Chapter Thirteen
Barrent walked through the narrow, twisting streets of the Quarter, onehand never far from his weapon. He walked among the lame and the blind,past hydrocephaloid and microcephalous idiots, past a juggler who kepttwelve flaming torches in the air with the aid of a rudimentary thirdhand growing out of his chest. There were vendors selling clothing,charms, and jewelry. There were carts loaded with pungent andunsanitary-looking food. He walked past a row of brightly paintedbrothels. Girls crowded the windows and shrieked at him, and afour-armed, six-legged woman told him he was just in time for theDelphian Rites. Barrent turned away from her and almost ran into amonstrously fat woman who pulled open her blouse to reveal eightshrunken breasts. He ducked around her, moving quickly past four linkedSiamese quadruplets who stared at him with huge mournful eyes.
Barrent turned a corner and stopped. A tall, ragged old man with a canewas blocking his way. The man was half-blind; the skin had grown smoothand hairless over the socket where his left eye should have been. Buthis right eye was sharp and fierce under a white eyebrow.
"You wish the services of a genuine skrenner?" the old man asked.
Barrent nodded.
"Follow me," the mutant said. He turned into an alley, and Barrent cameafter him, gripping the butt of his needlebeam tightly. Mutants wereforbidden by law to carry arms; but like this old man, most of them hadheavy, iron-headed walking sticks. At close quarters, no one could askfor a better weapon.
The old man opened a door and motioned Barrent inside. Barrent paused,thinking about the stories he had heard of gullible citizens fallinginto mutant hands. Then he half-drew his needlebeam and went inside.
At the end of a long passageway, the old man opened a door and ledBarrent into a small, dimly lighted room. As his eyes became accustomedto the dark, Barrent could make out the shapes of two women sitting infront of a plain wooden table. There was a pan of water on the table,and in the pan was a fist-sized piece of glass cut into many facets.
One of the women was very old and completely hairless. The other wasyoung and beautiful. As Barrent moved closer to the table, he saw, witha sense of shock, that her legs were joined below the knee by a membraneof scaly skin, and her feet were of a rudimentary fish-tail shape.
"What do you wish us to skren for you, Citizen Barrent?" the young womanasked.
"How did you know my name?" Barrent asked. When he got no answer, hesaid, "All right. I want to find out about a murder I committed onEarth."
"Why do you want to find out about it?" the young woman asked. "Won'tthe authorities credit it to your record?"
"They credit it. But I want to find out why I did it. Maybe there wereextenuating circumstances. Maybe I did it in self-defense."
"Is it really important?" the young woman asked.
"I think so," Barrent said. He hesitated a moment, then took the plunge."The fact of the matter is, I have a neurotic prejudice against murder.I would rather _not_ kill. So I want to find out why I committed murderon Earth."
The mutants looked at each other. Then the old man grinned and said,"Citizen, we'll help you all we can. We mutants also have a prejudiceagainst killing, since it's always someone else killing us. We're all infavor of citizens with a neurosis against murder."
"Then you'll skren my past?"
"It's not as easy as that," the young woman said. "The skrenningability, which is one of a cluster of psi talents, is difficult to use.It doesn't always function. And when it does function, it often doesn'treveal what it's supposed to."
"I thought all mutants could look into the past whenever they wantedto," Barrent said.
"No," the old man told him, "that isn't true. For one thing, not all ofus who are classified mutants are true mutants. Almost any deformity orabnormality these days is called mutantism. It's a handy term to coveranyone who doesn't conform to the Terran standard of appearance."
"But some of you are true mutants?"
"Certainly. But even then, there are different types of mutantism. Somejust show radiation abnormalities--giantism, microcephaly, and the like.Only a few of us possess the slightest psi abilities--although allmutants claim them."
"Are you able to skren?" Barrent asked him.
"No. But Myla can," he said, pointing to the young woman. "Sometimes shecan."
The young woman was staring into the pan of water, into the facetedglass. Her pale eyes were open very wide, showing almost all pupil, andher fish-tailed body was rigidly upright, supported by the old woman.
"She's beginning to see something," the man said. "The water and theglass are just devices to focus her attention. Myla's good at skrenning,though sometimes she gets the future confused with the past. That sortof thing is embarrassing, and it gives skrenning a bad name. It can't behelped, though. Every once in a while the future is there in the water,and Myla has to tell what she sees. Last week she told a Hadji he wasgoing to die in four days." The old man chuckled. "You should have seenthe expression on his face."
"Did she see how he would die?" Barrent asked.
"Yes. By a knife-thrust. The poor man stayed in his house for the entirefour days."
"Was he killed?"
"Of course. His wife killed him. She was a strong-minded woman, I'mtold."
Barrent hoped that Myla wouldn't skren any future for him. Life wasdifficult enough without a mutant's predictions to make it worse.
She was looking up from the faceted glass now, shaking her head sadly."There's very little I can tell you. I was not able to see the murderperformed. But I skrenned a graveyard, and in it I saw your parents'tombstone. It was an old tombstone, perhaps twenty years old. Thegraveyard was on the outskirts of a place on Earth called Youngerstun."
Barrent reflected a moment, but the name meant nothing to him.
"Also," Myla said, "I skrenned a man who knows about the murder. He cantell you about it, if he will."
"This man saw the murder?"
"Yes."
"Is he the man who informed on me?"
"I don't know," Myla said. "I skrenned the corpse, whose name wasTherkaler, and there was a man standing near it. That man's name wasIlliardi."
"Is he here on Omega?"
"Yes. You can find him right now in the Euphoriatorium on Little AxeStreet. Do you know where that is?"
"I can find it," Barrent said. He thanked the girl and offered payment,which she refused to take. She looked very unhappy. As Barrent wasleaving, she called out, "Be careful."
Barrent stopped at the door, and felt an icy chill settle across hischest. "Did you skren my future?" he asked.
"Only a little," Myla said. "Only a few months ahead."
"What did you see?"
"I can't explain it," she said. "What I saw is impossible."
"Tell me what it was."
"I saw you dead. And yet, you weren't dead at all. You were looking at acorpse, which was shattered into shiny fragments. But the corpse wasalso you."
"What does it mean?"
"I don't know," Myla said.
* * * * *
The Euphoriatorium was a large, garish place which specialized incut-rate drugs and aphrodisiacs. It catered mostly to a peon andresident clientele. Barrent felt out of status as he shouldered his waythrough the crowd and asked a waiter where he could find a man namedIlliardi.
The waiter pointed. In a corner booth, Barrent saw a bald,thick-shouldered man sitting over a tiny glass of thanapiquita. Barrentwent over and introduced himself.
"Pleased to meet you, sir," Illiardi said, showing the obligatoryrespect of a Second Class Resident for a Privileged Citizen. "How can Ibe of service?"
"I want to ask you a few questions about Earth," Barrent said.
"I can't remember much about the place," Illiardi said. "But you'rewelcome to anything I know."
"Do you remember a man named Therkaler?"
"Certainly," Illiardi said. "Thin fellow. Cross-eyed. As mean a man asyou could find."
"Were you prese
nt when he was killed?"
"I was there. It was the first thing I remembered when I got off theship."
"Did you see who killed him?"
Illiardi looked puzzled. "I didn't have to see. _I_ killed him."
Barrent forced himself to speak in a calm, steady voice. "Are you sureof that? Are you absolutely certain?"
"Of course I'm sure," Illiardi said. "And I'll fight any man who triesto take credit for it. I killed Therkaler, and he deserved worse thanthat."
"When you killed him," Barrent asked, "did you see _me_ anywherearound?"
Illiardi looked at him carefully, then shook his head. "No, I don'tthink I saw you. But I can't be sure. Right after I killed Therkaler,everything goes sort of blank."
"Thank you," Barrent said. He left the Euphoriatorium.