The younger Karee poked its head in the door.

"Food for me. Food for the yuma," Besseh said. The magician made its way to a rumpled cot and sat down, its legs spread in an unconscious and uncaring exposure of its bisexual organs.

George looked away.

"Magjc," Besseh said philosophically, "some is good; some is bad. You tell me what to do. If it is good, you have the good. If it is bad, you carry the hurt. I am..." The old Karee searched for a word, then gave up and uttered the rest in its own language, "reslani orgit."

"Blameless tool," George muttered to himself, staring at the lamp rather than at the flagrant nakedness of the magician.

"Ta? Blameless tool; yes. You want someone dead? You want a new wife? I do this for you, poor yuma who needs another to make sex with." Besseh laughed, crooking its head so that it could see George's expression. "Look at me!" it shouted when it noticed the direction of George's gaze. "You look at me! You come for help, so you look!"

Resentfully, George forced his head around.

"What you see, yuma?"

"I see Besseh Yo, a great magician."

The Karee got to its feet and shuffled its way towards George. "Your words is pus. Say what you see."

George tightened his jaw.

"I see an ugly yuma with shit on his shoe and fear in his face," Besseh said, shoving a hard finger into George's shoulder. "What do you see, ta?"

With a quick movement, George slapped Besseh's hand away. "I see a naked little savage," he said.

"Ta. What else?"

George bit his lip and stared hard at the lamp.

The finger punched him hard in the arm. "Naked little savage, ta? And more?" The finger jabbed bruises into George's muscle. "More?"

George moved out of Besseh's range and turned away from him. "No more," he said softly. The Karee enjoyed confrontations. They thrived on scenes. When other beings lost their tempers with Karee, as they most often did, the Karee laughed with strident voices. The Karee were primitives with a taste for the dramatic.

There was a flash of movement at the side of his head, a jerk and then a gout of pain. Alarmed, breathing hard, George backed to the wall, one hand over his stinging scalp. Besseh had torn out a lock of his hair.

The magician stood for a moment, the neat silver-gray curl in its hand. Then it opened its toothless mouth and swallowed it. "You and me is one now, yuma."

George's lip curled in bewildered confusion. He felt violated and more than a little afraid. "Maybe I'd better go."

"Lauren," the Karee said.

George flinched.

"I eat of you so I know. Eating is knowing. You come here about eating the memories."

"I come here to remember her, not like I can remember her now, but to relive those memories as if they were real. I want to touch her again. I've heard you can do that."

Instead of replying, Besseh called for food again. Tyoresh came in with two bowls, one for George, the other for the magician. For a while George simply watched the old Karee eat.

"You eat, yuma," Besseh said as it sucked the meat from the casque of a shota.

George looked down into the pinkish mass, plucked a shota from its gravy and peeled it. It tasted of mud.

The Karee ate with the slurping abandon of gluttony. When it was finished it rinsed the bowl in a pan of sand and water.

"You haven't asked who I am," George said.

Besseh stuck out its bottom lip, a Karee shrug. "You is yuma. More doesn't matter. All yuma is alike."

"All humans aren't alike Besseh."

"All yuma is alike," it said, twisting its face in George's direction and tilting its head back so that it could see. "We got power of the mind; you got power over the body."

George's eyes were drawn to the hunched hack, the twisted limbs, the deformed eye sockets of the creature. The magician, he imagined, had an intimate relationship with pain. For the first time since he had come he felt more pity than discomfort.

"You take the body from here to there, yuma. You come from your planet to this. But the body is stupid."

"Stupid. Is that what you think of us?"

Behind the twin slits on its face George thought he could set Besseh's eyes glitter, black diamonds in a cave. "Stupid," it said.

George got up from his stool and walked to the pan of sand and water. Besseh, with an odd gentleness, took the bowl from his hands.

"You ain't eat much," it said critically as it washed the bowl.

"Will you do the magic for me?"

"Sure."

"When do we start?"

George was unprepared for the splash. Grit and stale dishwater exploded against his eyes. He raised up a protective arm, but it was too late.

"Now," Besseh said with a laugh.

George felt himself falling. He twisted his body to the side, trying to catch himself.

Across the thick mauve carpet in the lobby a woman stood with Sanderson, the chandelier above her casting bright lights in her hair. As he approached into the subtle gravity of her slim body, the tug of her perfume, Sanderson asked in a strangely far away voice how he'd liked the Beethoven. Then he turned to the woman at his side. George's eyes had never left her face.

"George Hatterly," Sanderson said, "Lauren McKnight."