Xenoform by Mr Mike Berry Read Free Book Online Page B

They walked through a sound-cancellation chamber and the music hit them like a wave.
    The club was dimly-lit by the hectic glow of holo-construct women who danced amongst the clubbers like human lanterns, the colours blazing from them changing quickly in time with the music. Sometimes they flared with different shades, sometimes the colours came together and synched for a while. Real people were dancing with some of them, flesh and force field moving as if one.
    The bar was a boomerang-shaped swathe of glass on a suspensor cushion. Drinks stood solidly on what appeared to be only a green nimbus of light. A robot like a golden octopus was serving several drinks at once. People paid by inserting cards into its palms, having money automatically transferred over the net if they were buttonheads, or handing over hard money if they were of the type who liked to be hard to trace. They were crammed three-deep at the bar, clamouring for the machine’s attention.
    The dance floor was about a centimetre deep in black water. Occasionally, showers of dry ice pellets shot from the walls between the legs of the dancers, where they twisted and twirled as they sublimed in the water, dappled with pinprick laser lights. Some sort of machine was swooping around in the shadows near the ceiling – something quite big with wings. On a high balcony, revellers sloshed drinks down onto the dance floor as they thrashed along to the music.
    In a bat-winged plastic pulpit, the DJ was deep in the vibe. He was playing a sustained sinistro bassline on one deck, trimming and EQ-ing by DNI, dropping in hypnophone screams and wavering electric howls from the other. His tattooed torso was studded with implanted diamonds.
    ‘Not as bad as when I was here last, actually,’ opined Whistler to Roberts, leaning in close to be heard over the noise.
    ‘I’m going for a piss,’ Roberts replied, stalking off in a flurry of coat-tails.
    ‘Let’s dance then, shall we?’ asked Whistler, turning to Sofi.
    Sofi shrugged and disappeared into the crowd, hips already snaking, already drawing some looks. Spider and Tec, characteristically enough, went to the bar. Whistler, propelled by the beat, joined the dancers in the water. She worked her way into the rhythm, trying not to show too much of her natural grace and athleticism – trying, in other words, not to move too much like a skilled fighter – but she soon began to get lost in the pounding of the sinistro bass, dark splashes marking every footfall, dry ice pellets shooting like meteorites around her. An incredible human bestiary moved about her. Twining tentacles, symbiotic machinery, metallic body-parts, feathers, scales. Scales.
    He had the most breathtaking skin of scales. A buttonhead – tall, good-looking, naked down to the waist, well-muscled, dancing in perfect, hectic time. His skin seemed to be a brilliant orange, but in the coloured lasers the scales winked with green and red and blue such that it was hard to tell their true colour for sure. He was lost in the tune, but not so lost that he wasn’t edging closer to Whistler. Pretending not to notice, she let him.
    When he got within arm’s reach, he looked up briefly, appraising her lithe form, her matt grey skin, lined with blue, which flashed through the slits in her jacket and combats, her deceptively delicate face. His eyes were golden slits – snake eyes. He nodded to her and smiled, barely pausing in his work. She danced closer.
    ‘Hey,’ she shouted over the music. ‘Nice skin.’
    ‘You too,’ he answered, winding down to a near-standstill. He brushed a hand through his short-shaved hair, misting the air with fresh sweat.
    ‘What is it? Lizard scales?’
    ‘Dragon,’ he said seriously. ‘Well, s’meant to be…’
    ‘I like it,’ she said, and the hunger in her voice was genuine enough, if not of the nature that he thought.
    ‘You’re a meathead,’ he pointed out. ‘You’re a dying breed.’
    ‘What?’ Whistler shouted,