Phoenix Café by Gwyneth Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

themselves to physical imitation of the aliens. “He” had been altered before birth in the customary way, and was supposed to have no human sex, male or female. But he was grinning wildly all over his noseless face. “Does she have their place in her belly? Did she let you put your finger inside? Did you get her wet on you, did you feel the claw? How I’d like to have one of their women, if I had a dick you know: and stick it in and feel that claw c lutching me. Or is she made like human women down there? Does she m- menstruate?” He shuddered in thrilling disgust.
    Mâtho started to get upset. Rajath’s crude language distressed him.
    “What does it matter?” he protested. “Whatever traits they have given her, she is not a woman. They don’t have sexes; they are all exactly the same. He is an alien, we must remember that! We must not be fooled by his disguise.”
    “She’s not an alien,” corrected Joset, the doubter. “She’s the daughter of one of Maitri’s human servants: conditioned, characterized, stereotyped into believing herself one of them. She’s not an Aleutian, she’s a dangerous lunatic. You’re a brave man, Mish. I wouldn’t have liked to be alone with her. Did you ask her about that latest conversion ceremony? Have you snagged the coverage? Nasty! Very, very nasty…”
    “The missionaries don’t kill,” muttered Mâtho, scrupulously fair. “It’s assisted suicide; it’s quite legal if it’s done in private. It’s not legal to watch.”
    “Is it my fault if some grasping newshandler has been trawling the emergency services?”
    “We talked about God,” Misha whispered drowsily. “And death and immortality. But sex was there. The subtext of our conversation was all sex.”
    Rajath and Joset crowed and slapped each other on the back. “Michael Junior is in love with the alien throat-slasher!” howled Rajath, and broke into a fragment of popular song. “Oh, sweet mystery! Across the galaxy! Fated we meet, to be each other’s doom—” Mâtho looked ready to weep, torn between shame and guilty fascination. Misha remembered the inner torture chamber; the haunted darkness of Catherine’s eyes. He was feeding his friends with gobbets of her agonized flesh and blood.
    He swung himself to his feet. “Tomorrow I shall make flowers. Blue lilies and orange bellflowers. It’s an allusion to her gown. I’ll send them to her. She finds the sexual organs of our plants irresistibly arousing.”
    He swept his duster coat from the foot of the couch and tossed it around his shoulders. It had begun to melt. It would soon be in perfect tattered form for the passeggiata. He resumed his black beret and studied the effect, in his inward eye, with brief but exacting attention.
    “Don’t be scared, Joset. She’s given up the missionary work, she told me so herself. Miss Catherine will need a new distraction, and we shall provide it. But we don’t want to seem too keen. Let’s go. Out, anywhere! To the Café!”
    He plunged his hands to the wrists into a crystal nautilus vase that stood on the glass floor. “The City Manager was there, talking to lord Maitri. He was watching me very closely.”
    “The Manager!” breathed Mâtho, stunned.
    “So old Sattva ghosted the party.” Joset grimaced knowledgeably. “He’s a tricky customer. Did you manage to eavesdrop? Hear anything about increased law enforcement?”
    “Not a word,” confessed Misha. “I wasn’t interested. But let me tell you about the food. It was bizarre. Roast peacocks with their feathers, whole antelopes with their heads and horns, hedgehogs in fish sauce, small mountains of extinct fruits, and everything tasting horribly of yeast and detergent.”
    They stormed through the house and courtyard and out into the streets. It was growing dark at last: a darkness that would be unbroken by street-lamps or commercial displays. The Aleutians did not understand why anyone would need municipal lighting. Each of them bowed for