The Human Blend (28 page)

But of overt undercover agents out trolling for prey he could detect no evidence.

“Not zoe,” he told the man who had undergone the swamp strider meld. “Brain stuff more expensive, less stable. Mind trope—not trip, not tripe. Food for haute thought. Barf me a river, giver.”

The strider’s expression narrowed. “It would help if you named a tributary. Tickle me one.”

Resting his arms on the shaky railing, Whispr evinced a false interest in the murky water below. “Might have a something that’s worth something cubed. Need an appraisal.”

Tottering slightly atop his impossible legs, the swamp strider regarded
the supplicant suspiciously. “Plenty of dealers in Miavana. Easy access from there to the rest of Namerica and all points south and east. Why come here to the hot zone?”

“Plenty of watchers dealing watch on the dealers in Miavana, too.” Whispr offered a conspiratorial smile. “I prefer the words of the choir invisible.”

“Yopers, you do look like the type who don’t want to be seen. Turn sideways and a dance step makes you so. Brisk wind blow you away; all crow and no scare.”

From the other side of the walkway railing, Whispr met his gaze evenly. “Less wind in the waterlands. And I’m still here.”

The strider sighed and shuddered impertinently. “You selling and not buying. Why should I drop on you anything heavier than loose vowels?”

Whispr deliberately wiped long, bony fingers across a shirt pocket. “Maybe I
could
use a zoe.”

Now the strider returned the visitor’s smile. “That better. Business always better two ways from yesterday. Tell me what you trying to price. Weevil wax? Gotagod extract?”

“Hard goods.” Whispr kept his voice down.

“Jewelry? Instruments? Piece of equipment? Art? Sanitaried shellfish?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t need the appraisal,” Whispr replied sagely.

The strider gave a favorable nod. “Broth-brother has spent time studying spiff from scum. Cannot he tell poor Molpi
anything
about the nature of his goods?”

Whispr took another sweeping gander at their immediate surrounds. No one was so much as glancing in their direction. “Two bits both metal, but we don’t know for sure they are. Don’t know for sure what they do. Can’t tell by looking what they signify.”

“In muck there is mystery, as my Meld-father used to say. What you looking for is a muck diver. See Tomuk Ginnyy. Tell her Molpi sent you.”

“Directions?” Whispr asked.

The strider laughed softly. “Trouble with directions is they work both ways. I perceive you, broth-brother, but I don’t know you. And not knowing you, I don’t outloud homes of my friends. Herewith …”

Reaching into a pocket he withdrew a sleek, classy, utterly contemporary communicator. Flicking fingertips across the control panel he extended the device toward his customer. Bringing forth his own unit, which
was not nearly as stylish or costly as the strider’s, Whispr touched the upper contact to its counterpart on the strider’s device. As opposed to an over-the-air transmission, information exchanged thusly, via actual physical contact between devices, could not be intercepted.

“Gratitude,” Whispr murmured as he turned to leave.

Words accompanied the hand that reached out to restrain him.

“Long knowledge, short memory, broth-brother. Remember that we spoke of zoe-buying, and that my information does not come free. Restrooms are only for customers. Now—what z-kind tempts you?” He grinned encouragingly. “What’s your flavor? I got four dozen different, each of them mind-polish slick and smooth.”

A reluctant Whispr turned back. He had not really expected the strider to overlook their briefly voiced arrangement, but there had been no harm in trying to slip away without buying anything. Now that he mused more on it, however…

“No flavor,” he told the strider. “Normal duration and size will be fine, but blank.”

The strider’s eyes twinkled. “Oh ho so? You going to mix your own neurostick?”

“Why not?” Now that business between them was on the verge of being concluded, Whispr allowed himself to relax a little.

Molpi the strider leaned close, encouraging his customer. “Want to share the details with a broth-brother? Purely out of professional interest, of course.”

“Sorry,” Whispr told him. “But I can tell you that my intentions are clean and single-sourcing.”

Standing back away from the railing, the strider looked disappointed. “Each to his own taste, I suppose. Myself, I prefer to stir and shake before indulging.”

Whispr dropped his gaze, looked up knowingly. “You almost have to. It’s your business.”

“A
RE YOU SURE YOU KNOW
where we’re going?”

From where he was sitting in the small electric flatboat’s driver’s seat, hands locked behind his head and legs stretched out over the port side, Whispr smiled lazily over at her. “Of course I don’t—but the boat does.”

Luxuriating in the breeze that was temporarily keeping her cool if not
dry, Ingrid tried to relax and enjoy the panorama of surrounding swamp and rainforest. “What if your contact sold you a mess of pottage and we’re just zooming around aimlessly through government-protected morass?”

Whispr refused to be drawn in to an argument. Smart though she was, Seastrom had an annoying habit of worrying every little detail until it screamed for surcease.

“I’ve been around a little, doc. You’re experienced at identifying diseases. I’m good at spotting pretends. Our sourcer fit legit.” He closed his eyes, letting the information he had entered into the boat’s autopilot direct their course. “Besides, if we just keep going, we’ll know we’ve been done wrong when we hit the Gulf.”

She was only partially mollified. “We’re going in circles.”

“Of course we are,” he readily agreed. “The path to people who like their privacy always goes in circles. Start on the outside of a web and keep walking the circles inward and eventually you find the spider.”

It was not an analogy that made her feel particularly better, but it was evidently the only one she was going to get.

If one traveled in a straight line, the woman the strider had identified as Tomuk Ginnyy did not live far from Macmock. Traveling the circular route whose coordinates had been supplied to Whispr took a couple of hours, at the conclusion of which Ingrid’s relief at arriving at an actual destination nearly overrode the uncertainty in her mind and the soreness in her buttocks.

A handful of small houses occupied every square centimeter of the island’s buildable land. The remainder was overrun by enormous liana, vine, and Spanish moss–draped rainforest growths. Indigenous cypress and salt pine stood shoulder-to-shoulder with ceibu, mahogany, and dragon’s blood trees whose ancestors had migrated northward from South America. A small family of tamarins chattered in the miniature canopy while the long furry arms of a creature Ingrid only vaguely recognized bridged a cap between two branches. In no great rush to complete its transit, the three-toed sloth ignored the disembarking fellow primates below.

Like the spokes of a wheel, individual boat slips radiated outward from the round island’s circumference. Unlike in Macamock, here there were no streets, no walkways. The islet was neither large enough to require them nor important enough to warrant them.

Passing the first structure, which had been slapped together out of poly
paneling and sealant, they encountered what appeared to be a man in a bear suit. Or a bear in a man suit. Either way, an appalled and slightly intimidated Ingrid reflected, here was an individual who would unquestionably have benefited from a meld. Not to mention a bath.

Surprising her yet again, Whispr blocked the shambler’s path. “Looking for a lady understated of profession and name of Tomuk Ginnyy.”

Man-bear growled at the visitor. Looking at him, it was impossible to tell where his briar patch of reddish beard ended and his flourishing chest hair began. “No fishing here, wub-bub. No sights to see.” Raising a massive, hairy arm that protruded from a short dirty sleeve, he pointed eastward. “Miavana’s that way. This ain’t no tourist stop.”

“Really? A long Meld named Molpi told me this Tomuk is a good guide to local sights.”

The large local blinked. “Molpi the strider? He sent you this-a-by?”

“No,” Whispr snapped by way of reply, “we picked this architectural highlight out of a waterland guidesite.” He took a long, deliberate peer past the man. “Or maybe I ought to say archaeological.”

Anger flashed in the local’s eyes, only to be replaced almost immediately by amusement. Raising his other hand, he jerked rightward a thumb the size and color of a decomposing crawfish. “Third house over. Go circumspect, be polite. Folks hereabouts tend to snack on surprises.” With that he pushed past them, lurching toward a nearby dock. To Ingrid’s relief, it was not the one where they had berthed their rental craft.

From the outside the dwelling to which they had been directed was less than imposing, but in the limited time she had spent in Whispr’s company Ingrid had learned not to judge anything, be it people or possessions, from appearance. Money flaunted was money waiting to be stolen. Power displayed was power inviting a knockdown. From somewhere within the habitation a querulous voice responded to Whispr’s query.

“Molpi sent you?”

When Whispr nodded affirmatively, the woman who had materialized in the doorway stepped back inside. A low lintel forced them to bend as they entered. It would also, Whispr reflected appreciatively as he pushed through a second inner door, make awkward the aim of any unwelcome intruder.

Inside the double entrance Ingrid twitched in delight. The temperature within the residence was not merely cooled—it bordered on the arctic.
A visitor who stayed for twenty minutes or so would start to shiver. The astonishing artificial climate bespoke not only eclectic taste but also the ability to pay for it.

The interior of the main room was a cross between an electronics lab and a Mongolian yurt. Seemingly according to whim rather than any well thought-out decorative scheme, assorted primitive devices shared space with far more modern ones. In the center of the domed, circular chamber’s ceiling an ancient but dead-silent splay of jointed fan blades pushed frigid air downward. Ingrid quickly edged off to one side, where if not warm it was at least less glacial.

A short stout Meld in her midforties, their host revealed in the course of making introductions that she was an immigrant from Thule. How a Greenland Inuit had ended up in the steamy South Florida waterlands was a tale she did not seem inclined to elaborate upon. She looked perfectly Natural, Ingrid saw, except for her feet. They were enormous, rough-skinned, and clad in custom sandals. The initial meld had been for snow-shoe feet. In the course of her permanent move to the waterlands, she had decided to have the broadpod meld redone into flippers. The result was recognizable if less than perfect. What the émigré Eskimo now had were crude seal feet. Ingrid looked once, evaluated, and raised her gaze. She was far from shocked. As a physician she had seen far more unusual melds than this.

“Enough chat-chit,” their stocky host chirped. “I’m a busy lady. You say Molpi sent you to me? That’s good enough.” Naturally chubby cheeks bunched up in a rosy maternal smile. “He knows I’ll have his testicles melded if he sends me anybody suspect.” She looked speculatively from Ingrid to Whispr. “What can I do for you charming folks?”

His task accomplished, Whispr moved aside verbally as well as physically and let Ingrid take over. Stepping forward, she identified herself as a physician who was researching a particular, peculiar, possibly unauthorized, and potentially dangerous medical implant. From her backpack she removed and activated her own unadorned professional comm unit. The two women lapsed into silence as they spent several moments studying the projections the device projected into the air in front of them.

“Now that’s something you don’t see every day.” Their host squinted at one small portion of the infojection. “Might even be something you don’t see any day.”

“Can you help us?” As she spoke, Ingrid held her unit close to her waist. Her breath formed small cumulonimbus in the chill air in front of her lips.

The Inuit turned thoughtful. “Not without being able to directly input at least some of what you have just shown me. I could describe it in my own words and formulae, of course, but a half-assed evaluation is likely to be slimmer and much less accurate.” Turning flinty, her suddenly unblinking stare locked on the taller woman’s gaze. “It’s up to you. Did you come here for results or just to see if your panties would freeze?”

An uncertain Ingrid looked to Whispr for advice. He shrugged bony shoulders. “I’d say the same thing.”

The doctor nodded and followed their host over to a console. Shown a contact point she extended her unit toward it—and hesitated.

“The information I’m transferring concerns a nanodevice that I removed from the head of a young girl. What I”—she glanced quickly back at the watching Whispr—“what we want to know, if you can find out for us, is not only what it does but whether my initial analysis of its composition is correct, its factory or country of origination, and any additional relevant details you can uncover.”

She touched her unit’s contact to the open port on the console. Information was soundlessly transferred. When the exchange had been completed, their host took a seat before the console and began to verbally and manually manipulate some very elite instrumentation. As the thickset woman concentrated on her work Ingrid quietly moved back until she was once again standing beside Whispr.

“If she’s just researching the same lines of inquiry that I did in my office then we’ve come an awful long way for nothing.”

Whispr was watching the Inuit operate. “There is the global box everyone knows, and then there are the box channels that exist outside what is known. There are legitimate, accessible sites, and then there are those that have been rendered intentionally difficult to visit. There are some that when found fail to acknowledge their existence or will just vanish at the mere hint of a probe. It takes more than a tech to get inside them: it takes an artist.” He nodded toward where their now silent host was bent at her labors.