Xenoform by Mr Mike Berry Page A

sit.’ Whistler obeyed, sighing impatiently, and seated herself in the much lower supplicant’s chair. It was surprisingly uncomfortable, probably designed to hinder the concentration of the interviewee. ‘There was a problem with your last offering.’ Smith arched her fingers and awaited a reply.
    Whistler let her wait, meeting her gaze. ‘What?’ she said after a while.
    ‘What, indeed,’ mused Smith, more to herself than to Whistler.
    ‘You don’t know? What the fuck? Am I getting paid or not?’
‘Three questions in one there, Whistler,’ admonished Smith, actually wagging a finger. Whistler wanted to bite it off. ‘One – not yet, but we are working hard to determine the exact nature of the problem. There is not really much to work with …’
    ‘I don’t know what you mean. I only talk two languages – violence and money. If you can’t rephrase your statement within either of those frameworks, I guess we’re done.’ She started to stand, furious now, and sure that she was not to be paid.
    ‘Sit,’ said Smith with such quiet authority that Whistler found she had done it without even thinking. ‘Two – rather too general a query, I’m afraid. Perhaps we’ll come back to that. Three – not, I regret. I can’t even give you recyc value for that last piece of shit you brought me.’
    ‘The fuck!’ Whistler cried, incensed now. She cared not that technically this was her boss she spoke to. ‘That was good meat, Smith. The wings, yeah? Good meat! Good product! Fifty-thousand plus on any market, even black.’
    ‘I can’t even let you take it to resell by yourself, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.’
    This – an actual apology, unprecedented from Mrs. Smith – placated Whistler a little, as Smith had known it would. She watched as Whistler deflated into her chair, palms spread in resignation. She noticed that the harvester was still clenching her jaw angrily, but the readout on her desk told her that Whistler’s heart rate had fallen slightly as the fight went out of her. Crisis averted and the flying knife perched on a moulding near the ceiling could sleep until another day.
    ‘ So what’s wrong with it ?’ insisted Whistler. ‘Is the damn thing contaminated? Drugs? It can be cleansed, surely. Every bloody thing off the streets is contaminated with something. You clean it, right?’
    ‘Right. Usually. But we don’t know what this is. It’s something different. Some new organ from the black market. It seems to resist examination. We have some good people working on it, but until we know it’s safe we have to withhold payment. We have the product in cryo – if it passes, you’ll be paid.’
    ‘But that could be weeks, years or never, yeah?’
    ‘I’m afraid so, yes.’
    ‘Some way to treat a trusted subcontractor, man. Is there a fucking union I can join?’
    Smith didn’t laugh although she admired Whistler for trying to make light of the situation. ‘The man with the wings – Leo Travant, he was called, by the way, is not the only case we have found. You know Two-Ton Pete and his team?’
    ‘Yeah. Amateurs. They step on our toes from time to time.’
    ‘Yes, well, they brought in a young woman contaminated with the same tissue last week, and another yesterday.’
    ‘So what, though? There’s always something new out there.’
    ‘Yes, but this is different.’
    ‘How so?’
    ‘I told you. It resists examination. We don’t know what it does or where it comes from and until we know, payment is to be withheld. This is not public knowledge, you know. Pete’s team are not a party to it. All they know is that the produce was contaminated. We told them disease.’
    ‘So am I going to have a problem leaving here then?’ asked Whistler bluntly, studying the face of the woman poised above her.
    ‘No, no, nothing like that, I assure you. We wondered if you could help to...get things rolling again.’
    ‘How?’ asked Whistler, although she thought she already knew.
    Smith’s face