Small shoulders shrugged. “They will all be nice to you. It is part of what you are paying for.”
“No.” Whispr leaned forward and down so sharply that the remora took an uneasy step back. “Kind. As in understanding. As in empathetic. As in compassionate.”
“I don’t know.… ” Genuinely at a loss, the remora was shaking his head doubtfully. “Holes and appendages I can supply in quantity, some of it Natural and some of it Branded. But kindness …” His voice trailed away, and then he brightened. “I have someone for you, I think. Come with me.” Turning, he started off at a brisk pace up a sidestreet that was a river of neon-bright light and color. Whispr followed, hopeful but without any real enthusiasm. He did not expect much from the remora who had corralled him.
He should have been less pessimistic. The building they eventually entered was neat, clean, and well fitted out. Multiple drifting monitors ensured client safety while protecting an individual’s privacy. The lod in the entrance foyer was there as much for show as for security.
A short walk brought them to an open garden walled off from the outside world by two floors of rooms and a high peaked tile roof. The absence of any overhead dome or other transparency allowed the unobstructed African moon to shine directly into the fynbos-filled courtyard. Fragrances emitted by flowers strange and unfamiliar filled the air and set the mood.
In the center of the small but elegantly appointed courtyard a large rotating holo image hovered above a projector camouflaged to look like a fountain. A succession of fully-realized miniature women paraded, contorted, or masturbated beneath the benign distant moon.
“I’ll leave you here-now.” The remora was already backing up. “To make your choice. I would suggest Imalo or Trinca. If they’re not ready for what you want, a twenty-minute qwikmeld should do the trick. Then they’ll do the trick, which is you.”
“What about your commission?”
The remora pursed his lips. “I am touched, my friend—but fortunately not by you. My delivery, which again is you, has been duly noted and recorded.” He gestured at the garden and its heavily soundproofed surroundings. “Depending on what you spend, my portion will be forthcoming. Enjoy your virgin.” He turned and was gone.
Whispr was left to choose from among the redacted pixies who inhabited the rotating projection sphere. While he could have spent a contented hour simply watching, an actual woman was waiting for him in a hotel across town. Tomorrow they would want to get out on the road early, to avoid the queue that invariably backed up on auto-controlled routes. The name “Imalo” having slightly too exotic a ring to it, he voiced a request for Trinca.
She was a slightly built redhead complete to maniped freckles and permanently widened eyes. Not quite a Kewpie doll, with the aspect of someone aged fifteen or so, she was probably closer to her midthirties. As a Meld himself Whispr was not troubled by the skillful yet obvious manip work. A small shudder of delight went through him.
“Trinca?” She nodded. “You’re a virgin?”
“That’s what you ordered up, Hardly-There.” The woman spoke with the maniped voicebox of a teenager. Her response neither confirmed nor denied his query. He chose not to pursue it.
“Where should we go?”
Trying not to appear bored she sighed as she turned to indicate the surrounding apartments. “We have pretty much every imaginable kind of environment to choose from. Conceive one and I’ll let you know if it’s here, and available.”
He did, and it was. Beneath trees that swayed and caressed his bare back and a brook that babbled encouraging obscenities, he had his virgin. It was her first time, she moaned with practiced conviction, and would he be gentle? The illusion being nearly as effective as it was expensive, he was well pleased with the experience when he departed an hour later, having been much lightened in wallet and bodily fluids.
He was more than a little shocked to find that Dr. Ingrid Seastrom had waited up for him.
“Did you get what you went for?” The coldness in her voice was gone. Now it was more a mix of curiosity and disapproval.
“And then some!” He pushed past her into the central sitting area. The door to the bedroom was open and he could see that the linen had been mussed. Resolute as well as exhausted, he turned away, muttering, “I need a drink. I need replenishment.” He lurched toward the small cooler that projected slightly from the far wall. “Why’d you stay up? Why aren’t you asleep? You’re the one who’s desperate to get out of here first thing in the morning.” The cooler yielded a self-icing Tusker that on command ejected its cap. He drank thirstily, noisily, and unapologetically.
She came toward him. “Which is why I’m still awake. I didn’t trust you to get back in time and so I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I was sure you had returned.”
He lowered the half-empty bottle and sneered, wondering why as he did so. “Afraid I’d take off on you?”
She shook her head. “Not while there’s still a chance to make money at stake. I’ve learned that much about you.”
“How well you have learned about me, Ms. Prof. Doc.” He dragged the back of a bony hand across his lips, mowing foam that had dried to the consistency of flaking skin. “Want to know something else about me?”
Though calm, she remained well out of arm’s reach. “Not if it relates to your evening’s dissolute activities.”
Thanks to its gengineered hops Tusker was a powerful brew. He was feeling the effects already. Contrary to some popular beliefs, being able to instantly metabolize beer actually saved money and reduced alcoholism. The ability to get a good buzz on while imbibing less alcohol got drinkers off the streets and home sooner. Whispr, having never had a real home, usually had an easier time of it than most. Ignoring the advice fighting for prominence in his brain, he took a step toward her.
“C’mon, doc—you don’t fool me. You want to know the details, don’t you? All the ripe, plump, tickly-tickle, nasty little details.” He smacked his lips theatrically as his voice dropped to a melodramatic murmur. “It was a class operation. Despite the extra expense I always go for the best available whenever I can afford it. Want to know why?” He leered at her. “Because no matter what you order up, a class outfit always lets you take your time. Always lets you savor—things. Isn’t it the same with a class hospital—or a class doctor?”
Her attitude reflected growing distaste. “Actually, it’s the exact opposite. Except for hypochondriacs, visitors to a hospital or a doctor can’t wait to get away as fast as possible.”
His expression twisted, visual confirmation of what was going on in his head. “Oh, yeah, I guess that’d be right, wouldn’t it? See what happens when I try to impress you? See what happens when I struggle with metaphors?”
“I see what happens when you’re quick-drunk,” she told him coolly.
He tried to take another step toward her only to find himself moving laterally. “I’m not drunk. Just coming down from a physiological high. It’s called orgasm. Maybe you’ve heard of it?” He stared down at her. “Or maybe not.”
She would have punched him square in the mouth except that she was wary of getting too close to him. “When you came into my office in Savannah I thought you were just a common thief. Now I see that you’re a common bastard. A spiteful, miserable, low-life son of a bitch. I should never have let you in. I should never have removed those traktacs.”
He drew himself up, inflated with false pride. “Umbrage! I take umbrage, Ms. Doc. You wound me. I am at worst an uncommon bastard.” He wavered a moment longer in front of her, a pathetic stick-figure of a Meld. Then he began to cry.
If it was a ploy to gain her sympathy it wasn’t going to work. If it was sincere and not a ploy it still wasn’t going to work. As he crumpled in upon himself, physically as well as emotionally, and dropped into a crouch with his hands covering his face, she turned toward the bedroom.
“Try to get some sleep. Your unenumerated debauchery not-withstanding we’re still going to make an early
start in the morning. You demand that we see some wildlife, remember? Also to convince any possible watchers that we’re just ordinary tourists. So we’ll go look at some animals. You should feel right at home. Try not to throw up on the floor. I don’t want to have to pay a cleaning fee.”
He wanted to say something as she marched out of the room, but his voice didn’t seem to be working. In fact, a sizable number of frustrated organic functions were in the process of shutting down. When the last of them clocked out, he collapsed on the synthetic tile in a pool of his own spittle.
In the bedroom Ingrid Seastrom locked the door behind her, removed her clothes, laid them neatly across a chair, and slipped unclothed into the waiting bed. She paused a moment before closing her eyes. No sound came from the main room. The crying had ceased and not been replaced.
I should go check on him, she told herself. If not out of personal interest, then out of her responsibility as a physician.
Screw that. If he died she would go on as best she could without him. If he lived she would tolerate his presence and make use of him as necessary. The man was an accessory, an appurtenance, a tool she hoped could help her unravel the mystery of the thread.
Nothing more. He meant nothing to her. She would remain civil to him because that’s who she was. When their search concluded, successfully or otherwise, she would discard him as indifferently as she would the rental vehicle.
Lying on her right side in the bed, her knees drawn upward, she thought of her beautiful eighty-first-floor codo, of its modern conveniences and reassuring familiarity. She missed her friends and colleagues, her patients, the fresh daily lunches in one of the tower’s restaurants. Here she was, on the run in the SAEC, forlorn and pursued, her only companion an unpredictable degenerate malefactor who had crawled out of the sewers of Greater Savannah and presented himself in her office. She ought to have known better. She ought to have dismissed him out of hand.
But she couldn’t dismiss the thread. It glowed in her mind, flush with the promise of impossible technologies and hidden secrets. Her determination to understand it was as powerful, as compelling, as ever.
It struck her with a start that in its own way her obsession was no less a compulsion than perverted sex or drugs or whatever else a creature like Whispr engaged in for entertainment. She had heard and read on more than one occasion that the unrelenting pursuit of scientific data could be considered an addiction as powerful as any narcotic. That was what she was: a knowledge junkie. She was mainlining the mystery of the thread. Otherwise how to explain the contradictions inherent in her present situation? This wasn’t like her. For Ingrid Seastrom a weekend at the beach constituted a serious break in routine. Now here she was in Southern Africa, chasing technological phantoms.
She should pity Whispr, she realized. Not loathe him. Otherwise he might loathe her. Not that it mattered. Loathing or friendship; so long as they could continue to function together and help each other out. Drunk and attracted to her as he was, she reflected, he still had not laid a hand on her. Not since that evening in her condo. Lack of desire expressed did not necessarily mean lack of desire felt, she knew. Or maybe his depraved evening had simply left him too drained to try anything.
By morning he would either be dead or well rested, she told herself. Only then would she be able to know for certain how to proceed. She rolled over onto her back, unable to sleep and hating herself for it. Hating herself because she knew he was right.
She did want to know all the details of his evening, and in lieu of the realities that could have spilled from his teasing but now stilled lips, her imagination was working overtime and unbidden to fill in the lascivious, sweat-inducing blank spaces. As a consequence (or perhaps a punishment) she spent the next hours tossing and turning, unable to shut off the flow of lubricious images that assaulted her mind’s eye, unable to sleep, until mental as well as physical exhaustion finally combined to render her unconscious.
By far the worst of it was not the prurience itself, nor the fact that it revolved around her thoroughly dissipated companion, but the awareness that in more than one lewd and salacious scenario Whispr was not the central figure.
She was.
NATURAL AND MELD, WOMAN and man, doctor and riffler were both unusually subdued the following morning.
Screwed up, Whispr was thinking to himself as he silently packed his simple luggage for the journey ahead. Lewd up leads to screwed up. What could he have been thinking? The answer to that was simple enough: he hadn’t been—thinking. Ordinarily he would have had no trouble keeping a lid on his desires. That was easy enough for someone who was not exactly a magnet for women, melded or Natural. It was his constant proximity to Seastrom, he told himself. She was driving him crazy. The way she moved, the way she smelled, the way she looked, even her frequently patronizing speech; all combined to generate an erotic frisson he could no more ignore than he could the occasional pangs of hunger that rose from his meld-shrunken stomach.
The worst thing was that she seemed oblivious to it all. She gave no indication that she was in any way aware of the effect she was having on him. Furthermore, his yearnings were patently not reciprocated. The only attraction she felt toward him had to do with his ability to negotiate the less cerebral difficulties that threatened to derail their progress.
He could tell her how he felt, of course. Confess his attraction, beg for a crumb of attention, beseech her to look at him as something other than a two-legged utensil. But he had already tried that once, clumsily, in Savannah. A second botched attempt and despite the advantages his presence offered he had not the slightest doubt she would dump him like the skinny sack of street trash that he was. As if to confirm his worst fears and frustrations she was ignoring him even more than usual this morning.
He knows. As she gathered her travel gear, Ingrid would steal a glance in the direction of her silent, lean companion. Whispr wasn’t saying anything because he suspected, she told herself. He was too wise in the ways of society’s bottom rungs, too adept at reading expressions and emotions, not to know what she had gone through the previous night.
Naturally she had said nothing about it. By his continuing silence was he choosing to respect her privacy? She found herself analyzing every step she took, every gesture she made, for hidden meaning.
This won’t do, she told herself. You’re crediting him with far more perception than he possesses. He doesn’t know anything. How could he? Maybe he was good at analyzing expressions, but he couldn’t read dreams.
“You all right, doc?”
“What?” Startled by the sudden query after nearly an hour of mutual near silence, she looked up sharply.
His brows drew together. “I asked if you were all right.”
“I’m fine. Why shouldn’t I be fine? Why do you ask if I’m all right?”
He raised both hands defensively. “Hey, I was just expressing concern. Take it easy.”
She turned away. Yes, I’d better take it easy, she thought angrily. Otherwise this was going to be a long road trip and she was more likely to break down before their rental vehicle did.
“Got everything?” At the door, clutching her travel pack in one fist, she took a last look back at the unprepossessing room.
He was standing very close. It still made her a little bit nervous to have him in such proximity, looming over her, but in the absence of a valid reason for complaint she felt obliged to keep her unease to herself. He was careful not to touch her or otherwise make contact. The lesson of Savannah had been well learned.
“Let’s get moving.” He smiled, not at her or at the room but at images he had carried with him since childhood. “Let’s play tourist.”
She was shaking her head unenthusiastically as she let the automatic door close behind them and they started down the hall. “We’re just wasting time.” When he looked about to protest she raised a hand. “I know, I know—I promised. Wildlife first, then the research center. But this is unnecessary. Other than a few local thugs
with only their own interests in mind no one’s come near us.”
He nodded as he walked alongside her down the narrow corridor, deliberately shortening his stride so she would not have to move fast to keep pace with him.
“Some might consider that confirmation that we’ve been doing all the right things.”
She favored him with a jaundiced eye. “How is throwing away a couple of days or so gawking at antelope and elephants a right thing?”
“It’s right for me.” He spoke a little more harshly than he intended. “If there’s nothing on that stupid thread and its supposedly unique composition turns out to be some kind of false positive or fake, at least I’ll get something out of this trip. Meanwhile, I’m glad you’re feeling so confident. Go ahead and relax.” He raised his gaze, scanning the last of the hallway ahead. “I’ll stay paranoid for the both of us.”
Molé studied the unpretentious hotel. It was typical of the places where his surprisingly elusive quarry chose to stay. Didn’t they realize that by now he would have built up a profile on them? Repetition of choice was a hallmark of amateurs. The realization made him feel a little better and helped to mitigate some of his frustration. He was close now and looking forward more than ever to his inevitable reunion with the good doctor and the bad riffler.
He’d had plenty of opportunity to reflect on the seemingly interminable delays. It allowed time for contemplation of what he would do once he again made their acquaintance. Their expensive and time-consuming evasions demanded reciprocity. Consequently he would lavish more time on their demise than was his custom. The pathetic riffler he would educate piecemeal. With the doctor he would take longer. It would be more enjoyable. For one thing he was something of a student of the human body himself, and not only because he had undergone a succession of radical melds so extensive that it was difficult to tell how much of him remained human and how much now consisted of customized synthetic add-ons. The images such thoughts conjured cheered him. Yes, he and the doctor would have an extended conversation. The riffler could listen and watch, provided that Molé permitted him to retain the basic organic components necessary to do so.