“I understand,” she said. “Look, why don’t I contact some people I know on the local police force and see what I can find out? I can’t promise anything, of course.”
“Ms. Greenberg, I’m very grateful.” Ryton’s voice shook.
She looked embarrassed. “Well, I’ll do what I can.”
“This is the second time you’ve helped me. I hope that someday I can be of service to you. Thank you.”
“I’ll contact you if I learn anything. And you’re welcome.” Her image faded.
Ryton picked up the scattered yellow papers before him. He could not condemn all normals, he told himself. Not as long as he knew Andrea Greenberg.
The Star Chamber was dark at noon, redolent of stale beer and old cigarette smoke. Melanie peered through the gloom and tried not to look nervous as the bar’s owner stared at her with beady-eyed interest. His prominent front teeth reminded her of the hamsters she’d seen once in science class. Antique neon lights, blinking pink and green along the walk, and cryolights on the mechband in the corner were the only source of illumination. Each time Melanie moved, something crunched under her feet. She leaned against a bar stool, trying not to upset the brimming ashtray attached to it.
“Turn around, girlie.” His voice was hoarse. He inhaled on a cigarette butt that he held casually between thumb and forefinger, then flicked it into the sink behind the bar.
She made a quick spin, feeling horribly self-conscious in her tight jeans.
“Slower.”
Melanie did it again.
“Your legs are all right. Ass is good, too. Okay, lemme see your tits.”
“What?”
The man gestured impatiently. “C’mon. The job is for an exotic dancer. Exotic dancers gotta have good tits. Now do you want this job or not?”
Melanie wanted to run out the door. But she told herself she needed the job. She had to stay and prove herself. With fumbling fingers, she pulled up her blouse.
“The bra, too.”
She unhooked it, grateful for the dark room. He stared at her for what felt like an eternity.
Finally, he nodded. “Nice. Small, but nice. Funny, somehow I didn’t think mutant tits would look just like the rest. Okay, kid, you got the job. Get here about six-thirty so one of the other girls can show you the routines. There’ll be a costume for you in locker number four downstairs. You’re responsible for keeping it clean. You get three hundred fifty credits a week, plus tips.”
Melanie almost flew out the door. She had a job! She’d show everybody she could take care of herself. She hurried back to the tiny room she’d rented off Avenue J; she wanted enough time to get ready for tonight and the hall bathroom was usually busy after five.
When she returned to the Star Chamber, the bar was already filled with people drinking and smoking. She could feel the vibrations from the mechband all the way downstairs. Her locker was in a tiny space that looked as though it had started life as a root cellar. The room was crowded with women in various stages of undress. Melanie found her locker, opened it, and stared at her costume in shock. It was a red lace g-strip and garters attached to black stockings that flashed with purple cryolight arrows.
“What are you looking at? Haven’t you ever seen a g-string before?” the red-haired girl next to her asked. Her breasts were large and pendulous. She was applying green cryolight stars to them as she spoke.
“Where’s the rest of my costume?”
Raucous laughter was the only response Melanie heard for a minute.
“That’s your costume, sweetie,” the redhead said, not unkindly. “You must be the new girl. Dick said I should show you around. So get dressed. And don’t forget those purple arrows. No, not on your ears. On your boobs. Here, let me help you.”
She cupped Melanie’s left breast in one hand, took a purple arrow, licked it, gently affixed it to the nipple. Then she did the same to the right. Each time, her hands lingered a bit longer than necessary. Melanie felt her nipples hardening at the unfamiliar touch.
“You’re a sweet little thing, aren’t you?” the redhead said huskily. She rubbed the back of her knuckles across Melanie’s breasts.
“Don’t. Please.”
“Call me Gwen.” She put her arm around Melanie and drew her closer. Casually, Gwen reached a hand under Melanie’s g-strip and explored there, stroking gently, a look of friendly curiosity on her broad features. She seemed oblivious to the racket around them. Girls slammed locker doors, pulled on their skimpy costumes, and hurried upstairs.
Melanie tried to squirm away from that insistent hand. She leaned back against the lockers, but Gwen held her close, breathing heavily. Melanie felt dizzy, as if she was going to smother between Gwen’s enormous, perfumed breasts. She began to breathe in shallow gasps.
“I can see we’re going to be good friends,” Gwen said, licking her lips. “There’s a whole lot I can teach you.” Her busy fingers worked in tighter and tighter circles.
“Please,” Melanie said, her voice weak. That wicked stroking. Make her stop it, she thought. Oh, God, it was beginning to feel good. As if her legs had a mind of their own, they opened to let that friendly hand get at more of her. Gwen took her nipple in her mouth, arrow and all. Melanie moaned. She wanted her to stop, No, to continue. Yes, to continue licking and stroking, and.…
“Gwen! Dammit, what have I told you about hitting on the new girls!” The bar’s owner stood in the doorway, hands on hips.
Gwen released Melanie’s breast and withdrew her hand.
“Sorry, Dick.” The redhead looked repentant. Then her eyes met Melanie’s and she winked.
“Get upstairs. The new girl can serve drinks and Terry will show her the ropes.”
“Okay.”
With mingled relief and dismay, Melanie watched Gwen’s broad backside vanish up the stairs. She shook her head to clear it and told herself that she’d only imagined enjoying Gwen’s assault. Shivering, she vowed to stay away from her.
“You,” Dick said, pointing his cigarette toward her. “Upstairs too! And don’t make time on my time!”
Melanie blushed and hurried up to the main floor behind him.
Under the tutelage of Terry, a tall mulatto girl in pink g-strip and stockings, Melanie served drinks and sterile hypo packs for the first show.
By the time the second show started, the clientele of Star Chamber was sprawled around the cavernous room in various stages of intoxication. There were chutes and joy heads; a breenfreak with orange stripes tattooed on his bald head and down the middle of his nose; a couple of androgs in blue skinsuits; middle-aged businessmen with screencases and thinning hair; and tourists in travel sacs. Melanie had never seen such an assortment.
The first time a customer grabbed her ass, she jumped so hard she nearly lost her drink sling. Terry pinched her in irritation.
“Wavehead. That’s how you get the big tips. Let ’em have their feel. Just make sure they pay for it.”
Melanie quickly learned to smile and endure the rough hands that groped up her legs as she made change. She got a bigger tip that way. Everybody seemed to want to touch her. All right, she decided grimly. As long as they pay for it.
She watched Gwen dance a sweaty bump and grind accompanied by pounding drumbeats and horns from the mechband. The big redhead came off the stage grinning, her g-strip bulging with credit chips. Terry did a desultory belly dance, arms slowly writhing while the mechband whined a vaguely Mideastern tune. Each song included an extended musical vamp to allow patrons to stick credit chips in g-strips. Once the music started, the customers, drunk and feverish, crowded around the stage, whistling and yelling.
“You’re on,” Terry told her, hurrying down the stairs on the side of the raised dance floor.
“But I don’t know what to do.”
“Then fake it. Just get up there and shake your boobs at ’em. That’s all they care about. And make sure you get close enough so they can put the tips in.”
Melanie mounted the stairs
in a daze. The mechband asked the audience to welcome “Venus, the erotic mutant dancer,” then laid down an undulating rhythm. She stood frozen in the smoky orange spotlight, terrified. The customers booed and began rapping glasses and hypos on their tables in an irritable tattoo. The mechband started the melody again. Still, Melanie couldn’t move. She looked toward the bar. Dick was glaring at her. Terry hissed from the side of the stage.
“Get with it, stupid!”
Melanie shook her head and began edging toward the stairs. She couldn’t do it. She wanted to cover herself. To run and get away from the hunger she saw in the men’s eyes. It was the same hunger she’d seen in Gwen downstairs.
“Hey, what is this?”
“Dance, you stupid cow!”
“Boo! Get her off!”
She cringed back from the jeers of the crowd. The sting of a hypo startled her. Terry had jabbed a drink into her leg. She staggered, feeling things shift in her head. Her stage fright ebbed and disappeared as the warmth of the chemical uncurled in her bloodstream. These jerks wanted a show, did they? She’d give them a show, all right.
She took a deep breath and began to move her hips in mimicry of the other girls. The men gathered at ringside stopped complaining and sat down. Melanie closed her eyes and pretended she was alone, dancing for herself. As she began to shimmy, the crowd yelled its approval.
“All right, mutie!”
“Come on, honey. Show us that goodie!”
Feeling the rhythm of the music now, she became bolder and, opening her eyes, turned the shimmy into a strut that took her past the row of men in front. They waved credit chips at her, but she backed away teasingly.
A chuter with gray hair and dark circles under his eyes waved a three-hundred-credit chip at her.
“I’ve always wanted to feel mutant titty,” he shouted.
Melanie shook her head and danced away.
He held up two more three-hundred-credit chips.
“C’mere, darlin’.”
She waited until he held out twelve hundred credits. Then she shimmied up to him and leaned over. His hands were rough, and she flinched as he pawed her, but after a minute, he let go and slipped the chips under her belt.
After that, it was easy. Each time she saw a credit chip waving in somebody’s fist, she slowed her movements, teasing until the amount was increased. Then she danced close enough for the customer to cop a feel and deposit the tip.
Step right up and touch the mutant dancer, she thought woozily.
A pale young man with short, dark hair and old-fashioned eyeglasses hung over the stage’s edge, repeatedly surging forward to insert more chips in her g-strip. Each time, his grip on her leg was harsh and bruising. The fifth time she shook him off as the music ended. With relief, she hurried off the stage.
“Not bad. Five-minute break, then get busy at the tables,” Terry told her. “Dick wants us to push breen hypos; he’s overstocked.”
Melanie nodded gratefully and cut through the crowd toward the bar.
“Breen, please,” she told the barmech.
“Hypo?” came the mechanical query.
“Yes.” She pulled the credit chips out of her costume and gasped at their total. Over five thousand credits. She’d never had so much money before. Jamming the credits back under her belt, she grabbed the hypo, holding it up against the bar lights. The plump, disposable syringe glinted with amber liquid. Melanie closed her eyes and jabbed her upper arm. In seconds, the narcotic went to work, drawing a gentle curtain between her and the world.
“Miss Venus?”
“Yes?” She turned carefully, intent upon maintaining her balance. It was the pale young man with glasses, the one who’d grabbed her leg so many times.
“My name is Arnold,” he said. “Arnold Tamlin. I’ve always wanted to meet a mutant.”
Melanie forced a smile. “Well, now you have.”
He stared at her hungrily. “I enjoyed your dance very, very much.”
His speech was slurred. She wondered how much liquor he’d had. And what else, besides.
“Very, very, very much.”
“Thank you.”
He repeated himself again, then leaned toward her. She moved back, butting into the breenfreak, who scowled at her.
“Sorry.”
Arnold Tamlin continued to lean toward her. Then he seemed to fold in half, and began to slide, face down, to the floor. He didn’t try to get up. Dick appeared, nudged Tamlin with his foot, and when he got no response, leaned over the bar.
“Bouncer!”
A sturdy gray mech with padded claws rolled out of a slot at the end of the counter, latched on to the unconscious man, and dragged him toward the door. The last of Arnold Tamlin that Melanie saw was the gray soles of his shoes.
Two hours later, Dick told her she was off-duty. Gratefully, she put down the drink sling and joined some of the girls downstairs. Exhaustion so dulled her senses that she barely noticed the others around her until someone came up behind her and cupped her breasts.
“Want me to help you get out of that costume?” Gwen asked. Her breath was warm on Melanie’s neck.
“No! Leave me alone.” Angrily, she pulled free. She’d had enough strange hands grabbing at her body for one night. Tearing off her costume, she dressed quickly and hurried upstairs, out of the bar.
Twenty minutes and two tube stops later, she was sitting in the faded blue bathroom at Avenue J, watching water run into the rusty tub. Her watch read two a.m.
She eased herself into the steaming bath, glad for the silence of the late hour. There were bruises on her thigh and near one nipple. Five thousand credits balanced against six bruises. So this is independence, she thought wearily. A tear slipped down her nose and fell into the water without a sound.
11
“CARYL GET ME joe bailey at metro d.c.,” Andie said. If anybody could locate Melanie Ryton, it was Bailey. Besides, he owed her a favor. Several favors.
“He’s on line five,” Caryl said.
The deskscreen flickered, brightened. Bailey’s homely, long-jowled face smiled at Andie around a donut.
“Hey, Red. What have you got for me?”
“A missing girl. Mutant. Age seventeen or thereabouts. Chinese-Caucasian. Her name’s Melanie Ryton.”
“Right. Bailey fiddled with his keyboard, chewing. “Where’d she come from?”
“New Jersey.”
Bailey stopped chewing.
“Jersey? That’s not my beat. At least, not lately.”
“She told her parents she got a job here.”
“So?”
“They don’t believe her. I figured you could check on it faster than I could.”
“Give me a minute.” He wiped his hands and turned away from the screen. Then he was back, shaking his head.
“Negatory. No Melanie Ryton nowhere. I’ve checked employ, juvey, even the screw parlors. Nada.”
“Damn.”
“I thought your mutants kept all their kids at home in boxes.”
“Not funny. And not true.”
“Hope she’s careful out there. You heard about the sheikh who wants to buy a mutant girl for his harem?”
“No. But I believe it. Keep an eye out for this one, okay?”
“Andie, do you know how many kids, parents, grandparents, and missing pets I get asked about every day?”
“For me, Joe?” She leaned forward and gave him a flirtatious look, eyelids at half-mast.
Bailey sighed. “All right.”
A yellow message band from Caryl cut across the bottom of the screen: horner newsbyte starting, channel 12. urgent!
Andie glanced at the note. “Joe, I’ve got to go. Don’t forget about Melanie Ryton. And you’ve got powdered sugar on your chin.”
“Right. Ciaocito, Red.”
His image vanished, replaced by that of Senator Joseph Horner, smiling his best Sunday-morning-come-to-prayer-meeting smile at the camera. Then he turned back to his host, Randall Camphill.
“As I was saying, Randy, we’ve got to be vigilant against this supermutant threat,” Horner said.
Uh-oh, Andie thought. What is that son of a bitch up to? She hit the record button. Jacobsen was in a meeting, but she’d want to see this.
Camphill turned so that his best profile faced the camera. “Senator,” he said, “can you explain to our audience what you mean by supermutant?”
“An unnatural product of eugenics, of ungodly genetic tampering. The supermutant is a danger to the rest of us,” Horner said, voice cracking. “While we have come to accept our mutant brothers and sisters who are the result of natural, if unfortunate, processes—or so they tell us—we cannot accept, and must prevent, the defilement of human beings in the service of science. Who is to say that the supermutant, a product of the laboratory, is even human?” Horner’s eyes gleamed with righteous concern.
“And you say you’ve seen these so-called supermutants during your fact-finding trip to Brazil?”
“Well, now, Randy, I haven’t exactly seen them. But there’ve been signs. Clues. And we must be careful. We must be vigilant. Even now, they might be among us. At first, one or two, a mere drop of water in the population pool. But remember that a mighty ocean began with only a single drop. Be wary, lest we are all drowned in this coming flood.”
“Thank you, Senator Horner. We’re out of time.…”
Andie turned away from the screen.
“Oh, hell,” she muttered. “One cat, unbagged. That bastard.”
Should she buzz Jacobsen out of her meeting? She’d have to respond. Quickly.
The call waiting light began to blink on Andie’s screen, multiplying until every line into the office was ringing.
“We’re in for it now,” Caryl said, running toward her deskscreen. “What do I tell them?”
“No comment,” Andie said. “The senator’s in a meeting and they’ll have to call back. If they insist, take their name and number. Record all calls, but it’s strictly no comment if they ask questions.”
“Got it.”
In her imagination, Andie could hear Horner’s words repeated a hundred times across the country, around the world, booming from every vid kiosk on every street corner, spawning hysteria. People were already edgy enough about mutants. The riots of twenty years ago were a terrible, lingering memory. Fear of some monstrous supermutant could cause panic, perhaps worse. Was that what Horner was after?
The Mutant Season Page 12
