The Sum of Her Parts (26 page)

“Uh-huh.” Objecting vociferously the Meld wiggled the fingers of his right hand. Expensive biobond instrumentation gleamed in the light from the illuminating strips painted on surrounding walls and ceiling. “And what would
you
do? Manipulate them manually?”

“Depends on the composition.” Ingrid accompanied her unsolicited advice by smiling dazzlingly and inhaling deeply. Six pairs of unmelded eyes immediately shifted in her direction as she allowed
herself to be swallowed up and surrounded like a female humpback suffering the courtship of a trio of smothering suitors. Had the techs had tails they would have wagged. None of them paid the slightest attention to Whispr as he fell in quietly behind the trio that had become a quartet.

“Really?” opined the third tech. “What would you suggest, Miss … uh, doctor …?”

As she improvised cheerfully while managing to say nothing, the Natural in the lead leaned forward so that a scanner set flush in the wall beside the door could read his retina pattern. Simultaneously, a second and completely different scanner located below it read the information on the tech’s glowp. From within the wall a soft buzz was followed by a loud click. Only when the door opened inward and the technician stepped through was Ingrid able to appreciate its thickness and solidity. Flanked by the other Natural and the Meld and still talking, she positioned herself carefully between them. Meanwhile Whispr, striving not to be too obvious about it, moved up as close behind her as he dared. Absently, the Meld put his own eye up to the retinal scanner and his glowp close to the lower reader. Hidden motors continued to hum softly and the vaultlike door stayed open. Beyond, another corridor loomed invitingly. Ingrid took a step forward.

“Just a moment, please.”

Everyone turned. Having risen from his seat and his screen, the seemingly semisomnolent guard confronted them from behind. Ignoring the three techs, his attention was focused squarely on the only woman in their midst.

“Your name, specialty, and purpose, please, miss?”

“Susan MacGregor, general physician. I’m here to check on a patient.” She flashed another award-winning smile. “He’s not contagious, if that’s what you’re concerned about.” She turned to go through the open doorway.

“Your pardon. I must ask you to wait here a moment.”

“Look,” she began sternly, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I have work to do and you’re holding me up. We can discuss whatever’s troubling you when I’ve seen my patient and I come out.”

The guard did not reply. There was a commotion up the corridor. It was caused by the increasingly loud pounding of heavy feet. Half a dozen armed men and women, including two heavyset weapons melds whose left limbs terminated in large-caliber automatic weapons, were hurrying toward the tantalizingly open doorway. Aghast, at least one of the formerly besotted technicians had moved as far away from Ingrid as the enclosing walls would permit. His companions merely looked stunned.

“I am sorry, miss, but in the absence of clarification I must place you under arrest.” Leaving her, the guard’s glance settled on her companion. “And for security purposes, your assistant as well.”

Ingrid launched into a bitter diatribe professing outrage. “I hope you’re as bored with your job as you seemed to be when you were sitting behind that desk,” she told him angrily, “because when your superiors hear about this you won’t have to worry about being bored there any longer! This embarrassment is not going to go unremarked upon if I have to personally contact company headquarters in Cape Town!” Having slowed to a halt, the armed and armored bodies of the quick-response security team now completely blocked the corridor behind her and Whispr.

If he was rattled by her indignation the guard did not show it. “I would recommend that you do that, miss.” His gaze dropped floor-ward. “While you are at it you might also explain why a company doctor and her assistant have chosen to go on duty pairing freshly cleaned clothes with remarkably dirty high-tech desert boots.…”

There were five of the intruders. Maybe, Kruger thought as he studied the sullen, defiant faces, they thought that would be enough to overpower the security at Nerens long enough to steal whatever it was they had come for.

First the trespassing floater and its crew that had been ambushed by magified meerkats. Now this. It was turning out to be an unusually busy month. Someone else might have found the dual intrusion diverting. Not Kruger. He liked things calm, quiet, and boring.

Two women, two men, and one hermaphro. All Melds. Specialists in killing, infiltration, demolition, penetration—and more killing. They had been picked up several kilometers from the installation. Having been informed of their presence a curious Kruger had observed their approach from the multiple vantage points provided by silent, near invisible drones that flew well above the altitudes utilized by more common commercial searchers.

It had been amusing. Watching them advance in fits and starts, covering their methodical approach with weapons drawn and ready
to unleash narcotizing darts on any security personnel who might challenge them. Darts would make no noise and draw no attention. Oh, they had come well prepared, they had. The most likely scenario was that they had been air-dropped by a silent superfast floater.

Keeping them under constant surveillance and curious to see how they would proceed, he had pulled back his people and allowed them to enter the complex. There was often something useful to be learned from monitoring the activities of the unwary. Regrettably, in this instance the intruders had proved disappointingly predictable. Tiring of the game, once they were inside he’d had the section of corridor they had infiltrated closed off and filled with a fast-acting soporific gas. There had been no need to introduce anything fancy or expensive. One minute they were skulking along beside one another; the next they were passing out on top of one another.

Both of the men were quite large and muscular. The bands that bound their arms behind their backs and their legs and ankles together were fastened to the wall. This kept prisoners upright. It was by no means inhumane. If they wished they could relax by leaning against the smooth bare surface behind them. Otherwise their range of motion was circumscribed. One of the power loaders that worked the oceanfront diamond shelves might be capable of breaking such security bands. Mere flesh, blood, and bone, no matter how extensively maniped, could not.

The interrogation room was quite large, with a six-meter-high ceiling and four walls devoid of windows or decoration. Large floating digits marked the day and time. At one end there was a single door and a couple of chairs. Multiple vit pickups embedded in walls, ceiling, and floor recorded every millimeter of the chamber in very high resolution tridee.

Members of Kruger’s capable staff had methodically checked the captives for everything from concealed weapons to incendiary clothing to intestinal explosives until they were certain there was nothing left on their various persons capable of shooting, stabbing, cutting, poisoning, or exploding. What was left to answer his queries were four people of different shape and identical demeanor.

The hermaphro had bit down on a suicide capsule before Kruger’s people could get to him.

“Hello. My name is Het Kruger. I am the chief of security at this SAEC installation. You made an illegal entry into this facility and were caught. As you surely know, all travel into the Sperrgebeit is forbidden except to those who have been preauthorized by the relevant company department or Sanpark. None of you carry such authorization.” Smiling pleasantly, he held up his communicator. Its screen was blank and its projector remained dark. “If you were carrying such authorization, you would have knocked. Who, please, is second in command of your infiltrating group?”

“You’ll find out eventually anyway, I suppose.” A slender Tibetan woman whose maniped gunhands had been unloaded nodded toward the massive, heavily maniped Dayak occupying the far end of the lineup. “Sulok is in charge if anything happens to me.”

Kruger nodded and worked his communicator. From the ceiling a narrow openmouthed cylinder emerged. Emitting a soft pop, it disgorged an opaque yellow bubble the size of a watermelon. As the prisoners looked on, the bubble drifted slowly downward before angling to its right. Though the maniped Dayak fought and struggled with his bonds, he was secured to the wall behind him as effectively as if he had been nailed to it.

Touching the side of his head the bubble hesitated, as if verifying its location. Then, despite the shouted protests of Sulok’s comrades
and his own violent cursing, it englobed his skull. For a brief moment his furious features, slightly distorted, were visible through the engulfing yellow haze. Then the bubble ignited. This was followed by a great deal more screaming.

By the time the flames had burned themselves out there was nothing left of the man’s head. Seared carbon-black, the top of his spine stuck up and out from between his shoulders, smoking like an extinguished match. The fire had burned partway down into the chest cavity. Exhaust systems hummed as the interrogation room’s automated climate control worked hard to remove drifting ashes, soot—and the smell.

Kruger stood and waited patiently for the survivors to exhaust their rage. Their insults and threats and unpleasant descriptions of his ancestry affected him like a cold shower: bracing and cleansing. When they had finally run down he approached the diminutive Tibetan woman who had identified herself as their leader and halted a couple of meters away. Though the bindings securing her to the wall were unbreakable by any known organic force irrespective of meld, Kruger always prepared for the unexpected.

“You suckling yak bastard!” Evidently she was not quite finished. He raised one hand to his communicator. She stiffened and went quiet.

“Better,” he told her. With a slight nod he indicated the stillsmoking corpse hanging limp in its bonds at the far end of the lineup. “A necessary demonstration. To show that I have little patience with intruders. If you are curious, it involves a blend of aerogel and napalm. For the recalcitrant, it can be substituted for a meal. Acutely indigestible.” Holding the communicator up to his mouth he noted the fear the movement engendered in their expressions. Purely from a professional standpoint, he enjoyed the reaction.

“They’re ready, I think.”

Two figures entered the room: a man and a woman. The reaction of the three remaining prisoners to the appearance of the new arrivals was as varied as it was confused. Het Kruger was a type known to them: physically imposing, tough, lethal, completely self-controlled, and dedicated to his work. But this pair … the prisoners did not know what to make of them. They could console themselves with the knowledge that neither would anyone else.

They had to be Melds: no Natural human could grow so obese and still move with such apparent ease. What passed for clothing on their enormous bloated bodies consisted of colorful but untailored overshirts that fell almost to their knees. Matching blue or yellow pants accumulated in loose folds around huge feet that were encased in dark, loose-fitting boots of unnatural height and width. The woman had skin the color of burnt chocolate while her companion’s complexion suggested that he was suffering from an advanced case of jaundice. Their huge dark eyes were sunk so deeply in their bulging, fat-larded skulls that it was impossible to identify their exact color. Nostrils were wide and mouths reminded a couple of the prisoners of bottom-dwelling fish.

Advancing with a balletic waddle, they halted directly behind the security chief. When they spoke, the unexpectedly faint words seemed to come from somewhere deep within their massive, lumbering bodies.

“Why you try to enter Nerens?” the man asked.

The leader of the infiltration party strained to hear. What accent was that? Tongan, or perhaps Samoan? But there were too many clipped consonants, none of the softness in the brief query that would define Polynesian origins. Melanesian, perhaps, or even something local—meaning anywhere south of the Sahel.

She responded without hesitation. The security chief had not
put away his communicator. Not that it mattered whether she replied or not, she knew. She and her associates were dead anyway. It was the manner of dying she was bargaining.

“We were dropped off by floater and asked to perform a general reconnoiter and report back to Guangzhou.”

“Report on what?” inquired the corpulent female. Despite her similar size and shape her accent was completely different from that of her male companion.

The bound woman shrugged as definitively as her bonds would permit. “We were told to keep an eye out for unusual materials. Plastics, composites, especially metals.”

This response sparked a surprisingly animated conversation between the two blobs. Though the leader of the infiltrators strained to hear, the phrases being enunciated were too low and too garbled for her to glean more than an occasional word or two of the debate. When the overweight pair had concluded their discussion the man addressed the security chief. This time his speech was loud enough to be overheard.

“That is all. We are done here. Dispensation is yours, Mr. Kruger.”

The security chief nodded and the pair departed, barely managing to squeeze their respective bulks through the single portal. When the door had closed behind them Kruger turned back to the remaining captives.

“You heard the man. Dispensation is mine. Given your collective incompetence I’m inclined to think you’re relatively harmless. From the time your bumbling alerted the facility’s outer perimeter to your presence until the moment when you were rendered unconscious you were always under surveillance. You were only finally picked up because we got tired of monitoring you.”

To the prisoners’ credit a couple of them muttered a few choice sardonic comments.

“I’m not going to waste time haranguing you. I have better things to do and more important demands on my time. You have cooperated, so you’re going to be released. After all, you’re only low-level contract employees carrying out orders, and you didn’t harm anyone while you were inside.” He gestured toward the burned-out human wick at the far end of the line. “You’ve paid a twenty-five percent mortality penalty, chosen at random. We consider that warning enough.”