“But Dr. Friemann is a police officer,” Kenneally pointed out. “For her, it’s a matter of duty.”

Chan called Edgar Burdillon on his mobile phone and told him what the chief inspector was planning to do, but Kenneally was no more impressed by Burdillon’s objections than he had been by Chan’s.

“If you go out to talk to them, they will turn it into an argument,” Chan said to Lisa. “It will add fuel to the flames. Far better to stonewall them. If the chief inspector’s men can hold their position, the gale might just blow itself out. If you provoke them, you will definitely end up having to deploy riot shields and mount baton charges.”

“It’s not my decision,” was all that Lisa could say in reply.

“With all due respect, Dr. Chan,” Kenneally said, “I think I know more about keeping order in this sort of situation than you do. I helped to police dozens of political demonstrations and labor disputes while I was in the Met between fifteen and ten years ago. I even faced down the Countryside Alliance a time or two.”

“The Countryside Alliance went to bat for the privilege of killing things,” Lisa pointed out tiredly. “They weren’t possessed by anything like the kind of righteous fervor that has these people in its grip.”

In the end, of course, the chief inspector prevailed. He was the one with the privilege of issuing orders. Kenneally and his reluctant scientific adviser sallied forth, valiantly hoping to slay the dragon of extremism with the lance of moderation.

The crowd outside the main entrance of the building was about two hundred strong, but at least three-quarters of them had only come along to watch. They weren’t being proselytized particularly fiercely and for the moment, they weren’t part of the mob per se. The Animal Liberation Front and its allied organizations had bused in some two dozen agitators to swell the ranks of the local hard-liners, most of whom were local only in the sense that they lived somewhere in the cityplex. Being the easternmost campus of the Combined Universities, this one had attracted far less public attention in the past than those closer to the old Bristol city center, but the videotape that some insider had cobbled together with the aid of a miniature camera had brought the facility into prominence in spite of the fact that what the tape actually showedwas negligible without the highly imaginative and completely mistaken voice-over. Having come into the eye of the public, however, the campus was not to be allowed to slip out again without a fight; that had become a point of principle ever since the ALF’s nuisance tactics had started winning battles.

Chief Inspector Kenneally was a hardened twentieth-century man; he hadn’t adapted to the reality of the new millennium. He still believed in arbitration and compromise, but his opponents here were only interested in forcing concessions—and if they had to batter a few policemen to do it, they were ready to face the consequences. The jails were so overcrowded that they would be out on amnesty in a matter of months.

The leaders of the demonstration went by the cod-revolutionary pseudonyms of Eagle, Jude, and Keeper Pan. Keeper Pan was the only female. All three had voices trained to carry, and none was given to speaking if he or she could shriek instead.

When Chief Inspector Kenneally tried to assure the three of them that he could assuage many of their anxieties concerning the nature of the experiments in which the department’s dogs were involved, they assured him that he could not. When he denied that any dogs kept by the university had ever been infected with brain-damaging antibodies or artificial viruses, they told him they had heard such apologetic lies a hundred times before, and invited him to deny that the pups that had been seen to die in a gas chamber were really dead.

“I can’t do that,” he admitted, “but my colleague Dr. Friemann will be pleased to explain to you exactly what kind of research is being conducted, and what benefits are expected to flow from it for thousands of household pets and working dogs.”

Thanks a lot, Lisa thought as the hostile gazes of the three liberationists swung around to study her face. Eagle’s face was doubly shielded by blond dreadlocks along with face paint that split his features into black and white, but his blue eyes were penetrating. Jude’s warpaint was less flamboyant, and his dark eyes seemed less threatening, but Keeper Pan must have been even paler of complexion than Eagle when she was not in uniform, and the pinpoint pupils in her brilliant turquoise irises seemed particularly sinister.

“Just as her colleague Dr. Goebbels would have been happy to explain exactly how the death of the victims hesent to the gas chambers would benefit the mass of humankind,” Eagle informed the chief inspector from the side of his mouth. “Murderers are never short of excuses.”

“My job is to catch murderers,” Lisa pointed out, figuring that while she was in the spotlight, she might as well try to do the job. “Not to mention rapists, thieves, and animal abusers. I analyse DNA—not just human DNA, but plant and animal DNA. I can tie a suspect to a crime scene by means of the grass stains on his shoes. I can identify the individual nest from which eggs have been looted and the individual tiger whose organs have been ground up to make quack medicines—and I’ve done both those things, for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the World Wildlife Fund. I’m not the enemy. Biologists are not the enemy.”

“Biologists who murder animals in the name of experimentation arethe enemy,” Jude retorted. “They’re the enemy we’re here to fight, the enemy we’re here to stop. Biologists who create whole new species whose sole reason for being is to suffer from horrible diseases are the enemy.Biologists who make new kinds of viruses for use as weapons of war are the enemy.Biologists who play with immunosup-pressants and prions as if they were toys are the enemy.They’re the enemy that has to be defeated if we’re to five like truly humanbeings. They’re the enemy that has to be defeated if we’re to five at all. “

His oratorical technique was good. If he hadn’t been trained, Lisa thought, he’d certainly put in some practice. As far as the people who’d come only to be bystanders were concerned, he was winning hands down.

“The vice-chancellor has agreed to set up an internal inquiry to look into all the allegations made by the person who made the tape,” Kenneally said, obviously figuring that it might be best to bring the discussion down to earth again. “He’s also offered to let you have a seat on the committee as well as to send delegates to give evidence. That’s generous, I think—”

“Generous!” echoed Keeper Pan, her high-pitched voice cutting through the stormy air like an ancient factory whistle. “One place in a ready-made committee! One vote against a ready-made majority! One voice against a chorus! One honest witness against a team of stooges! Inquiry’s just another word for stall.We don’t want an inquiry—we want immediate action and a public guarantee that all animal experiments will be abandoned for good. We want it now”Perhaps, Lisa thought, Jude and Keeper Pan practiced their rabble-rousing techniques after sex, just as she and Morgan Miller had always practiced the art of clinical rhetoric.

Even Kenneally knew that Keeper Pan’s last cry was the cue for a chant, and he tried to get in the way.

“That’s not possible,” he said, raising his voice to make sure everyone could hear him. “That simply isn’t possible.”

“Yes, it is,” Eagle shouted back. “It’s not just possible, it’s easy.All you have to do is let the animals go.”

Haifa million mice!Lisa thought. Well, maybe we should. Give them the half-million mice, and the cats— not to mention the rabbits— and let them carry their prizes away, while smooth-talking them into refraining from killing one another. If only Ed and Morgan had a pride of lions and a flock of lambs! How these fools could educate us then in the art of the possible!