The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [6]
Sprawled above reeds and sawgrass on four separate walkway-connected platforms, Swallower’s Pawn and Supply looked as if it had been hit by a bomb. In actuality it had been, and on more than one occasion. Following each incident the resilient proprietor rebuilt his business; bigger, better, and sloppier than ever. Hunks of scavenged machinery were piled high and haphazardly on two of the platforms. They showed little rust. Nobody used equipment in the American South anymore that was susceptible to rust. Not when modern materials and coatings were widely and cheaply available that could ward off or prevent it.
Such resources could not, however, prevent swamp growths from epiphytes to mosses from taking root in odd corners of Swallower’s inventory. Sometimes he would spray retardant. More often he just let the growths flourish. As long as his customers could get a general idea of what lay underneath the thriving vegetation, he would declare, that was good enough.
Slowing, Jiminy coasted to a stop in the small parking area reserved for scoots. Sturdy posts kept it well above the high-tide line and adjacent to the dock. There a pair of battered, scored, heavily used skims lay next to one another, floating like giant narrow leaves on the dark water.
Swallower’s shop and office were part of the circular main building—circular in shape the better to withstand frequent hurricane winds and tidal surges. Its supporting platform anchored deep in the muck that passed for ground, it rose two stories high. The few windows on the lower floor were seriously security screened. It was assumed by visitors that the second floor was where Swallower dwelled in sybaritic and debased comfort. “Assumed,” because no one had ever been invited to see the owner’s living quarters. Those familiar with Swallower did not press for an invitation. There are some things mankind was not meant to know.
A pair of great white herons lifted off a pylon as the two men advanced via a raised walkway that led, like the leg of some giant dismembered crustacean, from the scoot parking area toward the main structure. Silvery metal glistened inside a wrecked and salvaged industrial-grade water purification block. Within the old machine’s guts something dark and hirsute wandered slow and deliberate: a bird-eating spider that had claimed it for a home. A splash sounded from the high reeds where a family of capybara, taking no chances, made haste to remove themselves from the presence of man. Long-established residents of the southeastern coast, they were good eating and knew it.
Having been alerted to the scoot’s approach by the shop’s automated outlying security, Swallower awaited them within the establishment’s central showroom. The large, high-ceilinged, circular space was crammed to the rafters with merchandise of every imaginable shape, size, and function: everything from antiques salvaged from Old Savannah to drums holding packets of the latest liquid jewelry in suspension. Access to the doughnut-shaped central counter and the single-person elevator at its nexus fluctuated according to the constantly shifting heaps of goods stacked on the floor. Having utilized the shop’s services on previous occasions, Whispr and Jiminy were able to approach the proprietor without the aid of a map.
Swallower was not the only occupant of the congested floor display. At least a dozen cats prowled the piles and patrolled the spun-carbon struts that supported the second floor. Natural and melded felines coexisted as freely and easily as did their human counterparts. All were rescued animals. A man of many contradictions, it was known that the shop owner would blow off the legs of a prospective scam artist without a second