![]() None of them sound precisely human anymore, and their strange, bestial laughter is almost enough to make Sylvia wish that she’d stayed home, almost enough to convince her that she’s in over her head, drowning, and maybe she isn’t ready for this, after all.Īnother secret bell rings, and the doors slide open again, releasing them into the brightly lit lobby. “And all the girls are growing antlers these days,” the leopard lisps, and everyone laughs, all of them except Sylvia. ![]() That was back before my dermals started to show.” “You were at Chimera last year?” someone asks, sounding surprised, and maybe even skeptical Sylvia thinks it must be whoever got on at the fourth floor, because she hasn’t heard this sexless voice before. “First time, I saw her at Berkeley,” the antlered girl replies. “But this will be the first time I’ve ever seen her in person.” The leopard lisps and slurs when she speaks, human vocal cords struggling with a rough feline tongue, with a mouth that has been rebuilt for purposes other than talking. ![]() “Yes, of course,” the leopard says to the antlered girl with cranberry skin. It’s much too warm inside the elevator and the air smells like sweat and musk and someone’s lavender-scented perfume. It only stops once on the way down, at the fourth floor, and she doesn’t turn to see who or what gets on. Sylvia stands all the way at the rear, her back turned to them, and stares out through the transparent wall as the elevator falls and the first floor of the hotel swiftly rises up to meet her. Sylvia steps quickly into the empty elevator, and the others follow her-the woman who is mostly a leopard, the fat man with thick brown fur and eyes like a raven, the pretty teenage girl with stubby antlers and skin the color of ripe cranberries-all of them filing in, one by one, like the passengers of some lunatic Noah’s ark. There’s still a multitude of psychiatrists who consider polymorphy a sickness, and politicians who consider it a crime, and priests who consider it blasphemy.Ī bell hidden somewhere in the wall rings, and the elevator doors slide silently open. And that if she ever tried to explain, they’d do their best to have her locked away, or worse. She knows that if they knew, if they ever found out, they’d want explanations. No one knows I’m here, she thinks again, relishing the simple nervous delight she feels whenever she imagines her mother or sisters or someone at work discovering that she lied to them all about going to Mexico, and where she’s gone, instead. The others are all naked, for the most part, and Sylvia keeps her head down, her eyes trained on the toes of her shoes, because the sight of them reflected in the polished elevator doors makes her heart race and her mouth go dry. Not quite a virgin, no, but the next worst thing, and all that pink skin to give her away, the pink skin and the silver-blue silk dress with its sparkling mandarin collar, the black espadrilles on her feet. There are several others waiting to sink with her-a murmuring, laughing handful of stitches and meat dolls busy showing off the fact that they’re not new at this, that they belong here, busy making sure that Sylvia knows they can see just exactly how birth-blank she is. She isn’t alone in the hallway, though she wishes that she were. ![]() The woman named Sylvia, who might as well still be a child, is waiting for the elevator that will carry her from the twenty-third floor of the hotel-down, down, down like a sinking stone-to the lobby and convention registration area. Series: The Tales of Gorlen Vizenfirthe.Series: From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide.People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction!. ![]()
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