"I've never been to any other," I said.

"It has people, some good, some bad. We live and die, love and hate, worship and fear. We try to get through each day without causing irreparable harm to those we care for."

"But what of its physical features?" I asked.

"Just props," he said with a shrug that began at his shoulders and wound up in the vicinity of his boneless toes. "I should have thought that you, of all these people, would find physical features unimportant."

"But to see other worlds," I persisted. "It must be—"

"They are simply stages. It is the players who are important."

"Why did you choose to come here?"

He shrugged again, in an equally disquieting way. "Because you were here. Because I have never been here. Because I wanted to know what you are like."

"Are we very different from the others you have visited?" I asked.

He shook his head, and for a minute I thought it would twist right off. "No. People are people. They have needs and desires, lusts and fears. I must confess, however, that you are a puzzle to me."

"Me?"

"Yes. Why are you content to let him abuse you?"

"Him? You mean Thaddeus?"

"Yes."

"He abuses other people, too. Why single me out?"

"Because they resent him, and you don't."

"Do you like appearing as a freak in a sideshow?" I responded.

"It is an acceptable camouflage."

"But you wouldn't want to do it for your entire life?"

"No," he said firmly.

"Neither would I," I replied. "I have a home here. This is my family. Even the marks treat me as if I belong."

"I understand this," said the Rubber Man. "But why must you stay with Flint? Why not go to another carnival, another sideshow?"

"Because you don't leave your family just because someone else belongs to a happier one," I said. It seemed a lot more convincing when I thought of it than when I finally got the words out. How do you tell a man with no bones who is half a galaxy from home what it means to finally have a home? The Rubber Man gave me a look that implied that I was even stranger than he had first supposed, and wandered off to join his companions.

A few minutes later Big Alvin and Treetop took them off to their platforms, and as I heard Thaddeus' voice filtering back to the dormitory tent I felt a little of the resentment that the Rubber Man had been unable to perceive. But I felt something else, too: I felt the cord that bound me to Thaddeus Flint and his world—my world—with its infinite variety of grotesques. It was a lifeline, it supplied me with comfort and sustenance, and I knew that nothing would ever pry my clutching fingers loose from it.

And then I thought of Thaddeus, driven by whatever personal devils made him the way he was. We are all prisoners of our needs, and since Thaddeus' needs were so much greater than mine or Alma's or Monk's or anyone else's, I couldn't help feeling that he was clutching his end of the cord tighter than any of the rest of us.

Chapter 7

Within three days the Man of Many Colors was well enough to be placed on exhibit with the other aliens, although Mr. Ahasuerus told me that his colors were nowhere near as bright as before he'd fallen ill. The Three-Breasted Woman, once she understood what Thaddeus had originally planned for her, became much more subdued in front of the marks, and positively virginal whenever Thaddeus was around. The others went through their paces, some bitterly, some with nothing more than resignation. I think they all looked to Mr. Ahasuerus to pull some rabbit out of the hat and free them, but the blue man seemed to have neither the will nor the ability to act. Besides, he was stranded on an alien planet, and I very much doubt that he could have found his way back to his spaceship without asking the locals for aid—and it has been my experience that people will pay good money to gape at an oddity long before they'll help him for free.

After a couple of days Queenie decided that our "freaks"—no one but Thaddeus and I knew what they really were—needed a cook more than our nude dancers needed a costumer, and she set up a makeshift kitchen in the dormitory tent and went to work preparing their meals, after which the quality of food the aliens ate increased dramatically.

The day after the Man of Many Colors returned to the sideshow was payday, and after the carnival had been closed up and the aliens bedded down, I wandered over to Thaddeus' trailer to pick up my money. When I entered I found him with Jupiter Monk and Billybuck Dancer. They were sitting around talking and drinking beer, and Thaddeus told me to join them.

I could tell that Thaddeus was in a good mood. He had taken in more money during the past four days than he had ever seen before, and he was smiling happily as Monk related a humorous tale of his first hunting expedition.

"Needed fifteen gibbons for some zoo or another," Monk was saying, "and they placed so damned many restrictions on hunters that I wasn't even allowed to carry a rifle. I mean it. So I finally hunt up a huge family of gibbons, and I start giving orders to my porters and trackers, and they start spouting Marxist philosophy, and finally they go on strike. We negotiate for two days, and then they just up and leave. The only thing they left behind was a truck, a batch of wood cages, and my supply of booze.

"So, given my situation, I figured the only thing I could do was to get the gibbons drunk. I mixed up a huge batch of fruit punch, flavored with about a dozen fifths of vodka, and left it out for 'em. It took 'em a day to walk up and start drinking it, but within a few hours the whole goddamned tribe was so drunk they couldn't see straight. Then it was just a matter of rounding them up and tossing them into the cages."

"They let you do it?" I asked.

"Well, some of them were so drunk they didn't give a damn what the hell I did. The others did put up a fight, but I was sober and they were drunk. I got cut up pretty bad, but within half a day I had my fifteen gibbons. So I deliver them and get an order for ten more, and I go out with an old-time tracker, a guy who ain't heard of Marx or Engels or Patrice Lumumba, and we hunt up some gibbons, and I pull out the medical kit and tell him how to patch me up after I drag them into the cages, and he kind of smiles and says that people have been getting monkeys and apes drunk for centuries, but I was the first guy who would rather wrestle with them than put the drinks inside the cages to begin with! So we did it his way and had our quota inside of an hour."

Thaddeus laughed so hard I thought he was going to spill his beer. The Dancer smiled politely, but as always I had a feeling that his mind was far away and long ago.

"How about you, Dancer?" said Monk. "Ever shoot any animals with those pearl-handled pistols of yours?"

"I don't shoot animals," he said in that gentle Texas drawl of his.

"What's the good of being a marksman if you don't go hunting now and then?" persisted Monk.

"I don't like shooting at things that haven't got a chance to shoot back," said the Dancer.

"Hey, Dancer," said Thaddeus, "is it really true that you outgunned a bandit down in South America?"

The Dancer shrugged noncommittally.

"Well, if it was me, I'd sure as hell brag about it," continued Thaddeus. "If you're the best, you want everyone to know it."

"If you're the best," said the Dancer pleasantly, "you don't much care what anyone else thinks."