The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [106]
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