The Human Blend (34 page)

“No, I don’t
think
you would. I know you would. With apologies, doctor, this is an area of expertise where you are out of your depth. Your knowledge of such dealings extends to what your pathetic companion may have told you and to what you may have seen portrayed in cheap popular entertainments. To employ that medium’s time-honored if hackneyed vernacular, you are stalling. This is how I deal with stalling.”

The flurry went off. Despite the deceptive gentleness of its exhalation, Whispr flinched and Ingrid, unashamedly, screamed. Once again, only Gator held his ground.

She looked down at herself. Having already released her bladder, her leg was no wetter—neither from urine nor blood. She had not been hit by the blast. Neither had Whispr, who rose slowly from the crouch into which he had instinctively dropped. Gator had barely moved. Bewildered, she looked to her right. As a physician she found the sight of so much blood alarming, but only from an academic standpoint.

The hundred or so explosive darts that had emerged from one of the flurry’s twin barrels had shredded Yabby Wizwang from the waist up as thoroughly as if his body had been pressed through a giant cheese grater. The visual consequences made it look as if he had simultaneously been attacked by a dozen crazed barbers wielding straight razors. So overwhelming was the trauma to his system that he had not even been able to pump a last burst of shocked air out of his shrunken lungs and past his juvenile vocal cords. Blasted back into his chair, blood draining from his minced corpse and onto the deck of the cabin, it was impossible to tell that
he had undergone extensive melding to make himself look like a ten-year-old. In death as in life he still looked like a ten-year-old. Harder to discern than true age was that the flayed form had once been human.

Belying his advanced years while demonstrating his experience, Napun Molé had reloaded the instant after he had fired, extracting one shell among several from the bandolier slung beneath his loose-fitting, garish tropical shirt. His voice had not changed in the slightest when he resumed speaking.

“Please now, Dr. Seastrom. The thread? I assure you it will not be damaged if the destructive effects just applied to your host have to be repeated on your own person. The metal is stronger than you may imagine.” Holding and balancing the flurry with his right hand, its short stock jammed into the crook of his arm, he extended his other hand expectantly.

The black caiman that leaped on him from behind nearly got him.

Even as she threw herself toward Whispr, Ingrid could not decide which astonished her more: the fact that the Alligator Man had somehow managed to silently signal his maniped reptilian accomplices that he was in need of help, or the fact that a stumpy-legged crocodilian like a three-meter-long caiman could get that far off the floor.

Molé was surprised but not taken. Whirling, he unleashed both barrels of the flurry. The foreparts and front half of the leaping reptile disintegrated in an expanding sphere of blood, teeth, scales, and bone. Enough kinetic energy remained from its jump, however, to drive a portion of the organic debris into the assassin and knock him to the floor. A second caiman followed close on the armored heels of the first while yet another was smashing its way through the largest of the portside windows. Each had attached to its skull a similar tiny manip implant that allowed Gator to control and direct them.

Seizing a stunned Ingrid as well as the opening, Whispr yanked her in the direction of the cabin’s other entryway. Pursued by violent curses in several languages, the muted but lethal
phut!
of the flurry being fired again, Gator’s half-hysterical bellowed commands, and a succession of primeval crocodilian roars, they climbed and stumbled desperately up to the main deck.

“Wait, wait!” After half dragging her up the steps, Whispr now fought to hold her back. She soon saw why.

Along with the dark water in which it sat, the boat’s deck was alive with
giant reptiles. Every species currently known to reside in tropical Namerica was represented: caimans black and white, alligators, crocodiles American and Orinoco. In response to Gator’s call they clambered over the sides of the houseboat, the smaller craft moored against it, and each other in their haste to force their way into the main cabin. Glancing back down the stairway Ingrid saw something massive, toothy, and glittering of eye coming her way.

“Whispr …” Without waiting, she pushed past him. “They’re not after us anyway.”

“What makes you think they can tell the difference between …?” He didn’t have time to finish the question because she didn’t give him any.

For whatever reason—the persistence of Gator’s summons, the natural attraction of the frenetic action occurring within the cabin, sheer dumb luck—none of the reptiles swarming the houseboat changed tack to lurch in their direction. One lumbering armored monster did take a snap at Whispr, who eluded the potentially bone-crunching bite with a twisting leap worthy of a celebrity ballerino. Ingrid gasped—she was beyond screaming—as something tore away a piece of her—shorts.

They made it to their rented watercraft which was, for the moment at least, thankfully unoccupied. Whispr disengaged the link locking it to the larger vessel. A quick spin of the wheel and a moment later they were accelerating away from the overgrown houseboat as fast as torque could be acquired.

Luggage being deemed less important than living, by mutual consent they did not go back to their rooms at the Macamock boatel. Instead, Whispr headed the speedy little watercraft straight toward distant Miavana. New clothes could be purchased. Personal effects could be replaced. Everything that mattered was already in the boat and intact: themselves, their individual faux idents, and most important of all, the thread. Far more important than recovering anything trivial from their rooms was the need to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the houseboat—in the event a fearsome and singularly ferocious old man managed to survive the dinosaurian assault Gator had thankfully unleashed upon him.

Tense behind the manual controls, sweat pouring off his bladed countenance, Whispr peered across at her.

“You look like hell.”

Her attention concentrated on the swamp and waterland ahead, she
barely glanced in his direction. “That’s not surprising. I usually look like I feel.” She shook her head slightly, ever so slightly. “He just
killed
him. Killed Wizwang. No warning at all. He didn’t even say he was going to shoot. He just killed him. To make an example for the rest of us. I was looking at his face. His expression never changed.”

“Whose expression?” Whispr inquired with grim humor. “The old man’s, or Wizwang’s?”

“The old man’s. I didn’t get a chance to see Wizwang’s. When I did look he—there wasn’t anything left to make an expression with.”

Whispr maintained a death grip on the manual steering, unwilling to relinquish control of their craft to the boat’s deactivated autopilot. The last thing he wanted was to give the elderly horror that had come after them a chance to take control of the watercraft’s instrumentation.

“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.”