for signs of apocalypse in the everyday world, which continued on its stubborn course regardless of their hopes and fears. How many of them had seen, or even heard of, Mouseworld? How many had wondered whether the plague of people might be the mysterious Fourth Horseman of Revelation? Momentarily lost in these imaginings, Lisa had to bring herself back to earth with a b.u.mp in order to ask: "What others?"

"What of those new subspecies that hide their transgenic lights behind carefully placed smoke screens?" Chan continued seamlessly. "Are we so naive, you and I, that we take it for granted there are no mice in Mouseworld designed to model human factors whose problematic aspects are far more controversial than fatal diseases? Are there gay mice in Mouseworld? We suspect so-but you and I cannot pick them out, because they are closeted, carefully unlabeled by their investigators. Are there mice whose makers dare to hope they will be more intelligent than their common kin, mice whose makers hope they will be stronger than their common kin, mice whose makers hope they will far outlive their common kin? Yes, yes ... undoubtedly. But which? The strangest thing about the H Block that lies at the very center of Mouseworld is that its society is subject to all kinds of hidden hands hidden hands whose motives and methods are unclear. Is that not a telling mirror of the world in which we Uve? Is it not testimony to the true momentum of history, the fundamental paradoxically of progress?" whose motives and methods are unclear. Is that not a telling mirror of the world in which we Uve? Is it not testimony to the true momentum of history, the fundamental paradoxically of progress?"

"This is a university, not some top-secret research establishment in the Arizona desert," Lisa reminded him. "The people who are doing these experiments will publish the results in due course."

"Will they?" Chan asked. "They feel strongly about it, for the most part-Morgan Miller more strongly than most-but the culture in which they operate is not merely more powerful than they are, but more powerful than they can imagine. The universities are already adopting, explicitly as well as implicitly, the same habits of confidentiality, the same obsessive interest in intellectual property, and the same blatant cupidity as their commercial rivals-and could not help so doing once they accepted the view that they were indeed rivals rivals of the biotechnology companies. Yes, the H Block was planted in the dead center of Mouseworld, surrounded by the proud relic of an earlier age-but while the cities continue to pour forth a cataract of data open to everyone who cares to look, what do the H Blocks produce? A vast series of tentative trickles, whose multifariousness serves to conceal their incompleteness. Thus the esoteric future emerges from the exoteric cradle of the past." of the biotechnology companies. Yes, the H Block was planted in the dead center of Mouseworld, surrounded by the proud relic of an earlier age-but while the cities continue to pour forth a cataract of data open to everyone who cares to look, what do the H Blocks produce? A vast series of tentative trickles, whose multifariousness serves to conceal their incompleteness. Thus the esoteric future emerges from the exoteric cradle of the past."

"In that sense," Lisa observed, "the deeper a.n.a.logy surely doesn't go far enough. All the work in here is being carried out with the aid of research grants, except for the kind of stuff people like me are doing just for practice. It all has to be accounted for. There's nothing sinister sinister going on here. Compared with the real world, it's a bit of a children's playground, or a Utopian enclave." going on here. Compared with the real world, it's a bit of a children's playground, or a Utopian enclave."

Chan smiled at that. "Of course it is," he said. "It is a mirror of our dreams and ambitions rather than the ugly reality of the world as it is. Or should I say your your dreams and ambitions? It is, after all, a thoroughly Western image." dreams and ambitions? It is, after all, a thoroughly Western image."

Although she knew little or nothing of Chan's personal history, Lisa knew immediately what he meant. In China-which had recently reclaimed Hong Kong from its former colonial masters-the population problem was not being left alone to find its own solution. There, if nowhere else, was a government that was not content to hope that the crisis would somehow be averted, or that the aftermath of the human depopulation crisis would follow the pattern now set by the mice of Rome and London, Paris and New York. China was the nation that had weathered more population crises in its own history than any other, and perhaps the only one whose leaders had really learned anything from the bitter experiences of their forebears. But Chan Kwai Keung was not in Hong Kong now. He was in England, where prosperity obscured all anxiety about a population whose increase had not yet been eliminated by the continual decline in the birth rate. In England, the most common view was that the population explosion was a "Third World problem" that did not apply to the developed nations, where women were marrying later and an increasing number were choosing not to marry at all.

Lisa herself had no intention of marrying or of having children. She could not imagine why so many women became broody, and she fervently hoped that no such misfortune would ever befall her-although even she was sometimes disposed to wonder whether this was evidence of something lacking in herself, some element of instinct lost to casual mutation. How many of us How many of us, she wondered, are nature's knockout mice are nature's knockout mice-and what, if so, are we modeling? The spectrum of human potential, or the range of potential folly?

"The architects seem to have taken as much care to isolate London, Paris, Rome, and New York from the rest of Mouseworld as our own governments have taken to isolate West from East and North from South," Lisa agreed, "but at the end of the day, all the mice in the world have common problems. The ecosphere has its boundaries, but we all draw on the same resources and we all p.i.s.s into the same pond. If the population boom does turn to a catastrophic collapse, it will affect all of us. No matter how we guard our individual cages, we'll all go down together when we go."

"There you are," said Chan lightly. "If we only look with educated eyes, we can see all manner of parables in this awesome confusion. Now that we have penetrated the darkest secrets of DNA, we are in some danger of forgetting that the actual actors in the world's drama are not disembodied genes, but firmly embodied organisms. Forensic science may deal almost exclusively in the future with the DNA extracted from smears and stains, but the criminals it convicts will all be whole organisms. Their genes may betray them, but cannot accurately define them."

"That's very good," Lisa said, meaning the compliment sincerely. "This place is by no means short of would-be philosophers, but you're the real thing, aren't you?"

"Very much so," he a.s.sured her. "So is Morgan Miller, in his own contradictory way. And so are you, if I may say so, despite your strange ambition."

"I like the idea of solving vexatious problems," she told him. "I like the idea of catching evildoers."

"Common criminals will always get caught," Chan told her, his voice retreating to a whisper and taking on an unaccountable chill, "but most evildoers, alas, go unrecognized and unchallenged. Perhaps it would be different if we were able to recognize the evils extrapolated in our own actions, but we are little better than mice as natural mathematicians-or, for that matter, as natural moralists."

"Maybe," said Lisa, still responding to his lightly veiled criticism of her chosen vocation, "but we have to do what we can, don't we?"

"We should," he agreed as the light of the setting sun added a hint of flame to his polished flesh, "and perhaps we shall."

PART TWO.

The Ahasuerus Ambush

SEVEN.

Lisa's first interview with Peter Grimmett Smith took place in a ground-floor seminar room. The setting would have seemed incongruous in any case, but it happened to be a room in which she had once chaired population-dynamics seminars for Morgan Miller. It had been redecorated and refurbished long ago, but the smart bio-plastic on the floor bore exactly the same pattern as the dumb vinyl that it had replaced, and it was easy enough for her mind's eye to subst.i.tute a lumbering TV-and-video and a primitive OHP for the station electroepidiascope that had replaced them.

The chairs were very different, being tastefully upholstered in a smart fabric whose soft texture and maroon hue could hardly have contrasted more strongly with the old gray-plastic monstrosities, but at the end of the day, a chair was just a chair: something to sit on. The desk across whose teak-finish surface she faced the man from the Ministry of Defence was likewise just a desk, similar to any number of desks that had formed barriers between her and the world during years past.

Smith looked almost as tired as Lisa felt, although he, like Mike Grundy and Judith Kenna, must have had the opportunity to get some some sleep before the alarm bells began ringing. The apparent tiredness took the edge off his interrogative manner. "For form's sake, Dr. Friemann," he said, "I have to ask you whether there's a possibility that the people who ransacked your apartment early this morning could have found any cla.s.sified material." He wasn't quite as good-looking at close range, and the harsh light of the seminar room exposed every sign of his age. sleep before the alarm bells began ringing. The apparent tiredness took the edge off his interrogative manner. "For form's sake, Dr. Friemann," he said, "I have to ask you whether there's a possibility that the people who ransacked your apartment early this morning could have found any cla.s.sified material." He wasn't quite as good-looking at close range, and the harsh light of the seminar room exposed every sign of his age.

"There was nothing cla.s.sified for them to find," Lisa a.s.sured him truthfully. "Nothing in the least sensitive, in fact. Everything work-related stays at work, in the office or the lab."

Smith nodded. Lisa was reasonably certain that he believed her; even Judith Kenna had to concede that she had a hard-won reputation for method, discipline, and good organization. "Do you have any any idea of what these people might have been looking for?" he asked. He gave the impression that he was asking again purely for form's sake, knowing exactly what the answer would be-but she knew it might be a ploy, to set her at ease while he developed his suspicions more subtly. idea of what these people might have been looking for?" he asked. He gave the impression that he was asking again purely for form's sake, knowing exactly what the answer would be-but she knew it might be a ploy, to set her at ease while he developed his suspicions more subtly.

"I'm not sure that they were looking for anything," she said pensively. "They may have been putting on a show. It's possible that the real purpose of their visit was to leave that stupid message on my door."

She noticed the ghost of a smile on the MOD man's face. "Why would they do that?" he asked.

"I think they might have been trying to discredit me," she said. "Perhaps they think that I'm the most likely person to figure out what's going on here, because I probably know Morgan Miller better than anyone else in the world does and I certainly care more about him than anyone else in the world does. I think they wanted to set things up so the people in charge of the investigation wouldn't entirely trust me and might decide to keep me on the sidelines just in case. Have they succeeded?"

"They might have," Smith told her with apparent frankness, "if the circ.u.mstances hadn't been quite so awkward."

Lisa raised her eyebrows, waiting for an explanation, but all Smith said was: "Considering your record, Chief Inspector Kenna doesn't seem to have a very high opinion of your abilities."

"I can't help that," Lisa said. "It's what we twentieth-century leftovers used to call 'a clash of personalities.' Does she say I can't be trusted?"

Smith shook his head. "Not at all. She did make some vague observations about lack of objectivity-something about it not being helpful to be so closely involved-and obsolescence of expertise. I got the impression that obsolescence of expertise might be one of her favorite phrases." He made a slight gesture with his right hand, intended to draw attention to the gray hair that an unwary youth cultist might have taken as a symptom of his own impending obsolescence.

"I strongly disagree about the helpfulness of my past involvement with Morgan Miller," Lisa said flatly.

"Good," Smith said. "As for the other thing... well, I find myself confronted with a desperate shortage of up-to-date expertise. Every biologist we had on call is working full time on the emergency. I need an adviser who knows her way around Morgan Miller's field, and there's at least a possibility that expertise as out of date as his will be the most useful kind. In brief, Dr. Friemann, I need your help far too desperately to worry too much about the fact that someone on the other side took time out to write Traitor' on your door. Time is pressing. Whatever reason they had for s.n.a.t.c.hing Miller, we have to get him back quickly if we can, and we have to take whatever action may be necessary if we can't. Are you willing to be seconded to my unit?"

"Yes," she said, "I certainly am."

Lisa hadn't expected it to be quite as easy as that. She guessed it wasn't just Peter Grimmett Smith who had found himself short of resources; his employers probably thought they were sc.r.a.ping the bottom of the barrel by appointing him to investigate. From the viewpoint of the MOD, this was a minor distraction-a nuisance they would have been glad to leave alone, had they only dared.

On the other hand, she couldn't let his willingness to take her aboard lull her into a false sense of security. The fact that he needed her didn't mean that he trusted her.

"In that case," Smith said, "I have to impress upon you that everything that pa.s.ses between us from this moment on is confidential. You don't repeat it-not even to Chief Inspector Kenna or Detective Inspector Grundy. Is that clear?"

"As crystal," she said. "What have you got that Kenna hasn't?"

He nodded, presumably approving her businesslike att.i.tude. "We commandeered Miller's phone records," he said. "Two calls leaped out screaming-both made within the last week, both to inst.i.tutions he'd never contacted before, both asking for appointments to visit. And before you ask-no, we didn't have his phone tapped. He put a tape on the calls himself."

That wasn't easy to believe. "Morgan "Morgan set a tape to record his own phone calls?" set a tape to record his own phone calls?"

"Not a permanent one. He just activated his answerphone during those particular calls. As if he wanted to make sure there was a record. As if he knew he might need one-even though he only asked for appointments to visit. He got the appointments within minutes, but that's not surprising. He's a biologist of some standing, even if he hasn't published much recently."

"Who did he call?" Lisa wanted to know.

"The first call was to the local offices of the Ahasuerus Foundation."

Lisa had heard of the Ahasuerus Foundation. It had been set up by some buccaneering sleazeball who'd made a fortune playing the stock market during the Great Panic of '25, ostensibly to sponsor research into technologies of longevity and suspended animation. At least a dozen similar outfits had been set up during the last half-century by aging millionaires offended by the thought they couldn't take their ill-gotten gains with them.

"And the other?"

"That's a little weirder-some crackpot outfit in Swindon called the Inst.i.tute of Algeny. Algeny apparently-"

"I know what the word means," Lisa told him.

Smith raised his eyebrows slightly. "Perhaps you could explain it to me," he said mildly. "The on-line dictionary wasn't very clear."

"It was a coinage of the 1990s that never really caught on, although Morgan approved of it. It was derived by a.n.a.logy with alchemy. Alchemy was a pseudoscience of inorganic transformations that a.s.sumed all metals were evolving gradually into gold, and might be given a helping hand to fulfill their aspirations if only the art could be properly understood and mastered. Algeny is an organic equivalent that a.s.sumes all organisms are striving to better themselves, and that we're already in the process of mastering the art that will allow men to become supermen."

Smith nodded. Lisa's explanation had obviously added a measure of enlightenment to what he'd learned from the dictionary. "So the most obvious thing that the two inst.i.tutions Miller contacted have in common-" he began tentatively.

"-is a strong interest in technologies of longevity," Lisa finished for him.

"Miller's not a young man," Smith observed. "Do you think he was a potential buyer?"

Lisa considered the possibility, then shook her head. She felt that a shadow had fallen over her, and knew it must show on her face. "He was deeply ambivalent about the process of growing old," she admitted, "but he was a lifelong enemy of narcissism. He thought that declining sperm counts and the changing demographics of the developed countries were both good things, even if they were too little too late, because it's better to have more older and, hopefully, wiser people around than lots of hungry children. It would have gone against his conscience to seek self-preservation in a world whose population was way past the long-term carrying capacity of the ecosphere."

"A seller, then," Smith said.

Lisa shook her head to that too. "No," she said softly. "I don't think so."

Smith didn't bother to point put that there didn't seem to be an obvious third alternative-unless the Ahasuerus Foundation and the Inst.i.tute of Algeny had something less obvious in common. "Neither inst.i.tution is British," he commented, watching closely for Lisa's reaction. "The Swindon outfit's European Union, but its headquarters are in Germany. Ahasuerus is American."

"Intellectual activity is as global as commerce nowadays," Lisa pointed out. "In any case, the EU and the USA are the best of buddies, united against the menaces of hyperflu, international terrorism, and illicit economic migration."

"True," said Smith in a tone that suggested it wasn't the whole truth. The MOD probably figured that the nation's friends needed more careful watching than its enemies did.

Lisa waited for the MOD man to continue-which he did after a contemplative pause. "So tell me, Dr. Friemann," he said, "what would a man like Dr. Miller do with a new technology of longevity if he happened to stumble across one while playing games with genetically modified mice?"

Lisa didn't open her mouth to begin a reply, because she knew full well that she wouldn't be able to finish the first sentence before doubts consumed it and spat it out. She needed more time to weigh the possibilities and to recalculate her a.s.sessments of the situation as she had so far found it. She shuffled uncomfortably in her seat, not because the chair was badly designed, but because the ambience of the seminar room had begun to call forth fugitive memories of long-past pressures and intellectual discomforts.

As long ago as 1999, she knew, a gene had been discovered whose modification extended the normal life span of a mouse by a third. It had triggered an a.s.siduous search for more, which had still been in full swing in 2002, but Morgan had never deigned to partic.i.p.ate. He had correctly predicted that the equivalent gene in humans would turn out to have been activated already by the processes of natural selection that had extended the human life span in the interests of parental care. Was it conceivable, she wondered, that even though he hadn't been in the hunt, Morgan had nevertheless contrived to stumble upon a transformation that allowed mice to live much much longer than their natural spans without exposing them to the long-understood rigors of calorific restriction? If so, it longer than their natural spans without exposing them to the long-understood rigors of calorific restriction? If so, it might might have provided a motive powerful enough to inspire his kidnappers-and maybe a motive powerful enough to take the precaution of destroying every single mouse in Mouseworld. have provided a motive powerful enough to inspire his kidnappers-and maybe a motive powerful enough to take the precaution of destroying every single mouse in Mouseworld.

Lisa wondered if Morgan's paranoia about overpopulation might have been sufficiently intense to stop him from publis.h.i.+ng an experimental finding that might have made the problem even worse-but she quickly rejected the hypothesis. As she had already told Peter Grimmett Smith, Morgan wasn't that kind of man. Nor was he the kind of man who would automatically seek custodians for any kind of secret inside such fringe organizations as the Ahasuerus Foundation and the Inst.i.tute of Algeny-in which case, why on earth had he contacted them? The fact that he had had might have persuaded someone-someone who didn't know him as well as she did-that he might have a secret worth stealing. In these troubled times, even a hint might have been enough to move someone to take desperate measures to steal his secret. might have persuaded someone-someone who didn't know him as well as she did-that he might have a secret worth stealing. In these troubled times, even a hint might have been enough to move someone to take desperate measures to steal his secret.

"Do you think someone inside one of the two organizations had Morgan s.n.a.t.c.hed?" Lisa asked.

"It's an appealing hypothesis," Smith conceded. "If not, perhaps someone in one of them forwarded the information to some interested third party."

"An unfriendly foreign government?"