Free The Human Blend by Alan Dean Foster Page A

transporting something of immense importance. If it was not recovered certain people including the speaker were likely to suffer. If it was to fall into the wrong hands—the worldwide media, for example—the consequences could prove calamitous to the interested parties. Prattling on, the caller used the word apocalyptic. In a lifetime of practicing his vocation Molé had encountered many synonyms for deep concern, but until now apocalyptic had not been among them.
    Despite knowing Molé as well as it was possible for someone to know him (which was to say not very well at all) and being fully aware of his reputation, the caller still felt compelled to ask certain questions. Molé was not offended. The more significant the job, the more that was at stake, and the more money that was on offer, the more queries a prospective employer was entitled to ask. He replied patiently and without rancor to every one, accepting each condition one at a time and indicating his full understanding of every relevant detail.
    In response to one of the questions, as he was already mentally readying himself to start making the necessary preparations, he had to admit that, no, he had never been to the central far east coast of Namerica.
    W HISPER SPENT THE FOLLOWING DAY hiding in the center of a dense grove of ceibu trees. There was a time not long ago when such growths could not be found north of Central America, but with warming temperatures and rising sea levels they, like so many other plant and animal species, had eagerly migrated northward. Once he thought he heard the voices of visitors to the nature preserve, but he knew he could have been mistaken. As tired and hungry as he was it was entirely possible he had imagined the presence of other people. In any case, he never saw them.
    It was not yet quite dark again when he felt safe in leaving the temporary refuge, but he was anxious to be on the move. The sooner he was out of the surrounding slough and swamp preserves the sooner he would be back in the developed, civilized surrounds of the city where he could get something to eat and find out what had happened to that bastard Jiminy. Peering cautiously out from among the trees and undergrowth he could see no sign of police or mobile scanners. All would be well if he couldcontinue to evade their notice until he could make his way back to town. A quick manip, just enough to fool the omnipresent pickups emplaced on numerous corners and shops, and he would be free to walk the streets again. The manip was vital. Once your features appeared in the continental Wanted database they were immediately accessible to every cop from Moose Jaw to Managua.
    But the database could be fooled. In a time when anyone could opt for a complete and even radical body meld, a simple facial could be performed in thousands of qwiclinics, or even one of the hundreds of mobile surges that plied every continent’s byways, highways, and flyways.
    He was about to step out into the shallows when he heard the growl.
    In early times the only dangerous large animals one had to keep an eye out for on the southeast coast of the old U.S. of A. was the occasional alligator and poisonous snake. Migrating north along with hundreds of other alien plants and animals were far more venomous New World serpents like the fer-de-lance and bushmaster, big crocodilians like the caiman and the Orinoco, dendrobates poison arrow frogs (kids were especially—and sometimes fatally—attracted to their bright, clownish colors) and a posse of exotic felines: ocelot, jacarundi, margay, and most conspicuously the one an unknowing Whispr had just roused from its morning meal.
    As he stood frozen in place and staring he was able to view at close range the jaws and teeth that gave the jaguar the most powerful bite in proportion to its body size of any of the big cats. As hefty as an African lioness at a hundred and fifty kilos, the mature male lay alongside its recent kill panting like a steam engine.