The Human Blend (12 page)

“It’s time to perform some information recovery. What did you do to, or for, this Whispr? It is vital that we talk with him. He and a friend stole something many others are looking to recover. There is much at stake, I am informed, besides money. My sisters and I hold no unreasonable expectations: we will be quite content to settle for the money.” As the door to the surgery slid shut she strolled over to the bank of darkened instrumentation. “It’s last chance time, little baker.” She giggled unpleasantly.

Even as he struggled against his bonds Chaukutri was watching her intently. “You know I cannot tell you anything about meldwork that has been performed in confidence. I am sure that if you continue to ask questions of relevant parties you will make Mr. Whispr’s acquaintance soon enough.”

“We don’t want to make it ‘soon enough.’ We want to make it yesterday.” A hand reached down, elegantly ringed fingers dancing over buttons and switches without quite making full contact. “I think I remember what this one does, but I’m not sure—”

“Don’t touch that! It …!”

When his wife returned from shopping and found him slumped over inside the surgery, she started screaming very loudly. Chaukutri was not dead. The meldwork that had been performed on him reflected an expertise that belied the operator’s inexperience. His arms had been modified into wings, his eyes enlarged beyond practicality, his mouth replaced
with a beak. Coarse feathers erupted from his skin while his now permanently bent legs terminated in feet that were broad and webbed. His mouth-beak had been widened into a permanent smile the writer Hugo would have recognized instantly.

Taken in toto the extensive meld was not unappealing—at least to children. Chaukutri now resembled a well-known and widely popular children’s cartoon character. Such animated melds were not unprecedented. A few were eagerly sought-after and costly. There was only one drawback to the far-reaching work that had been carried out on the man slumped unconscious in the chair.

Every bit of it had been carried out without the benefit of anesthetic.

I
N AN AGE OF RADICAL
cosmetology when the unusual had become the norm and the outrageous common it took a particularly exceptional meld to attract attention. For many that was reason enough to undergo melds that could be classified as extreme. “Look at me!” was the cry; sometimes strident, sometimes subdued, sometimes desperate, that had accompanied the first radical melds. Nowadays such once drastic manips were sufficiently widespread so as to rarely draw interest.

In the same way that three-meter-tall guards and three-hundred-kilo linemen had spelled the end of professional basketball and gridiron football (along with most other organized sports), so too had outlandish cosmetics performed purely for the sake of reckless narcissism fallen rapidly by the wayside. They had given way to melding carried out for more practical reasons. Better long-range vision for enthusiastic bird-spotters, larger hands for chefs, enhanced lungs for singers and specialized lips for all manner of brass and woodwind players, curved thighbones for enthusiastic bicycle riders, and greater sensitivity to changes in pressure for airline pilots.

Hobbyists were able to indulge in melds that allowed them to immerse themselves more completely in their favorite activities. With the advent of off-loadable organic storage banks capable of holding millions of old memories, brain melds proved not only impracticable but unnecessary. Then there were the melds that could be applied to pets as effectively as to their owners.

And as with all progressive leaps in technology, sex was forever in the forefront of new developments. Thanks to continuing advances in melding nearly anything that could be imagined became attainable.

Notwithstanding all of this, the complete face and body melding that had over a period of more than a decade completely remade Luther Heeley Calloway of Boudreux Island still marked him as something special among the melded masses. For one thing, no one had called him Luther or Calloway for a long time.

He was simply the Alligator Man.

“Why?” was inevitably the first question asked as to why he had chosen to undergo such an elemental transformation. The Alligator Man’s reply was as uncomplicated as it was sufficient.

“I like gators. Always have. Admired ’em, respected ’em, used ’em, and et ’em. Always thought it would be great to look like ’em. Found out I could. Did.”

Whispr knew about the Alligator Man. As did anyone who prowled even occasionally among the underworld of Greater Savannah. But he had never met him. Making his way downriver under cover of darkness, changing at the last minute from one commuter ferry to the next to throw off any possible police tail whether automated or human, he finally reached the low-lying complex of islets known collectively as Boudreux Island just after seven in the evening.

The Alligator Man did not greet him. The five-meter-long reptile that did raise its head behind the transparent autodoor caused Whispr to involuntarily jump backward half a meter. His newly enhanced and not yet entirely healed leg tendons protested at the sudden exertion required of them.

The loglike crocodilian yawned, displaying a toothy gape that was a perfectly primeval threat. “State your selfness.” The demand issued not from the depths of the enormous maw but from a speechbox that had been melded to the monster’s back just aft of the weighty skull.

“My name is—I’m called Whispr. I can show ident. Prior to today I resided at …”

The synth voice cut him off. “You are recognized, Whispr. Our files are extensive.” Lumbering aside on four clawed legs, the security pet made room for the visitor to enter as the portcullis door whirred upward. “Please come in. And don’t mind Lucius. He’s well trained, completely under control, and less inclined to gnaw on the legs of visitors than your average starving fried-chicken aficionado.”

Despite this dubious reassurance Whispr knew he had not traveled all
this winding way to be dissuaded by a melded reptile no matter how big or carnivorous. Although he effected his entry with more velocity than was normal, his stride expressed confidence.

“Come around to the back.” Wired to the reptile’s brain the permanently affixed voicebox crackled encouragingly. “I’ve just finished up for the day, but I always have time for another customer. You are another customer, aren’t you, Whispr-man? Otherwise you’re wasting both our time.”

“I hope I am.” Foolishly Whispr realized he had addressed his reply to the uncomprehending reptile. Meeting the gaze of the quadrupedal guard he found the latter’s eyes cold and empty.

Everyone knew why the Alligator Man was so called, but it was one thing to hear a secondhand description of the melds that had been performed and quite another to encounter them in the flesh.

Whispr’s host smiled. It was both impressive and off-putting.

“Call me Gator.”

For thousands of years it had been a customary coming-of-age rite for young men in the middle and upper Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea to scar their bodies as an homage to the sacred crocodile in the belief that doing so would allow them to partake of its strength. This was done by using a sharp knife to make multiple one- or two-centimeter-long slits in the skin and flesh of a young man’s back. Ash from a recent fire was then rubbed into the bloody open wounds. As the slits healed over the ash they formed raised bumps that strikingly resembled the ridged scutes of a crocodile.

Contemporary melding technology allowed such modifications to be taken to extremes undreamed of by Sepik villagers.

Whispr could not help but stare. No doubt his host was used to the attention, expected it, probably even welcomed it. Whispr found himself speculating on Gator’s social life—and more. Short of encountering an alligator woman via a box portal his appearance was not likely to draw the interest of any member of the opposite sex—or of any sex, for that matter. Still, Gator was doubtless satisfied with the transformation he had paid to undergo or he would not have done it. The man’s succinct explanation notwithstanding, Whispr could not keep from continuing to wonder why.

In an age of melds, there was no accounting for individual decisions. As for himself Whispr quite liked alligator. Preferably the tail, fried and
dipped in dressing and then slapped between the two halves of a fresh baguette.

The melds made his host look bigger. Most prominently in the face, though the rest of the body was in proportion. Unable to avoid staring at the results, Whispr could not imagine what it had all cost. It was clear that whichever surgeon or consortium had performed the work had been especially skilled.

Gator’s jawbones had been extended and strengthened. Human teeth had been removed and a full complement of crocodilian orthodontics installed in their place. When the man closed his mouth, selected white canines jutted outside his closed jaws just as they did in his reptilian namesake. Black slit, gold-flecked pupils replaced round blue ones. The external ears had been removed. At least, Whispr noted as he shook hands with his host, the man kept the prominent claws on his hands trimmed.

Given Gator’s customized appearance it was hardly surprising that of all the melds the man had undergone, some of them self-evidently painful, the most extensive work had been done on his skin. Even the tail that had been appended to his lower vertebrae and now extended behind him for a distance of more than a meter did not draw as much scrutiny as his modified epidermis. Tails of all kinds were a common meld especially favored by women. Crocodilian skin was not.

The nodules and scutes looked as if they had covered Gator from birth. Ranging in hue from dark green to black they shone in the room’s light like fine leather. Which they were. A side benefit of the aesthetics was that their owner was encased in the same natural armor that protected everything from caimans to garails. Eyeing his host, Whispr could not tell how fast the man was capable of moving, but between teeth, tail, and tough hide he would be a formidable opponent in hand-to-hand combat.

He had not come here to fight, however, nor to admire his host’s extraordinary meld. He had come because among those who practiced professions suspect and illicit, Gator’s technical knowledge was famed throughout the southeast coast. Whispr needed to engage the man’s brain, not his teeth. His host’s physical appearance was immaterial. Among melds eccentric and extreme, Whispr had encountered his share.

And there were forever rumors of the far more … outlandish.

Shaking hands was not a problem. Staring into those reptilian eyes was
not a problem. The proximity to so many threatening canines was not a problem. The only problem Whispr had with the engineer concerned not his physicality but his price. Upon hearing it, he shook his head regretfully.

“I can’t pay you what I don’t have.”

“And I can’t work without being paid.” Rising on leathery, claw-tipped feet shod in industrial-strength sandals Gator nodded in the direction of the front door that had admitted the visitor. In response to its owner’s movement the white caiman that had parked itself there reluctantly ambled off to one side.

Whispr was desperate. He was also caught in a conundrum. He couldn’t sell the enigmatic thread until he knew what was on it. Without knowing what information it contained he could not set an asking price. He had already taken a risk in coming here because once Gator knew what mysteries were contained on the thread he might well try to buy it for himself at a greatly reduced price.

Of course the thread might contain nothing of value whatsoever, or even be blank. But if that was the case, why were the police so interested in him? The murder of a tourist or any out-of-towner always provoked a heightened response from the authorities, but nothing as excessive as what he had recently experienced. It suggested that the thread must be worth something. He had to find out. Given such desperation, among contacts both real and rumored, the Alligator Man would be the first choice of anyone to try to unravel the thread’s contents. But he was not the only choice. Unable to meet his host’s required fee Whispr turned to leave. Before he reached the workshop door he heard a word both desired and fraught with uncertainty.

“Wait.”

Whispr turned back. At a distance his host looked more inhuman than ever.

“All you want is the information on a single storage thread decrypted and read?”

“Or parsed.” Whispr tried not to show any emotion. “I’d settle for parsed.”

“I don’t do half-assed work.” Gator grinned, and it was a truly remarkable thing to see. “I’ll read it whole entire or naught. I’m past parsing. I have more professional pride than that.” Still chuckling he extended a leathery green-black palm in his visitor’s direction. “Let’s see this thread you say your life is hanging from.”

Whispr proceeded to remove the packet from the hidden compartment in the sole of his right shoe. He worked carefully, though the thread had shown typical resistance to damage. Based on what he knew of it thus far it was more likely to be misplaced, overlooked, or lost than broken. He handed it over.

Taking the transparent packet deftly between two claw tips, Gator brought it close to his face. The silvery filament seemed to absorb rather than reflect the light in the heavily adapted living room.

“Mighty small piece of something to have caused you so much grief. The death of your partner at the hands of the authorities, you say? May their genitals undergo explosive melding!”

“I don’t know for sure that he was murdered because of this. It might have been over something else we took, or because of the person we had to kill. Or something else. But I feel sure that it must be valuable, somehow.”

Reptile eyes met his. “And how pray tell do you know that, Whispr-man?”

His visitor did not look away. “Because there was only one of these on the dead man. When there is only one of something and a lot of trouble is taken to conceal it, value is usually an attribute.”

“Hmm. We’ll see.” Holding the packet firmly, Gator beckoned. “Come with me.”

Part laboratory, part machine shop, part techrap, the workroom where Gator performed his unlicensed magic took up most of the back part of the house. Windows offered a view of one of the slithering Savannah River’s glistening moonlit tributaries. Something whose ancestors had migrated north from the Orinoco to settle happily among the cypress screamed softly from the trees. Whispr had no time to appreciate the real estate. He had to keep an eye on Gator. Despite the identification provided by the thread’s distinctive visual qualities Whispr had no intention of becoming a victim of an amiable switch on the part of his far more knowledgeable host. If at all possible he was not going to let the thread out of his sight.