The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [52]
Smiling weakly but hopefully the immigrant cook extended his trussed hands. “So you’ll be leaving, then.”
“Yes, I’ll be leaving. Immediately.”
Al-Thuum shook his bound wrists. “Could you release me?”
The old man stared down at him. “You might attack me.”
“I have no reason to do that.”
“You might call the police.”
“I wouldn’t do that, either.” The younger man’s smile was fading fast.
“You might contact the police and tell them what occurred here.”
The smile now gave way to a reprise of earlier fear. “Laa, I promise I won’t do that. Why should I? I barely met this Whispr, I don’t know him, I don’t care anything for or about him. Or for you, for that matter. I only want this whole last hour to go away. I just want to go to sleep, wake up, and go to my job tomorrow. That’s all. I will not present a danger to you, sir.”
“No, you won’t.” Molé was in agreement as he drew the gun.
The clerk barely glanced in the old man’s direction as the elderly visitor walked silently through the small lobby and out the single entrance onto the street beyond. Once outside and several blocks distant from the miserable residence hotel Molé allowed himself the freedom to curse aloud.
Nothing made him madder than having to work with bad or misleading information. Had the suppliers of that information been present he would have had a harsh word or two for them. And likely something more physical as well. There was nothing to be gained from cranking about it now, he sighed to himself.
His quarry still might return to the apartment he had sublet. Having employed certain liquids and methods to dispose of the corpse he had left therein, Molé had also left behind a handful of tiny devices that would alert him to the arrival of whoever might visit next.
In the meantime, there was ample mean time. Molé had other leads to follow, other ways of locating his target. Greater Savannah was a good-sized metropolis, but the hunter was used to working places like Chengdu and London, Kairo and Sagramanda. Someone hiding out in Savannah was unlikely to be able to continue to escape his notice for very long. The Mole’s reach, as his uncaring and unsubtle employers were fond of observing, was wide-ranging. No one could escape it for long.
All this money and effort, he mused to himself, to recover a single storage thread. He wondered what information it contained that made it so precious to those who had engaged his services. Valuable enough to enlist a hunter like himself as well as spending to corrupt a diverse menagerie of municipal authorities. Someone was pouring out money like water.
Ah well. Whatever was on the thread did not matter as long as an equitable portion of that money fell on him.
Only a few citizens out for a late night stroll bothered to glance in the direction of the hunched-over old man. Those who did, did so out of concern for his safety and presence in what was a less than salubrious corner of the city.
They need not have worried.
8
Traktacs.
Whispr didn’t have to see them. The angry linear marks where they had penetrated his skin were evidence enough. That was what had hit him on his underwater flight from the Alligator Man’s dwelling. They were also an indication that the authorities wanted him alive. Not out of any concern for his health or fear of public indignation should his head happen to get blown off, but probably because he could not be allowed to die until he revealed the whereabouts of the stolen thread. If the police had been certain it was on his person they would have used more deadly force and he would likely already be dead. A supposition was therefore easily inferred: keeping its location a secret was vital to keeping him alive.
Not that any of that would matter once the traktacs began to activate.
Each of the dozen or so tiny pellets contained its own transmitter and power source encased in a biodegradable husk. When these finally dissolved inside his body the pellets would begin broadcasting. The husks served a double purpose: