The Outpost by Mike Resnick

clipped Billy Karma cleanly on the chin, then stood back as the Reverend slowly collapsed.
    “You can’t beat a being who prays to Balaxtibo, the God of Self-Defense!”!" shouted Argyle triumphantly.
    “He’s one of the 37?” asked Baker.
    “Right,” said Argyle. “Though my personal favorite is Wilxyboeth.”
    “Which one is that?”
    “The god of sexual potency.”
    The Reverend Billy Karma groaned and sat up on the floor, gingerly rubbing his chin.
    Argyle extended his hand. “No hard feelings?”
    “None,” said Karma. “Pull me up, will you?” When he was standing, he turned to Reggie. “Hey, Reg, mix up a couple of tall ones for me and my pal here. Come on, Argyle, you fascinating little alien bastard,” he said, putting an arm around the sparkling alien’s shoulders and leading him off to a table. “We got a lot to talk about.”
    “We do?”
    Karma nodded. “Let’s start with Wilxyboeth.”
    “I wonder how you spell Wilxyboeth?” mused Willie the Bard, frowning and staring at his paper notebook.
    “How come you don’t use a recorder or a computer?” asked Catastrophe Baker, walking across the room to look over the Bard’s shoulder.
    “That’s not art.”
    “What’s the difference between recording what we say and writing it down?”
    “I embellish.”
    “And you couldn’t do that with a computer?”
    The Bard considered it for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t like machines.”
    “Neither do I, come to think of it,” admitted Baker. “I just figured a computer could do things faster.”
    “It can fuck up my book 200,000 times faster than my pen can,” agreed the Bard. “Trust me, you’ll all come out looking better because of my pen.”
    “Gonna take off all the rough edges, huh?”
    “Or add a few,” said the Bard. “Whatever it takes.”
    “I’ll make you a deal, Willie,” said Little Mike Picasso. “Give me ten percent of the advance and I’ll illustrate your book for you. I’ll do sketches of everyone in the Outpost.”
    “Sounds good to me,” said the Bard. “Long as you’re willing to wait ’til I sell it.”
    “Sure. No problem.”
    The Bard stared at him for a long moment. “Okay, it’s a deal,” he said. “Now suppose you tell me the real reason you offered to do this?”
    He gestured toward Silicon Carny. “I’ll die if I can’t draw her.”
    Baker looked over and saw her for the first time. “If all you want to do is draw her, you got a lot more wrong with you than you think.”
    Silicon Carny stood up, and everything came to a sudden stop. No one spoke, no one drank, no one dealt cards. If you made the effort, you could probably hear one molecule of air bumping into its neighbor. She had that kind of effect on men.
    I knew a little bit about her. Not much, but enough to understand her name. The Silicon part was easy enough; mighty few slender women have 50-inch bustlines with nipples that point almost straight up. The Carny part was because her entire body was covered by art—not exactly tattoos, but some alien painting that was in constant flux, almost like a continuous holo—and she’d grown up in a carnival sideshow.
    Finally, Baker broke the silence.
    “By God!”!” he exclaimed. “This has got to be the first time I ever saw one work of art stuck on top of an even purtier one!”
    Silicon Carny smiled at him. “You like?” she purred with an accent I still hadn’t placed after four or five years.
    “Ma’am,” he said, removing his vest and shirt, “I got some mighty artistic tattoos myself, as you can plainly see, but I freely admit they ain’t nothing compared to you—and they sure as hell ain’t painted on such a nice canvas.”
    I’d been right about the tattoos: they met in a passionate and pornographic embrace on his chest, then ran off in opposite directions until they reached his hands and headed back toward his chest again.
    Silicon Carny looked at him and giggled. For all I know she even blushed, but