by Andre Norton
She answered only with a faint smile. There had been a time when she was more fully human, when she could talk. But that ability was a thousand years and four lifetimes gone. And she did not regret the loss. With each incarnation she found there were fewer to whom she wished to speak. Talking meant little but lies. Thoughts told her more truth.
“What’s your name?”
The level look she gave him caused him to suddenly remember, without any resentment, the training his mother thought he had forgotten years before. He stood up to greet the naked visitor more properly…
“Hello, ma’am, welcome to-to wherever the heck this is. I’m Fred Hinkleman.” His hand hovered in air, then went to his head as if to remove an invisible hat in her presence. “What can I do for you? Do you want to be in my show?”
“She don’t got but little tits,” one of the strippers put in scornfully. The girl from onstage had joined those backstage, and the three Hinkleman Goddesses stood huddled together like moose when the scent of panther is in the air.
“I know how she gets to look glowy like that all over,” complained the dark kootch girl who was billed as the Wild Indian. “She just eats carrots, that’s all. Any of us could do it. Eat carrots till they’re coming out the kazoo.”
Fred Hinkleman seemed not to hear them at all. His gaze was stuck on the newcomer. “Tell you what,” he said to her. “You go onstage and show the yahoos what you can do. I’ll go introduce you right now. What should I call you?”
Her mouth, smiling, opened into a soundless meow.
“Cat? Good. Suits you.” He went out, and a moment later could be heard promising the marks “the hottest new talent in the adult entertainment business, the sleek, feline Miss Cat, uh, Miss Cat Pagan.”
“Just another pussy,” one of the strippers muttered.
She made her entrance onstage. Contrary to the logic of the word “stripper,” it is not necessary for one actually to be wearing anything in order to perform. Cat was wearing nothing at all, but that was not what made the already-sated marks go wild and leap up and stand on their chairs in order to see her. It was the way she wore it.
She did not bump or grind or flash for them. All she did was walk, pose, hint at possibilities, and possess the stage as she had once possessed the known world. Dignity clothed her as if in robes of gold. No mark thought of touching her. Every mark knew that the price of going to her afterward would be more than he could afford.
Looking out over them, she knew she could have any one of them-and many of them were young and well built, far more showily muscled than the man in sunglasses on the midway. But no. It was him she wanted. There was something about the way he stood. He had dignity, too.
When she considered that the marks had seen enough, she went backstage and helped herself to clothing: a short strapless red dress with a flared skirt, a wisp of lace to throw around her shoulders, a picture hat. The other Hinkleman’s G-String Goddess Revue girls watched her silently and did not try to stop her. Now that she had showed her stuff she was one of them. In the backstage air she could sense their stoical acceptance, and it surprised her. She had expected dislike, even enmity. But these women were carnies. They breakfasted with snake-eating geeks and sword swallowers, they bathed in buckets, camped in mud, and every day they were expected to perform magic, creating glamour out of dirt. So what was one more freak or freakish event to them? If the stranger wanted to show up out of nowhere, that was okay. They had weathered storms before.
“Honeycat, you’re a walking advertisement,” Hinkleman remarked when he saw her. “Go on, go do the midway. Have some fun.”
The kootcher with the melon breasts went along with Cat-in order to be seen with her, Cat surmised, noticing the other woman’s thoughts the way she noticed gnats in the air, with only a small portion of her attention. Melons wanted to make the best of a situation. Melons was not unwise.
“Been around the carousel a time or two, honey?” Melons chirped.
Married, she meant. Ignoring her, Cat headed straight toward the Guess Anything stand. Now that she was in her human form, she would make sure that the man there saw her. From her experience she knew this was all that would be necessary. She would smile just a little and look into his eyes, and when she walked away he would follow her as if she led him by an invisible chain of gold.
There was a crowd around the stand. The Guess Anything man was popular. Asked the standard questions concerning age and weight, he was often wrong, always on the side of flattery, and he gave away many prizes. But asked to guess far more difficult things-birthstones, marital status, number of children or grandchildren, home address, the place where a mark went to high school or nursing school or prison-he was often correct, uncannily so. And there was a quiet charisma about him. People stood listening to him in fascination, giving him their money again and again.
At the edge of the crowd Cat waited her turn with scant patience. She was not far away from him; he should see her… Wishing to enjoy his reaction, she felt for his mind with hers and found it easily. In fact, it awaited her. And yes, there was an awareness of her presence in him, but it was unlike any awareness she had ever experienced in a man before. His cognition of her had no lust in it. Despite her lithe, barefoot, red-clad beauty, her appearance did not affect him in that way. Not at all.
“Who’s next?” He took the mark’s money and handed it to a boy in the stand, a good-looking youngster. His son, Cat knew from touching his mind at that moment. The mother was long dead but still very much missed. He was raising the boy himself.
As the boy made change, his father guessed the mark’s age and weight, both incorrectly, then handed over the cheap ceramic prize with a smile. It was a warm, whimsical smile. Amusement in it: the “fine china dolls” were so worthless he made money even when he gave them away. But also something of heart: he liked to make people happy. Cat suddenly found that she liked his smile very much.
“Who’s next?”
“Right here, Ollie,” Melons said, nudging Cat forward. “Hey, Ollie, this here’s Cat.”
“I know. We met earlier.” He faced her. His smile was wonderful, but he still wore the dark glasses, even though night had fallen. She could not see his eyes.
“Hello, Cat,” he said. “Welcome.”
Melons said, “She wants you to guess her age, I guess. I don’t know. She don’t seem to talk none. Cat got her tongue.” Melons laughed at her own weak joke, chin angled skyward, breasts quaking. Ollie smiled but did not laugh.
“Some other time I’ll guess for her if she wants,” he said. “Not right now. I don’t think that’s what you really want right now anyway, is it, Cat?” His tone was mild, friendly. There was no flirtation in it.
Frustrated, she thought, I want you to take off those barriers over your eyes. I want to see into them and make you follow me. I want to know you carnally, and I want to know what you are.
No, his thought replied directly to her thought. No, sorry, I can’t do any of that. Not even for you, milady Cat.
Back at the girl show tent, an hour later, she found herself still quivering in reaction. This man had made her feel naked, unshielded, exposed in a way that no lack of clothing could ever make her feel exposed. Whoever or whatever he was, he could touch her mind. Perhaps he could even tell what she was-or had been.
Partly, she felt outrage, humiliation, vexation. As much as she had ever wanted any man she wanted him, and he had not responded as he should have. It is no small matter when a fertility goddess is thwarted in lust.
And partly she felt great fear. The deities of the old religions are always the demons of the new. Once in her thrice-three lives Cat had been found out and put to death, while still in her feline form, by burning. She still remembered not so much the horrible pain as the helplessness of her clever cat body enslaved by rawhide bindings, the leaping, ravenous flames of the bonfire, the stench of her own consumed skin and fur. It was not a death she ever wanted to experience again.
Strutting and posing through her next kootch show, she picked out a broad-shouldered, handsome young mark and summoned him with her eyes. As she had wordlessly commanded, he was waiting for her in back of the tent afterward, not quite able to believe what was happening, his mouth moving uncertainly, soft as a baby’s. She led him away into the darkness beyond the edge of the carnival, and he did what she wanted, everything she wanted, and he was good, very good. Afterward, she drove him away with her clawed hands. More punishment was not necessary. She knew he would go mad with thinking of her before many days had passed.
She should have been satisfied. Always before she had been satisfied by the simple, sacred act of lust. Yet she found that she was not.
She should have gone away on four speedy unbound paws from that dangerous place where someone had apprehended her truly. Yet she found that she would not.
Confusion take this Ollie person. He has shamed me and he has made me afraid, but he has not yet bested me utterly. We shall see whether he scorns me in the end.
Scorn was perhaps too strong a word, for when she came back to the carnival, walking alone, she found him waiting for her outside Hinkleman’s trailer. “I just want to say I’m sorry if I offended you, Cat,” he told her aloud. “I didn’t mean to.”
The words meant nothing to her. But the thought underlying them was clear as tears. I didn’t mean to stir up anger, and I don’t want enemies. I just want to be let alone with my son and my sorrow.
Sentiment annoyed her. She bared her teeth at him, nearly hissing, then passed him and went inside to sleep in the bunk Hinkleman’s girls had cleared for her. When Hinkleman came, a few minutes later, to see if he could share it with her as was the kootch show owner’s tacit right, she struck at him, leaving four long red scratches across his face. Then she listened in disgust as he comforted himself with the Indian instead. He was aging, potbellied, foul of breath, altogether repulsive. How could he be so goatishly eager while this man who attracted her, this Ollie, was so indifferent?
Men. Hell take them all. So Ollie wishes to be let alone? That will be no heartbreak for me.
Yet the next day when the carnival lights came on at sunset, she went first to the flower stand, and took a blossom-smiling, the old Italian woman gave it to her. Carnies give other carnies what they can. This was a flower like a woman’s petticoat, frilled and fringed and fluted, white once but dipped in a stain that had spread from its petal tips along its veins and into its penetralia, blood red. It was very beautiful. Cat placed it in her golden hair. Then she walked the midway in her red dress again, and came to a certain booth, his booth, and stood there staring at him. It was her curiosity, she told herself, that drew her back to him this way. And she knew that partly this was true.
Hello, Cat, he greeted her without speaking and without looking at her.
Hello.
You are the only one I can talk to this way.
You are the only one I can talk to at all.
There was a pause. Then he thought to her very softly, Yes. Yes, I see. It had not occurred to me, but there is such a thing as being too much alone.
No, not really. I like being alone.
Still… if you wish to talk sometimes, it is no trouble for me to talk with you.
It would be a way, perhaps, of finding out how much he knew of her. As for the other thing she wanted of him… she still desired it badly, and still felt no response in him. And there was no way in cold frosty hell she was going to ask it of him again. The flower in her hair should have been invitation enough. That and the summons in her eyes.
She made mental conversation as casually as if she were hostessing a court function, chatting with the lesser vassals. So you comprehend thoughts. When people come to you and ask you questions, then you can find the answers in their minds?
Yes. And also many things they would not want me to know. Very beautiful things sometimes, and sometimes very ugly. She heard a poet’s yearning in his tone of mind. He wanted to take what was in people and make a song, a saga great enough to hold all of it, everything he had heard and learned. But she did not wish to be in his song.
She could not ask him how much he knew of her. Why would he tell her the truth, anyway? He lied constantly.
So whatever questions the marks ask you, you could answer correctly every time.
Yes.
They why do you so often give the wrong answer?
To please them. People like to win. So I let them win sometimes, and then they come back, you see, and try again.
She turned and walked away. Behind her she could hear him as he started ballying: “I can guess your age, your weight, your occupation! Challenge my skill, ladies and gentlemen! Ask me any question. See if I can answer.”
Cat made sure she was well down the midway before she allowed herself to think it: He keeps them coming back. He keeps me coming back.
And then she thought, IfI win, will it be because he has let me?
And she thought, Who is he? What is he?
But her sense of fear felt eased somewhat. If she did not know those things of him by touching his mind, there was little reason to think he knew more of her.
That night she lay with a mark again, and found that she despised him and what she did with him. “You should charge,” Melons told her crossly after the man left. “It’s stupid not to charge. You’re making it bad for the rest of us.” She glared at the kootcher, but she could not have loathed herself much more if she did indeed perform the holy act for pay. Even the thought of how insanity would punish the man for his daring did not comfort her.
The next morning she went to find Ollie in his trailer with his young son. For hours she sat in their kitchen, and conversed in her silent way with Ollie, and had fried trout, fresh caught, for breakfast with both of them. The boy tended to the breakfast, mostly, just as he tended the booth in the evenings, making change for his father, and for the same reason. The Guess Anything man could not do it for himself.
Ollie was blind.
Blind? But-I didn’t know!
Hardly anybody does. Keep it to yourself, will you? His smile told her this was a small joke-he knew she could speak to no one. Yet it was no joke. A guess-man is supposed to see, to find clues with his eyes, to surmise, not to know. Anything else is too frightening. Ollie would be out of business if the marks knew the truth.
Of course.
Cat felt at the same time very foolish and strangely lighthearted. So he had never seen her in her red dress, he did not know how golden her hair glowed in the carnival lights, he had never seen the carnation softly bobbing at her temple, he could not see how beautiful she was at all. Yet he had been sorry to offend her. Yet he had greeted her the first time he felt her walk by.
Your eyes-how did it happen?
In the accident.
The fiery tragedy that had killed his wife. Afterward, he had sold his home, quit his job, and started traveling with the carnival. Built a life for himself the way he liked it. Letting people win. Giving them happiness.
Or-touching their minds, and learning all the truth about them, then telling them lies.
There was a pause. Then Cat asked gently, May I see your eyes now?
He hesitated only a moment, then reached up and removed the dark glasses. His eyes were not ugly. Really, she had known they could not be ugly. They were gray, misty, and seemed to stare far away, like the eyes of a seer. And his face, without its dark barrier in the way-how could she ever have thought his face was commonplace? It was exquisite, with arched aspiring cheekbones, brows that dreamed.
You are very beautiful.
You-they tell me you are also, Cat. I know-the feel of your mind-it is beautiful to me. It is proud, like a golden thing, a sunset thing.
You knew everything. Right from the start.
A silence. Then he admitted aloud, “Yes. I know.”
I do not understand this strange barbaric language. I understand only what I feel in your mind. Which is now a great sadness. You kn
ow I want you. But you are still in love with your wife.
I think-I am now only in love with my memories of my wife.
You are afraid, then. You think I would punish you, as I did the others.
No, I am not afraid. Danger is part of the beauty of you. Everything that is beautiful is full of risk.
But when I came to summon you, you did not want me.
I do not know… I am stubborn. Mostly I did not like the way you planned to take me.
You did not want me.
I want you now.
She had won. But perhaps he was letting her win?
The boy, who had finished scrubbing the dishes, smiled in the same winsome way as his father and went outside to wander the carnival grounds, to admire the motorcycle daredevil’s new Harley, and watch the roughies play poker, and talk with the Bearded Lady, the Breasted Man, the Wild Woman of Borneo, the Amazing Alligator Girl.
Cat touched Ollie’s fine-sculpted face. He leaned toward her, and let her touch guide him, and kissed her.
His body, she found within the next hour, was as beautiful as his face, and as ardent and clumsy as if he were a boy again. It truly had been years since he had given himself to a woman, a verity that made the gift all the more precious to her. She hugged him, she cradled his head in her arms and kissed him, she adored his awkwardness, she felt her heart burst open like a red, red flower into love of him.
Afterward, she was afraid. She was afraid. Love harrowed her with fear. She had sworn never to give her heart to a man again.
He said softly, “The carnival moves on tomorrow.”
Yes.
“There is this about a carnival, it takes in all kinds of people. Criminals, whores, freaks, geeks, holy rollers, crap shooters, it doesn’t matter, we’re all carnies. We all belong. You, too.”
Yes. She heard the wistfulness in herself. I like that.
“But there is also this, that we’re like wild geese, we carnies. We move with the seasons, everything is always changing. We get used to leaving places behind, people behind, losing bits of ourselves. My problem is I look back too much. I’ve got to learn not to do that.”