The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [118]
Luggage being deemed less important than living, by mutual consent they did not go back to their rooms at the Macamock boatel. Instead, Whispr headed the speedy little watercraft straight toward distant Miavana. New clothes could be purchased. Personal effects could be replaced. Everything that mattered was already in the boat and intact: themselves, their individual faux idents, and most important of all, the thread. Far more important than recovering anything trivial from their rooms was the need to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the houseboat—in the event a fearsome and singularly ferocious old man managed to survive the dinosaurian assault Gator had thankfully unleashed upon him.
Tense behind the manual controls, sweat pouring off his bladed countenance, Whispr peered across at her.
“You look like hell.”
Her attention concentrated on the swamp and waterland ahead, she barely glanced in his direction. “That’s not surprising. I usually look like I feel.” She shook her head slightly, ever so slightly. “He just killed him. Killed Wizwang. No warning at all. He didn’t even say he was going to shoot. He just killed him. To make an example for the rest of us. I was looking at his face. His expression never changed.”
“Whose expression?” Whispr inquired with grim humor. “The old man’s, or Wizwang’s?”
“The old man’s. I didn’t get a chance to see Wizwang’s. When I did look he—there wasn’t anything left to make an expression with.”
Whispr maintained a death grip on the manual steering, unwilling to relinquish control of their craft to the boat’s deactivated autopilot. The last thing he wanted was to give the elderly horror that had come after them a chance to take control of the watercraft’s instrumentation.
“Yeah. He just went on and on about his ‘employers.’ Not ‘employer’ … I’m sure he used the plural.”
Ingrid nodded in confirmation. “That’s how I heard it. I wonder if he was referring to SICK?”
“One thing’s sure,” Whispr responded. “He wasn’t referencing any political authority. That’s how I took it, anyway. The cops might bend far enough to kill somebody like Jiminy during a pursuit, but granting permission to shoot some innocent Meld just sitting in a chair …” He shook his head. “You’d have to be pretty damn twisted to approve something like that. I hold with Gator’s opinion: if the SAEC is working on ways to manufacture this MSMH stuff, then they’re the ones most likely to know what’s on an unreadable storage thread that’s made from it. Not to mention why it’s worth killing for. Not that it matters.”
She turned from the vista of swamp and rainforest ahead to look across at him. “What do you mean, Whispr?”
He kept shifting his attention between her and the waterway in front of them. “Haven’t you had enough, doc? I mean, how many folk have to die before it’s enough? How many lucky jumps do you think you get before your name shows up on the Lucifer list? If we go to the authorities with the thread and everything we know and make sure there are publicams and private pickups present when we do the handover, there’ll be too much publicity for those involved or bent to do anything to us. They’ll have to be satisfied with recovering the thread and leaving us alone. We can get out of this alive. There might even be a reward for coming forward with what we know.”
What Whispr said made sense. She thought about it long and hard. For a good five minutes.
“We’ve already talked about this, Whispr,” she finally told him. “I’m not giving it up. I can’t. If you want to go home, I’ll understand. I’ll keep the thread as payment for helping you with the traktacs.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, “you’ve already said that. You know, for a woman of science you sure can catclaw cling to an outmoded, illogical theory.”
Her brow furrowed. “What outmoded, illogical theory?”
“The one that says that if you keep on with this fanatic’s quest you’ll still manage to make it to your next birthday.”
While she had not gotten over her indignation over the zoe, she still had to smile. “It’s nice