The Sum of Her Parts (32 page)

“I myself,” the anthology of eyes explained, “have undergone twelve full-body shifts—or melds, if you prefer. My initial self looked nothing like this, nor did several of my intervening physicalities. Twice I chose to look like the original S’than. By all historical accounts a most symmetrical people. But it is almost impossible to find one who looks like that now. They have been shifting and melding for millennia. So the S’than you see today is more likely an honorific meld of an entirely different species who has chosen to become like the S’than.”

“You see how it goes,” Sarah told them. “An individual may choose to look like an ancestor, another species, or something entirely fanciful that has no precedent in the evolutionary record. It is now simply a matter of moving mind and body, of shuffling organic and inorganic components. As a consequence, the civilized species of the galaxy are all mixed up. No one can say for certain where anyone else comes from. We are all one with the multitude. There is no longer such a thing as shapeism. One is judged on other qualities. As your kind will one day learn to do.”

“But only a few of you know this,” she finished. “So to prevent panic and forestall defection we move among the majority of you in reassuring disguise, the better not to sow confusion.”

“The fat suits,” Ingrid thought aloud.

“Yes. With the aid of internal mechanisms and adjustments they are large enough to conceal a multitude of different forms.” A tapering spire gestured in her colleague’s direction. “Even body types as different as Johan and I. Most who work with us and for us are unaware of our true multiplicity of shapes.”

“So then.” Multi- and single-lensed, all Johan’s eyes focused simultaneously
on Ingrid. “You know everything. You know more than most of your kind. Your pursuit of answers in spite of being marked for elimination, in spite of everything, recommends you. Your determination to reach this place of isolation recommends you. Most notably, your lack of panic and your desired skills recommend you.”

As an overwhelmed Ingrid vacillated, Sarah added something that hit the beleaguered doctor especially hard.

“If it is knowledge that you seek, if that truly is what brought you to this place and to this moment in time, we can open the universe to you.”

Wasn’t that what she had wanted all along? Ingrid thought wildly. Answers, scientific explanations, understanding? First they had tried to have her killed and now … No, that wasn’t quite right, she told herself. Operating semi-independently, it was the aliens’ human interface that had sought her termination. Because as far as the aliens were concerned, individuals didn’t matter. Not when the maturation and survival of an entire species was at stake. Her species. Didn’t she owe it to the rest of her kind to help in accelerating their social and mental growth? Didn’t she owe it to herself?

Whispr saw the transformation washing over his companion as clearly as he had seen the churning waters of the desert flash flood threaten to suck her down and drown her. These creatures, these inhuman
things
, were playing with her mind. Persuading, coaxing, cajoling her with lies and falsehoods, alternating threats with promises. And she was falling for it! He could see it as surely as he could see a citizen being scammed on the Savannah waterfront. Interposing himself between her and the aliens he pushed his face close to hers.

“
Ingrid!
Listen to me. It’s Whispr. Remember? You brought me along to help you find your way through situations that were alien
to you and to your life experience.” He gestured at the silently watching creatures. “Well, I can’t imagine a situation any more ‘alien’ than this! It’s still an invasion, doc. They still want to take us over and control us—even if only with pretty words!”

“If we wished to take control of you, Whispr,” the alien Sarah told him, “we would have done so already. Or allowed the human predator Molé to have you. Instead, we brought you here and fed you freely of the most precious of all nutrients—wisdom.” Her mildly mechanical voice fell slightly. “That is the most we can do. We cannot tell you what to do with what we have given you. That is for you and you alone to decide.” Light glimmered within eyes on stalks. “Free will.”

“Free will? I’ll show you free will. I’ll show you what it means to be human and ‘unimproved.’ ” Turning away from the honey-voiced spires he tried to will himself through Ingrid’s eyes and deep into her being. “Doc, you can’t do this. You can’t let yourself be taken in by these—creatures.”

Gazing back at him she said simply, “Why not, Whispr? Why shouldn’t I believe them? Why shouldn’t I agree to help? For the good of all humankind.”

“Because,” he choked slightly, “because I—I love you.”

“Whispr!” She had thought that nothing could shock her out of her reverie, and he had just proven her wrong.

“Don’t do this, doc—Ingrid. Don’t listen to them. They spin words the way spiders spin silk. They’re ‘watering’ us, all right. They’re watering you with what you want to hear so that you’ll buy into their scheme and go to work for them.
Don’t do it!
”

She swallowed. “It’s too late, Whispr,” she told him softly. “I’ve already ‘bought’ into it.” Looking past him, she locked perception with Sarah. “Are you really female or did you just choose that name to make things comfortable for me and my friend?”

“I was once female,” the jumble of mobile spires assured her. “In my present form gender has no meaning.”

“I’m not sure I completely buy that.” She looked back at her companion. “I’m truly, truly sorry that you love me, Whispr. For a man who’s had to deal with so much tragedy in his life I feel bad about having to add to it. But while I’ve grown—fond of you, I don’t love you. Not in the way you want. I do believe these ‘people,’ and I believe in what they’re working toward, and I’m—staying.”

He stepped back from her, his expression tortured. “You’ve been co-opted. I don’t get entirely how, but I’m not blind. I don’t have to have something thrown in my face to see what’s happening.”

“Whispr, listen.…” She moved to close the physical if not the emotional distance that had opened up between them.

“No!”
He threw up his hands. What would they do to him now? They had swallowed the doctor. It was Ingrid whose cooperation, whose concession they wanted. He—he was nothing to them. His life was meaningless. As meaningless as that of any individual when measured against the “health” of the species. Hadn’t they said as much? He looked around wildly.

“I’ll get out of this, Ingrid! Somehow, some way, I’ll get out of it. And I’ll come back for you, and I’ll get you help, I promise!” He was backing away from the three of them now, his hands held out defensively in front of him. “I’ll get help!”

“Whispr-man.” Sarah Spires was advancing toward him, her golden limbs gleaming and outstretched in his direction, as much machine as mortal. “You are wrong, so very wrong. Let us help you to …”

Whirling, his thoughts aflame and his soul burning, he took one step, pushed off, and leaped into the emptiness behind him. As he fell he made no noise and heard no sound save for the swift fading above him of Ingrid Seastrom’s scream.

·  ·  ·

H
E MUST HAVE BLACKED OUT
, he told himself as he rolled over. He remembered jumping into the void. At the same time as the memory returned he grew aware that he was not dead, not falling, and not in pain. Given his recollections, this conflation of realities made no more sense than did the solid, gritty surface on which he was lying. As he opened his eyes a slight breeze teased his corneas. The air smelled dry and faintly of mint. His view was split horizontally between beige, yellow, and a deep blue.

He was back in the desert.

Bewildered but glad to be alive, he rose slowly to his feet. In place of the medical assistant’s attire he had been wearing he found himself back in his desert garb. His backpack lay nearby. A quick check revealed that with the exception of his communicator its contents were intact. Even to, and most important of all, his survival waterpak. How had it come to be here? How had
he
come to be here? Standing, he drew renewal from contact with the clean, natural earth.

He turned a slow circle. There was no indication that he was floating in some alien hallucination or disguised void. Soaring on dark wings, a black and white Namib crow came cawing overhead. He tilted his head back to track its path. No angel ever looked better, no cherubim ever warbled a more welcome aria. Of Nerens there was no sign. He was back in the desert, yes, but it could be anywhere in the desert—and while no Sahara, the Namib was vast enough.

An accident of some sort, he told himself. Something had caught him before he had struck the ebony ship and kicked him out here, like a character in a vit game. He was alive and free. For an experienced riffler like himself that was enough. It was all he needed. He would survive now. He would make it back to civilization. There he would tell his story, somehow hire or inveigle or
persuade others of its veracity, and return here with a whole avenging army. Let the invaders try to lock him in an examination room then! It would be he and his allies who would be doing the interrogating.

His one regret, the only thing that gave him pause and kept him from setting off southward immediately, was that he was leaving Ingrid Seastrom behind. Brainwashed or otherwise duped, there was nothing he could do for her now. Not by himself, without outside assistance. Bending, he picked up his pack and slung it across his narrow back. The weight of it was further assurance that he was not dreaming.

He didn’t need the communicator, he told himself. He was used to surviving on and with almost nothing. Direction he could determine by monitoring the sun. Determined and with increasing confidence, he started southward.

She was waiting for him on the other side of the next dune.

Behind her a flat gravel plain stretched for kilometers off to the south. Unseen in the distance lay Orangemund and civilization. Between them lay—a difference of perception.

She had been remelded. Gone was the red hair, the zaftig shape, the camouflaging adjustments to her cheekbones and ears and the rest of her face that had been necessary to disguise her from Molé and the rest of SICK’s hunters. She was once again the same attractive but far more normal woman who had pulled police traktacs out of his back in her office in Savannah. She was, in other words, more beautiful than ever. Even if her mind had been co-opted by aliens.

“Ingrid!” He started to rush toward her, then caught himself. This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. It wasn’t a dream, but it was everything that if given the chance he would have dreamed. “How did you get here? How did I get here?”

She gave a slight shrug. “The visitors can move space with a
starship inside it. Moving a person or two isn’t difficult. They prefer not to use the technology here unless they have no choice. There’s too much chance of the energies involved being detected and remarked upon. They make exceptions for ships.”

“ ‘Ships’?” He remembered the immense black shape. “There’s more than one?”

“Many,” she told him. “Over time they come and they go. The visitors are patient.” She smiled kindly at him. “They moved you. They moved me.”

“So you’re coming with me, then? You convinced them to let you go?” He tried to restrain his excitement. It was good that he did.

“No,” she explained gently. “I convinced them to let you go. I’m still staying. I wanted to say goodbye, Whispr.” She smiled anew. “You didn’t give me much of a chance. I owe you a great deal. If not for you I wouldn’t have been exposed to—everything.”

“By everything you mean the invasion and takeover of humanity?” he shot back.

She sighed. “You heard, but you didn’t listen. There’s no point in arguing and nothing more to be said. I wish you all the best, Whispr. You’re a better man than you think you are.”

“I’m still coming back for you, Ingrid.”

“I won’t be here. I’m going back to Savannah to resume my practice. I’ll go back to doing what I do best, only now for a greater and more noble cause.”

His expression twisted. “I’ve been around and seen a lot, Ingrid. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so smart perverted so quickly.”

“Converted, not perverted.”

“Wait a minute.” He stared back at the familiar feminine shape silhouetted against the perfect blue of the Namib sky. “You told me how I got out here, but not why. Why didn’t they just let me fall to my death?”

“For the same reason they didn’t leave you to Molé’s mercies. As you were falling I told them if they didn’t help you to live, then once again I would refuse to assist them. They plucked you out of nothingness and put you out here.” She shook her head sorrowfully. “More than that I can’t do for you, Whispr.” She indicated his backpack. “You’ve got what’s left of our supplies. Nerens security won’t bother you. I think you can make it out of here. I hope you can.” A dark mist began to coalesce around her. She eyed it unperturbed as it continued to thicken, like air made from ink.

“The visitors don’t understand long goodbyes. My time is circumscribed.”

“I’ll make it out of here, all right!” he yelled as he started toward her. “And when I do, I’ll tell everyone! About this place, about the invaders and their brainwashing, about everything! I’ll come back for you with soldiers and writers and vit correspondents hanging out of a dozen floaters! I’ll scatter this whole treacherous implant-invasion plan across both oceans!”

Wreathed in ebon haze, she shook her head sadly. “No you won’t, Whispr. Because no one will believe you. To those you’ll want to convince you’ll be just another crazy-ass street riffler. Just like the one who hung around my office until I had no choice but to acknowledge him and his problems.” Her frown turned to a smile. “Kind of a cute one, though.…”

The haze became a solid as he covered the last couple of meters between them. He reached out for it; to catch it and hold it and keep it close. Then it was gone. One moment he was running toward a pane of black glass and the next, a puff of vapor that dispersed through his clutching arms to vanish into the desiccated air like dust in a furnace.