loose coat from his shoulders. One which would have torn the scalp from his head had Dumarest not acted with unthinking speed. A stir of the air warned him, a gust of fetid odor, the sense of movement and he was moving forward and down to cushion the blow which slammed against his back. Feeling the impact of it. The grate, as claws ripped into his tunic to meet the protective mesh buried in the plastic.
The metal saved him from crippling lacerations but he felt the bruising fury, the shock, the force driving him to the floor.
He rolled as he hit, rolled again as something struck close enough to sting his eyes with wind. Something looming monstrous in the gloom, a shape of hair and limbs and a squatly huge body. One with claws and fangs gleaming with a greenish phosphorescence.
A beast spawned on some radiation-lashed world now snarling with a killing rage.
It lunged forward, foot raised to kick, taloned nails to rip out Dumarest's stomach and spill his intestines. A blow which would kill even if the mesh held, rupturing the spleen, pulping liver. A blow which missed as he flung himself over the floor, rising to back, almost falling as his foot hit the broom.
A weapon he snatched up and poised, bristles forward, the points aimed at the back-sloping face, the eyes. A thrust and he dodged the reaching claws, darting to one side as the thing pawed at its sockets. A minor irritation and it snarled as again Dumarest attacked, snatching at the broom, snapping off the head to leave him with a splintered stick.
A broken spear less than five feet long.
One he lashed upwards, feeling the tug of a claw in his hair as he hit the crotch, the genitals resting between the massive thighs. Ducking to stab at the same target. Backing as saliva and stench gushed from the fanged mouth.
After a moment of respite Dumarest checked the area. The door by which he had entered the room was barred by the thing facing him but another lay to one side. The room itself was illuminated by a single glowing plate set in the ceiling. A mass of straw lay in one corner, a trough in another. One containing water, he guessed, a bowl, now empty, could have held food.
A snarl and the creature lunged toward him. Clearly it had learned; the long arms hung protectively over the crotch, one lifting as it came close, the clawed paw missing as Dumarest darted aside. A move which gave him a choice of either door, but the one by which he had entered led only back the way he had come.
He spun, dropping to one knee, the wooden shaft in his hands whining as he sent it in a savage blow to the creature's leg. A blow which hit the kneecap, shattering the wood, but hampering the beast long enough for Dumarest to reach the other door. To duck through it. To slam it fast.
He leaned his back against it as he fought for breath.
Before him stretched a chamber, narrow, set with a guard rail before flanking cubicles with raised floors. Rooms like cells but without the bars. In the nearest something stirred.
At first he thought it a large bird then it turned and Dumarest saw the undoubted humanity behind the elongated jaws which gave the impression of a beak, the rounded, avian eyes, the double-orifice where a nose should have been. An illusion heightened by the extended column of the neck, the lack of ears, the backward slope of the forehead. Vivid tattooing supplied an artificial plumage.
As he stepped forward the creature retreated, hopping on distorted feet, thin, curved fingers lifting in futile protection. A quasi-human, naked, slight, unmistakably female.
'Don't touch her!' The voice was a deep gurgle coming from a cubicle opposite. 'Leave her alone. You frighten her, Gora, and I'll-' The voice paused. 'Gora?'
'No.' Dumarest turned to face a bloated obscenity; a man so gross as to be repulsive. Like the bird-girl he was naked. 'Who is Gora?'
'Someone I'll kill one day. If he gets within reach of my hands. If I can get my teeth in his throat. Come closer-I can't see so good. Who are you? Your aura's strange.'
'It's mine. Who are you?'
'Rastic Alatabani Seglar. Call me Ras. Would you believe I was handsome once?' The massive bulk shook with either laughter or tears. 'A traveler. A kid with stars in his eyes. I had the universe to rove in but I chose the wrong world. Got contaminated. Began to swell. Money would have saved me but I had no cash. Now I can't move. If I wasn't with the circus I'd die.'
A product of disease, disfigured, almost blind. Dumarest looked at the caricature of a face, the filmed orbs. A freak as the bird-girl was a freak, and the man tufted with feathers in the next cubicle, and the woman lower down-the one with two heads.
'I'm Olga,' said one. 'My, you're handsome. Tall and strong and a real man. More than Ras ever was, I'll bet. He lies, you know. Lies all the time.'
'Like you,' said the other head. 'I'm Inez. Pay no attention to her. She's jealous. She thinks everyone who comes to see us is interested only in her. Tell the truth, now, aren't I the prettiest?'
Dumarest said, 'Maybe you can help me. I'm looking for a friend.'
'A girl! I bet it's a girl!'
'Shut up, Olga! You talk too much!'
'And you eat too much! You're making me fat! Soon I'll be as ugly as you are!'
'Bitch!'
'Cow!'
'Shut up!' A harsh voice roared from the end of the chamber. 'Cut that babbling or I'll do it for you! You hear me? Cut it out!'
'Gora!' Olga sucked in her breath. 'Inez-do as he says.'
'I'm not afraid of him.'
'I am. Now be quiet.'
Their voices faded to twitterings as Dumarest walked to the far end of the chamber. Past a cubicle from which something stared at him, faceless, sexless beneath the thick mat of hair covering it from scalp to toes. Feeling the eyes of a woman with multiple breasts, another with a hump topped by a squinting, elfin face. A man with scales and vestigial wings. One thick with warty encrustations. A score of distorted human shapes.
Gora looked like a dog.
He sat in the far cubicle, lips sagging, jowls, the pouches of his eyes. Pointed ears added to the resemblance and his hair, fine and russet, covered forehead, neck, face and body. Pointed teeth gleamed as he bared his lips.
'Artificial,' he said. 'But the customers like it.'
'You in charge here?'
'I try to keep some sort of order. I've the voice for it.' He deepened his tone to a snarling growl, one terminating in a bark. 'That's acting-the rest is real. Genetic disorder, myasthenia, myopathy-you a doctor?'
'No.'
'Then you wouldn't be interested. A freak-nut, then? Come to indulge yourself? Wanting to see how we behave when not performing?' The liquid eyes studied Dumarest. 'No, I guess not. What, then? Grag wouldn't have passed you unless you were straight.' He looked at the door through which Dumarest had come. 'Conditioned to stay in his room,' he explained. 'But without the whistle he'll kill without warning.'
'A watchdog?'
'Something like that. Keeps us in and others out. Too rough for showing but he has his uses. Which is more than you can say for the rest of us.'
'Including you?'
'I do what I can. I'd go crazy if I didn't. At times I think I'm crazy anyway and it gets worse when we're not on show. Then, sometimes, it's possible to think of the marks as freaks and us as normal. Their eyes, the way they goggle, grin, act. Talking as if we were deaf, acting as if we couldn't see, poking with sticks, making suggestions, speculating how we come to be as we are.' The artificial fangs gleamed as Gora snarled. 'Throwing us bones, candy, filth. They must be sick in the head.'
Dumarest said, 'Is this all there are of you?'
'Freaks? Why be afraid of the word? That's what we are- freaks. Some born that way, some growing, others made. You think I'm joking?'
'No,' said Dumarest.
