you'll get this in the face.' His expression made it no idle threat. 'And don't signal to any of your help. If anyone comes close you'll regret it.'
'Who the hell are you?'
'No one you need worry about.' Dumarest eased his grip as he felt the muscles beneath his fingers relax. Dropping his hand he revealed the welts marking the skin. 'All I want is some information. Where can I find the boy?'
'With his mother.'
'He isn't there. He must be hiding out somewhere. With a friend, maybe. Someone he knows. You could tell me where to look.'
'I'm not sure.' Fenton rubbed at his wrist. 'I don't see much of him since Brill went. Susan-dying you say?'
'Forget her.' Dumarest let irritation edge his voice. 'What about the boy? Who was close to his father?'
Anton would have known the man and the places he frequented. Fenton knew of the lad as others would have and they, in turn, would have recognized his value. Some could have used him in the brush.
'She moved,' said Fenton abruptly. 'Susan, I mean. I offered help but when she didn't ask I figured she was making out. The boy said nothing-how the hell could he? Where can I find her?'
'She's sick,' said Dumarest. 'Dying, as I told you. Give her a few months and she'll be gone. All you have to do is wait.'
'You bastard!'
'Jarl,' said Dumarest. 'Let's start with Jarl. He knows Anton. Where can I find him?'
'Jarl who?' Fenton shrugged as Dumarest remained silent. 'It's a common name. Can you describe him?' He scowled as he listened. 'That sounds like it could be Jarl Capron. How the hell did the kid get mixed up with scum like that?'
'Maybe he was lonely. The address?'
'Scorelane. Number seventy-nine. That's all I know.'
Scorelane was a slash across town in what had once been the fashionable quarter. Now the houses looked like raddled old women dressed in rotting finery; windows dull, paint flaking, the whole looking drab and soiled beneath the cold light of the stars. Some places fought back with the use of lights and colored pennons and blaring music; small casinos, eating places, brothels, drug emporiums. Refuges for the optimistic, the hungry, the lonely, the desperate. Number seventy-nine was a hotel.
'A room? You want a room?' The crone behind the desk looked sharply at Dumarest with faded blue eyes. 'That isn't easy to provide at this time of year. We're pretty full and our regulars like to retain their quarters even while working away. But I'll see what can be arranged. You'll pay in advance, of course, and I shall need the highest references.'
The woman was lost in illusion, believing the place was what it had never been. Finding escape from reality in a game as she fussed over ledgers she could no longer read.
Dumarest looked beyond her to the wall which held a row of boxes each with a hook for its key. Most were cluttered with assorted debris and all were dusty and grimed. He said, 'I'm looking for Jarl Capron.'
'Jarl?' Her face became blank. 'You mean Mister Capron?'
'Yes.'
'Supervisor Capron?'
'Is he in?' A stupid question; the keys visible belonged to empty rooms. 'Which is his room?'
'I can't tell you that!'
'It's important.' Truth followed with a facile lie. 'I've been sent to collect him and some important papers. An emergency at the workings. Only the supervisor can handle it. The room?'
'Two flights up. Turn right. Number twenty-eight.' Her hand went to her mouth. 'Be careful not to make too much noise.'
An unneeded warning; Dumarest moved like a ghost as he climbed the stairs, keeping to the wall so as to avoid creaking treads. The first flight yielded a dusty landing soiled with dried mud and a wad of crumpled, bloody tissue. A solitary wad and the dirty carpet showed no stains. From behind a door down the passage he heard a woman's voice. 'Hold still, you fool!'
A deeper tone, 'That hurts!'
'Serves you right. The next time you come heavy with me I'll take out an eye. Now let me finish fixing that cheek.'
The second landing held more dust and a patch of dampness which could have been water spilled from a jug or seepage from a leaking tank. Dumarest skirted it and stepped softly down the length of the passage. A window opened on a narrow metal ladder which in turn ran to the street below. Touching it he felt a crusted dryness and, looking at his hand, saw the brown flakes of dried blood.
Jarl's?
Quietly he stepped back down the passage and halted outside room twenty-eight. The door was scarred, the number blurred, no light showing through the keyhole or beneath the lower edge of the panel. Pressing his ear to the wood, he heard a moaning susurration as of wind in a chimney. Frowning, he stepped back and moved to the head of the stairs as sound came from below. On the lower landing he caught a glimpse of a woman with a man whose cheek was covered with a plaster. He was younger than his companion and bore no resemblance to Jarl. Back at the door of room twenty-eight Dumarest pushed his foot against the door above the lock. A snap and it was open.
Beyond lay darkness broken only by starlight filtering through the uncurtained window. A low moaning. An acrid stench.
Then, suddenly, madness.
It came with a gust of sound and a blur against the pale oblong of the window. A snarling roar as if a beast had broken free and a shape which lunged forward, hands extended like claws, curved to rip and tear, to strike like hammers from the gloom.
Dumarest dropped as something slammed against his temple, breaking open the minor laceration and sending blood to wet his cheek. Stars flashed before his eyes as he rolled, feeling the numbing impact of a hard-driven boot, rolling again as it stamped on the spot where his head had rested. As he rose he knocked aside a clutching hand, ducked to let the other pass over his shoulder, stepped in and drove his fist hard against a solid body. Blow followed blow in quick succession. All driven with the full force of back and shoulders-none seeming to have any effect.
Before him the thing gibbered, roared, flailed at the air, swayed and came in with lowered head and raking feet, rose to spit and tear at Dumarest's scalp and shoulders with jagged shards.
Falling back, he hit the wall beside the door, felt the impact of the switch against his shoulder, threw it to bathe the room in brightness.
Jarl stood blinking at him from before the window. But Jarl was no longer a man.
The vials lying beside the soiled bed gave the answer; analogues taken to relieve boredom, used now as an anodyne against pain; the compounds used by degenerates addicted to bestial forms. With their aid a man could think himself a snake, a goat, a dog. He would emulate one, act like one, be as unpredictable as any creature of the wild. Jarl had ceased to be human.
He stood like a gorilla, stooped, shoulders hunched, the thorn-ripped parody of his face distorted into a snarling nightmare. In each hand he now held the neck of a broken bottle, the jagged shards reflecting the light in vicious gleams. His mouth was open, slavering, his eyes mere glints between puffed lids. He stank of sweat and rage.
He rushed without warning, hands lifted to raise the crude weapons high. Held like daggers, they swept down to slice the air, missing Dumarest by a fraction as he threw himself to one side. Again, the thing which had been a man moving with the furious speed of a predator, glass opening flesh above Dumarest's ear, shards ripping at the tunic, slicing through the plastic to bare the metal mesh imbedded as a protection in the material.
Before they could strike again, Dumarest had thrown himself clear, coming to rest before the window, steel flashing as he jerked the knife from his boot, metal which glinted with mirror-brightness as he twisted it. He guided it into the creature's eyes, hypnotic, commanding. As they followed the lure he stepped forward, boot lifting, the heel slamming against the jaw. The blow would have knocked an ordinary man unconscious but the
