The Human Blend (11 page)

Chaukutri joined him in dining. Not to scrutinize his progress but because the effort of monitoring the melding had left him as hungry as his patient.

“Since you ask for my advice …,” he began.

Whispr spoke between mouthfuls. “I haven’t.”

“Since you ask for my advice,” Chaukutri repeated more forcefully, “I am telling you now. As a friend who would not sell you out to the authorities for anything less than a couple hundred thousand—get out of town. Leave Savannah. In fact, leave Namerica. Go as far away as you can manage.” His tone turned wistful. “Try Mumbai, it’s not a lie. Or Dar-es. Djakarta, Guangzhou, Sagramanda—anyplace big where you can lose yourself.”

His patient replied sorrowfully. “I don’t know any of those places, ’Cuda. I’m not a man of the world like you. I was born here. This part of Namerica is my home. If I were to do as you say, then I really would lose myself.”

The melder sighed and sipped at his yogurt. “I am telling you, the word is out for you. Strong word.”

Whispr set his empty plate aside and smiled. Chaukutri did good work and the expression did not hurt his customer’s maniped face. “Thanks to your efforts they’ll have a tough time trying to ident me now.”

Chaukutri looked away and shrugged, but Whispr could see that he was pleased. “A little nip here, a tuck there, some new add-ons. Basic bone ladling, most of it. You should have gone more radical, Whispr. I could have put fifty kilos on you from top to bottom.
That
would have done it. Made you simultaneously bigger and more invisible.”

His guest’s smile widened. “If you had done that then I would have had to change my Meld name, too. No, ’Cuda. I needed a different look, but I still need to feel like me.”

Picking up the dishes Chaukutri rose from the folding chair on which he had been sitting. “That feeling will get you much sympathy with the police
when they pick you up. I have done what I can. The last I can do is wish you good luck.”

Whispr also rose. “Thanks, ’Cuda. You’re a real friend.”

“Don’t turn those mournful eyes on me—especially since I just worked on them. You are a repeat customer, that is all. I am nice to you and concerned about your fate only because it is good business.” He nodded in the direction of his guest’s plate. “Would you like me to wrap up some food for you to take with you?”

Whispr shook his head. “Thanks, no. One of the benefits of my fullself meld is that I don’t need much food. I can’t outrun a lot of my, uh, colleagues—but over a long slog I can outlast them. Speaking of which, you happen to have heard anything about my associate Jiminy? I need to have words with him.”

“I have heard nothing about the gentleman you name.” Chaukutri’s shoulders rose and fell. “I am sure once you are back in circulation you will soon enough find out all you need to know.”

Whispr did, but not in the way he imagined.

M
ARULA’S REPAIR SHOP WAS BURSTING
with parts and components for scoots, trucks, and a vast variety of personal transports. It was where people brought vehicles to be repaired that had gone out of warranty. It was where they brought vehicles to be extensively customized. It was also where the occasional stolen machine could be sold, bought, or traded in for one Marula had made legal.

The proprietor flashed quite a few extensive modifications himself. So many that first-time visitors committed the occasional oversight of mistaking the shop’s owner for one of his machines. Not only was N’da Marula not offended by such errors of identification; he was flattered by them. They only confirmed the effectiveness of the manips he had chosen to undergo.

Dark-skinned as the rest of him, his right hand was perfectly normal except for the variant sensor pads that had replaced his fingertips. The other hand was oversized, double-boned, and terminated in a clamp that had been created by fusing the bones of his fingers together and adding a second fused hand facing opposite. Mated to his enhanced bone structure it enabled him to lift and examine an entire scoot without mechanical aid. Outwardly he looked like a cross between a robot and a troll, but the shop
owner didn’t mind such comparisons. In the realm of extreme melds his were far from the most outrageous. For one thing, he still looked human.

His right eye had been replaced with an analytical probe whose multiple lenses were capable of extending several centimeters from the socket. Ears and nostrils were original, there being no reason to meld them. The kind of repair work his shop specialized in relied little on hearing or smell.

Seated opposite the square-shaped Marula, Whispr was virtually invisible to anyone who might chance to look into the workplace. The shop owner weighed four, maybe five times as much as his guest. A number of other melded employees toiled in the vicinity with sealers and cutters, handheld analyzers, and other gear on an assortment of vehicles ranging from single-person scoots to an elaborate limo that when finished would be the perfect likeness of an oversized horse-drawn carriage, complete with robotic horses.

“I’m taking a chance just talking to you.” The lenses of Marula’s melded eye kept extending and retracting nervously. “Hellslip, I’m taking a chance just letting you into my place.”

Whispr shifted a little to his right in order to place himself more fully in the stream of cold air blowing silently from one of the air-conditioning vents. It was midafternoon and Savannah-hot and sticky, even inside the shop.

“If bluebreath is that huggy on us then I bet that prick Jiminy has gone to ground, too.”

The brows over the shop owner’s natural and melded eyes rose in concert. “Jiminy C? That’s a name you don’t have to concern yourself with. The Cricket has been squashed. He’s dead and boned, his file filleted.”

Whispr’s jaw dropped as he registered shock. “What? How?”

“Word on the flyway is ‘resisting arrest.’ ” The shop owner’s sardonic grunt rose like a whale belch from the depths of his huge frame. “That’s always the explana when someone picked up for questioning dies in police custody, ain’t it?”

A disbelieving Whispr nodded slowly. “ ‘Resisting arrest’ is a nonstarter. That’s not Jiminy’s modus. Even if he had a reason to fight being taken into custody he wouldn’t do it. He’s not that brave. He’s not that stupid.”

“He’s also apparently not that alive.” Marula sipped from a self-chilling tankard of liquid high-potency calcium. Essential to keeping his massively
melded skeleton healthy and functional, a thermos of the fruit-flavored supplement was always close at hand.

Concluding repairs on the left side of an electric two-seater, a sealer hissed loudly on their right. Whispr waited for it to shut down before continuing.

“This makes no sense, N’da. Why would the police kill Jiminy? He wasn’t important.”

In the absence of knowledge the shop owner was perfectly willing to speculate. “Maybe he didn’t tell them what they wanted to know. Maybe they didn’t want him telling someone else something he
did
know.” One artificial and one natural lens focused on Whispr. “Do
you
know anything?”

“Nothing worth dying for,” Whispr replied without hesitation. “We riffled a meld hand off a dead guy, that’s all.”

“Nothing else?” Marula was watching him closely.

“Nothing else,” Whispr lied with a faculty born of much practice.

The shop owner considered. “Must have been a prodigious valuable hand. Or a mighty valuable man.”

“He didn’t look exceptional. A mild Meld. Ordinary tourist. Or so we thought. We didn’t intend to kill him.” A wan smile crossed Whispr’s newly melded face. “You know how it is. Sometimes things don’t work out as planned.”

“Bet Jiminy C would second that. Where’s this hand meld?”

“Jiminy had it.”

The shop owner looked disappointed. He could always black market a hand. “If that’s what someone wanted back, now that they’ve recovered it maybe it won’t be as bad for you as word has it. Maybe after a quick scorch around town the authorities will back off.”

Whispr blinked as he nodded. He was still getting used to his newly maniped eyes. “That’s what I’m hoping. I’d really like to stay in the area. I’m not a traveler. This is my home.”

Unable because of his mass to peer over his shoulder, Marula had to turn his whole body in order to look behind him. “Well, it’s a hot home today. For all of us.” Legs like mechanical lifts straightened and he extended the hand that still featured fingers. The visit was at an end.

Jiminy’s dead
. Wandering the halls of the specialty mall that occupied
the bluff overlooking the south side of the river allowed a contemplative Whispr to wander in comparative safety among busily shopping crowds of locals and tourists. On one occasion he passed close to a couple of burly security guards, but despite the fact that there must be a sizable reward on his head they didn’t even glance in his direction. He smiled to himself with satisfaction. Chaukutri was worth what he charged.

He thought back to his conversation with Marula. Had the shop owner been on the right track? Was it the ampuscated hand? Was that what the authorities wanted back so badly? But if they had recovered it from Jiminy, why kill the poor goof? Unless—unless the Cricket had managed to hide it somewhere before he had been taken into custody. If that was the case and it
was
the meld prosthesis the police were after it might explain why there was so much uncharacteristic pressure to find the Cricket’s partner.

Unless it was
not
the hand they were after. Unless they were desperate to recover something else.

He did not need to remove the packet containing the thread from its hiding place in his right shoe to imagine what that something else might be.

What was recorded on that slender bit of flexible storage material? Something worth killing for? The only reason he could think of for someone to want Jiminy homicided would be to keep him from talking about what he had done. Which was to slay a visitor and take two things from him. If the street was true and the authorities were still hot after Whispr, and the reason for the hunt did not center on the ampuscated hand, then it somehow had to involve the thread. If that tiny bit of cyberforage was valuable enough to justify a custody kill by the police then it might, then it must, be worth money. A lot of money.

Before he could do anything else, before he could plan anything else, he needed to know what was on that thread.

It was just at closing time when the three women showed up. His wife had left to do some shopping, leaving Chaukutri to close down the cookers and bank the mobile adverts. One by one the floating ads winked out as the energy that maintained them was turned off. He was in the process of locking the counter when the Natural approached. In the absence of the usual manips she was still quite attractive, in a severe sort of way. It didn’t take much imagination for him to envision her clad in polarized synthetics, wielding a …

“Is it too late to get some papadams?” Her voice was sweet but stilted, like chocolate that had been left too long in the sun.

He replied reluctantly. “I fear so, miss. Our cookers are just now shut down and I do not even have the wherewithal to heat up any leftovers.” He glanced to his left. “I have some cold sticky buns with sesame, if that will satisfy.”

“I guess they’ll have to. Three, please, if you have that many.”

“Most assuredly.”

Slipping the trio of hand-sized loaves into an aerogel bag he prepared to hand them over. Contact with the enzymes in human saliva would set
off a reaction that would dissolve the container, leaving only a trace amount of coagulated organic packaging that would pass harmlessly through the human gut. He handed over the sack in exchange for a credit stick.

That was the last thing he remembered until he regained consciousness.

Through a high horizontal window he could see that it was night outside. He was in his own surgery, seated with his arms bound behind him and his ankles secured so tightly that the flow of blood to his feet was in jeopardy. The woman who had approached him in search of something to eat was chatting amiably with two companions. Unlike her neither of them was a Natural.

They had been melded beyond oversize. It was not that they were unattractive. Their proportions were perfectly normal except for their height, weight, and enhanced muscularity. From what he could tell as he recovered consciousness both were fairly standard Amazon melds. Neither looked like an athlete. They were just large.

Seeing that he was awake the two bigs came forward to take up stances flanking his chair. The Natural confronted him.

“Your sticky buns are very good.”

He swallowed and fought to maintain his composure. “We bake most everything ourselves, right here.”

“Commendable.” Looking past him, she nodded. “You also do other kinds of cooking.”

He managed to force a smile. “Man cannot live by papadams and sticky buns alone.”

“Neither can woman. Our information is that you had a recent visitor named Archibald Kowalski, né Whispr. Information about him is as thin on the ground as he is reputed to be.” She leaned forward. “I’m going to take a stab in the dark and guess that he didn’t come here for your wonderful food. What did you do to him? A partial meld? Full makeover?” She straightened and popped something into her mouth. Chaukutri couldn’t see what it was, but her pupils dilated sharply. He tried to swallow again but his throat had gone dry.

“You are mistaken. We are old friends and he comes often to eat here.”

The Natural nodded. For a second time, she looked past him. “You know, when I was young I gave some thought to becoming a melder. Circumstances
led me into another line of work, but I never completely lost the desire.” She gestured.

Picking him up chair and all, the two Amazons hauled him backward. Into the surgery. Chaukutri’s eyes widened without the aid of chemical stimulation.

“Wait! What are you doing? There are sensitive instruments in here. Be careful, you could damage something.”

“We wouldn’t want to do that.” The Natural’s voice had fallen. “We don’t want to damage anything.” She waved at the nearby bank of instruments. “If you’re a careful little people-baker you won’t have kept any records. No records means no trails for the authorities to explore. No trails for the authorities to explore means that if your little hobby is discovered, in the absence of any examples or evidence to produce in court, they can’t haul you in on charges of performing dangerous melds. Which means that the only records are likely to be in your head.” As the two bigs stepped out of the surgery, the Natural scowled at him.