The Mutant Prime Read Free

seen. You were tough even for me to track down. And I’m good.”
    “Very good.” She gave him a sly look, an invitation. But he ignored it.
    “Don’t you think you’ve carried this too far? Face it—you’re scared to admit that the world-famous Narlydda, artist of sky and space, is a mutant. So you cheat all of us from sharing in the legitimacy, the renown.”
    “Cheat you? That’s not how I see it.” She stood, stepped out of the foam, and stalked toward the wall-mounted sonic dryers. She was a tall, lanky woman, naked in the filtered sunlight, with an odd green cast to her skin and hair, save for a silvery white thatch at her forehead.
    The dryers hummed, removing all traces of the dream foam. Nearby, a basket of ripe peaches sat on a low glass table. Narlydda selected one and floated it into her grasp, took a bite, swallowed. “Is this the face, the body, the skin, that the public wants to see behind the marvelous Narlydda’s work?” She finished the peach, tossed the pit into the compactor. “Not bloody likely. You know better, Skerry. The critics would kill me. They’d relegate my oeuvre to a mere curiosity. Mutant kitsch.”
    “Bull. It’d shake everybody up. A good idea, if you ask me.”
    “I didn’t.” She said it archly, but there was fire behind her words.
    “What’s the use of art if it can’t stand a little controversy? Especially in this effete, technohybrid paradise? We can’t always count on the Japanese-American Consortium for scandal.”
    He was using one of her own arguments against her.
    Narlydda sank down onto the cushioned deck. “I can’t believe you’re that naive. The art critics will only approve so much controversy. Otherwise, they might lose control of the market. And as for collectors … well, they do what the critics tell them.”
    “Don’t you have any faith in your work?” His look was steely.
    “Of course I do. I’m damned good. But what are you suggesting, Skerry? That I shoot the golden goose? Thumb my nose at the art establishment? Make fools of them? I’m plenty independent, but I’m not stupid.” She slouched against a soft yellow pillow. “Fifteen years ago, when I got started, Eleanor Jacobsen had just been killed. Then old ‘Mutant Uber Alles’ Jeffers was unmasked as a lunatic fanatic.” She gave a mock salute. “And thank God for that.”
    “Thank me.”
    His voice was flat. She paused, uncertain. Surely he was joking.
    “Well, I thought it was a bad season for mutants,” she retorted. “And a good time to lay low.”
    “You weren’t alone. I remember.” He paused, lost in some private memory. Then he shook it off, returned to the offensive. “But times change.”
    “Oh, sure. I grant you that things are better than before. But even now, we still make normals nervous. Admit it, Skerry. You know it’s true.”
    He nodded grudgingly. She smiled, a point won.
    “Besides,” she added, “I like my privacy. I don’t want to be bothered by all those critics and journalists. And I’m too old to go back to being a poverty-stricken artist.”
    “So much for artistic integrity.”
    “Stuff it, Skerry!” She stood up. “I’ve got plenty of artistic integrity. Narlydda is a free agent. Nobody tells me what to do or how to do it. As for cheating the mutant community, I donate plenty to our genetic research and storehouses. You can’t accuse me of being stingy or uncaring. Even if I don’t attend clan meetings. And since when are you so concerned about the mutant community, lone wolf?”
    Skerry climbed out of the pool and stretched out on the biplast deck. His thick, graying hair was caught in a ponytail at his neck. Hallucinatory images of red concentric circles and blade waves danced around his muscled body as the foam evaporated.
    “I’ve always been involved,” he said calmly. “Behind the scenes. That’s my style.”
    “Well, what’s so different from what I’m doing?”
    “At least I don’t hide behind the mask of a