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Star quest

Star quest

Titel: Star quest Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Dean Koontz
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large coin for every animal approved. Flies were already congregating about the front of the place, and Tohm could well imagine what it would look like when the heat of the day lay like a blanket over all. And what it would
smell
like.
    Next door to the meat market was an automated butchery where meats were kept in refrigerated glass cubes, constantly on display. The prices were about three times those of the cruder merchant, but Tohm felt that he wouldn't mind paying the difference. If he could gag meat down any more. Even looking at all that raw flesh, he realized, was making him ill. The customs, likes and dislikes of the Muties were, he knew, rubbing off on him too.
    A man in a fluttering cape like the one the auto-fact had provided him with many days ago came strutting along the walk. A grossly fat man with a pig's face, he picked at his teeth with a sparkling nail. The lower classes stepped into the street to allow him passage, even though it wasn't a physical necessity, the walks being wide enough for seven or eight men abreast. Tohm, however, did the same. He was not out to call attention to himself, to arouse suspicions.
    Once, crossing the busy street, he saw the boy with the white eyes go by in a limousine. A very wealthy woman sat beside him. The boy showed no signs of recognition. Tohm wanted to run after him, but he didn't. There was something about the boy he didn't like. He couldn't say more than that Perhaps it was Hunk's fear of the boy, and Hunk seemed afraid of so little. If the Mutie feared the boy, there was a reason. Something beyond the dreams. He made the other side of the street and struck out for the Market of Concubines, having entered the Street of the Pleasure Sellers.
    The Street of the Pleasure Sellers was not really a street at all, but a square. In the center of the square, a large fountain with the mythological creatures of Romaghin religion pouring water from pitchers over the heads of marble nymphets burbled gaily. There was a festive air to everything here. Buildings were colorful and in good repair. Multihued pennants were strung on glittering poles. Already, men were flocking into the square, the clots of upper class men painstakingly segregated from the fatigue-shod peasantry. But peasants, too, could visit the square, for the board of governors placed no social lines between the poor and the rich man's credits. One bill was as good as the other. Money, not ability, is the only thing that makes men equal
    "My yacht is parked in a low orbit," one rich man was saying to another. "I brought my half-miler, for I plan to take home fifty beauties."
    "My tastes," the other man said, fiddling with his pencil line moustache, "are not so easily satisfied. I find only one girl—if any—worth buying at an auction."
    "You are just being snobbish," the first man said.
    Tohm moved on. The majority of peasants were going to frequent the House of Love or the House of Nubile Maidens, where two bills brought fifteen minutes. Few had enough money to purchase their own slave girls, their own mistresses. They watched longingly as the merchants set up their rostrums on their respective platforms.
    Slowly, as the minutes passed, more and more people began drifting into the square. There were about two hundred now, seventy-five percent peasantry. A group of caped socialites were hunched around a KILL A MUTDE/ SAVE YOUR WORLD sign posted on the bulletin board, arguing politics, all in favor, of course, of killing Muties— differing only on the proper methods of destruction.
    A gong sounded, and a jester announced in singsong lyric that the market was legally open for business. The young peasants pulled out their money and ran for the doors of the pleasure houses. The older peasants were content to wait for an experience which, though necessary and desirable, was not so terribly unique any longer. The few young peasants who had denied themselves and saved their bills over months and months, stood watching the platforms, unsure to which they should run. Some would buy foolishly and quickly the first girls they saw. Others would wait, wait until all had been shown and none were being held back.
    A moment later, as if at a hidden signal, the merchants came from behind the curtains at the rear of their platforms and began hawking their wares. They were foppishly dressed in jewel-studded capes of brilliant colors with inch- rather than quarter-inch fringe. The Merchant Kinger, directly in front of Tohm,

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