Authors: Alan Dean Foster
Whispr could only stare speechlessly. Yabby Wizwang was the most perfect Meld he had ever seen.
When he pointed that out to his companion, Ingrid at first refused to believe it.
“How can you tell?” she whispered as she waited for him to catch up to her. “He looks exactly like a Natural child.”
“That’s the beauty of it.” As a lifelong Meld himself Whispr did not try to hide his admiration for the culmination of innumerable surgical intercessions that their host represented. “Maniping someone to look like a Meld is nothing. Doing a Meld that perfectly mimics a Natural requires not just money but real skill.” He nodded at the childish figure that was leading them deeper into the bowels of the foliage-draped craft. “Whatever surgeon or group of biosurges did this were artists as much as doctors.”
Ingrid was still reluctant to countenance her companion’s conclusions. “I have to ask,” she blurted in the direction of their host, regardless of how the query might be taken, “but how old are you?”
The boy looked back over his shoulder. “Seventy-four next month, Legs. And just so you should know, there’s one part of me that hasn’t been maniped. You’ve got at least an hour to guess which it is.”
Definitely not ten years old
, she swore then and there. But why invest what must have been an enormous amount of time, money, and suffering—for this? To look like a child permanently? In the course of her studies and her career she had encountered hundreds of Melds, but never one like this. There was no suggestion, at least not yet, that their host fancied himself Peter Pan or some other notable child character from literature or the arts. Why then go through everything that must have been required in order to
achieve this particular, peculiar, intentionally stunting Meld? She had to ask that, too, and also about the origin of his outré moniker.
They descended a stairway that soon opened into a room below the waterline. It was so packed with electronics there was barely enough room for its idiosyncratic owner and a couple of visitors. Wizwang settled himself into an ambient chair whose internally cooled padding folded affectionately around his limbs. There being no other furniture in the room his guests could choose between sitting on the floor or remaining standing. Whispr opted for the latter. Conscious of their host’s unsettlingly childlike eyes wandering over her from hair to toe, Ingrid elected to remain upright.
“My name? It’s a joke, of course.” In keeping with his incredibly elaborate meld his voice was preadolescent high-pitched, but there was nothing childlike about his diction. Nor the gaze that he used to pin her in place.
“I wanted something appropriately absurd and incongruous to fit my chosen Meld, which self-evidently is also a joke. How more amusing to live life than to make your own physicality into a permanent gag? How better to fit in with the rest of the Cosmos, which is also a joke? Read your Melville.” Boyish, hairless arms spread wide to encompass everything as he tilted back his head and looked upward. “All of this, all of existence, is a gag, a trick, a hoax that our genes devised to keep us from going crazy from thinking about it too much.” Lowering his eyes and dropping his arms, he favored her with a lopsided grin.
It was then and there that she came to the conclusion that their host was at least half mad.
“God doesn’t play dice with the universe,” he continued, reiterating an old and usually misunderstood quote. “He plays practical jokes with it. Didn’t you know? That’s what the universe is: a witticism, a one-liner with a many-googooplexed set of variations, designed to amuse its inhabitants and alleviate their boredom. Anyone who makes even a casual study of the cosmic neighborhood sees that it’s nothing but sham, pretense, and fraud pressed into the service of untrammeled hilarity. The cosmic con.” He leaned back in the soft cooling bulk of the chair. “Given that consensus I consider Wizwang, as a name, to be positively conservative.”
To Whispr their host’s declamation was nothing more than incomprehensible rant, but Ingrid found herself intrigued despite herself. “If all of it, if the entire cosmos, is nothing more than a deception and a joke, then what are we?”
Wizwang was clearly pleased by her interest. “Us? Isn’t it obvious? We’re the punch line. Through our activities and by our actions we reassert the truth of it every day.”
Interesting as the ravings of the partially mad man (mad boy?) were, she and Whispr had not come all this way and expended so much effort just to wile away the day in barmy philosophical explication.
“Did Ginnyy tell you why we need your help?”
Sequestered deep within his womblike chair, he shook his head. Boyish locks fluttered. “She said you seemed candid and sincere, that your request would interest me, and that you could pay. You have five minutes to confirm all of those things or I release the bees.”
Finally, Whispr thought. Something he could relate to. “You keep talking about bees. Is beekeeping a hobby or something?”
Their host’s laserlike gaze shifted to the other Meld in the room. “Yes, but it’s not mine: it’s theirs. The bees keep me, I don’t keep them.”
Whispr eyed the boy-Meld blankly. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s because you don’t understand bees. Few people do. I much prefer their company to that of my fellow delusional primates.” He jerked a thumb toward the bow. “They tend to stay forward. Unlike humans, they fully understand and are in complete harmony with their place in the ongoing cosmic joke. That’s why unlike us they’re only a minor anecdote and not a punch line.”
Flowers
, Ingrid realized with a start. The drifting houseboat was covered in flowers. It was not all camouflage, then. At the risk of pushing their host farther from brilliance and deeper into madness, she voiced another query.
“Your bees, do you talk to them?”
“All the time,” Wizwang assured her cheerfully.
“And—do they answer back?”
“Depends on what the day’s buzz is.”
She hesitated, smiled, lost the smile, ended up uncertain. “You’re joking with me again.”
“That would mean there are jokes within jokes, doctor. Like bacteria inside cells within bodies. The bees and mes, it’s a symbiotic relationship.” He grinned at her, a childish grin that was anything but. “You really want to sit there and spend the limited time I’ve carved out for you talking about honey production?”
More unsettled than she cared to admit, she fumbled with her shirt
pocket. “I’ve got something to show you—and no, it’s not what you’re hoping to see, so you might as well stay in that chair.”
“Tch. And just as I was about to elaborate on the specificities of my own meld.” He sniffed. “Buzzness it is, then. Show me something, and bee quick about it.”
The cosmos might not be founded on jokes, she told herself as she drew forth the capsule containing the storage thread, but this craft and its singular landlord certainly were.
He slipped the thread into a custom modified reader and began working on it even as she brought him up-to-date on everything she and Whispr had learned. Unable to tell if he was ignoring her or not, she contented herself with recitation until she had delivered the last bit of potentially pertinent information.
They spent the next half hour trying to contain their impatience while their host worked. He made no comment and raised no objection when they chose to occasionally wander outside. The waterland scenery constantly changed around the slowly drifting houseboat, its position continuously monitored and rejiggered by silent subsurface thrusters commanded by the craft’s GPS. Whenever midday’s oppressively hot and humid atmosphere began to weigh on them they would wander back downstairs and immerse themselves in the main cabin’s perfectly maintained climate.
During one muggy jaunt around the boat’s exterior Ingrid found herself entranced by the sight of a flock of snowy egrets and roseate spoonbills commuting to and from a roosting tree. Their continuous calls and cries resounded like half a ton of tinfoil alternately being crumpled and unfurled. As she was drinking in the beauty of the avian mural, a bee hummed past her face, buzzing an arc toward the boat’s bow. Black and yellow, it looked like a perfectly ordinary honeybee. Given its compound eyes, it was impossible to tell in which direction it might have been looking. For no especial reason, she thought it might have been looking at her.
“Doc! Ingrid!”
Dragging her thoughts away from potentially unsettling hymenopterian possibilities, Whispr’s shout drew her back toward the belly of the boat. A look of satisfaction on his too-young face, Yabby Wizwang was waiting for her.
“Tomuk Ginnyy’s search was even more on the mark than she thought.”
Ingrid joined Whispr in regarding their diminutive host. “What does that mean?”
Sliding out of his enfolding chair, their host underscored his points with a flurry of energetic, seemingly random jabs at and into the glut of three-dimensional projections that now filled the air of the cabin.
“She found evidence of these peculiar implants that quickly vanished as soon as they came under observation.” Whirling, he indicated his main console. It was so obscured with flex-plugs and add-ons that little of the base unit could be seen. “I’ve been able to correlate that information together with what you’ve given me.” He paused for emphasis. “There aren’t dozens of these occurrences. There are hundreds. Perhaps thousands. And who knows how many more that haven’t been reported, either because those who are afflicted with one of these devices don’t wish to file a report or because they’re not even aware they’ve been so infected.”
It was the first time in their frenetic acquaintance that Whispr had heard the attractive doctor whistle. “Incredible. Is there a locus for the outbreak?”
The melded eccentric shook his head. “Naturally I went ahead and recorded every reported incident. From what I’ve been able to collate, occurrence is worldwide and relatively evenly spaced. Whoever’s behind this evidently favors a comparatively egalitarian stratagem. Though to what purpose I cannot begin to divine.” Pausing in his pacing and gesticulations, he turned to face her. Seventy-four-year-old acumen stared out of a ten-year-old’s eyes. “I don’t suppose you could enlighten me further on that?”
Whispr glanced briefly at Ingrid, then back at their host. “We were kind of hoping you could do that for us.”
“Unlike some, I am not one who finds mutual ignorance comforting.” Lowering his gaze Wizwang fell into contemplation that was, as was the rest of him, half brilliant and half mad. “Whatever have you two stumbled onto, nosy doctor and pawn of the night? It must mean
something
. There is money behind this or it would not be a worldwide, albeit widely scattered, phenomenon. Where there is money there is purpose. Power, art—at this point it’s all pure supposition.
“I think it would be reasonable to assume that every one of these devices was implanted as part of the process of ‘fixing’ a previous bad meld. Such treatment would provide the perfect opportunity for participants in
this scheme, whoever they are and whatever it may be, to install the implant while carrying out repairs to the existing broken meld. Of course, just because that appears to be the logical modus does not mean it is the only way this has been done. There may be thousands of Melds, but apparently not Naturals, who on examination would also reveal the presence of one of these implants.”
“But why?” Whispr repeated. Though intellectually well out of his depth, he was not afraid to show it.
“Why indeed, stick-insect?” Though he was replying to Whispr, Wizwang’s attention remained focused on Ingrid. “To paraphrase Clausewitz, ‘Medicine can just be war by other means.’ ”
That comparison caught both of the houseboat’s visitors off guard. Was their host simply trying to shock them? “What are you talking about, Yabby?” Whispr mumbled.
“Large-scale clashes between nations and groups of nation-tribes has for some time been recognized as impractical and counterproductive. It’s bad for business and destroys or uses up that which war was once fought for, namely resources. But cultural conflict remains an issue for our wretched joke of a species, a philosophical appendix. Contemplation and consideration of a possible eventual conflict between Naturals and Melds has long been a fashionable subject among overwrought academics in search of a topic that would guarantee them publication. Perhaps these implants are in some way related to preventing that possibility.” His voice dropped but did not deepen. “Or preparing for it.”
“Oh, come on!” The outrageousness of Wizwang’s speculation took Ingrid aback. “Ever since the first full cosmetic meld was auctioned off by Singapore Surgeons, Inc., there’s been nothing to suggest the existence of that kind of controversy.”
“Not on a governmental level, no. But there’s plenty of it among and between individuals, doctor.” Off to one side, a solemn-faced Whispr was nodding knowingly.
“There are laws against Meld prejudice in every country,” Ingrid continued angrily.
“Laws are sufficient to stifle many kinds of antisocial behavior, but not bigotry. Prejudice is like stomach bile: controllable to the point of invisibility, but always present and just waiting for a chance to blossom and consume its host from the inside out.” Turning sharply, he strode over to
the customized reader that held the enigmatic silvery storage thread and leaned forward to examine a single readout.
“Nothing. Either this precious artifact of yours is empty, or else my equipment has so far been unable to break its encryption. I can’t tell because the instrumentation is still working. It hasn’t given up. Or your encapsulated thread could be a maguffin.”
“A what?” Whispr exclaimed.
“Something designed to throw the curious off the real track. To divert attention from this plague of—so far—harmless-seeming vanishing implants.”
“I don’t think it’s that,” the slender visitor opined softly.
Wizwang’s response was more indifferent than contemptuous. “Why not?”
“Because a good friend—well, a friend, anyway—of mine died because of it. Because I’ve nearly been killed in the process of hanging on to it.” He cast a self-conscious glance sideways at Ingrid. “Others have been hurt, too.” One slim arm rose to gesture in the direction of the reader that presently held the thread. “I don’t know what if anything is on that thread but in my experience people don’t kill to recover something that contains nothing.”