Body, Inc. (The Tipping Point Trilogy, Band 2) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 3: The Tipping Point Trilogy

Foster, Alan Dean

 
9780345511997: Body, Inc. (The Tipping Point Trilogy, Band 2)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345511999 ISBN 13: 9780345511997
Verlag: Random House Worlds, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

New York Times bestselling author Alan Dean Foster has always been on the cutting-edge of science fiction. In Body, Inc., he creates a tomorrow where genetic manipulation has become ubiquitous, and the very meaning of what it is to be human is undergoing drastic transformation.
 
In a world deeply wounded by centuries of environmental damage, two unlikely souls join forces: Dr. Ingrid Seastrom has stumbled into a mystery involving quantum-entangled nanoscale implants—a mystery that just may kill her. Whispr is a thief and murderer whose radical body modifications have left him so thin he is all but two-dimensional. Whispr has found a silver data-storage thread, a technology that will make him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. He is also going mad with longing for Dr. Ingrid Seastrom. Their quest to learn the secrets of the implant and the thread—which may well be the same secret—has led them to the South African Economic Combine, otherwise known as SAEC. Or, less respectfully, SICK.  SICK, it seems, has the answers.

Unfortunately, SICK has also got Napun Molé, a cold-blooded assassin whose genetic enhancements make him the equivalent of a small army. Molé has already missed one chance to kill Ingrid and Whispr and now he has followed them to South Africa. This time, he is not only going to succeed, he is going to make them suffer.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alan Dean Foster has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Star Wars: The Approaching Storm and the popular Pip & Flinx novels, as well as novelizations of several films, including Transformers, Star Wars, the first three Alien films, and Alien Nation. His novel Cyber Way won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction, the first science fiction work ever to do so. Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona.

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1

Whispr knew for certain that he was in Africa when the pair of black leopards shot past him in the airport corridor. His companion, cautious business partner, overbearing scientific advisor, and (dare he think it?) sometime personal physician, Dr. Ingrid Seastrom, let out a gasp and dropped to her knees as one of the big cats forcefully brushed her right leg in passing. Unlike their now panicky intended quarry the leopards tore through the terminal in complete silence. An equivalent airport Immigration and Security team back home in Namerica would have used dogs, an admiring Whispr thought as he watched the two carnivores take down their target. Amid screams and shouts, other equally startled arriving passengers were quick to scatter and give the cats room.

Pinning him to the ground beneath weight, fang, and claw they did not begin to devour the man they had trapped. In its excitement the larger of the two felines urinated on the frightened captive's legs. The smell of buttered popcorn filled the terminal. As Whispr had quickly assumed, both melanistic predators had been thoroughly maniped. Snapping against their muscular chests and flanks, loose-fitting lightweight vests flashing the SAEC's bright colors identified them as members of the Helen Zillie International Airport's security team. Strips of gleaming metal set atop their skulls between their ears testified to the skills of the biosurges who had installed the controlling implants.

Like the vests, the complex neuroplants were also probably South African Economic Combine products, Whispr mused. With impossibly slender and deceptively strong arms he helped the stunned Ingrid to her feet. The secrets of one peculiar kind of advanced SAEC technology--SICK technology--was what they had come all the way from Georgia and Florida to try to unlock. Less dramatic and more subtle, their purpose unknown, the quantum entangled nanoscale implants that had first intrigued and subsequently inveigled Ingrid Seastrom were infinitely more sophisticated than straightforward animal manips.

"Startled me." Ingrid continued to mumble to herself as she straightened her pantsuit.

She wasn't worried about her temporary dishabille or the fact that she had been knocked down. Overriding any and all other concerns was the need to keep safe the tiny silvery storage thread of metastable metallic hydrogen that lay hidden in a sealed security compartment within one cup of her brasserie. She worried about the shard's security because it represented a whole series of scientific breakthroughs and unknown social possibilities, some of them sinister. Whispr worried about it because if it were to be damaged or destroyed it surely wouldn't bring as high a price as it would if they could keep it intact.

Knowing her to be a consummate worrier, he wondered if Seastrom ever worried about him. Ever since he had obsessively but foolishly planted that scent-sucking zoe on her in Florida she had held herself even more distant than ever. Despite this her continuing disinterest in him no way lessened his feverish desire for her. But he had vowed to act the gentleman, much as that remained an abstract concept to a street survivor like himself. Not because he didn't feel the urge every day, every hour, to pull her close to him and press his mouth against hers, but because at this point in their relationship it would be a bad move from a business standpoint.

He looked at her, drank in the sight of her, with great pleasure every chance he got. Even in her current disguise mode with her blond hair blackened, her cheeks puffed with temp collagen, the additional weight she had put on, and the contacts that changed her eye color every couple of hours, he still found her irresistibly enticing. He loved the way she looked, the way she walked, even the slightly stilted professorial way she talked. His attraction had nothing to do with the fact that he was a Meld and she was a Natural. Knowing full well that she would find any such expressions of admiration on his part unutterably annoying, he kept them to himself. Besides, they had work to do and surveillance to avoid.

Unlike the terrified young man who had been taken down by the leopards and was now being rescued and arrested by the big cats' handlers, they had made it quietly through Immigration and Customs without any difficulty. Traveling with only hand baggage, they headed for the nearest Transportation kiosk. Some of the other disembarking passengers had stopped to watch as a trio of cops placed the unfortunate lawbreaker in securestrips. None of them were citizens of the SAEC, for whom such sights were old news.

"I wonder what they're holding him for?" As Ingrid looked back at the scene she saw that the young man still wore a look of utter terror. She didn't blame him. Not with two full-grown maniped male black leopards hoping to make hors d'oeuvres of his toes and barely restrained by their handlers.

Whispr was more interested in finding immediate transportation into the city proper. He had been witness to far too many arrests to find this one worthy of his time, the exoticism of the circumstances notwithstanding.

"Probably trying to sneak into the country illegally," he opined. In the old days, he knew, the frenetic apprehension and subsequent arrest would likely have involved drugs. Imagine locking someone up for possessing recreational pharmaceuticals! What little he knew of history never failed to amuse him.

"As I understand it there's three Africas: North, Central, and South. North is philosophically and spiritually confused, Central is like downtown Old Atlanta at two in the morning--only with a quarter billion people, and the South is where everyone in the Central and much of the North wants to be. Mostly because the SAEC and the South is where the subsist is." Turning, he nodded back in the direction of the now stripped and secured illegal visitor.

"Gotta give the crazy Natural credit. Instead of sneaking across the border through a tunnel up north he bought a ticket and tried flying in like an ordinary traveler."

In her mind's eye Ingrid could still see the black slash of the police leopard streaking past her. "What do you think they'll do to him?"

Whispr shrugged. Among the many welcoming flads trying to cozy up to them was one for a vehicle rental company. Sticking a finger into the glowing sphere had instantly activated its functions. It trailed hopefully behind them as they continued on through the Arrivals area.

"Deport him if he's lucky. Slap him in detention if he's not. Feed him to cats if the cops are in the mood."

Her eyes widened. Where medicine and science were concerned Ingrid Seastrom was utterly up-to-date, but concerning Real Life she could be woefully ignorant.

"I'm kidding." A smile cut his angular visage and she favored him with a look of disgust.

Actually he didn't have a clue what the local cops did with illegal immigrants. With a lineage that included sjambok-wielding Afrikaans security, bomb-making ANC revolutionaries, fearless Zulu warriors, and modern police melds, it wouldn't have surprised him a bit to learn that the cost of securing borders that were under constant pressure from desperate would-be immigrants was occasionally offset by offering up pieces of said intruders in lieu of expensive leopard food. Did illegals from Mauritania taste different from, say, renegade Somalis? The thought would never have occurred to a Natural like Ingrid. To an ultra-slenderized Meld like Whispr it was perfectly--natural.

Hovering close to his left arm, the basketball-sized floating advertisement fended off competing flads with barely audible bursts of static electricity. As it urged them forward it declaimed with soft mechanical enthusiasm on the advantages of renting a roadster from the company it represented. Whispr ignored the...

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Verlag
Random House Worlds
Erscheinungsdatum
2012
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345511999
ISBN 13 
9780345511997
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
304
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
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Deutschland