The Sum of Her Parts (3 page)

Its rate quickened when she felt something moving against her leg.

Looking down the length of her body and seeing the snake slithering
across her calves she let out an involuntary gasp. Outside their hiding place the searcher, which had moved on down the gully, suddenly paused. Hovering, it turned slowly from side to side, utilizing fixed-forward scanners to search the terrain directly in front of it. It did not turn around.

The snake was huge, more than four meters in length and a glossy, dark olive-green hue. So dark it was almost black. Staring hard and not moving a muscle Ingrid fought to remember all she had read about this part of the world while crossing the Atlantic on the plane from Miavana. The Namib was home to a number of poisonous serpents and with its distinctive sheen this one was most likely …

A black mamba. The second largest venomous snake in the world. Two drops of its venom were enough to kill a person. A snake this size would pack twenty to twenty-five such drops in one bite. They were aggressive and fearless.

She released her bladder. Both her first-aid kit and Whispr’s contained doses of adaptive antivenin, but if she was bit out here by a mamba this big it was doubtful she would survive.

At least, she thought as total and complete terror threatened to overwhelm her, as a physician she would be fully aware of the symptoms and effects as the poison consumed her.

Turning to follow the warm curves of her body, the snake came toward her face.

It had a deceptively small head, she thought. Smooth of side, wicked in outline, with bright dark eyes. As its heavy, muscular body climbed up her torso and advanced onto her left shoulder it felt as if someone were pulling a steel cable across her back. While it advanced its tongue flicked in and out just like in the nature vits she had seen while relaxing in her codo. Her wonderful, climate-controlled, view-enhanced, utterly civilized, snake-free codo back
in Savannah. She tried to will herself to that remembered distant domestic paradise, away from the lethal serpent, away from the hard, cool, pebbly ground on which she lay confronting one kind of death inside the shallow cave and an entirely different one drifting on the air of the dry ravine outside. She closed her eyes.

The weight stayed a little longer, and then it was gone. She was still alive. Opening her eyes she saw the snake moving away from her. It was making a leisurely slither for the other side of the canyon.

She was not the only one who noted its passing. Beside her Whispr had raised his head. He was gaping wide-eyed not at the retreating reptile but at her. It took her a moment to interpret his expression.

Admiration.

Then they were both pushing their faces into the hard ground as the earth outside their hiding place vomited skyward.

At first Ingrid thought she had been shot, only to realize that the sharp stings assailing her head and shoulders were a consequence of being struck by shattered rock and not bullets. Looking up she saw more chunks of rock falling to the ground. These were interspersed with dust, sand, and bloody fragments of the unlucky mamba. Having detected unauthorized movement behind it, the finely tuned searcher had pivoted in the air and fired its primary weapon. Analyzing the organic debris that resulted and determining that the original form was no longer a possible threat, the machine recorded the relevant information on its internal drive and broadcast it to its home docking station.

Deep within the SICK, Inc. complex at Nerens, a bored security technician perfunctorily made note of the fact that Searcher Eighteen had killed a snake. All the facility’s armed searcher drones were supposed to be programmed to recognize and spare a long list
of Namib wildlife, but the admonition was one that was enforced by the division only indifferently if at all. Among Chief of Security Het Kruger’s minions the possibility of a sudden raid by infuriated representatives of the World Wildlife Fund was not foremost among their daily concerns.

As soon as the searcher had moved out of sight down the ravine Ingrid started to scramble out from beneath the stone overhang. Given the adrenaline surging through her veins the stronger but lighter Whispr was hard put to restrain her.

“Not yet!” he hissed. “It’s too soon.” He nodded toward the curve of the arroyo where the searcher had vanished. “It might be lingering just around the first corner, or it might decide to come back and do a double check.”

“Double check, hell!” she said. Her full attention was focused on the darkness that lay at the back of the cave. “What if there are more snakes in here?” A sour gorge rose in her throat and she fought it down. “What if—what if this is a
den
?”

He worked to calm her. “Listen to me, doc. I’ve spent time in the coast swamps. Not long ago, in fact. They’re bolo with bad snakes. Copperheads, water moccasins, anacondas, other bad migrants from S.A. I’ve never been bit. You leave them alone, snakes will leave you alone. They don’t like to waste their venom.” He smiled crookedly. “Kind of like cops don’t like to waste bullets.”

Her heart rate was starting to slow to something resembling normal. “How long do you think we have to hide here?”

His speculative gaze studied the expanse of sunlit ravine. “As long as you have to hide anyplace from anything, which means longer than you think. Let’s give it half an hour to be sure.”

Her eyes widened. “Half an hour!” The urine-soaked right leg of her pants was beginning to itch.

He looked over at her. “I’ll keep watch. Take a nap.”

She envisioned a second mamba crawling over her while she dozed. Or maybe a cobra this time. Investigating the strange, warm intruder. Her pants legs were securely tucked into her hiking boots, but still …

“You watch the canyon,” she told him. “I’ll watch my toes.”

If they stuck to Morgan Ouspel’s route (and didn’t run into any more patrolling searcher drones), Whispr estimated it would take them roughly two weeks to walk unhindered to the SICK facility at Nerens. The map and coordinates the renegade company employee had transferred to their communicators showed the location of small water holes where they could refill their compact water bottles. In an emergency the tightly folded collection fabrics contained in these compact devices could be unfurled and raised to extract a limited amount of moisture even from air as dry as that to be found in the interior of the Namib. As for sustenance, they had plenty of concentrates and he had departed Orangemund well equipped with the necessary supplements to ensure that his internally grafted NEM would function properly. Once they successfully infiltrated Nerens, Ingrid insisted they would find a way to access food and drink.

All of this was predicated, of course, on her managing to pass herself off as an employee and him as her assistant. A long reach, he told himself as he easily kept pace with the doctor. But then this
entire journey had been a long reach from the day they had left Savannah. He soothed himself with the knowledge that great rewards come from taking great risks.

He continued to tell himself that as the vast treeless expanse of the Sperrgebeit stretched out before them.

I
NGRID WAS SURE IT
was all over and that they were done for when they fell on the sleeping stranger.

Though Whispr was slightly in front of her he was not to blame. The fabric that collapsed beneath him boasted the exact color and texture of the last kilometer or so of ground they had crossed. The fact that it gave way under his very modest weight indicated how fragile were the supports that had been holding it up. The yelp her companion let out when he fell was followed by her own short, sharp scream as she scrambled to avoid tumbling in his wake and failed.

The hoarse bark of surprise that accompanied their descent did not come from either of them.

As she struggled to regain some semblance of stability, the camouflaging material in which she had become entangled was yanked away from her. Rolling to a stop, she found herself staring at the business end of a sharp-nosed shovel. Beside her Whispr confronted the point of a pick. Looking up, she saw that their captor also wielded a thick, short-barreled weapon that was trained in their direction. With his fourth arm he was shielding his eyes against the sudden influx of desert sun into his formerly concealed encampment.

She found herself staring. Like the spines of a dinosaur, the pickarm and shovelarm protruded from the Meld’s shoulders. Additional muscle together with a supportive titanium weave had been grafted on to support the extra limbs. As for the pick and shovel themselves, they were not being held by additional hands.
They
were
his additional hands. Instead of fingers, the ladled bone at the end of each melded limb had been fused and sculpted to form the two disparate excavating utensils. Each was covered with a sheath of organic Kevlar that formed a protective glove over the solid bone. Despite having seen her share of exotic melds, she had never encountered anything quite like the figure who now stood guard over them. This was, she was soon to find out, because there were no independent prospectors operating within the city limits of Greater Savannah. She grew aware that Whispr was muttering at her.

“Well, that shreds it. We’re discovered, diced, and done. It’s all over.”

“I’ll say it’s all over.” The quadridexterous speaker shifted the muzzle of his weapon so that it was aimed directly at Whispr’s face. Meanwhile the four-armed Meld kept glancing anxiously at the sky. “Where’s your floater? On its way already? Won’t do you any good. There’ll be nothing left of you but mucus after I put your bodies through the sifter!”

Ingrid had just enough presence of mind to stammer, “Floater? We don’t have a floater. What are you talking about?”

“You gonna try an’ tell me the company put you out here on foot?” As he tilted his head to one side Ingrid saw that his right eye had been replaced with a magnifier meld. The way the embedded lens complex caught the sun was unmistakable.

“The company?” She exchanged a glance with Whispr before turning back to their captor. “We don’t have anything to do with the company. We’re independent. Scientists. We’re out here on our own, studying wildlife.”

Straight and white as salt, the Meld’s long hair fell to his shoulders. In the other direction, it halted long before it got anywhere near the top of his head. “Then you know you’re here illegally. SICK doesn’t allow scientists into the Sperrgebeit unless they’re
company supervised.” The muzzle of the short-barreled weapon came up and the shovelarm and pickarm withdrew. Both double-jointed utensilized arms folded up behind their captor’s back as the maniped muscles supporting them relaxed.

Then their owner began to laugh.

Whispr let the wheezing guffaws flow unchallenged for a while before deigning it permissible to interrupt. “So—you’re not gonna turn us in?”

Sniffling, the old Meld rubbed a filthy forefinger across his nose and flicked away something better left undescribed. “Me? Turn
you
in? Bug’s breath, I thought you were going to turn
me
in.” Extending the hand he had just employed for suspect hygienic purposes he smiled at Whispr. “Pul Barnato’s my name, giving the company a finger up the ass is my game. Has been for more than thirty years.” The pride in his voice was unmistakable.

From the time she had first made Whispr’s acquaintance Ingrid had never admired her companion more than the moment when he took that hygienically dubious hand and shook it firmly.

“Pleased to meet anyone who’s giving a major international corporation the finger.” Whispr did not provide the oldster with his name. Nor did Ingrid when, setting aside professional and personal thoughts of germs rampant on a field of bacteria, she took and shook the hand in turn. Thankfully, Barnato did not press them for further identification. As they were later to learn, it was enough for him that they were not minions of the hated company.

“Give me a hand.” He was busy gathering up and stretching out the crumpled fabric that had failed to support his unexpected visitors. “We got to get this back up before a searcher comes over.”

Whispr and Ingrid helped to wrestle the material back into place over their heads. Once it had been repositioned, Barnato scrambled out of the depression and fixed it back in place at the corners and along the edges. He used no metal or composite stakes
or weights, she noticed. Only carefully placed rocks that would draw no attention and set off no alarms.

Slipping back down into the excavation, he rejoined them. No longer fearful of being shot, picked, or shoveled, Ingrid found herself with time to examine their surroundings. Niches quarried into the walls of the depression held basic gear and simple stores. Except for a solar still whose automated tracking funnel was exposed to the sun, everything was concealed under cover. Most surprisingly, she could not see a single electronic device. The Meld had been careful to construct a subterranean dwelling that was electronically dead. In this day and age that was by itself enough to render him invisible to the senses and sensors of the outside world.

“You live here?” She did not try to mute her disbelief.

“It’s more a base of operations than a home. I move around a lot. Because I want to, because I need to, and because it helps me to avoid attention.” He smiled again, exhibiting orthodontics that in lieu of missing or melded teeth had been replaced by two bars of solid white composite. “It’s worked for thirty years. I expect it’ll work for another thirty.”

“But what do you do?” When it came to matters of personal curiosity Whispr was a virtual stranger.

Barnato gazed innocently back out of his one natural eye. “I’m a scientist. I’m here to study wildlife.”

There was a pause while his guests digested this. It lasted longer than it otherwise would have because their host had delivered the reply with an absolutely straight face. Then both Namericans burst out laughing.

“Okay.” Whispr wiped at his eyes. “We get it. No more intrusive questions.” He raised a hand. “Promise.”

“It’s amazing to me that you’ve been able to live out here, in this wilderness.” Ingrid was inspecting the surrounding wall niches for anything resembling modern survival gear. So far she’d found
nothing. She indicated the fabric that had been pulled out and stretched back above their heads. “Is this all it takes?”