Authors: Alan Dean Foster
She shrugged. “Animals. Okay, we’ll make time.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “Look at it this way: if we act like typical tourists, maybe no one will pay any attention to us.”
She perked up. “You believe that?”
“Not for a minute. But optimism-wise it’s the best I can do right now.” He shook his head gloomily. “SICK, Inc. We’ll just stroll in through their front gate and ask to speak to whoever’s in charge of arcane product development and nonsensical metallurgy.”
Ingrid went quiet, letting him steer the boat, pondering his last offhand comment. In subterfuge as in medicine, she concluded, there is virtue in directness. If that wasn’t a contradiction in terms. And she knew a contradiction in terms when presented with one.
It perfectly fit her present situation.
T
HAT HIS IRRITATINGLY NIMBLE QUARRY
was utilizing automatically rotating random idents did not surprise Molé. It was not something he had anticipated, but it was something he was prepared to deal with. That employment of the mildly sophisticated technique for continuously concealing one’s identity arose from the street experience of
the inconsequential Meld who had been his original quarry he had no doubt. That a Natural citizen of Dr. Ingrid Seastrom’s social strata was traveling in the company of an individual like this Whispr and was making use of the miserable Meld’s decidedly nonmedical learning was rather more surprising.
It would not matter in the end, of course. The outcome was fated. His recovery and return to his employers of the precious storage thread had suffered a temporary delay. While he disliked delays, he was quite able to accommodate them. Through their obstinacy and ignorance his quarry was only delaying the inevitable. And perhaps accumulating considerable future unpleasantness for themselves.
Though it took a little time, it had not been difficult for someone of his determination and experience to learn where the pair intended to travel next. Conveniently, the two small commuter watercraft he had seen fastened to the houseboat of the late iconoclast Yabby Wizwang had displayed vehicle identification information near their bows. The first he had traced as belonging to the interfering but undeniably interesting reptilian aficionado known as the Alligator Man. The other had been rented to a Ms. Arlene Verdoux. A little illegitimate digging through the right corners of the local box brought forth the watercraft rental company’s security image of Ms. Verdoux, whose likeness was, unsurprisingly, a close match for that of Dr. Ingrid Seastrom of Greater Savannah.
Breaking into the closed security systems of transport networks required a certain higher level of skill, but it still did not take him long to match up a Ms. Judy Davis with a Mr. Elon Danovich. Names could be altered with frequency, comparative ease, and the right program, but changing appearances took time and meldwork. While he would not have been surprised to see Archibald Kowalski subject himself to an extensive facial meld at a moment’s notice, it was something far less likely to be expected of a Natural like Ingrid Seastrom. As it developed, while their names were shifting like the wind, their physical appearances stayed more or less constant.
So it was that in due and not disproportionate time he learned that Ms. Davis and Mr. Danovich had departed on a JALAA flight to Tokyo. Why Tokyo? He would find out when he found them. With a sigh, he prepared to make the necessary travel arrangements. Tokyo was a big place, far larger in extent and population than Greater Savannah. But the fact that
he would be looking for a pair of gaijin would reduce the necessary search time considerably. As he packed his small bag and prepared to depart from Miavana he had no doubt that the runners and the thread they carried with them would be in his hands within a week at most. They really had no idea who they were dealing with.
But then, neither did anyone else who had ever been unfortunate enough to look over their shoulder and catch a glimpse of Napun Molé.
“S
O,” INGRID WONDERED AS
she settled back in Seat D, Row Ten, of SAA’s evening Miavana-to-Cape Town ramjet, “what makes you so sure this Molé creature isn’t on the flight behind us?” She twisted around in her seat. “Or even in the back of this same plane?”
Whispr was as relaxed as he had been in some time, luxuriating in the kind of air travel he had never expected to be able to experience.
“Because he’s not looking for our current idents, doc. He’s looking for the previous ones, and right now Judy Davis and Elon Danovich are on their way to Tokyo.” He smiled to himself. “I don’t know if it’s fair, but my experience says that each time you successfully employ a new ruse it gains you another year of life.” He snuggled back in his seat.
“While we were getting ready to leave I broke into JALAA’s reservations system, picked out a couple of passenger names at random, and time-subbed our prior idents for those of an actual couple going to Nippon. Instead of finding our Cape Town reservations, anyone researching our previous names or appearance will be shunted to theirs.” He chuckled to himself. “With any luck, Molé-man is already on his way in the opposite direction from ours.”
Ingrid considered. “He won’t be happy when he learns that he’s been tricked.”
Whispr’s amusement vanished. “What difference does that make? When he or his associates eventually find us it won’t matter if they’re laughing hysterically or growling in anger when they finish us off. But I think I’ve bought us some time.” His smile returned, albeit muted. “It’s funny—I don’t care so much about learning the secret of the thread anymore, as long as you’re satisfied to accept it as payment—but I do want to see the animals.” His gaze locked on hers. “You have your obsession, I have mine.”
Having delivered himself of that assessment, he set about learning how
to use the plane’s in-flight entertainment system, as delighted by each new offering as a kid with a new netglobe. Leaving him to his amusements, Ingrid chose to accept his assessment of their current prospects. If the assassin who had been set on them really was on his way to Tokyo, they should have at least a week or more to move about freely and make open inquiries in Cape Town—after setting aside a suitable period for wildlife viewing. Once they arrived she could renege on that agreement, of course. Doing so would also likely see her chances of learning anything about the thread without first getting herself killed reduced to near zero. In a place as foreign and dangerous as Southern Africa she would need the street smarts of her disreputable, seedy, and somewhat smelly companion more than ever.
As the plane climbed to the edge of space she found herself worrying about her friends and patients back home. What would they think when her “vacation” time ran out and she failed to return or contact anyone? She missed her comfortable codo and the modern conveniences and enhancements she had for so long taken for granted. She missed feeling safe. And she knew she couldn’t contact anyone, personal or professional, lest the communication be traced back to the location from which she initiated the contact.
Her fellow passengers were starting to settle in for the duration of the flight. No one was looking in their direction. Environment lenses flipped down over his eyes, Whispr was completely lost in whatever entertainment he had plunged into.
Reaching into a pocket she withdrew the transparent capsule, unsealed it, and extracted the thread. Holding it up next to the small window caused it to glisten silver and metallic in the polarized light. How could something so small and difficult to get into fuel so much violence and death? If she was fortunate enough to learn the secret of the tiny storage device’s contents, would she learn the answer to that as well?
And despite everything she had told Whispr, in her heart of hearts did she really want to?
A
LAN
D
EAN
F
OSTER
has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, Western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of the
New York Times
bestseller
Star Wars: The Approaching Storm
and the popular Pip & Flinx novels, as well as novelizations of several films including
Transformers, Star Wars
, the first three
Alien
films, and
Alien Nation
. His novel
Cyber Way
won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first science fiction work ever to do so. Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from an early-twentieth-century miners’ brothel. He is currently at work on several new novels and media projects.