"It stinks," said a woman with dark hair piled high over a thin face with hollowed cheeks and feverish eyes. "Why hasn't it been washed?"
"The scent is natural, my lady. The product of fear." Travante masked his annoyance. To sell was his trade but he could have wished for better wares. And the lewd comments, now rising from the crowd, assailed his personal dignity. "Am I offered a thousand? One thousand to start the bidding."
"A hundred," said a man. "I can always use it for meat."
"Two hundred." A blonde matron ran the tip of her tongue over a full bottom lip. "Jalash! We can share it!"
As the participant in depraved spectacles. A victim to be whipped, tortured, burned.
Dumarest said, "What can he do?"
"Nothing of a technical nature." The auctioneer, recognizing a spacer, wasted no politeness. "You bid?"
Dumarest shook his head, studying the creature. A parody of a man, the product of genes warped by wild radiation, the human pattern distorted almost beyond recognition. Yet some things remained; hate, fear, the desire to survive.
Anger which drove it to kill.
Eunice screamed as it reared, snarling. A scream echoed by others as the chain fastening the hands snapped, the ends lashing as it sprang from the block. Travante, trying to run, was smashed to one side, his head a bloody ruin. His assistant, stupidly brave, lost his eyes as the chain tore at his face. Then Eunice was in its grasp.
She arched, fighting the hands at her throat, trying to scream, failing to pull air into her constricted lungs. Stench filled her nostrils; the rank odor from the thing which hung about it like a cloud. The hands closing around her throat felt like iron.
A grip which would kill within seconds. Dumarest looked at the guards, helpless to fire because of the crowd, at the girl, the creature which held her.
Moving as he looked, his hand dropping to his boot, lifting with the knife as he closed the distance between himself and the mutant, steel flashing as he aimed the blade.
Dulling as he drove it just below the round of the skull. Sending the point to shear through the matted hair, the skin, the fat, the spine. To break through the windpipe and spray the girl with a fountain of blood.
"It was vile," she said. "Vile. That smell-" She shuddered and stepped to where incense rose from the brazen holder. Inhaling to free her nostrils of remembered stench. "It was good of you to wait, Earl."
Dumarest said dryly, "I had little choice."
"Urich?" She smiled through the smoke. "He is a little overbearing at times."
And had been more than a little afraid. Dumarest remembered the man's anxiety as he had paced the room in which he had been invited to wait. A comfortable chamber and the invitation had been polite enough-but guards had stood by leaving no doubt as to his freedom to leave.
"Concerned," said Dumarest. "I would have said he was concerned. You are to be married, I understand."
"It's no secret." She stepped from the wreath of pungent vapor. "I'm glad you waited. It gives me the chance to thank you."
She had bathed and changed and appeared untouched by her experience. The magic of slowtime had accelerated her metabolism and turned minutes into days; subjective time during which her throat had lost its soreness, her skin its weals. Now, hungry, she reached for a fruit and Dumarest watched as she tore at the pulp, juice running to moisten her chin.
"A mess!" She threw the fruit into a basket and dabbed at her face. "Why are nice things so troublesome? And this afternoon-why did that thing attack me?"
Because she had been there. Young and golden and laughing. A spoiled product of the Quelen and as good a target as any.
Dumarest said, "It was frightened."
"And so tried to kill?"
"A human trait which it shared. The best thing you can do now is to forget the incident. If you will summon the captain he will escort me from your home."
"Urich? Let him wait. They say it does a man good to be jealous a little. And he is lucky I'm still alive. If you hadn't acted, that thing would have broken my neck."
"I happened to be the nearest."
"No. Urich was at my side." She added, "But there are enough eager to pass comment on that. What do you think of him? Urich, I mean. What impression did you get?"
That of a man worried to distraction, unsure of himself, tormented with doubt. Dumarest remembered the man's eyes, the hurt they had contained.
"That of a good man worried about his future bride. You mean a lot to him."
"More than you suspect." Abruptly she turned to stare through the window. It was dark, the sky a shimmering glitter of stars. "You don't think he's too old for me?"
"What has age to do with love?"
"But do you?" Then, as he remained silent, she said, "He is fifty-two years old. I am thirty. Does that surprise you?"
She looked barely out of her teens. A child with a woman's body, who had dressed herself in adult clothes to impress a visitor. Dumarest looked around the room, at the mirror, the dolls, the skull resting on the open book. An odd thing to be found in a playroom but the dolls were to be expected.
As were the bones, the bowl of jet, the ornate symbols.
Dumarest wondered why the window had been left unbarred.
She said, as if reading his mind, "You think I'm deranged. Mad. Some deluded fool playing with bizarre toys." Her laughter held the clear note of childish innocence. "And you? What else are you with your clothes and your knife and the ship you ride in? What are those things other than toys?" Without waiting for an answer she said, "The Erce, isn't it? Your ship-the Erce?"
"Yes, it means-"
"Earth. Mother Earth. You don't have to explain."
Tolen had known better than to laugh but others hadn't been so restrained. To them Earth had been a joke but to Eunice the name had meaning.
Dumarest said tightly, "You know. You know of Earth. How?"
"Books." Her gesture embraced the tomes. "Talk. Stories."
"From?" He restrained his impatience. A wrong word and she would become annoyed as, if he pressed too hard, she could become bored and change the subject. "From whom did you hear the stories?"
"From my nurse when a child, I think." Her hand lifted to her parted lips as if she was about to suck her thumb. "And from Urich, of course."
"The nurse?"
"Rachel. One of the Ypsheim." Her shrug was casual. "She died years ago."
But Urich was alive. Dumarest forced himself to sound indifferent. "What made him talk about it? Earth, I mean. What did he say?"
She touched a book without answering, moved to look at the dolls, turned to stare out of the window.