Free The Sum of Her Parts by Alan Dean Foster Page A

less. “Who are you, Uncle Serpent?”
    “My name is Napun. Although I do not work directly for SICK,I am what you would call an outside consultant.” Despite his best efforts to control himself, both his gaze and his tone hardened slightly. “You, on the other hand, have been working for someone other than SICK. That makes us competitors for the same information.”
    She shrugged, one red-striped tentacle rising slightly higher than the other. “So you’re right about that. So what? Personally, SICK makes me sick.”
    “I did not seek you out to engage in a debate on the morals of international politics or commerce or the prime movers thereof. Your opinions are your own and I am willing to respect them. While we may serve different masters, we do so from the same perspective. We are hirelings for the same purposes, you and I.”
    She made no effort to disguise her surprise and contempt. “What? I don’t think so, old man.”
    He sighed understandingly. “I have spent a lifetime disproving disrespect.” He glanced around. “I would rather not have to do so yet one more time in such crowded surroundings. However, you may rest assured that I will do so if necessary. But there is no need for that. Think of me what you will.” He leaned slightly forward. “I am prepared to pay for whatever knowledge you may have gained regarding the present whereabouts or intentions of the two named Namericans. As you have doubtless already been paid a likely half of what your own employers promised you, what I can offer should more than make up for what you have lost on this particular project.”
    This time she did not dismiss his words out of hand. “I lost a colleague. Boo wasn’t only a fellow employee, she was a friend.” Lindiwe made a spitting sound without actually expectorating, revealing a melded tongue that had been maniped so that it was fully prehensile. A younger man might have found that distracting. Not Molé. “As for our team ‘leader,’ she was forced on us by the—byour employers. She was an arrogant out-of-town Natural bitch who thought she knew everything, and now she’s dead.” Her gaze met Molé’s without flinching. “So some good came out of it.”
    “I care nothing for such individuals. They are more expendable than stale bread. As to your friend, I am sorry.” He considered. “I will double your employer’s death benefit.”
    Lindiwe’s stare narrowed. Around them a radically melded assortment of humanity danced, leaped, osculated, fondled, cursed, and engaged in caressing and touching with a variety of limbs and digits both human and maniped. As he waited for a reply Molé ignored it all, from the pounding goolmech to the suggestive gestures to the occasional bemused stare that briefly flicked in his direction.
    “What makes you think we learned anything?” Lindiwe asked him. “We were making progress, yebo, but we had to get out of there fast. The place was booby-trapped to the ult.” She shuddered mentally at the memory. “Misleading tactiles, poisonous spiders—there are reasons why people leave sangomas alone, and they have only occasionally to do with old superstitions.”
    “
Did
you learn anything?” Emotion-deprived at the best of times, Molé continued to speak as calmly as if placing an order at the bar.
    Lindiwe found her gaze distracted by a pair of two-meter-tall local males each of whose heads had been severely maniped to resemble that of a horse. One man boasted a black mane and tail while the other’s maniped accoutrements were a Scandinavian blond. Both wore very little, the better to emphasize their additional stallion melds. These extended to regions beyond head and hair. At the moment they wore the expressions of men alone and not wanting to be. But first she had to get rid of this persistent old man.
    “We—the European—had just opened files in the sangoma’s box when the spider flood arrived. She thought they were illusory.They weren’t. They killed