Mal-forms, deforms, halfbreeds and underscum huddled or gambled or drank or danced. On a raised stage, a naked, heavy-breasted, eyeless girl
with a grinning mouth where her navel should have been gyrated to the pound beat.
We reached the bar, a soiled curve of hardwood under a series of hard white lights. The barkeep was a bloated thing with bloodshot eyes and a black snake tongue that flickered between his wet, slit mouth and rotting teeth.
'Hey, twist. What will it be?'
'Two of those/ I said, pointing to clear grain-alcohol shots that a waitress was carrying past on a tray. She would have been beautiful except for the yellow quills stippling her skin.
Twists. We were all twists here. 'Mutant' is a dirty word if you're a mutant. They delight in referring to themselves by the Imperium's glibbest and most detrimental slang, as a badge of honour. It's a pride thing, a common habit with any underclass. Non-telepaths do it when they call themselves 'blunts'. The tall, slender people of low-grav Sylvan do it when they call themselves 'sticks'. A slur's not a slur if you use it on yourself.
Labour laws on Eechan permit twists to work as indentured labourers in the industrial mill-farms and the sap distilleries, provided they abide by the local regime and keep themselves to the licensed shanty towns huddled in the skirts of the bad end of Eechan mainhive.
The barkeep slapped two heavy shotglasses down on the counter and filled them to the brim with grain liquor from a spouted flask.
I tossed a couple of coins down and reached for my drink.
The bloodshot eyes leered at me.
'What's this? 'Perial coins? Come now, twist, you know we ain't allowed to trade in those.'
I paused. A glance down the counter showed me that the rest of the clientele were paying in mill-authorised coupons or nuggets of base metal. And that they were all staring and scowling at us. A basic mistake, right off the bat.
My companion leaned forward and sipped his drink. 'Don't get fret with two thirsty twists who's happened to have lucked into a good black score, eh?'
The barkeep smiled and his black tongue flickered. He scooped up the coins. Ain't no fret, twist. You earn 'em, I'll take 'em. Just sayin' you might not want to go flashing 'em, s'all/
We took our drinks away from the bar, looking for a table. It had taken six weeks to reach Eechan, and I was impatient for a lead.
The beat changed. Another pound number began pumping through the underfloor speakers, which to my untutored ears was simply a variation in auditory assault. But the crowd clapped and roared approval. The naked girl with the grinning stomach began rotating her hips the other way.
'I have a feeling I should be leaving this to you,' I whispered to my companion.
'You're doing fine.'
'"Don't get fret, twist…". for God-Emperor's sake… where did you learn to talk like that?'
You never hung with twists?'
'Not like this…'
'So I'm guessin' you don't s'love that genejack pound beat, twist?'
'Stop it or I'll shoot you.'
Harlon Nayl grinned and blinked with all his sixteen eyes in mock offence.
'Sup up, twist. If that ain't Phant Mastik, I'll poke my eyes out.'
'Oh, let me,' I hissed, and slugged back my shot. 'Raise 'em and sink 'em and let's have another!' I grimaced to myself as the burning spirit scalded down my oesophagus, and then scooped two more drinks from the tray of the porcupine girl as she sashayed past.
Phant Mastik sat with his cronies in a side booth. Generations of rad-storm mutation had made him an obese thing with wrinkled flesh and enlarged features. His ears were frayed fan-like swathes of veiny skin and his nose was a drooping proboscis. An incongruous tuft of thick red hair decorated his neanderthal brow.
His eyes were deep-set and black.
And sad, I thought. Tremendously sad.
He was drinking from a big tankard by snorting the alcohol up through his dangling nose. His mouth, distorted by tusk-like jags of tooth, was useless. A twist whore, with an unnecessary number of arms, was sipping her drink, smoking an obscura stick, retouching her makeup and doing something to Phant under the table that he was clearly enjoying.
