Barrent walked through the narrow, twisting streets of the Quarter, one
hand never far from his weapon. He walked among the lame and the blind,
past hydrocephaloid and microcephalous idiots, past a juggler who kept
twelve flaming torches in the air with the aid of a rudimentary third
hand growing out of his chest. There were vendors selling clothing,
charms, and jewelry. There were carts loaded with pungent and
unsanitary-looking food. He walked past a row of brightly painted
brothels. Girls crowded the windows and shrieked at him, and a
four-armed, six-legged woman told him he was just in time for the
Delphian Rites. Barrent turned away from her and almost ran into a
monstrously fat woman who pulled open her blouse to reveal eight
shrunken breasts. He ducked around her, moving quickly past four linked
Siamese quadruplets who stared at him with huge mournful eyes.
Barrent turned a corner and stopped. A tall, ragged old man with a cane
was blocking his way. The man was half-blind; the skin had grown smooth
and hairless over the socket where his left eye should have been. But
his 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 came
after him, gripping the butt of his needlebeam tightly. Mutants were
forbidden by law to carry arms; but like this old man, most of them had
heavy, iron-headed walking sticks. At close quarters, no one could ask
for 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 falling
into 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 led
Barrent into a small, dimly lighted room. As his eyes became accustomed
to the dark, Barrent could make out the shapes of two women sitting in
front 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 was
young and beautiful. As Barrent moved closer to the table, he saw, with
a sense of shock, that her legs were joined below the knee by a membrane
of 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 woman
asked.
"How did you know my name?" Barrent asked. When he got no answer, he
said, "All right. I want to find out about a murder I committed on
Earth."
"Why do you want to find out about it?" the young woman asked. "Won't
the authorities credit it to your record?"
"They credit it. But I want to find out why I did it. Maybe there were
extenuating 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 murder
on 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 prejudice
against killing, since it's always someone else killing us. We're all in
favor 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 skrenning
ability, 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't
reveal what it's supposed to."
"I thought all mutants could look into the past whenever they wanted
to," Barrent said.
"No," the old man told him, "that isn't true. For one thing, not all of
us who are classified mutants are true mutants. Almost any deformity or
abnormality these days is called mutantism. It's a handy term to cover
anyone 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. Some
just show radiation abnormalities--giantism, microcephaly, and the like.
Only a few of us possess the slightest psi abilities--although all
mutants claim them."
"Are you able to skren?" Barrent asked him.
"No. But Myla can," he said, pointing to the young woman. "Sometimes she
can."
The young woman was staring into the pan of water, into the faceted
glass. Her pale eyes were open very wide, showing almost all pupil, and
her fish-tailed body was rigidly upright, supported by the old woman.
"She's beginning to see something," the man said. "The water and the
glass are just devices to focus her attention. Myla's good at skrenning,
though sometimes she gets the future confused with the past. That sort
of thing is embarrassing, and it gives skrenning a bad name. It can't be
helped, 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 was
going to die in four days." The old man chuckled. "You should have seen
the 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 entire
four days."
"Was he killed?"
"Of course. His wife killed him. She was a strong-minded woman, I'm
told."
Barrent hoped that Myla wouldn't skren any future for him. Life was
difficult 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 murder
performed. But I skrenned a graveyard, and in it I saw your parents'
tombstone. It was an old tombstone, perhaps twenty years old. The
graveyard 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 can
tell 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 was
Therkaler, and there was a man standing near it. That man's name was
Illiardi."
"Is he here on Omega?"
"Yes. You can find him right now in the Euphoriatorium on Little Axe
Street. 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 was
leaving, she called out, "Be careful."
Barrent stopped at the door, and felt an icy chill settle across his
chest. "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 a
corpse, which was shattered into shiny fragments. But the corpse was
also you."
"What does it mean?"
"I don't know," Myla said.
* * * * *
The Euphoriatorium was a large, garish place which specialized in
cut-rate drugs and aphrodisiacs. It catered mostly to a peon and
resident clientele. Barrent felt out of status as he shouldered his way
through the crowd and asked a waiter where he could find a man named
Illiardi.
The waiter pointed. In a corner booth, Barrent saw a bald,
thick-shouldered man sitting over a tiny glass of thanapiquita. Barrent
went over and introduced himself.
"Pleased to meet you, sir," Illiardi said, showing the obligatory
respect of a Second Class Resident for a Privileged Citizen. "How can I
be 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're
welcome to anything I know."
"Do you remember a man named Therkaler?"
"Certainly," Illiardi said. "Thin fellow. Cross-eyed. As mean a man as
you could find."
"Were you present when he was killed?"
"I was there. It was the first thing I remembered when I got off the
ship."
"Did you see who killed him?"