We approached.
Phant's minders got up immediately to block us. A homed brute and a twist whose entire head was a wrinkled skin hood for an outsized eye. They both reached into their robes.
'How you tonight, twists?' puffed Horn-brute.
We fine. No fret, just s'gotta talk to the Phant,' said Nayl.
Ain't not gonna happen,' said Big-eye, his voice muffled by his clothing. God-Emperor knew where his mouth was.
'I s'think so, when we have us such a scalding black score, him to enjoy' Nayl didn't shrink back.
++Let them through++ Phant said, his voice conveyed by an augmetic carry-sound unit. A vox-implant. Few twists had the money for that. Phant was certainly a player.
The minders stepped aside and allowed us into the booth. We sat.
++Go on++
Twist, I s'tell ya, we be in the market for section-alpha brainjobs. We s'hear you got one for the begging.'
++Hear? Where?++
'Round and around/ said Nayl.
++Uh huh. And you are?++
'Just two twists s'gonna earn us a deal/1 said.
++That right?++
We sat in silence for a moment as Phant called for more drinks. The girl was now combing and fixing her hair and doing her make-up. One of her many hands was on my knee under the table.
She winked at me.
With an eye growing from the end of her tongue.
++What I got, ain't no section-alpha, twists. S'section-alpha-plus++
That is s'why we came to you, Phant! S'why! No upper limit for our buy!'
++How U gonna pay?++
Nayl dropped one of the ingots onto the table.
'Pure mellow-yellow. And we got the bars. Much as it takes. So…? S'when-where?'
++I gotta talk to some people++
'Kay'
++Where can I reach U?++
The Twist and Sleep.'
++You sleep tight. Maybe I call you++
The audience was over. We took a table of our own near the raised stage and stayed for a couple more rounds, making a show of appreciating the indecent writhings of the girl with the belly mouth.
After an hour or so, we saw Phant and his retinue leave by a side door. 'Let's go/ I said. We finished our drinks and rose. Nayl gave porcupine girl a handful of coins and patted her bottom. Her quills bristled, but she smiled.
The minder didn't spare us a look with either of his heads as we left. Out of sight, round the corner of the dreary barstoop, I handed Nayl one of a pair of brass stimm-injectors and we detoxed quickly to rid our bodies of the alcohol dulling our systems.
It was the dead of night, but there was little darkness. The great curve of Eechan's ring systems glowed with reflecting sunlight and shone like bands of diamond-crusted platinum.
The main street of the shanty was a rutted, water-logged morass, and flaking boardwalk pavements edged the rows of slumping, dingy buildings. Glowing signs and the few street lamps reflected in the street puddles.
Beyond the shanty, to the west, the alpine slopes of the mainhive rose against the stars, like a dark mountain of trash decorated with a million little lights. To the east were the stacked, grubby mushrooms of the mill-farms and the distilleries, venting brown steam and yellow pollutants into the wind.
To the south, in the verdant farm lands, plains of thick, rubbery growth, we could see the running lights of several vast harvesters. They were segmented juggernauts; beetle-like machines the size of small starships, chewing up die greenbelt with massive reaping mandibles and digesting it through vast interior vats and worklines. Flues lined their backs like spines and spewed moisture waste and atomised sap up high into the atmosphere, where it
drifted and fell again like rain. Everything in the twist shanty was sticky with sap-fall. The rain was tacky and thick like syrup. The street puddles were viscous. Downpipes glugged and throbbed rather than pouring. Everywhere, there was a stench of decomposing plantfibre and liquefied cellulose.
'Do you think he took the bait?' I asked.
Nayl nodded. You could see he was interested. Gold's rare on Eechan. His eyes lit when I showed him that ingot.'
'He'll want to check us, though.'
'Of course. He's a businessman/
We walked along the street, hoods raised against the sticky rain. There were a few mutants around, all of them dressed in rancid tatters. They shambled along, lurked in doorways around covered braziers, or shared obscura bottle-pipes out of the rain in dim breezeways.
