The Human Blend (20 page)

As to what it might have stored on it …

Interrupted by a querulous voice, she was startled to see that the patient
had come up right behind her. She saw him before she heard him—a quality that might go some way, she realized, toward explaining her visitor’s Meld name.

“I don’t understand a lot of what your machine is saying.” His tone was timid, his attitude challenging.

Trying not to show that his proximity was making her nervous, she edged away from the slender, looming presence. “Chiefly, it’s saying that this thread is made from an unusual metal.”

Whispr perked up. “A valuable one? I told you it was valuable.”

“I didn’t say it was valuable,” she half lied. “I don’t know much about metals.” A delicate hand gestured toward the slot that held the thread. She was glad she didn’t wear good jewelry to work. “I do know that if the lab analysis is right, this is an unusual material. Now we need to try and find out what’s stored on it, if anything. Maybe if the container isn’t valuable, the contents are.”

“I already had friends try to find out,” he told her. “They couldn’t get at any contents.”

She had to smile. “I don’t know what kind of instrumentation your friends used, but the equipment in my office is pretty up-to-date. Some of it might be more advanced than anything your friends were using.”

His eyes met hers before she could avoid them. “I hope so.”

As she carefully extracted the thread from the study slot it struck her that this afternoon’s ongoing activities had nothing to do with the practice of medicine and a great deal to do with activities she was aware of only from watching the news and casual entertainment. But curiosity continued to overcome apprehension. They had already established the extraordinary nature of the thread’s composition. Suppose that was compounded by the discovery that it also held information of value or importance? What then? Among her friends and professional acquaintances she could count a considerable number of specialists, but “fence” was not one of them. Stealing another surreptitious glance at the man who had brought her the thread, she had no doubt that he would know exactly where to locate such a person.

What was she thinking? And what was she getting herself into? She had already taken one risk by treating him.

She ought to send him packing. Right now, this minute, before things grew any more complicated. She insisted to herself that she held back
from doing so only out of scientific interest. She wanted to know what, if anything, was on the thread. More crucially, she
needed
to know in what way if any it might be related to the vanished nanodevice she had removed from Cara Gibson’s head.

Conveying the thread to another part of the inlab, she started to insert the end featuring the connector into the nearest self-adapting flex receptacle—only to have it snatched from her fingers. Startled, she turned on her visitor. He was not just thin—his reflexes were lightning-fast.

“Wh—why’d you do that?”

His expression was impossible to read. “You want to know what’s on this, don’t you? To see if it’s valuable?”

“So do you,” she shot back accusingly.

“Utterso. But there’s something even more important to me.” Digging into a pocket with his other hand, he pulled out the envelope containing the extracted traktacs. “Do what we talked about first. Deactivate these. Then I’ll let you try to access the thread.” He taunted her with the transparent container full of seed-sized transmitters. “That was the deal.”

She wasn’t sitting at home on her couch munching popcorn and watching an entertainment vit, she told herself. She was participating in one. Like the rest of real life there was no fast forward and no rewind. She could continue, hit
ERASE
or …

“Give those to me.” She extended a hand and tried to ignore his knowing smile.

Deactivation proved less difficult than she feared. The band the traktacs broadcast on was straightforward and easy to find. While she had never had occasion to perform such work herself, the requisite mechanical means were at hand—as they would be in the office of any recognized and bonded physician. It was just never used because such interference with official police instrumentation was …

She concentrated on the work.

Her AI handled the necessary programming. Once that was completed it was a matter of subjecting each tiny pellet to the appropriate modulation by the inlab’s instrumentation. As each small but critical adjustment was completed she would pass the now harmless position locator back to the man from whose torso it had been removed.

When she handed over the last one he held up the glassine bag, carefully
and slowly counted its contents, then pocketed it and looked back at her. For a brief moment he did not look either melancholy or forlorn. He looked dangerous. Maybe murderous dangerous. But the sensation passed quickly.

There are all kinds of entanglement
, she thought. Including emotive ones. As a physician she had to cope with them every day—though they usually involved a patient’s reactions and not her own.

“How do I know you did anything except put these under a bright light?” he asked her.

She slipped into her best doctor-knows-all mode. “You don’t. You have only my word for it that, as a physician, I fulfilled my end of the bargain.”

She could see him debating with himself. Then he smiled—tightly, showing no teeth as usual, and passed back the thread. Taking it, she exhaled softly. Until that moment she had not realized how afraid she was that he was going to take it and run. Or worse. She suspected he did not because he wanted, he
needed
, to know as much as she did what, if anything, lay stored within the hair-thin strand of outrageous silvery metal.

Returning again to the instrumentation best equipped to answer that question she started to push the end featuring the miniconnector into the self-adapting flex receptacle—and found herself hesitating. Whispr was watching her closely.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” He indicated the waiting console. “Why aren’t you trying to see if it will plug in?”

“I have reason to wonder whether or not the contents might be something illegal.” She met his gaze without flinching. “Especially if it
does
turn out to be valuable.”

Her visitor might occasionally be slow of speech but there was nothing sluggish about his mental faculties. They suggested someone who rather than being stupid took time and care to think before he spoke.

“What about the similar thing you said you took out of a girl’s head? The thing that was part of a bad meld? Was it illegal?”

Now there was a notion deserving of contemplation. “I—I didn’t actually give it much thought. It was just something peculiar that didn’t belong. It was the strangeness of it that interested me. I never really considered whether it might be illicit or not. I just thought it was an atypical component of a bad job.”

He nodded toward the thread she was holding. “Maybe that’s all this is.
Strange and atypical doesn’t mean illegal. It’s enough for you to know that I got it from somebody who didn’t need it anymore.”

Clearly that was all the explanation she was going to get out of him. It would have to suffice—for now. “Another possibility, and one that’s even more likely, is that it is of military origin.”

That would explain a lot, Whispr realized. Not only the strange metal of which it was made but the exceptional effort the authorities had been expending to track him down. With a start he realized that the unusual amount of resources which had been deployed in that effort might have nothing to do with the fact that he had been involved in a robbery gone wrong but instead were directed solely toward recovery of the storage thread. The police, the government, might not be interested in him at all. In which case by returning the thread—anonymously, of course—the heavy pursuit might be called off. Return the thread now and he might be able to strike a deal.

She was still holding it between two fingers. He could easily snatch it away from her and bolt from the office. But no matter who was looking for it and no matter how important it might be, he remained tantalized by the potential it represented. He knew he wouldn’t be able to decide which way to jump until he found out what was on it.

As usual, greed overpowered common sense.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Taking a guarded step backward, she noted uncomfortably that he was standing between her and the exit from the inlab.

“Sorry. I get lost in my own thoughts a lot.” He made himself smile. “Sometimes I have a hard time finding my way back. A friend once told me it’s a side effect from taking too many cheap meld drugs.”

The regret with which he spoke left her staring blankly for a moment. Then she reacted, with a smile of her own. It faded quickly as she returned her attention to the thread.

“You understand that if this
is
military and my equipment here does succeed in accessing the thread’s contents, the act of doing so might well set off an alarm ten times stronger than any traktac and send out a locator broadcast of its own?”

He had already come to the same conclusion. As well as another. If he snatched back the thread and fled, he would have to start all over again trying
to find someone with access to instrumentation capable of penetrating its secrets. Mentally, he flipped a coin.

“Plug it in,” he said with conviction. “Let’s see what happens.”

Expressing satisfaction she turned away from him. With the dexterity of an accomplished physician she slid the thread connector first into the open flex receptacle. Immediately above it and as soon as contact was made, a telltale on the console flared to life.

Regrettably, the light was red. Frowning as she leaned toward the console, Ingrid murmured a succession of commands. Intermittently, the telltale would go out. On the occasions when it came back on, it was always the same disheartening color.

Whispr stood it as long as he could. “What’s happening?”

Intent on fine-tuning the instrumentation she barely glanced in his direction. “We have a connection, but my inlab isn’t reading any contents.”

“You mean the thread is vacant?” That didn’t make any sense, he thought. Why would anyone go to so much trouble to conceal an empty storage device?

“It’s not that,” she told him. “I can’t tell if it’s empty or full to the last byte. What I am telling you is that my equipment can’t read this medium, whatever it is.”

“How can you have a connection but not even be able to tell if there’s anything held in the volume?”

Stepping back from the console, a frustrated Ingrid gestured at it. “You don’t believe me?
You
ask it. I turned off the coding—it’ll respond to anybody’s voice.”

Accepting the challenge Whispr stepped forward and began mouthing commands at the console. It replied immediately, politely, and with the same blanket declamations of negativity that had greeted the doctor’s more precisely phrased inquiries.

“Maybe a more advanced reader …,” he mumbled unhappily.

“Perhaps. But as I told you, the electronics in my office are very up-to-date. They have to be, in order to keep up with the latest medical data. Furthermore, in addition to the public box the technical specs of my inlab are tied into all the other private ones in this building, including the hospital’s. We all share information and analytical capabilities. Everything except patient and associated privileged information.” She looked back at the flex receptacle.

“I agree with you that if we have a valid connection the equipment should at least be able to tell us if there’s anything stored on the medium. That it cannot suggests that it contains proprietary coding as advanced as the composition of the device itself.”

Whispr prided himself on his ability to see the world around him realistically. Among other things that meant being able to admit when you had reached the limit of your personal knowledge. So he was able to confess ignorance without shame.

“Don’t feel bad,” she heard herself saying. “I’m not sure what to do next, either. There are more powerful readers and other instruments that can probably tell what’s inside this thing.”

“Then let’s use them.”

Her hesitation was conspicuous. “I think if this storage device was mine, I’d want to study it some more before I would risk that. For example, subjecting it to scrutinizing radiation could bypass the coding—but it might also destroy or damage whatever is stored on it. Before I’d go deep-probe I’d want to try and get inside using less invasive technology. I propose that—”

Her suggestions were interrupted. Not by her visitor but by a chirp from the console. Leaving Whispr to wonder what was happening, she turned quickly to the readouts.

“We’ve got a response,” she finally informed him. Her eyes flicked over the information that had suddenly and unexpectedly appeared on the main monitor. “It’s putting out a signal. Very weak, bordering on the undetectable. And it’s got to be powered by the tiniest battery I’ve ever
encountered.” Looking back at him, she tried to be reassuring. “I doubt it’s summoning the police, if that’s what you’re worrying about. Its strength is much too weak. I imagine that anything capable of picking it up would have to be exceptionally sensitive and specifically attuned to listen for it. Unless this is an example of still another technology that’s new and incomprehensible and previously unencountered.”

Military
. More and more that was looking like the most likely explanation for the thread’s impossible composition and cryptic content.

Whispr tried to wrap his mind around something else that made no sense. “How can something that small and thin be putting out
any
kind of signal? Seems to me the whole thread would have to be devoted to power generation and that wouldn’t leave any room for information storage or anything else.”

She shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea, Whispr. Maybe it can change physical states, from storage to transmitter power. Between this and the encounter I had with the device I removed from that girl’s head I’m starting to think that someone, somewhere, is doing a little real-life rewriting of the physics textbooks.”