The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [96]
“Gratitude,” Whispr murmured as he turned to leave.
Words accompanied the hand that reached out to restrain him.
“Long knowledge, short memory, broth-brother. Remember that we spoke of zoe-buying, and that my information does not come free. Restrooms are only for customers. Now—what z-kind tempts you?” He grinned encouragingly. “What’s your flavor? I got four dozen different, each of them mind-polish slick and smooth.”
A reluctant Whispr turned back. He had not really expected the strider to overlook their briefly voiced arrangement, but there had been no harm in trying to slip away without buying anything. Now that he mused more on it, however…
“No flavor,” he told the strider. “Normal duration and size will be fine, but blank.”
The strider’s eyes twinkled. “Oh ho so? You going to mix your own neurostick?”
“Why not?” Now that business between them was on the verge of being concluded, Whispr allowed himself to relax a little.
Molpi the strider leaned close, encouraging his customer. “Want to share the details with a broth-brother? Purely out of professional interest, of course.”
“Sorry,” Whispr told him. “But I can tell you that my intentions are clean and single-sourcing.”
Standing back away from the railing, the strider looked disappointed. “Each to his own taste, I suppose. Myself, I prefer to stir and shake before indulging.”
Whispr dropped his gaze, looked up knowingly. “You almost have to. It’s your business.”
“ARE YOU SURE YOU KNOW where we’re going?”
From where he was sitting in the small electric flatboat’s driver’s seat, hands locked behind his head and legs stretched out over the port side, Whispr smiled lazily over at her. “Of course I don’t—but the boat does.”
Luxuriating in the breeze that was temporarily keeping her cool if not dry, Ingrid tried to relax and enjoy the panorama of surrounding swamp and rainforest. “What if your contact sold you a mess of pottage and we’re just zooming around aimlessly through government-protected morass?”
Whispr refused to be drawn in to an argument. Smart though she was, Seastrom had an annoying habit of worrying every little detail until it screamed for surcease.
“I’ve been around a little, doc. You’re experienced at identifying diseases. I’m good at spotting pretends. Our sourcer fit legit.” He closed his eyes, letting the information he had entered into the boat’s autopilot direct their course. “Besides, if we just keep going, we’ll know we’ve been done wrong when we hit the Gulf.”
She was only partially mollified. “We’re going in circles.”
“Of course we are,” he readily agreed. “The path to people who like their privacy always goes in circles. Start on the outside of a web and keep walking the circles inward and eventually you find the spider.”
It was not an analogy that made her feel particularly better, but it was evidently the only one she was going to get.
If one traveled in a straight line, the woman the strider had identified as Tomuk Ginnyy did not live far from Macmock. Traveling the circular route whose coordinates had been supplied to Whispr took a couple of hours, at the conclusion of which Ingrid’s relief at arriving at an actual destination nearly overrode the uncertainty in her mind and the soreness in her buttocks.
A handful of small houses occupied every square centimeter of the island’s buildable land. The remainder was overrun by enormous liana, vine, and Spanish moss–draped rainforest growths. Indigenous cypress and salt pine stood shoulder-to-shoulder with ceibu, mahogany, and dragon’s blood trees whose ancestors had migrated northward from South America. A small family of tamarins chattered in the miniature