mind, looking for a comparison, a simile that would make the vision into words. He was just about to give up when the proper words struck him. The look in these faces was much like the look in the faces of the scooterbeasts when they were penned in zoos. In a natural state, the scooterbeast moved as quickly as lightning across a storm sky. They were spinning, careening blurs to the eye. Penned, they pressed their faces to the glass walls and looked mournfully toward freedom, wishing to move again, to travel, to be lightning, to do what was denied them. “I see it,” he said to Gnossos.
“They’re Unnaturals.”
“The ones—”
“Who would like to kill,” Gnossos completed. “They are defects born with many of the old faults: with the desire to kill, an overwhelming greed, and bent toward self-gratification. There is nothing the government can do but take them and make them Sensitives. If they hurt anyone, they also feel the pain. Only ten times worse. Any pain they inflict is returned tenfold to their own nervous system. If they aid someone, they feel the other person’s pleasure. If they kill someone, they feel the death throes and terminal spasms ten times more intensely than the victim. None of them could tolerate that. They do not, therefore, kill or hurt.”
“And they look so normal,” Sam said.
“Outside. Outside, Sam. But on the inside—”
“He knows about the Unnaturals,” Hurkos said, “but he did not know about the Mues. That’s rather curious.”
“We’ll consider it over another drink,” Gnossos said. He placed the order, deposited the coins, waited for the liquor. None came. He pounded the robotender once, then bellowed for the human tapkeeper who was polishing glasses behind the bar. He was growing red-faced as he had been when his ship had collided with Sam’s. A false anger put on merely for the pleasure of appearing furious. The tapkeeper opened the gate in the bar and crossed the room with strides as sure and quick, almost, as Gnossos’. In his eyes glittered the tenseness, the trapped expression of the scooterbeast with his nose to glass.
“This thing is broken!” Gnossos roared. “I want my money back!”
“Here,” the human bartender said, flipping three coins to the poet. “Now all of you had better leave — please.”
“Why?” Sam asked. This was the second time he had encountered genuine rudeness — once with the Christian, now with the Unnatural. It puzzled him.
“This is not a Natural bar.”
“You’re a natural if I ever saw one,” Hurkos mumbled.
The bartender ignored the wit.
“We are allowed service anywhere,” Gnossos boomed. “Naturals and Unnaturals are not segregated!”
Shuffling his feet, a bit cowed, or taking a new line of tact, perhaps, the tapkeeper said, “It’s just for your own safety that I ask.” There was a mixure of fear and general uneasiness in his eyes now.
“Was that a threat?” Gnossos said, astonished. “Am I with the uncivilized?”
“Not a threat. It’s for your own safety, as I said. It’s because of him — that one.”
They followed the tapkeeper’s thumb as it jerked toward the man standing at the far corner of the bar. The stranger was clutching a glass of yellow liquid, taking large gulps of it without effort, swishing it about in his mouth as if it were mouthwash, chugging it down without a tear. He was huge, nearly as big as Gnossos, red-haired and red-eyed. His hammy hands clenched into fists, unclenched to grab his drink. Though physically a bit smaller than the poet, he had muscle where Gnossos had run somewhat to fat. The corded masses of tissue that were his arms seemed able to snap anything or anyone to pieces.
“Who’s he?” Gnossos asked.
“Black Jack Buronto.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Hurkos said, slumping even further into his chair. “You must be.”
“Henry Buronto’s his name, but he wins all the time at the gaming tables, so they call him Black Jack. And he carries one too — a blackjack, that is.”
A great many Unnaturals carried crude weapons, wishing they could use them, but never daring to because of the pain echoes that would engulf their sensitized brains. Clearly, Gnossos was fascinated by Buronto. Here was someone a bit different. A poet is, of course, a man of insight if he is a poet of any worth. But he is not a jaded guru if he is fascinated by things unique. Indeed, it is just such a fascination that he needs to hone his mind on. Buronto was unique. Here was someone smiled on by Fortune at the gambing tables. Here was someone, perhaps, stronger than himself. And here was someone, for some reason, to be feared.
“He’s dangerous,” the tapkeeper said.
“Dangerous because he carries a blackjack and wins at cards?”
“No. Dangerous because he would use the blackjack. He could kill all three of you—
Almost as if he had seen a signal, Buronto started across the room, directly toward them.
“Please leave,” the tapkeeper said.
“I think maybe we had better,” Sam suggested.
“Why?” Gnossos asked. “The blackjack bit? He won’t hurt us. Remember, every pain we feel, he feels ten times over.”
“But—” the tapkeeper began.
“You’re talking about me,” Buronto said, stepping up to their table. And his voice was like the voice of a canary-high and sweet and melodic. The trio stared at one another for a moment, astounded. The tiny voice again seeped from the massive throat. “Were you talking about me?”
Sam tittered, then let go and burst out laughing. Gnossos followed with his thunder-laugh. Hurkos fought it, seeming to be comfortable in his recently self-imposed melancholy and reluctant to leave it.
Buronto spoke again: “Stop laughing at me!”
The word “laughing” was so high-pitched that his voice cracked in the middle of it. And Hurkos too burst out laughing, spraying the table with saliva he had been fighting to hold back with the laugh.
“Stop it! Stop it!” Buronto shouted.
But the tension within the three of them had been at a peak. They had been restless, nervous, on edge since the encounter with the jelly-mass. The constant state of expectancy had honed their nerves to sharp, thin wires that were ready to vibrate wildly if only slightly plucked. And big Black Jack Buronto’s voice — or the strange anachronism that passed for a voice — had been the tuning fork that had set them all roaring as the tension drained. They laughed wildly. They laughed without control, tears streaming down their faces. They laughed all out of proportion to the joke.
“Oh, no, no, no,” the tapkeeper moaned. He chanted it over and over as if it were a litany.
“Shut up!” Buronto roared squeakily. His mouth was foaming. Little flecks of mad white… He brought a colossal fist down on the simu-wood table, knocked all the glasses off. But this too only served to send the trio into paroxysms of laughter. Hurkos was leaning on Gnossos, and Sam had his head thrown back, howling.
Black Jack muttered something incomprehensible, all meaning flooded away by burning rage. Clasping one fist in the other, he smashed the wedge of his flesh onto the tabletop, shattered the thing into two halves that stood separately for a moment until the weight of the broken top pulled the laminated leg apart and the table collapsed into the laps of the three Naturals. They ceased their laughter.
Buronto now had a face like a jungle animal. Great swatches of ugly blue discolored the uniform red of his countenance. His teeth were bared and foam-flecked. He snarled and spat and screeched unintelligible things between his teeth. He was mad as all hell and all hell could not have prevailed against him had he turned on it. He latched onto Hurkos’ chair, ripped it out from under the Mue and sent him crashing to the floor.
“What the hell?” Gnossos said to the tapkeeper. “He’s an Unnatural, but he’s also a Sensitive!”
“He’s a Sensitive, yes,” the tapkeeper shouted as. Black Jack smashed Hurkos’ chair into the wall again and again, more violent with each vicious swing. “He’s a Sensitive and feels the victim’s pain. But he was more of an Unnatural than the doctors knew. He was also a masochist!”
The color drained from the poet’s face as snowy realization swept in to take its place. “Then he likes being a Sensitive because—”
The bartender finished: “He likes to feel pain!”
