The Human Blend

by Alan Dean Foster

  “You seem very sure of yourself, Rudy.”

  He sat back in his chair, an elegant portrait of false modesty. “If I were not, I might like some of my less so-sure of themselves colleagues sometimes lose a patient. I never lose a patient. I will call you when I have something.”

  She nodded. “Use my emergency line if you have to.” As she turned and went out, the door to the Russian émigré’s inner office slid silently shut behind her.

  Rudolf Sverdlosk brought the capsule close to his eyes and regarded it through the magnifiers. It did not look in any way remarkable. It most certainly did not look like something that had been contrived from a material that ought not even to exist under the normal temperature and pressure present in his office. Or anywhere else on the surface of the Earth, for that matter. Was it a hoax? Among the physicians who worked in the medical tower Ingrid Seastrom was known for her expertise in several areas, but practical jokery was not one of them. The more he thought about what she had told him, the longer he contemplated the thread within the capsule, the greater grew the urge to begin submitting it to tests and challenges. He quietly hummed a nearly forgotten Urals folk song.

  Patients to see first, he told himself. Fun time after.

  His intent was to subject the thread to a preliminary test or two at the end of the workday, and if anything worth pursuing turned up, to resume the examination in more detail the following afternoon. But the enigmatic material would not let go of his imagination.

  It was after ten when exhaustion and eyestrain finally drove him from his otherwise empty offices and out into the sultry night. He sought succor and a change of scenery in a favorite neighborhood all-night café. His head was throbbing from the strain of trying to make sense of the thread while his mind whirled with possibilities. Though it was muggy on the street outside, like any good scientist lost in contemplation he was essentially immune to the weather.

  He was not, however, immune to the attentions of his fellow citizens.

  The café he frequented often enough for the waitresses to know what he wanted without him having to order it lay around one more corner. He was about to turn it when the pallid wall light that illuminated the sidewalk was partially blocked by three women. Two were Melds. One, a straightforward cosmetimax Meld, had chosen to adopt the striking blond appearance of an ancient cinema actress named Monroe. In contrast, her slender companion stood over two meters tall and reflected extensive internal melds. Sverdlosk saw that the bones of her arms and legs had been replaced with one of the more popular sinuousity condrites. As a consequence, her arms and legs were stiff enough to support her weight in spite of having been rendered nearly as supple as tentacles. Her ears tapered to points that accented the bony crest of her skull. Both sides of the latter were lavishly inlaid with intense phosphorescent tattoos.

  In contrast, the Natural who stepped forward to confront him was as plump and homey-looking as a middle-aged pitchwoman for homemade pies. At least, she was until she opened her mouth. Though deep and husky, her voice was calculatedly feminine. She put him in mind of a career bureaucrat who might have an interesting secret life. She also favored candor over good manners.

  “Dr. Rudolf Sverdlosk? Our monitoring of certain recent scientific inquiries suggest that a piece of private property we’ve been trying to recover might recently have passed into your possession. If that’s so, we need to know what you’ve learned about it. If it’s not so, we need to find out why our monitoring has singled you out as someone worthy of questioning.”

  The Russian responded with the practiced smile that invariably reassured patients and regularly intrigued women much younger than himself. “Yes, it is sticky out tonight, isn’t it?” He gestured past the pair whose appearance was no more outré than that of numerous other melded Savannahians out for a misty nighttime stroll. “I am on my way to get something to drink and maybe a little chocolate piroshka. If you want to talk, is much nicer to talk over black tea and—”

  She hit him. In the face, and much harder than he could have anticipated. As he collapsed onto the sidewalk a detached part of him dispassionately analyzed the blow and came to the conclusion that appearances notwithstanding, she was not a Natural. Unlike her companions, she only looked Natural. How otherwise to explain being struck by what felt like a fist of solid steel than to recognize that he had been struck by a fist fashioned of solid steel? Or by something equally dense and unyielding beneath the perfectly realistic skin?

  His systematic analysis was confirmed when the woman knelt to grab the front of his jacket and yank him toward her. Sinuous Meld wrapped her unnaturally supple arms around his torso and pinned his arms at his sides. Ancient cinema actress Meld was aiming a weapon at him while chewing on something crunchy that stank of lavender. The taste of salt was strong in his mouth. His probing tongue located the socket of the tooth that had been knocked out. He coughed, spitting blood.

  “So. Not tea-drinkers, then.”

  The plump woman’s Meld was not perfect. Or perhaps it was merely worn and in need of an upgrade. When she knelt before him, still gripping the front of his shirt, her metal patellas made squeaking sounds as they rasped against hidden internal cables.

  “Listen close, doctor. My friends and I are not out here wandering the streets in search of relaxation. We are on a job. We are working. You will answer my questions promptly because we do not like to waste time. Also because if you try to evade them or stall us we will have to jog your memory by every so often removing parts of your body.” Her eyes gave him a quick once-over. “You are a Natural. Losing body parts would be unpleasant.

  “You are maybe studying an unusual piece of metal. You have maybe learned something about it. All we want to know is what you have learned. Anything you might have found out. Something you might suspect. We believe that it may recently have been given into your care by someone else. What we do not know for a certainty is if it is still in your possession or how much time you have had to spend examining it. We believe it to be worth a great deal, but there is much we still have to confirm.” Letting go of his shirt, she stepped back to gaze unblinkingly down at him. “Tell us, doctor. What do you know?”

  He swallowed salty stickiness. “I know that I need drink of something stronger than tea.”

  The woman did not smile as she turned to her companions. “I think sometimes old men are braver than the young ones because they feel they have already lived their lives and are going to die soon anyway.” She nodded at sinuous Meld. “Spread his legs.”

  While still restraining his arms, the tall Meld’s lengthy limbs reached downward to wrench Sverdlosk’s thighs apart. He tried to resist, feebly.

  Pausing a moment to make certain that he was watching, the plump woman kicked off her shoes. Then she lifted her right leg high off the ground and slammed it back down. The steel heel slammed into the sidewalk, leaving a cup-shaped dent several centimeters deep. Her attention returned to him.

  “Maybe a certain part of your life is over already for you. Maybe not. Maybe you are a self-confessed celibate. Talk now, or I will resolve any ambiguity regarding this matter.”

  Cinema star Meld suddenly looked past them all and her eyes widened slightly. “Floater!”

  “Sewap!” The deceptively homey interrogator looked up sharply, favored the wheezing Sverdlosk with a last quick, murderous glance, then whirled and raced off around the corner the doctor had nearly succeeded in reaching. The two Melds who accompanied her had to work hard to keep up.

  For all its synthesized solicitousness, the police floater that dropped down beside the still seated Sverdlosk was as welcome a sight to the injured doctor as an Orthodox archangel.

  “You are hurt, sir. The perpetrators have fled. I will summon medical assistance.”

  Sverdlosk struggled to stand, only to fall backward and hit his head on the sidewalk. The strobing lights that straightaway speckled his vision distracted him somewhat from the throbbing pain in his mouth and jaw. “I don’t need medi
cal assistance. I’m a doctor.”

  They were the last words he managed to utter before he passed out.

  • • •

  “WAKE UP, INGRID. SOMEONE needs to talk to you. Wake up, Ingrid. Someone needs to talk to you. Wake up, Ingrid, someone …”

  “I’m awake,” she mumbled as she rolled over in the bed. Whoever was trying to contact her through her secure number, she knew it was not her shady guest. Her bedroom door was locked and had he somehow managed to circumvent the privacy code, she would have heard his voice and not that of her codo.

  The mildly sexy talking portrait of a favorite dramat star retreated from where it had been hovering above the foot of her bed. As it did so it melted into a similarly sized likeness of her friend and mentor Dr. Sverdlosk. His image was not that of a dramat star. The shock of it smacked her in the face like a bucket of chipped ice and caused her to sit up fast.

  “Rudy … my God, what happened to you?”

  “Three nightmares happened to me.” Sverdlosk’s lips moved only enough to form words, relying on the communicator’s amplification ware to render them audible. “All of them female. At least, I am pretty sure they were all female. They didn’t boast about it.”

  “Where are you?” She slid her legs out of the bed and activated the caffeiner. Continuously tracking her eye movements the room’s comm unit adjusted the doctor’s image so that it stayed in front of her. “Are you in your office? I’m coming right down.”

  “No you are not, Inny.” Despite his unmistakable frailty his tone was firm. “I not in my office. Thanks to recent ingestion of very pleasantly enervating cocktail of designer pharmaceuticals I am actually at present resting a number of floors farther down. Level Four, to be exact.”

  She felt more than a little insensate herself. “You’re in the hospital.”

  “To be exact, yes,” he acknowledged. “I am afraid I currently too anesthetized to fully appreciate irony of situation. Or the location.” As his head came slightly off the aerogel pillow that was supporting it his tone grew more intense. “Listen to me, Inny. These female but decidedly unfeminine Melds who confront me last night—they know about the thread that you gave me to research. They wanted to know if I had learned anything about it.”

  Reaching for the ready cup of instant caffeine Ingrid nearly knocked it out of its bracket. “What did you tell them?”

  “I tried joke with them. Maybe when they receive their melds they also inoculated against irony. Notice I still not laughing myself. Doctor’s orders. No muscle spasms, not even to laugh.

  “Smart people best at playing dumb. I tell them nothing. Not even about possible MSMH construction. Nothing.” He tried to sit all the way up, failed, then had to wait for a scolding beep from one of the instruments near him to cease before he could resume talking.

  “I can access my office from this bed, Inny. Is nice that I am in same hospital as my own home and offices. Will make for short commute when they letting me walk again. First thing after I regain consciousness and can think straight, I erase from here what not much I had recorded about your suddenly problematic little thread. I even revoke indication of its existence.”

  She inhaled sharply. “The thread! It’s still in your—”

  “No is not,” he exclaimed, interrupting her. “I use office remote to order it sent out via our building’s internal delivery system. System works good for groceries, medications, toys, toxic storage threads.…” A hint of alarm crept into his voice. “You not receive it yet?”

  “I just—your call woke me up. It’s Saturday, you know.”

  “Thank you for remind me, Inny. I not have to cancel any appointments. Maybe come Monday I am unexpectedly called home to Vladivostok for indefinite period of time. Family emergency. Is not lie.” He managed a painful smile. “I am member of my family, no?”

  She was trying to get dressed, chug the remainder of the cup’s contents, and carry on the distressing conversation all at the same time. “I’m on my way to check my delivery receptacle right now, Rudy.”

  “Good. I will wait to hear confirmation.” He lay all the way back down. “I in no hurry.”

  The floating portrait followed her out into the main living area as she ran a forefinger up the front of her jumpsuit’s seal. Unnatural rumblings sounded from the vicinity of the airbed that had been inflated on the far side of the room. A wraith or her houseguest, she mused. One and the same. Believing she heard her name called, she ignored the faint query.

  With relief she saw that her codo’s delivery container was not empty. It held several small packages. Two were pharmaceutical samples that as soon as she picked them up began to squeakingly explain why she should start to prescribe them for her patients. Another was a greeting from an old boyfriend that began to unfold and enlarge even as she slapped it down. The last was …

  Running her thumbprint over her name unsealed the package and exposed the interior. Inside an inner, padded box was a small transparent capsule containing a single by now all-too-familiar storage thread. One that had in the brief interval out of her possession seemingly turned toxic.

  “G’morn, doc.” The wraith had awakened. Sitting up and straining to see over the crest of the intervening couch, Whispr ran a hand through his disheveled hair as he tried to focus on the rapidly moving mistress of the codo. Apparently preoccupied, she was studiously ignoring him. “Sleep well? I sure as hell did. Best sleep I’ve had in …” He broke off, seeing that she was not just ignoring him but ignoring him resolutely. “Is everything …?” he began.

  “Get rid of this thread.” Along with his battered likeness, the voice of Dr. Sverdlosk was trailing the anxious Ingrid around the codo. “Is not worth whatever is on it. Not even if it really is made of impossible metal-magic stuff like MSMH. Go on boat picnic today, have good time—and throw it in deep part of river. Or better still, out in ocean somewheres. Same cheerful femmes that thrash-trash me may come looking soon for you. Tell them you take truth drug, anything they want, and when they ask about thread you can tell them truthfully what has been done with it. This is best advice cagey old beat-up doc guy like me who loves you can give you, Inny.”

  “I’m coming down there.” Her tone was grim. “What section and room are you in? If you don’t want to tell me over the tower’s comm system, I can find out for myself at the hospital. Then we can …”

  Being a doctor, Sverdlosk was accomplished at interrupting. “So. Here is orders. You don’t come to see me, pretty Inny. Much as I would enjoy company of your warm self sitting on side of my bed is not good idea right now. These people, whoever they represent, maybe others, might be watching me from first minute I admitted. Might be watching me now. Get rid of thread. I go on vacation as soon as I can arrange discharge. Never speak to me about it again, ever. I take emergency leave to visit Old Country and see grandchildren—who I would like to live to see grow up.” Before she could protest or offer an objection, his image began to dissipate.

  “Good-bye for nowadays, Inny. Take care of yourself. Watch where you walk at night. Throw away thread. Maybe you also take hurry-up vacation.…”

  Sverdlosk’s image vanished. When she anxiously called for reconnect, the link was refused.

  “Your friend didn’t sound too good. Didn’t look so good, either.”

  She whirled. Her guest had come up right behind her. Whispr is as Whispr does, she told herself.

  “I heard most of it.” Surprisingly, he did not look frightened. Only pensive. As if he always planned his life one step ahead, whether contemplating a break-in or breakfast. “I’ve always been one for knowing when I was operating out of my depth. Maybe your colleague is right.” A small sound made him whirl toward the front door. “Maybe we should get rid of the thread. I always prefer to acknowledge an ill omen before it’s pulled tight around my neck.”

  Ingrid stood there, holding a long-since drained caffeine cup in one hand and the capsule in the other, halfway between kitchen cubby and main living area. What
had she gotten herself into? Galileo only had to worry about the Inquisition.

  It was plain from his words and appearance that poor Sverdlosk could easily have ended up dead last night. Were his interrogators on to her already? Did they have ways of tracing the tower’s internal communications structure and know that he had just spoken to her? Or that so many people’s object of attention had already been delivered to her codo? If the latter, she might expect to hear an old-fashioned knock at the door at any moment. Or given his assailants’ lack of social graces, their arrival and intentions might be announced in something other than a civilized manner.

  And there remained the question of what to do with and about her seedy houseguest.

  “No.” She muttered an immediate response. “As a woman of science, I’m in too deep. It’s hard to describe, Whispr. There’s a name for people like me. Every time we learn something it only drives us to learn ten things more. It’s never enough. As far as this thread is concerned I’m like a fish that’s taken the bait. I can’t let myself off the hook until I know what’s on the other end of the line.” She smiled tightly at him. “I can’t jump off until then.”

  “Or,” he countered, “there’s also the chance that if you stay on the line you’ll end up fried and consumed, with someone spitting out your bones.”

  She looked away. “Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the most propitious analogy. But I can’t let go of this until I know what it’s all about, Whispr. I just can’t. No matter what Rudy or anyone else says.” She turned back to confront him. “If you want to give up on it, to back out now, I’ll understand. I’ll just have to proceed on my own and I won’t think any the worse of you.”