The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [29]
For once, however, he had caught a break. No chase materialized. Perhaps the family was unsure about the nature and capabilities of their boat thief. Maybe they believed that as a thief brazen enough to work in broad daylight he was armed. Or maybe their other craft was unseaworthy, or its power pack was discharged. Whatever the reason, by the time he found himself in the city’s outer, stilt-mounted suburbs, there was still no sign of pursuit. He did not heave a sigh of relief—it would have flexed the aching skin on his ragged back—but he was considerably eased in mind.
The sooner he could ditch the craft the better. Surely by now the family would have provided the police with a description of the thief and the stolen boat. Would it be accurate enough to allow the authorities to match the description with the images taken by Swallower’s security apparatus or any personal details Jiminy might give them?
He had no way of knowing that while the gentle ministrations of the Savannah police might indeed inspire Swallower to heights of ready compliance, his erstwhile partner and companion Cricket had long since passed beyond the conversational plane.
In olden times a thief might have waited until nightfall to abandon stolen transport. With the installation of automated metropolitan security monitors that could see as well in the dark as during the day, nighttime had ceased to be as much of a criminal’s friend. Whispr knew he would have a better chance of avoiding attention by losing himself among a typical workday crowd full of Naturals and other Melds than if he waited until after sunset when considerably fewer people were on the streets. He was not concerned about being singled out because of his particular meld. He was far from being the only representative of the artificially slenderized walking the streets of Greater Savannah.
After cleaning himself up as best he could with the gear that was available on the boat he pulled into one of numerous public riverfront piers and docked in a public parking slip. He took care to make it look as if the boat was properly clamped in place. Then he set the timer so that the catches on the hull would disengage in twenty minutes. If his good fortune held, the boat would slip free to drift downriver with the slight current, hopefully to be run over by a big cargo vessel or float out to sea. He could not chance just pushing it away from the dock because some good Samaritan might see it drift clear and intervene to alert its oblivious “owner.”
No one followed him from the pier and it was only a block to the nearest of the city’s silent, automated public transport lines. As he stepped on board, one or two fellow passengers glanced briefly in his direction, then looked away. While far from being coiffed and attired to shoot a cover spread for a fashion zine, he was less grubby than any number of the hundreds of bumelds who haunted every large conurbation. Without drawing attention to himself he did his best to hide his face as well as his body from the transport’s internal security pickups.
As protective measures both he and Jiminy had always utilized false addresses on all their official (and unofficial) idents. Aware of the delinquent nature of the individual they were looking for, the police would know or suspect as much. But it should still take them some time to locate his actual residence. Just to make sure and to exercise commonsense precaution, Whispr spent half the night working his way closer to his apartment. At no time did he encounter any evidence of either straightforward or surreptitious police presence in his neighborhood.
After confirming his ident the