The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [25]
“Not my cup of tea,” he replied in a polite quaver.
As he tried to go around her she stepped in front of him, blocking his path. Her practiced smile continued to invite. “It’s been my experience that even old men are all equestrians at heart—when they are presented with the right mount.”
The casually inadvertent “old man” designation did not trouble Molé. His actual age had never been a source of embarrassment to him. Quite the contrary. He took it as a point of pride that someone in his profession had survived for so long. Still, he was averse to the insistent invitation.
“I don’t have the kind of meld that might make for a memorable evening for you, girl.”
She laughed horsely. “You’ve got it backward, old man. It’s my job to make your evening memorable.”
“Then I suppose I can only accede to your persistence.” He extended an arm. She immediately wrapped hers around the proffered limb.
“A gentleman, too.” She squeezed his arm gently and her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh my—you’re in a lot better shape than you look! I promise you a night you won’t forget, senior. Or if times are difficult, an hour.”
“I will do my best to reciprocate.” She did not notice that the old man quaver in his voice had disappeared.
By the following morning she had, too.
The call that reached Napun Molé a month later differed from many similar calls that had preceded it only in detail. It found him lying on a water-whisking lounge on the beach at Pimento, in northern Peru. Speaking aloud the acceptance code string that activated the receiver-pickup resting in his right ear he answered the secure circuit greeting while alternating his gaze between the wealthy swimsuited women up from Lima and the fishermen demonstrating the use of their traditional reed boats. Most fishermen now were Melds, having had their bodies maniped to feature everything from gills to gengineered swim bladders.
No one paid any attention to one old man among many as Molé sat up on the lounge and swung his feet over the side. Nor did they remark on his incongruously youthful body, not realizing that the muscles it featured were wholly natural and the consequence of a lifetime of consistent serious exercise instead of a quick meld. The unusually thick soles of the feet he idly dug into the sand beneath the lounge were not manips to support creaking bones but cushions that allowed him to walk and run in near silence.
The voice on the other end of the call was atypically stressed. An important person had met an untimely demise and the usual suspects exonerated. On his person this individual had been transporting something of immense importance. If it was not recovered certain people including the speaker were likely to suffer. If it was to fall into the wrong hands—the worldwide media, for example—the consequences could prove calamitous to the interested parties. Prattling on, the caller used the word apocalyptic. In a lifetime of practicing his vocation Molé had encountered many synonyms for deep concern, but until now apocalyptic had not been among them.
Despite knowing Molé as well as it was possible for someone to know him (which was to say not very well at all) and being fully aware of his reputation, the caller still felt compelled to ask certain questions. Molé was not offended. The more significant the job, the more that was at stake, and the more money that was on offer, the more queries a prospective employer was entitled to ask. He replied patiently and without rancor to every one, accepting each condition one at a time and indicating his full understanding of every relevant detail.
In response to one of the questions, as he was already mentally readying himself to start making the necessary preparations, he had to admit that, no, he had never been to the central far east coast of Namerica.
WHISPER SPENT THE FOLLOWING DAY hiding in the center of a dense grove of ceibu trees. There was a time not long ago when such growths could not be found north of Central America, but with warming temperatures and rising sea levels they, like so many other plant and animal