The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [100]
Shaking her head slowly, Ingrid opened a sealed pocket and brought out the capsule. When the Inuit reached for it, the doctor shook her head again and refused to hand it over. Their host was reduced to squinting at the tiny cylinder resting in her visitor’s palm.
“What is it?”
“Some kind of storage thread—we think,” Ingrid told her. “We haven’t been able to find a reader capable of accessing the contents, and it appears to be made of the same unlikely material as the implant I removed and that you just researched for us. If they’re all made of the same material, then somewhere there exists an engineering and manufacturing concern that’s figured out how to do the metallurgically impossible. Not to mention having developed a method for covering up whatever it is that they’re doing by employing quantum entanglement.” Repocketing the capsule, she gestured at the center of the room where the rapidly clearing air had recently been occupied by diverse projections of questionable content.
“Not only do we want to know who is behind all this, we want to know how they do it, and why.”
Ginnyy nodded sagely. “So would I, after having skimmed the information I just called forth. Except that I’m not going to go into it any further. Because I did manage to find at least three similarities in every recorded instance.” She paused for effect. “Every one of those now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t little gizmos, irrespective of locality, health, gender, ethnicity, or anything else, was removed from a Meld. Not one of them was extracted from a Natural. And all of them were young. The oldest for whom I could find a report was nineteen. The youngest was twelve.”
Whispr’s voice was pitched lower than usual. “You said you found three similarities. What was the other one?”
Tomuk Ginnyy’s lips tightened. “Every single young person who’d had one of these mysterious disappearing objects removed from their bodies had previously undergone a botched Meld that later had to be fixed. Without exception.”
Listening to the Inuit, absorbing her words, Ingrid was immediately put in mind of Cara Jane Gibson and her slipshod, bungled cosmetic meld.
“So what we’ve got is a clear connection between the nanodevices, bad meld work, and young adults.”
Ginnyy nodded. “Unless additional research turns up something contrarian, like non-Melds who show the implant or older adults who still retain it.”
“But what’s it do?” a mystified Whispr wondered aloud. “What are they for, these tiny machines that disappear if anyone tries to study them?”
“I certainly don’t know.” The Inuit switched her attention to him. “I don’t think I want to know. To me a combination of bad melds, unauthorized cerebral implants, and elaborate secrecy screams stay away, don’t touch, keep off the lawn. You two want to pursue this further”—she gestured in the direction of the shirt pocket where Ingrid had deposited the thread-holding capsule—“you need to talk to someone else. I’m just a small-time scanner and I can already smell that this is beyond me. Any additional follow-up calls for someone with more skill and more guts than I have.” She turned back to her console. “You need to talk to Yabby Wizwang.”
The visitors exchanged a glance. It was an ident neither of them recognized. Had they encountered the name previously they were unlikely to have forgotten it. Any instinctive reaction Whispr might have had he deftly repressed. New to the underworld to which he had introduced her, a less tactful Ingrid could not keep herself from grinning.
“You’re kidding,” she heard herself saying.
Tomuk Ginnyy did not smile back. “If you want, I’ll set it up. Yabby’s work doesn’t come cheap, but he’s the best. Compared to him, I’m just your local small-town directory service. Yabby, he’s true global. But before I initiate contact for you, I’ve got three requirements.”
Anticipating what one of the three might be, Ingrid was already reaching for her wallet. “Name them.”
“One, you pay me what you owe for my work today. Two”—she shifted her attention to Whispr—“if you find out what