The Cassandra Complex

That was when the eggs started to fall on the police line. The “Rioters’ Handbook” on the net advised all demonstrators to start with eggs, because eggs were messy without threatening real injury. The tactic was supposed to put the police at a PR disadvantage, because passing out riot shields in response to half a dozen eggs would always look like over-reaction when the videotapes were studied. Every policeman and newsreader in the land had read the “Rioters’ Handbook,” of course—but that didn’t make the gambit any easier to counter.

Ke

As if her flight were the cue that the demonstrators had been waiting for, a hundred voices took up Keeper Pan’s suggested chant—and the hundred increased as the bystanders began to join in with the fun.

As soon as he was back in the command vehicle, hot on Lisa’s heels, Ke

“What kind of gas?” a uniformed inspector demanded.

How nice to have a choice, Lisa thought. Once upon a time, it all had to end in tears, but now we have an entire spectrum of specialist smokes,

“No gas!” Ke

If only the demonstrators had been working to the same sporting assumptions, all might have been well—but the new kinds of gas were advertised on the net, and the best efforts of His Majesty’s Customs & Excise were inadequate to prevent deliveries to eager customers. The reservists hardly had to to take up their formations when the gas grenades began to break them up again—and when they charged, they charged, raggedly but with violent effect. If they refrained from head-breaking, it was only because their training had taught them well enough the tactics of jab-and-slash. They went for bellies, balls, and kneecaps, and cut down the opposition with far more effect than random blows to hard heads could ever have achieved.

The protesters didn’t panic, but the bystanders did—and somehow, the least-careful bystanders now seemed to be in the front Unes to the right and the left, if not yet in the center.

Lisa and Chan observed the chaos dutifully from the command vehicle, each with a conscientiously clinical eye.

“You were right, Miss,” the security man observed, as if it were cause for surprise.

Lisa knew long before the official a

The ALF claimed yet another famous victory, and wisely refrained from returning to the fray on behalf of the rats and mice. Eagle and Jude were arrested but released without charge; Keeper Pan was the only real catch among those against whom there was sufficient video evidence to bring charges of assault. Under her birth name, Pamela Hardiston, she was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, but was removed from Warminster Open after seven days on medical grounds. She was credited with five more weeks of theoretical jail time at the Royal United, served under the joint supervision of Group Four and Bristol Cityplex Social Services, before being released on parole.

Lisa had faced at least a hundred perpetrators of serious crimes in various courtrooms before she finally ran up against one, in 2019, who was crazy enough to swear that he would come back and kill her when he was released. She was mildly surprised that it had taken so long, given the extreme reluctance of the vast majority of serious offenders to accept any responsibility for their own deeds. It always seemed to be somebodyelse’s fault, and police scientists in general were no less unpopular among the criminal classes than detectives, but detectives received far more threats of vengeance—though not, of course, as many as i

The man who broke precedent by threatening Lisa was a serial rapist named Victor Leverer, who appeared utterly convinced of his i

“Don’t worry about it, Lis,” Mike Grundy said after the judge had delayed sentence so that a psychiatric report could be compiled. “He’s just putting on a mad act before he goes to the shrink. It’s only a ploy.”

“The problem with that kind of ploy,” Lisa told him glumly, “is that the people who try it sometimes fall for their own patter. If he pretends hard enough that I’m the Antichrist who stitched him up on behalf of Lesbians Incorporated, he might end up believing it, and even if the shrinks tell the judge to throw the book at him, he’ll be out in seven—ten at the most. That’s plenty long enough for the grievance to fester, but not so long that I needn’t worry about it till I’m old.”

“These things never come to anything,” Mike told her. “Real life’s not like TV and the movies. He’ll have other things on his mind once he’s sent down. He’ll forget all about you inside of a year.”

“Real life is getting more like TV and the movies every day,” she countered with a sigh. “Where else can people find their role models now that the family’s completely broken down and nobody reads books anymore?”

“The family hasn’t broken down,” he assured her. “And people still read. It’s only TV that says otherwise.”

In Mike Grundy’s view, he and Helen still constituted a family of sorts in 2019, even though he’d accepted Helen’s decision not to have children. On the other hand, while Mike and Helen were alike in hardly ever opening a book for other than strictly functional reasons, Lisa was a committed reader.

“Well,” she said philosophically, “I suppose it goes with the territory. I suppose anyone who retires from the force without accumulating a whole football team of ugly monsters who’ve threatened to chop them into little pieces at the first opportunity obviously hasn’t made sufficient impact on the Empire of Evil.”

Oddly enough, it was the fallout from the Leverer case that first brought Lisa into contact with the Real Women, whose movement was still visible and fairly buoyant. She had often seen members of the clique working out in the gym she had been using for the last seven months, and had taken note of the fact that they were becoming gradually more numerous, but it wasn’t until Leverer’s threats hit the headlines that any of them tried to recruit her, or even to test out her credentials as a fellow traveler.