by Mike Resnick
Chapter 9
Thaddeus interviewed the aliens one by one, announced that one of them had told him who the telepath was, and settled back to enjoy the show. They didn't say much, but I could tell that there was a new level of tension in the dormitory tent. I also had a feeling that Mr. Ahasuerus knew exactly what was going on, but, for whatever reason, he made no attempt to offer his associates the true scenario.
Rainbow didn't get any worse, but he didn't get any better either, and by the time Four-Eyes was totally recovered another of the aliens was sick. This time it was Pumpkin, which was the name Monk finally came up with for the Elephant Woman. (I approved of it: it was feminine, and at the same time it described her head as perhaps no other word could do.) It turned out that she had developed a severe skin rash in reaction to the dry shampoo we were using on her, but her skin was so oddly textured and miscolored that she was sick for two days before we could pinpoint the problem.
Thaddeus’ first inclination was to wash her down and cover her rash with some kind of salve, but Mr. Ahasuerus assured us that she would react far more violently to water than to the dog shampoo.
“Well, what the hell can we treat her with, then?” demanded Thaddeus.
“Time,” replied the blue man. “I think that any foreign substance—and you must understand that all of your substances are foreign to her—will merely exacerbate the problem.”
I don't think that Thaddeus knew what “exacerbate” meant, but he gave an affirmative grunt and told Pumpkin to stay in the tent until she was better.
Since Rainbow was still under the weather, and Thaddeus never allowed Mr. Ahasuerus to be placed on exhibit, Pumpkin's illness left only nine aliens for the public to see. Business fell off a bit. I attributed it to the increasingly poor weather, and the fact that we'd already been in town for more than a week, but Thaddeus was convinced that the absence of two of the advertised freaks had led some of the people to conclude that they were frauds which had been exposed. It became imperative in his mind to get them back on display, and he spent a lot of time in the dormitory tent supervising their treatment.
Pumpkin wouldn't let him touch her, and even drew back when he merely walked by her, but Rainbow didn't much give a damn who did what to him as long as it made him feel a little warmer, and one evening I walked in to find Thaddeus, his shirt and jacket piled on the floor, sweat pouring off his body, giving the Man of Many Colors a vigorous rubdown. As he did so Rainbow's hue would intensify; when he stopped to rest, the color would become pale again. It was like a war of attrition, which Rainbow finally won since Thaddeus, strong and vigorous as he was, couldn't keep rubbing life and color into Rainbow's limbs and body all night.
“How do you feel now?” he asked, panting, when he had finally given up the battle.
“Better, thank you,” said Rainbow, though his color belied his words.
“Just how the hell hot does it get where you live?” asked Thaddeus, grabbing a towel and wiping himself off.
“That's somewhat relative,” said Rainbow weakly. “I don't find it hot at all, but it would probably kill you.”
“Why did you come here, of all places?” continued Thaddeus.
“To see it,” said Rainbow.
“Now that you've seen it, was it worth the trip?”
“No,” said Rainbow. “No, it was not.” He looked up at Thaddeus. “Will you ever let us go?”
“Let's let that remain one of life's little mysteries,” said Thaddeus.
He put on his shirt and walked over to me.
“If you're not doing anything later, give him another rubdown,” he said.
“It didn't do much good,” I replied. “Look at him.”
“There's an old story about a spider that kept trying to jump across a gap or climb out of a pit or something,” said Thaddeus. “I don't remember exactly how it went, but the gist of it is that if you don't keep trying to get Rainbow back in the show I'm going to kick your ass all over the Midway.”
“All right, Thaddeus,” I said. “I'll do it.”
“I knew I could appeal to your sense of Christian charity,” he laughed, and left the tent.
I gave Rainbow another rubdown that night, and again the next morning, and strangely enough his color was a little better after each session.
As the crowds continued to diminish, Thaddeus decided that it was finally time to move on. He felt we had to go at least one hundred miles away, since Maine is so sparsely populated that most of our customers drove more than an hour to get to us. He called the weather service, concluded that it was too cold to continue moving to the north, and decided to head back into Vermont.
He never mentioned it, but I'm sure the thought of Mr. Romany searching for us in Maine had something to do with his decision. Obviously Bullseye didn't know exactly where we were, and didn't telegraph the kind of mental signal that Mr. Romany could home in on, or else he would have found us already. I guess “Maine countryside” wasn't enough for him to go on.
We went back to Vermont and set up shop in one of the rural areas after Diggs got us the proper permits. Thaddeus told the aliens we were still in Maine, and then he let Bullseye “overhear” him saying that we were really in New Hampshire and that Mr. Romany would never be able to find us now.
The dormitory tent was getting a grubby, too-well-worn appearance. None of the furniture was really made for the aliens, and it started breaking. Most of them were starting to experience mild digestive problems from the food, too, and we found that winter had followed us to northern Vermont. The wind still cut to the bone, despite the heaters and blowers, and although Pumpkin finally started showing some improvement, Rainbow remained a ghastly shade of pale blue.
The second day in our new location Dapper Dan, the Missing Link, stopped eating altogether. He sat motionless on the edge of his cot, his elbows supported on his knees, his face in his hands, and refused to move. There didn't seem to be anything physiologically wrong with him—at least, there was nothing we could spot—and finally Thaddeus decided that he was healthy enough to work. He paid no attention to Thaddeus’ order to get up and move over to the sideshow tent, and Big Alvin had to half-drag and half-carry him there.
After the first show Thaddeus had Alvin bring him back to the dormitory tent, where he lay motionless on his cot. Thaddeus kept barking for the show until the crowds diminished in the late afternoon, then stalked into the tent and over to where Dapper Dan lay.
“All right!” he snapped. “Out with it! What the hell are you trying to pull?”
Dapper Dan made no answer.
“There's not a goddamned thing wrong with you!” continued Thaddeus.
He reached down and grabbed Dapper Dan by the shoulders, shaking him vigorously. “Admit it, you fucking ape! You're as healthy as I am!”
Dapper Dan made no effort to free himself, but merely met Thaddeus’ enraged gaze with an expression that, on his particular face, could have been anything from resignation to boredom.
“Now you listen to me!” Thaddeus bellowed at the top of his lungs, and all the aliens turned to him. “I let Rainbow and Pumpkin stay in here when they're sick, and suddenly the monkey man's trying to pull a fast one! That's what I get for being such a considerate guy. If you goddamned freaks think you can get away with this kind of shit, you've got another think coming!
Either Dapper Dan works tomorrow, or he can sit and sulk in the tent and Rainbow and Pumpkin will go on in his place.”
“You'll kill them,” said Mr. Ahasuerus.
“Not me, friend!” snapped Thaddeus. “If Rainbow goes out and turns into a blue popsicle, you'll know who to blame. He's lying right there on his cot. You hear me, apeman? I'll feed you and house you and medicate you when you need it, but you're going to work just as hard as I do, or you're going to wish you had. There's no third way!”
He stalked back out of the tent in the direction of his trailer, and Mr. Ahasuerus walked over to Dapper Dan while the other aliens studiously turned thei
r attention elsewhere.
“What is the matter?” asked the blue man gently.
“I cannot tolerate the situation any longer,” said the Missing Link. “Let him kill me if he wants. I look into the heavens, and I cannot even find my home star. I will never see my family again.” He paused, and turned his gaze directly to Mr. Ahasuerus. “I will not spend the rest of my life as a caged animal, depending on the whim of a madman for such minimal comfort as he chooses to give me.”
“There is nothing we can do,” said Mr. Ahasuerus.
“We can escape!” said Dapper Dan passionately. “We can kill this evil man and leave!”
Mr. Ahasuerus shook his head sadly. “No, we can't.”
“But why?” pleaded Dapper Dan, tears filling his eyes. “Why must I die without the sacraments of my religion? Why must I die on this piece of filth spinning around a star that I cannot even find on the charts of my world? Why must my soul be doomed to an eternity of aimless wandering in the void, an unthinkable distance from others of its kind?”
“We made a pledge to keep our existence a secret,” said Mr. Ahasuerus.
“You made a pledge!” said Dapper Dan.
“So did you,” Mr. Ahasuerus pointed out.
“I made a pledge to honor my God on my home world,” said Dapper Dan.
“I made a pledge to live out my days with the ones I love. Why should this pledge take precedence? It was made to a soulless company that had no idea of the consequences of our journey here.”
Mr. Ahasuerus sighed, a terrible sound but somehow touching. “I can't stop you,” he said at last. “You are a thinking being possessed of free will, and I have no more right to direct your life than Flint does. But I won't help you, and neither will any of the others. Our word must be our bond, regardless of how you yourself view it.” He turned to me. “Tojo, if he were to escape, how far would he get?”
“Not very,” I said. “Some of you might, if they didn't shoot you out of fear, but not Dapper Dan. He, more than any of you, resembles a wild animal of Earth. I think the first farmer who saw him would shoot him down. And the first person without a gun who saw him would call the police, and they would kill him.”
“And even if you avoided them,” said Mr. Ahasuerus, “where would you go? How can an alien in a hostile world survive? You don't even know where you are, so how could you find our shuttlecraft?”
“Then it's hopeless, and I shall die here, and my soul will wander aimlessly forever,” said Dapper Dan. He lay down on his cot in an odd and seemingly uncomfortable position which I somehow knew to be his race's equivalent of the fetal position.
“I ask you to consider your fellow beings,” said Mr. Ahasuerus. “If you do not go into the sideshow tent tomorrow, one of them will surely die, and the other will at the very least become sicker.”
Dapper Dan lay perfectly still. He said nothing, and gave no indication that he had even heard the Blue Man.
Mr. Ahasuerus turned to me. “The truth, Tojo: will Flint do what he said?”
“I don't know,” I replied truthfully. “I doubt it. He has no reason to see Rainbow die, and he has a very good financial reason to keep him alive. But if he feels that backing down would weaken his authority...” I let my voice trail off—it wasn't hard to do; it trails off all the time—and then looked up at him. “I really don't know.”
“I know that he's a greedy man,” said Mr. Ahasuerus. “I know that he's selfish and inconsiderate.”
“He's not what they call other-directed, that's for sure,” I put in.
“But I had not truly conceived of him as a totally evil man, a man who would willingly take a life merely to prove a point.”
“I hope you're right,” I said. “But just to be on the safe side, maybe you'd better try to convince Dapper Dan to go to work tomorrow.”
“I can't force him to do what he doesn't want to do,” said Mr. Ahasuerus.
“Flint is a shrewd man, and a masterful manipulator, but the fact of the matter is that if the Man of Many Colors dies, it win be Flint and Flint alone who bears the responsibility for it.”
“He'll be just as dead either way,” I said. “I think you should talk to Dapper Dan.”
The blue man uttered a dry chuckle; it sounded like a frog being choked.
“He has even made a pragmatist out of you, hasn't he?”
“I guess he has,” I replied.
Mr. Ahasuerus started walking to the other side at tent. “Let's let him think,” he said softly. “I'll speak to him later.”
I had about half an hour to kill before the next show, so I took the opportunity to make a brief tour of the carnival, which I hadn't done in days.
I saw Monk leading Bruno the Bear back to his bus, so I knew Billybuck Dancer would be performing in the specialty tent and I went inside to take a look.
He had an assistant—one of the strippers, dressed in a metallic cowgirl suit—and she was holding four picture cards up where the audience could see them. Then she asked the Dancer if he was ready. He nodded his head slightly—the only visible sign that he hadn't gone to sleep while leaning against one of the tent poles—and then she tossed all four cards into the air.
He responded so fluidly and smoothly that, unless you checked out the results, it seemed he was moving much more slowly than he was—but the results were the same as always: four rapid-fire shots, right through the middle of the four cards.
The next trick was one I never liked to watch. The Dancer tied the girl onto a huge wheel, put a card in each of her hands, and started spinning the wheel until it was going so fast that she became little more than a blur. He turned his back on her, walked about forty feet away, pulled out a pair of knives, and displayed them to the audience. Then he spun around and hurled them toward her, releasing one no more than half a second ahead of the other. The audience gasped, and one woman let out a shriek, but each knife found its mark, pinning the cards to the spokes of the wheel. The Dancer tipped his hat and bowed deeply, looking slightly unhappy as he always did, and then prepared for his next trick. It involved shooting a cigarette out of the girl's mouth, and I decided that I didn't want to watch it, so I went over to the strip show.
Gloria was just being introduced as Butterfly Delight, and the customers—95 percent of them male—gave her a rousing hand. When it became apparent that she was going to do nothing but a striptease and would wind up pretty much the way the other girls started out the applause stopped, but Gloria was oblivious to the disappointed muttering. She bumped and she ground and she dipped and she teased as if she were following Ann Corio or Gypsy Rose Lee fifty years ago. I was afraid they would boo her off the stage—I was always afraid they would boo her off the stage—but this time was no different from any of the others. A few of them appreciated the work that had gone into her routine, and most of them settled down to wait for the next act. I hoped it wasn't Stogie: when you play as raw as we do, I wouldn't want to be the comic who had to keep the marks amused for ten minutes right after Gloria had tried to put a little class into the meat show.
I left the tent and walked up and down the Midway, checking out the games.
Diggs had fired a couple of his clumsier helpers and put two fast-talking young men in their places, and business was booming—as booming as business can get in Vermont in the fall, anyway. The Rigger himself was having trouble getting customers to shell out at one of the booths, and since I hadn't made an appearance on the Midway since we arrived, I decided to help him out. I caught his eye, and a moment later he started teasing and taunting me until I finally agreed to play the game. I won two hundred dollars in about five minutes, and managed to pass the money back to one of the shills as the marks all crowded around the booth, hot to play a game that even a retarded hunchback could win.
I heard Thaddeus’ voice over the loudspeaker and I knew it was time to get back to the sideshow. When I arrived I learned that Snoopy—the Dog-Faced Boy—had collapsed while I was gone. He claimed it was due to stomach cramps,
but Mr. Ahasuerus thought it was the cumulative effect of our gravity, which evidently was much stronger than any he had been used to.
We kept it from Thaddeus as long as we could, but finally I had to tell him that Snoopy wouldn't be able to work. I had been afraid that he would throw a tantrum right in front of the customers, but he simply shook his head disgustedly and went on with his spiel.
When the last show was over he walked back to the dormitory tent with me to have a look at Snoopy for himself. The Dog-Faced Boy was panting heavily and drooling all over himself, and there wasn't any question that he was in serious discomfort.
“Well?” said Thaddeus, turning to Mr. Ahasuerus.
“I can't be sure,” said the Blue Man, “but I think it has been caused by your gravity.”
“Then why didn't he get sick sooner?”
“For the same reason that you don't die during the first few seconds that you are submerged in water.”
“Are you trying to tell me that he's dying?” demanded Thaddeus.
“No. But he needs rest. His body has been under tremendous stress.”
“How much rest?”
“A day, a week, a month,” said the Blue Man. “Who can say?”
“I can,” replied Thaddeus. “He works tomorrow night.”
“And if he can't?”
“Then he's going to find out what bodily stress is all about!” promised Thaddeus. He walked to the center of the tent, and emitted a loud shrill whistle.
“This has got to stop!” he announced when he had everyone's attention.
“Unless you want to be locked up in cages between one show and the next, and fed nothing but dog food and water, Snoopy had damned well better be the last one to get sick.” He turned his head slowly, staring at each alien in turn. “I'm not kidding,” he said at last. “If one more of you gets sick or pretends to get sick or tries to convince me that he's sick, everyone is going to suffer.”
He stalked over to one of the tables we had set up and told me to bring him a cup of coffee.
“They really are sick, Thaddeus,” I told him when I returned. “These are aliens. They weren't meant to live here.”