The Human Blend (3 page)

Sprawled above reeds and sawgrass on four separate walkway-connected platforms, Swallower’s Pawn and Supply looked as if it had been hit by a bomb. In actuality it had been, and on more than one occasion. Following each incident the resilient proprietor rebuilt his business; bigger, better, and sloppier than ever. Hunks of scavenged machinery were piled high and haphazardly on two of the platforms. They showed little rust. Nobody used equipment in the American South anymore that was susceptible to rust. Not when modern materials and coatings were widely and cheaply available that could ward off or prevent it.

Such resources could not, however, prevent swamp growths from epiphytes to mosses from taking root in odd corners of Swallower’s inventory. Sometimes he would spray retardant. More often he just let the growths flourish. As long as his customers could get a general idea of what lay underneath the thriving vegetation, he would declare, that was good enough.

Slowing, Jiminy coasted to a stop in the small parking area reserved for scoots. Sturdy posts kept it well above the high-tide line and adjacent to the dock. There a pair of battered, scored, heavily used skims lay next to one another, floating like giant narrow leaves on the dark water.

Swallower’s shop and office were part of the circular main building—circular in shape the better to withstand frequent hurricane winds and tidal surges. Its supporting platform anchored deep in the muck that passed for ground, it rose two stories high. The few windows on the lower floor were seriously security screened. It was assumed by visitors that the second floor was where Swallower dwelled in sybaritic and debased comfort. “Assumed,” because no one had ever been invited to see the owner’s living quarters. Those familiar with Swallower did not press for an invitation. There are some things mankind was not meant to know.

A pair of great white herons lifted off a pylon as the two men advanced via a raised walkway that led, like the leg of some giant dismembered crustacean, from the scoot parking area toward the main structure. Silvery metal glistened inside a wrecked and salvaged industrial-grade water purification block. Within the old machine’s guts something dark and hirsute wandered slow and deliberate: a bird-eating spider that had claimed it for a home. A splash sounded from the high reeds where a family of capybara, taking no chances, made haste to remove themselves from the presence of man. Long-established residents of the southeastern coast, they were good eating and knew it.

Having been alerted to the scoot’s approach by the shop’s automated outlying security, Swallower awaited them within the establishment’s central showroom. The large, high-ceilinged, circular space was crammed to the rafters with merchandise of every imaginable shape, size, and function: everything from antiques salvaged from Old Savannah to drums holding packets of the latest liquid jewelry in suspension. Access to the doughnut-shaped central counter and the single-person elevator at its nexus fluctuated according to the constantly shifting heaps of goods stacked on the floor. Having utilized the shop’s services on previous occasions,
Whispr and Jiminy were able to approach the proprietor without the aid of a map.

Swallower was not the only occupant of the congested floor display. At least a dozen cats prowled the piles and patrolled the spun-carbon struts that supported the second floor. Natural and melded felines coexisted as freely and easily as did their human counterparts. All were rescued animals. A man of many contradictions, it was known that the shop owner would blow off the legs of a prospective scam artist without a second thought and then force him to try to swim back to Savannah, but would spend thousands to save the life of an injured animal. Whispr shrugged at the thought. There was no accounting for personal predilections. As for himself, he was as indifferent to the affection of animals as he was to that of people.

Swallower belched softly as he turned from studying a heads-up display to confront them. He did not ask if they were armed. If they were, shop security would never have let them past the parking area, much less across the raised walkway that led to the front door. Shadowy of skin, though not as black as a Martian, the wildly bearded mass of man was bigger than Whispr and Jiminy put together. When asked why he didn’t have his obese form melded, or at least suctioned, he declared with satisfaction that not only did he take pride in his appearance, he took pride in being
naturally
fat.

“When I eat a good meal,” he had once explained without hesitation, “I want the results to
show
.”

The world, Whispr knew, was replete with inexplicable perversities not all of which stemmed from the endless inventiveness of melding.

The proprietor’s unwillingness to fine-tune his body did not extend to his profession. Above the natural eyes with which he had been born, two specialized ocular melds coldly examined the world around them. Their installation and grafton had necessitated a slight raising of his forehead. One eye was a magnifier of considerable range while the other saw into and registered sights far into the ultraviolet. Together they enabled their owner to ascertain the veracity of numerous items that were offered to him for sale, from fine meld componentry to estate jewelry that had been unwillingly liberated from various estates. More for show than need, Swallower had commissioned a pair of customized old-fashioned
spectacles—with four lenses, two set above two. When worn, they helped to soften his otherworldly appearance. This was useful in business dealings, since there was nothing soft about the man himself.

Thick fingers wrapped around and enveloped Jiminy’s much smaller hand. “I know thee, Cricket.” Releasing their careful grasp, they flicked in the direction of the other visitor. “As be your companion, how is the sad-eyed soda straw these days?”

Jiminy’s head inclined toward the silent, staring Whispr. “Jolly as always. We just had ourselves a most fine dinner at the Bug Shack.”

The proprietor’s doubled brow rose. “Eating out? Do not tell me you boys hath been working?”

Jiminy winked and swung his backpack around in front of him. “Nothing special. Just another fluky salvage pickup off the street.”

“Knowing thee and thy predispositions, I should rather say savage pickup.” A quartet of eyes peered downward. “What hath thee brought for me this night?”

As soon as he heard their host murmur his approval of the ampuscated hand, Whispr lost interest in the negotiations. Wandering toward the rear of the shop, he lost himself in idle contemplation of the assortment of merchandise. Some of it he recognized, some he wished he could afford, some meant nothing to him. One of Swallower’s many cats ambled by, paused, and whistled a merry tune. In the course of the surgery necessary to save its life it had been given a throat meld. Now it could sing like a canary, or a mockingbird. Poetic justice, Whispr thought. Bending down, he let his hand stroke it from head to hips. Its tail came up and purring commenced to alternate with birdsong.

Hundreds of containers, individual bits of machinery, partial scavenged melds, and other merchandise hung from the ceiling. Swallower’s shop was a bargain-hunter’s as well as a cat’s paradise. Whispr figured that Swallower could have done twice the trade if he had located inland on dry ground in the commercial district of uptown Savannah. But had he chosen to do so, his business would have been subject to more than twice the official scrutiny it presently received. Like a number of other kindred independent businessfolk whose establishments operated under ambiguous circumstances, Swallower preferred the anonymity conferred by the swampy suburbs.

“Eight.” Jiminy was hopping in small circles, wary of banging his head against suspended product or the exposed fiber rafters. “Whispr and me, we took on a lot of karma to get this hand. We gotta have at least eight.”

“I shall be fortunate to get eight on resale.” Swallower was less exercised than his visitor and no less resolute. “I can offer thee no more than three.”

“Three!” Oversized leg muscles contracting, Jiminy literally hit the ceiling, albeit it was only a glancing blow. “For three I’d just go ahead and turn myself in to collect the citizen’s tip! Save all this time and trouble.”

Unfurling a viewer from a pocket, Swallower nudged it to life and proceeded to consult the lambent screen. “I should sayeth three and a half, but I will go four in memory of the business we have done prior to this and the business that I expect will come after.”

“Four. Four is a four-lettered word.” Jiminy was not mollified.

“No it is not—four is a number.”

The Cricket eyed the fat man unhappily. “You’re playing games, Swallower.” Holding out the dismembered meld hand he waved it in the proprietor’s direction. Secured in place, the fingers did not jiggle. “You want it or not? You’re not the only dealer on the coast, you know.”

It was then that Whispr remembered the thread he had plucked from the dead man’s clothing. Should he mention it now? Swallower would likely have equipment capable of reading the contents of the unobtrusive sliver of storage media. Information was always worth subsist. But without any idea of what was on the thread, he and Jiminy had no way of pricing it. Relying on a prospective purchaser to tell you what your article was worth was a poor way to begin negotiations. Maybe they could hire someone just to read the thread. With this idea in mind he started toward the two arguers. He badly wanted Jiminy’s thoughts on how they should proceed. Besides, judging from the volume of perspiration rolling down their faces, both men could probably use a rest from the ongoing bargaining.

The necessary break was supplied by a source other than the advancing Whispr when all hell broke loose.…

Like Swallower himself, the alarms whose shrieking suddenly filled the shop were anything but restrained. They howled, they clamored, they screamed for attention. And they got it.

Wrangling forgotten, owner and visitor instantly ceased their haggling. Unsettled by the cacophony, panicked cats scattered among the rafters and merchandise in a flurry of tailed shadows and militant hissing.

“What be the freak?” Exhibiting speed and agility that belied his bulk, the startled Swallower turned from Jiminy and lunged in the direction of the control counter behind him. By the time he and his visitors reached it, holos relayed by several remote pickups were already dancing in the air above the projectors. A couple of the more confident cats paused to watch, their attention caught by the internally illuminated hovering images.

Whispr’s gaze went immediately to one particular oval holo. Uptaken from a unit hidden in a power tower or maybe a tree, it showed a line of high-power scoots traveling silently and at a high rate of speed down a narrow roadway. Even the dim light did not prevent Whispr from recognizing it immediately. It was the same elevated roadway he and Jiminy had recently
used to access Swallower’s enterprise. He stared silently. There were an awful lot of scoots, and they were transporting an awful lot of police.

They were coming this way.

Face flushed, four eyes all but alight, a furious Swallower turned rising rage on Jiminy.

“Treachery! Perfidious betrayal! Thou hath sold me out!”

Crouched down behind his upraised knees, a manifestly perplexed Cricket struggled to make sense of what the concealed security monitors were showing.

“I—I don’t understand. We were careful! No one saw us—no one!” He stared down at the amputated hand. “This doesn’t make any sense. It’s not even a whole
limb
.” His bewildered gaze shifted to another of the hovering holos. As the flotilla of police scoots materialized to fill it, the preceding image winked out.

“Mayhap thy slaying unknowingly and foolishly involved an important personage.” As he spoke Swallower waddled behind the circular counter, having to pass through the police-heavy holo to reach his destination.

“He didn’t look important.” Jiminy was mumbling
and
sweating now. “There wasn’t anything in his wallet to suggest consequence. Just the usual subsist. No spec defensive glam—nothing.”

“On one thing we doth agree.” A small open-sided elevator was descending slowly from the second floor. The lift was industrial grade, Whispr noted. It would have to be, to handle their host’s impressive bulk. “This indeed maketh no sense.”

Didn’t look important
, Whispr thought slowly.
Just the usual subsist
. Except for one thing. Except for the thread. Noting the fury in Swallower’s expression he decided now might not be the best time to bring up the matter of the tiny, artfully camouflaged storage device.

“We didn’t sell you out!” Jiminy was insisting.

Face flushed, quartet of eyes glittering, their bearded host stepped into the open lift. “Not intentionally, perhaps. I do not grant you that much acumen. But for one such as myself whose business be fencing without fences, stupidity be a synonym for blindness, and the blind sometimes cannot avoid stepping in shit.” Emitting a grinding noise that was less than reassuring, the lift started to rise toward the circular opening in the ceiling from which it had descended.

“Where are you going?” Whispr asked their host.

From the depths of the ebony Assyrian beard flashed a hint of a wry smile, like a crack in dried asphalt. “
I
am going to bed. If the police wish to speak with me, I shall appear before them cloaked in coverlet and yawns, affecting an air of bemusement at being rudely roused from my beauty sleep.”

Taking a long step forward, an increasingly distraught Jiminy continued to follow their host’s ascent. “But what about us?”

“Get thee hence from my sight and my shop. Flee these surrounds, lest thee shortly be identified to the looming authorities as intruders whom I was compelled to welcome only under duress, and with whom I would surely
never
do business.” Swallower’s hand slipped to the instrumentation on his belt.

As Jiminy was readying further protest, long, attenuated shapes began to emerge from the mountains of merchandise. In slinks and links the modified serpents came squirming toward the two visitors. Neither man being herpetologically challenged, they immediately recognized the venomous bushmasters and fer-de-lance who were advancing toward them under Swallower’s control. He liked his snakes as well as his cats, did their no longer congenial host, and there were far too many of the fat man’s pets to shoot.