"No, I suppose it doesn't," he continued. He uttered what I took to be an oath. "I ache for my mate and my children. I have my work to return to. What am I to do?"

"I'm surprised you haven't tried to escape," I remarked as casually as I could.

"To what purpose?" he said. "Oh, we have the ability to leave here, even if Flint tried to stop us. But where would we go? What would we do? We could never find our shuttlecraft, and before long our presence would be made manifest to your race."

"Would that be so terrible?" I asked.

"I personally cannot see why it would, but I am told that those few worlds that have been made aware of us have changed radically and unnaturally because of that knowledge. Our most sacred pledge before embarking upon this endeavor was to maintain secrecy at all costs."

Suddenly he didn't seem quite so satanic.

"You're caught between the devil and the deep blue sea," I said.

He didn't understand that, of course, so I had to explain just what the devil was. He was quite amused.

"We have three devils in our religion," he said with a smile. "One of them looks exactly like Monk, and another could be a cousin of Alma's."

"Then I hope you understand why I'm a little nervous in your presence," I said.

"You must not have been watching me very closely when Monk loaded us into his cages," said Scratch. "I was trembling so much from fright that I thought I would faint."

"Three devils," I said. "That's a lot of bogeymen to be afraid of."

"And none of them looks like Flint," he said, staring at the doorway. Then he added in a faraway voice: "Isn't that curious?"

He sat in silence for another moment or two, then wandered off. I checked on Rainbow, who seemed to be in serious discomfort, but there was nothing I could do for him, so finally I went back to the makeshift kitchen and asked Queenie for a cup of coffee.

"Ah, the henchman returns," she said contemptuously.

"I'm not his henchman, Queenie," I said.

"You like 'lackey' better?" she asked.

"I prefer Tojo," I said. "It's my name."

"Did he give it to you?"

"What if he did?"

"He's pretty good at making up names," said Queenie. "He tells a girl who doesn't know any better that he loves her, and then he names her Honeysuckle Rose and makes her go out on a stage and do God knows what with a bunch of sick, retarded hicks!"

"I don't know what you want me to say."

"I want you to say that he's a vicious bastard who ought to have his balls cut off!" she snapped. "Just once, I want you to stand up to him!"

"You still work for him," I noted softly.

"Only because Alma's still here," she said. "He's got her mind so messed up that she doesn't know whether she's coming or going. I'll tell you this, though: he's never going to lay a finger on my Alma again, or I'll kill him!"

"Is she your Alma now?" I asked.

"She is."

"And has she agreed?"

"She hasn't disagreed." She jutted her chin out. "You got any objections?"

"Not if she's happy," I said.

"I'll make her happier than he would, that's for sure," said Queenie.

"Is she going to keep working in the show?"

"She doesn't care who does what to her," said Queenie, and for a minute I thought she was going to cry. Then her face hardened again. "That's what Thaddeus has done to her. Once she cares again, she'll quit."

"I hope so," I said.

"I know you do," she replied gently. "I'm sorry, Tojo. Sometimes I can't help getting you mixed up with him. God, do you know what it's like lying in bed with her and seeing her looking out the window at his trailer with tears rolling down her face?"

"I know what her face looks like with tears on it," I said.

"It's not the same thing."

"No, I guess not," I answered softly. I thanked her for my coffee and spent the next hour sitting next to Rainbow, looking for a change in his color. There wasn't any, but he did seem a little more comfortable. Then, at noon, I escorted the other aliens to the sideshow tent.

Thaddeus showed up ten minutes late and looking very agitated. His patter was off, and he almost got into a fight with a customer. Finally, just before three o'clock, he told Swede, who was selling tickets, to close up the box office, and after he rushed the last batch of customers through he had me take the aliens back to the dormitory tent.

He entered a minute later, practically snorting fire from his nostrils, and told the guards to wait outside. Then he lined the aliens up and stood in front of them, an ominous smile on his face.

"I just got a phone call from Vermont," he said, looking from one alien to the next. "They released Romany early this morning." He paused for a few seconds, then continued. "He told them he was coming to Maine to look for us."

None of the aliens made any comment, or even moved.

"So I got to thinking about it," said Thaddeus. "How the hell could he know to look for us in Maine, when all logic says we'd be moving south, and when even I myself didn't know we were going to Maine until after he'd been arrested? I didn't tell the cops we were going to Maine, and I'm sure none of you told them. So how did he know?"

Silence.

"He knew," said Thaddeus triumphantly, "because one of you goddamned freaks is a telepath! You told him where we are and you're guiding him every step of the way!"

He folded his arms across his chest and glared at them.

"All right," he said. "Who is it?"

Nobody moved.

"Someone is in for a lot of trouble," he said. "What happens to him is going to happen whether it happens to everyone else or not."

"We have been kidnapped and mistreated," said Mr. Ahasuerus at last. "You have deprived us of our physical and spiritual needs. What possible threat can you make at this point?"

"You're still alive," said Thaddeus grimly. "That is not necessarily a permanent condition."

"You won't kill us," said Mr. Ahasuerus with a wry smile. "What would become of your profit?"

"You think about whether I'll make appreciably less profit with six freaks than twelve, and let me know when you come up with an answer," said Thaddeus.

"And you think about how you will display us if, for example, we were to go on a hunger strike," said Mr. Ahasuerus.

"Semantics," said Thaddeus.

"I don't understand."

"Whether you go on a hunger strike or I put you on a starvation diet, the result is going to be the same: you ain't gonna have one hell of a lot to eat."

"What must be, must be," said the blue man.

"You think about it real carefully," said Thaddeus. "Just how long do you think the rainbow man can go without food in his current condition? How long can the Cyclops make it without his pills? I want to know today!"

He turned to me. "You come with me!" he snapped. Then he walked out of the tent and headed over to his trailer. I couldn't see that any purpose would be served by defying him, so I paused for just a few seconds and fell into step behind him.

I expected to see him start ranting and raving and throwing things against the walls, but instead he sat on his couch, a self-satisfied smile on his face.