“You need some sleep,” Smith said. “My people still have work to do here, not just in Miller’s office and lab, but in Burdillon’s too—we’re not about to jump to any conclusions without covering all the ground. We also have to complete our background checks on the institutions before we move in on them. Chief Inspector Kenna says that you can’t go home yet, and there’s no point in challenging her ruling, so I want you to check into one of the hotels close to the campus and get your head down. I’ll be in one called the Renaissance, I think. Take a pill if you have to. I’ll pick you up when I’m ready.”

Lisa was about to protest, but she knew that the feeling of wakefulness prompted by the new information wouldn’t last. If she’d been sleeping properly for the last few weeks, it wouldn’t have done her much harm to miss out on a single night’s sleep, but she hadn’t actually had a goodnight’s sleep for as long as she could remember. She really did need to crash out, even if she had to take a pill to put her away and another to bring her around again. “Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll book into the Renaissance. It has delusions of grandeur, but a bed’s a bed.”

“Good,” said Smith. “With luck, this whole thing will be unraveled by this time tomorrow.” He didn’t sound as if he meant it, and Lisa could understand well enough why he wasn’t expecting overmuch luck. He worked for a government with its back against the wall. If the opposition were the EU, or the USA, or even representative of the kind of private enterprise in which the megacorps indulged, Smith would be working from a position of severe disadvantage.

On the other hand, Lisa thought as she moved toward the door, if it really is someone at Ahasuerus or the Institute of Algeny who has set this farce in motion, there might be hope. Common sense suggests that fringe organizations of their kind ought to be even less competent than the police or the Ministry of Defence.

She had left the room before she realized that she didn’t have her car, and would either have to walk to the campus gate or beg a lift from a friendly policeman. In the circumstances, the friendly policeman seemed to be the better choice, even if his friendliness might wane slightly when she explained that she couldn’t tell him anything of what had passed between herself and the man from the Ministry.

In the event, Mike Grundy had sufficient tact not to ask her what Smith had told her. He knew well enough that everything he couldn’t get directly from the man from the Ministry was being deliberately withheld, and that it wouldn’t be diplomatic to go after it, even in the privacy of his own car.

The journey to the Renaissance Hotel was only a few hundred yards, but it was long enough for Mike to voice concerns for Lisa’s safety.

“I could post a uniformed officer outside,” he suggested.

“When he could be doing something useful? Don’t be ridiculous, Mike. It’s broad daylight. If they’re crazy enough to come after me again—and I can’t believe for a moment they are—they’re going to wait until they have at least minimal cover.”

“They’re crazy enough to incinerate half a million mice,” Grundy pointed out. “They could be crazy enough to do anythingif things aren’t going their way. Amateur terrorism always looks good to the amateurs in question while it’s a plan on paper, but once the dreamers start acting it out, it always spins out of control.”

“It’s too complicated to be amateur terrorism,” Lisa told him, figuring that it was safe to say that much. “They want something, and they’re not going to do anything that will blow their chances of getting it. They won’t turn rat until they’re cornered, and we haven’t even got near them yet.”

“I could take you to my place,” he suggested. “I owe you, remember.”

“And your place is a fortress, is it? They walked straight into mine. I’m safer in the hotel, Mike. It’s a public place, full of human eyes and ears as well as the electronic kind.”

He conceded defeat readily enough as the Rover drew up on the hotel’s forecourt. “We’ll get them, Lis,” he said as she fumbled at the car door with her left hand. “We’ll find Morgan, and we’ll get him out.” It was pure bravado.

“Thanks, Mike,” was all Lisa could say when she finally got the door open. “We’ll talk later.”

As it turned out, she didn’t have to take a pill. The nights she had spent lying fretfully awake, unable to relax into sleep, had been spent in a very different context. Relaxation was no longer necessary; exhaustion had taken control. She didn’t even undress; the moment she was in her room, she had only to throw herself on the bed to pass swiftly into unconsciousness.

EIGHT

Lisa was unaware of having dreamed, or even of time having elapsed, when she was awakened by the ringing of the phone beside the bed. At first she had not the slightest idea of where she was; it took five seconds of bewildered confusion to get her mind back into gear and reconnect her with her memories of the long night and painful dawn. Even then, her reflexes made her reach for the phone with her right hand, and the torn skin between her thumb and forefinger sent a stab of pain into her brain as she flexed her fingers in preparation for the grab.

She overrode the warning and picked the handset up anyway, but transferred it to her left hand as soon as she had rolled over.

“Yes?” she said.

“Peter Grimmett Smith, Dr. Friemann. I’ve got a car to take us to Ahasuerus. I’ve brought you some breakfast. Five minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

She didn’t have a toothbrush or a comb, and her unsmart outer garments were not only bloodstained, but showing clear signs of long wear. There wasn’t much she could do about any of that; it was the inevitable penalty of clinging too hard to twentieth-century habits. She washed and tidied herself as well as she could, then went down to the lobby to meet Peter Grimmett Smith.

“Better not check out,” he told her. “You might need the room again.”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “But I’ll also need to go home at some stage, unless Mike Grundy or Steve Forrester can delegate someone to bring me some stuff from my wardrobe and bathroom. I’ll need my car too.”

“You can phone one of them later,” Smith said as he led her out to the car. “You really ought to invest in some smarter clothing—that tunic’s ruined.”

His own outer clothes, Lisa noted, were only shaped in an old-fashioned way; the fibers were brand new, as avidly active as anything on the market. Only something as paradoxical as gray power, she thought, could create a market for living fibers that maintained an appearance so staid as to seem more fossilized than dead.

The car was a sleek gray Jaguar with tinted windows. The driver’s window was wound down to reveal a young blond woman with eyes so pale as to seem almost colorless. Smith introduced her as Ginny. As soon as she and Lisa had exchanged nods, Ginny closed the window again, to seal herself away from the eyes of the world.

Smith opened the rear door for Lisa before going around to the other side of the car. The tray built into the back of the front-passenger seat was down; there was a cup of black coffee slotted into it beside a bag containing a flaccid croissant and an over-iced Danish pastry. The cup and the bag were both made of active fibers, though, so the coffee was still hot and the food was warm.

Lisa checked her wristwatch. She had slept through the remainder of the morning and well into the afternoon; it was far too late to be eating breakfast, but she was glad that Smith hadn’t attempted to provide lunch. She had lived alone all her life, and had long since given up hope that food technology would ever deliver a satisfactory prepackaged meal. She went to work on the food, glad of the simultaneous hit she obtained from the caffeine in the coffee and the sugar in the Danish pastry’s embellishments.