“Nothing worth dying for,” Whispr replied without hesitation. “We riffled a meld hand off a dead guy, that’s all.”
“Nothing else?” Marula was watching him closely.
“Nothing else,” Whispr lied with a faculty born of much practice.
The shop owner considered. “Must have been a prodigious valuable hand. Or a mighty valuable man.”
“He didn’t look exceptional. A mild Meld. Ordinary tourist. Or so we thought. We didn’t intend to kill him.” A wan smile crossed Whispr’s newly melded face. “You know how it is. Sometimes things don’t work out as planned.”
“Bet Jiminy C would second that. Where’s this hand meld?”
“Jiminy had it.”
The shop owner looked disappointed. He could always black market a hand. “If that’s what someone wanted back, now that they’ve recovered it maybe it won’t be as bad for you as word has it. Maybe after a quick scorch around town the authorities will back off.”
Whispr blinked as he nodded. He was still getting used to his newly maniped eyes. “That’s what I’m hoping. I’d really like to stay in the area. I’m not a traveler. This is my home.”
Unable because of his mass to peer over his shoulder, Marula had to turn his whole body in order to look behind him. “Well, it’s a hot home today. For all of us.” Legs like mechanical lifts straightened and he extended the hand that still featured fingers. The visit was at an end.
Jiminy’s dead. Wandering the halls of the specialty mall that occupied the bluff overlooking the south side of the river allowed a contemplative Whispr to wander in comparative safety among busily shopping crowds of locals and tourists. On one occasion he passed close to a couple of burly security guards, but despite the fact that there must be a sizable reward on his head they didn’t even glance in his direction. He smiled to himself with satisfaction. Chaukutri was worth what he charged.
He thought back to his conversation with Marula. Had the shop owner been on the right track? Was it the ampuscated hand? Was that what the authorities wanted back so badly? But if they had recovered it from Jiminy, why kill the poor goof? Unless—unless the Cricket had managed to hide it somewhere before he had been taken into custody. If that was the case and it was the meld prosthesis the police were after it might explain why there was so much uncharacteristic pressure to find the Cricket’s partner.
Unless it was not the hand they were after. Unless they were desperate to recover something else.
He did not need to remove the packet containing the thread from its hiding place in his right shoe to imagine what that something else might be.
What was recorded on that slender bit of flexible storage material? Something worth killing for? The only reason he could think of for someone to want Jiminy homicided would be to keep him from talking about what he had done. Which was to slay a visitor and take two things from him. If the street was true and the authorities were still hot after Whispr, and the reason for the hunt did not center on the ampuscated hand, then it somehow had to involve the thread. If that tiny bit of cyberforage was valuable enough to justify a custody kill by the police then it might, then it must, be worth money. A lot of money.
Before he could do anything else, before he could plan anything else, he needed to know what was on that thread.
6
It was just at closing time when the three women showed up. His wife had left to do some shopping, leaving Chaukutri to close down the cookers and bank the mobile adverts. One by one the floating ads winked out as the energy that maintained them was turned off. He was in the process of locking the counter when the Natural approached. In the absence of the usual manips she was still quite attractive, in a severe sort of way. It didn’t take much imagination for him to envision her clad in polarized synthetics, wielding a …
“Is it too late to get some papadams?” Her voice was sweet but stilted, like chocolate that had been left too long in the sun.
He replied reluctantly. “I fear so, miss. Our cookers are just now shut down and I do not even have the wherewithal to heat up any leftovers.” He glanced to his left. “I have some cold sticky buns with sesame, if that will satisfy.”
“I guess they’ll have to. Three, please, if you have that many.”
“Most assuredly.”
Slipping the trio of hand-sized loaves into an aerogel bag he prepared to hand them over. Contact with the enzymes in human saliva would set off a reaction that would dissolve the container, leaving only a trace amount of coagulated organic packaging that would pass harmlessly through the human gut. He handed over the sack in exchange for a credit stick.
That was the last thing he remembered until he regained consciousness.
Through a high horizontal window he could see that it was night outside. He was in his own surgery, seated with his arms bound behind him and his ankles secured so tightly that the flow of blood to his feet was in jeopardy. The woman who had approached him in search of something to eat was chatting amiably with two companions. Unlike her neither of them was a Natural.
They had been melded beyond oversize. It was not that they were unattractive. Their proportions were perfectly normal except for their height, weight, and enhanced muscularity. From what he could tell as he recovered consciousness both were fairly standard Amazon melds. Neither looked like an athlete. They were just large.
Seeing that he was awake the two bigs came forward to take up stances flanking his chair. The Natural confronted him.
“Your sticky buns are very good.”
He swallowed and fought to maintain his composure. “We bake most everything ourselves, right here.”
“Commendable.” Looking past him, she nodded. “You also do other kinds of cooking.”
He managed to force a smile. “Man cannot live by papadams and sticky buns alone.”
“Neither can woman. Our information is that you had a recent visitor named Archibald Kowalski, né Whispr. Information about him is as thin on the ground as he is reputed to be.” She leaned forward. “I’m going to take a stab in the dark and guess that he didn’t come here for your wonderful food. What did you do to him? A partial meld? Full makeover?” She straightened and popped something into her mouth. Chaukutri couldn’t see what it was, but her pupils dilated sharply. He tried to swallow again but his throat had gone dry.
“You are mistaken. We are old friends and he comes often to eat here.”
The Natural nodded. For a second time, she looked past him. “You know, when I was young I gave some thought to becoming a melder. Circumstances led me into another line of work, but I never completely lost the desire.” She gestured.
Picking him up chair and all, the two Amazons hauled him backward. Into the surgery. Chaukutri’s eyes widened without the aid of chemical stimulation.
“Wait! What are you doing? There are sensitive instruments in here. Be careful, you could damage something.”
“We wouldn’t want to do that.” The Natural’s voice had fallen. “We don’t want to damage anything.” She waved at the nearby bank of instruments. “If you’re a careful little people-baker you won’t have kept any records. No records means no trails for the authorities to explore. No trails for the authorities to explore means that if your little hobby is discovered, in the absence of any examples or evidence to produce in court, they can’t haul you in on charges of performing dangerous melds. Which means that the only records are likely to be in your head.” As the two bigs stepped out of the surgery, the Natural scowled at him.
“It’s time to perform some information recovery. What did you do to, or for, this Whispr? It is vital that we talk with him. He and a friend stole something many others are looking to recover. There is much at stake, I am informed, besides money. My sisters and I hold no unreasonable expectations: we will be quite content to settle for the money.” As the door to the surgery slid shut she strolled over to the bank of darkened instrumentation. “It’s last chance time, little baker.” She giggled unpleasantly.
br /> Even as he struggled against his bonds Chaukutri was watching her intently. “You know I cannot tell you anything about meldwork that has been performed in confidence. I am sure that if you continue to ask questions of relevant parties you will make Mr. Whispr’s acquaintance soon enough.”
“We don’t want to make it ‘soon enough.’ We want to make it yesterday.” A hand reached down, elegantly ringed fingers dancing over buttons and switches without quite making full contact. “I think I remember what this one does, but I’m not sure—”
“Don’t touch that! It …!”
When his wife returned from shopping and found him slumped over inside the surgery, she started screaming very loudly. Chaukutri was not dead. The meldwork that had been performed on him reflected an expertise that belied the operator’s inexperience. His arms had been modified into wings, his eyes enlarged beyond practicality, his mouth replaced with a beak. Coarse feathers erupted from his skin while his now permanently bent legs terminated in feet that were broad and webbed. His mouth-beak had been widened into a permanent smile the writer Hugo would have recognized instantly.
Taken in toto the extensive meld was not unappealing—at least to children. Chaukutri now resembled a well-known and widely popular children’s cartoon character. Such animated melds were not unprecedented. A few were eagerly sought-after and costly. There was only one drawback to the far-reaching work that had been carried out on the man slumped unconscious in the chair.
Every bit of it had been carried out without the benefit of anesthetic.
IN AN AGE OF RADICAL cosmetology when the unusual had become the norm and the outrageous common it took a particularly exceptional meld to attract attention. For many that was reason enough to undergo melds that could be classified as extreme. “Look at me!” was the cry; sometimes strident, sometimes subdued, sometimes desperate, that had accompanied the first radical melds. Nowadays such once drastic manips were sufficiently widespread so as to rarely draw interest.
In the same way that three-meter-tall guards and three-hundred-kilo linemen had spelled the end of professional basketball and gridiron football (along with most other organized sports), so too had outlandish cosmetics performed purely for the sake of reckless narcissism fallen rapidly by the wayside. They had given way to melding carried out for more practical reasons. Better long-range vision for enthusiastic bird-spotters, larger hands for chefs, enhanced lungs for singers and specialized lips for all manner of brass and woodwind players, curved thighbones for enthusiastic bicycle riders, and greater sensitivity to changes in pressure for airline pilots.
Hobbyists were able to indulge in melds that allowed them to immerse themselves more completely in their favorite activities. With the advent of off-loadable organic storage banks capable of holding millions of old memories, brain melds proved not only impracticable but unnecessary. Then there were the melds that could be applied to pets as effectively as to their owners.
And as with all progressive leaps in technology, sex was forever in the forefront of new developments. Thanks to continuing advances in melding nearly anything that could be imagined became attainable.
Notwithstanding all of this, the complete face and body melding that had over a period of more than a decade completely remade Luther Heeley Calloway of Boudreux Island still marked him as something special among the melded masses. For one thing, no one had called him Luther or Calloway for a long time.
He was simply the Alligator Man.
“Why?” was inevitably the first question asked as to why he had chosen to undergo such an elemental transformation. The Alligator Man’s reply was as uncomplicated as it was sufficient.
“I like gators. Always have. Admired ’em, respected ’em, used ’em, and et ’em. Always thought it would be great to look like ’em. Found out I could. Did.”
Whispr knew about the Alligator Man. As did anyone who prowled even occasionally among the underworld of Greater Savannah. But he had never met him. Making his way downriver under cover of darkness, changing at the last minute from one commuter ferry to the next to throw off any possible police tail whether automated or human, he finally reached the low-lying complex of islets known collectively as Boudreux Island just after seven in the evening.
The Alligator Man did not greet him. The five-meter-long reptile that did raise its head behind the transparent autodoor caused Whispr to involuntarily jump backward half a meter. His newly enhanced and not yet entirely healed leg tendons protested at the sudden exertion required of them.
The loglike crocodilian yawned, displaying a toothy gape that was a perfectly primeval threat. “State your selfness.” The demand issued not from the depths of the enormous maw but from a speechbox that had been melded to the monster’s back just aft of the weighty skull.
“My name is—I’m called Whispr. I can show ident. Prior to today I resided at …”
The synth voice cut him off. “You are recognized, Whispr. Our files are extensive.” Lumbering aside on four clawed legs, the security pet made room for the visitor to enter as the portcullis door whirred upward. “Please come in. And don’t mind Lucius. He’s well trained, completely under control, and less inclined to gnaw on the legs of visitors than your average starving fried-chicken aficionado.”
Despite this dubious reassurance Whispr knew he had not traveled all this winding way to be dissuaded by a melded reptile no matter how big or carnivorous. Although he effected his entry with more velocity than was normal, his stride expressed confidence.
“Come around to the back.” Wired to the reptile’s brain the permanently affixed voicebox crackled encouragingly. “I’ve just finished up for the day, but I always have time for another customer. You are another customer, aren’t you, Whispr-man? Otherwise you’re wasting both our time.”
“I hope I am.” Foolishly Whispr realized he had addressed his reply to the uncomprehending reptile. Meeting the gaze of the quadrupedal guard he found the latter’s eyes cold and empty.
Everyone knew why the Alligator Man was so called, but it was one thing to hear a secondhand description of the melds that had been performed and quite another to encounter them in the flesh.
Whispr’s host smiled. It was both impressive and off-putting.
“Call me Gator.”
For thousands of years it had been a customary coming-of-age rite for young men in the middle and upper Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea to scar their bodies as an homage to the sacred crocodile in the belief that doing so would allow them to partake of its strength. This was done by using a sharp knife to make multiple one- or two-centimeter-long slits in the skin and flesh of a young man’s back. Ash from a recent fire was then rubbed into the bloody open wounds. As the slits healed over the ash they formed raised bumps that strikingly resembled the ridged scutes of a crocodile.
Contemporary melding technology allowed such modifications to be taken to extremes undreamed of by Sepik villagers.
Whispr could not help but stare. No doubt his host was used to the attention, expected it, probably even welcomed it. Whispr found himself speculating on Gator’s social life—and more. Short of encountering an alligator woman via a box portal his appearance was not likely to draw the interest of any member of the opposite sex—or of any sex, for that matter. Still, Gator was doubtless satisfied with the transformation he had paid to undergo or he would not have done it. The man’s succinct explanation notwithstanding, Whispr could not keep from continuing to wonder why.
In an age of melds, there was no accounting for individual decisions. As for himself Whispr quite liked alligator. Preferably the tail, fried and dipped in dressing and then slapped between the two halves of a fresh baguette.
The melds made his host look bigger. Most prominently in the face, though the rest of the body was in proportion. Unable to avoid staring at the results, Whispr could not imagine what it had all cost. It was clear that whichever surgeon or consortium had performed the work had been especially skilled.
Gat
or’s jawbones had been extended and strengthened. Human teeth had been removed and a full complement of crocodilian orthodontics installed in their place. When the man closed his mouth, selected white canines jutted outside his closed jaws just as they did in his reptilian namesake. Black slit, gold-flecked pupils replaced round blue ones. The external ears had been removed. At least, Whispr noted as he shook hands with his host, the man kept the prominent claws on his hands trimmed.
Given Gator’s customized appearance it was hardly surprising that of all the melds the man had undergone, some of them self-evidently painful, the most extensive work had been done on his skin. Even the tail that had been appended to his lower vertebrae and now extended behind him for a distance of more than a meter did not draw as much scrutiny as his modified epidermis. Tails of all kinds were a common meld especially favored by women. Crocodilian skin was not.
The nodules and scutes looked as if they had covered Gator from birth. Ranging in hue from dark green to black they shone in the room’s light like fine leather. Which they were. A side benefit of the aesthetics was that their owner was encased in the same natural armor that protected everything from caimans to garails. Eyeing his host, Whispr could not tell how fast the man was capable of moving, but between teeth, tail, and tough hide he would be a formidable opponent in hand-to-hand combat.
He had not come here to fight, however, nor to admire his host’s extraordinary meld. He had come because among those who practiced professions suspect and illicit, Gator’s technical knowledge was famed throughout the southeast coast. Whispr needed to engage the man’s brain, not his teeth. His host’s physical appearance was immaterial. Among melds eccentric and extreme, Whispr had encountered his share.
And there were forever rumors of the far more … outlandish.
Shaking hands was not a problem. Staring into those reptilian eyes was not a problem. The proximity to so many threatening canines was not a problem. The only problem Whispr had with the engineer concerned not his physicality but his price. Upon hearing it, he shook his head regretfully.