In the end, the Real Woman merely shook her head. “You’re both working for the Secret Masters,” she said. “You just want to keep it for yourselves. You know the collapse is coming—hell, it’s already begun. To you, it’s just the inevitable unraveling of the tragedy of the commons. Not to us. You intend to be the seed of a New Order—well, so do we, and we have a very different idea of what that New Order ought to be. If people like me don’t do anything, the crisis won’t simply kill us all—it’ll put people like youin power for ever and ever. Your threats don’t mean a damn thing while the whole damn world is trembling on the brink. You can lock me up and throw away the key. I won’t be any worse off than the billions who’ll be scythed down by hyperflu and its successors, or starved to death in the aftermath of the pandemic. At least I’ll have gone down fighting for something I believe in. It’s not a choice between trusting Filisetti and Friemann—it’s a choice between trusting the people who stand shoulder to shoulder with Filisetti and the people whose company Friemann keeps. People like you, Mr. Leland, and the Ministry hack, and Morgan Miller, the Neanderthal neoMalthusian. We’re fighting for the future here, and we’re not going to give it up until we’re all dead, even if what Miller told us turns out to be true. I’m giving you nothing—not even name, rank, and serial number.”
Leland was astonished, and Lisa couldn’t blame him. Everything Leland knew suggested that his ploy should have worked. On the other hand, everything sheknew suggested that the crazy sequence of crimes should never have happened at all. Even if Stella had convinced others that Morgan had what she presumably thought he had, they must have suspected all along that it was a mere mirage, and the failure of the operation should have convinced them all. The Real Woman must be nursing an exceptionally powerful hatred of Leland’s employers if she wasn’t prepared to play ball “even if what Miller told us turns out to be true.”
What Morgan must have told his kidnappers, of course, was that Stella had got it absurdly wrong—and he must surely have been able to explain to them exactly how and why she had got it wrong. But what, in that case, had Chan been so anxious to deliver to her? Stella Filisetti had obviously jumped to the conclusion it was the backup that hadn’t been found among Lisa’s possessions—but she’d never have been commissioned to collect it herself if her companions had been fully convinced. Stella must have been the prime mover in the conspiracy, but she obviously wasn’t giving the orders. So who was? Arachne West? Lisa couldn’t believe that. Arachne was too careful, too methodical.
While she was thinking, Leland had stood up and moved to the door, but he waited there for her to follow. Lisa signaled her consent with a slight nod and he led the way down to the kitchen. Jeff wasn’t there, and Lisa couldn’t hear any sounds of movement from within the cottage.
“Well,” Leland said as he opened the refrigerator and peered unenthusiastically into the lighted interior. “I guess that’s one own goal apiece. At least we know what we’re dealing with now.”
“Do we?” Lisa queried.
“They have to be Millenarians,” he said as he shut the fridge door and slumped down at the table with a can in each hand. “The end of the world is nigh, and anyone who wants to be saved has to follow the recipe, no matter how crazy. Anyone who stands in the way is an Antichrist in the direct employ of the Devil.” He offered the right-hand can to Lisa. According to the label, it was Szechuan pollen beer—highly nutritious but difficult to stomach. She shook her head and he shrugged, abandoning it on the tabletop so he could use his right forefinger to crack the seal on the other can.
“What she actually said,” Lisa pointed out, “is that you and I are working for the Secret Masters. Which we are—you directly, me indirectly, at least as long as I let this farce continue. And she could well be right about the impending pandemic too. If the release of hyperflu was the first strike in a biowar—and nobody seriously thinks otherwise, no matter how closely we guard our tongues—then the war probably will kill billions rather than millions, and social structures really will collapse all over the world. Even if the Containment Commission can come up with measures that work, Britain is too closely integrated into the global economy to withstand the aftermath.”
“I already told you we have that covered,” Leland reminded her uneasily.
“So you did,” Lisa agreed. “But you also told me that the Cabal, not the government, would see to the distribution of the defense mechanism. That’s exactly what the Real Woman’s afraid of. She finds the idea of your friends selecting the survivors even harder to bear than the idea of ecocatastrophic collapse.”
“My point exactly,” Leland came back. “She’s a Millenarian. The end is nigh, the New Order is yet to arise. You heard her. Filisetti must have found out about something Miller had fed in—or was intending to feed in—to Burdillon’s defense work. They want the antibody-packaging system for their own people. They probably came back for you because they thought they could use you as a lever to make Miller give it up, but the real key is Chan if he has the only backup not securely stashed on university or Ministry premises. How it must have burned them up to have to leave Burdillon behind at the university when they made their getaway! You were right—it isa wild goose chase. Whatever new wrinkle Miller brought, or intended to bring, to Burdillon’s inquiry, it can’t be as good as ours. We don’t need it—but that doesn’t mean I can let it go. If it’s really out there, I need a copy. A copy will do, but I can’t go back empty-handed. Got to justify my fee. I need to find Chan. We need to get Miller out too, of course, but I need to find Chan as well. Got to cover all the angles.”
Lisa was tempted to tell Leland, merely for the sake of honesty, that he had jumped to the wrong conclusion, but she contented herself by asking a question. “Was she right when she said that the megacorps regard the biowar as the inevitable unfolding of the tragedy of the commons?”
“Always the tragedy of the bloody commons,” Leland muttered. “You’d think we’d have forged a new cliche by now. Even the megacorp buccaneers who’ll fight the Hardinist label till they drop believe in thatone. You’ve read the essay, I suppose?”
“Oddly enough,” Lisa confessed, “I never did. Morgan explained the thesis to me, of course—and I did read The Ostrich Factor.”
“That’s not so popular in the ranks of the so-called Secret Masters,” Leland told her. “That’s why half of them refuse point-blank to describe themselves as Hardinists. They hatethe Russell Theorem. Remember the Russell Theorem?”
Lisa remembered the Russell Theorem well enough. Given that two other Russells were numbered among Morgan Miller’s favorite sources, Morgan had always taken great care to point out that the Russell approvingly cited by Garrett Hardin was a different one: Bertrand Russell. What Hardin had called Russell’s Theorem was the proposition that social solidarity could be maintained only in collective opposition to some external enemy, and that any world state would inevitably fall apart for lack of one.
“Why should the men who engineered the crash of ’25 hate the Russell Theorem?” Lisa asked, curious.
“Because they’re One Worlders through and through, of course,” Leland said. “They’re happy to use Hardinist cant to justify the big steal— Oh, no, we aren’t taking over the world because we’re greedy bastards who love being richer than anyone can imagine; we’re merely humble and dutiful souls who’ve accepted the responsibility of protecting the ecosphere from the tragedy of the commons—but now that they have the world in their pocket, they don’t want to hear any argument that says they’ll never be able to hold it together. Some people, of course—including our guest, apparently—reckon that the men behind the coup arethe common enemy of the remainder of mankind, and there are some among the world’s new owners who think that perception, however mistaken it may be in objective terms, might actually serve their purpose. Why else do you think they disseminate such terms as ‘Secret Masters’and ‘Cabal’?”