The Cassandra Complex (39 page)

“I want a copy for myself,” Lisa said.

“I knew
that”
the Real Woman replied. “I want
lots
of copies. Now that the secret’s out, we have to make sure it reaches as many of the right people as possible and hope the opposition will keep it under a tighter rein. Do you know anyone who owns a big black van built like a battle cruiser?”

“Oh, shit,” said Lisa, swinging around to look through the rear window at the traffic behind them. The van in question had no distinguishing marks, but she knew that its presence on their tail couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. “How did
he
get on to us?”

“It’s the mercenary, right?”

“I assume so. His name’s Leland. Last time he butted in, it was blind luck. I thought I’d got rid of all the bugs he planted on me. So did Smith.”

“You probably did,” Arachne told her philosophically. “He’s put his own watch on Miller’s place, of course, and he probably has the details of this car too. He’ll have traced Min—she’s the one I set to baby-sit Filisetti—before your people did. Mrs. Grundy used her ex’s passwords to play merry hell with the police computer, but she couldn’t do much about the mall moguls, so Leland’s probably way ahead of the crowd. This whole operation was put together in too much of a hurry. It’s a pity I had to park the car for so long—it gave him a chance to get to us.”

“Sorry,” Lisa said. “If I’d left any sooner, even the Ministry’s third reserve eleven might have gotten suspicious. We’re not going to be able to lose him, are we?”

“Not in this traffic. I daren’t even try—I’ve got so many violations stored up that the watchdog would probably shut the engine down if I made a U-turn or ran a red light. Back on home ground, it might be a different story, though. I’ll drop you in Great Pulteney Street on my way back to the parking lot. The crowds will be swelled with lunch-hour shoppers. Run down William Street and turn right to the Pulteney Mews entrance of the mall. Don’t mess about—just go straight to Salomey and tell them we’re out of rope. I’ll dodge into the underworld as soon as I’m out of his sight and join you in the office. Don’t wait for me, though. Start copying. I have only three people left on-site, but they’re all bona-fide mall staff. They have friends and they know hiding places. Okay?”

“Okay. Leland won’t come after us with anything too heavy—he won’t even want to use the sleepy gas he deployed at Ahasuerus. While he doesn’t know what we know, his first priority is to get information.”

“I can look after myself,” Arachne assured her. “And let’s face it—I really don’t look dangerous in this getup, do I?”

“You’re too tall to look entirely harmless,” Lisa told her. “But that’s okay. Just smile at him—and keep the gun behind your back.”

They had already come off Lansdown Road into Broad Street, joining the queue for the turn that would take them on to Pulteney Bridge. The black van was two vehicles behind. Lisa could have seen Leland’s face if the windows of the van hadn’t been privacy-protected, and the fact that he could probably see hers as she turned wasn’t reassuring. Once they had taken the turn, however, it was just a matter of waiting for the traffic flow to carry them through the roundabout and into Great Pulteney Street. Arachne had no alternative but to drop Lisa on the wrong side of the street, but she didn’t leave her to stand there while the van caught up; she kept her foot on the brake until Lisa had crossed in front of her.

Unfortunately, bringing the traffic to a halt allowed ample time for the passenger door of the black van to slide back. Jeff must have been driving, because it was Leland who got down. How or why he had decided she was the primary target, Lisa didn’t know, but there was no point in pretending she was a shopper. She ran, and was delighted to see from the corner of her eye that Leland’s first attempt to dodge through the traffic and follow her into William Street was frustrated. Her view of him was immediately cut off by the corner, but she glanced back again as she turned into Pulteney Mews and saw him lengthening his stride as he rounded the previous corner.

As Arachne had anticipated, the crowds had thickened considerably because of the lunch hour, but no one got in Lisa’s way as she raced through the automatic doors and into the side concourse. There was no hope of concealing the fact that she had gone into Salomey, but once inside the store, the racks came to her aid, and she was able to duck out of sight while she made her way to the dressing room. When she took a peek between two pair of trousers hanging on a rack, she saw Leland still poised on the threshold, hesitating—not so much over the injunction on the door as because he was uncertain of whether to go left, right, or straight ahead.

When she reached the dressing room, the guide who’d taken her down into the bowels of the mall before was sitting on a chair, trying unsuccessfully to look bored.

“Trouble,” Lisa said. “The man following me is a mercenary. We have to make sure the doors down below are all shut tight.”

The woman didn’t waste time asking questions. She had the trapdoor open in a matter of seconds, and she lowered it again as soon as she and Lisa had passed through.

“Where’s Arachne?” she asked as she led the way to the first door.

“She’ll make her own way. The mercenary’s hireling is following the car. We’ll need couriers, but the first priority is to distract the opposition.”

“We’ll do what we can,” the woman promised. “It’s open, but you’d better knock.”

The last sentence referred to the door to the anteroom of Morgan Miller’s cell, and was spoken as the guide turned on her heel to retrace her steps.

Lisa did as she was told. When she knocked on the door, she was admitted without delay—but she hardly had time to enjoy the swift reflexive surge of relief before she was clumsily struck down from behind.

The blow was glancing, but it had been made by a heavy metal object. Lisa was momentarily blinded by the pain as she stumbled, falling to her knees. Anticipating a second blow, she ducked and scrambled away on all fours toward the inner door, uncomfortably aware that the reaction must seem extremely ungainly to whoever it was that had hit her.

The second blow never came, and Lisa was able to turn around, raising herself to a kneeling position while clasping her hand to the sore spot at the back of her skull.

She found herself looking up reproachfully into the hostile eyes of Helen Grundy. The gun with which Lisa had been inefficiently struck was now aimed directly at her heart.

TWENTY-FOUR

W
hat was
that
for?” Lisa complained bitterly. “I’m trying to help you, you stupid cow!”

“Just give me the data,” Helen said grimly. It was the tone rather than the content that communicated the wrongness of the situation to Lisa’s dizzied brain. She remembered then that Helen was supposed to be long gone, bearing mouse models of useless emortality to some distant destination.

“Do you even know who you’re double-crossing and why?” Lisa asked, coming slowly to her feet. “Or have you lost track too?”

“I can’t afford to give it away,” Helen told her. “I’ve too much stacked up against me. I used Mike’s passwords to hack into the police computer and foul up the precious databases, not to mention stealing the security codes that let us black out half the town. He won’t care about the others, but he’ll make bloody sure they throw the book at
me.
So give me the wafer, Lisa—or an excuse to shoot you.”

“Got too hot for you, did it?” Lisa said. “Arachne did mention that the weaker-kneed members of the team lost their nerve when they figured out exactly what kind of a snake you had by the tail.” While she said it, though, she glanced back anxiously at the inner door, wondering just how bad the situation had gone.

“He’s all right,” Helen said. “I don’t have anything against
him.”

“You don’t have anything against me either, did you but know it,” Lisa said with a sigh. “Arachne has the wafer. I jumped out of the car to draw the head mercenary away while Arachne took care of his henchman. It wouldn’t do you any good if I did have it. Leland got as far as Salomey before he lost me, so we’re cornered. We just have to hope that Arachne gets away with the goods.”

“I don’t believe you,” Helen said. “Anyway, if it’s only the mercenary who’s on to you, he can’t possibly have enough backup to seal a maze with as many exits as this one has. Give me the wafer, Lisa. It really would be just as nice to shoot you instead—all that’s stopping me is the possibility that I might still be able to make a deal. Leland, did you say his name is?”

“He’s a pro, Helen. He wouldn’t bargain with you if he didn’t have to—and he wouldn’t have to, even if you had something to sell. Which you don’t. All you’re doing here is letting your side down and trying to foul things up even worse than they are already.”

Helen’s wild eyes were growing even wilder. She had obviously realized that Lisa wasn’t going to hand anything over, whether she had anything to hand or not. The script that she’d formulated in anticipation of the confrontation had let her down, and she didn’t know what to do. In the movies, the people holding the guns always got the respect they deserved, and if the people who were on the wrong end of the barrel were slow to cooperate, the people with the guns simply knocked them about a bit more and rummaged through their pockets and pouches until they found what they were looking for—but Helen Grundy had already cottoned on to the fact that Lisa wasn’t going to make any effort to oblige her. She was afraid that if she tried to carry forward the fight with anything less than a bullet, Lisa would win—and no matter what she thought about the amount of pleasure it would give her to shoot her ex-husband’s good and loyal friend, she was exactly the kind of person to whom the logic of rational deterrence applied. She was trying to get out of trouble, not deeper in—and she knew, even if she couldn’t quite admit it to herself, that she wasn’t going to get out. No matter what she did, she was in trouble. She had been reckless in running up her moral debts, and now the account was due for payment.

That, at least, was the way Lisa calculated the situation—so the fact that Helen actually fired the gun caused her considerable annoyance as well as a horrid thrill of pure terror.

Fortunately, the analysis had been fundamentally correct, and Helen had been careful to raise the barrel of the gun before firing, so that the bullet went over Lisa’s head and smashed into the lintel above the door to Morgan Miller’s prison.

“Leland probably heard that,” Lisa observed when her nerves were calm enough to permit speech. “If he didn’t figure out where we went before, he will now.”

Leland wasn’t the only one who had heard the shot. The door through which Lisa had come hadn’t closed again, although it had swung back so that it stood ajar. Now it opened wide again, and Arachne West came through it with her own gun raised and ready to fire.

The Real Woman had pressed the barrel of her weapon to the back of Helen Grundy’s neck before she realized who it was that she was covering. Her command to drop the gun was overtaken by a disgusted curse, which emerged in a form that was semi-articulate at best.

Helen dropped her gun anyway. She seemed relieved to be required to do it, although she had to know what an admission of failure it was.

“Like some rat or lemming the day after the crash begins,” Lisa observed drily. “Running this way and that, going nowhere, lashing out at anything within range. No direction at all. Self-destruction born of panic.”

“You haven’t even started!” Arachne West accused her.

“No,” Lisa admitted. “I didn’t even get to start.” She reached into the pocket on her thigh and pulled the wafer out, displaying it to Helen Grundy. “Surprise!” she said. But Helen didn’t look surprised at all.

Arachne took the wafer and vaulted over the desk to reach the copier that would allow her to duplicate it repeatedly. “I gave the van driver the slip,” she said, “but they had a pretty good idea of where we are even before you set up the audible signpost. We still have half a chance while they’re trying to make their way through the maze, though. Pick up the gun, Lisa.”

Lisa knelt down carefully. She didn’t dare duck her head precipitately while it was still aching from the clumsy blow Helen Grundy had given her. She picked up the gun, but took due note of the fact that if anyone came hurtling through the door with heroism on his mind, she would be the first target to attract attention. Arachne had a switch within easy reach that would engage the door’s locks, but she hadn’t touched it—presumably because the idea of being locked in while the corridor filled with ambushers was even less appealing than the prospect of reckless heroic intervention.

Lisa contemplated asking Arachne to open the inner door, but it was probably safer to leave Morgan locked in. That way, he’d be okay no matter what happened in the outer room if or when Leland and his taciturn friend arrived on the threshold.

Arachne fed the wafer into the computer. She began decanting information onto the local disk before opening the connection to a subsidiary station that would allow her to transfer data slot to slot.

The sound of a slightly muffled explosion made Lisa start. “He’s shooting his way in!” she exclaimed.

“He can’t hack the locks,” Arachne told her, her calmness exaggerated by concentration. “He’s in too much of a hurry to be subtle. He’s a way off yet.”

No sooner had she finished speaking, though, than a second explosion sounded. Alarm bells now began to sound in profusion. The cityplex police would be on their way—but Leland had already pointed out that their response times left something to be desired, and the lunch-time crowds in the mall would be panicking by now. Aboveground, everything would be chaos and confusion.

The alarms weren’t loud enough to block out the sound of another door being taken off its hinges. This one seemed very close. Lisa had been aware for some time that Ginny’s pills had worn off, but while she was moving, she hadn’t lost her momentum. Now that she had nothing to do but stand still, the letdown could no longer be put off. She felt as if a heavy blanket had descended upon her. The sharp pain caused by Helen Grundy’s clumsy blow had become oppressively dull and constant now, and she had to clench her left fist tight, digging her fingernails into her palm, to fight the deadening numbness. She still needed help, though—and help came.