"Nobody beat anybody," Cussick answered. "Nobody won the war."

A small knot of people had stopped to listen. The veteran noticed them; all at once his cold eyes faded and glazed over. He grunted, shot a last hostile look at Cussick, and melted off into the group. Disappointed, the people moved on.

The next freak was part human, part animal. Somewhere along the line, inter-species mating had occurred; the event was certainly lost in the nightmarish shadows of the war. As he gazed up, Cussick tried to determine what the original progenitors had been; one, certainly, had been a horse. This freak, in all probability, was a fake, artificially grafted; but it was visually convincing. From the war had come intricate legends of man-animal progeny, exaggerated accounts of pure human stock that had degenerated, erotic tales of copulation between women and beasts.

There were many-headed babies, a common sport. He passed by the usual display of parasites living on sibling hosts. Feathered, scaled, tailed, winged humanoid freaks squeaked and fluttered on all sides: infinite oddities from ravaged genes. People with internal organs situated outside the dermal wall; eye-less, face-less, even head-less freaks; freaks with enlarged and elongated and multi-jointed limbs; sad-looking creatures peeping out from within other creatures. A grotesque panorama of malformed organisms: dead-ends that would leave no spawn, monsters surviving by exhibiting their monstrous qualities.

In the main area, the entertainers were beginning their acts. Not mere freaks, but legitimate performers with skills and talents. Exhibiting not themselves, but rather their unusual abilities. Dancers, acrobats, jugglers, fire-eaters, wrestlers, fighters, animal-tamers, clowns, riders, divers, strong men, magicians, fortune-tellers, pretty girls... acts that had come down through thousands of years. Nothing new: only the freaks were new. The war brought new monsters, but not new abilities.