"No." The guard smiled as he reassured the man who'd asked. "But it's best not to torment the creature. Anger makes it hard to handle and we like to keep it quiet."

Nonetheless dilettantes laughed as they threw stones into the cage. Bored, jaded, the idle parasites of a strugglng culture, they considered themselves above the restrictions binding others. Dumarest heard the guard yell again as he moved away. Heard the mocking reply, the sudden snarl from the creature which filled the air with the raw taint of primeval fear, roar repeated as again the men goaded the beast.

The guards were fools. They bore clubs and should have used them. Instead they added to the din with futile shouting, a stupidity matched by the original error of displaying the creature in the first place.

The noise faded as he merged with the throng in the midway, listening to the siren call of a young girl offering a variety of exotic experiences: sensitapes which gave a full-sense illusion of reality; analogues which conveyed alternate pleasures; sexual coupling of beasts, killing, burning, dying, the terror of the chase, the thrill of the stalk; drugs to heighten perception, others to increase the sensitivity of nerves so that a touch became an ecstasy, a kiss unendurable pleasure; compounds to dull, to distort, to change; salves, pills, tablets, tonics-the girl offered them all.

"And you, my lord?" Her eyes met Dumarest's. "Is there nothing you desire?"

Nothing she could supply and she must have read the answer in his eyes. Oddly her own filled with tears.

"I am sorry, my lord," she whispered. "So very sorry."

A sensitive? It was possible, carnivals and fairs were natural resting places for such misfits. But what had she seen to make her cry? What had she guessed?

Perhaps nothing-the tears could have been a trick to attract others, a little showmanship to enhance her standing. A facile explanation, but Dumarest hesitated to accept it. A warning? It was possible and his back prickled to the familiar sense of danger. Podesta was the staging point for those heading for Ascelius. It was the cheap and easy way which was why it was popular with students and, at this time, it was simple to become lost in the crowd, which was why he had chosen to travel in the guise of a student. Had the girl seen through his pretense? Had she known that others had done so?