The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [9]
“Mayhap thy slaying unknowingly and foolishly involved an important personage.” As he spoke Swallower waddled behind the circular counter, having to pass through the police-heavy holo to reach his destination.
“He didn’t look important.” Jiminy was mumbling and sweating now. “There wasn’t anything in his wallet to suggest consequence. Just the usual subsist. No spec defensive glam—nothing.”
“On one thing we doth agree.” A small open-sided elevator was descending slowly from the second floor. The lift was industrial grade, Whispr noted. It would have to be, to handle their host’s impressive bulk. “This indeed maketh no sense.”
Didn’t look important, Whispr thought slowly. Just the usual subsist. Except for one thing. Except for the thread. Noting the fury in Swallower’s expression he decided now might not be the best time to bring up the matter of the tiny, artfully camouflaged storage device.
“We didn’t sell you out!” Jiminy was insisting.
Face flushed, quartet of eyes glittering, their bearded host stepped into the open lift. “Not intentionally, perhaps. I do not grant you that much acumen. But for one such as myself whose business be fencing without fences, stupidity be a synonym for blindness, and the blind sometimes cannot avoid stepping in shit.” Emitting a grinding noise that was less than reassuring, the lift started to rise toward the circular opening in the ceiling from which it had descended.
“Where are you going?” Whispr asked their host.
From the depths of the ebony Assyrian beard flashed a hint of a wry smile, like a crack in dried asphalt. “I am going to bed. If the police wish to speak with me, I shall appear before them cloaked in coverlet and yawns, affecting an air of bemusement at being rudely roused from my beauty sleep.”
Taking a long step forward, an increasingly distraught Jiminy continued to follow their host’s ascent. “But what about us?”
“Get thee hence from my sight and my shop. Flee these surrounds, lest thee shortly be identified to the looming authorities as intruders whom I was compelled to welcome only under duress, and with whom I would surely never do business.” Swallower’s hand slipped to the instrumentation on his belt.
As Jiminy was readying further protest, long, attenuated shapes began to emerge from the mountains of merchandise. In slinks and links the modified serpents came squirming toward the two visitors. Neither man being herpetologically challenged, they immediately recognized the venomous bushmasters and fer-de-lance who were advancing toward them under Swallower’s control. He liked his snakes as well as his cats, did their no longer congenial host, and there were far too many of the fat man’s pets to shoot.
When a seven-meter-long python dropped from the ceiling to land right in front of Whispr and start toward him, the slender thief whirled and bolted for the exit. Coming to the same conclusion that trying to argue with Swallower was no longer a viable course of action, Jiminy soared over his retreating associate with a single bound. Behind them the pursuing serpents, more effective than any human security guards, halted at the doorway.
Once more outside, both men could see glimmers of light reflected from the eyes of Swallower’s beloved rescued and personalized felines. Be they calico or tabby, manx or maniac, they prowled the raised walkways flashing scythelike claws on their front feet. Patterned after the killing talons of the long-extinct Deinonychus, they were as adept at cutting a man’s throat as they were at disemboweling intruding rodents.
Hissing, fur standing on end, claws upraised, one overzealous stiletto cat barred their way. Jiminy cleared it effortlessly, leaping high to land well on the other side of the potentially lethal feline. Whispr, however, was forced to pause and search frantically for a way around it. Driven by instructions broadcast by Swallower directly into its brain and those of its stealthy, watchful companions, the killer kitty continued to block Whispr’s flight.