The Sum of Her Parts

by Alan Dean Foster

  Preparing to follow Chenwa outside, Volksmann had quickly changed his mind. Whatever had possessed these addled animal denizens of the Namib to wage war on his people he did not know. What he was certain of was that he wanted no more of it. All the approbation and monetary reward in the world were useless to someone lying dead in the desert. Making sure that Chenwa’s body was clear of the doorway, he touched a switch and watched as it cycled shut.

  “Get us out of here!” Isgard Fleurine, the twenty-something professional executioner with the grandmotherly meld, stood facing the doorway holding two sidearms aimed in its direction. There was panic as well as determination in her voice.

  Volksmann needed no urging. Racing to the front of the transport he threw himself back into the pilot’s chair and ran anxious fingers over multiple controls. The floater’s systems immediately came back online, the light from the various screens and readouts raising his spirits considerably. The absence of the driver’s heads-up didn’t concern him. What mattered now was to get off the ground. Once the compact craft was in the air and hovering a safe three or four meters above the surface the maddened hordes of homicidal rodents, or whatever they were, would be reduced to impotent chattering.

  With the floater’s automatic maintenance system having cleared the intakes of the bulk of ingested sand and grit, the transport rose smoothly to its maximum operating altitude of five meters. That was more than high enough for safety. Panting hard but beginning to breathe normally, Fleurine had holstered her weapons and was moving to join him. Safe from attack she leaned forward to peer down through the sweeping transparent front of the craft. Volksmann noted that the sandstorm was finally starting to abate.

  “Four dead,” he muttered. “Murdered by indigenous rodents. That’ll go down well with the Yeoh.”

  She put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and he reminded himself that this was a woman in her twenties who had only chosen to look eighty. A meld like that suggested a damaged personality, he knew. But then, both fit her job description. He was glad for the company.

  “Unexpected death comes with the territory. You don’t have to go into detail in your report, Meyer. I’ll back you up.” She wore a lopsided grin, simultaneously sensual and wolfish and greedy. Her eyes were not eighty. “This way I get to collect payment for six, so don’t expect any tears from me.”

  Turning on the floater’s landing beams Volksmann used them to search the ground off to his right. The earth there seemed to be moving, a veritable flowing pavement of brown and white bodies. Many of them were looking upward and throwing things in the direction of the transport. Spines, rocks, bits of metal: anything they could pick up. But their forelegs, while strong for their size, were short. Very little of the thrown material reached the floater’s underside. The few bits of metal that did rise to the transport’s height made tiny pinging noises as they bounced off the tough composite body.

  “Excitable little pointy-nosed bastards, aren’t they?” Moving away from the pilot’s seat the female assassin pulled the larger of her two sidearms and opened a port in the canopy. “Not that I’m into revenge or anything—it’s unprofessional—but hang here while I roast a few dozen of them. Wouldn’t want the rats to think they won anything.”

  Volksmann licked his lips. “Because of the storm we’ve been stuck here longer than I like. We need to pick up our quarry and start back before SICK security makes the changeover to the more active daylight shift.”

  “Sure, sure. I only need a couple minutes, mon père.” Leaning slightly out the port, the surviving member of his team started to take aim. “I got a bunch of them huddling together. Just let me take them out and …”

  A snapping sound cracked above the dying wind. Volksmann didn’t flinch at the sound of the gun going off. When he finally did turn to have a look he saw that it was not Fleurine’s weapon that had discharged. Turning, she gazed back at him with a blank look on her faux elderly maniped face. Her mouth was open and her expression one of surprise. When the blood from the hole in her forehead started to trickle into her eyes she blinked. Without speaking a word she fell forward onto the floor of the floater.

  A stunned Volksmann gaped at the petite form, then whipped around to peer out the windshield to his left. Light from the underside of the floater illuminated ground that was swarming with still more of the milling, chattering creatures. Many of them were pointing at the transport with tiny black paws. His searching eyes finally located the cluster that had been overlooked by the too-eager Fleurine.

  He recognized a pistol that had belonged to Shakovsk, who had tried and failed to help Hideki and Xiau. Propped up on a rock, it was supported by a densely packed knot of the creatures who kept it balanced and steady. Its lethal barrel was aimed upward and straight at the hovering floater. A worn, chewed, but tough strip of old leather had been passed behind the trigger guard and looped over the trigger itself. Six of the creatures clung to each end of the strap, looking for all the world as if they were engaged in a serious tug-of-war.

  Standing on its hind legs well behind the gun and gazing up at the floater was a single representative of the species. For an impossible instant Volksmann had the absurd sensation that he was looking into the eyes of another intelligent being. Then he flinched back just as the gun went off again.

  The shot smashed through the windshield, missing him by centimeters. As he lurched to one side his right hand dragged across several controls. Responding to the anomalous mixture of inadvertent manual commands, the floater went into a wild slew to starboard. Before Volksmann could recover and countermand the accidental instructions, it had smashed into the ground.

  Dazed but conscious, he pulled himself upright in the pilot’s seat and began working the instrument console. The engine whined and the floater skewed sideways, but would not rise from the ground. Something had been seriously damaged in the crash. Preoccupied with stabbing and pressing at various controls, it took him several minutes before he grew aware of a new sound. It reminded him of the flying sand that had scoured the transport as it battled its way northward through the storm. But the noise that had begun to reverberate through the sides and roof of the floater was not coming from blowing sand.

  It arose from the rapid-fire patter of hundreds of tiny feet.

  Whirling, he flung himself out of the pilot’s chair just as several dozen armed meerkats began scampering down the windshield in front of him. Utilizing their minuscule instruments of death they started scraping and stabbing at the transparency. To his relief he saw they were unable to so much as scratch the tough polycrylic. The hole that had been made by the second shot from the recovered pistol was not large enough to admit even the smallest of the attackers. He was safe inside the floater. At least, he was until he had to deal with SICK security, which would surely locate the downed craft as soon as the sun was up and the storm had fully subsided. There was water and emergency rations to sustain him. Not to mention his own weapons. He almost smiled. Unless his inexplicably organized assailants could muster enough strength to carry the floater off, he was safe.

  His biggest remaining concern, he realized, was how the hell he was going to explain this to SICK’s people and to his superiors in the Triad. Even in times when extraordinarily magified animals were commonplace, what had befallen his expedition made no sense. Magified mammals were harmless. Maniped pets did not attack their masters.

  “Bad human,” piped an unmistakably small voice. A chill went down Volksmann’s back, displacing the confidence that had braced him only a moment earlier. He turned.

  He had forgotten to close the port Fleurine had opened.

  There were at least a hundred of them inside now. Some rested on all fours. Others stood upright on their hind legs in disconcertingly humanlike poses. Dozens of bright black eyes were focused on the transport’s remaining occupant.

  Volksmann looked to his left. His personal sidearms lay in a compartment underneath the main instrument console. It would only take a matter of seconds fo
r him to pull them out and start firing. But he did need those few seconds. Proffering a winning smile, he looked down at the furry creature who was standing slightly apart from the others. It was she who had voiced the two astonishingly clear words. He found it unsettling to hear himself talking back to the creature.

  “This has all been a mistake. A stupid, regrettable mistake. I’m sorry for what has happened, but somehow I’ll make it right. I know that some of your—people—have been hurt. But all my people are dead. It’s all been a big misunderstanding.” As he spoke he was leaning slowly to his left. His hand extended toward the compartment that contained the guns.

  “Not all—your people, dead.” The articulate meerkat spoke with a solemnity that belied her size. “Is one people still alive. You.”

  “Well, yes, that’s true. What do you propose to do?” Volksmann’s straining fingers were almost to the handle of the compartment. Pull, grab, and shoot. With so many of them crowded together he would not have to worry about taking aim.

  The meerkat’s voice never changed, never varied in volume or tenor.

  “Rectify.”

  Volksmann’s fingers closed convulsively on the handle of the under-console compartment and yanked. Before the concealed drawer had stopped sliding forward he was already reaching for the nearest of the pistols inside. Had he been facing others of his own kind he might have had a chance. But no human boasts reaction time as fast as a meerkat. Just as no one was around to hear the screams that issued from within the downed floater.

  In any event, they did not last for very long.

  8

  One of the nice things about a modern Gatling gun, Het Kruger reflected as he watched the familiar lonely terrain slip by beneath the company floater, was that they could be massaged to accept pretty much any type of projectile that would fit the muzzles. Traditional solid bullets, explosive shells, armor-piercing rounds—just about anything that could be contained within the rotating barrels could be spat at an incredible rate of discharge toward a target.

  Take the floater in whose copilot’s seat he was presently sitting, drinking tea with his booted feet propped up on the instrument console. The two electrically powered amidships guns, one facing to port and the other to starboard, could spew explosive shells at thousands of rounds per minute, sufficient to disable or destroy anything short of the most heavily armored military hardware. To an outsider they would surely seem to constitute overkill for simple company security—which was precisely the point. Kruger called them his “bouncers”—a hoary old term still used to refer to individuals charged with keeping order in bars and clubs. Be they Natural or Meld, the best men and women engaged in that ancient profession never raised a hand in anger. Their mere presence, or the firm delivery of an appropriate word or two, was usually enough to defuse a potentially unruly situation.

  Similarly, the sight of the floater’s starboard and port multibarreled weapons was usually sufficient to convince even the most heavily armed intruders that they were seriously outgunned and that their best chance for survival lay in surrendering their arms. While on Kruger’s watch the heavy weaponry had only been fired once in anger. Two minutes after they had been unleashed, it was impossible to separate the bodies of the intruders from the floater in which they had been traveling. His own forensic specialist had taken one look at the mess and declared his inability to identify any of the remains.

  Instead of explosive shells, the single forward-mounted Gatling fired darts filled with a powerful soporific. The contents of one or two was usually enough to put even a big lod Meld to sleep. If weapons had to be used Kruger much preferred this quieter and more humane method of taking down illegal visitors. For one thing, the chance to question live intruders provided information that could be added to the facility’s security bank. Names, places, facilitators, could all be stored for reference against future intrusions. For another, cleanup was infinitely easier and less time-consuming.

  The particular intrusion he and his team were presently on their way to confront had been detected by the company satellite that stayed in synchronous orbit over the central and lower Namib. Able to complete a full high-resolution scan of the region every several days, it was not perfect. But it did make it impossible for any vehicle bigger than a kid’s shufslide to remain in the area long enough to do any harm. It was theoretically possible for a well-equipped intruder to get in fast and get out fast without being picked up by Nerens-based security. If an intruder was willing to risk their life for some vit and a few pictures, Kruger could only admire them. That was real dedication and he did not concern himself with such transitory violations.

  It was those who came hoping to spend time in the Sperrgebeit that set the facility’s, and his, alarms to ringing. Most of them were after diamonds. Some came seeking rare animals they could sell on the black market. A thousand-year-old Welwitschia mirabilis was worth a great deal of subsist to wealthy plant collectors. While industrial espionage was also always a possibility, in his tenure as chief of security he had never encountered an interloper who had entered the Sperrgebeit with that in mind. Few outside the inner circle of the SAEC even knew there was a research and manufacturing facility at Nerens. Those who did had no reason to suspect that it was engaged in anything other than mining studies.

  Early morning in the Namib was beautiful no matter where one happened to find oneself, no matter which direction one looked, no matter what time of year it was. It helped to have an appreciation for the beauties of desert terrain. Not everyone could tolerate such a lack of greenery. Kruger loved the peacefulness and the solitude, the banded colors of the rocks, the way the wind coiffed the crests of the barchan dunes. The money.

  His work consisted mostly of running routine checkups of procedures and equipment that never went wrong. It was repetitive but satisfying. Another man might have been bored to death. Not Kruger. Having seen plenty of action in his youth he was more than content to enjoy what amounted to an exceptionally well-paid semiretirement. True, at the facility he was occasionally exposed to sights and sounds that puzzled and confused him, but interpreting their meaning was not his job. Having survived being shot at for real, he knew that shooting other people while ducking fire was a scenario far better played out on a vit immersion than in real life. Bullets burned, getting hit hurt, and losing body parts even in a day and time when they could nearly always be replaced or substituted for was not nearly as exciting or invigorating as some of his younger and less experienced colleagues supposed.

  So he was gratified when word came from his scanner operator that there was no sign of movement at the location they were speeding to investigate.

  “Dead quiet ahead, sir,” the woman told him. With her right hand she slightly adjusted the perception helmet that covered her entire head. The three slender part flesh, part metal tentacles that emerged from her left shoulder were plugged deep and wirelike into the console in front of her.

  “Nothing at all?” Kruger spoke softly into the tiny vorec mike suspended in front of his mouth.

  “Nothing, sir. There’s a floater there all right. Imaging people were right about that. I’ve got it on reflective now. The silhouette is sharp enough for me to analyze the composition—but nothing’s moving. No heat signature from the vehicle and nothing bipedal in the immediate vicinity. It’s—quiet.”

  “Maybe they’re sleeping.” The port-side gunner stroked the back end of his weapon as if he were caressing a cat. “If so they’re gonna get a nasty wake-up call.”

  “Take it easy, Raki.” Kruger recognized the tone. Like so many of his ilk the younger man was bored. Rotation was a problem in every department at Nerens, including Security. The isolation, the lack of things to do, the restrictions on individual movement both outside the facility and within, tended to result in rapid burnout among the personnel. Few stayed more than a year. Even fewer were on track to remain in their posts until their recruitment period was up. Among employees he was something of a dinosaur. Occasionally the
strain of fulfilling an employment contract combined with the remoteness and desolation caused an employee to crack. Like that unfortunate Ouspel fellow, for example.

  As the floater turned due west he found himself wondering what had happened to the vanished employee. It was likely that he had fled on his own, propelled by his own personal psychosis. If so then he would have perished out in the vastness of the Sperrgebeit just like everyone else who tried to leave the facility without going through formal discharge procedures. Somewhere hyenas were gnawing the technician’s bones.

  “I have target on my screens, sir.” The pilot’s limbs gently adjusted instrumentation and the security craft slowed. “Orders?”

  With a sigh Kruger sat up straight in his seat and pulled his legs off the console. Time to go to work. “Sipho, where are you?” The security chief knew he could have answered his own question simply by checking one readout on the console in front of him, but it was always good procedure to have verbal confirmation of your backup’s position.

  “Coming around from the southeast, Het.” The voice in the security chief’s earpiece was clear and devoid of distortion. “ETA in approximately five minutes. You want us to go in or stand off?”

  “Stand off and stay airborne but move in close enough to establish visual. So far we’ve got nothing. I don’t like dealing with nothing. It implies concealment.”

  “You think they’re waiting for us?”

  Kruger considered. “There’s no way they can know that their presence here has been discovered. I doubt they’re expecting company so soon after entering the Forbidden Zone. One of my gunners thinks they may be sleeping in. It’s possible, especially if they had to ride out yesterday’s sandstorm. That doesn’t mean they’re not equipped with automatic alarms, or for that matter, automated weapons. I’ll go in first, make the usual circuit, give them the usual warnings. Then we’ll see.”