The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [37]
He thought back to his conversation with Marula. Had the shop owner been on the right track? Was it the ampuscated hand? Was that what the authorities wanted back so badly? But if they had recovered it from Jiminy, why kill the poor goof? Unless—unless the Cricket had managed to hide it somewhere before he had been taken into custody. If that was the case and it was the meld prosthesis the police were after it might explain why there was so much uncharacteristic pressure to find the Cricket’s partner.
Unless it was not the hand they were after. Unless they were desperate to recover something else.
He did not need to remove the packet containing the thread from its hiding place in his right shoe to imagine what that something else might be.
What was recorded on that slender bit of flexible storage material? Something worth killing for? The only reason he could think of for someone to want Jiminy homicided would be to keep him from talking about what he had done. Which was to slay a visitor and take two things from him. If the street was true and the authorities were still hot after Whispr, and the reason for the hunt did not center on the ampuscated hand, then it somehow had to involve the thread. If that tiny bit of cyberforage was valuable enough to justify a custody kill by the police then it might, then it must, be worth money. A lot of money.
Before he could do anything else, before he could plan anything else, he needed to know what was on that thread.
6
It was just at closing time when the three women showed up. His wife had left to do some shopping, leaving Chaukutri to close down the cookers and bank the mobile adverts. One by one the floating ads winked out as the energy that maintained them was turned off. He was in the process of locking the counter when the Natural approached. In the absence of the usual manips she was still quite attractive, in a severe sort of way. It didn’t take much imagination for him to envision her clad in polarized synthetics, wielding a …
“Is it too late to get some papadams?” Her voice was sweet but stilted, like chocolate that had been left too long in the sun.
He replied reluctantly. “I fear so, miss. Our cookers are just now shut down and I do not even have the wherewithal to heat up any leftovers.” He glanced to his left. “I have some cold sticky buns with sesame, if that will satisfy.”
“I guess they’ll have to. Three, please, if you have that many.”
“Most assuredly.”
Slipping the trio of hand-sized loaves into an aerogel bag he prepared to hand them over. Contact with the enzymes in human saliva would set off a reaction that would dissolve the container, leaving only a trace amount of coagulated organic packaging that would pass harmlessly through the human gut. He handed over the sack in exchange for a credit stick.
That was the last thing he remembered until he regained consciousness.
Through a high horizontal window he could see that it was night outside. He was in his own surgery, seated with his arms bound behind him and his ankles secured so tightly that the flow of blood to his feet was in jeopardy. The woman who had approached him in search of something to eat was chatting amiably with two companions. Unlike her neither of them was a Natural.
They had been melded beyond oversize. It was not that they were unattractive. Their proportions were perfectly normal except for their height, weight, and enhanced muscularity. From what he could tell as he recovered consciousness both were fairly standard Amazon melds. Neither looked like an athlete. They were just large.
Seeing that he was awake the two bigs came forward to take up stances flanking his chair. The