Ingrid counted off seconds. Thirty-one, thirty-two—light sources began to flicker back to life. Complaints were overwritten by questions, then resignation, then laughter, and soon it was business as usual again.
Nokhot grunted as she studied several readouts. “Couldn’t have held a boot that strong for a full minute. As it is, despite the shunts I programmed into it I’ll be lucky if they don’t trace it to my little hole in the ground and raid me.” She looked back at Ingrid. “This will cost you.”
The doctor sighed. “Everything does. Never mind that. Was the trace successful?” Next to her eagerness radiated from Whispr’s face. Or maybe it was just sweat.
The girl shifted her seat to where she could better study her instrumentation. Within the hovering box projection there was a distressing lack of imagery; only numbers.
More time passed in light than had in darkness, but without illumination. An impatient Ingrid finally prompted the tech. “Well? Where’s the signal going? What’s the destination?”
Nokhot absently brushed aside a falling braid as she looked back at her anxious customer. For a change she was not giggling.
“I don’t know the destination. I don’t know that there is a destination. But the direction is up.”
Whispr nodded sagely. “Refracted signal. Can you identify the satellite?”
“There is no satellite anywhere near the line of transmission. It’s all empty space.” Four hands turned palm upward. “Your little thread is broadcasting to emptiness.”
Ingrid struggled to make some sense of what the tech was telling her. “Moon?” she ventured uncertainly. “Mars, maybe?”
“The signal is going out at an angle that would not take it near any solar bodies. Not even the asteroid belt is in line. It’s just broadcasting out into nothingness. Unless it’s aiming at an unlisted military satellite or a relay not listed in catalog.” Nokhot indicated the slot that held the thread. “Pretty fancy-nancy piece of tech just for nothing. If that little smidge of a signal is given a proper boot like we just did, according to the parameters on that paper you brought me, it seems to repropagate itself. There’s an algorithmic unfolding takes place like I never seen before.” Her gaze narrowed as she examined her oddly matched customers more closely. “Where did you get your little thread?”
Whispr stepped forward and extended an open palm. “It was the prize in a box of Cracker Jack. Hand it back, please.”
She stared at him a long moment, then burst out giggling. “Okay, okay! Big secret man. Spends all kinds of time and money to communicate with nothing nowhere.” One hand reached back to open the slot and remove the thread. After carefully replacing it in its transparent capsule she started to pass it to the waiting Whispr.
Ingrid interceded. Her companion voiced no objection and took no visible offense as the doctor accepted the capsule and slipped it back into the tiny concealed compartment inside her shirt.
“Thank you for your efforts, Nokhot. What do I owe you?”
The girl named a price. For a change, it was reasonable. As Ingrid conducted the transfer Nokhot erupted in a fresh burst of girlish laughter.
“Hey, I know! I got it all figured out for you now!”
“Really?” Ingrid nearly forgot to log out of her extensively manipulated account. “What? Where?”
The girl’s dark eyes met hers. “Aliens! Your thread is talking to aliens!” She might have been trying to say more, but any additional words were overwhelmed by a flowering of giggles.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Whispr commented dryly. “You got it. Thanks for your efforts.” Rising, he turned and exited the shop. Ingrid followed. Insofar as she could tell, no one bothered to track their progress as they headed for the lift that would take them back to the surface.
Aliens. Thanks to Morgan Ouspel they knew what was on the thread, and while puzzling and more than a little sinister, it had nothing to do with aliens.
The rest of the day was spent in making preparations for departure. Whenever a curious shopowner would inquire as to their need for certain supplies they replied simply that they were going camping and bird-watching—which was half truthful. This explanation invariably prompted a caution from every salesperson.
“Watch where you go … don’t stray too far from town or the river … keep an eye out for lions and especially for leopards … the cheetahs won’t bother you … no bandits to worry about in the Namib, they don’t like the heat any better than we do … take plenty of water … take plenty of food … be sure to let someone know your general itinerary and when you plan to return.”
They paid dutiful attention to every recommendation—except the last two, having no intention of informing anyone of even their direction of travel. As soon as they were more than a day or two’s walk out of Orangemund they would be completely on their own.
“It’s insane, of course.”
Sitting at the outdoor café watching the sun set over the western desert and the Atlantic beyond, Ingrid waited for her cappuccino to finish brewing.
“What is?” Whispr was carefully masticating the last of his dinner. It was astonishing how much energy he could muster on so little caloric intake, she mused.
“The signal from the thread. That it could be directed at something alien.”
He took a half swallow of water and very carefully put down the glass. “She was joking. The Meld was joking.” He paused a moment, added bemusedly, “You’re not joking.”
Irritated, Ingrid looked away. “I don’t know what I’m doing. None of this makes any sense, Whispr. It hasn’t from the beginning. The thread is made of a metal that shouldn’t be possible. Yet somehow it retains its structure and composition. According to that Morgan person it contains not information but nanoscale implants of a kind I’ve maybe seen twice, and they shouldn’t be possible either. Now some amateur African technician insists that the minimalist signal it’s broadcasting, energized by a minuscule power source we don’t understand, is being beamed out into empty space. That is possible, but it makes even less sense than everything else.”
“Okay, doc—slow down. Suppose for the sake of wacky after-dinner conversation we assume everything you just said is true and supported by evidence. Which is more likely that it points to? The existence of little green men from outer space? Or to some good old down-home manufacturing and technical expertise by a consortium like the SAEC? Which is certainly big enough, resource-rich enough, and powerful enough to accomplish everything you just said?”
“I don’t know, Whispr. I don’t know.” Picking up a sugar stick she stirred her coffee. “But ‘wacky’ as it may be it certainly would go a long way toward explaining how something exists that it shouldn’t be possible to manufacture on Earth. What I can’t figure, even if you go way out on the end of the farthest limb, is what it has to do with nanoscale devices implanted in the cerebrums of teenagers who are suffering from the aftereffects of botched cosmetic melds.”
Whispr couldn’t repress a snigger. “Maybe the tech’s aliens are planning to open a world-dominating chain of manip beauty shops.”
She glared at him over her cappuccino. “It’s not funny, Whispr. The thread is real, the implants are real, and the transmission that goes nowhere is real.”
“Well, we’re going to Nowhere, so maybe we’ll find the answers there. And I bet they don’t involve aliens. Unless you’re trying to say that aliens are running SICK, Inc.”
“No,” she muttered. “No, of course not. SICK, Inc. has been around forever and their board of directors and administrators are well-known businesspeople whose individual lineages can easily be traced. I just can’t keep from thinking back to some of the things Morgan told us. About what he said he saw that made him break his work contract and leave illegally, at some danger to himself. He never did tell us.”
Whispr shrugged. “None of our business.”
“It is now,” she argued. “But it’s too late to press him for details. I’m sure he’s already on his way out of he
re.”
“Yeah, he was in a hurry, all right.” Her companion shook his head and grinned. “Teenagers. Maybe SICK is trying to control what kind of cosmetics and manips they buy.”
She didn’t laugh. “Maybe SICK is just trying to control them, period.”
Whispr blinked. “To what end? And why single them out? Plenty of adults suffer from bad cosmetic meld work. Why not implant them as well? Why not politicians and engineers and teachers? Why only teenagers who’ve had bad luck with their manips?”
Leaning forward, Ingrid rested her elbows on the table as she held her head with both hands. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“Well I do know. It doesn’t involve aliens, and it is about money.”
Raising her gaze, she stared at him through cappuccino steam. “How do you know that?”
“Because—Ingrid—I’ve lived long enough and hard enough to learn one thing, and that’s that it’s always about money.” He slugged down the rest of his water. “Of course, I could be completely wrong and you could be completely right and there really are aliens at the research facility and they’re running SICK, Inc. and doing something horrible to unsuspecting adolescents.” He smiled thinly. “The explanation is obvious. We’re being invaded.” He pushed back from the table. Around them other diners chatted amusedly, romantically, inconsequentially. “At least it would explain today’s teen music.”
They exited the café together. Insofar as Whispr could tell, no one followed them.
“Do you find everything worthy of sarcasm?” she challenged him.
“Everything.” He confessed without hesitation. “It keeps me sane.”
“Good. You’re going to need your sarcasm and everything else to keep you sane when we’re trekking across the desert.” Tilting back her head she eyed the bowl of night. The atmosphere of the southern Namib was utterly devoid of pollution and the sky was rife with stars like flecks of molten silver.
Stars and nothing else, she told herself firmly as they walked back to their hotel.
Napun Molé hated the desert—but not as much as he hated failure.
BY ALAN DEAN FOSTER
The Black Hole
Cachalot
Dark Star
The Metrognome and
Other Stories
Midworld
No Crystal Tears
Sentenced to Prism
Star Wars®: Splinter of the
Mind’s Eye
Star Trek® Logs One-Ten
Voyage to the City of the Dead
… Who Needs Enemies?
With Friends Like These …
Mad Amos
The Howling Stones
Parallelites
Star Wars®: The Approaching
Storm
Impossible Places
Exceptions to Reality
THE ICERIGGER TRILOGY
Icerigger
Mission to Moulokin
The Deluge Drivers
THE ADVENTURES OF FLINX OF THE COMMONWEALTH
For Love of Mother-Not
The Tar-Aiym Krang
Orphan Star
The End of Matter
Bloodhype Flinx in Flux
Mid-Flinx
Reunion
Flinx’s Folly
Sliding Scales
Running From the Deity
Trouble Magnet
Patrimony
Flinx Transcendent
Quofum
THE DAMNED
Book One: A Call to Arms
Book Two: The False Mirror
Book Three: The Spoils of War
THE FOUNDING OF THE COMMONWEALTH
Phylogenesis
Dirge
Diuturnity’s Dawn
THE TAKEN TRILOGY
Lost and Found
The Light-Years Beneath My Feet
The Candle of Distant Earth
THE TIPPING POINT TRILOGY
The Human Blend
Body, Inc.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALAN DEAN FOSTER 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.
www.alandeanfoster.com
Alan Dean Foster, Body, Inc.
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