The Sum of Her Parts (22 page)

Spotted hyenas.

“Magified melds. Components of Nerens security.” Gwi whispered tightly without looking up from working with the contents of his pack. Removing a small cylindrical shape from a package, he carefully unfolded its wings, tail, and propeller, locking them in place. Whispr admired the result.

“Model airplane? You’re going to fight maniped carnivores with a model airplane?”

“Maybe he has a model bomb.” Ingrid no longer had to strain to pick up the excited yapping of the oncoming predators, who made up for their awkward gait with surprising speed and unsurpassed endurance.

“No bomb.” Another transparent plastic container he took from his pack contained half a dozen capsules. Flicking open the container’s cap he carefully removed one of the pills, snapped the container shut, and replaced it inside his pack. As Ingrid watched he opened a compartment in the underside of the toy plane, slipped
the capsule inside, and snapped the lid shut. The deep-throated coughing laughter of the hyenas was very loud now. Whispr eyed their guide meaningfully.

“You better have a gun to go with that toy.”

“I work in sanitation, my friend. No one at the facility is allowed to have weapons except Security personnel. But I have this.” Using the hillock for concealment he shifted onto his knees and held the small drone high in his right hand.

Ingrid was trying hard not to panic. Being picked up by and having to try to explain themselves to SICK security was one thing; what the patrolling carnivore melds might do to them quite another. With a person, even a lod, you could reason. But magified hyenas …

“I am going to release this on ‘three’,” Gwi whispered. “Before I say ‘three’ you should take a deep breath, cover your mouth and nose, and try to hold your breath as long as you can.”

“I don’t underst …,” she began.

There was no time to explain even had the San been so inclined. The howling of the pack was nearly upon them. “One, two”—their guide inhaled deeply—“three!” On “three” he released the drone. Propeller whirring, engine whining softly, it promptly shot off at high speed directly toward the oncoming pack. Within moments it had begun to release a vapor from its underside. Too flustered to prepare properly, Ingrid forgot their guide’s admonition and took in a breath through her nose.

The stench that assailed her nostrils and sinus cavities hit her insides like a shot of zero gravity.

As she fell forward, cheeks bulging, Gwi threw himself on top of her. Divining the San’s purpose and still holding his own breath, Whispr joined him. Together their two bodies managed to smother most of the sound of the doctor’s retching. They laid thus for more than a minute, at which point the struggling Whispr had to gulp
air. To his great relief he found that much of the stench had cleared off.

So had something else. The maniacal braying of the pack of magified hyenas was receding rapidly into the distance. In another moment it was gone completely.

Sucking fresh air like a diver surfacing on an empty tank, Ingrid rolled over and wiped at her mouth. Whispr’s short-lived gallantry did not extend to helping her clean herself. “I’m sorry,” she sputtered, her expression twisting in disgust. “It all happened so fast.” Sitting up and still wiping at herself, she coughed and spat. “What was—what did you do?” Turning slightly to her left she listened intently, but of the hysterical choir of approaching four-footed death there was no sound. “What about the hyenas?”

“Running for their kennel, I should think.” Gwi was rearranging the contents of his pack. “The drone is a simple, inexpensive toy one can purchase anywhere. I like it because it is wholly mechanical. It is powered by compressed gas and made of maize-derived organic polymers. When it runs out of fuel it will land itself. Eventually it will disintegrate under the force of the elements. With the exception of the small gas cylinder that will quickly be covered by blowing sand there will be nothing for a searcher to find.

“But the
smell
 …” She put her hand over her mouth as mere memory of the noxious odor threatened to once more overwhelm her insides.

“The drone is an antique model of what used to be called, I think, a crop duster. It is designed to spray a fine mist of water. The capsule I loaded into it is filled with something different.”

“Essence of skunk?” theorized a curious—and grateful—Whispr.

Gwi shook his head. “Lion urine, concentrated about fifty times.” For the first time since the ominous chortling of the pack
had been heard he allowed himself to smile. “Traditional enemy of all hyenas. At that concentration the Melds must have thought they were coming up on a lion the size of an elephant.” Turning, he crawled swiftly to the crest of the mound. “Gone. Out of sight. Still running, I am sure. They will run all the way back to the Security kennel.” He stood and beckoned. “Come. If we move fast we will be able to reach the facility by midnight. That will be an excellent time to enter.”

Ingrid would happily have forked over several hundred for a change of clothing. As that was not to be had, she made herself rise and start off in the guide’s wake. She had to content herself with the fact that she did not smell anywhere near as bad as the horrible concoction that …

A thought caused her to put her own sorry hygiene out of her mind. “Gwi? Tell me: where does one get highly concentrated lion urine?” Before the San could reply Whispr interrupted with a question of his own.

“Never mind ‘where.’ ” Striding alongside their guide he leaned over to catch the younger man’s attention. “
How
do you get concentrated lion urine? And I swear, sandman, if you say ‘very carefully,’ I will personally snap one of those capsules under your nose.”

Gwi told them. The explanation made perfect sense to Ingrid. But then, she was a doctor.

I
T WAS SO DARK
that she could barely see the crouching shape of the San in front of her. In such reduced light Whispr’s slenderness rendered him almost invisible. She was convinced that if any of them was going to show up on a security monitor it would be her own recently maniped self. But no harsh spotlights sprang to life to blind her and no voices, human or magified, called out to them in the darkness. They were almost to the access well.

“We should have been spotted long ago.” As he paralleled their guide Whispr could not keep from marveling at the lack of attention. “I would have thought security here would be impenetrable.”

They halted beside the metal cylinder. Thrice Whispr’s height, it looked to Ingrid as if a smokestack had been removed from an ancient steamship and plunked down in the middle of the desert. Even in the darkness she could see that it had been painted to exactly match the surrounding terrain. In the distance, still farther to the west, a few lights were visible.

“There is every kind of security you can imagine.” Removing an electronic tablet from his pack Gwi held it up to the softly glowing oval seal that was set hip height flush into the curved side of the cylinder. He interrupted the process of entering code only to glance briefly at his chrono. “But everything at Nerens is self-contained and self-sustaining. It has to be. There is no connection to an external grid. There is no grid to connect to for hundreds of kilometers. So every sector operates on an individual sequence. Each sector requires between two and three minutes to cycle between power sources, during which time it is down. Receiving, aircraft monitoring, climate control, sanitation—even Security. This always takes place late at night so as to inconvenience as little of the facility’s work and staff as possible.” His fingers danced over the tablet he was holding.

Whispr frowned. “I’d think Security, at least, would cover the couple of minutes of downtime by using some kind of backup power.”

“One would think that, yes. But since no one has ever succeeded in breaking into Nerens and since outer perimeter security is considered impenetrable, the company does not seem worried about a couple of minutes of downtime in the middle of the Namib in the middle of the night. Perhaps the necessary switching to a
backup source for a mere couple of minutes is more work than they wish to deal with. Even in a village, what is ordered by those at the top is not always put into practice by those at the bottom.” When he smiled his teeth gleamed in the darkness.

“I break in and out all the time. So do several of my colleagues. We alternate our unscheduled ‘holidays’ so that no more than one of us is away from the facility at any one time.”

“No one misses you at work?” a dubious Ingrid inquired.

“My colleagues cover my work for me. This is Nerens. The movements of visitors, of scientists and engineers, of security personnel and drivers, those are monitored very closely. No one pays attention to those who deal with the facility’s waste except others who deal with the facility’s waste. It is expected that we will keep tabs on one another. Mine is not a popular department to visit.”

The almost invisible door set in the side of the cylinder hummed softly as it slid noiselessly aside. Photostrips painted on the interior wall revealed a molded spiral staircase leading downward. A primitive solution to an internal transport problem, Ingrid reflected. She found its presence, in lieu of a lift, encouraging. The more technologically downscale the area they were infringing, the less likely it was to draw attention from internal security. It was very much the same as in a hospital.

It was crowded with the three of them at the top of the stairwell. As the curved metal door slid shut behind them Gwi beckoned for them to follow as he started downward. He did not have to instruct them to descend quietly. Even so, Whispr could not resist asking one more question.

“You said the power was off to each sector for two to three minutes. What would have happened if we hadn’t gotten inside before that time was up?”

Glancing back as he led the way downward their guide’s reply
was a soft murmur. “Most likely we would now be in custody of company security. Every alarm on the east side of the facility would have gone off at once.”

A somber Whispr digested this news. “Just out of curiosity, how much time did we have left?”

Gwi smiled cheerfully back at him. “About ten seconds, I think. No more talk for now, please.”

Whispr did not have to be told again. He was envisioning himself and Ingrid being thrown to the ground, wrapped in secure bands, and hauled off to the local version of a SICK interrogation chamber. Ten seconds …

Descending the steep staircase was not as bad as slip-sliding over scree and rocks in Sanbona, but by the time the San raised a hand for them to halt, Ingrid’s knees and calves were throbbing from the effort. In the dim light and with her thoughts otherwise occupied she had not tried to calculate the distance they had come. She asked Whispr.

“More than a few stories and higher than hell. That’s the best I can guess.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Spurts of adrenaline canceled out her exhaustion. “We made it, Whispr. We did it! We’re inside Nerens.”

“Yay,” he muttered flatly. “Whoopee. We don’t even know what part of the facility we’re in, except that it’s far belowground. Getting all the way from Savannah to here was the ‘easy’ part. Now we have to get from here into the research center. I hope you’re ready to play doctor, doc.”

She stiffened. “I don’t have to ‘play’ doctor, Whispr.”

He sniffed. In lieu of confidence he would proffer fatalism. He found himself wishing for drugs. “You know what I mean. You’re going to have to fool people into thinking you’re part of the staff.”

“Easier than trying to pass you off as a medical assistant.”

He smiled. “I can be your ambulatory demonstration cadaver.”

“You better hope I don’t feel like demonstrating dissection.”

“Wait here.” Without further comment Gwi started off down a long, dim, high corridor. It was lined with pipes and conduits, some of them of sufficient diameter to easily pass a person down their length. Water dripped from several. A strange, foreign sensation began to drape itself, coatlike, over the waiting Ingrid. It took her a moment to identify it.

She was cold. Here in the center of the world’s oldest desert, she was starting to shiver. The temperature did not seem to trouble Whispr. Thin as he was, he ought to have been feeling the chill even more. Maybe, she thought, his fear kept him warm.

Minutes stretched into hours. They sat, they talked, she shivered, refusing to condescend to the obvious by asking Whispr to huddle close or to pull her thin thermosensitive blanket from her backpack lest they have to move in a hurry. She doubted his body gave off any more warmth than his personality anyway.

Relief came in the form of sleep. Lying down on the floor and using her pack for a pillow she was just as cold, but she didn’t feel it. Watching her reclining there Whispr was reminded of why he had come all this way. His participation had begun as a quest for subsist. That avarice remained, but along the way it had become laden with affection. Without his company, without his aid, this brilliant stupid woman would by now be dead ten times over.

You’ve always been a sucker for a nice body and a pretty face
, he told himself. That was all it really was, surely: straightforward lust. For money and for flesh. The alternative was too terrible to contemplate. The possibility that he had fallen in love with her.

These uncharacteristically warm thoughts were interrupted as a touch on his shoulder brought him back to consciousness. Blinking, he sat up in surprise. He had fallen asleep on the floor beside her. Scrambling to his feet, he adopted a defensive stance to confront the enemy. In the feeble light he made out a silhouette that
was misshapen, lumpy, and short. He exhaled in relief when he saw that it was only Gwi. Their guide had finally returned to them, and his arms were full of clothes.

As he dumped them on the floor a sleepy Ingrid awoke, rubbing at one eye. “What is—Gwi, what have you got there?” While her eyes focused she found herself recognizing a particular familiar design.

“Doctor clothing, I think.” The San grinned proudly. “You say you will pretend to be a facility doctor and this Meld your assistant. To make your gambit work you will need appropriate dressing. Here it is.” He shrugged diffidently. “I hope they fit.”