Infinity One

by Robert Hoskins (Ed. )

  “Well, I have to stay here and help my uncle, but by the end of the afternoon we’ll be through and I can do what I like. If I—if I come in then, will I be seeing you?” She laughed.

  “You’ll see me before then,” she said. “And hear me. When there are enough people, I sell the tickets and do the—what do call it—announcing?”

  “Barking—so you’re a lady barker. I never saw one before.” He gulped. “Would—would there be any time after that when you’re free?”

  “Free? I am always free.”

  “I mean, when you’d have time off, so we could . . . I mean if you wanted to, we could go somewhere and have a soda or something together, and . . . and talk.”

  “I must be here all the time, but there are times when I can come outside, like now. Then we could talk.” She smiled again, and Bart felt his pulse throbbing. “You are the first human being I have seen that I have liked.”

  Bart felt himself reddening. She must be some kind of foreigner, whose English was insecure. It wasn’t probable that in her entire life—she must be about 18 to his 20, he figured—a chance-met farm boy was the first person she had ever liked! But a little shiver of happiness ran through him.

  “Thanks,” he muttered. “I like you too, lots.”

  “The man—your uncle is calling you,” she said.

  He turned and waved as he ran back to the truck, but she had already slipped into the tent.

  “Got you a girl friend, huh?” his uncle greeted him with a grin. “Hold on to your wallet, sonny—them fly-by-night show folks are death on a kid with a dollar on 'em.

  Bart was surprised at the surge of rage that shook him. he was too angry to speak. He turned his back. His uncle guffawed.

  It was a busy market day, but as Bart weighed and made change and filled bags he never lost sight of the tent across the way. About ten o’clock he saw the girl come out again. A man whose face he could not make out followed her, carrying a little ticket booth of light wood, which he set up a few feet in front. He went in again, and came out with a roll of tickets and a cashbox and a chair. By this time curious people—Bart had seen them earlier, gazing at the tent and reading the sign—had gathered around, and the girl began her spiel. There was too much noise and he was too busy to hear much of it, just the word “tiger” and an occasional phrase of description or invitation. Once he heard her say: “Ten at a time only please. That is all the tent will hold.” People began to drift in and after a while they came out again to make room for others.

  Their neighbor at home, Jim Stutz, was one of them. He came over to the truck and greeted them as they sat on the tail-gate eating the lunch Bart’s aunt had packed for them.

  “How about it, Jim?” his uncle inquired. “Is it on the level? Did you go in the cage?”

  “Sure did,” Stutz said. “It’s amazin’. Great big cat, and I run my finger right down one of his stripes and he just purred—sounded like a tractor engine. Most of them’s afraid to go inside the cage—they just stand around and watch. The feller that owns him has to pick men from the audience and ask them if they want to come on up. Most of them back down.”

  “No women or kids?”

  “Oh, yeah, there was one woman went up—a big woman looked like a school teacher. There weren’t many kids there—who’s goin’ to pay a half dollar to let a kid see a tiger?”

  Bart listened with half an ear. He was keeping busy between bites of lunch, in a hurry to get through and see his uncle off the premises. After they’d sold out his uncle would leave, and then maybe the girl would have a few minutes free and he could join her.

  But it was past five when they’d cleared out the last of their produce and his uncle was ready to call it a day. He put away the crates and closed the tail-gate.

  “I’m off for a beer or two with the fellers and to do your aunt’s shopping, then I aim to get home before dark,” he said. “You sure you’ll get a ride? Don’t come home too late, now; your aunt worries.”

  “I’ll be all right,” said Bart. There had been little conversation between the two of them all day. “Aren’t you going to see the tiger first?”

  “Who me? I got no money to waste on fake shows. You go waste yours and you can tell me about it afterwards. And don’t run away with that girl!” he added with a grin. Bart disdained to reply.

  She was sitting in the ticket booth when he walked over, but people were wandering away with the supper hour and she had nobody to spiel to. How did they light the tent for the night show, he wondered: they must have some sort of lighting arrangements inside and outside. Probably they traveled by train, and the rest of the gear was in a railroad car over in the freight yard somewhere.

  “Is there anybody left in the tent?” he asked as he came up to her.

  “Only my . . . no, no customers. They will be coming again, after they have eaten. We have been to many small towns, and always that is the way it is. Do you always eat when the sun goes down?”

  “Sure, don’t you?”

  “We have different hours.”

  “Couldn’t you get off now and go downtown and have something with me?”

  “We have our own food. We cannot—what is the word?—we cannot assimilate yours.”

  “I see.” He felt vaguely offended. But she smiled her radiant smile and he forgave her city snobbishness. “Then can I go in and see the tiger now?”

  “No, he is not there,” she said sharply.

  “Not there?” The tiger certainly was not visible anywhere else.

  She seemed confused. “I mean, he is not on display. He must have his rest, like everyone else. When the people come again, then you can go in too. And you must not pay; for you it is free, because I like you.”

  “Why, thanks.” He wished his uncle had heard that. She came out of the booth and sat down on the grass in front of the tent. She plucked a blade of grass and looked at it as if she had never noticed grass before. “Come and sit with me,” she said, “and let us talk.” Bart was hungry—he’d eaten nothing since noon—but this was more important, and he squatted down beside her. If only there were some way he could persuade her to remain behind when the trainer—what was he? her father?—and the tiger left that night! If only he were independent, and more than 20, and on his own!

  Her eyes searched him gravely from head to feet. “Tell me,” she said, “are there many here like you, tall and beautiful?”

  “Oh, gosh!” His face burned. “You don’t call a man beautiful, honey—and I’m not even good-looking. My aunt says I’m a string bean with a corn tassel on top!” “I think you are beautiful. We have not been very fortunate on this tour. We have seen so few like you.

  Axe there others here? They have not come into the tent today.”

  “Plenty better-looking than I am.”

  “And females to? And young ones?”

  “Why, sure," he laughed uncomfortably. But no girls prettier than she was, he thought. “Most people look all right while they’re young and healthy, don’t they? Let’s talk about something else. Do you know we don’t even know each other’s names? I’m Bart Holland.”

  “I am—you can call me that name you just said—Hun-ney. I liked it.”

  “All right, if you don’t want to tell me your own name.”

  “You could not pronounce it.”

  He’d been right; she was some sort of foreigner.

  “Tell me,” she said. “What is you life? Do you live in a group—a family?”

  “I live with my aunt and uncle. My parents are dead.” “Dead before you? How could that be?”

  “It often happens." He looked at her curiously. She seemed embarrassed.

  “Never mind that,” she said. “Do you do work?”

  “I help my uncle on the farm—full time since I graduated from high school two years ago. But if I can manage it, I want to go to agricultural school next year.” “And you enjoy that life?”

  “Very much.”

  She was silent for a long time.
Then she said abruptly: “Eat now, since it is your time, and come back. I too must rest. Can you do that?”

  “Sure, as long as I don’t get home very late, and worry my aunt.”

  “She likes you?”

  “They’re both very good to me. She was my mother’s twin sister.”

  “Twin sister: what is that?”

  “They were both born at the same time. Haven’t you ever heard of twins?”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” she said hurriedly. She was certainly a strange girl—but an awfully attractive one.

  Bart got a hamburger downtown and came back to the railroad tracks. It was almost dark, and outside the tent were two tall poles with flaming torches on their tops. There were a dozen or so people in front of the tent, and the girl was giving her spiel again. When she saw him, she beckoned, slipped a ticket into his hand, and waved him toward the opening.

  The tent was very big, and it was well-lighted, though Bart could not make out the source of the light. In its middle stood the large cage, its door open, and the tiger inside of it. He was certainly a big one. He seemed to be asleep; he was lying with his eyes closed and his tail curled under him.

  The man who took Bart’s ticket must be the trainer himself, for no others were in sight except two men and a woman who stood near the cage staring at the tiger. Like the girl, the trainer was small and slim and dark; they were obviously related, and Bart felt better somehow to come to that conclusion. He joined the three customers already there. So far as he could observe, the tiger was a perfectly normal animal, except for a lack of the ferocity and nervous restlessness he had come to take for granted in caged wild beasts. He wondered if perhaps the trainer’s “method” was not simply dope.

  Outside he could hear the girl giving her spiel. By ones and couples, six more men and women trickled in, and then she stopped talking and the man left his post by the opening and walked up to the cage.

  He held up his hand for silence.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began hesitantly. Bart noted his strange accent, though he could not make out what it was. Apparently he was much less clever at foreign tongues than the girl was.

  “The Bengal tiger is one of the fiercest and most untamable of all wild animals. This specimen was captured in the jungle when he was young, and bought from a zoo only a year ago. Now I am going to show you how gentle he is.”

  He climbed through the cage door and picked up one of the paws of the sleeping tiger. The tiger opened his eyes, but made no attempt to move. The man seized the tiger’s ears and jiggled them. “Wake up,” he said. “You have company.”

  The tiger yawned, stretched, and rose. He was twice the length of the man, and his head was almost to the man’s chest as he rubbed himself against the slender trainer like an affectionate cat. He purred, and the vibration shook the bars of the cage.

  The trainer played with him as if he were a kitten. The tiger did no tricks, but he rolled over spontaneously and presented a white furry belly to be scratched. He licked the man’s gloved hand—“I wear gloves because his tongue is rough,” the trainer explained—and when the man inserted his whole arm into the tiger’s open mouth the beast made not attempt to close his jaws, but merely stood patiently, looking bored, until the arm was taken out again. Bart noted that the sharp teeth were all there.

  “Now,” said the man with a smile, “who would like to come up with me into the cage and play with my pet as I have done?” He pointed to a young man and a girl who stood holding hands. “You, sir? And you madam?”

  The man shook his head, but the girl giggled and pulled him forward. “Come on, scairdy cat,” she laughed. “Who’s afraid of the big bad tiger?” She climbed into the cage, and, shamefaced, the man followed her.

  Bart watched, fascinated, as they patted the complacent animal and stroked his head. Emboldened, the girl tweaked his tail. The tiger only yawned.

  “Who else will come, then?” the trainer called. Bart glanced around him. Behind him stood two men from town he recognized by sight, though he did not know their names. Egging each other on, then they too climbed in.

  “Let me go, ma,” whined a voice near by. A boy of about fifteen was wriggling away from his mother’s grasp. “Not without me,” she said firmly. They marched in together, amid laughter. The mother looked frightened, and refused to touch the tiger; the boy threw his arms cockily around the tiger's head and the beast licked his hair.

  As the boy let him go the tiger trotted up to the trainer and muzzled him. The trainer patted the animal’s head and walked to the front of the cage.

  “He is telling me he likes company, but he is getting tired,” he said. “We will make this the last showing tonight. But there is time for one more to come up and meet him, and then we shall say goodnight to you all. How about you, my young man? Do you not wish to stroke the pretty tiger?”

  “Sure, why not?” said Bart. He had been to shy to volunteer, but he had been hoping all along that the trainer would single him out and invite him. He started forward.

  Suddenly a hand caught his. Unseen by him, the girl had come into the tent. She must have been standing behind him.

  “Come up with me, Honey,” he said. He glanced at the trainer and was startled. The man had directed a look of violent anger at them. Perhaps she wasn’t supposed to go into the cage with customers. He dropped her hand, embarrassed. She seized his again. Imperceptibly she shook her head; he could barely hear what she was murmuring .

  “No. Do not go there. I beg of you.”

  Bart hesitated. Looking directly at the girl, the man called out something in a strange harsh language. The girl turned very white. Her eyes filled with tears. She answered in a few words in the same tongue, her tone full of emotion. The trainer made a gesture of despair. Even the tiger, Bart could swear, looked amazed!

  Everybody was staring at them. The girl tugged at his hand. “Come out with me,” she whispered urgently. “Be quick. I will explain.”

  Red-faced, dreading a scene, Bart followed her outside. He heard laughter behind him. She ran across the grass to the shelter of a shack beside the near-by freight yard. Even in the darkness he could see, as he joined her, the pallor of her face and the glitter of tears in her eyes.

  “What on earth?” he burst out. “You said the tiger was tame—you made me look a coward in front of all those people. What’s this all about?”

  “Not now,” she said tightly. “Wait. Look. Watch.” In a minute an elderly man and two middle-aged women emerged from the tent and walked across the tracks to their waiting cars—all the audience besides himself who had not gone into the cage. Evidently the show was closing and they had been asked to leave first. There was no sign of the young couple, the two men, or the mother and son.

  That meant that soon Honey must leave too. She would go away with the show, and he would never see her again. He did not even know her name, or how to find her after she had gone. His anger dropped from him; he looked at the silent girl, his heart full.

  “Watch,” she said again. Bart waited for the rest of the visitors to leave. At least there would be a minute then to say goodbye, time perhaps for a first and last kiss. He stared impatiently at the tent.

  And then in an instant it wasn’t there.

  Torches, ticket booth, tent, the trainer, the tiger, the people in the cage, simply ceased to be. There was nothing before his eyes but the grassy field beside the railroad tracks.

  Bewildered, aghast, he turned to the girl.

  “I could not let you,” she said through stiff lips. “I had to save you . . . how could it happen? In one day, I come to like you, as if you were one of my own kind.”

  “I don’t—where have they gone?”

  “Where we go always—to another town. It is the way we travel. But first they—those in the cage with . . . my father and the tiger—they will be delivered to the portal and taken away.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t,” she said gently. “I
will try to explain, and then you must leave me at once. I do not ask you not to repeat this—nobody would believe you; they would think you were crazed.

  “There will be six people missing forever, who will never be found. They will question us and search us— they always do—but they will find nothing and learn nothing. If searchers become dangerous to us, we shall disappear immediately, for good.”

  “You mean . . . those people will be killed?”

  “Of course not; they will live a long time, we hope, where they are taken. It is very like their own home. We are collectors.”

  “Collectors?”

  “For a . . . for something like what you call a zoo, such as we pretend we bought the tiger from. You have them for strange creatures from far places; so do we, but from still farther ones. They will be well cared for. But of course they can never come back.”

  “You and your father are making this . . . collection?” If he had not seen, he would have been certain that the girl must be a lunatic.

  “No, we are only employees. We work for . . . for him you call the tiger.”

  “The tiger?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “That is our proper shape.

  “We cannot keep long in yours; when our employer sees that we are tired, he gives the signal for the last show. I did not think that one would be the last, or I would not have risked your entering, but my father is not young any longer and sometimes he tires soon.

  “If anyone had ever imagined that one of us could fall into liking with a being from an alien world! I shall be sent home now, and I shall be punished.”

  Bart’s head was whirling.

  “Honey!” he cried, his arms out for her. She drew away.

  “No, my dear one.” The tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “I cannot vanish in our way unless I too am in the tent. I must find them; no matter how they punish me at home I could not live here like one of you.

  “I cannot last much longer in this form tonight. Go ... please go. Go at once.”

  Her whole body shuddered. Speechless, Bart gazed at her. His legs would not obey him; he could not stir.

  There was a gasp and a shimmer.