"You hesitate," she said. "You did not refuse when Linda Vyna made you the same offer. Did you enjoy her ministrations? Was the bitch gracious? At least she's had experience enough in entertaining men in need." She drank and lowered the empty glass. "Do you love her?"

"No."

"Yet you would use her. As you were willing to use me on Ascelius."

"To escape," he said. "And you were there to help me do it. A lucky coincidence."

"They happen."

"Perhaps."

"Have you never known others?" She refilled her glass and, when she turned, again she was smiling. "Come, Earl, why be so suspicious? Drink and relax and talk to me. Of your travels and other coincidences you have known. Surely there are some?"

"Many." He lifted his glass and lowered it untouched. Her eyes ignored its passage. "One should amuse you. Two brothers left home at various times to seek their fortunes. Both became mercenaries and, after twenty years, they met on a battlefield."

"And one killed the other?"

"I said they were mercenaries," he said patiently. "They had been at their trade long enough to have learned the futility of slaughter. One held the upper hand and made an offer; terms which would leave his opponents far less than what they had but more than they could hope to retain if beaten into submission. The offer was accepted."

"And when they met face to face and realized their relationship they joined forces and turned against those who had hired them?"

"No. Mercenaries, if nothing else, are realists. The terms stood but, afterwards, they traveled together. A mistake; while there was work for one there was not enough for two. Finally they argued over a woman and one killed the other. He lived barely long enough to claim his prize; she had loved the other and took her revenge in bed."

"So?" She frowned. "What is your point?"

"A simple one, Charisse. Things are not always what they seem. You, for example, a young and beautiful woman-who would take you for a liar?"

She said, tightly, "You are a guest in my house, Earl. I suggest you remember that."

"A guest?" He looked at the glass in his hand then set it on the table. "On Podesta you told me your father had died a year earlier. I believed you-why should you bother to lie? But later I learned that a man, Rudi Boulaye, had visited you. You, Charisse, not your father. Circe was not a man. That was ten years ago."

"So? My father was busy."

"He would never have been too busy to entertain Boulaye. They shared a common interest. Did you see him?"

"Boulaye? No. I merely gave him access to the library and Armand's papers. He offered to pay and I had need of the money at that time." She drank some of her wine. "I wish you'd drink with me, Earl."

"Later, perhaps."

"It's harmless, I swear it." She shrugged as he made no comment. "All right, so I lied. What of it?"

"I wondered why. Was it just to make yourself seem younger than you are? A harmless vanity? But then came the meeting on Ascelius and your loving care." His left hand rose to touch his temple. "The implant you so generously gave me."

"Something to ease your pain," she said quickly. "A convenient form of medication."

"Which dulled my intellect and made me amiable and robbed the temporal lobe of a true awareness of time. Which is why I removed it. What else did it contain? A receptor for a stunner? Something you could activate to throw me into an artificial sleep? Why? Were you afraid of me?"

Her laughter rose in genuine amusement. "Afraid of you? Earl, of all men you are the one I trust most. You couldn't hurt me if you tried. As you couldn't hurt the creature I set you against. Those fools, Enrice and the rest, they thought you had no chance but they hadn't seen you fight the mannek. It was stronger, taller, better equipped and more fearsome and you fought it to the point of death. Yet you ran from an overgrown girl. Do you know why?"

"Tell me."

"A simple thing, Earl, the color of her hair. Black hair like mine, like that of the child you risked your life to save. Whom did she remind you of? A woman you had loved? A child you had lost?" She paused, waiting, shrugging when he made no answer. "Not that it matters. I had the clue and it was enough. The rest was a matter of routine."

Of suggestions whispered into his ear while he lay at her mercy in drugged unconsciousness. Hypnotic conditioning used as an elementary precaution could have cost him his life. Not from the female he had faced, the men set on the roof of the building would have prevented that, but there could have been others. Black-haired women with the urge to kill.

"No, Earl!" Her voice held command. "Don't be a fool!"

He looked at his hand, at the knife he had drawn, the blade reflecting shimmers as it amplified the nervous tension of his muscles.

"You hate me," she mused. "But you can't harm me. Classic conditions for developing a mind-ruining conflict. One aggravated by your recent exertions. Another classic example, this time of an exercise in utter futility. What did you hope to gain? What had you to fear? The only dangers you faced were of your own choosing." Her eyes widened as he stepped toward her, to halt with the knife lifted, the point aimed at her throat. "Earl!"

"I can't harm you," he said. "Remember?"

"The knife-"

"An illustration. The real point of the story I told you. Things are not always what they seem, true, but the moral wasn't that. It was to make the point that it is a mistake to jump to the wrong conclusion. A knife is a tool designed to cut and so you imagine I intend hurting you. But you know I can't do that so-"

She cried out as the blade lifted, caught at her necklace, tore it free to send it flying to the floor where it lay with gleaming, winking eyes. The strands in her hair followed to lie in an ebon tangle.

"No!" She backed, hands lifted to shield her face. "No, Earl! No!" And then, with sudden fury, "You bastard! You'll pay for what you've done!"

He saw the fall of her hand, the gleam as she drew metal from her waist, springing forward, knife raised as she aimed the weapon at his face. Metal clashed as he knocked it aside, a thin, high ringing which rose to die in fading murmurs as he tore the gun from her hand to send it after the gems.

"You attacked me," she said incredulously. "You could have killed me." Then, dully, "Well, Earl, do you like what you see?"

She was still as tall, the curves of her body taut against the fabric of her gown and, with her face hidden in shadow, she seemed much the same. Then as he looked Dumarest noted changes, a blurring which seemed to accelerate, a shifting and alteration as the last shreds of illusion vanished before the impact of harsh reality.

Charisse was grotesque.

Nothing is really ugly in the context of its environment; a spider, a slug, a snail all have the beauty of functional design, but Charisse was a woman and, as a woman, she was monstrous.

"Armand," she said dully. "My loving father. My creator. A fool who aspired to be a god. The egotistical bastard! May he rot in hell." She took the glass of wine Dumarest had poured for her, stared at him for a moment, drank and threw the delicate crystal to shatter in a glitter of shards. "And you, Earl-did you have to be so cruel?"

He said nothing, handing her more wine. This time after drinking, she did not hurl the glass to ruin.

Bitterly she said, "You know, I was a very pretty child. A living doll, they used to call me. A sweet creature who won the hearts of all who saw me. A success, Armand thought. The living proof of his genetic skill." Her hand shook as she looked at the glass. "A pretty child-who would think it now?"

Those blind who would make their judgment on her voice but none who could see. The thrust of the knife had torn the wig from her scalp leaving a naked skull, the false eyebrows and eyelashes adding to the clownish distortion of her face, pocked with nodulated skin, flesh mounding over bone, puffed, seamed, a parody of what a face should be, rendered even more bizarre by the cosmetics emphasizing the eyes, the mouth, the line of the jaw.