Authors: Alan Dean Foster
Something bubbled off to his right. At first he thought it was a big fish that had been startled by the passage of the two predators. Only when the
noise and disruption was repeated several times in rapid succession did he realize the cause.
Projectiles, moving fast through the water. Whether auto-hunter or actual police, someone was shooting at them.
Following Gator’s directions the caimans went deeper and initiated evasive action. Quick as they were, they were organics and not mechanical submersibles. They were not even as agile as otters.
He knew it immediately when Gator got hit. The Alligator Man nearly lost his grip on his mount. Even in the murky water the trail of darker liquid that started to swirl from his left hip was identifiable. Whispr had seen too many men bleed not to recognize the source.
His host gestured one last time. Perhaps he also conveyed further instructions to the caiman’s headbox. Regardless of the cause Whispr found his mount turning away. Was Gator initiating separation to make it more difficult for the police to track them? Or was he sacrificing his guest, delivering him to the authorities in order to facilitate his own escape now that he had been wounded? Whispr had two choices. He could let go of the ring and let himself float to the surface. Or he could take a chance on his host’s integrity and hang on. He chose the latter. If nothing else, it was less tiring.
Something tore into his right side.
He couldn’t tell what he had been hit with. The persistent burning sensation hinted at something other than a simple slug. But since he had been struck while he was beneath the surface and since his experience of fighting underwater was limited, he could not be certain of anything. Looking back and down, fighting to hang on to the control ring, he saw long strands of his shirt trailing in the water like bleached seaweed caught in a current. There was also blood, but not as much as he feared and considerably less than he expected. Had the shot internalized and was even now sapping his life force or had he only been struck a glancing blow? Warm water and adrenaline combined to mute the effects.
There was no muting the persistent throbbing, however. He hung grimly to the grip ring as the caiman maintained its powerful push toward a programmed and unknown destination. Time enough, Whispr told himself through the pain, to learn how badly and by what he had been hit when eventually he emerged from the water. No more shots struck him. A glance downward showed that he was not losing much blood. After awhile
it dawned on him that his mount must have either eluded or outswam any police pursuit. He was going to be all right. He was going to make it.
All he had to do, he told himself as the underwater vista surrounding him grew more and more blurry, was not black out.…
“C
OME OUT NOW
, with your hands up and empty! We know you’re in here, Kowalski!”
The cordon of cops advancing steadily deeper into the techrap complex knew nothing of the sort, of course, but based on the frantic research performed by the Center over the past couple of days there was a decent probability that the fugitive who was the subject of so many recent bulletins might indeed be found seeking out the just barely legal services of one Luther Calloway, né the Alligator Man.
The corporal who was on point and who led the way in had neither the manner nor the meld for subtlety. Working with hands the size of hams he simply leaned his considerable weight on the front door and pushed. To the officer’s surprise, the barrier was surprisingly flimsy. Having been warned to expect everything from reinforced portals to automated weaponry and having thus far encountered neither, he and his colleagues relaxed slightly in spite of themselves. Relaxed, but did not let down their guard.
The sergeant was not allowed to do so. As the woman in charge, relaxation was a luxury of which she could not partake. “Relaxing” while an assault was in progress would look bad on her record, and since the movements and actions of every city cop were transmitted continuously for the purpose of permanently recording such movements not only by their own individual sealed personnel monitors but by those of their fellow patrolling officers, she could not apply for nor hope for any personal privacy time until the raid had been concluded. The compact devices allowed monitors at the Center to keep track of the actions of everyone on the municipal force. Backup could be deployed without having to be requested, help sent to an injured officer unable to respond, situations analyzed in real time by experts in specialized fields.
The continuous recordings also did an excellent job of cutting down on incidents of police brutality, with consequent benefits not only to the officers who had to function under constant surveillance but to the taxpayers as well.
Within minutes the armed men and women who had spread throughout
the building began to trickle back toward the entrance to report. Gathering around the sergeant they comprised a wide spectrum of Naturals and police-specific Melds. The commtech had remained with her throughout the dispersal and search, ready to make use of the instrumentation that had been melded into his body and in a few instances linked to his own nervous system. Even among Melds, Officer Raymer was unique in that he stuck his two specially melded fingers into open electrical sockets not by accident or because of some perverse fetish but because the gesture was designed to recharge the batteries that were emplaced in his buttocks.
“Nobody here, sergeant. The place is empty.” The young officer reporting was not out of breath. It was just that while impressive for a private, one-man operation, the techrap and integrated living quarters did not occupy a great deal of floor space. Checking the interior had required only a short time.
“Not unexpected.” The sergeant was disappointed but not surprised. Similar simultaneous raids were taking place all over Greater Savannah. Still, given its level of importance this was one collar every commanding sergeant wanted to make. Word had seeped out of the Center that whoever brought in the Meld called Whispr could look forward to not just a commendation but possible immediate promotion. Why the low-class Meld was such a catch she could not imagine, unless he had somehow managed to seriously offend someone important.
Not her job to wonder, she reminded herself. Only to apprehend. Despite the succession of negative reports from the members of her squad she was loath to quit the riverside techrap so quickly.
Opening his eyes, the commtech spoke up. “Auto-hunter reports are all negative, sarge. Same from our people on the river.”
“The river.” It was a short mantra, but one worth investigating. She turned to her squad. “Check the lower floor.”
“This place is a one-story, sergeant.” The officer who spoke up sounded apologetic.
“Then check the understory,” she snapped. “Check the friggin’ mud. You find anything bigger than a crawfish, I want to talk to it.”
They fanned out anew. It wasn’t long before they found the camouflaged trapdoor.
“Think they’re down here?” The patrolwoman spoke as she knelt and began tracing the fringes of the locked opening with her scanner.
Holding his riotuss casually, her companion shrugged. “Could be. Good place to hide from infrared pickup.” He nodded at the almost imperceptible lines that marked the edges of the portal. “If so, they sure are being quiet.”
Something on the underside of the barrier clicked and the lightweight but strong panel popped upward a centimeter or so.
“That’s got it,” she murmured. Rising, she drew her sidearm, aimed it at the portal, and glanced at her partner. “Ready?” Raising the muzzle of his riotuss, he nodded. The ammo gauge on the crowd-control weapon read full.
With the toe of her right boot she flipped the door up and open. It fell backward on the floor with a soft bang. The riotuss’s search beam illuminated a slick surface below: water black as onyx.
“Kowalski, Calloway—come on out! Game’s over.”
There was no response from below. No sound, no movement. Looking to her left, the officer who had opened the doorway fastened her gaze on a dog-sized storage cylinder. Pushing it with her left foot she shoved it toward the opening until it tumbled in. There was nothing sham about the splash that resulted. The river below was real and not a projection. She edged toward the silent gap.
“I’m gonna have a look.”
“Slow,” her companion advised her unnecessarily.
With a nod she dropped silently to her knees, then to her stomach. Lying prone, she stuck the muzzle of her weapon and then her head into the opening. The light built into the end of the barrel swept the underside of the techrap.
“Nothing,” she reported just before the Orinoco crocodile shot like a missile from the depths of the dark water, clamped its jaws shut around her head, and dragged her screaming into the water below.
At this point the erstwhile occupants of the complex who had been the subject of the raid were summarily forgotten in the ensuing confusion, panic, and unregulated hysteria that resounded piercingly not only throughout the heretofore silent techrap but via a multitude of active links through the no longer phlegmatic souls at police Central.
“Really, I must speak with the fellow. He is my late wife’s cousin’s youngest son.”
The ramshackle residence hotel located in one of Savannah’s poorer districts being too low on the scale to afford a customized Meld (or even better, an automaton), its front desk clerk was a Natural. As a Natural he needed less coddling than a Meld and less maintenance than an automaton. He was also adaptable. Fully cognizant of his exalted position as decision-maker in matters of admittance, he took his time studying the supplicant before deigning to respond.
The poor old guy certainly looked harmless enough.
“Everyone calls your skinny whip-guile relative Whispr. Tell me his real name.”
The elderly visitor did not hesitate. “Archibald Kowalski. The family is from a little town up north—Pittsburgh.”
None of which meant anything to the clerk. He had solicited an answer simply to see if the visitor would have one. Whether it was accurate or not was immaterial. What mattered was that the old man had replied promptly and without hesitation. The clerk sighed.
“A duplicate keystress’ll cost you twenty, if you want to sit in the room instead of the hallway.”
The oldster dutifully slid a charge tic across the desk. Both of them knew that the clerk could have let the hotel’s visitor into the room in question for free, just as both of them knew he would not do so. A ritual as old as the first time one Cro-Magnon provided space in his cave to another, the exchange was soon concluded.
“None of my business,” the clerk murmured as the visitor deftly palmed the keystress, “but is this a family visit?”
The shuffling senior smiled slightly. It was impossible to tell just by looking at him if he was Natural or Meld. He was a short, sorrowful-faced little fireplug of a man, stocky but not fat beneath his cheap garb. On the street no one would look at him twice. Presumably it was an incurable (or too expensive to fix) spinal disease that caused him to bend forward slightly at the waist. His eyes were brown and his nose appeared at one time long ago to have been broken in several places and poorly reset: in an era of melds and other medical miracles such sloppy work was a sure sign of frail finances. There was a healthy glow to his full cheeks that stood in contrast to his otherwise genteel shabbiness, indicating that even if he didn’t dress well, he ate well. The fringe of unkempt white hair that haloed his otherwise bald head was thick and several centimeters long.
Yeah, he’s a Natural
, the clerk decided as he appraised the pitiful coiffure. Even a poor Meld would go either all skin or all hair, both cosmetic choices that were equally easy to obtain. He realized that the old man was still speaking to him.
“I don’t mind telling you. My late wife’s cousin recently passed on. I am here to convey the news and to inform Archibald that he has been left a small inheritance. I come in person instead of sending the information via the box because I have papers with me that he must sign in person in order to claim the sum.”
Grunting acknowledgment of this explanation, in which he had no interest whatsoever, the clerk turned back to the soft porn projection in which he had been immersed. Half-meter-high dancing nymphs swirled around him, cooing and caressing. He smiled like someone in the throes of a pleasant drug-induced daze. In boxland did the entertainment moguls a pleasure dome decree.
“Got us a rich lodger, eh? That’s a first!”
“Oh no, not rich. Not at all. But it is only fair that Archibald receive that to which he is entitled from those who wish it upon him.” As he stepped into the open lift and turned back to face Reception the elderly visitor bowed slightly. Even lost within the lascivious projection the clerk was visibly startled. In his entire life he could not recall anyone ever having bowed to him.
Lucky bastard
, this Koo-kowski. None of his relatives had ever left the clerk anything except misery.
In the hallway on the sixth floor the old man pressed the keystress to the center of Room 684’s handleless door. A synth voice warbled “Recognized” and the barrier obediently slid aside. The internal room lights came on as he entered. There were not many of them and they were weak. This the visitor expected.
“Hello?” he called tremulously. “Whispr? Archie Kowalski?”
In the absence of a reply he began a slow search of the living area. It was not spacious enough to qualify as modest. Tiny, perhaps. There was one living room and a bathroom. A cooking unit sat on a table next to an old food preserver that hummed too loudly. Nothing in the cubicle was elaborate enough to qualify as décor. Painted with receptors, the blank wall opposite the narrow, pushed-apart twin beds served as the sole viewing monitor. Inspecting the room’s electronics the old man could not find evidence of a proper projector. Primitive accommodation indeed, whose sole virtue was its cheapness.
He checked the single built-in closet. It held a change of clothing, some personal items remarkable only for their insignificance, and little else. As he peered into the depths of the food preserver the visitor’s nose wrinkled. The fare was all of a piece with everything else in the cubicle.