The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [79]
“Listen close, doctor. My friends and I are not out here wandering the streets in search of relaxation. We are on a job. We are working. You will answer my questions promptly because we do not like to waste time. Also because if you try to evade them or stall us we will have to jog your memory by every so often removing parts of your body.” Her eyes gave him a quick once-over. “You are a Natural. Losing body parts would be unpleasant.
“You are maybe studying an unusual piece of metal. You have maybe learned something about it. All we want to know is what you have learned. Anything you might have found out. Something you might suspect. We believe that it may recently have been given into your care by someone else. What we do not know for a certainty is if it is still in your possession or how much time you have had to spend examining it. We believe it to be worth a great deal, but there is much we still have to confirm.” Letting go of his shirt, she stepped back to gaze unblinkingly down at him. “Tell us, doctor. What do you know?”
He swallowed salty stickiness. “I know that I need drink of something stronger than tea.”
The woman did not smile as she turned to her companions. “I think sometimes old men are braver than the young ones because they feel they have already lived their lives and are going to die soon anyway.” She nodded at sinuous Meld. “Spread his legs.”
While still restraining his arms, the tall Meld’s lengthy limbs reached downward to wrench Sverdlosk’s thighs apart. He tried to resist, feebly.
Pausing a moment to make certain that he was watching, the plump woman kicked off her shoes. Then she lifted her right leg high off the ground and slammed it back down. The steel heel slammed into the sidewalk, leaving a cup-shaped dent several centimeters deep. Her attention returned to him.
“Maybe a certain part of your life is over already for you. Maybe not. Maybe you are a self-confessed celibate. Talk now, or I will resolve any ambiguity regarding this matter.”
Cinema star Meld suddenly looked past them all and her eyes widened slightly. “Floater!”
“Sewap!” The deceptively homey interrogator looked up sharply, favored the wheezing Sverdlosk with a last quick, murderous glance, then whirled and raced off around the corner the doctor had nearly succeeded in reaching. The two Melds who accompanied her had to work hard to keep up.
For all its synthesized solicitousness, the police floater that dropped down beside the still seated Sverdlosk was as welcome a sight to the injured doctor as an Orthodox archangel.
“You are hurt, sir. The perpetrators have fled. I will summon medical assistance.”
Sverdlosk struggled to stand, only to fall backward and hit his head on the sidewalk. The strobing lights that straightaway speckled his vision distracted him somewhat from the throbbing pain in his mouth and jaw. “I don’t need medical assistance. I’m a doctor.”
They were the last words he managed to utter before he passed out.
• • •
“WAKE UP, INGRID. SOMEONE needs to talk to you. Wake up, Ingrid. Someone needs to talk to you. Wake up, Ingrid, someone …”
“I’m awake,” she mumbled as she rolled over in the bed. Whoever was trying to contact her through her secure number, she knew it was not her shady guest. Her bedroom door was locked and had he somehow managed to circumvent the privacy code, she would have heard his voice and not that of her codo.
The mildly sexy talking portrait of a favorite dramat star retreated from where it had been hovering above the foot of her bed. As it did so it melted into a similarly sized likeness of her friend and mentor Dr. Sverdlosk. His image was not that of a dramat star. The shock of it smacked her in the face like a bucket of chipped ice and caused her to sit up fast.
“Rudy … my God, what happened to you?”
“Three nightmares happened to me.” Sverdlosk’s lips moved only enough to form words, relying on the communicator’s amplification ware to render them audible. “All of them female. At least, I am pretty sure they were all female. They didn’t boast about it.”
“Where are you?