The Human Blend

by Alan Dean Foster

  “If you want to hang on to the collateral, that’s okay with me.” His voice was devoid of worry. “Now that we’ve come to an agreement I know you’re not going to run out on me.” He smiled, and it was a genuine smile this time. “I know where you live. Or I will, as soon as we get there.” He looked toward the doorway. “How many k’s to your place?”

  “Less than one,” she told him. “All of it vertical.”

  • • •

  WHISPER WAS NOT AWED by her dwelling, but he was quietly impressed. In company with Jiminy and others he had stolen from more elaborate surroundings. Possibly it was the sheer tidiness of the place. It was as clean and orderly as his unmemorable succession of habitats had been grubby and chaotic.

  Not unlike his life, he thought.

  She showed him the spare bathroom, which was indeed spare but positively luxurious compared to where he had recently performed his hygienic ablutions. The compact eating area featured a self-cleaning cooker and plates made out of material more solid than cellulose derivatives. He could dine when and as he chose, Ingrid told him.

  If she had known how little time he’d had during the preceding several days to pause and eat, she would not have been surprised at the ravenousness with which he proceeded to consume an imposing quantity of food.

  He apologized afterward as he lay slumped on the big U-shaped couch in the common area. “I don’t eat like this all the time.”

  “Only when you’re running from the authorities?” she challenged him.

  “No,” he countered without rancor. “There are times when I don’t have enough money to pay for food. When it’s on offer I tend to eat everything in sight.”

  She slowly looked him up and down. “At least you’ll never have to worry about going on a diet.”

  “Wouldn’t want to.” He patted his nonexistent stomach. “Inherited genetic predisposition as well as physical manip. This is what I opted to be. This is what I wanted to look like.”

  She considered. “Mind if I ask you why?”

  His reply was unexpectedly terse. “Yes. I do mind.”

  That was the one and only time she queried him about his chosen meld.

  While she dove into the global box the following day to try to learn everything she could about MSMH, he spent the hours wallowing in utter luxury. His only regret was that there were fewer of them (the hours, that is), because he did not awaken until some time after noon. It was the longest period of continuous sleep he had allowed himself in a very long time. Safe and secure in her upper-level codo, in an upscale secured building, he was able to close his eyes in peace and shut down the automatic reflexes that he normally engaged to wake him at the slightest sound. Such reflexes were vital to ensuring survival on the street, where anyone at any time might slit your throat for your money. Or your shoes. While discovering that you had no money might prompt regret on the part of your murderer, it was better to avoid such possible post-homicidal misgivings by not getting yourself killed in the first place.

  At his initially hesitant but increasingly confident command, the cooker in the trim and efficient kitchen area dispensed real bacon (not soy) and real eggs (not self-coagulating flavored albumin), together with real coffee, real sugar, real …

  It had been so long since he had tasted real anything that the flavors were almost new to him. His shocked taste buds and overwhelmed digestive system both threatened rebellion. It was one uprising he put down ruthlessly, as the most difficult part of the meal proved to be keeping it down afterward. Unused to bona fide food, the risk of losing it via violent upchucking was all too real. He solved the problem by distracting himself with the entertainment system in the living area. When he activated the vit, the floor-to-ceiling windows darkened commensurately, threatening to send him off to dreamland all over again.

  As he ate and relaxed, his host ignored him. Seated at her home station Ingrid recited a steady stream of vorec commands to speed-whip through readouts and dimensional projections faster than he would have been able to read one. Occasionally he would look up from the ambient entertainment and its cone of constrained sound to peer across the room at her. Above her station he caught glimpses of rapidly merging sentences underlying swiftly flowing imagery. Multisyllabic expressions, technical terms, incomprehensible lexi accompanied diagrams and schematics as alien to his experience as the construction plans for spacecraft.

  Leaving the entertainment projector running, he stepped beyond the boundaries of its focused sights and sounds and wandered across the room until he was standing behind her. A glance showed that the capsule containing the inscrutable thread lay on the small desk near her right arm. He could easily have grabbed, whirled, and fled from the codo. He did not. Instead, he waved at the colorful scientific projections and readouts.

  “What is all this?”

  She spoke without looking up. “We don’t know what’s on the thread, but unless my inlab’s gone completely haywire we do know what it’s made of. I’m trying to find out what company or government might have made a recent breakthrough in metallurgical research or the relevant high-pressure physics or both that would enable them to manufacture something like this.”

  He nodded to himself. What she was presently doing he could not do. Not only was he unable to comprehend the information that was being mustered, he did not have the background, the knowledge, or the wherewithal to call it up in the first place.

  As he stood and watched, his attention slowly shifted from the gush of incomprehensible data to the technical sorceress who was summoning it forth. She was wearing a loose-fitting one-piece lounger of some pale yellow airfleece material. Her new blond haircut was short and severe (the time and resources Naturals devoted to physically manipulating follicles never ceased to dumbfound Melds). What was visible of her body beneath the airfleece was anything but severe. He wondered why she wasn’t partnered. He did not know her well enough to ask. So instead of asking, he leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the back of her neck, his lips just brushing the short hairs there.

  She whirled as if she had been shot. Her expression was such a clashing jumble of surprise, terror, and uncertainty that he almost burst out laughing.

  “Don’t …! What do you think you’re doing?”

  For once he did not need an interpreter for her words. “I kissed you.”

  “I know what you did.” She had backed as far away from him as the chair at the box station allowed. “Why did you do it?”

  Simultaneously smart and stupid, he told himself. Typical of her kind.

  “To see how you would respond. Did you like it?”

  She wiped furiously at the back of her neck, as if someone had spilled hot soup on her skin. “No, I didn’t like it, Whispr. And if you do anything like it again, if you even look like you’re going to do something like it again, our business relationship will be terminated forthwith!”

  His expression excessively somber, he nodded slowly, gently mocking her without words. “Okay. Got it. I regard myself as suitably chastised. If you’re so outraged, how come you didn’t hit out at me?”

  “I’m sitting down. I can’t reach you.” She started to get up. “If you’ll just stay there, I’ll rectify the oversight.”

  Raising his hands defensively, he backed away. “All right, all right. Take it easy, mind-muffin. I promise I won’t touch you again.” He nodded in the direction of the thread. “Where I’ve come up from, money trumps sex every time.”

  “Sex?” She found herself sputtering. The idea that this slow-witted vagrant, this street-scum, this stick-insect of a Meldman would even entertain such thoughts … would conjure such imagery …

  For a moment she thought she was going to be physically ill.

  “Calm down.” By now he was more annoyed than offended. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  “Next time you ‘try,’ I’ll shoot you. With whatever is at hand.” She was actually shaking. Not violently, but enough to get the point across. “Can’t blame a woma
n for blowing your fool head off.”

  Turning with a sigh, he returned to the far side of the room to once again immerse himself in the entertainment cone. Regaining control of herself Ingrid returned to her work. It took several attempts with her unsettled voice before the vorec recognized and acknowledged her commands and resumed the research she had been pursuing. Occasionally she thought she sensed a presence and would jerk around sharply to look behind her. On each occasion she saw nothing. Insofar as she could tell, the only time her guest stepped out of the entertainment cone was to get something to drink from the refrig.

  Gradually she allowed herself to relax enough to slip back into deep study mode. By early evening the cavalier imposition of earlier that afternoon had begun to diminish in memory and importance. Only rarely did it intrude on her concentration or interrupt her train of thought.

  Mind-muffin …?

  ONE CORNER OF THE LIVING area floor inflated to form a guest bed that was only temporary, but it was worlds away from the assorted platforms on which Whispr usually slept. Long after his host and erstwhile business partner had retired for the night he lay awake on the cushiony surface, unable to fall asleep because of the unaccustomed softness and silence. The nocturnal view from the eighty-fifth floor revealed a whole new world: the glistening spires of Greater Savannah and the electric suburbs that stretched off in all directions. To the west he could make out the vast floating commercial hub of the port and even the pair of thousand-meter-long cargo ships that were moored there, their towering carbon-fiber masts aglitter with running lights.

  This was truly another world, he concluded. Another planet. In the bedroom off to his left slept a woman who was not only smarter than him, more attractive, a Natural, and cleaner, but one so determined to find answers to complicated questions that she would invite someone like himself to spend the night in the same habitation as her. An admirable and potentially useful acquaintance was Dr. Ingrid Seastrom. What he had told her earlier when she had so forcefully rejected his clumsy advance was true, but to Whispr such unattainability only enhanced her allure.

  As sure as blood flowed through his veins, the door to her bedroom would be locked. She might even have armed herself, though he doubted she owned a deadly weapon. Her type would be much more likely to have a nonlethal protective device. A vomitizer, perhaps, or something that would spew blinding lenscoat.

  He smiled to himself. If she thought any kind of internal door lock could keep out someone with his experience, she was only fooling herself. Once in the bedroom, surprising her while she was asleep, he could easily force himself on her. He pictured the many ways she might respond to such an intrusion, knowing as he did so that the various scenarios spinning through his mind were little more than sheer fantasy. More likely, the act of simply entering her sleeping quarters unannounced would put an immediate end to their recently established business connection. It was vital to maintain that relationship—at least for now.

  Relationship? Had their association advanced far enough for him to legitimately employ that terminology? Even on a solely commercial basis? It smacked of an intimacy that existed only in his addled imagination.

  He wanted her.

  Denying the desire that coursed through him would have demanded self-deception. He had made an advance and been harshly rebuffed. More importantly than wanting her physically, he needed her intellectually. One did not have such problems with the box, which was sexless unless programmed to be otherwise.

  As he lay on the bed pondering the much too rapid and far too extreme changes that had overtaken his life in the course of the past week, city lights and inner longing conspired to keep him awake until well into morning. Only then did the exhausting events of the previous couple of days finally connive sufficiently to render him unconscious.

  11

  “I’m going to have to show the thread to Dr. Sverdlosk. He’ll want to take his own readings in order to run his own programs and analysis.”

  Bestirring himself, Whispr slid his legs off the inflatable bed. Might as well get up, he told himself. His coffitte had already turned tepid and was in need of a recharge. It was amazing how quickly one could get used to the finer things of life.

  “You’re not going to leave it with him?”

  “No.” Fully dressed and ready to go out, Ingrid had stopped by the half-open front door to look back at him. “I’ll be right beside him while he takes his measurements and I won’t let it out of my sight. I don’t think there’ll be any problem.”

  Whispr still wasn’t happy. “Sure you can trust this boffin?”

  Ingrid tut-tutted. “That paranoia of yours again. I’ve known Rudy ever since I took up both personal and professional residence in this building. He’s one of my closest friends and a dear colleague. Honest, dependable, wide-ranging in his interests, generous with advice, and something of a mentor.”

  “Sounds like the perfect boyfriend.” Whispr couldn’t quite keep the sneer out of his voice.

  While the memory of his earlier unwelcome advance had begun to fade, a certain frisson of tension still scented the codo like spoiled cheese. She was grateful for the chance to make light of it.

  “Rudy? He’s seventy-something. A little too old for me.”

  Whispr brightened immediately. “As opposed to me?”

  “Natural or Meld, you’re too skinny,” she shot back. “Also too forward, too rough around the edges, too unstable, too—”

  He cut her off. “Too much. I get the picture.” He raised his self-heating glass in sardonic salute. “I guess I’ll have to satisfy myself with reloaded coffittes.”

  “Don’t overdo it. Someone as naturally jumpy as you doesn’t need to add caffeine.” The codo’s front door slid all the way aside and she started out. “I’ve put a hinder on one half of the drink dispenser. No alcohol or other stimulants.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t indulge as much as you seem to think. I’ve seen too many friends lose their lives at the same time as their inhibitions.” He offered a casual wave as she departed.

  Then he spent the next hour fruitlessly trying to rescind the block she had placed on the kitchen dispenser.

  SVERDLOSK HAD AGREED TO MEET her in his offices during their mutual lunch hour. Although the enigmatic thread was not far from her thoughts she still had to deal with her regular clientele as well as new patients and referrals. Her preoccupation was apparent to staff and friends alike.

  “You are distracted, dyevooshka.” Sverdlosk’s eyes twinkled beneath brows bushy as rainforest caterpillars. With the crinkled skin beneath his eyes, full mane of white hair, and perfectly trimmed short white beard, he looked like a secondary character from a Chekov play. In fact, he looked much like the playwright himself would have looked had he lived to such a respectable age. There was nothing grandfatherly about his manner, however. Certain men are forever thirty—if only in their minds.

  “You have no idea.” As she replied she was reaching into the secured pocket over her left breast. Reading her finger, the flap unsealed and allowed her to remove the small clear capsule that had been secreted within. Without the slightest compunction she handed it to the senior physician. Whispr’s wariness may have infected her, but so far she was free of his frightful paranoia.

  Sverdlosk pushed out his lower lip, eyed her questioningly, and then turned his attention to the capsule’s contents, rolling the transparent cylinder back and forth between his fingers. At a touch, magnifier lenses flipped down over his eyes. A Meld in his position would have undergone and employed an artificial vision enhancement. In lieu of that and like Seastrom, the physician had to rely instead on traditional medical tools.

  “So? I see a little silvery thread with what I suppose is connector on one end. Some kind of storage appliance?”

  Ingrid nodded. “I think so. A standard flex plug-in accepts it, but nothing in my office or codo can read it—or even tell me if there’s anything on it.” She readied herself. “Then there’s the matter of its composi
tion. That I do know.”

  White brows drew together slightly. “Maybe storage medium is an electrophoretic geloid. That’s a new technology not every reader can access. What about the composition?”

  She stared evenly at him. “I’ve checked it several times. It appears to be some kind of metastable metallic hydrogen.”

  This time the heavy white brows threatened to merge. The senior physician gazed anew at the capsule’s contents. “It cannot be ‘some kind’ of metastable metallic hydrogen. Is either MSMH or is not. I will surely find out.” He looked up at her. “If it were anyone else save a close friend of mine telling me this, I would say that my time was being wasted with joke.”

  Ingrid rose from her chair. “It’s no joke, Rudy. Run your own tests. I’m sure you will anyway. What I need to know is what, if anything, is stored on that thread.” She paused, then hurried on. “I have reason to think it might be worth a lot of money.”

  “Knowledge is its own reward.” The physician replied without hesitation. “But money is nice supplement. Now you have me very interested even if is nothing on thread. But if material is anything like what you hilariously claim it to be …” The eyes twinkled again. “For such a friend and colleague with such a fine mind behind the find and also fine behind I will do this at no charge. Give me couple of days.”

  She nodded. “I’ve got to get back to my office. Rudy—swear you won’t discuss this with anyone else. Not even with other close friends, not with anyone.”

  “Oh? And why not?”

  She chewed her lower lip. “I have reason to believe there are other people who think that whatever is on that thread is valuable. Some of them might not be—nice.”

  He chuckled. “So! Is big secret. Okay, Inny-grid. I tell no one.” He held the capsule up to the light and squinted at the contents. “What is tucked inside you, little hair of the impossible metallic hydrogen dog? What could make you so valuable as to so worry Ms. Inny? Scientific secrets? Wonders of the universe? Politicians’ affairs with maybe names and dates and favorite fetishes? Dr. Rudolf will winkle them out of you.” Lowering his gaze, he grinned through his beard at the waiting Ingrid. “End of the week at latest, I will have something to tell you.”