The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [109]
A bemused Whispr looked over the top of his glass. “Of course we will. You just told us that you’re going to pay.”
“I did? Pay no attention to my aimless ramblings.” His small body forced him to rise and lean forward in order to hold his raised glass over the center of the table. “Here’s to the unraveling of secrets, the uncovering of information, the explanation of impossible metallurgy, and mutual profit.” Polycarb glasses clinked.
It was about then that the fight started.
The fracas was initiated by two Naturals. It was not related to the presence of the visitors from Savannah, it carried no Machiavellian subtext, and it had been sparked by a difference of opinion as old as mankind. One man took exception to something that another man said, or was perceived to have said, or he imagined to have been said, to the woman who was sitting with the offended. An escalation of execration ensued that rapidly devolved into physical conflict.
The smaller man pushed the larger man. The larger man pushed the smaller man, who fell into his girlfriend, who despite the presence of the subtle gripping upholstery beneath her butt that had been engineered to hold wavering drunks in place promptly toppled off the stool on which she had been sitting. As it invariably does in such situations, bawling led inexorably to brawling.
Picking up a chair, the bigger man threw it at his opponent, who ducked lithely. Sailing over the bar, the decidedly unaerodynamic furniture struck the unsuspecting human bartender a blow sufficient to knock him unconscious. He had not seen the errant seat coming his way because he had been in the process of trying to alert the local authorities to the budding conflict. Recovering, the sniveling girlfriend’s determined defender responded with a twirl and leg sweep redolent of the best capoeira to be seen in Salvador’s backstreet rodas. Taken by surprise, the bigger man still managed to stumble clear of the attempted takedown.
Unfortunately, this sent him crashing onto a table occupied by two Meld couples. Unwillingly transformed from observers to participants, they commenced to pummel the larger Natural. As one of them boasted four arms and the other a set of powerful tentacles, he instantly found himself subjected to a serious mauling. Seeing that the matchup had now become unequal, several hitherto uninvolved bystanders who happened to be acquaintances of the bigger man promptly joined in.
By now a good portion of the bar’s population was engaged in ritual battle, motivated by increasingly angry words and fueled by various distillations of grains and tubers, not to mention a soupçon of exceedingly powerful synthetics. Naturals scuffled with each other and with Melds, and vice versa. An increasingly anxious Ingrid saw no evidence of any Natural-Meld sociocultural war here. Though on ample display, the loathing and dislike being exhibited was entirely egalitarian. Naturals bashed Naturals and Melds clobbered Melds with equal enthusiasm.
“This way!” Painfully aware that a superior intellect was as useful in dealing with a conflagration of drunks as a bucket of magnesium powder was in putting out a kitchen fire, a concerned Wizwang hurried to lead his visitors clear of the escalating conflict. Hugging the railing that separated bar from swamp the three of them worked their way around the edge of the overwater platform, striving to make it to the exit before any of them could be caught up in the increasingly bloody wrangle.
Having chosen an inopportune moment to attend to a personal matter, the bar’s bouncer finally appeared in the entrance whose succor Ingrid, Whispr, and their host sought. In fact, he did not merely appear in the entrance—he occupied it. The initial attraction of heavy mass-muscle melds had faded as soon as it was realized that the caloric intake and exercise needed to maintain them required more dedication than most people were willing to contribute. However, the big muscle meld was still sought after by those for whom it represented a professional as opposed to merely a cosmetic