Without turning she replied, "Mother made me do it—she is much afeard of my worldiness."
A couple strolled out of one of the cubicles ahead of them. The man wore the brief belted tunic of an Ancient Roman. His hair was short, his broken-nosed Latin features bordered by what looked like gigantic spit-curls.
With him was a dark-skinned woman, veiled to her liquid black eyes, her figure hidden more effectively than Deborah's by a voluminous bright silk sarong. Both of them waited while Deborah and Justin walked past them, regarding Justin with curious dark eyes. The Roman said, "Ave."
Culling a forgotten scrap of Latin from his schoolday memories, Justin replied, "Pax vobiscum," saw the Roman start with surprise. "Who are they?" he asked in an undertone of the strangers who had let them go ahead.
"Belvoir is full of their like—and even odder," was the girl's reply. "But ye will soon see for ye'rself."
"Have you been here long, Deborah?" Justin asked her.
"'Tis hard to say," was her reply. "Longer than Dr. Phillips or yourself—not as long as most of the others. Dr. Phillips says we have been waiting for ye, Master Charles—that soon we shall go home."
Curious, thought Justin, when she frowned slightly at mention of returning home. It seemed unlikely that any girl could be happy in this strange place.
They came to a large chamber filled with long tables. Running down the center of each was a sort of wall. Seated at perhaps half of the hundreds of modernistic comfortable-looking chairs was the oddest collection of humans Justin had ever seen.
He noted one hirsute low-browed male, clad in a mangy looking hide, who seemed scarcely more than a giant ape. This specimen, with fierce concentration, was gnawing greedily on the scarcely-charred thighbone of a medium-sized animal without benefit of tableware. Beside him sat a squat mocha-skinned female whose skinny pendulous-breasted body was entirely innocent of clothing.