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by herself. Only when she was absolutely certain of the findings and had something more concrete to back them up would she risk sharing them with others. Only when she was certain, for example, that she was not being made the subject of some elaborate, albeit scientifically impressive, practical joke on the part of unknown colleagues.
    Finding herself operating in the kingdom of the incongruous, she would begin with the obvious—by inquiring of her ostensibly unaware patient as to the name, nature, and whereabouts of whoever had performed on her the deceptively straightforward cosmetic feather meld. What that might lead to she had no idea.
    Possibly even to a manufacturer of infinitesimally small machines that had no rational basis in known physical reality.

4
    “Hey, old man!”
    Turning slowly as he leaned on his cane, Napun Molé squinted in the direction of the challenging voice. He was short, his white hair fraying and thinning, a squat little fireplug of a mestizo in his late fifties who looked much older.
    “Sorry—what?” Raising the hand that was not gripping the head of the cane, he pointed to the right side of his head. “My ears …”
    Rolling his eyes, the security guard came closer. “I started to say that this is a restricted area, old man.” He indicated the medium-size cargo ship, its sails autofurled, that lay alongside the dark dock. “What are you doing out here anyway, in the middle of the night?”
    “Middle of the night?” Lapsing into introspection, Molé put shaky fingers to his lips. “Is it that late? I thought—I thought …” He looked around and blinked. “I must have wandered away from the group. We came down the funicular and …”
    “You
are
lost, old man.” The oft-restored nineteenth-century funicular that still conveyed tourists and citizens alike from the top of Valparaiso’s cliffs down to the harbor lay several kilometers to the south. The guard’stone softened. “I bet your guide or tour attendants are going loco looking for you. Do you have any identification? An emergency number I could call so someone can come and pick you up?”
    “An emergency—yes, yes.” Reaching into a pocket, Molé brought out a cheap, battered wallet, started to fumble at the contents with uncertain fingers, and dropped it. Sighing, the guard shook his head.
    “I’ll get it.” Muttering under his breath, he reached down to pick it up. He therefore did not notice when the hinged tip of the old man’s left index finger flipped open. The programmed-protein spidersilk-derived aramid fiber that shot out automatically looped itself around the guard’s neck and tightened convulsively. Eyes bugged wide, the startled guard tried to shout, but the swiftly contracting strand had already interdicted the air supply to his lungs. Reaching up with both hands, he tried to grasp the tightening filament, but it was too thin and too deeply embedded in the flesh of his throat for him to slip thick fingers between strand and skin. Blood began to trickle, then to spurt from beneath the thread, which by now had buried itself invisibly deep into his neck.
    Molé watched the guard’s demise evolve, until within minutes the man lay dead on the dock. His head had been half severed from his neck. A quick flick of the old man’s left hand halted the ongoing contraction and rewound the lethal loop. The strand’s gengineered hydrophobic properties kept the dead guard’s blood from adhering to it as it was reeled back into the hollow finger.
    A rapid survey showed that the killing had not been observed. Reaching down, Molé picked up his wallet. Using both hands he dragged the body of the guard to the edge of the dock and eased it over the side. Landing between the hull of the freighter and the dock’s polycrete pillars, it made only the slightest of splashes.
    From another, deeper pocket Molé extracted the folded dispersion suit and slipped effortlessly into the one-piece garment. Racing up the now