The "man" facing him was more nearly human than most; only a blob of flesh dangling from his forehead and a wattled reddish dewlap swinging pendulously below his chin qualified him for the ghetto. Kesley forced himself to stare rigidly over the man's shoulder while he replied.
"I'm looking for ... I don't know his name. He's tall, very tall, and—" He broke off, overwhelmed by self-conscious guilt, unable to recite the catalogue of one mutant's alienness to another.
"Go ahead," the mutant said with surprising warmth. "Tell me what he looks like and I'll see if I can find him. I'm not offended."
Kesley licked his lips and proceeded to describe the man he sought as vividly as possible. When he was through, the mutant nodded.
"You look for Lomark Dawnspear, friend. Has he wronged you?"
"No," Kesley said hastily, beginning to wish he had never come. "I just want to talk to him."
"Wait here. I'll try to bring him to you."
Kesley waited. The mutant vanished in the confusing tangle of closely-packed shacks.
In the midst of this poverty and genetic horror, Kesley held himself perfectly still, hoping not to call to himself the attention of some unfortunate who might be jealous of his fine clothes or unscrambled chromosomes. But no one approached him. The mutants held their distance, eyeing him with unashamed curiosity from the cramped porches of their huts.
It was a panorama of total ghastliness. Kesley could see now where the horror with which men regarded the Old Days had arisen: the people here were living reminders of the crime of the Old World—a crime, Kesley thought, whose consequences were visited upon the tenth and the twentieth generations.