The Three-Legged Hootch Dancer: Tales of the Galactic Midway, Vol. 2

by Mike Resnick

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  The Three-Legged Hootch Dancer: Tales of the Galactic Midway, Vol. 2

  by Mike Resnick

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  Science Fiction

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  Fictionwise, Inc.

  www.Fictionwise.com

  Copyright ©1983 by Mike Resnick

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  He was, by choice, a Thing.

  Where once he had arms and legs and long lean fingers, now he had two soft gray lumps. There was nothing—neither stubs nor even scars—to indicate that his legs had ever existed. The smooth bronzed skin that had once covered his body was gone, replaced by coarse gray reticulations that exuded a foul-smelling slime. His nose, once short and narrow, was now a broad, wrinkled band of cartilage, the nostrils fully eight inches apart. If he possessed eyes, no observer could tell. His mouth, which had once dined on steak, was now equipped only for sucking fluids. Clouds of vapor engulfed him whenever he exhaled.

  His name was John Edward Carp, and he was content.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  Somehow,” sighed Thaddeus Flint, popping open a can of beer and surveying the bleak, barren, red-brown landscape, “this wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I set this deal up."

  “Surely you didn't think that every world would be like your own, Mr. Flint,” said his tall, cadaverous, blue-skinned partner with what passed for a smile.

  “As a matter of fact, I had rather hoped one or two of them might be better—or at least more interesting.” Flint pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face. “This is some galactic civilization you've got yourself, Mr. Ahasuerus. I don't think I've been this impressed since I passed through Biloxi in the winter."

  The blue man shrugged. “View it as a shakedown tour. The Corporation wants to see what you can do in the sticks before they let you play the Big Lemon.” Flint snorted, and Mr. Ahasuerus turned to him. “Didn't I say it right?"

  “Close enough,” replied Flint, taking a sip of his beer. “Well, where do we set up?"

  “You're the expert,” said Mr. Ahasuerus.

  Flint looked around, then spat on the sandy loam. “This is as good a place as any. No water, no toilets, no roads, no people. Why should we make things easy for ourselves?"

  “Do I detect a note of sarcasm?” asked the blue man mildly.

  “Would you like me to sing it in E above high C, just so you'll be sure?” replied Flint. He saw a burly man leaning against the spaceship and called to him. “Hey, Swede!"

  “Yeah, boss?"

  “I realize that standing around sunning yourself is pretty important work, but if you can tear yourself away from it for couple of hours, I want you to go into town, wherever that may be, and start posting signs to the effect that The Ahasuerus and Flint Traveling Carnival and Sideshow will be open for business at sunset."

  “Anything else?” asked Swede.

  “Just try not to get trampled in the mad rush,” said Flint dryly. He turned back to the blue man. “I assume someone has made sure that the signs are in some language that the residents of this vacation spa can read—always assuming they have eyes, of course."

  “It has been seen to,” responded Mr. Ahasuerus.

  “And Swede's not gonna get shot or strung up?"

  “Not as an invading alien,” said the blue man. “Of course, if they've had a prior unsatisfactory experience with a carnival..."

  “Well,” shrugged Flint, “that's why we're not sending someone real important, like you or me.” He finished his beer, squeezed the can out of shape, and tossed it on the ground. “God, I don't know what I'm going to do when I run through the last of this stuff. You'd think someone in this goddamned galaxy would know how to brew a keg of beer!"

  His gaze fell on Jupiter Monk, the big, ruddy-faced animal trainer. He was standing about two hundred yards from the ship, a huge hoop in his hand, waiting for Simba, his aging, near-toothless lion, to jump through it. Simba seemed more interested in watching the strippers unloading their costumes.

  “Come on, you fucking overgrown alleycat!” bellowed Monk. “It ain't as if I've got all afternoon!"

  Simba looked at him and yawned.

  Monk shook the hoop in front of him and bellowed a nonstop stream of curses. Finally the lion sighed, crouched, and jumped unenthusiastically toward the hoop. His head hit the top of it, a forepaw hooked onto the rim, and Simba, Monk, and the hoop went sprawling in a dusty, twitching heap.

  “Goddamnit, Thaddeus!” bellowed Monk, pulling lion hair out of his mouth and carefully rearranging his long, drooping mustache.

  “What is it this time?” asked Flint wearily, walking over to the scene of the mini-disaster.

  “Just once, I wish to hell you'd pick a world that has the same gravity as Earth! Now, that's not so fucking much to ask, is it?” Monk paused to remove a final hair from his mouth. “When you told me we were going to tour all these worlds, I thought it was going to be a little different, you know what I mean?"

  Flint nodded. “I know exactly what you mean. Talk to my partner. He picks the worlds."

  “He keeps picking worlds like this one and he's going to find himself with a little four-legged company in bed some night,” said Monk. He sighed. “I could be watching the Cincinnati Bengals playing the Pittsburgh Steelers right now, you know that? I don't need this shit."

  “Can you guess what I don't need right now?” asked Flint.

  “I'm sorry,” said Monk, brushing himself off. “But you got to admit this sure don't look like all those futuristic worlds we used to see in the movies."

  “I know. How's the Dancer adjusting to the gravity?"

  “How the hell do I know?” responded Monk. “I got problems of my own."

  He grimaced. “In point of fact, I got two leopards who stand a good chance of leaping clear out of the tent if I don't do a little work with ‘em."

  So saying, he reached down, grabbed Simba by his mane, and started leading him off in the direction of the animal cages.

  Flint watched him for a moment, then sought out Billybuck Dancer, his trick-shot artist. The young man was sitting cross-legged on the ground, staring off at some fixed point in space and time that only he could see.

  “How's it going, Dancer?” asked Flint, after standing in front of him for almost a minute without eliciting a response.

  “Just fine,” replied the Dancer in his gentle Texas drawl. “Everything's just fine, Thaddeus."

  “Problems with the gravity?"

  “Naw."

  “Have you practiced?” persisted Flint.

  “Don't need to,” responded the young man. “One world's pretty much like the next."

  “You're going to be shooting a cigarette out of a girl's mouth at a hundred and fifty feet,” continued Flint. “What if something goes wrong?"

  “Nothing ever does."

  “Damn it, Dancer!"

  The young man sighed, got to his feet, and loosened the pistol he had tucked into his belt. Then he leaned down, picked up a trio of reddish stones, and hurled them high into the air.

  “Am I supposed to be impressed?” a
sked Flint, as the stones reached their apex and started falling toward the ground.

  The Dancer smiled and suddenly became a blur of motion. The three stones had been blown apart before Flint had even heard the first report of the gun.

  “It's just like pointing your finger, Thaddeus,” said the Dancer softly. He tucked the gun back into his belt, lowered himself to the ground, crossed his legs, and resumed staring off into the distance. Flint looked at him for a long moment, then smiled, shrugged, and walked over to the ship, where he spent the next two hours supervising the unloading and construction of the Midway by Mr. Ahasuerus’ robotic crew.

  There were six booths containing games of chance, two food concession stands, a gift stand, a specialty tent for Monk and the Dancer, and a tent for the strip show. He had wanted rides as well, but the Corporation had decided that the mere act of hiring a bunch of beings who weren't even members of the Community of Worlds was financial risk enough. The rides would come out of the show's profits, if any.

  Flint didn't have to be an accountant to know that the next profitable world would be the first one. He was good at his job, no question about it—that was, after all, why he had been able to form a partnership with Mr. Ahasuerus and convince the distant Corporation to fund his tour—but nothing he had encountered on Earth had prepared him for the problems involved in taking his show on the galactic road.

  The first planet they had played was Domar, a nondescript little world circling a nondescript little star known as Beta Scuti. The Domarians were, for the most part, a friendly and outgoing race that appeared likely to enjoy just the kind of entertainment his carnival was capable of providing.

  Furthermore, they were telepaths, which meant that his barkers wouldn't even need the translating devices the Corporation had furnished. It was an exciting prospect, setting up shop on his first new world, and he had anticipated a happy, prosperous, and wonder-filled two-week stand.

  They were run off the planet in seven hours, and Flint had to explain to Mr. Ahasuerus, in no uncertain terms, that if his advance men ever booked the carnival, with its crooked games and phony patter, onto another telepathic world, there was going to be one less partner left alive to share the eventual profits.

  The second world was Baaskarda. The natives seemed interested in all aspects of the carnival, they squandered their money on overpriced treats and treasures and played the games with abandon, and Flint felt in his bones that this world would more than make up for the first one.

  They were thrown off the planet in eleven hours, barely escaping with their lives. Apparently Bruno the Bear, the star of Monk's four-animal stable, resembled the Baaskardans a little too closely, and the moment Monk started cracking his whip at Bruno a riot ensued.

  By the time they reached Kligor, the third world on the tour, Flint had thoroughly checked out the physiques as well as the mental gifts of the natives, and couldn't see any reason why the carnival shouldn't finally start making a little money.

  That was just what it made: a little money.

  The Kligorites crowded into the tent to watch Monk and the Dancer in rapt fascination, and fell everlastingly in love with cotton candy and hot dogs. But their religion was based—in a way Flint never quite understood—on the principles of gambling, and the games of the Midway were just too tame compared to what they could get in church.

  By the time they hit Corff, the fourth world, Flint was learning to improvise. The local gendarmes had come by for their payoff—some customs remained the same the galaxy over—and Flint discovered that nothing he was doing was illegal, which made for some very unhappy policemen (or policethings, as Flint mentally classified them). Finally he found out it was against the laws of Corff to wear the color red. While Mr. Ahasuerus was puzzling over the social and religious causes for this, Flint dressed two of his strippers in red gowns, paraded them by the cops, paid the latter to look the other way, and everyone was happy. Unfortunately, the crowd seemed more interested in gaping at the red outfits for free than paying money to see any of the shows, and the carny took another bath—also red—but at least he felt he was starting to adjust to things.

  Indeed, he reflected wryly, if he lived long enough he might even show a profit on one of these little jerkwater worlds.

  Like this one, for instance. Name: Ramanos. Location: fifth planet circling the class G-3 star known as Tau Beta. Dominant race: the Borgraves, reasonably humanoid in appearance if you could get past those ridiculous white feathers and the webbed hands and feet. Not a member of the Community of Worlds, but aware of its existence.

  Flint didn't know what they used for money, but that wasn't his department: he freely admitted to never having seen a French franc, a British pound, or a Japanese yen, and he left it up to Mr. Ahasuerus, who seemed to have literally thousands of currency conversion tables at his fingertips, to decide how much to charge for the carnival's various attractions.

  Jason Diggs, a compulsive gambler and card shark who had earned the sobriquet Digger the Rigger as the kingpin of the carnival's games, had been monitoring the Borgraves’ video programs for the past two days and had finally decided which games to set up in the booths. Flint noted with approval that three of them—Fascination, the Bozo, and the Loopstick—required the Borgraves to throw objects with some accuracy, which was going to prove difficult, considering their oddly webbed hands.

  He wished that he had a freak show to go with the other features. He'd had one recently—a very unwilling one, which had led to his partnership with Mr. Ahasuerus—and he was firmly convinced that nothing, not even the strippers, could draw dollar-for-dollar against a truly sensational display of freaks. He'd proved that twice in the past, once with a bunch of hopeful actors in makeup, more recently with the alien tourists that Mr. Ahasuerus had shepherded to Earth.

  Besides, he needed something. The food stands would never break even trying to sell ice cream to aliens. Monk's animals were a little less exotic in their current setting than on Earth—and sooner or later they were going to die, with no hope of replacing them. Gambling seemed to be of universal interest, but the Rigger's games were designed for humans—and Northeastern American humans at that—and it was going to take quite a while before he could devise a guaranteed moneymaker and incorporate it into the Midway.

  Billybuck Dancer could always attract a crowd—but just how long could anyone, even aliens who had never seen a pistol before, watch his displays of marksmanship before they got bored? After all, he never missed. Maybe if he occasionally wounded one of the girls...

  Flint considered it for a moment, then shook his head. They had a limited supply of women, and he had better uses for them.

  Which brought him, circuitously, back to the strip show. Of all the carnival's attractions, it was the only one that was truly unique—Mr. Ahasuerus had told him that no other planet in the galaxy had discovered the art of the striptease—and the one he had counted upon to keep the show's financial head above water while he was learning the ropes. And yet of all the draws on the Midway, it had consistency been the poorest. Anything that ran contrary to his experience upset him, and it was Flint's experience that come good times or bad, strict towns or wide-open, tame shows or raw, sex sold.

  “Tojo!” he called out suddenly.

  A small hunchbacked man, perhaps thirty years old, with straight black hair and a slightly yellow cast to his skin, looked up from a tent stake he was securing.

  “Yes, Thaddeus?” he stammered.

  “Come here a minute. I want to talk to you."

  The hunchback finished tying a line to the stake, stood up and walked over to Flint with an ungainly shuffle.

  “What is it, Thaddeus?"

  “I think we're going to make a couple of changes tonight,” said Flint, lighting a cigarette and offering one to the hunchback, who refused it.

  “It's my barking, isn't it?"

  “What are you talking about?"

  “The way I talk,” said Tojo unhappily. “The way I"—he
fought to force the words out—"the way I stammer. I'm not blind, Thaddeus. I've seen the size of the crowds."

  “You want to hand in your notice now, or do you think I can get in a word first?” said Flint irritably. “For a guy who keeps tripping over his tongue, you are the talkiest son of a bitch I ever met."

  “I'm sorry, Thaddeus,” said Tojo. “Go ahead."

  “Thank you,” said Flint ironically. “First, let's get one thing straight: whatever's wrong with the meat show, it's not your fault. You've got a translating device that hides your stammer, and while you're not half the barker I am, no one else is either, and that never stopped other girl shows from making money. So the problem lies somewhere else.” He paused. “Is Priscilla staying off the stuff?"

  “You drank it all, Thaddeus,” said Tojo.

  “I know I drank it all!” snapped Flint. “You don't have to tell me I drank it all! It was probably the best damned thing that ever happened to her, except maybe for spending a night in the sack with me. Is she getting it anywhere else?"

  “Whiskey or sex?” asked Tojo.

  “Whiskey, you ugly little wart!"

  “No, Thaddeus, she's not getting whiskey anywhere else."

  “And her act is as good as ever?"

  “Her act was never very good."

  “I've been thinking about that,” admitted Flint. “Starting tonight, let Gloria lead it off."

  “But she's the headliner,” said Tojo.

  “But nobody's going to stay to see the headliner if Priscilla chases them all out of the tent, are they?"

  “I don't know if that's a good idea, Thaddeus."

  “I don't recall asking your opinion,” replied Flint. “Just tell Gloria that she's up first."

  “I'll tell her,” said Tojo with a sigh. “But I wish you'd stop by and listen to my patter. I still think I'm the problem."

  “It's not you,” said Flint, a little more gently. He took a deep drag on his cigarette. “You worked with me every night for six years. Some of that talent couldn't help but rub off."