Sideshow: Tales of the Galactic Midway, Vol. 1 Read online

  “Tojo,” said Thaddeus, “get Numa and Albert over here.”

  I sought out the two aliens. Numa refused to speak with Thaddeus, but Albert followed me to the table.

  “Your friend Dapper Dan has gone off the deep end,” said Thaddeus, as the Human Lizard took a seat.

  “I don't understand.”

  “He's become irrational.”

  “Why?” hissed Albert the Alligator. “Because he doesn't like slavery?”

  “Because he tried to kill himself,” said Thaddeus patiently. “And I gather that according to his beliefs, this is not exactly the best way to enjoy a happy after-life.”

  “He's going to die on your world anyway,” said Albert in his distinct and sibilant whisper. “Why not get it over with as soon as possible, so that he can begin searching for his deity immediately?”

  “You're as crazy as he is!” snapped Thaddeus in exasperation.

  “Because I see nothing wrong in his killing himself to avoid a lifetime of degradation?” hissed Albert.

  “If it's such a tempting alternative, why haven't you tried it?” said Thaddeus.

  “Because my situation is different,” answered Albert. “This experience, distasteful as it is, constitutes only the smallest portion of my lifetime. I shall be alive centuries after you are nothing but an unpleasant memory.”

  Thaddeus shot Mr. Ahasuerus a quick look, and the blue man nodded.

  “How comforting,” said Thaddeus dryly. “I don't suppose all those years of experience you've piled up might give you a hint about Dapper Dan's situation?”

  “His situation is intolerable,” said Albert, staring unblinking at Thaddeus with his cold lifeless eyes. “It will remain intolerable until you release him.”

  “That wasn't exactly the answer I had in mind,” said Thaddeus. “Can't you speak to him, tell him about the glories of his home world and of all the wonderful things that await him there?”

  “There is nothing wonderful about his planet,” hissed the Human Lizard.

  “Maybe not to a refugee from the Reptile House,” said Thaddeus, “but it must be a desirable place for him.”

  “I doubt it,” said Albert. “It is a world of bitter extremes of climate and a totalitarian theocracy.”

  “That he believes in,” said Thaddeus.

  “Believing in his religion makes it no less oppressive,” said Albert emotionlessly.

  “Then talk to him about his family, about how much they'll miss him.”

  “They won't,” replied Albert.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He is an outcast.”

  Thaddeus turned to Mr. Ahasuerus. “How the hell did you put this group together—empty the jails and the loony bins?”

  “I know nothing about this,” said Mr. Ahasuerus.

  “Suppose you enlighten us,” said Thaddeus, turning back to the Human Lizard.

  “He became an outcast when he elected to come here,” said Albert. “The moment he missed his daily religious sacrament he ceased to exist to his family.”

  “Then why the hell did he come?” demanded Thaddeus.

  “Had he returned he would have done certain penances—hideous penances, even by your standards—and he would have been exonerated. But until that occurs, he might as well be dead as far as his friends and family are concerned. Indeed, he is less than dead to them.”

  “And he accepted that just to set foot on a little ball of shit spinning around a distant sun?” said Thaddeus uncomprehendingly. He turned to me. “He must be one unhappy monkeyman.”

  “He is,” I said softly.

  “I wonder what he thought he'd find here?” mused Thaddeus.

  “Something other than what he found,” hissed Albert coldly.

  “How about you?” said Thaddeus, seemingly anxious to change the subject. “Why are you here?”

  “I am an exobiologist.”

  “A what?”

  “My life's work is the study of alien life forms. I was presented with an opportunity to visit a planet I had never been to before. I took it.”

  “You mean you could have told us right off the bat why some of you were getting sick and how to cure you?” demanded Thaddeus.

  “Probably.”

  “Then why the hell didn't you?”

  “Most of them, like the Missing Link, would be better off dead,” said Albert.

  “Yeah?” said Thaddeus. “Well, I just hope you're as unhappy as he is.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't like you very much,” said Thaddeus. “I don't like your looks, and I don't like the way you speak, and I don't like your attitude.”

  “Have you considered how your attitude might appear to one of us?” asked Albert.

  Thaddeus glared at him for a long moment. “We're getting off the subject,” he said at last. “Will you speak to him?”

  “I will not.”

  “And you?” he said, looking at Mr. Ahasuerus.

  “I will try,” replied the blue man. “He is my responsibility.”

  “Good,” said Thaddeus, rising to his feet. “Hey, Alvin.”

  The big guy hurried over.

  “Alvin, keep a close eye on Dapper Dan for the couple of days. If you have to tie him down to keep from trying to off himself, do it. And have Queenie tell Gloria to go to town tomorrow for more sodium pills.”

  Alvin nodded, and Thaddeus walked over to the Missing Link. He didn't say a word, just stood and looked at him. Dapper Dan was asleep now, breathing deeply and regularly, but his face was troubled, as if he were having a bad dream. Thaddeus reached out a hand as if he was going to give the Missing Link a reassuring pat on the shoulder; when his hand got halfway to its mark he suddenly drew back.

  “Come on, Tojo!” he snapped. “There's no sense hanging around here. Everything's back to normal.”

  I followed him to the trailer. Neither of us was sleepy, so he opened a pair of beers and handed one to me. Jupiter Monk entered as we were drinking them in silence.

  “Hope you don't mind the intrusion,” he said, rubbing his hands and blowing on them, “but old Alvin woke the whole place up a few minutes ago looking for mustard, of all things, and since I saw your light on I thought—”

  “Stop jabbering and grab yourself a beer,” said Thaddeus.

  “I thought you'd never ask,” grinned Monk, walking to the refrigerator.

  “Ah, I see you've switched from bottles to cans.”

  “It's what they had,” replied Thaddeus with a shrug.

  Monk popped open a can and joined us in the living room.

  “Man, it's a bitch of a night, isn't it?” he said. “Reminds me of the Klondike, except up there we didn't have anything to worry about except polar bears and wolves and maybe an occasional moose.”

  “So what's down here?” I asked.

  “Cops. Marks. Rubes. Thaddeus. For safety, I'll take the Klondike every time.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?” said Thaddeus irritably.

  “Well, you got to admit you ain't always as easy to get along with as a polar bear,” laughed Monk.

  “If you've come here to dump on me you can go right back where you came from,” said Thaddeus. “I've had enough people telling me what they think of me for one night.”

  “As a matter of fact, I came over because I finally came up with our last name.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Three-Breasted Woman,” said Monk. “We never could decide on a name for her.”

  “And now you've got one?”

  “Yep.”

  “Just how many hours did you spend thinking about it?” said Thaddeus sarcastically.

  “Came to me in a flash,” said Monk.

  “So what is it?”

  “I figure each of those breasts is a D-cup,” said Monk, a pleasant smile crossing his face as he pictured them in his mind's eye, “and she's got three of them, so how about 3-D?”

  “It's awful!” snorted Thaddeus.
“It sounds like a movie gimmick.”

  “You got anything better?”

  He didn't, and no one came up with anything better, so she became 3-D, and the whole troupe finally had carny names.

  We had a few more beers, and then Monk looked at his watch and discovered that it was almost five-thirty. “I'd better go,” he said, draining the can he was holding in his hand. “If I hurry, my head'll hit the pillow before my alarm clock goes off.” He glanced out the window. “Shit! It's snowing again. What the hell did you leave California for, Thaddeus? You must have been crazy.”

  Thaddeus merely shrugged.

  “Where were you—north or south?”

  “South,” said Thaddeus. “A suburb of L.A.”

  “Anaheim?”

  “Santa Cruz.”

  “Too bad it wasn't Anaheim,” said Monk. “They've got the Angels and Disneyland and all kinds of good things.”

  “We were just a few miles away,” said Thaddeus.

  Monk put his coat on and buttoned it up. “We ain't either of us too smart. I could be hunting apes in Africa, and you could be watching a batch of 2-Ds shaking on a California beach.” He opened the door. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Close that damned thing!” shouted Thaddeus. “It's freezing!”

  Monk laughed and slammed the door behind him as he went out into the snow.

  Thaddeus opened another beer and offered one to me.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “Have one,” he said, pushing it into my hand. “I don't like to drink alone.”

  “Thaddeus,” I said slowly, “where did you grow up?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “None. But I know where Santa Cruz is: it's a suburb of San Francisco.”

  “Big deal.”

  “But I thought you said—”

  “How the hell do I know where Santa Cruz is?” he snapped. “I heard it mentioned in a movie.”

  “You didn't grow up there?”

  “I've never been to California in my life,” he said bitterly.

  We sat, silent and motionless, for perhaps ten minutes while the wind whipped against the windows and the snow kept accumulating.

  “I was born in Trenton, New Jersey,” he said at last. “My mother was the cheapest whore in town. Even the black guys wouldn't touch her. She got nothing but freaks and winos.”

  “And your father?” I asked gently.

  “There isn't a hat big enough to pull his name out of,” said Thaddeus, his voice low and toneless. “I grew up in a one-room flat, watching my mother fuck two hundred, three hundred men a week and shoot every cent she made into her goddamned arm. The state kept taking me away and putting me in foster homes, and I kept coming back. Until I was twelve.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Some junkie bashed her head in. I found her after he had gone.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “A little of everything.” He looked out the window. “Mostly I starved and I froze. California girls—hah! I've never been halfway to the Mississippi.”

  “Then why say you did?” I asked. “No one in a carny cares where you came from.”

  “I care,” he said so softly I could hardly hear him. “I spent my whole fucking life fighting and clawing for every penny so that I'd never wind up back in that goddamned room in Trenton.”

  “But why California?”

  “Because it's clean,” he said. “I like to tell myself that one time in my life I was someplace that was clean.” He turned to me suddenly. “If it's dirty, I don't want to hear about it.”

  “It's clean, Thaddeus,” I lied.

  He finished his beer. “If you ever tell anyone what I just said, I'm gonna rip that goddamned hump off your back and shove it down your throat,” he said. “You got that straight, you fucking dwarf?”

  “I won't tell anyone, Thaddeus,” I said.

  “You'd better not,” he muttered, and lay down on the couch. He was asleep in less than a minute, and as I looked at him, curled up in the same position as Dapper Dan and with the same unhappy expression on his face, I was struck by how little difference there was between the two of them.

  I noticed that it was cold inside the trailer, so I covered him with a blanket, as I had done so many times in the past, and went off to my own bed. As I lay down and prepared to go to sleep, I found myself wondering what Dapper Dan's mother had done for a living, or if he had thought of this world as his California.

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  * * *

  Chapter 11

  I woke Thaddeus up at noon. He had his usual hangover, he was his usual irritable self, and he croaked for his usual cup of coffee.

  “Thanks,” he said when I brought it to him. He took a sip, warmed his hands on the mug, and closed his eyes.

  “Better,” he muttered. “That was some night we had last night, wasn't it?” he said with a wry smile. “Alma being noble, of all things, and the monkeyman trying to kill himself, and...”

  His voice trailed off, and I could tell by the troubled expression on his face that he remembered what he had confided to me. Suddenly he became very ill at ease, almost ashamed; it was a new posture for Thaddeus, and while I had waited for it for years I had to admit to myself that it didn't become him.

  He finished his coffee in silence, dressed quickly, and walked across the Midway to the dormitory tent. I cleaned up the kitchen and made the beds, and by the time I followed him over he was sitting on the edge of Dapper Dan's cot, examining his pulse and heartbeat as if he knew normal from abnormal.

  Then he called for a cup of soup. Queenie brought it over, and Thaddeus started spooning it out to Dapper Dan. The fight seemed to be out of the Missing Link—if “fight” was the right word for it in the first place—and he swallowed each spoonful as Thaddeus gave it to him.

  When the bowl was empty Thaddeus turned to Big Alvin and Treetop, who had been standing guard since before the suicide attempt.

  “Didn't anyone think that maybe he could use a little food?” he demanded. “Hell, he puked until he didn't have anything left inside of him.”

  Neither of the men answered him, and Thaddeus carted Mr. Ahasuerus over.

  “How about you?” he said. “I thought he was supposed to be your responsibility.”

  “I thought rest was more important than nourishment,” said the blue man.

  “Nobody's paying you to think!” snapped Thaddeus. “Hell, it's freezing in here! He needs calories more than he needs sleep!”

  He stomped around the tent, full of impotent rage. Finally he wound up back at Dapper Dan's cot.

  “You!” he said sharply. “If I move you to my trailer, will you give me your word that you won't try to kill yourself or try to escape?”

  “No,” said Dapper Dan, staring weakly but unblinking at Thaddeus.

  Thaddeus stared back at him for a long moment, then turned to the guards again. “Alvin, you and Treetop rig up a stretcher out of one of the cots and move him to the trailer. Then tell Swede to set up housekeeping there and keep an eye on him.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Ahasuerus.

  Thaddeus’ eyes fell on Rainbow, whose color was once again pale blue.

  “This one too,” he said, gesturing to the Man of Many Colors.

  “Do you want us to bring them back at show time?” asked Big Alvin.

  “No. They stay there until they're healthy. And Pumpkin and Snoopy stay in the tent today. Four-Eyes too, unless Gloria gets back with his pills in time.”

  “I could go on in their place,” suggested Mr. Ahasuerus.

  Thaddeus uttered a dry laugh. “I can't figure you out,” he admitted. “Why the hell would you want to do me a favor?”

  “I don't,” replied Mr. Ahasuerus. “I simply want to make sure that you don't lose so much money that you must force any of my sick companions back into the sideshow before they are ready .”

  “Don't worry about it,” said Thaddeus. “They
're not worth anything to me if they're dead.”

  “Very well,” said Mr. Ahasuerus. “I withdraw my offer.”

  “Your withdrawal is accepted.”

  “May I ask a question?”

  “Go right ahead,” said Thaddeus, lighting up a cigarette and offering one to the blue man, who refused it.

  “Since you ... ah ... took over the management of the sideshow, you have never once displayed me to the public.”

  “Are you feeling slighted?” asked Thaddeus.

  “Merely curious.”

  “Good. It'll give you food for thought,” replied Thaddeus.

  “That is the only answer I am to be given?” asked Mr. Ahasuerus.

  “It is.”

  The blue man looked at him, puzzled. Then he shrugged and walked away.

  “I've been wondering about that myself, Thaddeus,” I said.

  He lowered his voice until none of the others could hear it. “Simple. You give their leader special privileges, even if he doesn't ask for them, or want them, and you get them to thinking about it, and they may be a little less likely to follow him when he tries to take over.”

  “You think he's going to try something, then?”

  “Of course.”

  “But he's been more cordial and cooperative than just about anyone else would be in the same circumstances,” I protested.

  “Tojo, the man works for a corporation, just like anyone else. And he must be pretty high up the ladder to have a spaceship and a bunch of tourists from other worlds entrusted to him. What does that imply to you?”

  “What should it imply?” I asked.

  “Nobody reaches a position of authority without the ability to be a backstabbing bastard when the chips are down. I don't know why he's trying to soften me up, but it doesn't make any difference. If he's the leader, then he's got to be the toughest of them.”

  “But he's not a human being,” I said, not even remarking on the fact that Thaddeus had, for the first time, referred to him as a man. “Maybe things are different on his world.”

  “As near as I can tell, there's one basic law anywhere you go in the universe: the strong eat the weak.”

  “I think you're wrong,” I said. “I hope you are.”

  “What if I am? There's no harm done, and at least he doesn't have to put up with all the hicks staring at him. And if I'm right...” He let his voice trail off and flashed a smile at me.