by Mike Resnick
“Nobody made them come,” he said irritably.
“But you're making them stay,” I pointed out.
“Don't you go putting the blame on me, you little dwarf!” he snapped. “I didn't fly halfway across the galaxy. They took their chances, and they lost.”
“Then you're really going to lock them up if one of them gets sick?”
“I told them I would,” he said. “Why should you doubt it?”
“It wouldn't be the first time you said something you didn't mean,” I answered.
“Just how the hell many things can I back down on? These bastards get the idea that I can be pushed around and pretty soon they'll be putting you and me on exhibit on the moon.”
I could see that talking to him wasn't going to do any good, so I fell silent for a while. Then Thaddeus sent me over to his trailer for a six-pack of beer, and when I returned he spent the next two hours nursing one beer after another, shooting an occasional contemptuous glance in the direction of Dapper Dan.
Finally he went off to his trailer, and after I found out that Mr. Ahasuerus had organized the healthy aliens into an around-the-clock nursing team, I broke down and followed him. I didn't relish sharing quarters with Thaddeus, even if he didn't have a woman in for the night, but I had been sleeping on canvas cots for almost two weeks and it wasn't doing my back any good. I've never been really comfortable ever since my spine started twisting, but I couldn't remember it ever hurting more than when I'd wake up after a night on one of the canvas cots.
“Well, look who's here,” said Thaddeus when I walked into the trailer. “I kind of thought you wouldn't be showing up here again.”
“Back problems,” I said.
“To say nothing of stench problems,” he said with a grimace. “My God, that Pumpkin stinks, doesn't she?”
“It's the rash,” I said. “We don't have anything we can treat it with.”
“If they're all this puny, I think Man is going to conquer the whole damned universe ten years after he develops something that'll get him from one star to the next,” said Thaddeus. “I've never seen a sicklier bunch of creatures in my life.”
“Take a batch of humans to one of their worlds, and you might,” I said.
He shrugged. “Maybe you're right.”
He was going to say something more, but just then there was a knock on the door.
“It's open!” shouted Thaddeus.
I heard the door open and shut, and then Alma walked into the room, wearing a heavy sweater and a pair of faded jeans. Thaddeus looked surprised for just a moment, and then his face became a blank.
“May I sit down?” she asked.
He gestured toward a chair.
“Thank you. Thaddeus, I have to talk to you.”
“I'd better leave,” I said, getting up from the court but Thaddeus pushed me back down.
“Stick around, Tojo,” he said. “This is your trailer, too.”
“I'd rather we spoke alone,” she said uneasily.
“I'm sure you would,” said Thaddeus. “But we no longer have any intimate secrets, do we? Unless you have some new ones to tell me, that is.”
“You're making this very difficult for me, Thaddeus,” said Alma.
“I can't imagine why,” he said bitterly. “We don't have all that much in common anymore, so why should a little talk be difficult?”
“I stopped by the tent tonight,” she said.
“Oh?” replied Thaddeus, lighting a cigarette. “Which one?”
“You know which tent,” she said. “Is it true?”
“Probably. But just for the record, is what true?”
“Are you really going to put them in Monk's cages if another one of them gets sick?”
“Why should it concern you?” he said.
“You didn't answer me,” said Alma.
“You noticed,” he said with a harsh grin. “Why don't you ask Queenie? I understand she has all the answers these days.”
“Are you going to put Rainbow on display if Dapper Dan doesn't go on tomorrow?”
“You'd better believe it!” snapped Thaddeus. “Being sick is one thing. Going on strike is another.”
“Can't you see that Dapper Dan is the sickest of them all?” she said.
“He's as healthy as I am,” said Thaddeus.
“Physically, yes. But he thinks he's going to die, and that you've condemned his soul to everlasting perdition.”
“Who told you that?” demanded Thaddeus, suddenly tense.
“Mr. Ahasuerus.”
“Did he say what religion Dapper Dan practices?”
“I don't know,” said Alma. “Probably some Eastern one. What difference does it make? He thinks you're sending him to hell. That's all that matters.”
I could see the tension seep away from him as he realized she still thought they were merely freaks: odd and ill-formed, but of this world.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked at last. “Close the show every time one of them wishes he was somewhere else?”
She shook her head. “Just treat them like human beings. They may be different, Thaddeus, but they're not monsters. You've got to start allowing them their dignity.”
“Well, now, look who's talking about dignity!” said Thaddeus, a cruel grin on his face. “You spread your legs for two thousand strange men every day and then you go and crawl into the sack with a dumpy fifty-five-year-old broad who didn't even know which side of her welfare check to sign when I found her. That's some goddamned dignity!”
“Who taught me to work in a meat show?” said Alma without any hint of anger. “As for Queenie, she loves me.”
“Hah!” snorted Thaddeus.
“She does, Thaddeus. I'm important to her. She treats me like a person instead of just a body. You treated me the way you treat them. You can't go through your whole life using people like that. It's got to stop!”
She pulled a crumpled Kleenex out of her pocket and blew her nose.
“I didn't mean to lecture you, Thaddeus,” she said slowly. “It never does any good, and it's not what I came over for.”
“Now that you're on the subject, just what the hell are you doing here, besides telling me how to run my business?”
“I've come to make a deal,” she said. “You like deals, don't you?”
“I'm listening.”
She shifted uneasily on her chair and lowered her gaze to the floor. “If you'll promise not to put them in cages, or to make Rainbow work in the sideshow until he's healthy, I'll move back in with you.”
I don't know what Thaddeus was expecting, but that sure wasn't it. For just a second he looked surprised; then a strange expression—perhaps concern, perhaps something else—crossed his face.
“Did you have a fight with Queenie?” he asked a long, uncomfortable pause.
“No,” said Alma, still staring at the floor.
“Does she know you're making this offer?”
Alma shook her head, and a tear trickled down her cheek.
“Do you love her?” he asked softly.
“I need her. I need someone,” she whispered, more tears following the first.
“And you're offering to come back, just because of a bunch of freaks?”
She forced herself to look at him. “Is it a deal?” she asked, her face very pale and very wet.
“I'd make you unhappy.”
“You always do.”
“I'd still sleep with other women,” he said. “I'm too old to change.”
“I know,” she replied, blowing her nose again.
“Queenie would hate you even more than she hates me,” he pointed out. “If you move in here, she'll never take you back. She's not as generous as I am.”
“Queenie will live without me. Those poor creatures won't.”
“You really think I'd kill them?”
“You kill everything you touch in one way or another,” said Alma, never taking her eyes from his. “This won't be any worse for me than working in the s
how.”
“Or any better?” he asked with a wry smile.
“Or any better.”
“And yet,” he said, truly puzzled, “you'd come back. For them.”
“Yes.” She wiped the tears from her face with a forearm. “You know something, Thaddeus?” she said with a wistful little smile. “When I was nine or ten years old I was one hell of a tomboy. I played football and baseball with the best of them, and I used to go home with cuts and bruises all over me, but I never cried—not once.” She ran the soggy Kleenex over her face. “Until I met you.”
He stared at her and said nothing. I think she must have felt more naked than she ever felt on any stage, and she began shifting uncomfortably again.
“Well?” she asked at last, and her voice shook just a little. “Do we have a deal?”
“Go back where you belong,” he said wearily. It could have sounded nasty, but somehow it didn't.
“What?” she asked, blinking as if she was sure she didn't understood him.
“Go back to Queenie.”
“You don't want me?” she said, a blush of shame starting to spread across her face.
“I don't make deals.”
She turned to me, and I could tell she was going to start crying again.
“Goodnight, Tojo. I'm sorry you had hear this.”
“Goodnight, Alma,” I said. “Take care.”
She turned and walked out of the trailer without saying another word.
“She really thought I was going to lock them in cages,” said Thaddeus, watching her through a window as she ran back to Queenie's trailer.
“Weren't you?” I said.
“With everything I've done, she was willing to come back for more, just to help them,” he said, ignoring my question. “Isn't that odd?”
He lit another cigarette and looked at the dormitory tent for a long minute.
“It's starting to snow again,” he said.
“I know,” I replied.
“Tojo,” he said in a faraway voice, “get your ass over there and tell Rainbow he'd better stay in bed tomorrow. It looks like it's going to be a cold day.”
He was still staring at the tent when I left the trailer to do his bidding.
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* * *
Chapter 10
At three o'clock the next morning Dapper Dan tried to kill himself.
Big Alvin pounded on the door to the trailer until he finally woke us up. He was standing there in only his T-shirt and jeans, totally oblivious to the snow and wind, and screaming that Thaddeus had to get over to the dormitory tent right away.
As always when there was an emergency concerning the carnival, Thaddeus was up and dressed and reasonably wide awake in less than a minute. I can't move as fast as most people, and it took me about three minutes just to get out of my pajamas and into my clothes, and another minute or so to reach the tent. When I entered it Thaddeus was already working on the Missing Link, who was weakly trying to push him away. “Mustard!” he snapped at Alvin. The big guy just stood there with an uncomprehending look on his face. “Dammit, Alvin! Get me a jar of mustard!”
“Any particular kind?” asked Big Alvin.
“Just get it, you dumb son of a bitch!” bellowed Thaddeus.
Alvin shrugged and went out the door, obviously on his way to one of the concession stands. I walked over to Queenie's kitchen, found a bottle of yellow mustard, and brought it to Thaddeus.
He took it from me without a word and poured half its contents into Dapper Dan's mouth. The Missing Link fought against it, but finally swallowed the stuff.
“Stand back!” Thaddeus ordered the other aliens, who had all crowded around. “Give him air!”
A moment later Dapper Dan clutched his belly, and a few seconds after that he began vomiting. Thaddeus, a disgusted look on his face, held the apeman's head until he was finished.
“Don't just stand there, Treetop!” he hollered. “Get something to clean this up with.”
He turned to me. “Do you know what that bastard did? He took a whole bottle of Four-Eye's sodium pills. Swallowed every last one of them.” He put a hand on Dapper's shoulder and looked down at him. “You poor dumb monkeyman. If you want to kill yourself, you don't announce that you've taken the pills until they've had time to get into your system. Now all you're gonna have is one hell of a bellyache.” He took the edge off his voice. “Are you feeling any better?”
Dapper Dan made no answer.
“Would the sodium have killed him?” I asked dubiously.
“Who knows?” responded Thaddeus wearily. “I think fresh air and sunshine would kill half of them. For all I know his standard diet is bird shit.”
“I will try again,” said Dapper Dan softly.
“I don't doubt it,” said Thaddeus.
Dapper Dan looked up at him. “Why couldn't you let me die?”
“Maybe next time I will,” said Thaddeus.
“I hope so,” said Dapper Dan.
“Jesus Christ, what the hell's the matter with you?” snapped Thaddeus. “You're getting fed, you're not being beaten, there's always a chance that Romany will find you. What the hell do you want to die for?”
“Leave him alone, Thaddeus,” I said.
“Let me tell you something, Tarzan,” he continued, ignoring me completely.
“If it was me instead of you, I'd have made twenty escape attempts already. I'd be lying in wait for you every time you walked into the tent. I'd go an a hunger strike instead of just threatening to. It doesn't take any brains or guts to kill yourself—or maybe it does, considering how badly you botched it. What kind of people are you, anyway?”
Dapper Dan looked as if he was going to say something, but suddenly tried to vomit again. Nothing came up, and he finally lay back, exhausted, on his cot.
“Just lie still and try to relax,” said Thaddeus, picking up a towel and mopping the Missing Link's face. “You start moving around and you'll start heaving again. There's been enough stupidity around here for one night.”
“Please go away,” said Dapper Dan softly.
“When I'm ready to,” replied Thaddeus. He sat on the edge of the cot and took Dapper Dan's pulse. “I wish I knew what the hell was normal for you,” he said after a moment or two. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and took a long drag. “That must be some world you come from, apeman.”
“What do you mean?” whispered Dapper Dan.
“Well, you'd rather kill yourself than stay away from it.”
“I would rather die than remain in bondage,” said Dapper Dan.
“That's an interesting conclusion to reach in less than two weeks. Don't they have any jails on your world?”
“No.”
“You're kidding!” scoffed Thaddeus. “What do when someone breaks the law?”
“No one does,” said Dapper Dan.
“I don't believe you.”
“What you believe is of no importance to me.”
“Other than the freedom to pretend you're a sideshow freak for Ahasuerus instead of really being one for me,” said Thaddeus, “just what is important to you?”
“My family and my God,” said Dapper Dan.
“In that order?”
“There is no order. They are the same.”
“Ancestor worship?”
Dapper Dan shook his head weakly. “You would not understand.”
“Try me.”
“To what purpose? Whether I die now or I die later, I must search for my God alone.”
“You make it sound like he's lost,” said Thaddeus with a smile.
“God is not lost,” said Dapper Dan so softly that I had trouble hearing him. “But I am.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?” asked Thaddeus.
Dapper Dan merely closed his eyes and turned side.
“I heard him speak about it earlier this evening,” I said. “As I understand it, he believes his soul will be lost if he dies
without the sacraments of his religion.”
“Is that right?” said Thaddeus thoughtfully.
“He was very distressed at the thought of dying away from home,” I said.
“So he tries to kill himself rather than take the chance he might die here sometime in the future,” said Thaddeus. “That's about as logical as these jokers get.”
“He's been pretty depressed, Thaddeus,” I said. “I don't think he's thinking very clearly.”
“Well,” said Thaddeus, a puzzled frown crossing his face, “he seems to be clear on one point.” He touched Dapper Dan gently on the shoulder. “You'd really rather go to hell for all eternity than spend another day here?”
“Yes!” howled the Missing Link.
His huge hairy body was wracked by sobs, and Thaddeus suddenly stood up like he'd been shot through with electricity. For just a moment he looked like he had no idea what to do next. Then his cigarette burned down to his fingers, he cursed and threw it on the ground and snuffed it out with his shoe, and the moment was gone.
“I think he's wigged out,” he said, staring at the huge alien weeping out his misery. He walked over to one of the tables and sat down at it. “Between Alma and the monkeyman, this has been a very enlightening evening,” he said caustically. “Tojo, get me a cup of coffee.”
While I was preparing it, Mr. Ahasuerus walked over to Thaddeus and awkwardly seated himself on a chair that was much too small for him.
“He will try again,” said the blue man.
“It doesn't make any sense,” said Thaddeus. “If he's afraid to die away from home, killing himself is about the last thing he should be considering.”
“He won't do it because it is sensible,” said Mr. Ahasuerus. “He has been in a severe depression.”
I arrived with the coffee.
“Thanks,” said Thaddeus. He turned to the blue man. “You want a cup?”
“No, thank you.”
“Has Dapper Dan got a particular friend in this bunch, someone who could talk a little sense to him?” asked Thaddeus. “I can have him watched twenty-four hours a day but it would be a lot easier on all of us if I didn't have to.”
“He spent a lot of time speaking with the Human Lizard and the Sphinx on the voyage to Earth,” offered Mr. Ahasuerus.
