The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [40]
“Come around to the back.” Wired to the reptile’s brain the permanently affixed voicebox crackled encouragingly. “I’ve just finished up for the day, but I always have time for another customer. You are another customer, aren’t you, Whispr-man? Otherwise you’re wasting both our time.”
“I hope I am.” Foolishly Whispr realized he had addressed his reply to the uncomprehending reptile. Meeting the gaze of the quadrupedal guard he found the latter’s eyes cold and empty.
Everyone knew why the Alligator Man was so called, but it was one thing to hear a secondhand description of the melds that had been performed and quite another to encounter them in the flesh.
Whispr’s host smiled. It was both impressive and off-putting.
“Call me Gator.”
For thousands of years it had been a customary coming-of-age rite for young men in the middle and upper Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea to scar their bodies as an homage to the sacred crocodile in the belief that doing so would allow them to partake of its strength. This was done by using a sharp knife to make multiple one- or two-centimeter-long slits in the skin and flesh of a young man’s back. Ash from a recent fire was then rubbed into the bloody open wounds. As the slits healed over the ash they formed raised bumps that strikingly resembled the ridged scutes of a crocodile.
Contemporary melding technology allowed such modifications to be taken to extremes undreamed of by Sepik villagers.
Whispr could not help but stare. No doubt his host was used to the attention, expected it, probably even welcomed it. Whispr found himself speculating on Gator’s social life—and more. Short of encountering an alligator woman via a box portal his appearance was not likely to draw the interest of any member of the opposite sex—or of any sex, for that matter. Still, Gator was doubtless satisfied with the transformation he had paid to undergo or he would not have done it. The man’s succinct explanation notwithstanding, Whispr could not keep from continuing to wonder why.
In an age of melds, there was no accounting for individual decisions. As for himself Whispr quite liked alligator. Preferably the tail, fried and dipped in dressing and then slapped between the two halves of a fresh baguette.
The melds made his host look bigger. Most prominently in the face, though the rest of the body was in proportion. Unable to avoid staring at the results, Whispr could not imagine what it had all cost. It was clear that whichever surgeon or consortium had performed the work had been especially skilled.
Gator’s jawbones had been extended and strengthened. Human teeth had been removed and a full complement of crocodilian orthodontics installed in their place. When the man closed his mouth, selected white canines jutted outside his closed jaws just as they did in his reptilian namesake. Black slit, gold-flecked pupils replaced round blue ones. The external ears had been removed. At least, Whispr noted as he shook hands with his host, the man kept the prominent claws on his hands trimmed.
Given Gator’s customized appearance it was hardly surprising that of all the melds the man had undergone, some of them self-evidently painful, the most extensive work had been done on his skin. Even the tail that had been appended to his lower vertebrae and now extended behind him for a distance of more than a meter did not draw as much scrutiny as his modified epidermis. Tails of all kinds were a common meld especially favored by women. Crocodilian skin was not.
The nodules and scutes looked as if they had covered Gator from birth. Ranging in hue from dark green to black they shone in the room’s light like fine leather. Which they were. A side benefit of the aesthetics was that their owner was encased in the same natural armor that protected everything from caimans to garails. Eyeing his host, Whispr could not tell how fast the man was capable of moving, but between teeth, tail, and tough hide