Authors: Alan Dean Foster
It was unfortunate that the Meld called Whispr was not there, but the oldster was a patient man. Settling himself on one of the beds and stretching out his legs he activated the cheap house monitor and leaned back to watch a nature documentary. The natural world was a particular love of his, be the subject matter unmelded or otherwise.
Long after night had fallen he still had not eaten. That did not trouble him. He was used to going long periods without eating. Around eleven p.m. the door announced an arrival and the old man rose from the bed. He would surprise the renter. Moving off to one side he stood against the
wall and waited. As he did so, his spine unbent. A professional acrobat’s trick, it would have astonished the sleepy-eyed desk clerk.
A figure entered, carrybag in hand. Moving slowly and clearly tired from the day’s exertions, he set the carrybag down on the table beside the cooker and turned. As he did so his eyes widened slightly.
“
U’af
, who are y …?”
Melded muscle-twitch fibers contracted throughout the old man’s body as he cleared the space between them in a single bound. When the startled resident reached for something in his left pocket the quartet of tentacles that extended from the four fingers of the oldster’s left hand snapped whiplike around the man’s left arm and wrenched it violently sideways. Crying out as the intruder closed on him the resident used his other hand to pull a knife from a scabbard under his shirt and thrust wildly forward. It skittered off his attacker’s chest, the fine point unable to penetrate the flesh-toned organic Kevlar meld.
“Harami!”
the resident screamed.
“Itassal bil bulees!”
Even as he worked to bind the younger man’s hands the suddenly uncertain intruder wondered why he should be calling for the police in Arabic. Was the use of that language some sort of code he shared with someone elsewhere in the building? Or was it being employed to trigger a defense mechanism or activate a concealed communicator? While his earlier search of the tiny apartment had turned up neither potentially problematic installation it was always possible something had been overlooked.
Slapping sealant over the man’s mouth the oldster threw him down on one of the beds. When he tried to struggle back to a sitting position his assailant wrapped two finger-tentacles around his neck and drew a thumb-sized cylinder from a shirt pocket.
“This is only a simple neuralizer. You can buy one in many stores or via the consumer box. You know what it does. Delivers an incapacitating electric shock.” He leaned toward the man thrashing around on the bed. “However, if I were to press it against your left eye and fully discharge it …”
No one needed to project any images. The man on the bed immediately stopped fighting.
“Before we go any farther, let me assure you I mean you no harm.” The oldster smiled reassuringly. His appearance was that of a favorite uncle or
doting grandfather. “Odd as it may sound at the moment and under the present circumstances, I don’t want to hurt you. I only want something you have. Do you understand?”
Still wide of eye but beginning to calm down, the man on the bed nodded slowly.
“Good. My name is Napun Molé.” He sighed as he saw the man’s brows furrow in confusion. “It is pronounced ‘moe-lay,’ not ‘mol.’ The word comes from the Aztec and refers to a sauce made with cacao or chocolate and spices—not to the little burrowing mammal of which you are doubtless thinking. Nor, for that matter, does it have anything to do with the unit of measurement that represents Avogadro’s number and is used for weighing atoms, molecules, and elementary particles.” His expression tightened. “I am Mol-
é
, not ‘Mole.’ Please do not forget that when you address me. If it is easier for you to do so you may use my first name, which proffers no such confusion.” As he spoke he continued to play with the neuralizer, passing it from the fingers of his right hand to the bizarre tentacles of his left. These continued to extend and retract as he talked.
“As I am sure you are already well aware the police have also been looking for you and for the item of interest in your possession. Please don’t insult me by telling me you don’t have it. If you had not taken it and it was not in your possession or at least under your control, you would not have been striving so strenuously these past several days to avoid the attention of the authorities. Those who want it back—my employers—have no interest in you, your future relationship with local law enforcement, or anything else. For all they care you can go blithely about your business and on your way or find yourself helmeted beneath a truther. It is of no consequence to them, or to me.” His eyes gleamed and suddenly he did not look as old as he was.
“But I will have it, or you will suffer. I am very adept at what I do and I can spend many hours making you believe you are dying. Except that you will not. You will wish that you were, but you will not.” He paused. “Do we understand one another, Mr. Kowalski? Or Whispr, if you would rather be addressed by your Meld name.”
Behind the sealant, the figure on the bed was making violent muffled sounds. Molé nodded perceptively. “I will remove the sealant now. If you scream or yell for help, I will be forced to silence you. It will be unpleasant for you. It will be more unpleasant the next time you regain consciousness.”
Reaching forward and down he used the tips of his melded tentacle-fingers to peel back the sealant that covered the man’s mouth.
There was some coughing and sputtering before the figure said, “I don’t know what you talking about and I don’t know
who
you talking about! My name is Ali al-Thuum! I am a part-time cook at the Ghadames Restaurant on Mirabile Street. Please, I have a family in Sahara States who rely on the little money I can send them. What is it you want from me?”
The old man considered. Reaching down, he unzipped the shirt beneath the cheap coat he wore. As he passed the palm of his right hand over his belly the accessible chipped library that had been installed in his stomach came to life. While the bound man on the bed looked on with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, his elderly captor proceeded to verbally access his own stomach. The flesh that framed the storage insert was aged, but all muscle.
The conclusions Molé drew from querying his internalized database were irrefutable. He had the correct address and apartment, all right—but the wrong man. Shutting down the library he zipped up his shirt and regarded the immigrant cook.
“I regret this episode of mistaken identity, Mr.…?”
“Al-Thuum.” Visibly relieved, the younger man’s heart rate began to slow, his blood pressure to drop, his excessively dilated pupils to contract. Molé knew all this because the sensors that were components of his left eye meld told him so. The individual who had been mistaken for Molé’s quarry tried to smile. “I can feel sorry too for what you said earlier because my name sometimes also causes me embarrassment. But it is my family name and I will not disown it.”
“I’m not interested in your name or anything else about you.” Molé’s response was as indifferent as it was calm. “What I’m interested in right now, the only thing I am interested in right now, is the location of a man named Archibald Kowalski, also known as Whispr, who is the tenant of record for this apartment.”
“I shouldn’t tell you that,” al-Thuum mumbled as he looked down at himself.
“Of course you should.” Molé shook his head slowly. Sometimes he could never decide if people were stubborn or just stupid. “Otherwise you will die a slow and painful death. I’ll find him eventually anyway. You know that I will. Listen to my voice and you will know it. Look into my
eyes and you will find this confirmed. To me your demise will be only an inconvenience. Your inconvenience will be far greater, and permanent.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
The elderly grim-faced captor edged the neuralizer toward al-Thuum’s face and the younger man flinched. “Honestly, honestly! I do not. He sublet these rooms to me only yesterday.” Bound hands flailed sideways as they struggled for purchase on the mattress. “See? There are two beds. His only condition of the subletting was that he be allowed to sleep here from time to time.”
A number of the remarkably tiny, astonishingly sensitive, and profoundly expensive sensors that comprised Molé’s left eye played over the man on the bed. At the same time Molé inhaled deliberately of the bound young man’s body odor in hopes of isolating and identifying certain potentially revealing pheromones. Insofar as this exceedingly sophisticated combination of sight and sound was able to ascertain, al-Thuum was telling the truth. There was also no indication that he might be involved in a physical relationship with Molé’s target.
It meant another delay. Another inconvenience. But then, the truth was often inconvenient.
“When might he be back?”
The man on the bed shook his head. “I don’t know that, either. I don’t know anything about him, really, except that he needed money. That’s why he moved into this place and almost immediately agreed to sublet it to me. At least, that’s what he said.”
For someone on the run it made perfect sense, Molé knew. Rent living quarters so you would have an address and a place to eat, sleep, and clean yourself, but utilize it only when there was no alternative. Meanwhile sublet to keep it occupied and have the look of being lived-in, but not by you. What information he had been able to glean on this Whispr person suggested he was not particularly bright. In the light of present circumstances that assessment might have to be revised. Even in Molé’s chosen profession general intelligence evaluations had a difficult time gauging street smarts.
A pity this wretched émigré was not fat, or female, or otherwise melded. Any of those characteristics would have been sufficient to physically distinguish him from the loose description Molé had obtained of his quarry and the whole awkward confrontation could have been avoided.
“I can wait,” he declared softly.
“You might have a long wait.” Al-Thuum coughed again. His expression wrinkling slightly in disgust, Molé decided he would not want this gentleman cooking his food. “The last time I saw him he said he might be away for a while, and just to keep his bed clean and made up in case he should return unexpectedly.”
The hunter nodded. “Yes, you’re right. I could linger here for days, or weeks even, wasting time while he and the important article he carries with him journey ever farther from Savannah. Now that you mention it, renting this residence and then subletting it to another might be nothing more than an astute ploy to induce someone like myself to squat here and wait for him to fall into my lap.” He straightened. “I thank you for reminding me of something I should have thought of for myself.”
Smiling weakly but hopefully the immigrant cook extended his trussed hands. “So you’ll be leaving, then.”
“Yes, I’ll be leaving. Immediately.”
Al-Thuum shook his bound wrists. “Could you release me?”
The old man stared down at him. “You might attack me.”
“I have no reason to do that.”
“You might call the police.”
“I wouldn’t do that, either.” The younger man’s smile was fading fast.
“You might contact the police and tell them what occurred here.”
The smile now gave way to a reprise of earlier fear. “
Laa
, I promise I won’t do that. Why should I? I barely met this Whispr, I don’t know him, I don’t care anything for or about him. Or for you, for that matter. I only want this whole last hour to go away. I just want to go to sleep, wake up, and go to my job tomorrow. That’s all. I will not present a danger to you, sir.”
“No, you won’t.” Molé was in agreement as he drew the gun.
The clerk barely glanced in the old man’s direction as the elderly visitor walked silently through the small lobby and out the single entrance onto the street beyond. Once outside and several blocks distant from the miserable residence hotel Molé allowed himself the freedom to curse aloud.
Nothing made him madder than having to work with bad or misleading information. Had the suppliers of that information been present he would have had a harsh word or two for them. And likely something more physical as well. There was nothing to be gained from cranking about it now, he sighed to himself.
His quarry still might return to the apartment he had sublet. Having employed certain liquids and methods to dispose of the corpse he had left therein, Molé had also left behind a handful of tiny devices that would alert him to the arrival of whoever might visit next.
In the meantime, there was ample mean time. Molé had other leads to follow, other ways of locating his target. Greater Savannah was a good-sized metropolis, but the hunter was used to working places like Chengdu and London, Kairo and Sagramanda. Someone hiding out in Savannah was unlikely to be able to continue to escape his notice for very long. The Mole’s reach, as his uncaring and unsubtle employers were fond of observing, was wide-ranging. No one could escape it for long.
All this money and effort, he mused to himself, to recover a single storage thread. He wondered what information it contained that made it so precious to those who had engaged his services. Valuable enough to enlist a hunter like himself as well as spending to corrupt a diverse menagerie of municipal authorities. Someone was pouring out money like water.
Ah well. Whatever was on the thread did not matter as long as an equitable portion of that money fell on him.
Only a few citizens out for a late night stroll bothered to glance in the direction of the hunched-over old man. Those who did, did so out of concern for his safety and presence in what was a less than salubrious corner of the city.
They need not have worried.
Traktacs.
Whispr didn’t have to see them. The angry linear marks where they had penetrated his skin were evidence enough. That was what had hit him on his underwater flight from the Alligator Man’s dwelling. They were also an indication that the authorities wanted him alive. Not out of any concern for his health or fear of public indignation should his head happen to get blown off, but probably because he could not be allowed to die until he revealed the whereabouts of the stolen thread. If the police had been certain it was on his person they would have used more deadly force and he would likely already be dead. A supposition was therefore easily inferred: keeping its location a secret was vital to keeping him alive.