The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [65]
So that’s it. His thought was mistaken, but the notion took hold and he clung to it desperately. She wants to be paid. His misperception was understandable. The lives of nearly everyone he had ever had dealings with in the course of his adult life invariably revolved one way or another around money. Specifically, the lack of it and how to rectify the deficiency.
Not that it mattered. He knew that the pittance he could access would not buy two minutes of this esteemed physician’s time.
Except maybe …
Setting aside the clear envelope that held the threatening traktacs, he lifted one leg and began fumbling with his right shoe. “I can’t pay you,” he began timidly, “but maybe we can work a trade. I have something that I think—no, that I know must be worth a lot of money!”
Watching his trembling fingers fumble with the shoe as he struggled to maintain his balance, Ingrid truly felt sorry for him. But not sorry enough to lavish any more time on his problems. The more he scrabbled and groped at himself, trying to locate something inside the scruffy footwear, the more she felt he was relatively harmless. A glance at the time projection that drifted decoratively around the walls of the examination room just below the ceiling revealed that afternoon was marching ever remorselessly toward evening. Her homeward commute was vertical and short-lived, but still constituted precious off-time that he was wasting.
“I’m afraid I don’t operate on a barter system, Mr.… Whispr. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m a doctor, a general practitioner. Not a police tech. With the instruments I have here I might be able to deactivate the little locators I extracted from your side, but circumstances and moral constraints dictate that I …”
She stopped in midsentence to gaze at what he had removed from a compartment concealed in the sole of the shoe. Her initial sight of it made her want to break out in sad, disparaging laughter. Reflexive closer examination of the capsule hinted at it—hinted at …
Within the transparent capsule lay a small bit of thread. To all outward appearances the thread was metallic in composition. One end terminated in a tiny but recognizable universal connector. The alloy of which the thread had been fashioned had a peculiar, distinctive cast. The way it caught the soft but bright light that suffused the examination room suggested something at once briefly glimpsed and familiar. As she stared at it the silvery mottling seemed to change and flow before her eyes. That was preposterous, of course.
More than anything else the thread’s general appearance reminded her of the singular sheen on the advanced molecular-level biomechanical insert that she had removed from the follicularly melded pate of young Cara Gibson. With one significant difference. Unlike that supposedly quantum entangled nanoscale device, this one showed no sign of disappearing.
Could it be touched? Could it be handled and manipulated? Could it (most likely of all) be entirely unrelated to the mini mechanical mystery she had encountered earlier? Was she ascribing unknown potential to it out of yearning instead of common sense? And if it did possess anything other than the most superficial similarity to that baffling set of inlab conclusions that had been drawn from the Cara Gibson incident—how had it come to be in the possession of this downcast street person?
“May I—can I—see that?”
Whispr was instantly on guard. “You know what it is?”
“No. No, I don’t. I don’t have a clue. But I may—I may have once encountered something similar.” Sensing his unease, she hastened to reassure him. “If you want to try and trade something so insignificant for my services, particularly for services not commonly rendered, I have to know whether what you’re offering is worth anything, don’t I? Surely you don’t expect me to take your word for it that it’s valuable?”
“N-n-no, I guess not.” Reluctantly, he handed over the capsule. His willowy, sun-browned fingers covered her pale palm like a predatory crab dropping