"She's beginning to see something," the man said. "The water and the glass are just devices to focus her attention. Myla's good at skrenning, though sometimes she gets the future confused with the past. That sort of thing is embarrassing, and it gives skrenning a bad name. It can't be helped, though. Every once in a while the future is there in the water, and Myla has to tell what she sees. Last week she told a Hadji he was going to die in four days." The old man chuckled. "You should have seen the expression on his face." "Did she see how he would die?" Barrent asked. "Yes. By a knife-thrust. The poor man stayed in his house for the entire four days." "Was he killed?" "Of course. His wife killed him. She was a strong-minded woman, I'm told." Barrent hoped that Myla wouldn't skren any future for him. Life was difficult enough without a mutant's predictions to make it worse. She was looking up from the faceted glass now, shaking her head sadly. "There's very little I can tell you. I was not able to see the murder performed. But I skrenned a graveyard, and in it I saw your parents' tombstone. It was an old tombstone, perhaps twenty years old. The graveyard was on the outskirts of a place on Earth called Youngerstun." Barrent reflected a moment, but the name meant nothing to him. "Also," Myla said, "I skrenned a man who knows about the murder. He can tell you about it, if he will." "This man saw the murder?" "Yes." "Is he the man who informed on me?" "I don't know," Myla said. "I skrenned the corpse, whose name was Therkaler, and there was a man standing near it. That man's name was Illiardi." "Is he here on Omega?" "Yes. You can find him right now in the Euphoriatorium on Little Axe Street. Do you know where that is?" "I can find it," Barrent said. He thanked the girl and offered payment, which she refused to take. She looked very unhappy. As Barrent was leaving, she called out, "Be careful." Barrent stopped at the door, and felt an icy chill settle across his chest. "Did you skren my future?" he asked. "Only a little," Myla said. "Only a few months ahead." "What did you see?" "I can't explain it," she said. "What I saw is impossible." "Tell me what it was." "I saw you dead. And yet, you weren't dead at all. You were looking at a corpse, which was shattered into shiny fragments. But the corpse was also you." "What does it mean?" "I don't know," Myla said. * * * * * The Euphoriatorium was a large, garish place which specialized in cut-rate drugs and aphrodisiacs. It catered mostly to a peon and resident clientele. Barrent felt out of status as he shouldered his way through the crowd and asked a waiter where he could find a man named Illiardi. The waiter pointed. In a corner booth, Barrent saw a bald, thick-shouldered man sitting over a tiny glass of thanapiquita. Barrent went over and introduced himself.