Molé sounded tired. “I did so not want this to be difficult.”
He jumped. Or more properly, he sprang.
To their credit the two equine Melds reacted smartly. A professional, Lindiwe responded even faster. In a conventional brawl that would have been enough. Attracted to the action despite the club’s disorienting deluge of sound and light, other patrons could have been forgiven for considering the fight uneven: one unprepossessing old man against three much younger and bigger Melds. Sympathetic onlookers could have told him that there were easier and less painful ways to commit suicide, which was what he appeared bent on.
Few of them were close enough to see the chromatic flash of cutlery that erupted from the oldster’s hands and elbows. While unable to clearly perceive the cause of all the blood that explosively filled one corner of the big room, startled spectators had no difficulty discerning the results.
As Molé completed his leap and landed behind the blond, the big horse Meld went down as if his bones had been soaked in acid. With both his femoral artery and jugular sliced, even advanced emergency medical procedures would have been hard pressed to save him—and they were not available. Efficient as always, Molé did not waste time in contemplation of his accomplishment. Bloviation and the striking of heroic martial arts poses were for melodramatic popents, not real life. He engaged with the second big male before his first victim’s spurting torso struck the floor.
Exposing body armor fashioned from dense maniped bone, the startled dark-haired Meld parried his much smaller assailant’s thrusting hands. That left him vulnerable to attack from Molé’s feet. Pushing off on his right foot and making full use of maniped muscles, the frozen-visaged old man kicked out with his left foot. A curving razor the full width of his foot snapped out from his shoe’s leading edge. Propelled by muscles both natural and enhanced, this weapon embedded itself in the horse Meld’s abdomen just below the navel all the way up to Molé’s ankle. As he dropped back toward the floor he twisted his body sideways. His left leg followed suit, as did his left foot. Landing cleanly on his right foot he dropped into a defensive fighting stance. Though not necessary given the blow he had just struck, this fresh posture was the consequence of a lifetime of skill and training.
The remaining equine Meld looked down at himself, swaying slightly, and took a tentative step backward. His elderly assailant forgotten, the man dropped both hands to his stomach and pressed hesitantly inward. Turning and staggering toward the front of the club he kept both hands against his lower belly while he devoted his full attention to keeping his now revealed intestines from spilling out onto the floor.
Having managed to avoid her interrogator’s initial attack Lindiwe had pulled a pair of handguns. Contrary to the more common fictional depictions of such confrontations they were different makes and models, the better to maximum the potential results. Each had been customized to be held and operated by tentacles instead of hands. Taking careful aim at the old man she fired twice.
First one slug, then a second, penetrated Molé’s shirt and the toughened skin of his chest beneath, knocking him backward. Slightly slowed, both then struck the internal organic fibrous armor plates that had been grafted to his ribs and sternum. Manufactured of gengineered keratin grown from Molé’s own body (so that its natural defenses would not reject the internal grafts) and reinforced with carbon nanofibers, the plates stopped both shots as well as absorbing much of the shock. Even so, the impact was enough to cause his heart to miss a beat, but it quickly stabilized. His specialized and enhanced internal defenses moved quickly to englobe the fragments of the bullets to prevent infection. They would render the metal shards harmless until they could be removed.
Lower level adepts like this snake-arm never learn, he told himself as he fought to regain his footing. When dealing with an attacker always aim for the head. The body, even a small body, has too much available space in which to plant defenses.
Her second sidearm fired poison darts. Unable to penetrate his toughened assassin’s epidermis they bounced harmlessly off him and fell to the floor.
By this time he was moving sideways and had one of his own weapons out. Increasingly aware of the toxic confrontation that was escalating in their midst, Natural and Meld patrons alike had begun to scatter in all directions. The rising mad panic provided a percussive counterpoint to the pounding, throbbing goolmech that continued to pour into the club from hidden projectors. In the distance by the entrance a pair of two-hundred-kilo lods with low brows and bald skulls covered by sensor caps were trying to force their way toward the scene of the ongoing confrontation. Their progress was hampered by the crush of screaming patrons battling to reach the exit and a concurrent need to avoid squashing as few customers as possible.
As two more shots and a second flurry of ineffectual poison darts came his way, Molé threw himself toward the floor. Shells and the plastic feathers that made the darts fly true shot over him as he fired his own weapon while still falling. His response of choice consisted of a single small pellet fired from the end of one maniped finger. Penetrating his target’s skin and lodging in her flesh, the swiftly dissolving pellet delivered a rapidly dispersing measured quantity of modified histrionicotoxin that had been synthesized from the body of Dendrobates azureus. The consequences of this dosage of maniped lipophilic alkaloid took more time to manifest themselves than would a bullet or a fatal charge of electricity, but he did not want to kill the female hireling outright. Dead people were a notoriously poor source of information.
Exhibiting no adverse effects from the pellet that had lodged in her gut, Lindiwe was still trying to get a clear shot at her tormentor. The fact that he was much faster on his feet and hands than she expected was complicated by the play of ceiling lights and wandering glowlos that played havoc with her vision. It took a moment or two before she finally spotted him hiding behind a table that had been overturned by other patrons in their haste to escape. She smiled to herself. No thicker than the radiant fibers from which it had been spun, the vit screen oval tabletop would pose no barrier to the slugs from the more traditional of her two sidearms. Pocketing the poison dart pistol she gripped the heavy plastic gun with the ends of both tentacles, ignored the pornographic offerings that were continuing to stream across the upturned table, and fired.
Unfortunately for her aim, by the time her tentacle tip depressed the electronic trigger she was already falling backward. The shot slammed harmlessly into the ceiling, sending plastic and insulate flying. Fully alert but now completely unable to move, she landed hard on her back.
As she stared helplessly upward a figure came into view. One hand scratching at the back of his head, her elderly assailant gazed down at her speculatively. There was blood on the front of his torn shirt where her earlier shots had struck home, but otherwise he seemed none the worse for wear for having taken two direct hits to the torso. He was so close. All she had to do to finish him off was incline the muzzle of the pistol still gripped in both rubbery limbs slightly upward and depress the trigger with the tip of one tentacle. But though they held tightly to the weapon her cephalopodian limbs would not respond.
Bending over her the old man studied her face. He did not appear especially angry nor was he breathing hard. He circumvented his inability to pry the multiple coils of her locked tentacle tips off her gun by sliding a concealed blade from the left side of his left hand and simply sawing them off above where they gripped. Quivering like dying snakes, the bleeding ends continued to cling to the weapon even after they had been severed from her body. He tossed the mess aside and looked back down at her.
“You are externally paralyzed,” he informed her unnecessarily. “You cannot even close your eyes.” She looked on in horror as a small aerohypo emerged from the end of another of his fingers. “I am going to give you a small localized dose of the antidote. In addition to your heart and lungs, which for the moment continue to function, this will enable you to move anything from the neck up. You’ll be able to blink and
moisten your eyes, to move your tongue, and to talk. If you tell me what I want to know I’ll give you enough of the antidote to allow you to recover fully within five minutes. It’s a very unique toxin. The ability of the natural world to find ways to kill is still superior to that of melded man.”
“What …?” Her tongue and lips felt thick, as if they had been coated with liquid rubber. Both were still far from functioning perfectly, and coordination was an increasing problem. “What do you want …?”
“The one word. You say you remember seeing one word repeated inside the sangoma’s box projection before you fled her establishment. I paid you for it. A lot for one word. You can keep the subsist.”
“You’ll—you’ll give me—the antidote?” Breathing was growing increasingly difficult. She feared she was on the verge of swallowing and choking on her own tongue.
“Of course.” He looked up and to his right. The two bouncers were drawing near, having forced their way through most of the remaining crowd. “Quickly, please.”
She told him. He frowned.
“Are you certain?”
“That was all I—saw. From the file. And like I told you, I saw it—several times. Enough so that despite everything, it stayed with me.”
He nodded. “Very well. I believe you. I also need to know who you were working for. Who hired you and your deceased friend and the incompetent woman Chelowich?”
Capable of movement, her eyes met his eyes. “That was not—part of the agreement.”
He started to rise. “We can renegotiate—if you wish to take the time.”
“No, no.” Her eyes widened. “It was the Yeoh Triad!”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Unpleasant people. Very persistent, few scruples. Knowing of their interest now adds urgency to my undertaking.” For the first time since he had presented himself at her table he gave her an honest smile. “Pun is intended.”
Trembling inside, she stared up at him. Her chest was starting to hurt, as if one heavy weight after another was being layered onto her sternum. Despite the paralysis it felt as if little needles were being inserted into her lower throat. Needles with legs that were crawling upward. “The antidote!”
He straightened. “I’m terribly sorry. I seem to have forgotten to bring some. In my profession I don’t have much use for antidotes. You see, as far as my employers are concerned, I am the antidote. To foolish interlopers like yourself.”
Stepping over her immobile body he started toward the entrance, heading straight toward the approaching lods. She tried to scream after him, her tentacles and their bleeding amputated ends lying like expired anacondas against the floor.
“You—promised! You …!”
He glanced back at the helpless figure that was part octopus but still mostly woman. “Don’t worry. The toxin is still spreading through the rest of your body. It won’t hurt when it reaches your heart. Unless it begins to affect your lungs first. That might be painful.” Turning away he ignored her increasingly frantic mix of curses and screams.
Finally he could relax. After missing his quarry in Florida and then in Sanbona he would no longer have to stress himself to track down the thieving doctor and her pathetic Meld companion. Because he knew where they were going. In one word, the Yeoh Triad’s surviving (for another moment or two, anyway) hireling had told him so.
“Namib,” she had said.
Surprising and unexpected as it had been to hear, the one word was enough to make the remainder of his task easy. He could now take his time.
What they were attempting was impossible, of course, but if he had learned one thing about his targets it was that their resolve far exceeded their common sense. It was admirable, if self-defeating. He would react accordingly.
Namib. He shook his head. The world was full of crazy people. He knew this to be so because in his career he had met far more than his fair share. Prior encounters notwithstanding, Dr. Ingrid Seastrom and the man who called himself Whispr had to be the oddest as well as the most determined pair of fools he had ever dealt with. All because of a little storage thread that his employers desperately wanted returned.
Not for the first time he found himself wondering what was on it. Then he released his curiosity like a little boy letting go of a kite. Someone who had mastered his particular skill-set labored daily under a constant cloud of concern. There was no need to add to it by wondering about matters that did not concern him.
His path blocked, he halted.
The two bouncer lods were now directly in front of him. Each was enormous, their eyes almost disappearing into the flesh of their engorged faces, marbles sinking in pudding. Even their cheeks were muscled. They looked like overstuffed baby toys. If either of them got a solid grip on him they could pop him like a grape.
“I’m leaving now, gentlemen. My preference is to do so quietly.”
Displaying natural oriental features, the older of the two lods would have made a fine Buddha stand-in had he not been employed to subdue mayhem on a nightly basis. The figure confronting him in the now nearly vacant club was small, elderly, and deceptively self-confident. Looking past the patron’s patient, almost grandfatherly visage, the bouncer’s gaze rose to take in the overturned fixtures, the sliced and diced blond horse Meld, and the utterly motionless tentacle woman. A glance to his left showed a wide trail of blood leading to where a second horseman had collapsed on the floor only meters from an emergency exit. As if trying to escape the claustrophobia of his gut, entrails dribbled out between the Meld’s spread fingers.
The two bouncers exchanged a look. Wordlessly they stepped aside, two mountains giving way in recognition of reality. Without glancing to either side, Molé took his leave through the valley between. Both lods tracked him with their eyes until he, like the rest of the evening’s shaken clientele, had funneled out through the main entrance.
“He looked awfully old,” declared the younger Meld.
“No,” insisted his superior. “Not old. Experienced. The two ain’t always the same.” Turning back to the room that was still under assault by waves of numbing contemporary music he waved a thick arm. “Let’s get this mess cleaned up.”
Within the hour the House of Nasty was back in business as if nothing untoward had ever occurred within its unhallowed walls.
5
Ingrid woke up fast when Whispr screamed. It was a piercing, shocked sound the likes of which she had not heard before. In the course of their association her companion had done plenty of shouting, but this was the first time she had ever sensed true terror in his voice. Naked fear reverberated around inside his throat like a ball bearing caught in a pipe.
Sitting up sharply she looked to her left. A hasty glance at his communicator, which had been placed on the ground between them, indicated that it was almost two in the morning. Feeling that lightning (or in this case flood) was unlikely to strike twice within the same week, and taking their usual care to conceal their heat signatures from possible passing SICK searcher drones, they had sought shelter at the bottom of a sandy dry creek bed beneath another jutting sandstone overhang. With no clouds in evidence overhead or hovering ominously above the mountains off to the east they felt that a repeat of the flash flood they had survived earlier was unlikely.
Then what had prompted Whispr’s ear-vibrating screech?
“What is it, what’s wrong?”
Having shot from beneath his thin but warming cover he was now standing stock-straight in the center of the ravine. Moonlight unadulterated by haze or atmospheric pollution of any kind cast the impossibly slender Meld as a character out of Sleepy Hollow. Shaking visibly he raised a stick arm and pointed.
“Ghost! It’s a ghost!”
He was pointing at her.
Dropping her gaze to the front of her own blanket she saw nothing. Then movement, intermittent and rapid, caught her eye. Whatever had awakened her companion was making its way across her covered ankles. Barely visible in the reduced light, its outline confused her at first. Then sh
e identified it, and having identified it, understood the reason for her companion’s panic. Having done far more reading about their intended destination than Whispr, she was able to recognize the intruder for what it was, and promptly relaxed. But not entirely.
The dancing white lady spider was poisonous, and it certainly was as pale as a ghost, but it was not aggressive. Having migrated north from South America, far more dangerous arachnids now infested the lowlands of her home county in southeastern North America. Fascinated, she tracked the spider’s pallid progress until it disappeared into the depths of the overhang. A nocturnal hunter, it was unlikely to retrace its steps and trouble them again. Turning, she smiled reassuringly at her still trembling associate.
“It’s just a white spider. It won’t bother you.” She snuggled back down beneath her cover. “Go back to sleep.”
He continued to hesitate. After several minutes of hard staring during which he failed to pick out the fast-moving and now vanished arachnid’s path he finally returned to his sleeping pad and with considerable reluctance slowly slid back down into a prone position.
“Easy for you to say. It didn’t go tiptoeing across your face. What if it had been something more dangerous?”
“Then I would have screamed.” She rolled over onto her side. “I’ve seen a lot worse on a biosurge’s table.”
Whispr was muttering to himself. “White spiders. Black mambas. What’s next—green scorpions?”
She did not reply. Muffled in a dearth of sympathy, he closed his eyes and once more bemoaned his situation. Why was he here, halfway around the planet, trudging through open desert in expectation of imminent demise when he could be back home in Savannah, riffling tourists and sharing tall tales and short toddies with his friends?
The answer had not changed any more than had the question. Because “back home” offered no prospects, no future, and no friends. Because back home the cops were looking for him. Because he had chosen to risk all for a chance to find the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow that probably terminated in hell. And because he had grown far, far too fond of a Natural woman who was so beyond his station that his train never even stopped there.