The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [84]
Looking askance at her boss, the movie star Meld gestured in the direction of the main living area that they had noiselessly bypassed in order to get to the bedroom.
“Maybe she fell asleep in an entertainment bubble.”
“Maybe she’s voiding her bowels.” The plump woman whirled. Both her eyes and the blade she was wielding flashed in the subdued light. “Find her!”
They barely had time to return to the codo’s largest room when the crested flex-armed Meld bent double, made a hushing sound, and pointed with one all but jointless arm. Her companions nodded understandingly. Without a word having to pass between them, all three melted back into the shadows.
Responding to an arrival the hall walls brightened with enough light to illumine the entrance to the codo. A single figure stood silhouetted in the doorway. Quietly, it closed the door behind it. No internal lights picked up the photonic slack. But then, the deceptively plump leader of the invasive trio thought, someone familiar with the codo’s layout would not need to activate its internal illumination.
She did not have to gesture or speak to her companions. They knew what to do. Figures that were scarcely specters edged off in opposite directions.
Moments later struggling noises scored by unreserved confusion filled the room with sound and motion. The trio’s leader frowned. The voice that now rose above those of her cohorts was not what one would expect from a youngish female physician startled by intruders in her own home. In truth, it was neither youngish nor female. Once again flicking to life the blade she held, she used its glow to locate a nonaural control switch. At her touch, gentle illumination flooded the codo.
A figure struggled in the grasp of the two Melds, but it was not the one the intruders had been expecting. It was elderly, male, and utterly lacking in promise. Another professional acquaintance of their target? the Natural wondered. But if that was the case, what was he doing in the physician’s apartment at this time of the morning? Did Dr. Ingrid Seastrom have a thing for old men? Did she perhaps like to be surprised in the middle of the night? Was this unprepossessing soft-footed nocturnal visitor all part of some creepy fetish? She shrugged. In her time and professional life she had seen enough so that little surprised her. Oftentimes the more intelligent the individual, the more bizarre their private obsessions.
Well, she mused to herself, if this prowling white-haired oldster was in search of the codo’s owner, whether it be for reasons professional or perverse, he had been preceded in disappointment by her and her colleagues. On a more hopeful note, he might know where she was. Putting on her best matronly smile, she stepped forward out of the shadows and into the subdued light.
“Now what do we have here? A thief of hearts—or of the more mundane variety?”
Eyes wide and fearful, the oldster hung slack in the grip of the two Melds. “I don’t—who are you people? What are you doing in Dr. Seastrom’s home?”
The portly leader of the invading trio felt a twinge of disappointment at the mention of the mildly honorific “Dr. Seastrom.” The elder’s choice of words seemed to rule out any sort of perverted amorous rendezvous. Further questions would therefore be restricted to the ordinary.
“I might ask you the same question.” Sitting down on the arm of the woven free-form couch, she toyed with the slender blade that now shimmered with its own pointed internal illumination. “Are you a friend of Seastrom’s? If your answer is yes, we have questions for you. If your answer is no, then that raises an entirely new and unexpected suite of inquiry.” Her gaze narrowed. “How either proceeds is entirely up to you.”
The old man sighed. “Yes, I can see that. Please don’t hurt me. I will respond to the fullest extent of my ability to do so. What is it that you want to know?”
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