S. Swann - Forests of the Night

MLI's money did come from wholesale dealing in gemstones—massive dealings. They moved so many rocks that the whole lapidary industry was suffering a depression. The devaluation of diamonds and lesser stones didn't seem to bother MLI's balance sheet. They simply moved more rocks to compensate. There was no sign of where their inventory came from, but its volume justified the eighty billion in assets MLI claimed.

In with the accounting information was a collection of letters.

Isham asked about a few of them. None came from MLI itself. They were all forgeries from the hands of MLI's nonexistent employees.

A Jack Brodie from South Euclid, Ohio, wrote to ask a California legislator to consider helping to eliminate federal morey housing in that state. Just a simple request from someone who contributed twenty-five grand to his campaign. Diane Colson, allegedly living in Parma, Ohio, "informed" a committee member on House Appropriations of all the waste in the federal budget. In the military and NASA in particular.

There was that August 10th letter—Wilson Scott from Cleveland was urging support for Binder's mo-FORESTS OF THE NIGHT

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reau control package, "in view of the recent violence." The smoking gun as far as the Zips were concerned. The proof the violence was engineered to get certain people elected to the Senate.

Isham dispensed with most of this with a few questions. She seemed to be in a hurry to assimilate the information. She only slowed once, over a letter from the familiar name Kathy Tsoravitch, written to Joseph Binder back in the Fall of 2043.

Isham looked up at Nohar. Her sunglasses were off and her retinas cast an orange reflection back at him. "What'sNuFood?"

Nohar shrugged. "A little R&D enterprise MLI bought out. My friend with the computer thinks it's only there to smooth out the loss column of their taxes. Some sort of diet food."

"Why a food company?"

Nohar really didn't care. It wasn't his problem any more. "Diversification?"

To his surprise, Isham actually laughed a little. Her laugh was as silent as her breathing. "They went to a bit of trouble to get this particular company—" Isham slid the letter across the desk and Nohar glanced it over. Kathy was positively adamant Binder prevent NuFood's enterprise from being approved by the PDA. If he remembered correctly, MLI bought out NuFood only a few months after this letter.

Isham riffled through the papers. "NuFood's ten million in assets is barely a ripple in MLI's finances. The patents are nearly worthless. It doesn't seem to have an income at all."

"I told you it was a tax dodge. A money pit the IRS would buy."

Isham looked at length of computer printout. She seemed to be talking to herself. "Then why would they be piping money into it before it failed?"

The comm rang. Even though it wasn't her office, Isham didn't hesitate. "Got it."

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When the comm lit up, only showing black, she said, "Bald Eagle here. This isn't a secure line."

An electronically modified voice came back. "We have the go."

The caller hung up.

Isham smiled and gathered up the papers. "Well, I'll ask these franks about NuFood when we have them in custody."

She locked the case and gestured to the door as she put on her mirrored sunglasses. When Nohar stood up, his knee began throbbing again. He had to grab the door frame to help himself move outside. Isham walked by him and started down the hall. She paused to turn and say to him, "I'm afraid we're going to have to keep a close eye on you until this clears. You're probably going to be stuck here for a while."

"I don't have anything better to do at the moment."

Nohar hobbled down the corridor and collapsed in a chair in a waiting room across from the lab where Manny was working. Isham passed him, going toward the stairs. She looked at the red-haired FBI agent who was sitting across from Nohar. She pointed at Nohar and the agent nodded.

It seemed Nohar now had his own personal pet FBI agent. The agent didn't wear shades, a normal human-Even with the pet FBI guy, for once, Nohar was thankful

for the Fed. With all this, MLI was blown open. There'd be nothing left for them to cover up. The violence should be over. He was sorry for Smith, but Nohar was glad his part had ended.

The agent looked vaguely uncomfortable. Nohar wondered whether it was because he was guarding a morey, because the morey he was guarding was still covered with graveyard mud, or because FBI agents were trained to look constipated as a matter of course. Nohar yawned and struggled his wounded leg up on a table. Manny came out of the lab across from the lounge,

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trailing another agent. He carried a black bag in his good left hand. "Seems to be my eternal duty to patch you up. Let me see that knee while the lab techs trou-bleshoot the chemical analyzer."

Nohar's agent walked up so the two FBI guys framed Manny like human bookends. Manny was ignoring the agents as he felt along Nohar's right leg. Nohar tried not to wince, but Manny knew when he got to the tender area. "Damn it, you should have gone to the emergency room."

"And make the Fed divide their forces?"

"Very runny." Manny slit the pants around the knee, which was swollen a good fifty percent. Even under the mud and the fur, Nohar could see the discoloration. "You need an orthopedic surgeon. You may have done yourself some permanent damage."

Manny reached into the bag and got out an air-hypo and slipped in a capsule. "This is a local—" Manny shot the hypo into the leg and the pain left Nohar's knee, leaving no feeling at all. Then Manny pulled out a hypodermic needle, a large one. Manny found the needle impossible to maneuver with his bandaged right hand and shifted it to his left. When he did, the color leeched from the face of Nohar's agent. "I'm going to drain this and put another support bandage around it. And if you don't see a specialist about this, I swear I will hunt you down, trank you, and drag you there myself,"

Manny slid the needle home. Nohar only felt a slight pressure under his kneecap. Nohar's agent, however, began to look ill. The guy got worse when Manny started withdrawing blood-colored fluid from Nohar's knee. Manny filled the hypo, put it in a plastic bag, and repeated the process with another hypo. The agent turned away, looking out the window at the hospital's parking garage.

Manny sponged off Nohar's knee with alcohol and a strong-smelling disinfectant that made Nohar want

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to retch. As Manny scrubbed, Nohar tried to get his mind off the smell.

"What's with the analyzer?"

"Every new piece of equipment has some bugs—" Manny sounded like he didn't quite believe it. He looked up at the agent who'd accompanied him. The guy stayed expressionless. "Your client was one weird frank. If frank is even the right term—nothing to indicate the gene structure even has a remote basis on the human model. It looks like it was engineered from scratch. I don't know what we got here. There was no cellular differentiation in the samples I salvaged. Through and through this guy was made of the same stuff."

Manny pulled out a bandage, a white plastic roll this time, not clear. As he wrapped it tightly around No-har's leg, he continued, "No organs, nerves, skeletal system ... all I can think of to explain it is all the constituent cells are multifunctional, able to do duty as anything the body needs as it needs it."

That was just plain weird. "No organs? Nerves? It-he had to have a brain. He was intelligent. He talked to me—"

"His identity, his 'mind,' would be distributed in electrical signals over his entire body. Just as all the other functions would be diffused within the creature. Eating, excreting—probably reproduces by binary fission."