One of the women was very old and completely hairless. The other was young and beautiful. As Barrent moved closer to the table, he saw, with a sense of shock, that her legs were joined below the knee by a membrane of scaly skin, and her feet were of a rudimentary fish-tail shape.
"What do you wish us to skren for you, Citizen Barrent?" the young woman asked.
"How did you know my name?" Barrent asked. When he got no answer, he said, "All right. I want to find out about a murder I committed on Earth."
"Why do you want to find out about it?" the young woman asked. "Won"t the authorities credit it to your record?"
"They credit it. But I want to find out why I did it. Maybe there were extenuating circ.u.mstances. Maybe I did it in self-defense."
"Is it really important?" the young woman asked.
"I think so," Barrent said. He hesitated a moment, then took the plunge.
"The fact of the matter is, I have a neurotic prejudice against murder.
I would rather _not_ kill. So I want to find out why I committed murder on Earth."
The mutants looked at each other. Then the old man grinned and said, "Citizen, we"ll help you all we can. We mutants also have a prejudice against killing, since it"s always someone else killing us. We"re all in favor of citizens with a neurosis against murder."
"Then you"ll skren my past?"
"It"s not as easy as that," the young woman said. "The skrenning ability, which is one of a cl.u.s.ter of psi talents, is difficult to use.
It doesn"t always function. And when it does function, it often doesn"t reveal what it"s supposed to."
"I thought all mutants could look into the past whenever they wanted to," Barrent said.
"No," the old man told him, "that isn"t true. For one thing, not all of us who are cla.s.sified mutants are true mutants. Almost any deformity or abnormality these days is called mutantism. It"s a handy term to cover anyone who doesn"t conform to the Terran standard of appearance."
"But some of you are true mutants?"
"Certainly. But even then, there are different types of mutantism. Some just show radiation abnormalities--giantism, microcephaly, and the like.
Only a few of us possess the slightest psi abilities--although all mutants claim them."
"Are you able to skren?" Barrent asked him.
"No. But Myla can," he said, pointing to the young woman. "Sometimes she can."
The young woman was staring into the pan of water, into the faceted gla.s.s. Her pale eyes were open very wide, showing almost all pupil, and her fish-tailed body was rigidly upright, supported by the old woman.
"She"s beginning to see something," the man said. "The water and the gla.s.s are just devices to focus her attention. Myla"s good at skrenning, though sometimes she gets the future confused with the past. That sort of thing is embarra.s.sing, and it gives skrenning a bad name. It can"t be helped, though. Every once in a while the future is there in the water, and Myla has to tell what she sees. Last week she told a Hadji he was going to die in four days." The old man chuckled. "You should have seen the expression on his face."
"Did she see how he would die?" Barrent asked.
"Yes. By a knife-thrust. The poor man stayed in his house for the entire four days."
"Was he killed?"
"Of course. His wife killed him. She was a strong-minded woman, I"m told."
Barrent hoped that Myla wouldn"t skren any future for him. Life was difficult enough without a mutant"s predictions to make it worse.
She was looking up from the faceted gla.s.s now, shaking her head sadly.
"There"s very little I can tell you. I was not able to see the murder performed. But I skrenned a graveyard, and in it I saw your parents"
tombstone. It was an old tombstone, perhaps twenty years old. The graveyard was on the outskirts of a place on Earth called Youngerstun."
Barrent reflected a moment, but the name meant nothing to him.
"Also," Myla said, "I skrenned a man who knows about the murder. He can tell you about it, if he will."
"This man saw the murder?"
"Yes."
"Is he the man who informed on me?"
"I don"t know," Myla said. "I skrenned the corpse, whose name was Therkaler, and there was a man standing near it. That man"s name was Illiardi."
"Is he here on Omega?"
"Yes. You can find him right now in the Euphoriatorium on Little Axe Street. Do you know where that is?"
"I can find it," Barrent said. He thanked the girl and offered payment, which she refused to take. She looked very unhappy. As Barrent was leaving, she called out, "Be careful."
Barrent stopped at the door, and felt an icy chill settle across his chest. "Did you skren my future?" he asked.
"Only a little," Myla said. "Only a few months ahead."
"What did you see?"
"I can"t explain it," she said. "What I saw is impossible."
"Tell me what it was."
"I saw you dead. And yet, you weren"t dead at all. You were looking at a corpse, which was shattered into shiny fragments. But the corpse was also you."
"What does it mean?"
"I don"t know," Myla said.
The Euphoriatorium was a large, garish place which specialized in cut-rate drugs and aphrodisiacs. It catered mostly to a peon and resident clientele. Barrent felt out of status as he shouldered his way through the crowd and asked a waiter where he could find a man named Illiardi.
The waiter pointed. In a corner booth, Barrent saw a bald, thick-shouldered man sitting over a tiny gla.s.s of thanapiquita. Barrent went over and introduced himself.
"Pleased to meet you, sir," Illiardi said, showing the obligatory respect of a Second Cla.s.s Resident for a Privileged Citizen. "How can I be of service?"
"I want to ask you a few questions about Earth," Barrent said.
"I can"t remember much about the place," Illiardi said. "But you"re welcome to anything I know."