“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.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.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 attitude, it might not be a good idea for me to stay at your place. Does she know Helen?”

“God, I hope not,” Mike said. “Why?”

“Just something she said. Stella Filisetti has radfem connections.”

“Shemight 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 associate 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 screwing your old boyfriend.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’thave 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 hemight 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 Cassandra 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 fucking 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 dosomething. If Morgan were offered a way to stop playing Cassandra, couldn’t he be tempted? If he were offered a means of taking a hand, mightn’t the chance to set aside that awful feeling of futility have been irresistible?”

“Morgan’s not behind this,” Lisa assured 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 twowomen,” Lisa reminded him grimly. “And that’s just here. Maybe allof 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 scrap 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 Cassandra 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, youhave 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’tbehind 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.”