Текст книги "The Cassandra Complex"

Автор книги: Brian Stableford

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

NINE

The building into which Lisa and Peter Grimmett Smith ascended was indeed perfectly ordinary, at least by the standards of recent construction. The elevator from the parking lot took them only as far as the lobby atrium, where they had to pass through a metal detector before being allowed to approach the reception desk. The edge of the circular desk was surmounted by a transparent wall made of some chitinoid substance that glittered eerily as its curves reflected the light of the high-set mock chandeliers.

Smith passed a smartcard through a narrow slit in the wall. The bored teenage girl who accepted it fed it to her station with the world-weary air that was currently de rigueur among what the tabloids called “slaves of the machines.”

“That’s okay, Mr. Smith,” she said after consulting her screen. “Dr. Goldfarb’s waiting for you. Take elevator number nine. This afternoon’s code is 857. Thank you for your patience.”

Lisa tried to remember when “Thank you for your patience” had replaced such vapid formulas as “Have a nice day” in the standard lexicon of programmed social interaction, but she couldn’t put a date on it. Patience had been in such short supply for so long that the mantra might have come into use at any time between 2001 and 2030.

The principal design features of the high-rise had, of course, predated the establishment of the Containment Commission by some twenty years. Their ostensible purpose in the 2020s had been to offer protection against the ever-present menaces of client rage and employees inclined to “go postal.” Unfortunately, the equipment of such edifices with “fortress hearts” had quickly demonstrated that the quality of a fortress is only as good as the people and systems manning it. It hadn’t taken more than a couple of years to reveal the many kinds of chaos that could be created in such a building by a systems crash, and only a couple of years more to reveal how much worse such chaos could become if it were boosted by active malice.

Arguments had raged for years as to how much better each new generation of “foolproof software” really was—until the advent of new plagues had brought about a sudden reversal of public opinion as the millions of people who had to work within the carcasses of these monstrosities suddenly realized the advantages of careful isolation. The building housing the West-of-England office of the Ahasuerus Foundation was probably host to more than a hundred different megacorp groups and close to a thousand human employees, whose chances of picking up even so much as a common cold within its walls were negligible. Even the fiercest plague war was highly unlikely to touch inhabitants of institutions like this one, provided they kept their cars clean and their clothes smart. It also helped if they lived alone.

No wonder the world is overfull of workaholics, Lisa thought as the elevator smoothly carried them up to the thirty-first floor. While conversation was suspended, she took the opportunity to ring Mike Grundy and ask for news. He reported that Chan still hadn’t checked in and that his own attempts to see Ed Burdillon at the hospital had been thwarted by Smith’s men. He also confirmed that her flat was still out of bounds. Lisa asked him to transfer her car, some clean clothes, and a few other essentials of everyday life to the Renaissance. He promised to see to it.

“Did your people get anything useful from Ed Burdillon?” she asked Smith when she’d returned the phone to her belt.

“Nothing useful,” Smith told her, so glumly that it had to be true. “We passed the clothes he was wearing to Forrester—let’s hope he can come up with something.”

The elevator car was capable of sideways movement through “unmanned corridors,” as well as vertical movement in its shaft, so it eventually delivered them direct to a door that was supposedly unreachable by any other means.

Dr. Goldfarb was a little man in a dark-blue suit. The suit was as smart in the new sense as Peter Grimmett Smith’s, and considerably smarter in the old sense. Although the texture of Goldfarb’s skin implied that he was five or ten years younger than Smith and Lisa, he was wearing gold-rimmed spectacles that would not have looked out of place in a Dickensian costume drama; either he was something of a poseur, Lisa deduced, or he was untreatably phobic about lasers.

Goldfarb ushered his visitors through the reception area and into his station-packed inner sanctum. He seemed to be in sole charge of the office at present, although there were two chairs in each section. He politely offered both the chairs in the inner office to his visitors, but Smith declined and Lisa thought it best to do likewise. It was as if none of the three wanted to offer any of the others the psychological advantage of standing.

“I’m afraid that I really can’t offer you much help,” Goldfarb said, securing his quasiDickensian image by rubbing his hands together to emphasize his helplessness and his regret.

“This is both a police matter and a matter of national security,” Smith informed him coldly. “I understand that you need to operate a policy of strict confidentiality, but Morgan Miller’s life may be in danger. We need to know exactly what he told you.”

“Oh, yes, of course”Goldfarb was quick to say. “I’ve been in touch with New York, and they agree entirely that we must cooperate fully.The problem is that Professor Miller really didn’t give me any significant information when he visited. I’ve made a tape of our entire interview for you, but I fear that you won’t find it very useful.”

As he spoke, he picked up a wafer from the console to his left and held it out to Lisa. Lisa accepted it, then glanced at Smith to see if he wanted it passed on to him immediately. When he made no sign, she put it in the breast pocket of her tunic.

“Thank you,” said Smith.

“I’m not trying to hide anything,” Goldfarb insisted, although no one had insinuated by word or gesture that he was. “Professor Miller came here primarily to ask me questions about the organization. He’d read our mission statement and had made what seemed to me to be a reasonably comprehensive study of the research projects we currently sponsor, but he seemed slightly anxious about certain unfortunate rumors that have circulated in the tabloid press….”

“I presume that what you mean,” Peter Grimmett Smith observed, although he didn’t inject any measurable sarcasm into the statement, “is that he wanted to make sure you’re a real research institute, not a bunch of crackpot conspirators.”

Goldfarb actually blushed, but he didn’t go so far as to wince. “If you want to put it so crudely,” he conceded. “Professor Miller was anxious to ascertain that we would make responsible use of any data that he might pass on to us.”

“But he didn’t tell you what the data in question might be?” Smith asked. Lisa didn’t think much of Smith’s interrogatory technique, but he was severely handicapped by his reluctance to ask the questions he actually wanted answered. To introduce the topic of antibody packaging would be recklessly indiscreet.

“As you’ll see for yourself when you look at the transcript,” Goldfarb murmured defensively. Lisa realized that one reason why Smith hadn’t taken the wafer from her was that he was signaling to Goldfarb that he knew perfectly well that the transcript could easily have been doctored and didn’t consider it worth the silicon and rare earth it was printed on. “All he said,” Goldfarb added when he realized that Smith and Lisa were waiting for him to go on, “is that he’d been trying to solve a seemingly intractable problem for nearly forty years, and that although he’d failed, he thought he ought to make his data available so that other researchers wouldn’t have to repeat all his wasted stratagems.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Lisa said immediately. “I’ve known Morgan Miller for thirty-nine years, and I’ve followed every step of his quest to solve the problem of developing a universal transformation system. Even if he hasn’t published every last detail of his failed attempts, there’s nothing esoteric about the work. Anyway, why should he think that an organization like yours would be interested in his records? He’s never done anything specifically relevant to longevity research or suspended-animation techniques.”

“Really?” said Goldfarb, who seemed genuinely surprised. “I must admit that isn’t the impression he gave me. When you look at the transcript—”

“What isthe impression he gave you?” Smith butted in.

Goldfarb hesitated, but only for a moment. “Well,” he said, blushing again, “I did get the impression that the data to which he referred wasdirectly relevant to the core element of our mission statement.”

“The extension of the human life span?” Smith was quick to clarify.

“The fostering of human emortality,” Goldfarb corrected him. Glancing sideways at Lisa, he added: “That’s emortality with an ‘e.’ Our founder disliked the word immortality’ because he thought it implied an inability to die no matter what, whereas—”

“I know what emortality means,” Lisa said through slightly gritted teeth. “I’m a scientist, not a community policeman—and I’ve known Morgan Miller well for nearly forty years. Are you suggesting that Morgan was engaged throughout that time on some clandestine line of research that he never even mentionedto me?”

Goldfarb shrugged. “I know nothing about the circumstances …” he began, but trailed off in evident confusion, unable to decide where the sentence ought to go.

“But you’re definitely telling us that whatever this line of research was, it was unsuccessful?” Smith put in. “According to what he told you, he only wanted to save others from wandering up the same blind alleys, not knowing that they’d already been checked.”

“That’s what he told me,” Goldfarb agreed hesitantly. It didn’t need a psychologist to spot the implied “but.”

“And what did youtell New York?” Smith demanded.

Goldfarb didn’t reply. He and his superiors had obviously agreed that he had a duty to override the issues of confidentiality that were relevant to his conversation with Morgan Miller, but Smith’s question presumably went beyond that decision. “It was just an impression I got,” the little man said defensively.

“We’ve already taken note of the fact that you’re the kind of man who forms a lot of impressions,” Smith said rather intemperately. “What did you tell New York?”

“Nothing,”Goldfarb insisted. “It’s just… I’m trying to helpyou here … it’s just that scientists nowadays have got into the habit of playing their cards very close to their chests. Miller came here fishing for information, and I wasn’t entirely sure that he’d have bothered doing that if his results had been as uniformly negative as he said they were. I told New York that I thought he was probably keeping something up his sleeve.”

Goldfarb was blushing again, having obviously considered the possibility that it might have been his “impression” that had prompted Morgan Miller’s kidnapping. It didn’t seem very likely to Lisa, but in a crazy world, it sometimes didn’t need much to trigger precipitate responses.

“That was rather irresponsible, don’t you think?” she put in.

“There’s also the possibility that he’d missed something,” Goldfarb retorted, shifting his ground uncomfortably. “Scientists don’t always have a clear view of the implications of their own results, especially if they haven’t exposed them to any kind of peer review. I told New York that I thought Miller might be uncertain about the causes for his failure, and that he might want someone else to take a look at his results in case they could pick up something he’d overlooked. He did seem … well, frustrated.As if he were annoyed with himself for not having solved what must have seemed at first to be a minor obstacle, even after all this time. There was something about the manner of his approach that suggested desperation.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Lisa said, unable to contain her annoyance. “You may think you’re a good judge of character, Dr. Goldfarb, but the person you’re describing isn’t Morgan Miller, and the Morgan Miller I know never gave me the slightest hint that he was working on any kind of longevity technology. None of this rings true. I don’t have a clue as to why he came to you, but if he really said what you say he said, in the way you say he said it, then he must have been playing a part. He was spinning you a line, maybe because he wanted to find out something about Ahasuerus—or you—that he couldn’t find out without trickery.”

Lisa saw that Smith was frowning, and realized that Mike Grundy would probably have been blazing mad if she’d gone off like that during one of his interviews. She knew she shouldn’t be throwing speculations of this sort at a witness—but everything Goldfarb said had needled her.

“How good is your security, Dr. Goldfarb?” Smith asked, abruptly changing the subject.

“Oh, the very best,” Goldfarb assured him, seemingly glad that the subject had been changed. “Our founder was a systems expert, thoroughly versed in methods of encryption, and he knew as well as anyone what damage can be done when confidential information becomes available to people who want to use it for their own ends.”

Such as precipitating stock-market crashes, Lisa thought.

“So nobody outside your organization could possibly have obtained a copy of the text on the wafer you’ve just given my colleague?” Smith followed up. “Even though it’s been to New York and back, and even though you’ve recently produced a decrypted version?” Unless, of course, Lisa added silently, it was deliberately leaked, here or across the pond.

“Nothing’s absolutely certain,” Goldfarb admitted cautiously, “but I have to say that it’s very unlikely. At the very least, we’d surely have some indication if our systems had been hacked. We have verygood alarm bells.”

As if on cue, a bell began to sound. Goldfarb spun around as if he’d been burned, but he relaxed almost immediately when he realized that it wasn’t an alarm at all. It was Peter Grimmett Smith’s phone.

Smith scowled, turning his back to take the call.

“I thought for a moment that something had crashed downstairs,” Goldfarb said to Lisa, as if to establish the fact that he was not listening in to Smith’s conversation. “It seems to happen more frequently with every week that passes. It’s all that newspaper talk about ‘slaves of the machine’—nobody with half a brain wants to do basic inputting and negotiation anymore in case they get stuck with a reputation as an idiot, so we get stuck with actual idiots minding reception and the parking facilities. They’re always pressing the wrong buttons and getting flustered because they can’t work their way out of the error maze. Believe me, Dr. Friemann, ouralarms neverring, and nobody in this office has ever been accused of contributory negligence. If Morgan Miller was kidnapped because of anything he told me—which I find very difficult to believe, in view of its vagueness and negative tenor—the kidnappers must have picked it up somewhere else. You mighttry the Algenlsts in Swindon; I believe Professor Miller was also checking them out, although I can’t imagine why.”

The words “pot,” “kettle,” and “black” floated unbidden into Lisa’s mind, but she resisted the temptation to extend the thought. Ever since Judith Kenna had begun to hunt for evidence of the twentieth-century habits Lisa had allegedly failed to transcend, she had been trying to update her stock of cliches.

Smith turned around again. “It’s Ginny,” he said. “Chan Kwai Keung’s at the booth outside the lot. He must have followed us out from the Renaissance. He wants to talk to you, Lisa. He says it’s a private matter that he’s not prepared to discuss with anyone else until he’s cleared it with you.”

Lisa could hardly help but infer that whatever Chan had to say, it must have an urgent bearing on Morgan Miller’s kidnapping—but she had no more idea than Smith of why Chan couldn’t have told the police, or the MOD man Smith had instructed to talk to him.

“I’d better go down,” she said.

Smith obviously resented being dragged away from an interview he didn’t consider to be complete, but it was equally obvious that he wasn’t about to let Lisa talk to Chan without being there to hear what was said. He turned away again, although all he said into the mouthpiece of the phone was: “Tell the guard to let him in. We’re on our way—we’ll be there in five minutes.”

“I’m sorry,” said Goldfarb, “but I really don’t think there’s anything else I can tell you.”

“That’s okay,” Smith said insincerely. “We’ll take a look at the transcript while we’re on the road to Swindon, and if there’s anything we need to come back for, we’ll contact you by phone.”

“I’ll call you an elevator,” Goldfarb said, reaching out to make good his word. His eagerness to be rid of them would be understandable, Lisa thought, even if he had a conscience as pure as—

She swallowed the intended reference to driven snow, cursing at the necessity of censoring her private thoughts.

The elevator had arrived at the door of the outer office by the time Goldfarb had ushered them out of his little empire. Goldfarb didn’t actually push them into it, but the little man’s hands were fluttering with ill-restrained impatience. “I do hope you find Professor Miller before any harm comes to him,” he said anxiously. “A terrible thing—and Edgar Burdillon hurt! Terrible! A man held in the greatest respect throughout ourorganization, I can assure you.”

“Did Miller mention Burdillon when he came to see you?” Smith asked, pausing on the threshold of the elevator.

“No,” said Goldfarb. “At least, I don’t think—”

The bespectacled man was still in mid-sentence when the door slid shut and the elevator slid sideways toward its shaft.

A universal transformermight be as useful to researchers in the longevity field as any other, Lisa thought as they descended. Was it possible that Morgan had been talking about the main line of his research, albeit from a slightly odd angle? The transformer he never found might have been even more useful to people determined to give humankind a hefty shove up the evolutionary ladder. If Morgan hadbeen talking to Goldfarb about his own Holy Grail, and someone misunderstood…. Maybe he’d recently seen some results obtained by one of the researchers sponsored by Ahasuerus that connected in a nonobvious way with what he’d been doing for the last forty years—something that made him see some of his former results in a new light. Maybe his old hopefulness had been stirred up again.

She abandoned the train of thought when she noticed that Peter Grimmett Smith was frowning. His mind was still on Chan Kwai Keung, and Chan’s insistence on speaking to Lisa. All the suspicions Smith had generously set aside in order to make use of her expertise had obviously been reawakened. He looked like a man who was wondering whether he might have made a serious mistake. Given his age, he must be in the same position relative to compulsory retirement that Lisa was, and he probably had an equally thin margin for error,

Lisa wished that she’d had more sleep and that she didn’t feel so ragged. Despite the smartish dressing, her right arm had begun to ache all the way from the elbow to the palm of her hand.

Fortunately, Smith still remembered the code when the elevator reached its destination on the ground floor. The teenage receptionist hardly glanced at them as they crossed the lobby to the other elevator; she was busy with her computer, making a great show of concern, although the dullness of her blue eyes gave the lie to her performance.

“Do you think he was lying?” Lisa asked Smith, hoping to distract his attention from more embarrassing possibilities. “Goldfarb, I mean.”

“Difficult to say,” Smith replied, catching his lower lip with his teeth as he put on a show of bringing the question into focus. “The trouble with organizations like Ahasuerus is that they’re a law unto themselves. They think they’re above petty national concerns. If Miller hadgiven them something they considered valuable, I’m not at all sure that they’d tell us what it was just because the poor devil has been kidnapped. They’d be more likely to hire some fancy mercenary group to go after the kidnappers for them—but we’ve had no indication yet of any such move, and even if Ahasuerus’s private enclave of the net is as secure as Goldfarb thinks it is, there isn’t a mercenary outfit in these parts whose communications are any more solid than a sieve.”

“And if he isn’ttelling the truth,” Lisa said, “why make up such a peculiar story? Why take the trouble to tell us that whatever Morgan wanted to give him, it’s forty years out of date? And why throw in all those impressions? It’s not the kind of smoke screen I’d have—”

She broke off as the elevator stopped and its twin doors parted.

“Oh, fuck!”she breathed.

Directly ahead of them, about fifteen meters away, the body of Peter Grimmett Smith’s driver lay supine on the concrete, unconscious or dead. There was an obscenely large gun in her outstretched right hand, pointed in the direction of a yellow Fiat that was skewed across the entry.

If appearances could be trusted, the Fiat had been shunted into that position by a black Daf van, both of whose doors were yawning wide. The huge screen shielding the entrance to the parking lot had almost completed its descent a couple of meters behind the van.

Chan Kwai Keung was standing beside the Fiat, having apparently exited the driver’s seat in some distress. There was blood on his forehead and naked fear in his face as he stared at a black-helmeted figure who was pointing a gun almost as large as Ginny’s at his chest, from little more than arm’s distance.