"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.
"That spider-man over there. Can you guess how his arms and legs got that long? Babies are malleable. Tissue can be stretched, bone too when you're young and mostly gristle. They rested him on a plank and tied weights to his wrists and ankles. Heavy weights left for years. Something to see when he was ready." Gora spat his disgust. "People!"
Dumarest made no comment.
"So we sit here," continued Gora. "Amusing the normal. Taking their insults, sometimes their pity. At times I don't know which is worse."
"I do," said Dumarest. "One freak bullying another, for example."
"I don't bully them."
"Ras wants to kill you."
"Ras wants to die," corrected the dog-man. "At times we all want to die. How else can we escape this hell?"
"You're fed, housed, kept warm," reminded Dumarest. "So you have to earn it-but who else would employ you? Some would think you are lucky. And if you want to die you can do it whenever you want."
"How? Without a gun? A knife?" Gora looked at the hilt riding above Dumarest's boot. "You could do it. Give me an easy way out."
"No, I won't do that. Any edge will do. Teeth if you've nothing else. Just bite through a vein."
"That all?"
"That's all-if you've the guts." Dumarest watched as Gora lifted his wrist to his mouth, the fangs lowering, biting, indentations showing on the hair, the flesh beneath. Before blood could flow he said, quickly, "You've the courage but you're not ready yet. When you are you'll do it fast. But you know the others need you."
An out the other accepted. "Yes," he said, lowering his wrist. "Yes, I guess they do."
"You help them all the time."
"That's right."
"And you can help me. I'm looking for a girl named Melome. She was sold to the circus last night."
"A freak?"
"A sensitive." Dumarest added, "Some would call it the same thing."
"They could be right." Gora shook his head. "I haven't seen her. Try the infirmary." He gestured at the door close to his cubicle. "You'll have to go out that way." As Dumarest reached for the knob he said, "Would it hurt?"
"Just the sting of the bite. After that you'd just drift into sleep."
Into sleep and death and final oblivion. An easy way out-but one Dumarest would never take.
Reiza snapped, "Up, Chang! Up!"
He was slow to respond, snuffing the air, lambent eyes shifting in the sleek perfection of his skull. Small signs others might have overlooked or ignored but to her they were beacons of danger. Attention diffused when it should have been concentrated solely on her. The crack of her whip demanded attention.
"Stay!" The animal had moved a little. "Stay, Chang! Stay!"
A beast troubled by unaccustomed stimuli; during the last performance some fool had chosen to use a klaxon. A trick which had raised a laugh but which had almost shattered the delicate balance of command she held over her charges. An unthinking gesture, perhaps, or maybe one with a sinister intent; placid though Baatza was yet there were always those yearning for violence and the sight of blood.
"Up!" The crack of her whip again. "Up, Chang! Up!"