She was a color shifter.
Noting the change in his expression, she pursed her lips with satisfaction. "Like it?" she inquired softly. "Like me? You must, or you wouldn't have asked for me." Glissading to the slow, unsubtle throbbing from the unseen speakers, she ran one hand up her other arm, then alternated the self-caress. "Cost me a bundle, it did, but good gengineering is expensive. And every girl needs a specialty. This one was a lot of work, but in the end it's safer than some. And there's an added benefit. I like myself this way."
Entranced in spite of himself, Cardenas followed the performance with something more than just professional detachment. Color shiftering was only one of a thousand come-ons available in the sextels of the Strip. Though milder than many, as she had pointed out, it required a permanent commitment on the part of the catalyzer. He found himself wondering what had prodded her to undergo the extensive and complicated, though not particularly dangerous, course of treatment.
Coy Joy was the recipient of gengineered chromatophores. Derived from the epidermis of members of the order Cephalopodia, they had been implanted in her skin to give her the ability not only to change color, but to create a plethora of exotic patterns simply by visualizing them. As she pranced and pirouetted before him in time to the slowly swelling, throbbing music, her slender naked form changed from pale beige to dark brown, then to black, and back to beige again. All familiar human skin tones. But royal blue was not, nor burnt umber, nor teal or chartreuse or a flickering maroon. It was a performance any of her genetic antecedents, be they octopus or squid, cuttlefish or chambered nautilus, would have admired.
Fascinated, he watched as she began to move faster. Responding to a corollaried gram, the lights in the room dimmed. As she slipped deeper and deeper into the performance, her emotions were reflected in her appearance. Rapid color changes were enhanced by the patterns that flowed like light across her skin, except that they came from within her own body. Scale patterns replaced smooth flesh, to be banished in turn first by images of flower petals and then black leather. Red stripes appeared, giving the appearance of light whip strokes, to be replaced by three circles of light that burst outward from her main erogenous zones like spreading ripples in a pond. Her nipples flared pink, then burgundy, and finally a deep, pulsing scarlet. Faster and faster the emerging circles blinked, not lights but actual color changes, enticing him and drawing him toward her as she extended her hands in his direction. Her parted lips pulsed with a soft inner, unnatural pink no lipstick could realize.
She was changing color so fast and so frequently now that her flesh had become one continuous erotic blur-teasing, tempting, a veritable living maelstrom of panchromatic curves and searing light. And all of it was very close now, inclining toward him, half blinding his dazed vision. As he felt the heat of her body, so close to his own, he found himself concentrating on her eyes-virtually the only visible part of her that did not change color. Arching forward, she leaned her face toward his. The waves of crimson that swept outward from the center of her deepened to purple as they neared her extremities. All her extremities. Mesmerized by the sight, he swallowed hard as she reached for…
Taking a deliberate, deep breath, he drew himself reluctantly back from the abyss into which, on another day, on another occasion, he might gratefully have allowed himself to be drawn. Raising his left arm, he activated and flashed his ident bracelet. Her expression fell alarmingly. As if an internal switch had been thrown, the erotic panoply of pattern and color vanished from her exposed flesh. Once again she stood before him slim, naked, and brutally unadorned.
"This is a legal sextel, and I'm fully licensed," she snarled angrily. "What do you want? My health certificate was revalidated only last month, and I'm up on all my taxes. Has someone complained? If someone's complained, you've got the wrong-"
"Take it easy. I need some information. Nothing compromising, I promise you. And I've paid for two hours, so your commission is secure no matter what you do-or don't do. Look on it as time off."
"Fuck you. Or I guess not. I'm not telling you a thing, fedoco."
Cardenas sighed and took another drag of his self-chilling beer. It was starting to fill him up. Sometimes, being nice, being polite, could be counterproductive. That would do neither him nor the sylph any good.
"We can do this here or at the station. You know it'll go better for you here. If you end up coming with me-or I guess not-your employers won't be happy no matter what story you feed them."
She slumped, her breasts bouncing, and took a seat on the sand in front of him. She made a point of staying out of arm's reach. "Two hours. I hope to hell you haven't got two whole hours' worth of stupid questions."
"So do I." He shifted his own position on the sand and, after a moment's thought, helped himself to another cerveza from the cooler. The automatonic pelican was studiously ignoring him. "I'm interested in anything you can tell me about one of your regulars. Might have called himself George Anderson, but more likely went by the name of Wayne Brummel."
Her head jerked up and around. "If you know he's one of my regulars, then you probably know more about him than I do. I don't have anything to say. You want to skip me to the station, I'll dig out some stable clothes and we'll go, and to hell with Administration. If you want to know about Wayne, why come to me? Why not habla him yourself?"
As ever, Cardenas's tone remained unchanged. "Because a few days ago, somebody had him extirpated."
As her eyes widened and her lower jaw took a notable drop, her entire nude body straight away turned a blindingly pure ivory-white. Here, Cardenas realized as he looked away, was a witness he would not have to intuit. She could no more conceal her emotions from him than she could fly to the moon.
Although, he saw compassionately, she could no doubt imitate the flight.
EIGHT
IN CARDENAS'S EXPERIENCE IT WAS A GENERAL rule that whores did not cry. But there was no mistaking the anguish in Coy Joy's eyes: more than one would have expected a sylph to shed for a dead client, even one who might have been gentle, straight, and tipped lavishly.
"This Brummel was more to you than just a steady mark?"
She nodded, her face contorted as if she was trying to weep but had forgotten how. Continuing to reflect the emotions boiling within her, the blinding pallor of her skin had given way to a light brown flecked with intermittent blobs of uncontrolled blueness that expanded and contracted in time to her sobs. Through the ambiguous miracle of gengineering, Coy Joy had moved far, far beyond wearing her emotions on her sleeve. She wore them everywhere. Though it was all but impossible to avoid looking at her attractive, naked, color-saturated body, Cardenas struggled hard to maintain a professional detachment. If he did not, he sensed he would get nothing out of her, no matter what threats he might propound.
"I understand your concern, and I'm sorry for your loss. Your reaction answers my question, but I promise that you'll feel better by tomorrow morning."
Her face streaked with tears and softly pulsating indigo splotches, she looked up at him over her cupped hands. "How-how do you know?" she sniffed.
Without elaborating, he simply smiled and told her, "I can tell. Brummel was good to you?"