The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [78]
It was after ten when exhaustion and eyestrain finally drove him from his otherwise empty offices and out into the sultry night. He sought succor and a change of scenery in a favorite neighborhood all-night café. His head was throbbing from the strain of trying to make sense of the thread while his mind whirled with possibilities. Though it was muggy on the street outside, like any good scientist lost in contemplation he was essentially immune to the weather.
He was not, however, immune to the attentions of his fellow citizens.
The café he frequented often enough for the waitresses to know what he wanted without him having to order it lay around one more corner. He was about to turn it when the pallid wall light that illuminated the sidewalk was partially blocked by three women. Two were Melds. One, a straightforward cosmetimax Meld, had chosen to adopt the striking blond appearance of an ancient cinema actress named Monroe. In contrast, her slender companion stood over two meters tall and reflected extensive internal melds. Sverdlosk saw that the bones of her arms and legs had been replaced with one of the more popular sinuousity condrites. As a consequence, her arms and legs were stiff enough to support her weight in spite of having been rendered nearly as supple as tentacles. Her ears tapered to points that accented the bony crest of her skull. Both sides of the latter were lavishly inlaid with intense phosphorescent tattoos.
In contrast, the Natural who stepped forward to confront him was as plump and homey-looking as a middle-aged pitchwoman for homemade pies. At least, she was until she opened her mouth. Though deep and husky, her voice was calculatedly feminine. She put him in mind of a career bureaucrat who might have an interesting secret life. She also favored candor over good manners.
“Dr. Rudolf Sverdlosk? Our monitoring of certain recent scientific inquiries suggest that a piece of private property we’ve been trying to recover might recently have passed into your possession. If that’s so, we need to know what you’ve learned about it. If it’s not so, we need to find out why our monitoring has singled you out as someone worthy of questioning.”
The Russian responded with the practiced smile that invariably reassured patients and regularly intrigued women much younger than himself. “Yes, it is sticky out tonight, isn’t it?” He gestured past the pair whose appearance was no more outré than that of numerous other melded Savannahians out for a misty nighttime stroll. “I am on my way to get something to drink and maybe a little chocolate piroshka. If you want to talk, is much nicer to talk over black tea and—”
She hit him. In the face, and much harder than he could have anticipated. As he collapsed onto the sidewalk a detached part of him dispassionately analyzed the blow and came to the conclusion that appearances notwithstanding, she was not a Natural. Unlike her companions, she only looked Natural. How otherwise to explain being struck by what felt like a fist of solid steel than to recognize that he had been struck by a fist fashioned of solid steel? Or by something equally dense and unyielding beneath the perfectly realistic skin?
His systematic analysis was confirmed when the woman knelt to grab the front of his jacket and yank him toward her. Sinuous Meld wrapped her unnaturally supple arms around his torso and pinned his arms at his sides. Ancient cinema actress Meld was aiming a weapon at him while chewing on something crunchy that stank of lavender. The taste of salt was strong in his mouth. His probing tongue located the socket of the tooth that had been knocked out. He coughed, spitting blood.
“So. Not tea-drinkers, then.”
The plump woman’s Meld was not perfect. Or perhaps it was merely worn and in need of an upgrade. When she knelt before him, still gripping the front of his shirt, her metal patellas made squeaking sounds as they rasped against hidden internal cables.