Nightmare journey

would feel no reluctance when the time came to destroy him; he was, after all, nothing but an animal, tainted now, unfit.
    On his right, near the fireplace, an open door revealed descending stairs. He hurried to them, looked into the gloom of the hotel's cellar. He hesitated, certain that this could not lead him anywhere. At most he would find a tiny, street-level window that looked onto an alleyway that the Pures already controlled.
    Then he heard the soldiers in the public room. The Pures in the back alley had reached the locked kitchen door and were rattling it experimentally.
    Without pausing to consider his fate any longer, he stepped through the door, shut it behind, and went quickly down the wooden steps.
    2
    THE cellar was nearly lightless. A single window faced an alleyway, perhaps large enough to leave by though effectively barred by thick iron pipes. What little light there was found its way through the dirty glass beyond the bars, casting impenetrable shadows in the subterranean chamber. In this chiaroscuro chaos, it was impossible to find a way out in time. Even if there were a way out. Which was doubtful.
    He was about to turn and leave, to take his chances in the occupied upper floors, when he felt light, teasing mental fingers working along the surface of his own mind, the fingers of an esper. They were weightless fingers, yet sharp and insistent, like the spidery cracks in crimson pottery glaze.
    He turned and examined the shadows, frightened and yet curious. He knew that his only chance of survival lay in the unexpected, and he had certainly never expected to meet another esper here, now.
    On your left, the voiceless voice said, the crisp metallic whisper of telepathic conversation.
    Jask turned, squinted into darkness.
    Someone waited there, though he could not discern the nature of the man.
    Come closer.
    He went closer, and his eyes adjusted to the intense blackness. But the moment he saw the creature, he stepped rapidly backward, his throat constricted and his heart thumping in terror.
    You have nowhere to run. Help me instead.
    “Can you speak?” Jask inquired.
    “You do have it bad, don't you? You're as prejudiced and snottily superior as those upstairs hunting for you!” The voice was deeper, harsher than even the General's voice, and it made Jask sound like a woman by comparison.
    “What are you?” Jask asked.
    “Don't you mean-who am I?”
    Jask did not reply. So many years of theology and custom did not fall away so easily. If he used the word, “who,” it implied that he considered the beast a man, that he had rejected all he knew to be holy and certain.
    The mutant snorted. “I'm a man.”
    More silence.
    Jask saw that it was his place to speak, though he could not find the right words. His eyes roamed the creature. Flickering impressions in the dim light: huge, seven feet tall… thick of body, with arms like branches, legs like trunks of oak… chest as big around as a barrel… a dark and almost snoutlike nose… broad face… deep-set eyes… a well-matted, rich cover of fur all over a body otherwise naked…
    “Like a bear,” the creature said.
    “Yes.”
    “I'm a man, nevertheless.”
    Jask said, “The Artificial-”
    “-Wombs.”
    Jask nodded. The beauty was there, even in the dim light, the pleasant line and functional structure that random mutation lacked. Still, this was not a man, could never be a man.
    “Damn it!” the bruin growled in frustration. He spat on the floor with a great, wet hawking noise, shook his head in disgust at Jask's hesitation. “Can't you hear them up there?” He spoke in an inordinately vicious whisper.
    “What do you want?” Jask inquired.
    He had momentarily forgotten the threat of the hunters above, far more concerned with the hulking being that stood in the shadows so close at hand.
    “Set me loose, and I'll get us both free from this predicament,” the bruin promised.
    It was the sort of guarantee made in a moment of desperation with no possibility of fulfillment. Yet he sounded sincere enough.
    Someone overhead shouted. A door burst open, and automatic weaponry chattered loudly. The soldiers had entered Jask's room. When they found him gone, they would sweep through the hotel in short order, shooting ahead of themselves, frantic men with frantic solutions. To them, he was an esper, a man who could never be permitted to live in peace. He was no longer a sacred vessel of Pure genes, but tainted, unfit, touched by mutation.
    “How can you get us free?” Jask wan