Authors: Alan Dean Foster
Not that any of that would matter once the traktacs began to activate.
Each of the dozen or so tiny pellets contained its own transmitter and power source encased in a biodegradable husk. When these finally dissolved inside his body the pellets would begin broadcasting. The husks served a double purpose: to act like the casing of a bullet and protect the transmitter inside, and to give a target shot with them an opportunity to turn him or herself in before the organic outer shell fully dissolved. Once
it did, a compelling combination of homing signals and internal irritants would be released. The former would allow the police to track down the source of the broadcasts while the latter would render the subject thus afflicted increasingly uncomfortable within his own skin. For one who had been hit with traktacs there was only one remedy: the removal of every last one of them before they could begin broadcasting their location.
To anyone familiar with such an intrusion the size, color, and shape of the entry wounds shouted the distinctive signature of traktacs. Only the police and the military had the authorization to utilize and the inclination to use such specialized stalking ammunition. It would therefore be presumed by anyone asked to treat such an injury that the patient was wanted by one official institution or another, else such devices would not have been inflicted on the patient. Whether they chose to treat the wounds or not, any legitimate physician was required to report such a request. It therefore behooved the increasingly uncomfortable Whispr to seek immediate relief from one who was not legitimate. This led him to seek out a mobilemed he knew well.
When he wasn’t playing the blues through the straight-line sax that had been melded from an additional radius, an operation that had left him with three instead of two major bones in his left forearm, Cyrene Pope (everyone who knew him called him Righteous) performed the work of a wandering physician. He did this only with what he could carry on, or as a part of, his profoundly melded person. Whereas in earlier times as eclectic a personality as Righteous Pope might have collected tattoos or metallic body modifications, such iconoclasts now accumulated a highly personalized diversity of melds. The musician-medic boasted so many he barely looked human.
Beneath his chin, a radical throat meld had produced an organic speaker. Linking to his melded forearm, it allowed him to amplify his music without the aid of mechanical supplements. While the fingers of his sax-arm remained perfectly functional, those of his other hand featured medic melds that allowed him to perform all manner of on-the-spot minor surgeries and bodily repairs. Attached to his lower ribs, his bloated flanks featured compartments holding medical supplies that could be accessed by rolling back flaps of self-adhering skin. In addition to the various skills he had mastered, Righteous was a walking dispensary. Very useful for treating someone injured on the spot, or who wished to avoid certified medical
treatment. Licensed treatment was better, safer, and guaranteed by the government, but it was also intrusive. A fair segment of Righteous’s clientele preferred his makeshift surgeries to having to report cause and location.
Whispr found him on the riverfront plying both his music and his medicine beneath the old bluff warehouses. While some of the blocky structures could trace their noble commercial ancestries all the way back to the eighteenth century, they were all antique shops and restaurants now. Thoroughly gentrified, as were their patrons. That didn’t keep people from stopping to listen to Righteous’s music, or seeking treatment from him for scrapes and bruises, or furtively purchasing from his internal body stock the occasional semilegal recreational pharmaceutical.
Whispr waited beneath a sprawling shade tree on the faux stone riverwalk until Righteous concluded his business with a well-dressed young couple. As soon as the Naturals continued on their way, hand and drugs in hand, he hurried forward.
“Don I know you, mon-man?” Unlike many who chose to maintain at least one natural eye, both of Pope’s were full melds. One to aid in his medical work, the other simply to gleam large and bright while shining forth a gold-tinged beam of its own. To a devotee of cosmetic melds, appearance was every bit as important as practicality.
Not wanting to draw attention to himself, the slender supplicant slowed as he drew near. “They call me Whispr.”
“Whispr—right! Speak up, mon-man. Make yourself known.” Amused at his own sally, Righteous let out a prodigious laugh. Whispr waited until the jovial human who was still just barely identifiable as a member of the species calmed down.
“Got a problem,” he murmured.
Righteous grinned broadly. “Lady got you down? Cat got your tongue?” The flesh beneath his left arm bulged, parted, and before folding back in on itself revealed a small tongue. The musical Meldman roared again, but less stentorian this time. “Serious now, mon-man, what can old Righteous do for you?”
After one more scan of the immediate riverfront surroundings to make certain as best he could that no one was watching, Whispr turned sideways, lifted the hem of his shirt, and exposed his right side to the musician-medic’s melded eyes. Golden light illuminated the bright red spots on Whispr’s skin while the other eye scrutinized and took readings. When he
had finished the examination to his satisfaction, Righteous straightened. His smile had vanished and he was now dead serious.
“Looks like you been attacked by a covey o’ drunken hummingbirds, my sibilant friend.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Either that or you done caught yourself a consignment o’ traktacs. Course, it might be nothin’ but the first stages of a bad case o’ shingles. That I can treat. And I doubt any hummers gonna mistake you for a flower.” He shook his head sympathetically. “But traktacs, now—those little screamers are bad news. Baaad news.”
Dropping his shirt hem, Whispr growled under his breath. “Tell me something I don’t know, bone-music. Why the hell d’you think I came to you?” Like marbles on marble, his eyes were in constant motion, continuously searching their surroundings for signs of approaching police.
“To avoid the official hell, I’ve no doubt.” It was a solemn Righteous who now met the anxious Whispr’s gaze. “Traktacs—damn difficult little buggers. I can hex a stall on ’em, but I can’t do an extraction. If I try without knowing the individual codes, never mind the group signature, all the procedure’ll do is set them off. Every one of them.” Tilting back his head slightly, he squinted skyward. “The Savannah strikers’ll be down on you like hail in December. They’ll pound you flat and spatula you off. I don’t want to be next to you when that happens.”
“I don’t
want
it to happen.” Whispr chewed his lower lip. Around the two men, who appeared to be engaging in a perfectly commonplace afternoon conversation, tourists milled contentedly while locals sauntered in and out of the upscale restaurants and shops that lined the edge of the bluff.
“If you just do the stall, what happens next? I’ve only heard about traktacs. I’ve never had to deal with them.” The slender thief’s expression was one of despair, his voice thickly beseeching. “When your stall wears off I’ll be just as vulnerable to trace as before.”
Righteous nodded agreement. “One way or another, my friend, you’ve got to get them out of your body without setting the nastily loquacious little nobbers off.”
“You said that can’t be done.” Whispr’s tone was simultaneously hopeful and accusing.
The musician-medic shook his head. “Huh-um—I said that
I
couldn’t do it. Don’t have access to the right tools. Expensive, sophisticated.” He
performed an unexpected and surprisingly nimble pirouette. “Do I look like either?”
Whispr was crestfallen. “Then what can I do?”
“I got couple o’ names. Docs who are repute-revered for giving treatment without asking too many questions. Not because they’re off-wire like me and mine but because they actually believe the oaths they’ve taken: to render ministration without mulling. To treat without judging. Course, confronted with an officially inflicted infiltration like the one you got they might as easily turn you right in as prescribe you a pill.” He studied the other man somberly. “That said, one of them’s still your best chance. After I install the stall I’ll give you names and addresses. You decide to supplicate on them, that’s up to you.”
Whispr’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t have a choice.”
Later, as Righteous was arranging his fantastic array of physical melds preparatory to temporarily freezing the ability of the traktacs embedded in the other man’s body to communicate with their law enforcement host and broadcast their location, Whispr thought of something else.
“One more thing. I don’t have the money to pay you right now. But I expect to shortly.”
Righteous grinned. “That’s okay, my friend. The stall’s a cheap insert. I’ll stick it between two ribs, right in the center of where you were infected. It’ll give you seventy-two hours of anonymity. Best I can do. After that, the traktacs’ signal will override the install. You’ll have three days to get rid of the little hugger-muggers before they start bawling to the hop-cops. Me, I reckon if you ain’t evicted them by then you’re a pretty high priority candidate for pickup anyway. As for payment, I’m not worried. I know as soon as you can that you’ll compen and sate.”
They moved toward a secluded, tree-shaded area behind a shuttered cotton-ice stand where Righteous could perform the stall install in privacy.
“How do you know I will?” Whispr was genuinely curious.
“Because if you don’t, my friend, then I’ll find you and kill you. Or hire one of our mutual friends to do the deading deed.” Before commencing the on-site riverside outpatient surgery the musician-medic blew a brief underlying tune on his orthopedic radial sax, scoring as well as underscoring the threat he had just made with an appropriate snippet of man-music blown through his own bone.
• • •
A
S HE EXITED THE PUBLIC
transport the following morning Whispr proceeded on the belief that Righteous’s work was as good as his name. It was an assumption he had to make. It wouldn’t do any good to doubt it. If the traktacs embedded in his right side were now active and functioning and had not been temporarily stalled by the work of the musician-medic, the police were likely to land on him at any minute. The surest proof he had that the street doc had done his job properly was the undeniable fact that so far Savannah’s ugliest handpicked blues had failed to do so.
That did not guarantee everything Righteous had told him was truthful. Seventy-two hours stall-time, the mumed had promised him. Three days in which to liberate himself from the traktacs before they reconstituted their programming and he lost the protection provided by the provisional electronic scramble.
Assuming Righteous had been straightforward, Whispr could have taken a day to relax.
Sure he could
, he told himself. Just like when they used to give the condemned rolled tobacco to burn between the lips prior to execution by firing squad. Death anticipating death. Having always been a firm believer in no time like before the present, as he strode down the pedestrian path he studied the first of the two names and addresses Righteous had slipped him. Preferring to walk, he disdained the use of the parallel moving walkway off to his right. Not because he was a resolute believer in daily exercise but because the walkway’s protective transparent sides made it too easy for someone to be trapped within. Better to rely on one’s own two feet (or more, in the case of those Melds sporting multiple manips).
Even allowing for his naturally slender limbs, he was able to move faster than ever now thanks to Chaukutri’s excellent tendon melds. As long as he kept to open, old-fashioned, paved static paths he could take flight in any direction he wished at any moment he chose. He retained, as he and his friends were fond of referring to it, fleedom of movement.
It was for other reasons entirely that he found himself more than a little uncomfortable in his present surroundings.
Here in the northwest district, well above Old Savannah and its flat-land flood-prone suburbs, rose the residence-office towers of successful and important commercial enterprises. The university tower was here too,
along with its attendant stadium and other athletic facilities. There were banks and businesses, gleaming white and silver spires dedicated solely to habitation, soc schools for teaching children how to survive in contemporary society, manicured parks and rambling upscale entertainment venues. What there was not were any individual residences. Even for the wealthy, land in central Savannah had become too pricey. Those who wished to live in mansions had been banished to the country.
Around him people of all sizes, shapes, colors, and melds wandered at leisure or with purpose in mind. Melded construction workers with huge muscles and oversized hands were repairing a length of rubberized boulevard. An impossibly long-limbed street vendor was hawking fast food from a cart whose clever design resembled a miniature nineteenth-century paddle-wheel riverboat. The solar-driven paddle wheel powered the cart’s cooker, refrigeration, and insistently flashing lights.
Many of the residents here were Naturals, but they did not comprise the majority of strollers. Not at this time of morning. Most of the casual walkers were teens. Able to attend soc in either the morning or the afternoon and do their academics at home, they were free to enjoy the rest of the sunny, humid day on their off time. In contrast to the workers they were made up of an equal number of Naturals and Melds.
It had struck Whispr on more than one occasion that each year the population seemed to consist of fewer Naturals and more Melds. That was the impression he held, anyway, however unscientific his own personal sampling might be. Certainly it looked that way when one encountered groups of perambulating preadults. All hung together, of course, Naturals and Melds mixing as freely among their age groups as did adults. In the first years of readily accessible and affordable melding there had been some unspoken segregation, but that kind of social shun had long since been relegated to the past. Nowadays boys and girls, androgynies and Melds, socialized without giving the interaction a second thought.