"You still don't understand how the game is played, do you?" he said with a smile. "He wanted to talk now. I made him back down. He wanted to talk here. I made him go into town. He probably wanted Bullseye around. I made him meet me alone."

"What does that prove?"

"It proves that he's operating under a lot more restraints than I am," answered Thaddeus. "And it also means that, tough as he looks, he's not going to be able to make any effective threats." He paused to clear his throat. "Maybe I can't stop Dapper Dan from killing himself, and maybe I don't know how to make Alma happy, but Romany is a different cup of tea: we're playing in my ball park again, and I know all the ground rules. Put the freaks away and grab your jacket. You're coming with me."

"But why?"

"Because he won't want you to," said Thaddeus. "What's the good of dealing from strength if you don't play any cards?"

I escorted the six aliens back to the tent, made sure that Gloria had dropped off the sodium pills for Four-Eyes, and hunted up my jacket. I considered telling Mr. Ahasuerus that Mr. Romany had found us, but decided not to get his hopes up. (It wasn't until we were halfway to town that I realized he would know anyway: the others had to have seen and recognized Mr. Romany during the show. I spent the rest of the ride wondering if Mr. Ahasuerus would think me Thaddeus' lackey for not telling him.) The town was like most northern Vermont villages: narrow streets, a huge town square, old frame buildings (mostly saltboxes, with hydra-headed chimneys) that had been converted into stores and shops, and an occasional long low office building with so much glass on display that you couldn't help wondering how they heated it when the really cold weather arrived.

Lucy's Tavern was the carny folks' hangout when they weren't working or drinking in their trailers. It was an old three-story home with tongue-in-groove paneling that boasted an undersized bar and about a dozen small tables with uncomfortable wooden chairs in what had once been the living room. Each table possessed a bowl of peanuts, provided gratis by the management, and the floor was littered with peanut shells, which remained where they fell, either to add to the atmosphere or because Lucy and her employees were simply disinclined to sweep them up.

It was mid-afternoon when we arrived, and the place was totally deserted, except for a bored-looking bartender who had his nose buried in a National Geographic magazine. Mr. Romany was sitting at a table in the farthest corner of the dimly lit barroom, waiting for us with a bottle of Schlitz and a half empty glass in front of him.

Thaddeus left me at the table, ordered a couple of beers at the bar, and returned a minute later.

"I thought you were coming alone," said Mr. Romany.

"I told you once before," grinned Thaddeus. "He's my bodyguard."

Mr. Romany stared at me.

"He's small, but he's wiry," added Thaddeus. He pulled up a chair and seated himself. "Did you have a nice trip?"

"Once I got out of jail."

"View it as an occupational hazard," said Thaddeus, still smiling.

"I've endured worse."

"If you had any playing cards with you, you could have turned it into a paying proposition," said Thaddeus.

"Shall we stop the small talk and get down to the business at hand?" said Mr. Romany coldly.

"It suits me," agreed Thaddeus. "How about you, Tojo?"

"Fine," I said, startled.

"All right," said Mr. Romany. "You have committed a serious crime, Mr. Flint. Even by the rather lax standards of this planet, kidnapping is a major felony."

"Then you should report me to the police. If you had committed a crime, I certainly wouldn't hesitate, as you may have noticed."

"We both know that is impossible."

"Well, we're both in the same boat then, aren't we?" replied Thaddeus. "You don't want the authorities to know they're aliens, and I don't want the authorities to know I've kidnapped them. I guess we're just going to have to trust each other."

I watched Mr. Romany very closely for a reaction, but there wasn't any.

Either his face was incapable of any other expression, which was certainly possible, or else he was playing his cards very close to the vest. I opted for the latter: he had known he couldn't bluff Thaddeus by invoking the authorities. He had mentioned it more as a matter of form, just to get it out of the way.

"What is to prevent me from stealing them back?" he said, and then I knew he was bluffing. He just wanted Thaddeus to outline how thoroughly he had gone about protecting the aliens to gain some insight into his antagonist.

"Not a thing," replied Thaddeus calmly. "Of course, if you do, I'll kill the Missing Link and the Man of Many Colors." He paused to let that sink in. "Check the tent it you like. You won't find them there."

"Where are they?"

"Somewhere up in Maine," lied Thaddeus. "Of course, I don't have to kill them. I might just turn them over to the government. I mean, once you've taken Mr. Ahasuerus and the rest away, I'd hardly be hurting my own income, would I?"

This time there was a reaction, a slight tightening of the muscles in Mr. Romany's lean, intent face. I knew that if I had seen it, so had Thaddeus—and he would doubtless file it away for future use. Obviously exposure meant more to Mr. Romany than the deaths of a couple of the aliens.

"You're being very unreasonable about this," said Mr. Romany at last. "You've gotten away with kidnapping, you've doubtless made a considerable amount of money because of it; now return them and no further action will be taken."

"No action has been taken at all," replied Thaddeus.

"That is due to change. The Human Pincushion is monitoring this conversation. Once he learns that you have no intention of releasing them, they will be forced to take action, with or without my help."

"Horseshit," said Thaddeus.

"I beg your pardon?"

"The Pincushion can't hear a word we're saying. All he can do is send. If he could receive, he'd have known I planned to take them over in the first place, and you'd have been a little better prepared for me. Now, Mr. Romany," he said, leaning forward on the table, "if you're all through talking nonsense, maybe we can get to the point."

"The point is that you have illegally abducted twelve sentient beings and are holding them against their wills."

"The point," said Thaddeus, "is that someone is pressuring you to clean this little problem up in a hurry. You're just a goddamned flunky, an advance man or an assistant tour guide or something like that. Someone higher up is starting to worry about Mr. Ahasuerus and his group, and you don't want any black marks on your record. When promotion time rolls around, you don't want them to remember that someone had to bail you out on a little backwater world like this one."

As Thaddeus spoke Mr. Romany became more and more uncomfortable, fidgeting awkwardly in his chair. "So the problem that confronts us now," concluded Thaddeus, a contemptuous smile on his face, "is not how we're going to save a bunch of innocent tourists from a life of bondage and degradation, but how we're going to save your ass. Would you say that about sums up the situation?"

Mr. Romany nodded unhappily.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence, during which Thaddeus flashed me an I-told-you-so grin.