“It istrue,” Lisa said. “What he told me just now. I’m sure of it.”

“It’s only a couple of hours since you were equally sure he couldn’t possibly have kept a secret from you for the last thirty-nine years,” the Real Woman pointed out. “But that’s a cheap shot. I know it’s true. I was prepared to believe it as soon as he came out with it. It was so horribly plausible—and I mean horriblyplausible.”

“So why did you start burning him?”

Arachne shrugged. “You know how it is with committee decisions,” she said. “There’s always some stupid fucker who won’t fall in with the party line. Collective responsibility always gives birth to collective irresponsibility. It wasn’t vindictiveness, Lisa—not on my part, anyhow. If I’d been running the show … but you know how the spirit of sisterhood works. Discussion good, hierarchy bad. Result: confusion decaying into chaos. I knew we’d lost the plot the moment he opened his mouth. You know what? I actually think he was right. I think he did the right thing, at least up to a point. There really are some things that man was not meant to know. Never thought I’d say that. Could I get anyone else to see it the same way, though? Could I fuck. Crazy times, hey?”

“I don’t,” Lisa murmured.

“Don’t what?”

“I don’t think he did the right thing. Not even up to a point. He should have let other people in. Not necessarily me, but somebody. Ed Burdillon or Chan. It’s not just collective responsibility that mothers irresponsibility if you don’t take precautions.”

Arachne West shook her head slightly, but there wasn’t the least hint of a smile about her forceful features. “‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive,’” she quoted. “Always been one of my favorites. So why’d you do it, Lisa? Have your ova stripped and frozen, I mean. That looked verysuspicious. Could even have got you killed if Stella and the other loose cannons had blasted off a few broadsides.” She obviously didn’t know how close she was to the truth.

Lisa sat down on the edge of the desk. “It was one of the things I used to debate with Morgan, back in the days when we were as close as close could be. Although he admitted that one of the major causes of the population explosion was the clause in the UN’s Charter of Human Rights that guaranteed everyone the right to found a family, he wasn’t opposed to it, and he didn’t altogether approve of the Chinese approach limiting family size by legislation. What was really needed, he always argued, was for people to accept the responsibility that went with the right: to exercise the right in a conscientious fashion, according to circumstance.

“There had been times in the past, he said, and might be times in the future, when the conscientious thing to do was to have as many children as possible as quickly as possible—but in the very different circumstances pertaining in the early years of the twenty-first century, the conscientious thing to do was to postpone having children for as long as possible. To refuse to exercise the right to found a family was, in his opinion, a bad move, because human rights are too precious to be surrendered so meekly. His solution to the problem had been to make a deposit in a sperm bank, with the proviso that it shouldn’t be used until after he was dead.

“I decided, in the end, to do likewise—but there was a slight technical hitch. Donor sperm was easy to acquire and by no means in short supply, but the procedure to remove eggs from a woman’s ovaries is much more invasive. Eggs were in such short supply that there was no provision in the contract for the kind of delay clause Morgan inserted. A donation was supposed to be a donation, and that was that—but the bank was prepared to make an informal compromise and agree to leave my eggs on long-term deposit unless the need became urgent. I figured that the principle remained the same, so I settled for that. It had nothing to do with Morgan’s emortality research.”

“Are you sure?” the Real Woman asked.

Lisa saw immediately what Arachne was getting at. Morgan had persuaded her to make the deposit. The arguments he had used were good ones, but in view of what she now knew, they probably had not been the ones foremost in his mind. Back in the first decade of the new millennium, he must have hoped that all the problems he’d so far encountered with his new technology were soluble. He must have hoped that he might one day be able to make human women emortal—always provided that they had enough eggs left in their ovaries—or eggs available that could be replaced therein.

No wonder it looked so suspicious, she thought. No wonder Stella Filisetti took it as proof that I knew.

“Tangled webs,” Arachne observed. “Wish I could spin ’em like that.”

“You don’t seem to be in any great hurry to get the answer to your big question,” Lisa observed.

“No,” the Real Woman admitted. “As a matter of fact, what I was instructed to do—or would have been if we were allowed to use words like ‘instructed’—was simply to keep you here as long as possible. There’s no way for me to avoid implication in the kidnapping, or for Helen, but the rest of the girls have scattered to the four points of the compass and they have to figure that they have a chance to get away. How many mice do you suppose Stella managed to get out before the bombers went in? Anybody’s guess, isn’t it? Your colleagues will intercept a few, but they won’t get them all. The committee figured that was the fallback position that we had to protect at all costs. As far as they’re concerned, my only utility now is to hold back the hounds as long as possible—which means, the way they see it, preventing you from unleashing the pack prematurely. I’m supposed to shoot you, if necessary.”

“And Morgan?”

“Him too. Some of them even think I might do it. I have this tough image, you see. Some people bluster and threaten but never shoot, and some don’t but do. Then there are the Stellas, who shouldn’t ever be trusted with fireworks at all. We started out with the intention of not killing anyone, and I’d rather finish the same way if I can, but you shouldn’t take too much for granted. I have no idea of what I might be capable of if the situation becomes desperate. God, listen to me. Ifthe situation becomes desperate! By nightfall, the men at the Ministry of Defence will know that there’s a really neat weapon whose specifications are hidden somewhere in Morgan Miller’s house. And unlike us, they have all the time in the world to search for it. How many other menwill get to hear about it, do you suppose?”

“Your people will get at least some of the mice,” Lisa pointed out. “Stella and Helen have seen to that. Once they have the mice, it’s only a matter of time before they get the retrovirus. It’s just a virus. A vaccine can be developed, given time—but it would save time if your people had the gene map.”

“It’s alla matter of time now,” Arachne agreed, “and there’s never been enough of it. I don’t much feel like following orders, given that I’m the one who’s left holding the baby. I’d prefer to get a hold of the data, if I can—on any terms you care to offer, although I don’t have much to offer now I’ve already told you that I’m not going to kill anybody. I’d also like a chance to run. I probably won’t get far, but sisterhood has its advantages. So—if you ask Miller the big question, will he give you the big answer? And if he does, what will youdo with it?”

“We might not have time to do anything with it,” Lisa pointed out. “By now, Smith’s people will probably have purged the phone records. They’ll be after Helen and everyone they suspect of involvement. They were already looking for you.”

“That’ll tie up a lot of manpower,” Arachne observed. “Everybody running this way and that, far too busy to stop and count the daisies. I suppose Miller’s house is under guard?”