“Yeah. He just went on and on about his ‘employers.’ Not ‘employer’ … I’m sure he used the plural.”
Ingrid nodded in confirmation. “That’s how I heard it. I wonder if he was referring to SICK?”
“One thing’s sure,” Whispr responded. “He wasn’t referencing any political authority. That’s how I took it, anyway. The cops might bend far enough to kill somebody like Jiminy during a pursuit, but granting permission to shoot some innocent Meld just sitting in a chair …” He shook his head. “You’d have to be pretty damn twisted to approve something like that. I hold with Gator’s opinion: if the SAEC is working on ways to manufacture this MSMH stuff, then they’re the ones most likely to know what’s on an unreadable storage thread that’s made from it. Not to mention why it’s worth killing for. Not that it matters.”
She turned from the vista of swamp and rainforest ahead to look across at him. “What do you mean, Whispr?”
He kept shifting his attention between her and the waterway in front of them. “Haven’t you had enough, doc? I mean, how many folk have to die before it’s enough? How many lucky jumps do you think you get before your name shows up on the Lucifer list? If we go to the authorities with the thread and everything we know and make sure there are publicams and private pickups present when we do the handover, there’ll be too much publicity for those involved or bent to do anything to us. They’ll have to be satisfied with recovering the thread and leaving us alone. We can get out of this alive. There might even be a reward for coming forward with what we know.”
What Whispr said made sense. She thought about it long and hard. For a good five minutes.
“We’ve already talked about this, Whispr,” she finally told him. “I’m not giving it up. I can’t. If you want to go home, I’ll understand. I’ll keep the thread as payment for helping you with the traktacs.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, “you’ve already said that. You know, for a woman of science you sure can catclaw cling to an outmoded, illogical theory.”
Her brow furrowed. “What outmoded, illogical theory?”
“The one that says that if you keep on with this fanatic’s quest you’ll still manage to make it to your next birthday.”
While she had not gotten over her indignation over the zoe, she still had to smile. “It’s nice of you to care, Whispr.”
“I don’t care!” he yelled. “I could care less if—ah crap, forget it. Forget everything. It doesn’t matter anymore, I guess. We’re gonna die anyway.”
“That’s the spirit!” Reaching over, she gave his right shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I like a man who’s driven by optimism.”
“Driven to madness, you mean,” he muttered darkly. But his shoulder tingled where her fingers had gripped him. That wasn’t logical either. He eyed her in wonderment. “People sure can change fast, and I don’t mean by melding. You’re not the same twitchy tight-ass doctor who treated me in Savannah.”
She spent awhile digesting that while they powered on toward Miavana as fast as the compact rental craft could carry them.
“So,” she finally asked him, “you sticking with this and with me, you staying here in Florida, or are you going back to Savannah?”
He guided the boat around a floating mass of emerald-green, meterwide Victoria regina lily pads. Panicked frogs the size of his open palm scattered in all directions, prompting a brief surface-shattering attack by a couple of lurking pirarucú.
“I go back to Savannah without the thread for justify, I get picked up or killed by the cops. I stay here, I get killed. I go with you, I get killed. Not an easy call, doc.”
Turning away from him she watched the line of exotic vegetation flow past off to starboard. “Your unremitting sarcasm demeans you, Whispr.”
“Really? I thought it defined me as a realist. You’re a physician, Ingrid. Not an industrial spy, not a professional probe. Keep on with this and you’re gonna find yourself way out of your depth and eventual-like singing with the Choir Invisible.”
She looked evenly at him. “You didn’t answer my question.”
He gave a violent shake of head, thoroughly annoyed with himself. “Of course I’m sticking with you. If only to get an apology before we’re both shot, or decapitated, or however badly this eventual-like ends. How the hell do you expect to learn SICK’s secrets when they have toxic scum like Molé working for them?”
“We don’t know that he works for them,” she countered. “He never identified his ‘employers.’ ” She turned thoughtful. “But based on what Gator told us he found out, it’s the logical place to start. We’ll try and learn what we can from SICK, Inc. by doing the last thing a company with their reputation would expect.”
“What’s that—no, I don’t want to guess. Tell me—Ingrid.”
“We’ll go there.”
“Excuse me?” He looked over from the controls.
“To SICK, Inc. Wherever their main research facilities are located. I don’t know that location offhand, of course, but I think I read in a business journal somewhere that their corporate headquarters are in South Africa. Their principal research setup would be the logical place to try and find out if they’re working on something as improbable as a technique for manufactured MSMH.”
Whispr nodded slowly. “Yeah, that makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is how in the name of all that’s melded you think you’re going to get yourself, or me, or the both of us into the R&D facility of a major multinational concern that’s legendary for not playing nice with competitors or, for that matter, governments.”
“One step at a time, Whispr.”
“One foot in the grave at a time. Oh well, never in my most stim-aided dreams did I ever think I’d ever get to Africa. As long as you’re paying, doc, I’m with you on this suicide express.” He was growing wild-eyed. “To the terminal Terminal where we’ll be terminated, that’s where we’re heading!”
She did her best to calm and encourage him. “Don’t be so negative, Whispr. Think about it. Aside from the business of the implants, if the SAEC is working with MSMH and is after the thread and suspects that I have it, the last place their hired hunters like this Molé person would expect me to show up is at the front gate of one of their own administrative or research centers.”
“With good reason.” He turned thoughtful. “I just have one condition for staying on this doomed night train.”
“Name it.”
His words were suddenly filled with a wholly unexpected yearning. “If we’re going all the way to Southern Africa having to avoid hired assassins the whole time, before I die I want to see some wild animals. I’ve only seen them in vits. Never expected to see them in anything but vits.” He turned to face her. “I want to see lions, Ingrid. I want to see elephants. I want to see gemsbok and reedbok and steenbok and every other kind of bok.”
Her reply was somber. “This isn’t a vacation, Whispr. You yourself have missed no opportunity to point that out.”
He was unshakable. “That’s the deal, doc. Ingrid. I get to see my animals or you can go get yourself killed all by your smarmy upperclass know-it-all lonesome.”
She shrugged. “Animals. Okay, we’ll make time.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “Look at it this way: if we act like typical tourists, maybe no one will pay any attention to us.”
She perked up. “You believe that?”
“Not for a minute. But optimism-wise it’s the best I can do right now.” He shook his head gloomily. “SICK, Inc. We’ll just stroll in through their front gate and ask to speak to whoever’s in charge of arcane product development and nonsensical metallurgy.”
Ingrid went quiet, letting him steer the boat, pondering his last offhand comment. In subterfuge as in medicine, she concluded, there is virtue in directness. If that wasn’t a contradiction in terms. And she knew a contradiction in terms when presented with one.
It perfectly fit her present situation.
THAT HIS IRRITATINGLY NIMBLE QUARRY
was utilizing automatically rotating random idents did not surprise Molé. It was not something he had anticipated, but it was something he was prepared to deal with. That employment of the mildly sophisticated technique for continuously concealing one’s identity arose from the street experience of the inconsequential Meld who had been his original quarry he had no doubt. That a Natural citizen of Dr. Ingrid Seastrom’s social strata was traveling in the company of an individual like this Whispr and was making use of the miserable Meld’s decidedly nonmedical learning was rather more surprising.
It would not matter in the end, of course. The outcome was fated. His recovery and return to his employers of the precious storage thread had suffered a temporary delay. While he disliked delays, he was quite able to accommodate them. Through their obstinacy and ignorance his quarry was only delaying the inevitable. And perhaps accumulating considerable future unpleasantness for themselves.
Though it took a little time, it had not been difficult for someone of his determination and experience to learn where the pair intended to travel next. Conveniently, the two small commuter watercraft he had seen fastened to the houseboat of the late iconoclast Yabby Wizwang had displayed vehicle identification information near their bows. The first he had traced as belonging to the interfering but undeniably interesting reptilian aficionado known as the Alligator Man. The other had been rented to a Ms. Arlene Verdoux. A little illegitimate digging through the right corners of the local box brought forth the watercraft rental company’s security image of Ms. Verdoux, whose likeness was, unsurprisingly, a close match for that of Dr. Ingrid Seastrom of Greater Savannah.
Breaking into the closed security systems of transport networks required a certain higher level of skill, but it still did not take him long to match up a Ms. Judy Davis with a Mr. Elon Danovich. Names could be altered with frequency, comparative ease, and the right program, but changing appearances took time and meldwork. While he would not have been surprised to see Archibald Kowalski subject himself to an extensive facial meld at a moment’s notice, it was something far less likely to be expected of a Natural like Ingrid Seastrom. As it developed, while their names were shifting like the wind, their physical appearances stayed more or less constant.
So it was that in due and not disproportionate time he learned that Ms. Davis and Mr. Danovich had departed on a JALAA flight to Tokyo. Why Tokyo? He would find out when he found them. With a sigh, he prepared to make the necessary travel arrangements. Tokyo was a big place, far larger in extent and population than Greater Savannah. But the fact that he would be looking for a pair of gaijin would reduce the necessary search time considerably. As he packed his small bag and prepared to depart from Miavana he had no doubt that the runners and the thread they carried with them would be in his hands within a week at most. They really had no idea who they were dealing with.
But then, neither did anyone else who had ever been unfortunate enough to look over their shoulder and catch a glimpse of Napun Molé.
“SO,” INGRID WONDERED AS she settled back in Seat D, Row Ten, of SAA’s evening Miavana-to-Cape Town ramjet, “what makes you so sure this Molé creature isn’t on the flight behind us?” She twisted around in her seat. “Or even in the back of this same plane?”
Whispr was as relaxed as he had been in some time, luxuriating in the kind of air travel he had never expected to be able to experience.
“Because he’s not looking for our current idents, doc. He’s looking for the previous ones, and right now Judy Davis and Elon Danovich are on their way to Tokyo.” He smiled to himself. “I don’t know if it’s fair, but my experience says that each time you successfully employ a new ruse it gains you another year of life.” He snuggled back in his seat.
“While we were getting ready to leave I broke into JALAA’s reservations system, picked out a couple of passenger names at random, and time-subbed our prior idents for those of an actual couple going to Nippon. Instead of finding our Cape Town reservations, anyone researching our previous names or appearance will be shunted to theirs.” He chuckled to himself. “With any luck, Molé-man is already on his way in the opposite direction from ours.”
Ingrid considered. “He won’t be happy when he learns that he’s been tricked.”
Whispr’s amusement vanished. “What difference does that make? When he or his associates eventually find us it won’t matter if they’re laughing hysterically or growling in anger when they finish us off. But I think I’ve bought us some time.” His smile returned, albeit muted. “It’s funny—I don’t care so much about learning the secret of the thread anymore, as long as you’re satisfied to accept it as payment—but I do want to see the animals.” His gaze locked on hers. “You have your obsession, I have mine.”
Having delivered himself of that assessment, he set about learning how to use the plane’s in-flight entertainment system, as delighted by each new offering as a kid with a new netglobe. Leaving him to his amusements, Ingrid chose to accept his assessment of their current prospects. If the assassin who had been set on them really was on his way to Tokyo, they should have at least a week or more to move about freely and make open inquiries in Cape Town—after setting aside a suitable period for wildlife viewing. Once they arrived she could renege on that agreement, of course. Doing so would also likely see her chances of learning anything about the thread without first getting herself killed reduced to near zero. In a place as foreign and dangerous as Southern Africa she would need the street smarts of her disreputable, seedy, and somewhat smelly companion more than ever.
As the plane climbed to the edge of space she found herself worrying about her friends and patients back home. What would they think when her “vacation” time ran out and she failed to return or contact anyone? She missed her comfortable codo and the modern conveniences and enhancements she had for so long taken for granted. She missed feeling safe. And she knew she couldn’t contact anyone, personal or professional, lest the communication be traced back to the location from which she initiated the contact.
Her fellow passengers were starting to settle in for the duration of the flight. No one was looking in their direction. Environment lenses flipped down over his eyes, Whispr was completely lost in whatever entertainment he had plunged into.
Reaching into a pocket she withdrew the transparent capsule, unsealed it, and extracted the thread. Holding it up next to the small window caused it to glisten silver and metallic in the polarized light. How could something so small and difficult to get into fuel so much violence and death? If she was fortunate enough to learn the secret of the tiny storage device’s contents, would she learn the answer to that as well?
And despite everything she had told Whispr, in her heart of hearts did she really want to?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALAN DEAN FOSTER has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, Western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Star Wars: The Approaching Storm and the popular Pip & Flinx novels, as well as novelizations of several films including Transformers, Star Wars, the first three Alien films, and Alien Nation. His novel Cyber Way won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first science fiction work ever to do so. Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from an early-twentieth-century miners’ brothel. He is currently at work on several new novels and media projects.
www.alandeanfoster.com
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