Primary Inversion (Saga of the Skolian Empire) Paperback Read Free Page B

biomech system had reached the limit
of what was considered safe even with state-of-the-art bioengineering
technology.
    Besides, it wouldn’t hurt me to practice my English without
a computer “whispering” in my ear. Program end, I thought. As the menu
vanished, I spoke to the waitress in the best English I could muster without
help. “Is okay there we sit?” I motioned at a booth next to the far wall.
    “Certainly.” The red color receded from her face, and my own
cheeks cooled. She glanced at Helda and Taas, who both looked normal again, and
her shoulders lowered slightly. The muscles in my shoulders relaxed as well.
    She took some big cards from a nearby table and headed for
the booth. When we followed her, she looked back at Rex and blushed again.
    Following her glance to Rex, I noticed how tightly the pants
of his uniform fit. They clung to his well-muscled legs like supple black
leather, menacing and sexy at the same time. And those big hands. How did they
feel when they—
    “Why are you staring at me?” Rex asked.
    “What?” I flushed. “I wasn’t.” Block, I thought. As
the Block psicon flashed in my mind, the waitress’s reaction to Rex receded in
my thoughts. His pants looked normal again. Well, almost normal. She was right;
it was sexy the way they fit him. I had never noticed it before, at least not
consciously.
    “Always,” Helda muttered as we walked to the booth. “Always
they want him.”
    “You mean Rex?” Taas asked.
    “Ya. Always.” She tilted her head at me. “The boys always
want her.”
    I laughed. “I seem to remember a few of them wanted Rex too.”
    At the sound of my laugh, the waitress jumped like a skittercolt.
She stopped at the booth and fumbled with the cards she had brought, dropping
them onto the scratched tabletop. Then she stood blinking at us. So we all
stopped and watched her, waiting to see what she would do next. After a moment
she turned pink again.
    “She wants us to sit down,” Taas decided.
    “So let’s sit.” Rex squeezed past her, putting his hand on
her tiny waist in the process. Her face went from pink to bright crimson. Then
the rest of us sat down.
    The waitress spoke to Rex. “Would you like a drink?”
    He answered in Skolian. “That voice of yours makes me want
to hold you all night.”
    “If you get bored with him,” Helda added, “you can have us.”
She motioned at Taas, who sat across the table. “Me and him. He’s got style, I’ve
got muscles.”
    “Excuse me?” the waitress asked in English.
    “Leave her alone,” I said. I picked up one of the cards she
had put on the table. The heading on it was made from clear tubes filled with a
fluorescent yellow gas. jack’s place, it
announced. Projection holos floated above speckled patches on the card, each 3D
image displaying a dish of food. When I turned the card, the holos showed
different views of their offerings.
    My translation program gave “synthetic meat sandwich” as the
meaning of Hamburger. I tried Hot dog and got “synthetic meat
sandwich.” When Beef Bliss came up as “synthetic meat sandwich,” I gave
up. Didn’t Jack serve anything else? I looked at the others. “What do you want?”
    “Ale is fine,” Rex said. Helda and Taas nodded agreement.
    I spoke to the waitress in English. “You ale do?”
    She peered at me. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
    “Ale,” I repeated. “Got any?”
    “You mean beer?”
    I squinted at her. “I think.”
    “Dark or light?”
    What did that mean? “Any kind. You prick.” No, that wasn’t
right. She was turning red again. I made another try. “You pick.” I waved my
hand at the others. “Four beers.”
    “All right.” And off she went, but not before she gave Rex another
one of her shy smiles.
    Across the room, the door opened. A group came into the bar—and
this time when my shoulders went rigid it was my own reaction, not anyone else’s.
    Traders. There were six of them now, the five we had seen