I was sitting with Mr. Ahasuerus, sipping a cup of coffee while he toyed with a bowl of soup. Both of us were wrapped in blankets, which afforded us at least a little warmth against the wind that seemed to cut right through the canvas.

"Are they all from your world?" I asked.

"No," he said. "There are thousands upon thousands of populated worlds in the galaxy. They come from some of the others."

"Each of you is from a different world?"

"That is correct."

"Including Mr. Romany?"

"Yes."

"Is this the prelude to an invasion?" I asked, surprised that I could remain so calm while embracing so frightening a thought.

Mr. Ahasuerus laughed softly. It was a hideous sound.

"Have I said something funny?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "I laugh only so I will not cry. Haven't you figured it out yet, little one?"

"I guess not," I admitted. "Why are you here?"

"We are sightseers," he said bitterly. "We travel the galaxy, visiting those planets that have not yet joined a community of worlds."

"You're tourists?" I repeated unbelievingly.

He nodded again. "We masquerade as a sideshow so to draw the least possible official attention to ourselves. It allows us to observe a cross-section of the populace without revealing our origins or upsetting their political and religious structure."

"This same group goes all over the galaxy?"

"No. We never accept an applicant who differs too greatly from the dominant life form of the planet that we are to visit. Hence, every member of this particular group breathes oxygen, all but two have mastered at least a rudimentary knowledge of your language, and without exception all can eat the same food you eat with very little damage to their systems. When I realized that no native race had blue skin I decided not to display myself. I also had some trepidations about allowing Amphrawse—the one we billed as the Sphinx—to appear."

"He seemed the oddest," I said. "Except for yourself."

"I know," said Mr. Ahasuerus. "But he had saved his money—or what passes for money on his world—for almost three years in order to visit your planet for two weeks. In his single-minded pursuit of his goal he had broken up his—how may I phrase it?—his family unit, which carries far more serious consequences to him than to a native of Earth. How was I to tell him that he must remain in hiding during our stay here?" He paused for a moment, as if recalling the Sphinx's pleas and appeals. "I am glad that he had nothing to do with our present circumstance. It was a poor decision on my part, for it endangered the others." He sighed. "The mind discerns and decides, and the heart vetoes. It is a very inefficient system."

"It seems to be universal," I said.

"Not entirely," he replied, casting a glance in the direction of Thaddeus' trailer.

"Even him," I said.

"You delude yourself," hissed the Human Lizard, who had been listening to us. (I don't mean that he hissed in a dramatic sense; rather, that his voice was so sibilant that nothing he could ever say would sound like anything but a hiss.) "He treats me decently," I said defensively.

"You have very lax standards of decency," said the Human Lizard.

"What do you know about it?" I said irritably. "Thaddeus gave me a job when everyone else laughed at me. He's the only person who treats me like a human being."

"Is this how human beings treat each other?" replied the Human Lizard.

He was incapable of intonation, so couldn't tell if it was a sincere question or a sarcastic one.

"He's got a lot of people to feed," I said. "He's got a lot on his mind."

"Why do you continue to defend him?" said a voice from behind me. I turned and saw Alma standing just inside the doorway.

"What are you doing here?" I asked her "I just heard that we have a new girl in the show," she said with open hostility. "I thought I'd come over and find out at about it."

She walked through the tent until she came to the Three-Breasted Woman, who was sitting huddled on a chair with a blanket around her. Alma reached out and pulled the blanket away before the Three-Breasted Woman could shrink back out of reach.

"Goddamnit!" she said. "How the hell are we supposed to compete with that? Why don't you stay with the freaks where you belong?"

The Three-Breasted Woman stared up at her in terror, and Mr. Ahasuerus walked over.

"She does not speak English very well," he said gently, interposing himself between the two of them.

"Then how the hell did she convince Thaddeus to let her out of the freak show?" demanded Alma.

"It was not a matter of choice," said Mr. Ahasuerus.

Suddenly Alma's whole attitude changed. "You mean Thaddeus is making her do it?"

Mr. Ahasuerus nodded.

"Does she know what she's getting into?" said Alma.

"None of us do," replied Mr. Ahasuerus.

She turned to me. "And you let him do this, you evil little man!"

"How could I stop him?" I said.

"All right, goddamnit!" she snapped. "I'll go talk to him myself!"

She turned on her heel and left.

"Will she succeed?" asked Mr. Ahasuerus softly.

I shrugged. "I don't know."

"What will happen if she doesn't?"

"Let's worry about that when it happens," I said, not wishing to think about it, but thinking about it anyway. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, even if Thaddeus made her go through with it. After all, she acted like a hootch dancer anyway. Maybe she was a stripper on her home world. Maybe she could even put on a show that would shock Alma.

I asked Mr. Ahasuerus what the Three-Breasted Woman did when she wasn't touring the galaxy.

"She is a . . . I don't know your analog word for it. She participates in her religion."

"Like a nun?" I asked.

"What is a nun?"

I told him, and he replied that that pretty much defined what she was.

"Is she—uh—sacrosanct?" I asked, fumbling for the proper word.

"I don't understand."

"Celibate?"

He didn't know that word either, but when I managed, with much blushing and even worse stammering than usual, to explain it to him, he nodded and said that it was his understanding that all active practitioners of her religion were celibate.

"Oh, brother!" I muttered.

He must have sensed my distress, because he fell silent. After a few more minutes of unsuccessfully trying not to think of what lay in store for a celibate nun in a meat show, I trudged over to the Man of Many Colors, who was lying very still on one of the cots, while the Human Lizard and the India Rubber Man took turns rubbing his wrists vigorously and mopping sweat from his forehead.

"What's the matter with him?" I asked.

"Exposure to the cold," hissed the Human Lizard.

"But the rest of you were exposed to it," I said.

The Human Lizard turned and stared at me with his dead eyes. "In case it has escaped your notice, may I point out that we are not all alike? He comes from a hot arid land, hotter even than my own world. When he is healthy he glows a livid red; when tired, a bright green. He has the capacity to change colors from red to yellow to brown almost at will. But blue is the death color. As it grows paler, he grows weaker; when it vanishes, so too will his life."