The Cassandra Complex Part 3

"I can find it on my own," Lisa a.s.sured her.

"I'm going the same way," the younger woman pointed out. "The helicopter from London should be here soon, and I need to make sure there's enough clearance in the parking area to let it land."

As they walked out of the building into the cold dawn air, Lisa said: "You don't really think I had anything to do with this, do you?"

"I certainly don't think you're allied with the perpetrators," Kenna a.s.sured her. "But the fact that they decided to include you in their set of targets suggests that you do have something something to do with it, wouldn't you say?" to do with it, wouldn't you say?"

"Everyone is supposed to keep important data backed up at a remote location," Lisa said. "I'm one of Morgan Miller's oldest friends. Maybe they just a.s.sumed that he'd keep backups at my place-not realizing, I guess, that Morgan doesn't do very many of the things that everyone's supposed to do."

"Perhaps they did," the chief inspector admitted.

They had drawn level with the small ambulance that had trailed the fire engines; its two staff were sitting inside looking bored, having not had a single significant case of smoke-inhalation to treat. The young woman who leaped out in response to Lisa's gesture with her towel-enshrouded hand seemed glad of the opportunity to do something.

Judith Kenna looked carefully around while the paramedic unwrapped the bloodstained dressing and peeled back the sleeve of Lisa's undershirt, tut-tutting all the while.

"I know it probably said 'Sterile' on the package," the paramedic said, "but this patch must be thirty years old. You really ought to get a modern medical kit-and the fabric of this undershirt isn't nearly smart enough to cope with gashes like these. There are much better ones on the market nowadays."

"Dr. Friemann was at home," the chief inspector put in, anxious to deflect any implied criticism of the facilities at her station. "You know how it is with home kits-you never replace them until you use them up. And I don't suppose responsiveness to injury was uppermost in her mind when she bought the undergarment."

Lisa grit her teeth and said nothing.

The paramedic tut-tutted again over the various wounds before reaching for a tube of sealant. "You'll never get the stain out of that tunic," she observed. Her own uniform, unlike Judith Kenna's, was made of ultramodern fibers that were presumably as expert at mopping up blood as they were at mopping up sweat and tears.

Lisa tried to take the criticism as stoically as she was taking the treatment, although the anesthetic effect of the sealant couldn't offer much protection to her self-esteem. In the hope of deflecting the censorious gaze of Judith Kenna's eyes from her hand, she said: "On the other hand, if the kidnappers were just guessing where Morgan might have kept his backup wafers, they probably wouldn't have contented themselves with raiding my place. If Morgan had found something recently, they might have been more likely to look for it at Stella Filisetti's place." She was fishing, to find out whether Kenna knew whether or not Morgan had been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his research a.s.sistant. When Kenna didn't bite, Lisa added: "Unless, of course, it was Stella who told them my flat was the more likely hiding place."

"How well do you know Stella Filisetti?" Kenna was quick to ask.

"Hardly at all," Lisa admitted. "I've only met her a couple of times. Morgan never told me anything about her, except for a few pa.s.sing remarks about her radfem sympathies."

"Some of the nicest people I know are radfems," the chief inspector commented mildly. "None of them pose any threat to national security."

"I didn't mean to imply that he disapproved," Lisa said swiftly.

"You have radfem acquaintances yourself, I believe," Kenna added.

Lisa had to stop herself from asking the chief inspector where that tidbit of information had come from. Instead, she said: "I've known one or two." Her first a.s.sumption was that Kenna must be talking about Arachne West-but then she remembered that she had had more recent and much longer-enduring contact with another proud wearer of the label, and wondered how significant the chief inspector's choice of the word "acquaintances" had been. Arachne West had almost qualified as a friend once-but Helen Grundy never had.

If Helen was numbered by Kenna as one of those radfems who were "among the nicest people I know," Lisa thought, that might go a long way to explain why she was so down on Mike-and why she might disapprove so strongly of Lisa's having taken Mike in for a while after Helen threw him out.

"All done," said the paramedic brightly. "None of the cuts is bad enough to need syntheflesh-just peel off the sealant in three or four days. How'd you do it?"

"Somebody shot a telephone receiver out of my hand," Lisa said laconically. "It could have been worse-at least the shooter waited until I'd taken it away from my ear."

The young woman grinned as if it were a joke, then went back to join her partner.

"Is Stella Filisetti a suspect?" Lisa asked the chief inspector.

"We're treating everyone as a suspect until we know otherwise," Kenna replied predictably, "including your friend Sweet. Security people usually have ways of acc.u.mulating information on people with whom they come into regular contact."

"He's another casual acquaintance," Lisa said. "But it would take a master of disguise to seem that stupid if he were actually the criminal mastermind who planned all this."

Kenna was still watching her closely, speculatively, if not actually suspiciously. The chief inspector was obviously not convinced that Morgan Miller hadn't entrusted her with a precious backup wafer, perhaps containing the secret of the Ultimate Weapon of Biowarfare. Lisa realized that it might not be easy to persuade Kenna that the burglars had simply made a mistake-understandably enough, given that she couldn't quite convince herself that they had simply simply made a mistake. made a mistake.

If a mistake had been made-and it had been, Lisa silently insisted-it couldn't have been simple. The reasoning that had led the would-be burglars to her must be as convoluted as it was powerful. The fact that she was Morgan's oldest friend wasn't enough. Nor was the fact that she had once been his mistress. There had to be something else. But if they suspected that she and Morgan had discovered a biowarfare weapon together together, when were the two of them supposed to have done it? Surely nothing that they had worked on back in the first decade of the century could possibly have any relevance to the hyperflu epidemic, or whatever agent of the apocalypse would follow in its train.

Or could it?

Lisa was grateful to realize that Judith Kenna was no longer looking at her. The chief inspector had been distracted by the distant sound of a helicopter's throbbing engine.

"That'll be your Mr. Smith," Lisa observed, hoping her relief didn't show too clearly. "He's made good time."

"Yes, he has," the chief inspector agreed, her tone finely balanced between satisfaction and regret. "I'll have to brief him. You'd better wait with DI Grundy."

All but one of the fire engines had now been withdrawn, so there was plenty of s.p.a.ce in the parking lot for the chopper to set down. Lisa watched four men climb down from the belly of the aircraft. They were all wearing black overcoats, which seemed as distinctive as a uniform-much more so, in fact, than the relatively casual sh.e.l.l-suits of the paramedics, let alone Mike's plainclothesmen.

Lisa had had contact with MOD field operatives on numerous occasions, but she didn't recognize any of these men. She couldn't even guess which of the many available sets of cryptic initials might be used to identify their department. They looked like businessmen, but that wasn't inappropriate to the kind of work they would be routinely engaged in. The government for which they worked was not one of those conventionally regarded as a mere puppet of the megacorps, but its supposed independence meant that its dealings with the corps were all the more intricate and challenging. The only way to compete with crocodiles, or even to avoid becoming crocodile food, was to cultivate crocodilean habits.

Lisa thought she identified Peter Grimmett Smith even at a distance, and her guess was confirmed when she saw him shake Judith Kenna's hand. He was a tall, dark-haired individual, handsome in a stately sort of way. He seemed to be tired and fractious. Lisa was perversely pleased to note that he must be in his sixties, easily old enough to be the chief inspector's father.

Poor Judith, she thought. Just can't get away from the older generation. Mike, me, Sweet, the senior fireman, and now the man from the Ministry. Is his expertise past its use-by date too, I wonder? Is this his last mission before he retires to the old bee farm? If he's waving the flag for gray power, he's really going to jangle her nerves, especially if he succeeds in getting to the bottom of all this while she's still flummoxed. Just can't get away from the older generation. Mike, me, Sweet, the senior fireman, and now the man from the Ministry. Is his expertise past its use-by date too, I wonder? Is this his last mission before he retires to the old bee farm? If he's waving the flag for gray power, he's really going to jangle her nerves, especially if he succeeds in getting to the bottom of all this while she's still flummoxed.

She wondered briefly whether the spook's name really was Smith, but decided that it probably was. No one used Smith as a nom de guerre anymore; it was too twentieth century. twentieth century. The Grimmett, which presumably served to distinguish him from all the other Peter Smiths on the civil-service roster, was a bit of a giveaway. The Grimmett, which presumably served to distinguish him from all the other Peter Smiths on the civil-service roster, was a bit of a giveaway.

Lisa was tempted to hang around and watch, but the advent of daylight hadn't banished the relentless wind and she'd neglected to put on her own black overcoat before leaving home. She retreated into the building and went back to Sweet's office, where Mike Grundy's men were still impatiently gathering information and trying to judge its significance. Sweet had rejoined them, but no one seemed to be restricting their conversation in case he might be an enemy keeping tabs on their progress.

"They've got to be local," Jerry Hapgood was saying. "The blackout proves that."

"No, it doesn't," Mike told him. "The blackout only proves that they were clever enough to know they couldn't transport Miller crosscountry without being tracked, unless they could work a concealed switch. We don't know that they didn't bring him out of the blackout before Powergen got its act together-and even if they bring him out now in the trunk of some commuter's car or the back of a pickup, we don't stand the slightest chance of intercepting him, even with real containment measures about to come into force."

"This whole containment thing's a joke," once of the PC's observed. "It'll all be show no matter how far it goes, so that the government can pretend they're doing something. something. When hyperflu arrives, if it hasn't already, there'll be no way to pin it down. If we don't have a cure soon, it'll run riot." When hyperflu arrives, if it hasn't already, there'll be no way to pin it down. If we don't have a cure soon, it'll run riot."

Lisa knew that the PC was right. Even the strictest imaginable containment strategy would leave far too many loopholes where a cityplex like Greater Bristol was concerned. The inhabitants of the Outer Hebrides might manage to control traffic between the islands and the mainland carefully enough to keep out viruses, but Britain was far too overcrowded and far too busy. busy. If the First Plague War really were shaping up to be World War Three-and it was difficult to see how the viruses could be offset before the epidemic was worldwide-then the Bristol cityplex would eventually find itself in the front line. So-called pre-containment measures couldn't keep Morgan Miller in the East Central area any more than they could keep hyperflu out of it if his well-organized captors wanted to remove him. If the First Plague War really were shaping up to be World War Three-and it was difficult to see how the viruses could be offset before the epidemic was worldwide-then the Bristol cityplex would eventually find itself in the front line. So-called pre-containment measures couldn't keep Morgan Miller in the East Central area any more than they could keep hyperflu out of it if his well-organized captors wanted to remove him.

"The men from the Ministry are here," Lisa said, although she knew they must have heard the helicopter. "They'll be taking over the thinking and planning."

"Doesn't mean they'll carry the can if Miller slips through the net," Hapgood pointed out. "Always blame the messenger-isn't that the thinking?"

"Better not let the chief inspector hear you talking like that," Mike Grundy observed as he moved away from the group to stand closer to Lisa. "Okay, Lis?" he asked, nodding toward her sealed cuts.

"Fine," she told him. "Numb now. Did you manage to get a team out to my place?"

"Yes. Nothing yet. The burglars' vehicle was parked on the school grounds, but there's nothing there that might help us to identify it. Your neighbors say they didn't hear anything until the shots were fired, and they didn't come out of hiding in time to see anything. The paint on the door might have trapped a fiber or two, but it looks as if the bullets they fired into your equipment might be our best bet. Together with the dart in Burdillon's body, they're the only solid evidence we have. If we can trace either one of the handguns, we're away ... but how far we'll get without the telephone records, I wouldn't like to say. You look tired. You can't go home, but you should get some sleep-can I return the favor you did me when I was between residences?"

"Kenna wants us both here, at least until Smith says we can go," Lisa told him. "Anyway, given her att.i.tude, it might not be a good idea for me to stay at your place. Does she know Helen?"

"G.o.d, I hope not," Mike said. "Why?"

"Just something she said. Stella Filisetti has radfem connections."

"She might know Helen, then," Grundy observed. "I doubt that Kenna would get involved with any kind of organization or movement outside the force, however respectable-and with people like your old friend Ms. West still around, radfem isn't respectable yet. Kenna's far too principled to a.s.sociate with the Arachne Wests of this world, and getting palsy-walsy with Helen would be only one step removed. No matter how determined she might be to persuade me to retire quietly, I doubt that she'd go to Helen for ammunition. Anyway, that's all water under the bridge. Do you think Filisetti's the insider? Any particular reason, apart from the fact that she's not at home?" He didn't add: might know Helen, then," Grundy observed. "I doubt that Kenna would get involved with any kind of organization or movement outside the force, however respectable-and with people like your old friend Ms. West still around, radfem isn't respectable yet. Kenna's far too principled to a.s.sociate with the Arachne Wests of this world, and getting palsy-walsy with Helen would be only one step removed. No matter how determined she might be to persuade me to retire quietly, I doubt that she'd go to Helen for ammunition. Anyway, that's all water under the bridge. Do you think Filisetti's the insider? Any particular reason, apart from the fact that she's not at home?" He didn't add: and probably s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g your old boyfriend. and probably s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g your old boyfriend. He was too scrupulous. He was too scrupulous.

"If Morgan discovered something interesting," Lisa observed, "Stella would be in the best position to know about it. If he took precautions to conceal it from her, that might have made her all the more curious. The only flaw in the theory is that Morgan couldn't couldn't have discovered some state-of-the-art biological weapon by accident. That's the stuff of cheap technothrillers-and he wasn't doing that kind of work. If it really is cloak-and-dagger business, we'd do better to focus our attention on Ed Burdillon and Chan. Do the security wafers indicate how Ed became aware of their presence?" have discovered some state-of-the-art biological weapon by accident. That's the stuff of cheap technothrillers-and he wasn't doing that kind of work. If it really is cloak-and-dagger business, we'd do better to focus our attention on Ed Burdillon and Chan. Do the security wafers indicate how Ed became aware of their presence?"

"No. Do you think he he might have been the inside man? They could have arranged to knock him over to give him an alibi of sorts." might have been the inside man? They could have arranged to knock him over to give him an alibi of sorts."

"No," said Lisa. "Ed's straight. So's Morgan. Neither of them would have tried to hide something useful to national security, or even something valuable in purely commercial terms."

"Unless they had a good reason," Mike pointed out, "or the temptation was so great that even an honest man could be corrupted. Everyone has his price."

"Not Morgan. And it's still the stuff of cheap technothrillers."

"It's their script, not ours," Mike reminded her. "If they're crazy enough, they probably think like a cheap technothriller. Anyway, remember what you said earlier about the Ca.s.sandra Complex. Morgan Miller has spent fifty years preaching that a population crash is inevitable, even though everyone with half a brain can see that we can't carry on increasing our numbers without completely f.u.c.king up the ecosphere. He's been suffering all the while from feelings of impotence and bitter frustration. Just suppose that after those fifty years, he suddenly found there was, after all, a way that he could do do something. If Morgan were offered a way to stop playing Ca.s.sandra, couldn't he be tempted? If he were offered a means of something. If Morgan were offered a way to stop playing Ca.s.sandra, couldn't he be tempted? If he were offered a means of taking a hand taking a hand, mightn't the chance to set aside that awful feeling of futility have been irresistible?"

"Morgan's not behind this," Lisa a.s.sured him. "I'd know."

"Would you?" he asked, so softly that the other men might not have been able to hear him even if they were listening hard, "or is it just that you can't stand the thought that you might not... that he'd let Stella Filisetti in on it, but not you?"

"There were two two women," Lisa reminded him grimly. "And that's just here. Maybe women," Lisa reminded him grimly. "And that's just here. Maybe all all of them were women-the fact that Sweet's convinced that no woman could have dragged Ed Burdillon away from Mouseworld at a trot only means that he never met Arachne West, or any other Real Woman. If you think it might have been Morgan or anyone working for him who shot the phone out of my hand, wait till you hear the tape from my living room. The way he-or she-spoke Morgan's name is enough in itself to establish that he's a victim." of them were women-the fact that Sweet's convinced that no woman could have dragged Ed Burdillon away from Mouseworld at a trot only means that he never met Arachne West, or any other Real Woman. If you think it might have been Morgan or anyone working for him who shot the phone out of my hand, wait till you hear the tape from my living room. The way he-or she-spoke Morgan's name is enough in itself to establish that he's a victim."

"Don't rule anything out, Lisa," Mike urged in the same low tone. "Just think about it. We need this result, you and I. If we can get one over on Kenna while the MOD man's watching, we'll have arms and armor-but if we come out of it looking bad, we'll both be on the sc.r.a.p heap in no time."

"Morgan's a victim, not a conspirator," Lisa insisted frostily. "As am I. Not to mention half a million mice. Which is, if you care to think about it, the oddest thing of all. Why kill the mice, Mike? If there was some amazing secret hidden in Mouseworld, why not simply steal the mice that contained it? Why kill them all?"

"I can't answer that," Grundy whispered-and for the first time, Lisa realized just how frightened he had become. "I can't make sense of any of it yet. I can see Kenna's ax coming down on my neck, but I can't see any way off the block. How's that for a Ca.s.sandra Complex? The only one who can get us out of this with our careers intact is you, Lis. Even if the fools who came to your flat had it completely wrong, they think you know what's going on. They must have a reason to think that, and you're the only one who stands a chance of figuring out what it is. Whatever it is, Lis, you you have to get to the bottom of it-and you have to face up to whatever it turns out to be. All I'm asking is that you don't leave any stone unturned, no matter how uncomfortable it might be-not just for your sake, or mine, but for Morgan's. If he have to get to the bottom of it-and you have to face up to whatever it turns out to be. All I'm asking is that you don't leave any stone unturned, no matter how uncomfortable it might be-not just for your sake, or mine, but for Morgan's. If he isn't isn't behind it, they're going to kill him as soon as they have what they want-and the longer he holds out on them, the worse they'll hurt him." behind it, they're going to kill him as soon as they have what they want-and the longer he holds out on them, the worse they'll hurt him."

Lisa was tempted to tell Mike that he couldn't have it both ways-that she couldn't consider the possibility that Morgan might be responsible for this mad caper while simultaneously motivating herself with the thought that he might be in mortal danger-but the complaint died on her lips. Whichever one of the two possibilities was right, she did did have to solve the puzzle as quickly as was humanly possible, and she have to solve the puzzle as quickly as was humanly possible, and she was was the person best placed to do so. If she failed, everybody might suffer. the person best placed to do so. If she failed, everybody might suffer.

Probably, she thought, that was why the intruders had come to her apartment-not to rob, but to discredit her; to do as much as they could to earn her the mistrust of Peter Grimmett Smith and his merry MOD men. If so, she had to hope that Mr. Smith wouldn't fall for it-and whether he did or not, she had to bend every atom of her intelligence and of her knowledge of Morgan Miller's life and work to figuring out exactly what kind of mess he had gotten himself into.

First Interlude THG POLITICS OF MOUSEWORLD.

The tour that Morgan Miller gave Lisa when he welcomed her to the department began with the lab s.p.a.ce in which she would be working and the parallel s.p.a.ces occupied by her fellow research students, then progressed to his own territory. There was far too much for her to take in all at once, and too many names to remember, but it was obvious from the start that Miller was a misfit. It wasn't just the fact that he was the only person except for the departmental secretaries who wasn't wearing a white coat; it was the slight wariness haunting the att.i.tudes other people struck when they spoke to him. Some of them, Lisa a.s.sumed, must have been working cheek-by-jowl with him for years, but not one of them gave the impression of actually knowing him.

Miller was not a tall man-his height was almost exactly the same as Lisa's-but he gave the impression of being loftier than he was. His frame was slim and his face rather gaunt. She guessed that he was in his late thirties, but there was a stern agelessness about his hard features that suggested he wouldn't look substantially different in twenty years' time. No one would have described him as handsome, but the narrowness of his jaw made the upper half of his face seem uncommonly wide, exaggerating the width of his forehead and making his dark-brown eyes seem a trifle overlarge. When he had been a child, Lisa thought, those eyes must have seemed plaintive and adorable, but now that he was a man, they seemed intimidatingly cool and contemplative. The whole ensemble gave the impression of a penetrating intelligence quietly lurking in the depths of an unusual mind. Had he not possessed such a luxuriant head of dark-brown hair-which certainly wasn't a wig-Miller might have have resembled a stereotyped cartoon egghead, but there was something about him that resisted submission to any kind of category.

It wasn't until the end of the tour that he took her into Mouseworld. He ushered her through the door with a wry smile, as if he were ashamed to have to stoop so low as to use it as a kind of punch Une but had no alternative. It was an awesome sight, and it stopped her in her tracks for a moment. Miller had obviously seen similar reactions many times before, and the wryness of his smile twisted his thin lips into an uncla.s.sifiable grimace.

"Four hundred and fifty thousand, give or take ten percent," he said, antic.i.p.ating the question that had indeed sprung unbidden to Lisa's lips-although she had not actually intended to voice it, because she knew how lame it would sound. "That's in the one big experiment distributed around the four walls. The mice in the central block are taking part in several hundred different enterprises of considerably more importance, so we take care to give them all the s.p.a.ce they need. Ours are in this sector here."

Miller moved toward the central H-shaped complex, but Lisa didn't move with him, even though she had noted that he'd said "ours" rather than "mine." She couldn't take her eyes off the walls.

The four cities were not identical in terms of their layout-London had to accommodate the door to the lab, Paris was interrupted by two large windows, Rome by two smaller ones, and New York by a huge cupboard-but all four were "open" in the sense that all of the internal part.i.tions contained doorways and all of the rooms had openings in the floor and ceiling, connected by ladders to the floors above and below. Although each city's s.p.a.ce was divided into dozens of floors and each floor into hundreds of compartments, every mouse could get to any location within its own city, always provided that the other mice in the sector would permit it to pa.s.s.

Lisa observed that the automatic feeding mechanism was simple in its basic design but amazingly intricate in its construction, making a supply of food pellets and water continuously available to every compartment. She also saw that each compartment had its own built-in cleaning system, equally simple in design, which continuously replaced the sawdust-like matrix that soaked up the urine. The system must have been wondrously efficient, because the stink, though distinct, was by no means nauseating. Such quasiclinical observations were, however, utterly overwhelmed by the impression created by the restless mice as they swarmed in vast numbers through the mazy complexes, like wheat fields blown by a wayward wind, or an ocean stirred by lashing rain and turbulent eddies.

She had never seen anything like it, nor had she ever imagined anything like it. She had never seen Ufe in such awful, chaotic profusion.

"It must cost a fortune," was the observation she actually made when she finally found her voice, but it was a ridiculous understatement of her actual response.

"Compared with what?" Miller retorted wryly. "A cyclotron? Ofsted? Back in seventy-four, the university's one and only computer filled a dedicated building and cost millions-Mouseworld must have seemed trivial by comparison. But you're right, of course. The startup cost was far too high even in the context of thirty years ago, at the optimistic height of one of the rosier interludes of the old boom/bust cycle. Fortunately, the population explosion was a hot topic then, thanks to Paul Ehrlich and a few other best-selling alarmists. There were big grants to be had. That was before the ostrich factor took hold."

It was the manner in which he spoke that kept everyone at a distance, Lisa realized. It wasn't that he was contemptuous, or hostile, or unduly arrogant-but there was something in his manner that emphasized a detachment so extreme as to const.i.tute removal. removal. She knew it wasn't the kind of trait that most women would find attractive, but most women didn't consider themselves natural-born forensic scientists. Why, she wondered, didn't he wear a lab coat? She knew it wasn't the kind of trait that most women would find attractive, but most women didn't consider themselves natural-born forensic scientists. Why, she wondered, didn't he wear a lab coat?

"Ostrich factor?" she queried, while her captive eyes roamed the four walls of Mouseworld, refusing even to see the central block, where all the compartments were neatly separated from one another and at least one mouse in ten was a Morgan Miller, gloriously secure in its own abundant personal s.p.a.ce.

"Head in the sand," Miller told her. "If we refuse to see the problem, it doesn't really exist. The phrase is Garrett Hardin's, but the book that contains it didn't get anywhere near the best-seller lists, thus proving its own thesis. You should come along to my third-year lectures on the population dynamics module-I kick off with an introduction to the neoMalthusians in three weeks time. It's usually rather lively, even nowadays, when little short of a neutron bomb can be relied upon to raise the majority of students out of their appalling apathy. No offense intended."

"None taken," she a.s.sured him. She knew what he meant. She'd taken undergraduate courses in Practical Transgenics and Bioethics-topics that raised a storm wherever the chattering cla.s.ses gathered for a dinner party or paused to gossip in Waitrose or the GP's waiting room, but couldn't even raise a ripple at home. Anyone who bothered to sign up for such courses was already numbered among the converted, and the students were relentlessly agreeable in the face of their teachers' preachings. It was almost as if they were members of some beleaguered cult.

"I'm a.s.suming that you're an exception," Miller said, perhaps intending to pay Lisa a compliment. "I suppose that as a policeman, you'll at least be uncommonly dutiful, if not overly willing to challenge authority."

That seemed to Lisa to be marginally more offensive than the remark for which he'd issued his offhand non-apology. "I'll come along to your lectures," she a.s.sured him. As a postgraduate, she was obliged to attend a quota of second- and third-year courses in order to make up ground that had fallen outside her own undergraduate specialties. Those that her supervisor taught had to be on her list, if only for diplomatic reasons.

"If you cared to set an example and ask some searching questions in the seminars, I'd be grateful," he said. "It might save me from having to go quite so far over the top in the hope of eliciting a response. Feel free to be as aggressive as you like. It's a postgrad's responsibility to play the Judas goat, after all."

It wasn't, but Lisa didn't know whether he was joking or being provocative, so she didn't laugh and didn't rise to the bait. "Twenty-eight years is a long time to run an experiment," she said instead. "And the running costs can't be trivial. Even if the food's cheap, equipment maintenance and waste disposal must consume quite a budget."

"Animal population dynamics is a difficult field in which to do experiments," Miller agreed, seeming to lose half an inch of height as he bowed to the force of her fascination with the four cities and slumped into patient resignation. "Even organisms that can get through a generation in thirty days or so have to be observed for years if you're to get any worthwhile data about the way their populations respond to changes in circ.u.mstance. Anything with a yearly life cycle is out of the question for lab work, although there are teams all over the world that send people out every spring to collect data on wild populations of all kinds of species, and have been doing so for twenty years and more. Most of what we know about mammalian population dynamics in nature is based on the records kept by hunters and fur trappers, and the data is prejudiced by the fact that the killing of their members by humans is by far the most important variable impacting on the populations. Lab-based observations are virtually restricted to rats, rabbits, and mice-and if you think the running costs of this this setup are an unacceptable burden, imagine what it would cost to keep a similar number of rats or rabbits." setup are an unacceptable burden, imagine what it would cost to keep a similar number of rats or rabbits."

"So why keep them in such large numbers?" Lisa asked.

"Because you can't do experiments on the effects of overpopulation with small numbers," Miller observed, without loading the comment with more scorn that was actually necessary.

"I see," Lisa said, wishing that she'd seen it a little earlier.

"The American experiments set up in advance of this one were all terminated after a couple of years," Miller told her, perhaps by way of repentance. "Even when they began to produce interesting results, the practical and political difficulties of keeping them going were insuperable. The whole point of this one was to build something sustainable over the long term, in the hope that it would clarify some of the puzzles Calhoun and McKendrick had to leave unsolved."

"And has it?" Lisa asked, determined not to be forced into a humiliating confession that she had no idea of who Calhoun and McKendrick were. Fortunately, Miller knew perfectly well that she was a biochemical geneticist whose background in population biology was likely to be exceedingly sketchy, and he didn't try to make her look foolish.

"Calhoun was one of the first people to investigate what would happen to a population limited only by s.p.a.ce," he said. "His experiments gained a certain anecdotal notoriety in the sixties, when even I was but a child, but that overestimated both their scope and their importance. To simplify brutally, he put a few rats into a fairly s.p.a.cious but limited complex, gave them as much food and water as they needed, and did what he could to keep pollution within reasonable limits. The population did pretty much what he expected it to do: rose exponentially to a peak, then collapsed again. When the crowding became unbearable, the rats' social system-such as it was-completely disintegrated. They fought continually and destructively, began to eat their own young, and showed every known symptom of environmental stress: ulceration, heart disease, hair loss ... you name it, the observers saw it. It was never really intended as an experiment in the scientific sense, of course. If I remember correctly, Calhoun was working for the National Inst.i.tutes of Health. It was a demonstration-a parable to supplement the natural parables of the lemming and the snowshoe hare."

"I read about the snowshoe hare," Lisa put in helpfully. "They're responsible for the lynx cycle in Canada-and the lemmings are famous. There used to be a cinema ad that showed them pouring over a cliff, but I can't remember what it was for."

"It was an antismoking ad," Miller reminded her. "People misunderstood the lemmings for a hundred years, just as they misunderstood the lynx cycle. The myth was that the lemmings were committing suicide, just like smokers who wouldn't stop. There were all kinds of crackpot theories. One suggested that some atavistic instinct was forcing them to follow an ancient migration route to land that had been inundated by the sea. In much the same spirit, people tried to correlate the lynx cycle with the sunspot cycle, as if that would somehow provide an explanation. Even within the scientific community, there was a well-established myth of predator-prey cycles suggesting that the number of lynx pelts recovered by the Hudson Bay Company's trappers varied cyclically because of the feedback effects of the trappers' own activity, or because every time the lynx numbers increased, they sent the populations of their prey into steep decline. All nonsense, of course. The lynx population and the snowshoe hare population went up and down together-the population crashes that caused the hares to decline were entirely independent of the intensity of predation, but every time the hare population crashed, the lynx population crashed too."

"But they can't have been in the same situation as the experimental rats," Lisa pointed out, glad for an opportunity to show that she was on the ball. "They had unlimited s.p.a.ce."

"That's the curious thing," Miller agreed. "You'd think so, wouldn't you? The snowshoe hares had all of Canada, the lemmings all of Siberia and Scandinavia. You'd think that the limiting factor controlling their population size would be the availability of food-but it wasn't. When the cases were actually investigated, it immediately became obvious that the peak populations could endure the winters, despite the scarcity of food. The populations didn't collapse until the spring, when food was becoming much more abundant."

He paused, inviting Lisa to catch on. She had to hesitate for six or seven seconds, but then she figured it out. "The mating season," she said.

"Exactly," Miller conceded, favoring her with a smile of pure but not particularly abundant generosity. "They could tolerate the density of population when their attention was fixed exclusively on the business of survival, but when the breeding season came around, the males became fiercely territorial. It wasn't the absolute limitation of s.p.a.ce that was important, but the perceived limitation. The compet.i.tion for territory became so intense so suddenly that the animals couldn't handle the consequent physiological stress. Their systems became permanently adremdinized. Snowshoe hares are relatively meek, so they just drop dead in droves, mostly from heart attacks. Lemmings aren't-when they get into fighting mode, they simply can't stop. The lemmings that died in the last couple of so-called lemming years were mostly killed on the roads, and human activity has had such a profound effect on their numbers that there'll probably never be another, but the lemmings that had attracted the most attention back in the famous lemming years were the ones that carried their territorial squabbles to the limits of the available territory. They fought on cliff tops for every last meter, sometimes to the death. Suicide wasn't a factor, although sheer frustration was."

"And all these examples became parables in the sixties and seventies because everybody thought that something of the same sort was going to happen to us," Lisa finished for him. "I see."

"If only," Miller said. "What actually happened was that a few strident alarmists began telling people that something of the sort was bound to happen to the human population if we didn't take measures to prevent it, and take them soon. soon. For five years or so, a few people listened, and crew anxious-and then even they decided that by far, the easiest way to stave off the anxiety was not to listen to the alarmists. So they played the proverbial ostrich and stuck their heads in the sand. They were encouraged to do it by economic theorists who # thought that economic growth was the only worthwhile goal of collective human endeavor, and that population growth was good because it facilitated economic growth. Ironically enough, the original founders of Mouseworld were also anti-alarmists." For five years or so, a few people listened, and crew anxious-and then even they decided that by far, the easiest way to stave off the anxiety was not to listen to the alarmists. So they played the proverbial ostrich and stuck their heads in the sand. They were encouraged to do it by economic theorists who # thought that economic growth was the only worthwhile goal of collective human endeavor, and that population growth was good because it facilitated economic growth. Ironically enough, the original founders of Mouseworld were also anti-alarmists."

Lisa hadn't been expecting that, and she couldn't take advantage of the pause that Miller left for her to pick up the baton and carry the argument forward.