Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

First Empire crashed and burned. The starport was just a vast open space, crowded with starships of all shapes and sizes. Big brutal configurations, with little aesthetics and less grace. They were built for efficiency, and nothing else. About what you’d expect of an age that gave its ships numbers instead of names.
    Dominic and Glory told a whole bunch of lies to the starport control tower as to why they’d come back to Heartworld so unexpectedly, invoking their authority as Defender and Investigator to get out of the ship and off the starport as fast as possible. Owen got rid of the energy gyves, with his captors’ permission, since they’d only attract attention.
    A commandeered luggage trolley on antigrav floaters got them to the edge of the starport, and then they set about walking through the city to the Imperial Palace. There wasn’t much traffic, on the streets or in the skies. When Owen inquired about this, he was told that most people preferred to use the ubiquitous transfer portals, which could teleport you directly to your destination. When Owen not unreasonably demanded to know why they weren’t using them, Glory explained that they were programmed to teleport people, and she was pretty sure Owen didn’t qualify. God alone knew how much energy it would take to teleport whatever it was he’d become. So they walked. No one would notice; lots of people liked to walk in the city. For all sorts of reasons.
    Owen strode along between Dominic and Glory, and no one paid him any attention at all. After a while, he wasn’t surprised. The wide streets were packed with strange and exotic people, many only borderline human as Owen understood the term. Everyone was talking at once, and no one seemed to be listening. The air was full of all kinds of music, blasting from every direction at once, and songs drifted on the air like clouds. The buildings were all bright primary colors, soaring up into the sky. Advertisements flashed on and off, the razor-bright holos jumping out of everywhere and haranguing anyone stupid enough to make eye contact. Half of them offered goods and services Owen didn’t even recognize. Everywhere he looked, the people and the ads and the storefronts were overpoweringly loud and in your face. And oh, the bright and glorious people, thronging through the boulevards, out and about to see and be seen, walking proudly like birds of paradise; aristocrats of the greatest Empire Humanity had ever known.
    Even if they didn’t all look like people. There were those who walked in their bones, wrapped in transparent flesh and skin, with just the faintest traces of blue and scarlet ganglia, for contrast. There were people who flew through the perfumed air on pure white feathery wings. People so wide and heavy that the ground shuddered under their every step, people with any number of limbs, or grafted protuberances that must have been alien in origin. And, of course, the many different sexes. People with genitals like the pulpy petals of some unknown flower, or spiked flails, or fleshy plug sockets. Hermaphrodites, with three or four sets of genitals. Owen didn’t know what to do with himself when one of them winked at him.
    “Don’t stare,” Dominic said sternly. “Makes you look like a tourist.”
    “Couldn’t we have flown to the palace?” said Owen, just a little plaintively. “I think I’m going into culture shock.”
    “No one flies anymore, except for the winged wonders up there,” said Glory. “People either walk or use the transfer portals. Flying in a ship is . . . unusual. It would be noticed. Walking is fine. People walk to boast of their latest forms and adaptations, using their example to try and convert others to their particular cause or fashion.”
    Owen listened, but kept on looking about him. Even the wildest areas of his Empire had nothing to compare with this. He was beginning to feel like the barbarian Glory had named him, dazzled by his first glimpse of true civilization. Everywhere he looked he saw extreme forms and changes that had only the barest links to the basic human norm. Owen had to wonder how many changes you could make to your body and still be human inside. He remembered the Hadenmen and Wampyr of his own time, and shuddered briefly. The one thing he didn’t see on the streets was anyone who looked like him. He felt obscurely lonely, in the middle of this exotic, alien crowd. His gaze fell upon areas marked Enter at Your Own Risk , and drew