The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [77]
“So? I see a little silvery thread with what I suppose is connector on one end. Some kind of storage appliance?”
Ingrid nodded. “I think so. A standard flex plug-in accepts it, but nothing in my office or codo can read it—or even tell me if there’s anything on it.” She readied herself. “Then there’s the matter of its composition. That I do know.”
White brows drew together slightly. “Maybe storage medium is an electrophoretic geloid. That’s a new technology not every reader can access. What about the composition?”
She stared evenly at him. “I’ve checked it several times. It appears to be some kind of metastable metallic hydrogen.”
This time the heavy white brows threatened to merge. The senior physician gazed anew at the capsule’s contents. “It cannot be ‘some kind’ of metastable metallic hydrogen. Is either MSMH or is not. I will surely find out.” He looked up at her. “If it were anyone else save a close friend of mine telling me this, I would say that my time was being wasted with joke.”
Ingrid rose from her chair. “It’s no joke, Rudy. Run your own tests. I’m sure you will anyway. What I need to know is what, if anything, is stored on that thread.” She paused, then hurried on. “I have reason to think it might be worth a lot of money.”
“Knowledge is its own reward.” The physician replied without hesitation. “But money is nice supplement. Now you have me very interested even if is nothing on thread. But if material is anything like what you hilariously claim it to be …” The eyes twinkled again. “For such a friend and colleague with such a fine mind behind the find and also fine behind I will do this at no charge. Give me couple of days.”
She nodded. “I’ve got to get back to my office. Rudy—swear you won’t discuss this with anyone else. Not even with other close friends, not with anyone.”
“Oh? And why not?”
She chewed her lower lip. “I have reason to believe there are other people who think that whatever is on that thread is valuable. Some of them might not be—nice.”
He chuckled. “So! Is big secret. Okay, Inny-grid. I tell no one.” He held the capsule up to the light and squinted at the contents. “What is tucked inside you, little hair of the impossible metallic hydrogen dog? What could make you so valuable as to so worry Ms. Inny? Scientific secrets? Wonders of the universe? Politicians’ affairs with maybe names and dates and favorite fetishes? Dr. Rudolf will winkle them out of you.” Lowering his gaze, he grinned through his beard at the waiting Ingrid. “End of the week at latest, I will have something to tell you.”
“You seem very sure of yourself, Rudy.”
He sat back in his chair, an elegant portrait of false modesty. “If I were not, I might like some of my less so-sure of themselves colleagues sometimes lose a patient. I never lose a patient. I will call you when I have something.”
She nodded. “Use my emergency line if you have to.” As she turned and went out, the door to the Russian émigré’s inner office slid silently shut behind her.
Rudolf Sverdlosk brought the capsule close to his eyes and regarded it through the magnifiers. It did not look in any way remarkable. It most certainly did not look like something that had been contrived from a material that ought not even to exist under the normal temperature and pressure present in his office. Or anywhere else on the surface of the Earth, for that matter. Was it a hoax? Among the physicians who worked in the medical tower Ingrid Seastrom was known for her expertise in several areas, but practical jokery was not one of them. The more he thought about what she had told him, the longer he contemplated the thread within the capsule, the greater grew the urge to begin submitting it to tests and challenges. He quietly hummed a nearly forgotten Urals folk song.
Patients to see first, he told himself. Fun time after.
His intent was to subject the thread to a preliminary test or two at the end of the workday, and if anything worth pursuing turned up, to