“In Sperrgebeit this kind of formal settlement is quite illegal, of course.” !Nisa pointed out one surprise after another as she led her guests through the village. Nearly naked children broke away from monitors and projections that depicted everything from courses in advanced desert zoology to linguistics and floater mechanics in order to gape at the strangers. !Nisa continued to enlighten her two visitors.
“Those of us who have permission to live outside developed areas have reclaimed and been granted traditional parts of the Kalahari and the Namib. Our ecologically sound communities make no imposition on the animal preserves and offer educational and recreational facilities for tourists who wish to experience the desert regions and learn about our history and way of life.” Her tone hardened.
“But other lands that have always been home to our people are officially off-limits. Sperrgebeit is one such place. As you can see, it has not stopped us from resettling territory where our ancestors once roamed freely.”
“What’ll you do if company security finds this place?” A young girl offered Whispr a biodegradable plastic glass full of fruit juice. Finding it surprisingly cold, he downed it greedily.
“We will argue for our rights to remain here. Do not let either our melded appearance or our choice to live with as little clothing as possible fool you. In addition to the best biosurges, we have fine solicitors on our payroll. And if we cannot win rights to live in places such as this legally, we are ready to fight for what we believe belongs to us.”
Using the back of a skeletal hand to wipe fruit pulp from his mouth, Whispr shook his head sadly. “You can’t win a pitched battle with the SAEC.” He indicated the idyllic surroundings. “One armored floater full of company mercenaries would take this whole valley out.”
!Nisa nodded. “From a military standpoint you right.” Raising a hand off the ground, she gestured toward a well-concealed cluster of antennae. “But it would all be broadcast, live and worldwide. We have excellent uplink facilities here. Resulting outrage would be very bad for the company. So we have a number of weapons with which to fight.
“Meanwhile we live here quietly, peacefully, and undiscovered as we honor the ways of our ancestors. On reaching adulthood, many of children you see here will go off to soches in the cities to learn how to live and interact with other people, Naturals as well as Melds. Not all will choose return. But enough will come back to live as I do in order to maintain connection that we have worked hard to reestablish with the land and with our traditions.”
Exhausted from the climb, Ingrid looked around for a place to sit down. Arriving out of nowhere a teenager with a collapsed chair approached her, sat back, unfolded the chair, and invited her to relax. Murmuring a thank-you she lowered herself onto the supportive fabric. Clearly she, Whispr, and their interaction with !Nisa was being studied. When her companion requested similar seating, a second chair was quickly provided.
“Now then.” Settling herself back on her haunches and idly licking a hand-foot with her melded tongue, !Nisa confronted her guests beneath the shade of the massive stone overhang where they were sitting. Ingrid noted that the two armed lookouts who had escorted them uphill had recently been joined by two similarly equipped older men. “You must tell me what brought you to this place where no one comes.”
“We did tell you,” Ingrid began. “We’re explorers who …”
!Nisa raised the hand she had been cleaning. “Please, doctor. You are too far from anywhere and too lightly equipped to be engaged in desert exploration. Fools do not deceive the company on a daily basis, and we San are not fools. I indebt to you for treating my wounds and for helping me, but not to extent of endangering all that we have made here.” Leaning forward, seated on her haunches, and resting foot-hands on the ground, she embodied both sheep and shepherd in a single vision. “What are you doing in the Sperrgebeit?”
Her tone and her expression hinted that further obfuscation on the part of the visitors might result in a serious downgrading of the hospitality they had so far been shown. So despite Whispr’s frantic eye-rolling and gesturing Ingrid proceeded to tell their host the truth. By the time she had concluded the story, her attenuated companion was on the verge of passing out from frustration. But !Nisa looked satisfied.
“That is an extraordinary tale. Too extraordinary to be an invention, I think. You actually want to get into Nerens?” Ingrid nodded vigorously, but their host still found it hard to believe. “Not for diamonds, but to learn what lies on a single storage thread you have bring with you?” Once more Ingrid gestured affirmatively.
“You might maybe get in,” one of the armed men standing on four legs behind her commented, “but you never get out again.”
Twisting around she looked back at the speaker. “They’re our lives. It’s what we choose to do, no matter how crazy it sounds.” She turned back to !Nisa. “Of all people the San should appreciate that.”
“You argue plausible. We will let you go.”
“Right.” Whispr was on his feet fast. But Ingrid hesitated.
“Can you help us? Help us to get inside the facility? If we can just get past perimeter security I think I can convince any workers we meet that we belong there. I am a doctor. People, even those who are usually suspicious, tend to believe what doctors say.”
“People like me?” !Nisa smiled, then turned serious again. “This Nerens we are talking about. Is true my people have no love for the company, or its minions, or the constant patrols whose attention we work to avoid. But at same time I see no compelling reason why we should risk even one of our own to assist you on what is plainly insane desire to sacrifice yourselves on altar of SICK security.”
“Where have I heard that sentiment expressed before?” Whispr muttered under his breath.
Ingrid mustered all the determination she could. “!Nisa, you’re proud of your children, of how they go out into the world to get a proper social education and then, how some of them at least, return to adopt again your traditional way of life. Well, I happen to know that someone or something connected to this thread and to SICK is doing things to young people. To young adults who have suffered through bad melds. It’s possible even some young San might be among those who have received certain unauthorized nano-implants.”
The men behind her moved closer. Several other villagers who had paused to watch came nearer. Had they been listening all along? Nothing in this place, she reflected, was half as primitive as first appeared. She rushed on.
“I don’t know what these implants do. I do have reason to believe that they’re connected to the thread somehow because both the thread and the implants are made of the same unique material. We believe that the material, and maybe also the thread and the implants, originate or at least are worked on at a secret research facility in Nerens.”
“Nerens all about diamond mining,” put in an older man who had just wandered over. “Nothing else there.”
“No,” Ingrid corrected him firmly. “The diamond mining may be real, but I believe it’s a cover for this facility. My friend and I have dedicated ourselves”—Whispr made a rude noise but was ignored—“to getting inside this place and learning what the thread and the implants are all about. Maybe you’re right—maybe we won’t get out”—another distinctive nonverbal comment arose from her companion—“but we’ve come a very long way through very difficult circumstances to try.” She sat back. “Won’t you—can’t you—help us? If not for our sake then for those of the children whose futures are somehow being tampered with.”
An older woman standing behind !Nisa spoke up. By now quite a crowd had gathered around the visitors and their guide. “How do you know that is happening? You just admit that you don’t know what these implants do.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” Ingrid confessed. “But I do know that people operating out of benevolent motives don’t put unauthorized devices into the brains of unknowing young people who are just trying to get bad cosmetic work fixed. Devices that vanish when anyone
tries to study them. If these implants are intended to do good, why would those who install them do so secretly and without notifying the patient?”
“And SICK behind this?”
Sensing the mood change in her growing audience and not wishing to have to parse her explanation, Ingrid simply nodded agreement.
Several older villagers moved to consult quietly with !Nisa. Whispr and Ingrid could only wait in hopeful silence as their hosts debated her request. Would they risk exposure of their little paradise to assist a couple of lost strangers, even if they believed that the intentions of the two Namericans were benign? Or would they force them back down to the desert floor and turn them loose to be discovered by company security? It had been a while since she and Whispr had been at the complete mercy of others and it was not a sensation Ingrid enjoyed revisiting.
When finally the conference broke up and the elders wandered off without so much as looking in the visitors’ direction, she could not help but wonder if her request had even been discussed. !Nisa quickly resolved her uncertainty.
“Wherever the company establish an enterprise it likes to be able to say that it provides jobs for locals. Often these are low-level, low-paying positions. At Nerens some of these are always reserved for the San. Hiring some of us make them look good. Sometimes San employees sent to Cape Town to provide reassuring vitops for visiting media.” Turning to her left she strained to see deeper into the village. “So someone have gone to fetch Gwi.”
For the first time in a very long while the normally pessimistic Whispr felt a tickle of sanguinity. “This Gwi person—this is someone who has actually worked inside Nerens?”
!Nisa nodded. “The research division of which you speak may be unknown to outside world, but is hard to keep secrets from the San.” She turned thoughtful. “Maybe SICK does not care what we know because they understand that except for our clinic and contacts in Gaborone we have little contact with the outside world. Or perhaps their people think that because we choose to live and meld ourselves this way that we are stupid throwbacks.”
“I can’t believe this.” Seated before their host Ingrid reflected on all that she and her dour companion had gone through to get to this point. Now, here, in the Forbidden Zone of the Namib, they were for the first time about to meet someone who had not only worked inside Nerens but might possibly know something about the research facility itself!
No, she corrected herself. This would be the second time. She had momentarily forgotten about the refugee employee Morgan Ouspel. But other than providing them with instructions on the best way to make it through the Sperrgebeit and panicking at the sight of the storage thread (a “distributor” he had called it), he had either been reluctant or unable to supply anything more in the way of explication save for some nonsensical babble about a “big picture” and its “painters.” Would a modern bushman who had worked at the facility know more? Or at least prove more transparent in his comments?
Gwi was a surprise in more ways than one. Not only had he not undergone the extreme quadruped meld favored by his fellows, judging by his appearance he had not yet been subjected to a single manip. Short like all of his people, he was nearly as slender as Whispr despite being completely Natural. In place of the skimpy traditional attire favored by his relations he was clad in buff desert pants whose camo pattern changed according to how the sun struck the chameleon material. This was complimented by a yellow-beige shirt whose pockets were stuffed with the kind of mini-electronics one might expect to find on a sophisticated youth out for a skate in Cape Town or Joburg. Sand-repelling sandals shod his otherwise bare feet. Among his four-footed relatives he looked almost as out of place as the two Namericans.
In contrast to his appearance, his first words were not encouraging.
“I don’t know why I’m talking to you two except that Auntie !Tana told me to do so.” His expression as he studied them over the rim of photosensitive shades was disapproving. “She said something about you trying to help mis-maniped people my age.”
When it came to lack of tact Whispr was more than a match for the newcomer. “You’ve worked in the facility at Nerens?”
“Not exactly.” The young man turned his critical gaze on the much taller Meld. “I work in the facility at Nerens.”
The correction shut Whispr up, but only for a moment. “C’mon—you expect us to believe that company security lets you travel freely back and forth between the facility and the outside world? We have it on excellent authority that nobody is allowed out unless they’ve first been properly ‘debriefed.’ ”
A thin smile appeared on the younger man’s face. “Who said anything about ‘freely’? I’m San. This is my country, and in my country I come and go as I please.”
Ingrid wanted to believe him. Wanted to very badly, because if he was telling the truth then it presented the kind of opportunity she and Whispr could hardly hope existed.
“How can you get in and out of the facility without being picked up by Security? And why would you take that kind of risk?”
He shrugged. “I take the risk because I know I can do it. I like to visit my relatives. And there’s another reason.” When he lowered his voice Ingrid realized it was not for their protection but for his. He didn’t want any of his friends or relatives to overhear. “I’m a musician. As a boy I started here in the village playing modern reproductions of traditional instruments. Just like San language, San music is full of unique rhythms and sounds. I’ve been to Gaborone and played in clubs there. I want to go to Harare and Mombasa, to Mauritius and Antananarivo, and expand my musical horizons.” His voice filled with enthusiasm. “I want to compose, and to play full bandwand!” His right hand gestured. “But I need a sounding meld.” He indicated their surroundings; the peaceful valley, the busy village.
“I love my people, and my family. But a good sounding meld costs real subsist. My people have happiness, but not a lot of money. What they manage to accumulate is used for melding. There is a communal pot, but the subsist in it is not for the use of would-be musicians. That’s why I took the job at Nerens. So that when I slip away from there to come here for a visit, I can take some time along the way to look for diamonds. To pay for my gear and the travels I hope to take.”
“Find any?” Whispr automatically asked.
Gwi’s excitement faded somewhat. “One or two. Poor quality. Not worthless, but far from enough to pay for the music meld I need. So I keep working, and I keep looking. All I need is one good-sized gem-quality stone. That’s all, just one.”
“Get us into Nerens and I’ll pay for your meld,” Ingrid told him without hesitating.
He frowned as he eyed her up and down. “You? What are you, this man’s mistress? Or a wandering hooker from the Cape Flats?”
Ingrid flushed so violently that Whispr worried she would faint.
“I—am—a—doctor! And this hair, this body, is just a temporary camo qwikmeld. I don’t normally look like this. In my natural state I am …” She caught hold of herself. “I really am a successful physician, Gwi. Ask !Nisa. While I see that your people have access here to many modern conveniences I suspect that a credit card processor isn’t among them. But I promise you: if you help us to get inside Nerens I will pay for whatever meld you want, no matter how elaborate.”
“I know she doesn’t look like it at the moment,” Whispr added tactlessly, “but she really is a doctor. Good one, too.”
Gwi pondered their responses before replying coolly. “How can you pay for my meld if you are dead? Or do you expect me to get you out of Nerens as well?”
“Just get us in. Of course,” she added with a knowing smile, “if you do want me to pay for your body work then I suppose you will have to get us safely out again.”
The young San pursed his lips. “You trouble me like lice. What proof do I have that if I help you to do this thing you will not simply shaft me once you are safely outside again?”
Ingrid spread her hands wide. “We have no communicator
and our food is running low. Without your help or that of your people there’s no way we can get out of the Sperrgebeit, much less the greater Namib.” She gestured beyond him. “We saw that you have floaters. Get us into Nerens and out again, then take us to the nearest town that offers banking access. I’ll transfer the subsist while you watch. If you want, you can bring some armed friends of yours. If we don’t fulfill our side of the bargain you can take compensation on us however you wish.”
Whispr looked alarmed. “Hey now, wait a minute, doc! Leave us maybe discuss this between us before you go promising my blood and bone on your behalf!”
“Too late.” Gwi looked satisfied. “It is a bargain, Ms.…?”
“Alice,” she told him. “Call me Alice.”
“Ah,” he murmured, nodding. “Because I am about to take you through the Looking Glass, yes?”
“Uh, yes, sure—that’s it. And don’t mind my friend Colin here. He gets nervous whenever he thinks about actually being inside Nerens instead of just talking about it.”
“Then he is smarter than he looks.” Amusement faded from the young man’s voice. “There is a real possibility that once inside, you will be discovered. Then you will die. As for myself, I am prepared for such an eventuality. One who dwells in the Namib lives each day side by side with death. But I will keep you alive as long as I can.” He turned to leave. “I will see to it that your packs are topped up with additional food. You will need to carry your own gear. I will guide you but I will not porter for you.”
“That’s understandable.” She rose. “Don’t worry about me, Gwi. I’m tougher than I look. I’m tougher than I was.”