The five ladies went trooping off the stage, their sassy little buttocks wiggling provocatively. “Where are they going?” Rohan asked. “Where are all the lovely ladies going?” he repeated, and felt a tightness in his chest at the sadness of it all.
“Gone to housewives everyone,” Franz said.
“What an awful waste,” Rohan groaned. “We need an expert commission—girls keep turning into wives. It’s a scandal. We need an investiga—”
A drum roll cut through his slurring words. All the lights in the club went out save for a single stabbing spotlight pinning the stage. Into that cone of light leaped a girl. She seemed to be flying, so high was her grand jeté, and the long cloak flowing behind her added to the illusion of flight. The music resumed, a primitive, urgent beat. She stood front and center, her features covered by an elaborate mask and headdress. All that could be seen was an unnaturally pointed chin and the glitter of her eyes. She caught the edges of the cloak with long claws set with light-emitting diodes, and dropped it to reveal an elaborate costume, far more concealing than was usual for a stripper. Rohan wondered if the claws were sewn into gloves?
She began to dance. No harsh gyrating and suggestive posing. She danced with breath-catching grace. Her arms wove patterns, and the diodes left streaks of multicolored fire in the air around her. Layers began to fall away. The crowd shouted its approval as each piece of clothing fell. Another slithered to the stage floor and a long silky tail covered with sleek red and white fur unfolded and wove around her like a dancing snake. The shouts became roars.
The girl danced in close to her sweating admirers. Hands groped for her like blind babies seeing the tit, but she always eluded them. Unless those reaching hands held credit spikes. Those she allowed to be thrust into the credit deck that adorned the low-slung belt that clasped her waist. Rohan sat rigid, fingers gripping the edge of the table, willing her to remove the mask. Show me … show me … She approached their table. The young men leaned across the table, spikes extended like some commercial metaphor for sex. Rohan couldn’t move. He just watched as another layer fell away to reveal pale cream and red fur that covered her flanks and belly and rose like a spear point between her breasts. There was a gasp from the audience.
John fell back against the booth. “The Pope’s holy whickerbill!” he breathed.
The music quickened in tempo. Fire sparked from the tips of her long claws, the jewels and bells on the mask and headdress set up a hysterical ringing. She spun, faster and faster, then another great leap took her back center stage. Legs widely braced, hands cupping her breasts. She slowly slid them up her chest, across her neck, lifted the mask and headdress and flung them aside. She was alien and yet familiar. Rohan devoured her features. Noting the tiny upturned nose with flaring nostrils, pricked ears thrusting through the wild tumble of cream and red curls. They were tufted on each point. Cat eyes of emerald green.
“An alien,” Bret said, and his voice held both disgust and lust.
Blackout.
The lights came up. The stage was empty. Excited conversation danced around the table.
“Cosmetic surgery?”
“No. Gotta be one of those Cara half-breeds.”
“Thought we killed all of them.”
“Should have. Disgusting.”
“Hey, turn out the lights, close your eyes, and think of it as exotic underwear,” John said with a laugh.
The room seemed to be ballooning and receding about Rohan. His heart thundered in his chest, and his breath came in short pants. An erection nudged urgently at his fly. He staggered out of the booth.
“Sir?”
“Are you all right?”
“Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer.
“Wait,” Tracy said. “A Cara/human half-breed? There’s no such thing. First off, it’s illegal.” The young officer pointed at the Hajin waitress. “And second, our equipment might line up, but there’s no way we’d produce offspring.”
Rohan waved an admonishing finger at him. “Ah, but remember that the Cara were master geneticists. They’d been blending genes from every known alien race long before humans arrived on the scene. They were eager to add us to the mix, and couldn’t believe that the League was serious when the ban on alien-human comingling was put in place.”
Tracy took a sip of his drink. He knew from his studies that the Cara had no physical norm. They tailored bodies to suit a given situation. They changed sex on a whim. For thousands of years, they had been harvesting, mixing, and manipulating the genetic material from every race they met. A task easily accomplished, since the Cara spent their lives aboard vast trading ships that traveled between systems, or in the shops supplied by those ships. For the Cara, the greatest sin was uniformity. They believed that diversity was the key to survival and advancement. It had all been horrifying to the humans, and human purity became an obsession. Most genetic research and manipulation was outlawed for fear that the Cara might find a way to affect the basic human genome. Tracy said as much to Rohan.
The older man shook his head. “Yes, but that didn’t discourage the Cara. They found volunteers, disaffected humans hostile to the League, and produced several thousand half-breeds.” He picked up his glass and set it down over and over. Linking the circles formed by condensation into a concentric pattern.
“So, why make this girl look so different?” Tracy asked. “They could have made the offspring look like anything. Even exactly like a human.”
Rohan looked up. “And that was their mistake. That’s what they should have done. Instead, they tried to temper any backlash by tweaking the genes to make the children attractive to humans. Or at least what they thought would be attractive. They had noticed that we like cats. Hence Sammy.” Rohan refilled his glass and took a long pull. “What they didn’t realize was that it would make the kids just that much more horrifying.”
“But you weren’t disgusted by … Sammy?”
“Samarith, her full name was Samarith. And no, I wasn’t disgusted, but I had a taste for the exotic. They knew that. And used it.”
Rohan’s stomach was roiling, his head pounding. Swaying, he made his way through the anteroom and out onto the street. The sea-tinged air cleared his head somewhat. He found the corner of the building and went looking for the stage door.
What are you doing? the rational part of his mind wailed.
“I’m going to compliment her on her dancing,” he said aloud.
And ask about her life. Explore her thoughts. Share her dreams. Fuck her blind.
He found the side entrance and entered. Inside, the smell of sweat and rancid makeup seeped from the walls and hung in the air. Rohan swallowed hard and tried to find his way past the lighting control panel. He turned down a hall and found himself pressed against the wall as a gaggle of girls came hurrying past, heading for the stage. In the confines of that narrow space, they rubbed against him. He could feel the warmth of their bare skin even through his clothes, and his erection hardened again. He found another hallway, but this one was guarded by a tall man with a pendulous belly. Rohan tried to walk past and was blocked. The bouncer’s exposed biceps displayed military tattoos and muscle now overlaid with fat. The overhead lights gleamed on his shaved head.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I wish to see the young lady who just finished performing.”
“You and every other aristo …” The man glanced down at Rohan’s crotch. “Who stores his brains in his cock.”
Rohan gaped at him. “My good man, you can’t address me in that way.”
“Yeah,