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While his slender shape would allow him to hide behind pylons as well as trees, daylight would make locating him easier. Only by losing himself in a crowd could he be confident of throwing off the search.
    How badly did they want him? If it was deemed serious, if the authorities were really determined, they could get a court order requisitioning copies of Swallower’s in-house security recordings. These would show his visitors clearly and from every angle. Once his face and form were flashed into every police file, Whispr knew he wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without being scanned and identified by one of the hundreds of ubiquitous security pickups speckled throughout the state.
    To protect his continued obscurity what he really needed was a new face—or at the very least, a serious adjustment. Ideally, suitable anonymity called for a full-scale remeld. That much work would require money beyond subsist, of which he had little. As fond as he had become of his slim, flexible body, if it would keep him out of a Reducation Center he would gladly pay to pack on a few dozen melded kilos. He was far more attached to his freedom than to his shape.
    Along with having no money, he had nothing to sell. Leastwise, nothing that would pay for even the comparatively simple meld he needed. What he did have was a solid if unremarkable reputation in certain illicit quarters of the Savannah area, and excellent credit therein. Unlike Jiminy and other acquaintances, Whispr rarely bought anything he could not afford. His wants being simple, he had never been in debt.
    Now was the time to call those credits and cash in on that reputation. Added weight, a few basic facial manips, maybe a custom add-on or two would change his appearance more than enough to baffle the police. Of course, they were used to lawbreakers on the run changing their appearances. The eternal striving of the pursued to disguise themselves from their pursuers had stimulated comparable advances in criminology and police forensics. But if he could just acquire a few simple manips, Whispr was confident he could evade the notice of the authorities.
    After all, he told himself as he plugged onward through the swamp, it wasn’t as if he and Jiminy had stolen the hand of a president or a popular entertainer. Their prey might have been an important businessman, or at most a visiting dignitary taking in the tourist sights of Old Town. Surely nothing more.
    He was more interested than ever to see what was on that storage thread, though.
    But first he had to elude the police pursuit, then arrange for a quick manip and meld. Any mysteries contained on the thread would have to wait.
    As he splashed and fought his way through the reed beds and increasingly frequent patches of damp forest he wondered if there were any amphibs tracking him. A full amphibian meld, involving the addition of gills but the retention of lungs, was much more expensive and difficult to install than a simple lung-gill replacement. Usually, hydrophilic citizens opted for the latter and a round-the-clock underwater lifestyle. More complex amphib melds were reserved for the rich, or for full-time supervisors of the huge fish and shellfish farms permanently emplaced along the entire east coast.
    Because of their location amid the slowly but steadily rising waters of the Atlantic, low-lying cities like Savannah often had an amphib or two on retainer, if not a full staff like New York or Boston. There used to be whole squads of them working farther south in old Miami. But old Miami was no more, a badly sited conurbation lost to history and the rising waters that had inundated much of the Florida peninsula.
    He couldn’t recall reading or hearing anything about an amphib cop being part of Savannah’s police department, and the water in which he found himself was too shallow to permit a gill Meld to move about comfortably. Most likely, the police would rely on their scanners to track him down. Having already avoided