The Sum of Her Parts

  “Ridiculous and uncomfortable,” he agreed. Unlike the gully where days earlier they had taken refuge from the patrolling searcher, the current winding channel was smooth-sided and offered no shelflike overhangs capable of sheltering them from the momentary deluge. They had no choice but to tolerate the rain until it ceased. From everything he had read about the Namib prior to leaving Orangemund, that was likely to be soon.

  Sure enough, the entire storm lasted less than fifteen minutes from the time it unloaded its first drops until the sky cleared and the sun reappeared. Making a face, he swung his pack around in front of him and jiggled it firmly, shaking off as much of the clinging liquid as possible. Ingrid did her best to put a good face on their situation.

  “Look at us, wasting water in the Namib. I can think of at least half a dozen public and private environmental organizations back home that would condemn us out of hand.”

  Her efforts failed to amuse her companion. “I don’t care if we are in a desert—I don’t like being wet. Ever since I locked up with you on this madman’s outing it seems like I’ve spent half the time being wet. In Savannah, in Miavana, in Sanbona, and now even in the middle of the world’s oldest farking desert!” He glared across at her as he slipped the self-cushioning pack around onto his back. “Despite the chance to make some serious subsist out of all this there are times since I wish I’d just given you the damn thread and walked out of your neat and tidy little office.” He turned wistful. “I could be back in Savannah sharing stim with my friends instead of out here hiking from nowhere to Nowhere.”

  So much for trying to lighten the atmosphere, she thought. Her tone hardened. “I got the impression you didn’t have many friends.”

  He looked at her sharply. “Hey, I knew plenty of people! Lots of people.”

  “There’s a world of difference between acquaintances and friends.”

  “That so? I thought you were a doctor of medicine, not philosophy.” His voice turned challenging. “How many ‘friends’ you got, doc? Not professional colleagues. Not grateful patients. Real friends.”

  She bridled. “I’ve got plenty! There’s Suzanne, and Leora.…”

  Whispr’s angular face screwed up in a rictus of dismay as he interrupted. “What the hell kind of name is Leora?”

  “It’s a perfectly good name!” she snapped back at him. “She’s a probe specialist who works in my tower, a fine technician and a true friend and … why are you nodding and smiling like that? Are you patronizing me?”

  He looked away. “How could I do that, Ingrid? I’m just a lowly subsist-scrabbling street Meld and you’re a respectable uptown doctor. Why, just look at how respectable you are! Entering another country under a false name, maniping your body and face to conceal your identity, flaunting your beauty to distract attention and questions from what you’re doing here.…”

  “That has nothing to do with the number and quality of friends that I …!” She paused and her tone changed abruptly. “Flaunting my what?”

  “Your beauty.” He continued without hesitating but with his gaze fixed firmly on the next bend in the ravine that was leading them northward. “It dazzles men, and probably some women. Naturals and Melds alike. I know: I can bear witness to its effects. And that was before the hair and boob manip. Maybe you’re unaware of it, but you stun people quietly.”

  She gaped at him. Then she shook her head and irritably kicked aside a small rock in her path. “You have the most peculiar way of pissing people off, Whispr.”

  Now he did turn to look at her, his reply floating on his characteristic sardonicism. “Riffling isn’t my only talent.”

  She drew herself up. “You’re just trying to flatter me, to win the argument.”

  He scowled. “Whenever a woman says to a man ‘you’re just trying to flatter’ me, what she’s really saying is ‘flatter me some more.’ ”

  They strode onward in silence for several minutes. Off to his left a lizard vanished into a crack in the ravine wall, its black-and-gray striped tail a swift shrinking, highly agitated punctuation mark.

  When she finally spoke again it was to say something that shook him to the core, affecting him even more powerfully than had Napun Molé’s attempt on their lives in Florida or the recent pursuit of their vehicle in the Sanbona Preserve.

  “As long as we’re arguing about friends—have you ever been in love, Whispr?”

  He dared not look at her. What could he say that would not give him away? That at first he’d been able to muster only adoration for one so exquisite and so far above his social station? That when they had decided to work together to try to unravel the mystery of the thread and she had become suddenly approachable his adoration had advanced (or more appropriately devolved) into lust? That what had developed subsequently was a jumble of feelings to which try as he might he could not put a suitable label? Was that love? Was it shallow because he was shallow, or might he dare to believe that despite his generally miserable life that he was capable of something deeper and more meaningful?

  He was confused. Confused, uncertain, fearful, ashamed, and most of all in pain. The pain blasted through him every time he looked at her. When she walked, when she ate, when she slept and he could gaze upon her openly and without having to worry that she would notice and take offense at his stare.

  You’re a riffler, he told himself. A riffler, a murderer (however unintentionally), a haunter of the fringes of respectable society, a disposable blowaway Meld. You’re only hurting yourself if you think anything more than a short-term business relationship could ever eventuate between you and this woman.

  Except for the pain, of course. Unlike her, that would always stay with him. On such pain he skated across an emotional landscape as frozen as any arctic lake. Each casual word hurt anew, each criticism only brought more agony. He wanted it to go away, to leave him, to evaporate like the water from the recent atypical downpour. But it would not. It stayed strong and throbbing and was eating him up from the inside out.

  Yeah, he concluded. It felt like love, all right.

  “Whispr?” She was pointing in front of them.

  A snake was crossing from one side of the arroyo to the other. It was brown and much smaller than the ferocious mamba that had indifferently slithered across Ingrid in the cave where they had hidden from the searcher drone. He didn’t know if this one was poisonous or not. He found that he didn’t care.

  “Easy to go around it,” he told her. “As for—what were we talking about? Oh, yeah, love. Sure I’ve been in love,” he told her. “There was one particular woman …” He did not complete the thought. He could not.

  Her interest was genuine—and its innocence only added to the pain. “I take it that it didn’t work out?”

  “No.” He struggled to articulate. “It didn’t work out.”

  “What was she like? Natural or Meld?”

  “She started as a Natural. But everyone starts out as a Natural,” he added hastily. “Beautiful. Smart—much smarter than me. A professional, not a street Meld. We fought a lot, but we managed to get along. As a matter of fact, I think we were both surprised at how well we managed to get along even though we didn’t really have a lot in common. Even though she was pretty she was a tough little bugger. Resilient. I liked that about her.”

  Ingrid was smiling now. This was much better than arguing. “And what did she like about you?” she teased him.

  He spat to one side. “Damned if I know.” A pause. “Maybe she liked me because I let her be herself, and do what she wanted to do, and I didn’t demand too much of her.”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, a woman likes that. Of course, so does a guy. Anyone would, I suppose.”

  “You would too, of course,” he said flatly.

  “Of course. If—when—I find myself in a permanent relationship it’ll have to be with someone who espouses all those things.”

  A familiar, frustrating wall thrust up between them, the portcullis slammed down, and his expression
twisted. “What does ‘espouse’ mean? Is it like ‘expose’?”

  “Not really. It means …” She stopped, frowning. “Do you hear something?”

  Besides the warm liquid honey that is your voice, you mean? He forced himself to concentrate on the surrounding reality—and then he also frowned.

  “Yeah, I hear it.” He was suddenly alarmed. “Sounds like a truck, or at least a 4×4. Not a floater, and too loud to be a drone.”

  The noise grew louder, a steadily rising roar. “Awfully big truck, if that’s what it is,” she commented uneasily. “Especially for a place where there’s no road.”

  “Could be a freight transporter. Big one.” He began searching the flanking, winding walls of the ravine for another hiding place. “Anything like that out here, it would have to belong to the company.”

  Another long moment passed while they stood standing motionless and listening. The growl continued to grow in volume.

  “That’s no truck,” he muttered. “Too consistent, too loud, too …”

  He never finished the thought, as it was interrupted by the raging wall of brown and white water that came thundering around the nearest bend in the canyon.

  Flash flood.

  The atypical downpour that had temporarily soaked them had been far more intense off to the east. There, on the westernmost slopes of the Jakkalsberge, the deluge had filled rivulets and streams, arroyos and canyons, gathering volume and strength as it made a doomed rush toward a shore it would never reach. Instead the water spread out over the vast gravel plains, soaked into thirsty spongelike sands, and briefly filled to overflowing every dry gulch and desiccated gorge that striped the mountain slopes.

  Including the one up which they were presently hiking.

  “RUN!”

  She followed his lead as he turned and bolted back the way they had come. As they ran they frantically scanned the passing stone walls for signs of a way out, a way up, or even simple handholds. There was nothing; only the slick curving rock walls like waves frozen in time, whose sides had been scoured smooth by thousands of years of churning, rushing, polishing water. Predecessors of the thundering flood that was closing rapidly on them right now.

  “Here, doc, over here!”

  The several fissures in the rock wall that Whispr had found were too narrow to admit human fingers. Natural human fingers. The desperate street Meld jammed the bony pitons that were his attenuated digits into the barely visible cracks and started to pull himself upward. With his slender body flattened against the cool stone he looked like some skeletal desert arachnid.

  Hurrying to follow him, Ingrid stumbled in the sand and gravel, regained her footing, and tried to start up in his wake. Even with heavily trimmed nails her fingers were unable to gain a purchase on the rock. She screamed, but the apocalyptic bellow of the oncoming water drowned her out. Keeping the fingers of one hand firmly jammed in the deepest fracture he could find, Whispr reached down and grabbed her fluttering right hand.

  “Climb! Use your feet, doc! Move!”

  The water slammed into her, bursting upward over her shoulders as she turned her head away from the brutalizing current. The thin cablelike muscles in his arms strained as he strove to maintain his grip. Water surged all around them, tugging at her and stretching her out like a beige-colored flag with her legs like tatters pointed downstream. She was too heavy, he was too weak, the flood was too strong. Her fingers slipped from his.

  “Whispr!”

  All the high-tech trekking equipment in his pack could do nothing to strengthen his grip. He could only watch as the powerful current swept her away from him and carried her downstream. He saw her go under, come up with her head tilted back, and, spitting water, go under again. She reemerged at the first bend, trying desperately to get a purchase on the indifferent stone. Her hands flailed at the smooth rock. If she could hold on until the initial rush started to subside it would be okay, he told himself. His heart was pounding.

  For a moment he thought she had succeeded. Then she lost her newfound grip, wailed again, and slipped from view. The last thing he heard was his name, rising just above the roiling waters.

  Well, crap, he thought as he pulled his fingers out of the anchoring fissure and resignedly let go.

  He was a decent swimmer. Not trained, but living in a city threaded by canals and bulwarked by swamps it was a skill every child picked up at an early age. Trying to stay in the middle of the rush where the current was swiftest he made up the distance between them at an impressive pace. He would have gone much faster without his pack, but abandoning it would only see him trade drowning for a slower death. Without his special supplements he would leisurely starve. In the water his whiplike melded body offered almost no drag.

  He could see her now, not far in front of him. She was no longer making any effort to swim, either toward him, the canyon walls, or anywhere else. It was all she could do to keep her head above water. Though her eyes were half shut she continued to strike at the water with wild splashing, slapping waves of her arms, as if she could somehow subdue it physically. Her flailings were growing increasingly feeble. He noted that her own pack was still on her back. It would take more than the force of a flash flood to break the magfab straps. But it was weighing her down and making it difficult for her to stay afloat. Whispr had never seen such an awkward swimmer.

  Probably she’d initially panicked when she had been swept away from him and had never regained control of herself. Go figure. Street bum keeps his cool and doctor panics. He’d have something to say about that.

  Then she went under again, did not resurface, and he feared he might not have someone to listen to the chidings he intended to deliver.

  Only the fact that some air had become trapped in her pack saved her. As he was giving up hope this added buoyancy bounced her back to the surface, facedown in the water. Having outdistanced its burden of plant matter, drowned small creatures, sand, soil, and sodden humans, the front of the flood and its throaty roar began to recede southward. Ramrod current had given way to irritated swirls by the time he got a hand on the upper straps of her pack, rolled her over, and started swimming to his right. Though equally flush with flood, the water in the tributary ravine he had spotted offered no resistance to his methodical strokes as he towed her out of the main flow. Narrowing while its floor rose rapidly, the bottom of the side canyon soon provided slippery but welcome purchase for his feet.

  Without knowing quite how he did it, his boots slipping on loose gravel and slick rocks and his slenderized muscles on fire, he hauled her body, backpack, and all up out of the side stream and onto dry land. There he laid her out on her back and collapsed beside her, his chest heaving. The empty blue overhead offered not even a solitary cloud by way of consolation.

  “Didn’t think … didn’t think we’d make it, doc.” He wiped at his mouth, coughed, and spat onto the moisture-welcoming surface. The droplets vanished instantly as they struck, sucked down into the ever-thirsty ground. “I couldn’t hold you … I’m sorry. Why—why didn’t you try to swim back to me? I didn’t think I was going to be able to catch up to …”

  She wasn’t responding. Her eyes remained shut. Around her head her maniped red hair spread out in a saturated flaming corona. She was not moving. A coldness born of something much deeper and more malign than his recent swim crept over him.

  “Doc? Ingrid?”

  Oh hell, oh damn, oh shit. She was dead. She was dead and he was alone. Alone in the desert. Alone in the Namib. Alone inside. Or—maybe not. Could the patient save the doctor? Try, try, he had to try—but what to do?

  Bad water, good air. A prescription that was as straightforward as it was simple. Slipping frantically out of his pack, he rose to his knees and dumped it quickly to one side as he bent over her. Pressing both hands against her stomach, he pushed, not knowing if he was pressing too hard, not knowing if he was doing it right. He repeated the thrust once, twice. On the third time her body reacted: arching sharply upward, she retche
d from the bottom of her toes, spewing foul water and other stomach contents all over him. Turning his face away he ignored the warm dousing and prepared to push some more.

  He couldn’t. Her stomach was out of his reach. Having rolled onto her left side she was jerking and spasming violently while clutching her midsection with both hands. More water gushed from her mouth to disappear in seconds into the desiccated earth. When the last foul drops had dribbled from her lips, her hands relaxed and all the air seemed to sigh out of her body. Her eyes remained closed. She was motionless once more.

  “Ingrid? Hey, doc, you okay?” Reaching over, he put a hand on her side and shoved. Gently at first, then when no reaction was forthcoming, more forcefully. Her right arm bobbed loosely.

  He didn’t want to roll her over onto her back again in case there was still any water in her stomach or lungs, but he felt he had no choice. As he bent over her he startled himself by realizing that despite the desperate circumstances he was still able to recognize the irony of the situation. Here he was, targeting the lips and mouth with whose contact he had longed for since that day in her office, and he felt no stirring beyond a distinct touch of nausea that threatened to make him empty his own guts.

  Mouth-to-mouth. He wasn’t trained in that ancient revival technique either, but he would do his best to improvise. Inclining his head forward and down he bent nearer, his open palms bracing themselves against the warm ground on either side of her shoulders. He was very close to her when she coughed in his face and her eyelids fluttered.

  He drew back hurriedly.

  Her eyelids snapped open and she took a moment to focus. “I think I’m not dead.”