“What is it? What’s wrong?” He indicated the waiting console. “Why aren’t you trying to see if it will plug in?”
“I have reason to wonder whether or not the contents might be something illegal.” She met his gaze without flinching. “Especially if it does turn out to be valuable.”
Her visitor might occasionally be slow of speech but there was nothing sluggish about his mental faculties. They suggested someone who rather than being stupid took time and care to think before he spoke.
“What about the similar thing you said you took out of a girl’s head? The thing that was part of a bad meld? Was it illegal?”
Now there was a notion deserving of contemplation. “I—I didn’t actually give it much thought. It was just something peculiar that didn’t belong. It was the strangeness of it that interested me. I never really considered whether it might be illicit or not. I just thought it was an atypical component of a bad job.”
He nodded toward the thread she was holding. “Maybe that’s all this is. Strange and atypical doesn’t mean illegal. It’s enough for you to know that I got it from somebody who didn’t need it anymore.”
Clearly that was all the explanation she was going to get out of him. It would have to suffice—for now. “Another possibility, and one that’s even more likely, is that it is of military origin.”
That would explain a lot, Whispr realized. Not only the strange metal of which it was made but the exceptional effort the authorities had been expending to track him down. With a start he realized that the unusual amount of resources which had been deployed in that effort might have nothing to do with the fact that he had been involved in a robbery gone wrong but instead were directed solely toward recovery of the storage thread. The police, the government, might not be interested in him at all. In which case by returning the thread—anonymously, of course—the heavy pursuit might be called off. Return the thread now and he might be able to strike a deal.
She was still holding it between two fingers. He could easily snatch it away from her and bolt from the office. But no matter who was looking for it and no matter how important it might be, he remained tantalized by the potential it represented. He knew he wouldn’t be able to decide which way to jump until he found out what was on it.
As usual, greed overpowered common sense.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Taking a guarded step backward, she noted uncomfortably that he was standing between her and the exit from the inlab.
“Sorry. I get lost in my own thoughts a lot.” He made himself smile. “Sometimes I have a hard time finding my way back. A friend once told me it’s a side effect from taking too many cheap meld drugs.”
The regret with which he spoke left her staring blankly for a moment. Then she reacted, with a smile of her own. It faded quickly as she returned her attention to the thread.
“You understand that if this is military and my equipment here does succeed in accessing the thread’s contents, the act of doing so might well set off an alarm ten times stronger than any traktac and send out a locator broadcast of its own?”
He had already come to the same conclusion. As well as another. If he snatched back the thread and fled, he would have to start all over again trying to find someone with access to instrumentation capable of penetrating its secrets. Mentally, he flipped a coin.
“Plug it in,” he said with conviction. “Let’s see what happens.”
Expressing satisfaction she turned away from him. With the dexterity of an accomplished physician she slid the thread connector first into the open flex receptacle. Immediately above it and as soon as contact was made, a telltale on the console flared to life.
10
Regrettably, the light was red. Frowning as she leaned toward the console, Ingrid murmured a succession of commands. Intermittently, the telltale would go out. On the occasions when it came back on, it was always the same disheartening color.
Whispr stood it as long as he could. “What’s happening?”
Intent on fine-tuning the instrumentation she barely glanced in his direction. “We have a connection, but my inlab isn’t reading any contents.”
“You mean the thread is vacant?” That didn’t make any sense, he thought. Why would anyone go to so much trouble to conceal an empty storage device?
“It’s not that,” she told him. “I can’t tell if it’s empty or full to the last byte. What I am telling you is that my equipment can’t read this medium, whatever it is.”
“How can you have a connection but not even be able to tell if there’s anything held in the volume?”
Stepping back from the console, a frustrated Ingrid gestured at it. “You don’t believe me? You ask it. I turned off the coding—it’ll respond to anybody’s voice.”
Accepting the challenge Whispr stepped forward and began mouthing commands at the console. It replied immediately, politely, and with the same blanket declamations of negativity that had greeted the doctor’s more precisely phrased inquiries.
“Maybe a more advanced reader …,” he mumbled unhappily.
“Perhaps. But as I told you, the electronics in my office are very up-to-date. They have to be, in order to keep up with the latest medical data. Furthermore, in addition to the public box the technical specs of my inlab are tied into all the other private ones in this building, including the hospital’s. We all share information and analytical capabilities. Everything except patient and associated privileged information.” She looked back at the flex receptacle.
“I agree with you that if we have a valid connection the equipment should at least be able to tell us if there’s anything stored on the medium. That it cannot suggests that it contains proprietary coding as advanced as the composition of the device itself.”
Whispr prided himself on his ability to see the world around him realistically. Among other things that meant being able to admit when you had reached the limit of your personal knowledge. So he was able to confess ignorance without shame.
“Don’t feel bad,” she heard herself saying. “I’m not sure what to do next, either. There are more powerful readers and other instruments that can probably tell what’s inside this thing.”
“Then let’s use them.”
Her hesitation was conspicuous. “I think if this storage device was mine, I’d want to study it some more before I would risk that. For example, subjecting it to scrutinizing radiation could bypass the coding—but it might also destroy or damage whatever is stored on it. Before I’d go deep-probe I’d want to try and get inside using less invasive technology. I propose that—”
Her suggestions were interrupted. Not by her visitor but by a chirp from the console. Leaving Whispr to wonder what was happening, she turned quickly to the readouts.
“We’ve got a response,” she finally informed him. Her eyes flicked over the information that had suddenly and unexpectedly appeared on the main monitor. “It’s putting out a signal. Very weak, bordering on the undetectable. And it’s got to be powered by the tiniest battery I’ve ever encountered.” Looking back at him, she tried to be reassuring. “I doubt it’s summoning the police, if that’s what you’re worrying about. Its strength is much too weak. I imagine that anything capable of picking it up would have to be exceptionally sensitive and specifically attuned to listen for it. Unless this is an example of still another technology that’s new and incomprehensible and previously unencountered.”
Military. More and more that was looking like the most likely explanation for the thread’s impossible composition and cryptic content.
Whispr tried to wrap his mind around something else that made no sense. “How can something that small and thin be putting out any kind of signal? Seems to me the whole thread would have to be devoted to power generation and that wouldn’t leave any room for information storage or anything else.”
She shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea, Whispr. Maybe it can change physical states, from storage to transmitter power. Between this and the e
ncounter I had with the device I removed from that girl’s head I’m starting to think that someone, somewhere, is doing a little real-life rewriting of the physics textbooks.”
“Is it directional? The signal, I mean.”
She eyed him in surprise. “I can’t figure out if you’re knowledge-challenged or just knowledge-specific.”
He smiled diffidently. “Actually, I’m stupid, but I do know a few things.”
She turned back to the console readouts. Nothing to trace there. Her shoulders slumped.
Whispr could see that investigation-wise the doctor was at a dead end. Not one to linger in an atmosphere of unproductive circumstance, he started toward the instrumentation.
“I guess this is as much as I’m going to learn in your office. Thanks again for all your help, medicinal and otherwise. I promised you payment if you deactivated the traktacs. I keep my word, Ms. Doc. As soon as I find someone willing to buy that thing, whatever it is and regardless of whether it can be read or not, I promise that I’ll pay you—something.” He reached for the flex receptacle.
Her palm came down on a contact nearby. A sheet of hard transparency slid down to cover the opening to the receptacle. Grimacing, Whispr put a fingertip on the covering and tried to push it back up. It didn’t budge. She withdrew her hand from the contact and backed up as he reached toward it. No matter how hard or how many times he pressed it, the receptacle’s protective cover remained in place.
Coded, he told himself. Matched to a command or to her handprint. Either way, he knew he could eventually break in and get the contact to work. He was good at breaking into things. But he was curious.
“Why’d you do that? Your equipment can’t read the thread. It’s no good to you.”
“Or to you.” As she replied, she heard a tiny voice in her head shouting. What do you think you’re doing? You’re all alone here, everyone else has probably gone home, this guy isn’t big but he’s strong and desperate, and you’re confronting him over—what? The unknown?
Employing much harsher and less politely acceptable silent musings, Whispr was wondering much the same.
“You can’t stop me getting it back. It’s my property. I’ll find something. I can use a chair, if I have to. I’ll break it open.”
It struck her abruptly and unexpectedly that a single trailing letter constituted the only difference between thread and threat. Banishing the less than noteworthy insight from her thoughts, she surprised herself by continuing to refuse to buckle to the demand of her taller, probably stronger visitor.
“I mean it when I say that I don’t know if there’s anything on that thread. But I feel that after everything I’ve done for you that I now have an equal right to know if there is. I’ve helped you twice now. You say you’ll pay me. I have no guarantee of that.” She indicated the receptacle. “You can pay me with knowledge. More fulfilling to me, cheaper for you. And there is this similarity of manufacture between the thread and the device I removed from the girl’s head. It’s important to me to understand and to resolve that. It’s a matter of medical knowledge.”
“I might trust you more if I could see that ‘device’ you keep talking about.” Whispr held his ground. “Where is it?”
“Elsewhere.” She improvised hurriedly. “It’s not currently accessible. It doesn’t matter. I have records of it that I can utilize for direct comparison. There’s no need for you to concern yourself with its location.” It was her turn to eye the receptacle. “I want to know what, if anything, is on that thread. You want to know what, if anything, it’s worth. If we continue to work together we can achieve mutually beneficial and nonconflicting aims.”
“ ‘Work togeth …’ ” He gaped at her. The woman staring back at him was smart, she was a successful nonmeld physician, she was pretty—she might as well be from a different universe. He shook his head slowly but forcefully. “I just finished ‘working together’ with an old friend. Now he’s dead. Partly because we worked together. Doesn’t that scare you?”
She swallowed. “Yes. Yes, it scares me.” Having taken the first step off the precipice she found herself continuing to plunge helplessly. “But I don’t care. I’ve only ever seen one other thing like that thread, and neither of them make any sense. I don’t know for sure how much yours might be worth, but a part of me won’t rest until I understand one or both of them better than I do now. I’ll try to explain this to you, Whispr—I don’t have any choice in the matter. Now that I’ve seen them, I have to understand them.” She paused and stared hard at him. “It’s called ‘science.’ ”
Whispr reflected that to someone like himself and to most of his friends, such an attitude would be called “senseless,” but he kept the thought to himself. “Supposing for the moment that I might consider going along with something like this—why should I?”
She thought fast. “You don’t have access to the kind of expensive, specialized scientific equipment that I can call upon in the name of ‘research.’ I don’t have access to the kind of, uh, specialized resources that you do. We each have detailed knowledge in our respective—fields. Maybe I can figure out the secrets of this storage medium without you. Maybe you’d eventually be able to do the same without me. But there’s no guarantee of either one working, and we have a much better chance of learning what we want to know if we pool our resources.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “I wouldn’t have figured you for someone who would take a chance on someone like me.”
“Neither would I,” she responded unapologetically, “until just now.” She nodded toward the sealed receptacle. “The thread, it changes everything.”
“That’s your opinion. I still think I can solve it without you. And when I do, I’ll keep my promise to pay you.” He started again toward the console, looking around for something heavy with which to shatter the protective transparency that now covered the plug-in.
Her thoughts raced. She knew she couldn’t deny him physically. Anyway, if she tried to do so she might end up losing more than just an opportunity.
“I can also help you to hide from the authorities.”
That gave him pause. Even absent the matter of the mystifying thread, it would have given him pause.
She rushed on. “Just because you’re rid of the traktacs doesn’t mean they won’t run you to ground tomorrow. If everything you’ve told me is true they’ll still be hunting you because they want the thread back.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s—right. What exactly did you have in mind?”
I don’t have anything in mind, she told herself a bit hysterically, because I’m sure by now that I must have lost it.
“I’ll—I’ll hide you. I have a big codo. There’s plenty of room. While we try to solve the thread you—you can stay with me.”
There, she thought. Four successive terse statements; all true, half of which marked her as self-designatedly certifiable.
“No one will even think to look for you in a private residence, much less in my place.”
“You’re kidding,” he shot back. “You’re just trying to stall me until you can think of something else. Or call the police.”
“I swear it—Whispr. You can live in my place. Until we unravel the insides of that thread.” Seeing that he remained doubtful she tried to think of a rationale that would appeal to him on his own terms. “Besides, your promise to pay me will mean a lot more if I can keep an eye on you and the relevant property.”
“I’ll be damned.” A hand featuring heavily weathered, impossibly slender fingers stretched out toward her. “You’ve got a deal, Ms. Doc. And to show you that I mean to keep my part of the bargain I promise not to kill you in your sleep.”
As she shook his hand, feeling the coiled strength in the serpentine digits, her responding smile was twisted. “I’m relieved to hear it, Whispr.” She let go of his hand and the fingers slid away from her flesh like so many snakes slithering back into their den. Dividing her attention, she walked back over to the console that was now
dominated by the shuttered receptacle.
While he watched her work the instrumentation, he admired the play of muscles and other things beneath her clothing. She was moderately fit, but he wouldn’t have called her athletic.
“You have my label,” he murmured softly. “What shall I call you? You’re a Natural, so you don’t have a Meld moniker. I can’t keep calling you ‘Ms. Doc.’ What’s your first name?”
Concentrating on reopening the receptacle, she barely glanced in his direction. “Why don’t you just call me ‘doc’?” Not wanting to irritate him this early in their new business relationship, she added, “Until we get to know each other better.”
He was disappointed, but accepting. “All right—doc. Only problem with that is it makes me think of some old guy with a long beard wearing a white coat. You got the white coat but you don’t look anything like an old guy with a long beard.”
“I can see that you could’ve made your way through life on flattery alone,” she replied absently. “There.” The protective panel slid back to reveal the silvery thread. Plucking it carefully from the flex plug receptacle, she slid it back into its protective capsule. A quick check of another instrument revealed that the device was still generating its minuscule emission. To what end and for what purpose remained as much a mystery as its composition and contents.
Feeble as the output was, perhaps the device was some kind of limitedrange homing signal, she mused. If that was the case then she might have the opportunity to learn the nature of the thread’s contents from its owners themselves. At which point, if such a get-together eventuated, it might be reassuring to have someone of Mr. Whispr’s idiosyncratic talents present.
When he started to reach for the capsule she instinctively dropped it down the front of her camisole. The instant she did so she grasped that this might not be the most rational response to his reaching. The realization that where such an action would give someone like Rajeev pause, it might mean less than nothing to her visitor. Her breath caught in her throat for just an instant, until he smiled and shrugged.