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a few scars one might choose to keep if one felt it was glamorous …
    Yet here was this stranger saying, in a voice which suddenly seemed as though it ought to be familiar, “Well? Is the clumsy fool going to behave decently and come with me to a dueling-hall, or must I simply stick him like a pig out here in the open? Either way—are you listening?—I propose to kill you.”

CHAPTER V
    A LL OF A SUDDEN what traces of carnival mood remained in Horn’s mind, artificially supported by the various euphorics he had continually gulped down since his arrival at the fairground, vanished before a rising gale of cold disgust. It had been threatening him all night, and he had barely managed to hold it at bay; the starkness of the stranger’s words now stripped him of all defenses, and he realized that without reservation he detested the world that had bred him as he was.
    For it had also spawned casual killers who could beat androids to death for amusement, secure in the knowledge that their crime was mere destruction of property. How far above life was property prized, when the lack of it condemned the losers to the living hell of Dispossession?
    Waiting impatiently, the man in white and gold said, “If I have to, I will run you through out here—I swear it! And there will be no one but my
friends
as witnesses!”
    Drawn back to the present, Horn looked about him. In shadows nearby he detected blurred figures whose attitude somehow betrayed eagerness. People of that kind also were something he had heard about but not encountered before: those who spent the week of carnival tracking down sadistic killers and watching their duels with a voyeur’s greed. There were rules to govern dueling, naturally, and such bystanders could always be relied on to swear that they had been complied with.
    He sought a way of escape, and realized sickly thatthere was none. He could be tripped whichever way he tried to run. Therefore …
    Detrmination grew in him. Without realizing it, he knew now that he had been surrounded all his life by things which nauseated him. He had never struck back, but only hidden himself behind the stockade of security afforded by his grandfather’s fortune. For better or worse, that was going to stop.
    He saw that a cooler for iced drinks and confectionery had been overturned a few paces from where he stood. He strode towards it and slapped a handful of sticky but delightfully cold pulp on his forehead and cheeks. His mask had long ago been mislaid in the tumult of the night. Refreshed, he turned to the man in white and gold.
    “Very well. Where shall we go?”
    The stranger took a step back, as though surprised to find his challenge at last accepted. But he swiftly recovered his self-possession.
    “There is a hall a short distance from here which is still open. I see you have no sword of your own, but you can rent one there. Come with me.”
    Horn snatched up a blouse some girl had discarded on the ground and used it to wipe away the last traces of the fruit-pulp from his face. He was nervous, but to his amazement he was not afraid. He had conceived a sense of purpose, though it was a purpose he intellectually despised, and the sensation was strange and somehow inspiring. Falling in beside the challenger, he noticed from the corner of his eye that the anonymous watchers were following along behind.
    “You seem to be pretty free with your challenges,” he muttered after a few paces. “Is the number of your kills the index of your enjoyment of carnival?”
    The eyes behind the gold mask glinted. “I have killed at every carnival since I was twenty!”
    “By picking on opponents who have never been challengedbefore?” Horn made the words as insulting as he could. The man in white and gold bridled.
    “Once! Only once! Have you never dueled, then?”
    “Not in your style, for the pleasure of a kill.” Horn hesitated, then decided the rest of the truth was worth exploiting for what it might do to undermine the