The Sum of Her Parts (11 page)

“Where … are … the diamonds? Where is the mine, or the field, or the alluvial deposit?” His foot descended slightly. Unable to turn away, she felt the pressure. Her sinuses began to scream. As a doctor she knew in detail the succession of physiological events that would follow if he allowed all his mass to follow his foot. The crunching noise and the subsequent copious blood would be the least of it. More worrisome would be the direction the numerous bone fragments would take as they spread throughout her …

The boot wavered, moving slightly back and forth, and then slid forward off her face to land in the sand. He was straddling her now and swaying slightly. As he turned he reached for the pistol that was attached to his belt. His hand and fingers seemed to freeze. Hardly daring to breathe, she squinted up at him.

Something was sticking out of the side of his neck. Several
somethings. They looked like green needles. As she stared, another struck him in one fold of his ridged forehead. Reaching up, he plucked it free and gaped at it with a confusion of shock and wonderment. His eyes rose; searching, scanning. Another of the green needles penetrated the left one, just below the pupil.

Screaming and clawing at his face, he stumbled backward and tripped over the body beneath him. She was grateful that he landed nearby and not on top of her. As he rolled in pain and dug desperately at his punctured cornea a hail of pale green needles peppered his body. Water began to seep from his back sac where they pierced the aqueous manip. Soon he stopped screaming and stopped digging. More moments passed before he stopped for the last time.

As Ingrid lay on the ground breathing hard, a small scrabbling noise drew her attention away from the body of the guide. Squinting against the still rising sun she was able to make out shapes gathering along the upper edge of the ravine. More and more appeared until there were several dozen of the upright figures staring silently downward. Each carried a hollow reed that had been strengthened with treatment from vegetable resins and a quiver full of needles slung across its back. A few wore small pouches slung over one shoulder or the other. Their hair ranged from brown to gray and on to white, but their eyes were universally black. None stood much taller than the other.

None stood much taller than a foot.

She was dreaming, Ingrid told herself. That had to be it. There was no other reasonable explanation. On the other hand their tormentor was dead. The freewalker Quaffer lay nearby within arm’s length, motionless and studded with green needles. Moments ago he had been alive and delivering very real threats. Now he was unmoving and harmless. The indisputable cause of his condition stood lining the rim of the ravine and staring down at her.

A glance showed that Whispr was equally mesmerized. But despite the belligerent guide’s evident demise her friend was not as sanguine about their prospects as was his companion. The creatures had killed Quaffer. They could with minimal effort kill him and his equally helpless companion.

They began to chitter among themselves. Then one that was slightly bigger than his companions descended into the arroyo. Small clawed feet effortlessly found footholds where a human would simply have fallen back to the bottom. As it approached Ingrid she lay perfectly still, not wanting to do anything to alarm it. Not that she could do much with her hands bound behind her and her ankles locked together by plastic strips.

The slender mammal performed a quick circumnavigation of the doctor, staring and sniffing, while its companions watched intently from above. Scrambling up onto her chest it rose up on its hind legs and stood as comfortably as any biped while it studied her face. The black nose at the tip of its long snout quivered. When it yawned she had a glimpse of small but very sharp teeth.

Whispr could stand it no longer. “What is it?” His gaze swept the line of armed figures that dominated the rim of the little canyon, their eyes intent on the two bound shapes below. There were more than thirty of them now, each grasping a minature blowgun. “What are these things?”

Her attention fixed on the face of the furry being standing on her chest, Ingrid swallowed before replying. “I’ve seen nature vits of them. I think they’re meerkats.”

A response was immediately forthcoming—but not from any source she would have anticipated. It arose in the form of an intelligible squeaking from the enchanting lightweight whose strong supportive tail was presently aligned with her cleavage. Each word was enunciated with the painstaking care reflective of the effort
that had gone into forming it. At the same time sunlight glinted off the bits of crudely clipped nanocable that emerged from the back of the diminutive speaker’s skull. The trailing wires imparted a faintly Rastafarian look.

“Yes—meerkat.”

“They can talk!” So flabbergasted was Whispr that for a moment he forgot he was bound and incapable of more than the slightest movement. “Talking weasels—here!”

The subject of his amazement turned to look at him. “Why not—here?” The tiny paw not clutching the blowgun gestured upward. “I, called Nyala, can talk. Other friends—cannot.”

Hopping down off Ingrid’s chest the meerkat landed on all fours and scurried over to the mountainous body of the big freewalker. As she trotted across the sandy bottom of the ravine Ingrid could see that the quiver on her back was filled with more of the minute needles that feathered the corpse. Approaching with caution, the creature who called herself Nyala sniffed gingerly of the body. Jumping onto the chest she quickly explored the dead guide’s length from ribbed forehead to booted feet. Coming back around the torso she paused beside an open hand, opened her jaws, and sank needlelike teeth into the extended thumb. Whispr winced as blood leaked. The test was conclusive.

Quaffer was not faking.

Returning to Ingrid’s side the meerkat leader looked up and let loose a stream of chatter. Immediately the flanks of the gully filled with members of her mob who easily handled walls so sheer that they would have defeated any human’s efforts to climb out. Swarming over Whispr and Ingrid they began chewing carefully and energetically. While a fascinated Ingrid observed the frenetic activity in silence, it moved her companion to be considerably more vocal.

“That’s it … get the ones on my ankles … hey, that’s a finger, not a strap …!”

Within moments they found themselves free to sit up. While the rest of the mob retreated to a safe distance the meerkat who called herself Nyala remained close to Ingrid, watching as the human rubbed her wrists to restore circulation. Blood flowing once again and their nemesis from Orangemund reduced to a harmless mass of dead flesh off to one side, she found herself in solemn conversation with the desert-dwelling mammal. The meerkat’s habit of standing on two legs while propping itself up with its tail gave it the incongruous appearance of a small, sunken-eyed, sharp-snouted primate. Recollection of her elemental zoology reminded her that it was not a primate but a member of the mongoose family. She did not wonder at its ability to speak: only at its comparative fluency.

Plainly, it had been expertly magified.

Animal magification was a long-established analog of human melding. Though it was only supposed to be applied to fully domesticated animals or those that had been specifically bred for the purpose, exotic animorph pets were widely available on the black market. Parrots that could sing as well as speak were all but ubiquitous. Cats that could respond to verbal commands with purring answers were a perennial holiday gift. Even some of the higher reptiles like the iguana responded well to advanced magification. And of course everyone knew of the famous and long-established Ciudad Simiano Reserva in Central America that was home to the
descendants of true primates who had been illegally magified so that they possessed actual intelligence.

But the mongoose was no primate. Yet it displayed an intelligence level on a par with several of the old-world monkeys. Ingrid continued to rub at her left wrist.

“Why did you come to our aid? Where have you come from? How—how are you able to speak with intelligence?”

“Many questions.” Leaning back on her tail, Nyala checked the condition of her mob before replying. “Must go slow. Thinking makes—head hurt.”

Whispr let out a grunt. “Never thought I’d have something in common with a weasel.”

“They’re not weasels, Whispr,” an irritated Ingrid corrected him. “They’re mongooses.”

“I’ll tell you what they are.” Sitting on the sand he turned to face the nearest line of dark-eyed saviors. The movement caused a couple of blowguns to be raised part way in his direction. “They’re damn welcome, that’s what they are.” He eyed his left wrist. “I didn’t think anything had teeth sharp enough to bite through a restraint band.” Swiveling on his skinny backside he directed his gaze at the meerkat standing beside Ingrid. “Why
did
you help us out, furball?”

On the verge of responding, Nyala was momentarily distracted by the appearance of a small beetle that was attempting to make its way between her and the female human. Dropping to all fours she darted directly at it, snapped it up in her jaws, chewed briefly, and swallowed. Neither Ingrid nor Whispr was unsettled by the display. With the advent of worldwide food shortages, insects and their kin had become a major protein source for humankind. In a turnabout from thousands of years of history locust swarms were now looked forward to with eager anticipation by large segments of the planet’s
population. Having finished her unexpected snack, the meerkat Nyala explained.

“Come—from Bethlehem.”

Their pint-sized rescuers were not through delivering shocks, Ingrid realized. “I can’t believe that. Bethlehem? All this way? You crossed the whole continent? And if you came from there why do you speak general English and not …?”

Having responded more judiciously to the claim, Whispr had crawled to his pack and extracted his communicator. To conserve its remaining power, in lieu of an energy-hungry projection he opted to study the small screen directly. When he found what he was looking for, he interrupted.

“They may be smart,” he explained, “but they’re not super-weasels. They can’t defy distance. Turns out there’s a Bethlehem in South Africa.” Lifting his eyes from the device he gazed admiringly at the row of curious faces staring back at him. “Still, it must have been a helluva hike from there to here.”

Nyala gestured at her companions. “Some run, some steal ride on machines. Namib our home, ever. Taken as infant cubs were we. Raised and …” She struggled to form the words for which she was searching, finally surrendered and settled for a single one. It was more than adequately expressive.

“Experiment,” she finished helplessly.

Ingrid nodded understandingly. It was just such illegal intelligence-enhancing gengineering that had produced the ancestors of the apes of Ciudad Simiano. Nyala’s limited ability to speak and think proved that such prohibited research was still being carried out. She gestured diplomatically in the direction of the alert and watchful mob that was arraigned around their leader. Bored by the hard-to-understand human chatter, a couple of them were taking tentative nibbles of the dead Quaffer’s fingers.

“But the others can’t talk?”

Proving that she had absorbed more than just minimal speech, Nyala responded with a negative shake of her head. “All can think. Some experiments more effective than others. Some others …” Her little voice trailed away. Ingrid kept very quiet. Then the meerkat straightened. “Others not have successful layright—larynx manip. Only me.” In a gesture Ingrid found inexpressibly touching, the meerkat tilted her head forward until she could place a small black paw between her ears. “One other thing also make difference. Experiment people say I—genius.”

Whispr nodded understandingly. “So because of that this, uh, tribe, they chose you to be their leader?”

“Meerkat mob leader always a female,” she snapped back at him. “I chosen because I best to help others survive. Not because can think far and speak human. This is Namib home. More useful here is meerkat chatter than human growling.”

“I could almost agree with you,” Ingrid murmured fervently. “You still haven’t said why you helped us.”

“Remember me being many times tied. Remember fighting back. Remember being—hurt.” Dropping to all fours Nyala padded over to Ingrid, stood up, and put a paw on the back of the doctor’s hand. It was tiny and soft. Small bright black eyes stared deep into Ingrid’s own. “Tying against will is wrong.” She glanced toward the lump of the freewalker’s body. “Hurt others is wrong. And—is important for species survival dominant females stick together.”

Ingrid found herself starting to choke up. Whispr was encumbered by no such emotional upwelling.

“Dominant fem …?” He shrugged. “Whatever.” Raising a hand, he pointed toward Quaffer’s body. “I’m guessing you punctured the subgrub with about fifty or sixty of those little needles. Even though the biggest of them is only maybe a couple of centimeters
long, the freewalker dropped like a friend of mine who once ohdeed on redruzz.”

Slipping her paw off Ingrid’s hand Nyala turned toward the male human. “Needles are Codon spines dipped in scorpion venom. Meerkats eat scorpions. Poison is—strong, but we are immune.”

Whispr was nodding. “Okay. Now I know why he went down. Maybe you could let us have a few of those spines? They’d come in real useful in a close quarter fight and …”

“No!” Nyala dropped to all fours and scurried away from him. “Humans have enough things to hurt already.” She looked back up at Ingrid. “We make mistake in saving you?”

“No—no, you didn’t, and we’re more grateful than we can say.” Ingrid glared across at her companion. Perceptive enough to realize that he had stepped on some very small toes, this time Whispr offered no comment. “My friend—it’s just that there are so many dangers out here in the Namib and he likes to be prepared for anything.”

Standing up, Nyala indicated the freewalker’s carcass. “That is worst kind danger anywhere everyplace, and Namib is mostly safe from it. You stay in Namib, you avoid that kind worst danger.”