It was the first time in their frenetic acquaintance that Whispr had heard the attractive doctor whistle. “Incredible. Is there a locus for the outbreak?”
The melded eccentric shook his head. “Naturally I went ahead and recorded every reported incident. From what I’ve been able to collate, occurrence is worldwide and relatively evenly spaced. Whoever’s behind this evidently favors a comparatively egalitarian stratagem. Though to what purpose I cannot begin to divine.” Pausing in his pacing and gesticulations, he turned to face her. Seventy-four-year-old acumen stared out of a ten-year-old’s eyes. “I don’t suppose you could enlighten me further on that?”
Whispr glanced briefly at Ingrid, then back at their host. “We were kind of hoping you could do that for us.”
“Unlike some, I am not one who finds mutual ignorance comforting.” Lowering his gaze Wizwang fell into contemplation that was, as was the rest of him, half brilliant and half mad. “Whatever have you two stumbled onto, nosy doctor and pawn of the night? It must mean something. There is money behind this or it would not be a worldwide, albeit widely scattered, phenomenon. Where there is money there is purpose. Power, art—at this point it’s all pure supposition.
“I think it would be reasonable to assume that every one of these devices was implanted as part of the process of ‘fixing’ a previous bad meld. Such treatment would provide the perfect opportunity for participants in this scheme, whoever they are and whatever it may be, to install the implant while carrying out repairs to the existing broken meld. Of course, just because that appears to be the logical modus does not mean it is the only way this has been done. There may be thousands of Melds, but apparently not Naturals, who on examination would also reveal the presence of one of these implants.”
“But why?” Whispr repeated. Though intellectually well out of his depth, he was not afraid to show it.
“Why indeed, stick-insect?” Though he was replying to Whispr, Wizwang’s attention remained focused on Ingrid. “To paraphrase Clausewitz, ‘Medicine can just be war by other means.’ ”
That comparison caught both of the houseboat’s visitors off guard. Was their host simply trying to shock them? “What are you talking about, Yabby?” Whispr mumbled.
“Large-scale clashes between nations and groups of nation-tribes has for some time been recognized as impractical and counterproductive. It’s bad for business and destroys or uses up that which war was once fought for, namely resources. But cultural conflict remains an issue for our wretched joke of a species, a philosophical appendix. Contemplation and consideration of a possible eventual conflict between Naturals and Melds has long been a fashionable subject among overwrought academics in search of a topic that would guarantee them publication. Perhaps these implants are in some way related to preventing that possibility.” His voice dropped but did not deepen. “Or preparing for it.”
“Oh, come on!” The outrageousness of Wizwang’s speculation took Ingrid aback. “Ever since the first full cosmetic meld was auctioned off by Singapore Surgeons, Inc., there’s been nothing to suggest the existence of that kind of controversy.”
“Not on a governmental level, no. But there’s plenty of it among and between individuals, doctor.” Off to one side, a solemn-faced Whispr was nodding knowingly.
“There are laws against Meld prejudice in every country,” Ingrid continued angrily.
“Laws are sufficient to stifle many kinds of antisocial behavior, but not bigotry. Prejudice is like stomach bile: controllable to the point of invisibility, but always present and just waiting for a chance to blossom and consume its host from the inside out.” Turning sharply, he strode over to the customized reader that held the enigmatic silvery storage thread and leaned forward to examine a single readout.
“Nothing. Either this precious artifact of yours is empty, or else my equipment has so far been unable to break its encryption. I can’t tell because the instrumentation is still working. It hasn’t given up. Or your encapsulated thread could be a maguffin.”
“A what?” Whispr exclaimed.
“Something designed to throw the curious off the real track. To divert attention from this plague of—so far—harmless-seeming vanishing implants.”
“I don’t think it’s that,” the slender visitor opined softly.
Wizwang’s response was more indifferent than contemptuous. “Why not?”
“Because a good friend—well, a friend, anyway—of mine died because of it. Because I’ve nearly been killed in the process of hanging on to it.” He cast a self-conscious glance sideways at Ingrid. “Others have been hurt, too.” One slim arm rose to gesture in the direction of the reader that presently held the thread. “I don’t know what if anything is on that thread but in my experience people don’t kill to recover something that contains nothing.”
Wizwang nodded pensively, no longer indifferent. “It’s possible that the owners of the thread might only be striving to protect the secret of its unique manufacture. I’m not surprised that I haven’t heard about this. Media coverage of violence that involves industrial espionage is inversely proportional to the size of the companies involved. Lids are clamped and sources muffled—or extirpated. Explanations for everything may well be contained on the thread itself.”
Ingrid pointed toward the reader. “But you said that your equipment can’t get into it.”
“Time, my succulent general practitioner, is the key that unlocks many secrets.”
She made a face. “If you’re trying to impress me by speaking in aphorisms, it’s not working.”
“Pity.” Small but shrewd eyes met her own. “Perhaps I should try a spew of sexual entendres. Oh, right—you’re a physician. References of any sort to the act of reproduction will not faze you. Or would they?” Before an increasingly and visibly aggravated Ingrid could respond, he concluded, “I see I have you well riled, but not off balance. This is proof you will not tip easily.” Barely pausing for breath, he proceeded to switch subject matter with disconcerting ease.
“There’s a bar on eastside Macamock called Fillie Gumbo. Meet me there at ten tonight. I’ll either have some answers for you or I’ll have given up. Either way you’re buying and I’ll be bringing my appetite.”
“Now why would anyone want to skip an invitation like that?” Whispr commented sardonically. “Why should we leave the thread with you?”
“Because I’m your last hope of finding out what if anything is on your thread or you wouldn’t be here now. Because I’m known and therefore can be trusted.” He looked again at Ingrid. “Because I want to see what Legs here wears to a nightclub, even a cheap one. Tonight. Be there or bee ware,” their host advised him. “Nobody stiffs Yabby Wizwang.”
Whispr sniffed meaningfully. “Not with that body.”
Their host’s cheeks started to flush, and then he smiled. “You have hidden depths, stick-man. You must, or one of your social status would be dead by now.” He turned back to Ingrid. “Keep an eye on this one, doctor, lest in an inopportune moment you hear him say, ‘Physician, peel thyself.’ I wouldn’t trust him in my bathroom unmonitored.”
She looked over at Whispr, who was gazing back noncommittally. “We’re partners in this. It’s strictly a business arrangement. At my insistence, not his.”
Wizwang’s wispy brows rose slightly. “Should I find anything on your prized thread more outrageous than that admission, I will be surprised indeed.”
15
Built on short narrow pylons out over the water at Macmock’s western edge in order to take advantage of the frequently spectacular southern sunsets, the Fillie Gumbo would not have passed Savannah’s riverside building codes. A spiderweb tissue of salvaged polymers, recycled cypress and mahogany (the only woods the local tropical termites would not eat), non-ferrous metals, and an assortment of colorful building materials of dubious origin and possibly toxic content, the establishment was nonetheless extremely popular with the locals who were themselves of equally polyglot composition.
Some of the Naturals Ingrid observed eating, drinking, and arguing as she and Whispr made their way beneath the arched glowing entrance and out onto the expansive, well-lit, and decomposing mist-cooled deck were less admirable representatives of the human species than the often cheaply melded counterparts with whom they shared the bar and tables. The bar itself was fashioned of what had once been a piece of structural art. Its architectural glory in the past, the once vertical supportive column in the shape of a stylized mermaid lay on its side. It had been reduced to serving as a tittering footrest for backcountry drunks; its former beauty degraded, its original raison d’être dishonored by vomit stains and the untold involuntary discharges of multiple overstressed bladders. Even Whispr shied away from it.
There was no need to squander time at the bar anyway since the individual they had come to meet was already seated at an oval table by the water’s edge. The seeming incongruity of a small boy hoisting a large beer attracted no attention. Recluse though he might be, it was apparent from his half-empty mug that Yabby Wizwang was well known here.
Ingrid automatically took the chair opposite him while Whispr sat between, facing the water instead of their host. While the establishment’s surprisingly advanced misting system did its best to cool the air it could not entirely bring the nighttime heat and humidity into the realm of the comfortable.
Setting down his beer, Wizwang stared across the wooden table at the doctor. “You’ll pardon me if I don’t say that I love you for your mind. Mind I’ve got.” His deceptive ten-year-old eyes roved.
She proceeded to do her best to support the contention that it is possible to ignore someone and engage with them at the same time. “We’re here, you’re here. Have you learned anything?”
“Yes.” Leaning back in his chair he turned his head to his right to drink in the dark horizon. Out in the Everglades a few specks of light marked the locations of isolated stilt homes and commuting watercraft. “I’ve learned that there are drawbacks to confining oneself to the body of a prepubescent.”
“We’d really like to socialize,” Whispr commented dryly, “but you know how it is when people are trying to kill you. Especially for what you don’t know.”
Their host looked over at him. “Try as I might, I can’t decide which of you two is more likely to be voted the life of the party.” Digging into a pocket he brought out the capsule containing the storage thread and passed it back to Ingrid. Despite the guarantees he had given she was more than a little relieved to have it once more in her possession. Whispr’s expression showed that he felt exactly the same. She hurried to tuck it away.
“Maybe there’s instrumentation in the bowels of the Septagon that can crack the contents of that sliver, but I don’t have access to it.” Wizwang had turned deeply serious. “Until you showed up with it I’d never met a piece of hairware my gear couldn’t unlock. This failure is a first for me. However,” he added encouragingly, “the time I spent working with it and attempting to learn about it was not a complete failure. Serendipity is a wonderful thing, especially when one starts digging into continental police records.”
Instantly on guard, Whispr started to rise. “You’ve been researching us.”
Small boyish hands made placating gestures. “Easy, easy, scarecrow! Everything is connected, everything is linked. I am very fond of links and, I flatter myself, enormously skilled at following them. What I did manage to discover should be all to your advantage and to the benefit of your searching. If a butterfly dies on the other side of the planet, what does it mean for us here?”
Only partly mollified, Whispr continued to glare at him. “That we know there’s one more dead butterfly in the world.”
“Not a man who likes to take in the big picture, I see.”
“Spend too much time looking at the big picture and you’re liable to miss the gun aimed at your head,” Whispr shot back.
Ingrid intervened hastily. “What have you found out?”
Pressing one among the many assorted images that were embedded in the tabletop, Wizwang ordered another beer. “That you’re not the only ones in this part of the world interested in storage devices made of MSMH.”
Ingrid’s thoughts flashed immediately to the trio of Meld miscreants who had nearly killed Dr. Sverdlosk while trying to extract information from him about the mysterious thread. “By chance are any of them melded women?”
Wizwang looked uncertain. “No, no women. I just happened to come across one, and it’s a man.”
“You’re sure?” she pressed him.
“If you doubt my ability to tell the difference, come over to my side of the table and sit on my lap.”
She kept her seat. “I’ll take your word for it, Yabby. You say this person knows about MSMH storage threads?”
“I don’t know if he knows about them, but it seems that he’s interested in them. I came across him because he’s been making comparable inquiries in parallel places. Nothing about head implants in adolescents. He just seems to be interested in the successful manufacture of MSMH and its possible use as a storage medium. Since he’s been as discreet about it as you and the stick-man here, I responded tentatively and in kind. Once I established to my satisfaction, which I assure you is as demanding as your own, that he seemed reasonably trustworthy, I began to exchange information with him.”
“You talked to someone else about our thread?” Whispr was aghast.
Wizwang favored him with a look usually reserved for invertebrates. “I told you I took care. Having met and learned from you, I was able to exchange certain credentials with this individual. He revealed enough to indicate to me that he knows things about your thread that you do not. In contrast, you have access to information concerning it that he would badly like to sample for himself. Being as happy as any middleman to take a cut from both sides, I have arranged for you all to meet.”
Ingrid looked over at her companion. “What do you think, Whispr?”
Her willowy companion did not hesitate. “I don’t like it one bit. Just because this guy isn’t one of the lipsticked abyssuggers who pack-jumped your colleague doesn’t mean he might not work for the same outfit that sent them on an infocrawl around Savannah. He could be bait to draw us out.” He glared anew at their host. “What guarantee do we have that you’re not setting us up?”
Wizwang stiffened visibly. “First, my wary whipsnap, I wouldn’t do any such thing because my reputation hereabouts and faraway is worth far more to me than any piddling fee I could collect from turning you over to those who wish you ill. And second, had I desired to do so, this meeting would not now be taking place. Easier to sell you out at your cheap hotel than to waste time chattering with you beforehand. And I would have kept the thread.”
Ingrid was not entirely convinced, but her eagerness to learn more about the thread outweighed her concern. “Where is this meeting to take place?”
“At my home, you’re welcome very much. Another layer of security for you for which I expect no recompense.” He sneered at the brooding Whispr. “Or thanks. Tomorrow morning anytime after sunrise. Before you come, have some breakfast, mainline some caffeine, sip-sup some local juice. I know that I will. So, I suspect, will this interested but chary third party. Then the four of us will cojoin to celebrate a collusion of the unknowable that hopefully will result in at least a modicum of enlightenment for all.”
“Or there could be a shooting,” a still dubious Whispr muttered.
“Ever the optimist,” Wizwang observed mildly. “I suppose one should not expect even a meager measure of jollity from one of so spare a frame and countenance.”
Conversation momentarily ceased as their host’s latest brew arrived, foaming mightily. Eyeing the condensation on the sides of the chilled mug, it occurred to Ingrid that neither she nor Whispr had ordered anything. Her dry throat colluded with her stressed mind and she ordered a drink from the compliant tabletop.
“I guess what you’re saying is that you can’t help us any further but ma
ybe this person can.” Whispr threw her an agonized glance, but she ignored him. “We’ll be there. I don’t know what else to do.”
“When you don’t know what else to do, do what someone who does know what else to do does.” Wizwang lifted his mug in salute. “Drink up, hope for the best, and let the piss dribble where it may.” He downed a long swallow through lips that appeared better suited to sipping milk. The contrast was jarring.
When their own drinks arrived Whispr tried to have the last word on the matter. “I don’t care what you said on your fertilizer barge. You set up this meeting so you pay for the drinks. We’re trying to minimize our exposure down here.”
Wizwang looked ready to protest, then shrugged juvenile shoulders. “A sampling of local libations, one of which is for a pretty lady? I think I can be that magnanimous. I’ll fold the cost of your respective lubricants into your final invoice anyway and you’ll never know the difference.”
A bemused Whispr looked over the top of his glass. “Of course we will. You just told us that you’re going to pay.”
“I did? Pay no attention to my aimless ramblings.” His small body forced him to rise and lean forward in order to hold his raised glass over the center of the table. “Here’s to the unraveling of secrets, the uncovering of information, the explanation of impossible metallurgy, and mutual profit.” Polycarb glasses clinked.
It was about then that the fight started.
The fracas was initiated by two Naturals. It was not related to the presence of the visitors from Savannah, it carried no Machiavellian subtext, and it had been sparked by a difference of opinion as old as mankind. One man took exception to something that another man said, or was perceived to have said, or he imagined to have been said, to the woman who was sitting with the offended. An escalation of execration ensued that rapidly devolved into physical conflict.
The smaller man pushed the larger man. The larger man pushed the smaller man, who fell into his girlfriend, who despite the presence of the subtle gripping upholstery beneath her butt that had been engineered to hold wavering drunks in place promptly toppled off the stool on which she had been sitting. As it invariably does in such situations, bawling led inexorably to brawling.