Lightspeed: Year One

“De Vries has already started talking about concentration camps,” a woman named Alex Singleton says; she glances apprehensively at Fera and then quickly back down at the napkin she’s been folding and unfolding for the past ten minutes. Alex Singleton has the striped, blonde fur of a tiger-lion hybrid, and six perfectly formed breasts. “Are you still going to be talking like this when they start rounding us up and locking us in cages?” she asks, and unfolds the napkin again.

“That’s never going to happen,” Fera replies, and scowls at Alex Singleton. “I’m not saying there aren’t a lot of scary people out there. Of course, there are. We’ve just given the bigots and xenophobes something new to hate, that’s all. We knew there’d be a difficult adjustment period, didn’t we?”

“You have the most sublime knack for understatement,” Maxwell White laughs.

And then Fera turns to Sylvia and smiles, that smile so beautiful that it’s enough to make her dizzy, to make her blush. “You’re awfully quiet over here, Syl. What do you think of all this? You think we’re all about to be rounded up and herded off to a zoo?”

“I’m afraid I’ve never been much for politics,” Sylvia says, not meaning to whisper, but her voice is almost lost in the din of the bar. “I mean, I don’t guess I’ve thought much about it.”

“Of course, she hasn’t,” Alex Singleton mutters. “Look at her. She still wears clothes. She’s pink as—”

“I think maybe what Alex is trying to say, in her own indelicate way,” the woman with iridescent scales interrupts, “is that you’re probably going to find the political ramifications of our little revolution will suddenly seem a lot more important to you, once you start showing.”

“That’s not at all what I was trying to say.”

“Some of us forget they were ever blank,” Fera says, glaring at Alex Singleton, and she stirs at her martini with an olive skewered on a tiny plastic cutlass.

The thin man sitting next to Maxwell White clears his throat and waves at Sylvia with a hand that’s really more of a paw. “Fera tells us you’re one of Collier’s patients,” he says, speaking very slowly, his lupine jaws and tongue struggling with the words. “He’s a good man.”

“I’m very happy with him,” Sylvia replies, and takes another sip of her Coke.

“He did my second stage,” the wolf man confides, and his black lips draw back in a snarl, exposing sharp yellow canines and incisors. It takes Sylvia a moment to realize that the man’s smiling.

“So,” Maxwell White says, leaning towards her, “what’s your story, Sylvia?”

“Like Fera said, I’m a journalist, and I’m preparing to write a book on the history—”

“No, that’s not what I’m asking you.”

“I’m sorry. Then I guess I didn’t understand the question.”

“Apparently not.”

“Max here is one-third complete bastard,” Fera says and jabs an ebony thumb at Maxwell White. “It was a tricky bit of bioengineering, but the results are a wonder to behold.” Half the people at the two tables laugh out loud, and Sylvia is beginning to wish that she’d stayed in her room, that she’d never let Fera Delacroix talk her into coming to Burbank in the first place.

“Is it some sort of secret, what you’re hiding under that dress?” Maxwell White asks, and Sylvia shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “It’s not a secret. I mean—”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Back off just a little, Max,” Fera says, and the man with python eyes nods his head and shrugs.

“He does this to everyone, almost,” Alex Singleton says and begins to shred her napkin. “He did it to me.”

“It’s not a secret,” Sylvia says again. “I just—”

“You don’t have to tell anyone here anything you’re not ready to tell them, Syl,” Fera assures her and kisses her cheek. Fera Delacroix’s breath smells like vodka and olives. “You know that.”

“It’s just that none of us are wearing masks,” Maxwell White says. “You might have noticed that.”

“Excuse me, please,” Sylvia says, suddenly close to tears and her heart beating like the wings of a small and terrified bird trapped deep inside her chest. She stands up too fast, bumps the table hard with her right knee, and almost spills her drink.

“You’re a son of a bitch,” Fera growls at Maxwell White, and she bares her teeth. “I hope you know that.”

“No, really, it’s okay,” Sylvia says, forcing an unconvincing smile. “I’m fine. I understand, and I’m fine. I just need some fresh air, that’s all.”

And then she leaves them all sitting there in the shadows, murmuring and laughing among themselves. Sylvia doesn’t look back, concentrates, instead, on the sound of her espadrilles against the wide stone tiles, and she makes it almost all the way to the elevators before Fera catches up with her.