Authors: Alan Dean Foster
“I’m coming down there.” Her tone was grim. “What section and room are you in? If you don’t want to tell me over the tower’s comm system, I can find out for myself at the hospital. Then we can …”
Being a doctor, Sverdlosk was accomplished at interrupting. “So. Here is orders. You don’t come to see me, pretty Inny. Much as I would enjoy company of your warm self sitting on side of my bed is not good idea right now. These people, whoever they represent, maybe others, might be watching me from first minute I admitted. Might be watching me now. Get rid of thread. I go on vacation as soon as I can arrange discharge. Never speak to me about it again, ever. I take emergency leave to visit Old Country and see grandchildren—who I would like to live to see grow up.” Before she could protest or offer an objection, his image began to dissipate.
“Good-bye for nowadays, Inny. Take care of yourself. Watch where you walk at night. Throw away thread. Maybe you also take hurry-up vacation.…”
Sverdlosk’s image vanished. When she anxiously called for reconnect, the link was refused.
“Your friend didn’t sound too good. Didn’t look so good, either.”
She whirled. Her guest had come up right behind her.
Whispr is as Whispr does
, she told herself.
“I heard most of it.” Surprisingly, he did not look frightened. Only pensive. As if he always planned his life one step ahead, whether contemplating a break-in or breakfast. “I’ve always been one for knowing when I was operating out of my depth. Maybe your colleague is right.” A small sound made him whirl toward the front door. “Maybe we
should
get rid of the thread. I always prefer to acknowledge an ill omen before it’s pulled tight around my neck.”
Ingrid stood there, holding a long-since drained caffeine cup in one hand and the capsule in the other, halfway between kitchen cubby and main living area. What had she gotten herself into? Galileo only had to worry about the Inquisition.
It was plain from his words and appearance that poor Sverdlosk could easily have ended up dead last night. Were his interrogators on to her already? Did they have ways of tracing the tower’s internal communications structure and know that he had just spoken to her? Or that so many people’s object of attention had already been delivered to her codo? If the latter, she might expect to hear an old-fashioned knock at the door at any moment. Or given his assailants’ lack of social graces, their arrival and intentions might be announced in something other than a civilized manner.
And there remained the question of what to do with and about her seedy houseguest.
“No.” She muttered an immediate response. “As a woman of science, I’m in too deep. It’s hard to describe, Whispr. There’s a name for people like me. Every time we learn something it only drives us to learn ten things more. It’s never enough. As far as this thread is concerned I’m like a fish that’s taken the bait. I can’t let myself off the hook until I know what’s on the other end of the line.” She smiled tightly at him. “I can’t jump off until then.”
“Or,” he countered, “there’s also the chance that if you stay on the line you’ll end up fried and consumed, with someone spitting out your bones.”
She looked away. “Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the most propitious analogy. But I can’t let go of this until I know what it’s all about, Whispr. I just can’t. No matter what Rudy or anyone else says.” She turned back to confront him. “If you want to give up on it, to back out now, I’ll understand.
I’ll just have to proceed on my own and I won’t think any the worse of you.”
Startled to discover that his host thought of him as anything other than a piece of human flotsam that had washed up on the shores of her office seeking repair, he was slow to respond. When he finally did reply, all his confounded thoughts would allow him to stammer was, “Curiosity killed the cat.”
“Except for the ones who manage to find the mice.”
He stared down at her. “This really has nothing to do with subsist for you, does it? You could care less about whether that filament of misery floss is worth a million bucks or a million cents. You just want to know the why and where and how of it.”
“That’s right, Whispr.” She nodded solemnly. “Knowledge for knowledge’s sake.”
“I wish I had a dozen credits for every supposedly smart friend who lived by that philosophy. If we happen to find out that it’s worth a lot of money, you won’t mind then if I get all hungry and aggrand some for myself?”
Her smile returned. “I wouldn’t expect you to do otherwise. Does that mean you’re going to stick with this?”
“Oh, you can bet your right-so, but not here. If whoever’s trying to claim the thread is close enough to it to hop all over your friend, then they’re too close to it and to us. Anyway, as far as the thread is concerned he pretty much told you to forget he exists. He’s right when he indicates that when the foul folk are getting that close to you, it’s time to get out of town.” He looked once more toward the front door. “My gut tells me it’s time we do like he do.”
She was tentative but agreeable. “If you think we should base ourselves elsewhere for a while, then I guess I should follow your lead. This kind of thing is your area of expertise, not mine. Any suggestions?”
It made him feel disproportionately good to know that in one area, at least, his thought processes were working ahead of hers.
“I’ve heard there are some especially knowledgeable linkies in the outer Miavana area, working out of the waterlands west of the city. Your creaky guy-friend made noises about taking vacation time. How do you fancy a holiday?”
She considered. “It wouldn’t be as if we were taking off for India. Miavana’s
not far. I could still keep in touch with my office and oversee ongoing treatment of my regular patients and …”
“Forget that, Ingrid.” He caught himself, surprised at his unexpected presumption. “Can I call you Ingrid?”
“You just did. If we’re going to try and follow up with this anonymously, you constantly calling me Dr. Seastrom might be a little counterproductive.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry, but once we leave here you can’t have any contact with your office, your patients, this colleague of yours who got his face squared—no one. The Nasty who are after the thread have already shown themselves persistenters. You can bet wet that as soon as they’re onto you certain they’ll be monitoring every communications channel in Namerica that has your ident affixed to it.”
“I suppose you’re right. You’ll have to excuse me, Whispr. I’m kind of new to all this. Doctors are used to straightforwardness, not subterfuge.”
“Subterfuge is my life, or I wouldn’t have one.” He did not go into details. “We’ll go by rental. False names. I’ve got appropriate ident and I can fix you up with one fast. Money debited to new cards through double intermediaries so it can’t be traced.” His meld-slender form straightened. “See, there are all kinds of talent in this world, doc. Ingrid.”
“And plenty of operations of the nonsurgical kind, apparently.” She looked around the codo, wondering what kind of accommodations they would be able to manage surreptitiously. At least there would be no shortage of options in a tourist and vacation Mecca like the South Florida waterlands.
“When should we get started?” she asked him.
He did not smile. “We already have.”
She nodded and headed toward the bedroom, where he longed to follow but knew he could not. Certainly not until this business of the thread had been resolved. Only then would he feel free enough to push other matters. Until that time they would have to function closely together yet apart. And not only because he had found himself drawn to her from the first moment she had placed a gentle healing hand on his traktac-infested body. There was more to it than that. For one thing, as much as he was attracted to her, he didn’t trust her.
If she was half as intelligent as she appeared, she would treat him the same way.
The codo was quiet, the codo was safe, and at three in the morning the codo was very dark. Because its lower floors were occupied by a hospital and associated medical offices, the tapering spire’s security was much tighter than that of the average codomercial tower. Additionally, each private residence boasted its own customized refuge arrangements. These ranged from extra locks, to simple alarms, to government-registered active deterrent systems. By law the latter could encompass and include everything from narcoleptizing misters to high-power small-caliber arms.
None of this mattered to the Natural who carefully opened the door, nor to the two Melds who crowded close behind her. Deactivating a lock required as much artfulness as disarming a weapons system. Given ample experience in all facets of entering residences and businesses uninvited, the leader of the trio of intruders had no difficulty utilizing the sophisticated instrumentation at her disposal to allow her and her cohorts to enter the darkened dwelling without making any noise.
Ahead of them a short hallway opened onto a pleasant, neatly laid-out living area. The dimly glimpsed fixtures and fittings that furnished the high-floor corner codo indicated that its owner had good taste as well as an
ample income. Valuable pictures and marketable gimcracks were ignored, however. The three had come to rob, yes, but their sole interest lay in a single, tiny, easily pocketable device. Not expecting to find it lying loose on a table or in a cabinet, their intent was to save time by simply requesting it from the current owner. If all went well the one-sided transaction could be accomplished quickly and with a minimum of fuss. That it might take longer and necessitate other than verbal persuasion was a consideration the invading trio had come prepared to implement.
Stepping past the stout woman who had expertly bypassed both the tower and the codo’s integrated security, the replicant of a movie star from long ago gestured silently to her right and beckoned for her companions to follow. Pushing wide a half-open door revealed a dark bedroom, the light emanating from its walls muted almost to nonexistence. Blackout glass eliminated any glow from the tower across the street. There was just enough illumination to allow the intruders to see the single large bed with its aerogel pillows, yeast-float mattress, and scented floral-decorated coverlet that smelled fragrantly of bougainvillea.
Two of the women unsheathed simple weapons: a blade and a shocker. Having to bend to avoid scraping her crested skull against the ceiling, the third reached into a purse to bring out a roll of sonitape. Used for sealing small cracks and openings in enclosed spaces where recordings were to be made, the soft, stretchable material also made an excellent gag.
Gripping the shocker, the sturdy woman in the center directed the doppelganger of the ancient actress to go left. The taller woman half walked, half slithered around to the other side of the bed. At a signal from their leader the two Melds leaned forward simultaneously. As the coverlet was wrenched aside, fingers both bony and flexible reached down and forward. They closed around nothing. There was nothing for them to close around.
The bed was empty.
For the first time since she and her associates had broken into the codo, the chubby woman spoke. The curses she uttered were no less pungent than the fragrance that rose from the tropical bouquet–programmed coverlet.
Looking askance at her boss, the movie star Meld gestured in the direction of the main living area that they had noiselessly bypassed in order to get to the bedroom.
“Maybe she fell asleep in an entertainment bubble.”
“Maybe she’s voiding her bowels.” The plump woman whirled. Both her eyes and the blade she was wielding flashed in the subdued light. “Find her!”
They barely had time to return to the codo’s largest room when the crested flex-armed Meld bent double, made a hushing sound, and pointed with one all but jointless arm. Her companions nodded understandingly. Without a word having to pass between them, all three melted back into the shadows.
Responding to an arrival the hall walls brightened with enough light to illumine the entrance to the codo. A single figure stood silhouetted in the doorway. Quietly, it closed the door behind it. No internal lights picked up the photonic slack. But then, the deceptively plump leader of the invasive trio thought, someone familiar with the codo’s layout would not need to activate its internal illumination.
She did not have to gesture or speak to her companions. They knew what to do. Figures that were scarcely specters edged off in opposite directions.
Moments later struggling noises scored by unreserved confusion filled the room with sound and motion. The trio’s leader frowned. The voice that now rose above those of her cohorts was not what one would expect from a youngish female physician startled by intruders in her own home. In truth, it was neither youngish nor female. Once again flicking to life the blade she held, she used its glow to locate a nonaural control switch. At her touch, gentle illumination flooded the codo.
A figure struggled in the grasp of the two Melds, but it was not the one the intruders had been expecting. It was elderly, male, and utterly lacking in promise. Another professional acquaintance of their target? the Natural wondered. But if that was the case, what was he doing in the physician’s apartment at this time of the morning? Did Dr. Ingrid Seastrom have a thing for old men? Did she perhaps
like
to be surprised in the middle of the night? Was this unprepossessing soft-footed nocturnal visitor all part of some creepy fetish? She shrugged. In her time and professional life she had seen enough so that little surprised her. Oftentimes the more intelligent the individual, the more bizarre their private obsessions.
Well, she mused to herself, if this prowling white-haired oldster was in search of the codo’s owner, whether it be for reasons professional or
perverse, he had been preceded in disappointment by her and her colleagues. On a more hopeful note, he might know where she was. Putting on her best matronly smile, she stepped forward out of the shadows and into the subdued light.
“Now what do we have here? A thief of hearts—or of the more mundane variety?”