The Sum of Her Parts

by Alan Dean Foster

  It was noisy inside the House of Nasty, but not oppressively so. The intense goolmech that directly tickled one’s tympanum was comparatively subdued. So was the lighting. The latter condition was a given. Although perfectly willing to pay whatever was asked in order to indulge their preferential perversions, that did not mean the participants were prepared to have them highlighted for the delectation of potential tattletales. It was all well and good to delve into the depths of depravity and splash around in the muck, but not so if the details were allowed to find their way back to a spouse or relative or fiancée.

  As he threaded his way through the prattling, giggling, sucking crowd, the ambient illumination in the club’s main chamber shifted from red to purple and back again as artfully as in a properly mixed drink. Though the music being hammered out was not to his taste, he was grateful for the strings and percussion that drowned out most of the dim-witted palaver passing for conversation around him.

  Two bar counters separated by a dance floor and scattered tables faced each other across the basement. If they ran true to form they would offer more than alcohol. It was a truism of humanity that once a new stimulant or narcotic became available, a thousand people would line up to try it without a care as to whether it was effective, indifferent, or fatal. When it came to stimulants, reputation always trumped well-being. A place like this, he reflected, would stock the latest of everything. Better living through chemistry. Or better dying.

  Someone stepped in front of him to block his path. In her late thirties, the Meld was still attractive, with a voluptuous body whose gym and pill-toned attributes included three breasts that threatened to erupt from her single-piece cerulean dress like toothpaste from a broken old-fashioned tube. He eyed the various regions of bulging tanned flesh distastefully while drifting spheres of lime-green light ambled across them. Having no time for such diversions he impatiently tried to step around her. She sidled sideways to intercept him once again.

  Already bent slightly forward at the waist to emphasize his fragility, he twisted his torso into an even more damaged posture. “Please excuse me, madam. I am here only to quietly imbibe and perhaps have something to eat.”

  Putting hands on hips she struck a pose that was at least five thousand years old and threw him a lecherous smirk. “What, all supping and no tupping? Don’t you find me attractive?”

  “Even at my age and with my poor vision I can still say yes to that, my dear. Surely you do not think the same of me?” Before she could respond he raised a trembling hand to forestall the rote response that he knew would be forthcoming. Anything to get rid of her. “Please, no falsified flattery. I am not ashamed of my natural condition. Find yourself someone who can muster at least a minimum of endurance to match your intentions and leave me to drown my musings in peace.”

  The leer she wore like a carnivale mask widened. “So drinking’s your thing? Want to know what mine is?” Before he could demur she leaned toward him, multiple cleavage on ample display. “I like old guys,” she whispered and then straightened. “Want to know why?”

  He did not, but neither did he want to cause a scene and possibly scare off the person he was really looking for. “Why, my dear?”

  “Because I get off on their gratitude. It gives me a chill thrill. That’s a fair swap, isn’t it?” Reaching out she rested a hand on his left shoulder and squeezed, the nails that had been permanently bonded to the finger bones digging slightly into his flesh. “I know I’ll get mine. I guarantee you’ll get yours.”

  The vast variety of decadent tastes exhibited by humankind never failed to sadden him. “I know I could give you a surprise, madam, but I have neither the inclination nor the time nor the strength.” He took a step forward. A pale yellow orb drifted past his face and for the barest instant was reflected in his eyes. Had the trolling slummer blocking his way seen it she might have fled. Instead she stood her ground.

  “A surprise? You? That would be a first, but I like firsts. Maybe you’re not up to much, but you strike me as someone who’s been around. I’m willing to take my chances.” She gestured to her right. “We could rent a gas tube. I’d split it with you.” She grinned. “Then you can split me, old man.”

  Her leering persistence had become intolerable. Mustering a smile, he caught her gaze with his. Peering into his eyes she sensed rather than saw his right hand slide up the front of her body. Convinced she had made a sale she relaxed, expecting the hand to go higher. Instead it halted below her breasts in the vicinity of her solar plexus. Unexpectedly powerful melded fingers moved and thrust. Her eyes bulged. Her mouth opened in a wide “O” and she inhaled sharply, only to find that her lungs wouldn’t work.

  “Will this do for a surprise?” he murmured softly.

  Eyes still wide she continued to stare at him. Then they fluttered shut and she crumpled to the floor like a pile of overcooked yams. Two nearby couples interrupted their simulated coitus to look over in surprise. Molé smiled at them.

  “I think she took too strong a stimcomb. She’ll be fine.” He stepped over the motionless body that had contracted into a fetal position. “Let the staff handle it. They are paid to do so.”

  The two couples eyed the speaker, who was patently too old and feeble to have done anything untoward, and returned to their loveless playacting. Having dealt with the brief nuisance, Molé worked his way through the gyrating crowd to the nearer of the opposing bars.

  It was crewed by two mixologists, one Natural and one Meld. The latter flaunted a pair of double-length arms, the better to reach the high shelves and distant reaches of the container-laden jet-black back bar. Each of his hands featured eight nimble fingers capable of handling the most complex components of the bartender’s art. For several minutes Molé watched both men at work before sidling over to sit across from the Natural. Being less busy than his counterpart he would have more time to observe, and more time to talk.

  “ ’Evening, ou man.” Despite his youth the much younger man spoke with the practiced control and timbre of experience, as if his voice had been tuned like a piano. “I wish you a short day and a long night. What will you have?”

  “Water.” Molé was scanning the crowd that had washed up at the back of the room, human flotsam that had been left behind as the tide of daily life had receded. Away from the gyration floor there were tables and booths and time for moneyed wastrels to contemplate a multitude of whispered inanities.

  The bartender turned to feign a serious inspection of the rows of bottles and other containers behind him. “Sorry. We’re fresh out of that. Try again. Or you could go back outside.” He nodded in the direction of the entrance that led to the street above. “Harbor’s full of water.”

  “Ah. Humor. I appreciate humor.” Molé’s voice was perfectly devoid of inflection. “Since you insist, I will have a single shot of raki flavored with synchoc. Light on the phenylethylamine content, please.”

  The Natural smiled professionally. “Interesting call. You from around Istanbul?”

  Having turned again on his seat to resume studying the crowd, Molé did not answer. The bartender shrugged, prepared the drink, and served it in a small glass at room temperature. Reaching behind him, Molé picked it up and sipped delicately; staring, watching, searching.…

  There. Setting the half-full glass back on the bar he passed his credit card across the sensor set flush into its side, not bothering to see if the transaction took. He was not running a tab and the bartender, busy with other customers, did not check to see if the old man’s cred had been accepted. His attention was not necessary. Had payment been refused the alarm in the glass would have reacted by alerting club security.

  His informant had earned his subsist, Molé mused as he made his way toward a table located close to the back wall. Of course the woman sitting there by herself might be a completely different good-looking tentacular Meld than the one he was looking for, but the bright red stripes that adorned her fingerless grasping limbs suggested otherwise. Mindful of her pro
fessional reputation, local though it might be, he halted on the other side of the table.

  It took a moment before she noticed him staring at her. Deliberately she reached out and wrapped the attenuated sucker-lined end of one limb around the four-sided quarter-meter-tall metal drink holder in front of her.

  “I don’t like men who stare. And old men revolt me. So you disgust me doubly. Find someone else to feel up with your eyes before I wash them out with alcohol.”

  Molé was not in the least disturbed by the affront. Instead of complying he quietly took a chair across the table from her. Her right tentacle tensed around the drink container. He began patiently, speaking as one would to a child.

  “Your name is Lindiwe. Together with an unfortunate companion named Terror and a self-evidently incompetent European team leader named Chelowich you broke into the house-business of a local witch doctor named Thembekile. You were seeking information on a pair of visiting Namericans whom I have found out paid her an earlier visit: a doctor named Ingrid Seastrom and a vapid male Meld companion who calls himself Whispr. I have attempted to get in touch with the witch doctor herself. This is at present not possible because the thoroughly botched intrusion by you and your friends has apparently unnerved her and sent her into deep hide somewhere else in the country.

  “I am sure that I can eventually locate her but it will take time and much effort since she appears to have many friends and colleagues. Since you do not, it was far easier to find you. Being conservative by nature and in this particular instance more than customarily impatient, I naturally decided to begin by seeking the information I require from one who may already have obtained it.”

  Molé essayed a trustworthy smile, an expression at which over the years he’d had occasion to have considerable practice. Taken together with his age and general appearance this rendered his aspect positively avuncular.

  It certainly struck the tentacled woman as such, though not exactly in the way Molé would have preferred. Hard-staring back at him she admitted nothing and confirmed less. “Who are you, Uncle Serpent?”

  “My name is Napun. Although I do not work directly for SICK, I am what you would call an outside consultant.” Despite his best efforts to control himself, both his gaze and his tone hardened slightly. “You, on the other hand, have been working for someone other than SICK. That makes us competitors for the same information.”

  She shrugged, one red-striped tentacle rising slightly higher than the other. “So you’re right about that. So what? Personally, SICK makes me sick.”

  “I did not seek you out to engage in a debate on the morals of international politics or commerce or the prime movers thereof. Your opinions are your own and I am willing to respect them. While we may serve different masters, we do so from the same perspective. We are hirelings for the same purposes, you and I.”

  She made no effort to disguise her surprise and contempt. “What? I don’t think so, old man.”

  He sighed understandingly. “I have spent a lifetime disproving disrespect.” He glanced around. “I would rather not have to do so yet one more time in such crowded surroundings. However, you may rest assured that I will do so if necessary. But there is no need for that. Think of me what you will.” He leaned slightly forward. “I am prepared to pay for whatever knowledge you may have gained regarding the present whereabouts or intentions of the two named Namericans. As you have doubtless already been paid a likely half of what your own employers promised you, what I can offer should more than make up for what you have lost on this particular project.”

  This time she did not dismiss his words out of hand. “I lost a colleague. Boo wasn’t only a fellow employee, she was a friend.” Lindiwe made a spitting sound without actually expectorating, revealing a melded tongue that had been maniped so that it was fully prehensile. A younger man might have found that distracting. Not Molé. “As for our team ‘leader,’ she was forced on us by the—by our employers. She was an arrogant out-of-town Natural bitch who thought she knew everything, and now she’s dead.” Her gaze met Molé’s without flinching. “So some good came out of it.”

  “I care nothing for such individuals. They are more expendable than stale bread. As to your friend, I am sorry.” He considered. “I will double your employer’s death benefit.”

  Lindiwe’s stare narrowed. Around them a radically melded assortment of humanity danced, leaped, osculated, fondled, cursed, and engaged in caressing and touching with a variety of limbs and digits both human and maniped. As he waited for a reply Molé ignored it all, from the pounding goolmech to the suggestive gestures to the occasional bemused stare that briefly flicked in his direction.

  “What makes you think we learned anything?” Lindiwe asked him. “We were making progress, yebo, but we had to get out of there fast. The place was booby-trapped to the ult.” She shuddered mentally at the memory. “Misleading tactiles, poisonous spiders—there are reasons why people leave sangomas alone, and they have only occasionally to do with old superstitions.”

  “Did you learn anything?” Emotion-deprived at the best of times, Molé continued to speak as calmly as if placing an order at the bar.

  Lindiwe found her gaze distracted by a pair of two-meter-tall local males each of whose heads had been severely maniped to resemble that of a horse. One man boasted a black mane and tail while the other’s maniped accoutrements were a Scandinavian blond. Both wore very little, the better to emphasize their additional stallion melds. These extended to regions beyond head and hair. At the moment they wore the expressions of men alone and not wanting to be. But first she had to get rid of this persistent old man.

  “We—the European—had just opened files in the sangoma’s box when the spider flood arrived. She thought they were illusory. They weren’t. They killed her before she could do much in the way of digging.”

  “But you got away.”

  “I ran like hell. The door was secured so I went out a window.”

  “You ran. You are a coward.” The way Molé voiced it the word hung in the air as a cold statement of fact, not an accusation.

  Lindiwe was young but not so inexperienced as to be so easily provoked. She ignored the implication. “The bite of one button spider can kill. I prefer to say I cut my losses rather than that I ran.”

  Molé did not pursue it. There was nothing to be gained by doing so. “You say that Chelowich had just begun to open the sangoma’s files. I presume there were some that related to the visit of the two Namericans. I know it is difficult to read and comprehend while running (once again his tone was not accusatory) but were you able to see or learn anything? Anything at all?”

  Get rid of him, an increasingly stimulated voice inside the tentacle woman’s mind insisted. Conversing among themselves, the impatient stallion Melds were threatening to desert the vicinity of her table.

  “You keep saying you’ll pay. How much?”

  Molé named a figure. “No negotiations. You know it’s more than you deserve.”

  She pondered, then nodded brusquely. “Half upfront. To prove that you’re more than just a babbling senior citizen. The rest after I tell you everything I saw.”

  Now it was the old man’s turn to hesitate. He disliked spending his employer’s money on goods unseen. But this worm-armed woman was his only serious lead. He had been completely honest when he had told her that tracking down the sangoma, who had gone into serious hiding, would take time and effort.

  “Communicator?”

  Smiling, she drew it from a purse. As her device processed the proffered payment she turned her smile on the taller of the two nearby equine Melds. He neighed encouragingly and added an additional flourish with a becoming toss of his mane.

  As soon as the amount had been verified and entered into her account she placed the handheld device back in her purse and secured it. “Several sentences flashed in the box field before it went dead, but I was moving fast and yes, I was scared, so I didn’t exactly linger to read at leisure. In fact, out of all o
f it I just remember one word, and that only because it had been highlighted several times.”

  Though quietly displeased, he reserved judgment. “What was the one word?”

  Rising, she let her left tentacle slide around the back of the blond horseman and her right around the waist of his contrasting companion. The pair of flexible limbs continued to coil around the exposed muscular bodies until they reached manip-hardened abdomens. Both men looked startled at the unexpected ministrations. Then the blond smiled down at her, put an arm around the back of her head, drew her close, and kissed her. Pulling away, she grinned up at him, then over at his equally agreeable and expectant companion.

  “Want some sugar, pony-boys?”

  Finding himself abruptly ignored at the table Molé raised his voice slightly. “I just paid you a lot of money for one word. I will have it, please.”

  The dark horseman, who weighed well over a hundred kilos, sneered at the elderly figure. “I gives you one word, ikhela, and I no charge you for it.” He proceeded to deliver himself of two syllables.

  The newly bonded trio of tentacles, tails, and temerity laughed uproariously. Molé quietly pushed back his chair, stood, and calmly addressed the speaker.

  “I venture to say that your dick is considerably bigger than your wit.” His gaze shifted to Lindiwe. “The word. And if that is indeed all you have to offer then I must insist on a partial refund of what I have just paid you.”

  Her lips parted in astonishment. The gall of the little ancient! “Are you threatening me, old man?” She looked first at the blond, then at his companion. “Can you believe it? This old fart is threatening me.”

  Leaving her in the embrace of his stablemate, the dark Meld came around the table. Even without the hooves that had replaced his feet he would have towered over Molé.

  “Time to go, Gogo. Nothing left for you here now but more words. You keep pester this arm-woman and you will get angry ones, and maybe also clip-clop upside the head.”