“As I am sure you are already well aware the police have also been looking for you and for the item of interest in your possession. Please don’t insult me by telling me you don’t have it. If you had not taken it and it was not in your possession or at least under your control, you would not have been striving so strenuously these past several days to avoid the attention of the authorities. Those who want it back—my employers—have no interest in you, your future relationship with local law enforcement, or anything else. For all they care you can go blithely about your business and on your way or find yourself helmeted beneath a truther. It is of no consequence to them, or to me.” His eyes gleamed and suddenly he did not look as old as he was.
“But I will have it, or you will suffer. I am very adept at what I do and I can spend many hours making you believe you are dying. Except that you will not. You will wish that you were, but you will not.” He paused. “Do we understand one another, Mr. Kowalski? Or Whispr, if you would rather be addressed by your Meld name.”
Behind the sealant, the figure on the bed was making violent muffled sounds. Molé nodded perceptively. “I will remove the sealant now. If you scream or yell for help, I will be forced to silence you. It will be unpleasant for you. It will be more unpleasant the next time you regain consciousness.”
Reaching forward and down he used the tips of his melded tentacle-fingers to peel back the sealant that covered the man’s mouth.
There was some coughing and sputtering before the figure said, “I don’t know what you talking about and I don’t know who you talking about! My name is Ali al-Thuum! I am a part-time cook at the Ghadames Restaurant on Mirabile Street. Please, I have a family in Sahara States who rely on the little money I can send them. What is it you want from me?”
The old man considered. Reaching down, he unzipped the shirt beneath the cheap coat he wore. As he passed the palm of his right hand over his belly the accessible chipped library that had been installed in his stomach came to life. While the bound man on the bed looked on with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, his elderly captor proceeded to verbally access his own stomach. The flesh that framed the storage insert was aged, but all muscle.
The conclusions Molé drew from querying his internalized database were irrefutable. He had the correct address and apartment, all right—but the wrong man. Shutting down the library he zipped up his shirt and regarded the immigrant cook.
“I regret this episode of mistaken identity, Mr.…?”
“Al-Thuum.” Visibly relieved, the younger man’s heart rate began to slow, his blood pressure to drop, his excessively dilated pupils to contract. Molé knew all this because the sensors that were components of his left eye meld told him so. The individual who had been mistaken for Molé’s quarry tried to smile. “I can feel sorry too for what you said earlier because my name sometimes also causes me embarrassment. But it is my family name and I will not disown it.”
“I’m not interested in your name or anything else about you.” Molé’s response was as indifferent as it was calm. “What I’m interested in right now, the only thing I am interested in right now, is the location of a man named Archibald Kowalski, also known as Whispr, who is the tenant of record for this apartment.”
“I shouldn’t tell you that,” al-Thuum mumbled as he looked down at himself.
“Of course you should.” Molé shook his head slowly. Sometimes he could never decide if people were stubborn or just stupid. “Otherwise you will die a slow and painful death. I’ll find him eventually anyway. You know that I will. Listen to my voice and you will know it. Look into my eyes and you will find this confirmed. To me your demise will be only an inconvenience. Your inconvenience will be far greater, and permanent.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
The elderly grim-faced captor edged the neuralizer toward al-Thuum’s face and the younger man flinched. “Honestly, honestly! I do not. He sublet these rooms to me only yesterday.” Bound hands flailed sideways as they struggled for purchase on the mattress. “See? There are two beds. His only condition of the subletting was that he be allowed to sleep here from time to time.”
A number of the remarkably tiny, astonishingly sensitive, and profoundly expensive sensors that comprised Molé’s left eye played over the man on the bed. At the same time Molé inhaled deliberately of the bound young man’s body odor in hopes of isolating and identifying certain potentially revealing pheromones. Insofar as this exceedingly sophisticated combination of sight and sound was able to ascertain, al-Thuum was telling the truth. There was also no indication that he might be involved in a physical relationship with Molé’s target.
It meant another delay. Another inconvenience. But then, the truth was often inconvenient.
“When might he be back?”
The man on the bed shook his head. “I don’t know that, either. I don’t know anything about him, really, except that he needed money. That’s why he moved into this place and almost immediately agreed to sublet it to me. At least, that’s what he said.”
For someone on the run it made perfect sense, Molé knew. Rent living quarters so you would have an address and a place to eat, sleep, and clean yourself, but utilize it only when there was no alternative. Meanwhile sublet to keep it occupied and have the look of being lived-in, but not by you. What information he had been able to glean on this Whispr person suggested he was not particularly bright. In the light of present circumstances that assessment might have to be revised. Even in Molé’s chosen profession general intelligence evaluations had a difficult time gauging street smarts.
A pity this wretched émigré was not fat, or female, or otherwise melded. Any of those characteristics would have been sufficient to physically distinguish him from the loose description Molé had obtained of his quarry and the whole awkward confrontation could have been avoided.
“I can wait,” he declared softly.
“You might have a long wait.” Al-Thuum coughed again. His expression wrinkling slightly in disgust, Molé decided he would not want this gentleman cooking his food. “The last time I saw him he said he might be away for a while, and just to keep his bed clean and made up in case he should return unexpectedly.”
The hunter nodded. “Yes, you’re right. I could linger here for days, or weeks even, wasting time while he and the important article he carries with him journey ever farther from Savannah. Now that you mention it, renting this residence and then subletting it to another might be nothing more than an astute ploy to induce someone like myself to squat here and wait for him to fall into my lap.” He straightened. “I thank you for reminding me of something I should have thought of for myself.”
Smiling weakly but hopefully the immigrant cook extended his trussed hands. “So you’ll be leaving, then.”
“Yes, I’ll be leaving. Immediately.”
Al-Thuum shook his bound wrists. “Could you release me?”
The old man stared down at him. “You might attack me.”
“I have no reason to do that.”
“You might call the police.”
“I wouldn’t do that, either.” The younger man’s smile was fading fast.
“You might contact the police and tell them what occurred here.”
The smile now gave way to a reprise of earlier fear. “Laa, I promise I won’t do that. Why should I? I barely met this Whispr, I don’t know him, I don’t care anything for or about him. Or for you, for that matter. I only want this whole last hour to go away. I just want to go to sleep, wake up, and go to my job tomorrow. That’s all. I will not present a danger to you, sir.”
“No, you won’t.” Molé was in agreement as he drew the gun.
The clerk barely glanced in the old man’s direction as the elderly visitor walked silently through the small lobby and out the single entrance onto the street beyond. Once outside and several blocks distant from the miserable residence hotel Molé allowed himself the freedom to curse aloud.
Nothing made him madder than ha
ving to work with bad or misleading information. Had the suppliers of that information been present he would have had a harsh word or two for them. And likely something more physical as well. There was nothing to be gained from cranking about it now, he sighed to himself.
His quarry still might return to the apartment he had sublet. Having employed certain liquids and methods to dispose of the corpse he had left therein, Molé had also left behind a handful of tiny devices that would alert him to the arrival of whoever might visit next.
In the meantime, there was ample mean time. Molé had other leads to follow, other ways of locating his target. Greater Savannah was a good-sized metropolis, but the hunter was used to working places like Chengdu and London, Kairo and Sagramanda. Someone hiding out in Savannah was unlikely to be able to continue to escape his notice for very long. The Mole’s reach, as his uncaring and unsubtle employers were fond of observing, was wide-ranging. No one could escape it for long.
All this money and effort, he mused to himself, to recover a single storage thread. He wondered what information it contained that made it so precious to those who had engaged his services. Valuable enough to enlist a hunter like himself as well as spending to corrupt a diverse menagerie of municipal authorities. Someone was pouring out money like water.
Ah well. Whatever was on the thread did not matter as long as an equitable portion of that money fell on him.
Only a few citizens out for a late night stroll bothered to glance in the direction of the hunched-over old man. Those who did, did so out of concern for his safety and presence in what was a less than salubrious corner of the city.
They need not have worried.
8
Traktacs.
Whispr didn’t have to see them. The angry linear marks where they had penetrated his skin were evidence enough. That was what had hit him on his underwater flight from the Alligator Man’s dwelling. They were also an indication that the authorities wanted him alive. Not out of any concern for his health or fear of public indignation should his head happen to get blown off, but probably because he could not be allowed to die until he revealed the whereabouts of the stolen thread. If the police had been certain it was on his person they would have used more deadly force and he would likely already be dead. A supposition was therefore easily inferred: keeping its location a secret was vital to keeping him alive.
Not that any of that would matter once the traktacs began to activate.
Each of the dozen or so tiny pellets contained its own transmitter and power source encased in a biodegradable husk. When these finally dissolved inside his body the pellets would begin broadcasting. The husks served a double purpose: to act like the casing of a bullet and protect the transmitter inside, and to give a target shot with them an opportunity to turn him or herself in before the organic outer shell fully dissolved. Once it did, a compelling combination of homing signals and internal irritants would be released. The former would allow the police to track down the source of the broadcasts while the latter would render the subject thus afflicted increasingly uncomfortable within his own skin. For one who had been hit with traktacs there was only one remedy: the removal of every last one of them before they could begin broadcasting their location.
To anyone familiar with such an intrusion the size, color, and shape of the entry wounds shouted the distinctive signature of traktacs. Only the police and the military had the authorization to utilize and the inclination to use such specialized stalking ammunition. It would therefore be presumed by anyone asked to treat such an injury that the patient was wanted by one official institution or another, else such devices would not have been inflicted on the patient. Whether they chose to treat the wounds or not, any legitimate physician was required to report such a request. It therefore behooved the increasingly uncomfortable Whispr to seek immediate relief from one who was not legitimate. This led him to seek out a mobilemed he knew well.
When he wasn’t playing the blues through the straight-line sax that had been melded from an additional radius, an operation that had left him with three instead of two major bones in his left forearm, Cyrene Pope (everyone who knew him called him Righteous) performed the work of a wandering physician. He did this only with what he could carry on, or as a part of, his profoundly melded person. Whereas in earlier times as eclectic a personality as Righteous Pope might have collected tattoos or metallic body modifications, such iconoclasts now accumulated a highly personalized diversity of melds. The musician-medic boasted so many he barely looked human.
Beneath his chin, a radical throat meld had produced an organic speaker. Linking to his melded forearm, it allowed him to amplify his music without the aid of mechanical supplements. While the fingers of his sax-arm remained perfectly functional, those of his other hand featured medic melds that allowed him to perform all manner of on-the-spot minor surgeries and bodily repairs. Attached to his lower ribs, his bloated flanks featured compartments holding medical supplies that could be accessed by rolling back flaps of self-adhering skin. In addition to the various skills he had mastered, Righteous was a walking dispensary. Very useful for treating someone injured on the spot, or who wished to avoid certified medical treatment. Licensed treatment was better, safer, and guaranteed by the government, but it was also intrusive. A fair segment of Righteous’s clientele preferred his makeshift surgeries to having to report cause and location.
Whispr found him on the riverfront plying both his music and his medicine beneath the old bluff warehouses. While some of the blocky structures could trace their noble commercial ancestries all the way back to the eighteenth century, they were all antique shops and restaurants now. Thoroughly gentrified, as were their patrons. That didn’t keep people from stopping to listen to Righteous’s music, or seeking treatment from him for scrapes and bruises, or furtively purchasing from his internal body stock the occasional semilegal recreational pharmaceutical.
Whispr waited beneath a sprawling shade tree on the faux stone riverwalk until Righteous concluded his business with a well-dressed young couple. As soon as the Naturals continued on their way, hand and drugs in hand, he hurried forward.
“Don I know you, mon-man?” Unlike many who chose to maintain at least one natural eye, both of Pope’s were full melds. One to aid in his medical work, the other simply to gleam large and bright while shining forth a gold-tinged beam of its own. To a devotee of cosmetic melds, appearance was every bit as important as practicality.
Not wanting to draw attention to himself, the slender supplicant slowed as he drew near. “They call me Whispr.”
“Whispr—right! Speak up, mon-man. Make yourself known.” Amused at his own sally, Righteous let out a prodigious laugh. Whispr waited until the jovial human who was still just barely identifiable as a member of the species calmed down.
“Got a problem,” he murmured.
Righteous grinned broadly. “Lady got you down? Cat got your tongue?” The flesh beneath his left arm bulged, parted, and before folding back in on itself revealed a small tongue. The musical Meldman roared again, but less stentorian this time. “Serious now, mon-man, what can old Righteous do for you?”
After one more scan of the immediate riverfront surroundings to make certain as best he could that no one was watching, Whispr turned sideways, lifted the hem of his shirt, and exposed his right side to the musician-medic’s melded eyes. Golden light illuminated the bright red spots on Whispr’s skin while the other eye scrutinized and took readings. When he had finished the examination to his satisfaction, Righteous straightened. His smile had vanished and he was now dead serious.
“Looks like you been attacked by a covey o’ drunken hummingbirds, my sibilant friend.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Either that or you done caught yourself a consignment o’ traktacs. Course, it might be nothin’ but the first stages of a bad case o’ shingles. That I can treat. And I doubt any hummers gonna mistake you for a flower.” He shook his head sympathetically. “But traktacs, now—those little screamer
s are bad news. Baaad news.”
Dropping his shirt hem, Whispr growled under his breath. “Tell me something I don’t know, bone-music. Why the hell d’you think I came to you?” Like marbles on marble, his eyes were in constant motion, continuously searching their surroundings for signs of approaching police.
“To avoid the official hell, I’ve no doubt.” It was a solemn Righteous who now met the anxious Whispr’s gaze. “Traktacs—damn difficult little buggers. I can hex a stall on ’em, but I can’t do an extraction. If I try without knowing the individual codes, never mind the group signature, all the procedure’ll do is set them off. Every one of them.” Tilting back his head slightly, he squinted skyward. “The Savannah strikers’ll be down on you like hail in December. They’ll pound you flat and spatula you off. I don’t want to be next to you when that happens.”
“I don’t want it to happen.” Whispr chewed his lower lip. Around the two men, who appeared to be engaging in a perfectly commonplace afternoon conversation, tourists milled contentedly while locals sauntered in and out of the upscale restaurants and shops that lined the edge of the bluff.
“If you just do the stall, what happens next? I’ve only heard about traktacs. I’ve never had to deal with them.” The slender thief’s expression was one of despair, his voice thickly beseeching. “When your stall wears off I’ll be just as vulnerable to trace as before.”
Righteous nodded agreement. “One way or another, my friend, you’ve got to get them out of your body without setting the nastily loquacious little nobbers off.”
“You said that can’t be done.” Whispr’s tone was simultaneously hopeful and accusing.
The musician-medic shook his head. “Huh-um—I said that I couldn’t do it. Don’t have access to the right tools. Expensive, sophisticated.” He performed an unexpected and surprisingly nimble pirouette. “Do I look like either?”