He would have to find out.

There were only two ways of getting information about Earth. One lay
through the horror-tinged visions of the Dream Shop, and he was
determined not to go there again. The other way was through the services
of a skrenning mutant.

Barrent had the usual distaste for mutants. They were another race
entirely, and their status of untouchability was no mere prejudice. It
was well known that mutants often carried strange and incurable
diseases. They were shunned, and they had reacted to exclusion by
exclusiveness. They lived in the Mutant Quarter, which was almost a
self-contained city within Tetrahyde. Citizens with good sense stayed
away from the Quarter, especially after dark; everyone knew that mutants
could be vindictive.

But only mutants had the skrenning ability. In their misshapen bodies
were unusual powers and talents, odd and abnormal abilities which the
normal man shunned by day but secretly courted by night. Mutants were
said to be in the particular favor of The Black One. Some people felt
that the great art of Black Magic, about which the priests boasted,
could only be performed by a mutant; but one never said so in the
presence of a priest.

Mutants, because of their strange talents, were reputed to remember much
more of Earth than was possible for normal men and women. Not only could
they remember Earth in general, but in particular they could skren the
life-thread of a man backward through space and time, pierce the wall
of forgetfulness and tell what really had happened to him.

Other people believed that mutants had no unusual abilities at all. They
considered them clever rogues who lived off people's credulity.

Barrent decided to find out for himself. Late one night, suitably
cloaked and armed, he left his apartment and went to the Mutant
Quarter.

Chapter Thirteen

Barrent walked through the narrow, twisting streets of the Quarter, one
hand never far from his weapon. He walked among the lame and the blind,
past hydrocephaloid and microcephalous idiots, past a juggler who kept
twelve flaming torches in the air with the aid of a rudimentary third
hand growing out of his chest. There were vendors selling clothing,
charms, and jewelry. There were carts loaded with pungent and
unsanitary-looking food. He walked past a row of brightly painted
brothels. Girls crowded the windows and shrieked at him, and a
four-armed, six-legged woman told him he was just in time for