Theodore Sturgeon - The Synthetic Man

The Dreaming Jewels (v2.0)

Theodore Sturgeon, 1950

A jewel-eyed jack-in-the-box holds a mysterious key to the future of a young boy who

runs away from home and hides away in a traveling freak show.

1

They caught the kid doing something disgusting out under the bleachers at the high-school

stadium, and he was sent home from the grammar school across the street. He was eight

years old then. He'd been doing it for years.

In a way it was a pity. He was a nice kid, a nice-looking kid too, though not particularly

outstanding. There were other kids, and teachers, who liked him a little bit, and some who

disliked him a little bit; but everyone jumped on him when it got around. His name was Horty

-- Horton, that is -- Bluett. Naturally he caught blazes when he got home.

He opened the door as quietly as he could, but they heard him, and hauled him front and

center into the living room where he stood flushing, with his head down, one sock around his

ankle, and his arms full of books and a catcher's mitt. He was a good catcher, for an

eight-year-old. He said, "I was -- "

"We know," said Armand Bluett. Armand was a bony individual with a small mustache and

cold wet eyes. He clapped his hands to his forehead and then threw up his arms. "My God,

boy, what in Heaven's name made you do a filthy thing like that?" Armand Bluett was not a

religious man, but he always talked like that when he clapped his hands to his head, which he

did quite often.

Horty did not answer. Mrs. Bluett, whose name was Tonta, sighed and asked for a highball.

She did not smoke, and needed a substitute for the smoker's thoughtful match-lit pause when

she was at a loss for words. She was so seldom at a loss for words that a fifth of rye lasted

her six weeks. She and Armand were not Horton's parents. Horton's parents were upstairs, but

the Bluetts did not know it. Horton was allowed to call Armand and Tonta by their first names.

"Might I ask," said Armand icily, "how long you have had this nauseating habit? Or was it an

experiment?"

Horty knew they weren't going to make it easy on him. There was the same puckered

expression on Armand's face as when he tasted wine and found it unexpectedly good.

"I don't do it much," Horty said, and waited.

"May the Lord have mercy on us for our generosity in taking in this little swine," said

Armand, clapping his hands to his head again. Horty let his breath out. Now that was over

with. Armand said it every time he was angry. He marched out to mix Tonta a highball.

"Why did you do it, Horty?" Tonta's voice was more gentle only because her vocal cords

were more gently shaped than her husband's. Her face showed the same implacable cold.

"Well, I -- just felt like it, I guess." Horty put his books and catcher's mitt down on the

footstool.

Tonta turned her face away from him and made an unspellable, retching syllable. Armand

strode back in, bearing a tinkling glass.

"Never heard anything like it in my life," he said scornfully. "I suppose it's all over the

school?"

"I guess so."

"The children? The teachers too, no doubt. But of course. Anyone say anything to you?"

"Just Dr. Pell." He was the principal. "He said -- said they could ... "

"Speak up!"

Horty had been through it once. Why, why go through it all again? "He said the school

could get along without f-filthy savages."

"I can understand how he felt," Tonta put in, smugly.

"And what about the other kids? They say anything?"

"Hecky brought me some worms. And Jimmy called me Sticky-tongue." And Kay Hallowell

had laughed, but he didn't mention that.

"Sticky-tongue. Not bad, that, for a kid. Ant-eater." Again the hand clapped against the

brow. "My God, what am I going to do if Mr. Anderson greets me with 'Hi Sticky-tongue!'

Monday morning? This will be all over town, sure as God made little apples." He fixed Horty

with the sharp wet points of his gaze. "And do you plan to take up bug-eating as a

profession?"

"They weren't bugs," Horty said diffidently and with accuracy. "They were ants. The little

brown kind."

Tonta choked on her highball. "Spare us the details."

"My God," Armand said again, "what'll he grow up as?" He mentioned two possibilities. Horty

understood one of them. The other made even the knowledgeable Tonta jump. "Get out of

here."

Horty went to the stairs while Armand thumped down exasperatedly beside Tonta. "I've had

mine," he said. "I'm full up to here. That brat's been the symbol of failure to me ever since I

laid eyes on his dirty face. This place isn't big enough -- Horton!"

"Huh."

"Come back here and take your garbage with you. I don't want to be reminded that you're

in the house."

Horty came back slowly, staying out of Armand Bluett's reach, picked up his books and the

catcher's mitt, dropped a pencil-box -- at which Armand my-Godded again -- picked it up,

almost dropped the mitt, and finally fled up the stairs.

"The sins of the stepfathers," said Armand, "are visited on the stepfathers, even unto the

thirty-fourth irritation. What have I done to deserve this?"

Tonta swirled her drink, keeping her eyes on it and her lips pursed appreciatively as she did

so. There had been a time when she disagreed with Armand. Later, there was a time when

she disagreed and said nothing. All that had been too wearing. Now she kept an appreciative

exterior and let it soak in as deeply as it would. Life was so much less trouble that way.

Once in his room, Horty sank down on the edge of the bed with his arms still full of his

books. He did not close the door because there was none, due to Armand's conviction that

privacy was harmful for youngsters. He did not turn on the light because he knew everything

in the room, knew it with his eyes closed. There was little enough. Bed, dresser, closet with a

cracked cheval glass. A child's desk, practically a toy, that he had long outgrown. In the

closet were three oiled-silk dress-covers stuffed full of Tonta's unused clothes, which left

almost no space for his.

His ...

None of this was really his. If there had been a smaller room, he would have been shoved

into it. There were two guest bedrooms on this floor, and another above, and they almost

never had guests. The clothes he wore weren't his; they were concessions to something

Armand called "my position in this town" rags would have done if it weren't for that.

He rose, the act making him conscious of the clutter he still clutched in his arms. He put it

down on the bed. The mitt was his, though. He'd bought it for seventy-five cents from the

Salvation Army store. He got the money by hanging around Dempledorff's market and carrying

packages for people, a dime a trip. He had thought Armand would be pleased; he was always

talking about resourcefulness and earning ability. But he had forbidden Horty ever to do that

again. "My God! People will think we are paupers!" So the mitt was all he had to show for the

episode.

All he had in the world -- except, of course, Junky.

He looked, through the half-open closet door, at the top shelf and its clutter of

Christmas-tree lights (the Christmas tree was outside the house, where the neighbors could

see -- never inside), old ribbons, a lampshade, and -- Junky.

He pulled the oversized chair away from the undersized desk and carried it -- if he had

dragged it, Armand would have been up the stairs two at a time to see what he was up to,

and if it was fun, would have forbidden it -- and set it down carefully in the closet doorway.

Standing on it, he felt behind the leftovers on the shelf until he found the hard square bulk of

Junky. He drew it out, a cube of wood, gaudily painted and badly chipped, and carried it to

the desk.

Junky was the kind of toy so well-known, so well-worn, that it was not necessary to see it

frequently, or touch it often, to know that it was there. Horty was a foundling -- found in a

park one late fall evening, with only a receiving blanket tucked about him. He had acquired

Junky while he was at the Home, and when he had been chosen by Armand as an adoptee

(during Armand's campaign for City Counsellor, which he lost, but which he thought would be

helped along if it were known he had adopted a "poor little homeless waif") Junky was part of

the bargain.

Horty put Junky softly on the desk and touched a worn stud at the side. Violently at first,

then with rusted-spring hesitancy, and at last defiantly, Junky emerged, a jack-in-the-box, a

refugee from a more gentle generation. He was a Punch, with a chipped hooked nose which all

but met his upturned, pointed chin. In the gulch between these stretched a knowing smile.

But all Junky's personality -- and all his value to Horty -- was in his eyes. They seemed to

have been cut, or molded, blunt-faceted, from some leaded glass which gave them a strange,

complex glitter, even in the dimmest room. Time and again Horty had been certain that those

eyes had a radiance of their own, though he could never quite be sure.

He murmured, "Hi, Junky."

The jack-in-the-box nodded with dignity, and Horty reached and caught its smooth chin.

"Junky, let's get away from here. Nobody wants us. Maybe we wouldn't get anything to eat,

and maybe we'd be cold, but gee ... Think of it, Junky. Not being scared when we hear his key

in the lock, and never sitting at dinner while he asks questions until we have to lie, and -- and

all like that." He did not have to explain himself to Junky.

He let the chin go, and the grinning head bobbed up and down, and then nodded slowly,

thoughtfully.

"They shouldn't 'a been like that about the ants," Horty confided. "I didn't drag nobuddy to

see. Went off by myself. But that stinky Hecky, he's been watching me. An' then he sneaked

off and got Mr. Carter. That was no way to do, now was it, Junky?" He tapped the head on

the side of its hooked nose, and it shook its head agreeably. "I hate a sneak."

"You mean me, no doubt," said Armand Bluett from the doorway.

Horty didn't move, and for a long instant his heart didn't either. He half crouched, half

cowered behind the desk, not turning toward the doorway.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothin'."

Armand belted him across the cheek and ear. Horty whimpered, once, and bit his lip.

Armand said, "Don't lie. You are obviously doing something. You were talking to yourself, a

sure sign of a degenerating mind. What's this -- oh. Oh yes, the baby toy that came with

you. Your estate. It's as repulsive as you are." He took it from the desk, dropped it on the

floor, wiped his hand on the side of his trousers, and carefully stepped on Junky's head.

Horty shrieked as if it were his own head which was being crushed, and leapt at Armand.

So unexpected was the attack that the man was bowled right off his feet. He fell heavily and

painfully against the bedpost, grabbed at it and missed, and went to the floor. He sat there

for a moment grunting and blinking, and then his little eyes narrowed and fixed themselves on

the trembling Horty. "Mmm -- hm!" said Armand in a tone of great satisfaction, and rose. "You

should be exterminated." He grasped the slack of Horty's shirt and struck him. As he spoke, he

hit the boy's face, back and forth, back and forth, by way of punctuation. "Homicidal, that's

what you are. I was going to. Send you away. To a school. But it isn't safe. The police will.

Take care of you. They have a place. For juvenile delinquents. Filthy little. Pervert."

He rushed the sodden child across the room and jammed him into the closet. "This will keep

you safe until the police get here," he panted, and slammed the door. The hinge side of it

caught three fingers of Horty's left hand.

At the boy's shriek of very real agony Armand snapped the door open again. "No use in your

yelling. You -- My God! What a mess. Now I suppose I'll have to get a doctor. There's no end

-- absolutely no end to the trouble you cause. Tonta!" He ran out and down the stairs.

"Tonta!"

"Yes, Peaches."

"That young devil stuck his hand in the door. Did it on purpose, to excite sympathy.

Bleeding like a stuck pig. You know what he did? He struck me. He attacked me, Tonta! It's

not safe to have him in the house!"

"You poor darling! Did he hurt you?"

"A wonder he didn't kill me. I'm going to call the police."

"I'd better go up while you're phoning," said Tonta. She wet her lips.

But when she reached the room, Horty was gone. There was a lot of excitement for a while

after that. At first Armand wanted to get his hands on Horty for his own purposes, and then

he began to be afraid of what people might say if the boy gave his own garbled version of the

incident. Then a day went by, and a week, and a month, and it was safe to look to heaven

and say mysteriously, "He's in safe hands now, the poor little tyke," and people could answer,

"I understand ... " Everyone knew he was not Armand's child, anyway.

But Armand Bluett tucked one idea snugly away in the corner of his mind. That was to look

out, in the future, for any young man with three fingers missing from his left hand.

2

The Hallowells lived at the edge of town, in a house that had only one thing wrong with it;

it was at the intersection where the State Highway angled into the end of Main Street, so

that the traffic roared night and day past both the front and back gates.

The Hallowell's taffy-headed daughter, Kay, was as full of social consciousness as only a

seven-year old can be. She had been asked to empty the trash, and as usual she opened the

back gate a crack and peeped out at the highway, to see if anyone she knew would catch her

at the menial task.

"Horty!"

He shrank into the fog-swirled shadows of the traffic-light standard.

"Horton Bluett, I see you."

"Kay ... " He came to her, staying close to the fence. "Listen, don't tell nobody you saw

me, huh?"

"But wh -- oh. You're running away!" she blurted, noticing the parcel tucked under his arm.

"Horty -- are you sick?" He was white, strained. "Did you hurt your hand?"

"Some." He held his left wrist with his right hand, tightly. His left hand was wrapped in two

or three handkerchiefs. "They was going to get the police. I got out the window onto the

shed roof and hid there all afternoon. They was lookin' all over the street and everywhere.

You won't tell?"

"I won't tell. What's in the package?"

"Nothin'."

If she had demanded it, grabbed at it, he would probably never have seen her again.

Instead she said, "Please, Horty."

"You can look." Without releasing his wrist, he turned so she could pull the package out

from under his arm. She opened it -- it was a paper bag -- and took out the hideous broken

face of Junky. Junky's eyes glittered at her, and she squeaked. "What is it?"

"It's Junky. I had him since before I was born. Armand, he stepped on it."

"Is that why you're running away?"

"Kay! What are you doing out there?"

"Coming, Mother! Horty, I got to go. Horty, are you coming back?"

"Not ever."

"Gee ... that mister Bluett, he's so mean ... "

"Kay Hallowell! Come in this instant. It's raining!"

"Yes, Mother! Horty, I wannit to tell you. I shouldn'ta laughed at you today. Hecky brought

you the worms, and I thought it was a joke, thass all. I didn't know you really did eat ants.

Gee ... I et some shoe-polish once. That's nothin'."

Horty held out his elbow and she carefully put the package under it. He said, as if he had

just thought of it -- and indeed he had -- "I will come back, Kay. Someday."

"Kay!"

" 'Bye, Horty." And she was gone, a flash of taffy hair, yellow dress, a bit of lace, changed

before his eyes to a closed gate in a board fence and the sound of dwindling quick footsteps.

Horton Bluett stood in the dark drizzle, cold, but with heat in his ruined hand and another

heat in his throat. This he swallowed, with difficulty, and, looking up, saw the broad inviting

tailgate of a truck which was stopped for the traffic light. He ran to it, tossed his small bundle

on it, and squirmed up, clawing with his right hand, trying to keep his left out of trouble. The

truck lurched forward; Horty scrabbled wildly to stay on. The package with Junky in it began

to slide back toward him, past him; he caught at it, losing his own grip, and began to slip.

Suddenly there was a blur of movement from inside the truck, and a flare of terrible pain as

his smashed hand was caught in a powerful grip. He came very close to fainting; when he

could see again he was lying on his back on the jolting floor of the truck, holding his wrist

again, expressing his anguish in squeezed-out tears and little, difficult grunts.

"Gee, kid, you don't care how long you live, do you?" It was a fat boy, apparently his own

age, bending over him, his bowed head resting on three chins. "What's the matter with your

hand?"

Horty said nothing. He was quite beyond speech for the moment. The fat boy, with

surprising gentleness, pressed Horty's good hand away from the handkerchiefs and began

laying back the cloth. When he got to the inner layer, he saw the blood by the wash of light

from a street-light they passed, and he said "Man."

When they stopped for another traffic signal at a lighted intersection, he looked carefully

and said, "Oh, man," with all the emphasis inside him somewhere, and his eyes contracted into

two pitying little knots of wrinkles. Horty knew the fat boy was sorry for him, and only then

did he begin to cry openly. He wished he could stop, but he couldn't, and didn't while the boy

bound up his hand again and for quite a while afterward.

The fat boy sat back on a roll of new canvas to wait for Horty to calm down. Once Horty

subsided a little and the boy winked at him, and Horty, profoundly susceptible to the least

kindness, began to wail again. The boy picked up the paper bag, looked into it, grunted,

closed it carefully and put it out of the way on the canvas. Then to Horty's astonishment, he

removed from his inside coat pocket a large silver cigar case, the kind with five metal cylinders

built together, took out a cigar, put it all in his mouth and turned it to wet it down, and lit up,

surrounding himself with sweet-acrid blue smoke. He did not try to talk, and after a while

Horty must have dozed off, because he opened his eyes to find the fat boy's jacket folded as

a pillow under his head, and he could not remember its being put there. It was dark then; he

sat up, and immediately the fat boy's voice came from the blackness.

"Take it easy, kid." A small pudgy hand steadied Horty's back. "How do you feel?"

Horty tried to talk, choked, swallowed and tried again. "All right, I guess. Hungry ... gee!

We're out in the country!"

He became conscious of the fat boy squatting beside him. The hand left his back; in a

moment the flame of a match startled him, and for an etched moment the boy's face floated

before him in the wavering light, moonlike, with delicate pink lips acrawl on the black cigar.

Then with a practiced flick of his fingers, he sent the match and its brilliance flying out into

the night. "Smoke?"

"I never did smoke," said Horty. "Some corn-silk, once." He looked admiringly at the red

jewel at the end of the cigar. "You smoke a lot, huh."

"Stunts m'growth," said the other, and burst into a peal of shrill laughter. "How's the hand?"

"It hurts some. Not so bad."

"You got a lot of grit, kid. I'd be screamin' for morphine if I was you. What happened to it?"

Horty told him. The story came out in snatches, out of sequence, but the fat boy got it all.

He questioned briefly, and to the point, and did not comment at all. The conversation died

after he had asked as many questions as he apparently wanted to, and for a while Horty

thought the other had dozed off. The cigar dimmed and dimmed, occasionally sputtering

around the edges, once in a while brightening in a wavery fashion as vagrant air touched it

from the back of the truck.

Abruptly, and in a perfectly wide-awake voice, the fat boy asked him, "You lookin' fer

work?"

"Work? Well -- I guess maybe."

"What made you eat them ants?" came next.

"Well, I -- I don't know. I guess I just -- well, I wanted to."

"Do you do that a lot?"

"Not too much." This was a different kind of questioning than he had had from Armand. The

boy asked him about it without revulsion, without any more curiosity, really, than he had

asked him how old he was, what grade he was in.

"Can you sing?"

"Well -- I guess so. Some."

"Sing something. I mean, if you feel like it. Don't strain y'self. Uh -- know Stardust?"

Horty looked out at the starlit highway racing away beneath the rumbling wheels, the blaze

of yellow-white which turned to dwindling red tail-light eyes as a car whisked by on the other

side of the road. The fog was gone, and a lot of the pain was gone from his hand, and most of

all he was gone from Armand and Tonta. Kay had given him a feather-touch of kindness, and

this odd boy, who talked in a way he had never heard a boy talk before, had given him

another sort of kindness. There were the beginnings of a wonderful warm glow inside him, a

feeling he had had only once or twice before in his whole life -- the time he had won the

sack-race and they gave him a khaki handkerchief, and the time four kids had whistled to a

mongrel dog, and the dog had come straight to him, ignoring the others. He began to sing,

and because the truck rumbled so, he had to sing out to be heard; and because he had to

sing out, he leaned on the song, giving something of himself to it as a high-steel worker gives

part of his weight to the wind.

He finished. The fat boy said "Hey." The unaccented syllable was warm praise. Without any

further comment he went to the front of the truck body and thumped on the square pane of

glass there. The truck immediately slowed, pulled over and stopped by the roadside. The fat

boy went to the tailgate, sat down, and slid off to the road.

"You stay right there," he told Horty. "I'm gonna ride up front a while. You hear me now --

don't go 'way."

"I won't," said Horty.

"How the hell can you sing like that with your hand mashed?"

"I don't know. It doesn't hurt so much now."

"Do you eat grasshoppers too? Worms?"

"No!" cried Horty, horrified.

"Okay," said the boy. He went to the cab of the truck; the door slammed, and the truck

ground off again.

Horty worked his way carefully forward until, squatting by the front wall of the truck-body,

he could see through the square pane.

The driver was a tall man with a curious skin, lumpy and grey-green. He had a nose like

Junky's, but almost no chin, so that he looked like an aged parrot. He was so tall that he had

to curve over the wheel like a fern-frond.

Next to him were two little girls. One had a round bush of white hair -- no; it was platinum

-- and the other had two thick ropes of pigtails, bangs, and beautiful teeth. The fat boy was

next to her, talking animatedly. The driver seemed not to pay any attention to the

conversation at all.

Horty's head was not clear, but he did not feel sick either. Everything had an exciting,

dreamlike quality. He moved back in the truck body and lay down with his head on the fat

boy's jacket. Immediately he sat up, and crawled among the goods stacked in the truck until

his hand found the long roll of canvas, moved along it until he found his paper bag. Then he

lay down again, his left hand resting easily on his stomach, his right inside the bag, with his

index and little fingers resting between Junky's nose and chin. He went to sleep.

3

When he woke again the truck had stopped, and he opened unfocussed eyes to a writhing

glare of light -- red and orange, green and blue, with an underlying sheet of dazzling gold.

He raised his head, blinking, and resolved the lights into a massive post bearing neon signs:

ICE TWENTY FLAVORS CREAM and CABINS and BAR-EAT. The wash of gold came from

floodlights over the service area of a gas station. Three tractor-trailer trucks were drawn up

behind the fat boy's truck; one of them had its trailer built of heavily-ribbed stainless steel

and was very lovely under the lights.

"You awake, kid?"

"Uh -- Hi! Yes."

"We're going to grab a bite. Come on."

Horty rose stiffly to his knees. He said, "I haven't got any money."

"Hell with that," said the fat boy. "Come on."

He put a firm hand under Horty's armpit as he climbed down. A jukebox throbbed behind the

grinding sound of a gasoline pump, and their feet crunched pleasantly on cinders. "What's your

name?" Horty asked.

"They call me Havana," said the fat boy. "I never been there. It's the cigars."

"My name's Horty Bluett."

"We'll change that."

The driver and the two girls were waiting for them by the door of a diner. Horty hardly had

a chance to look at them before they all crowded through and lined up at the counter. Horty

sat between the driver and the silver-haired girl. The other one, the one with dark ropes of

braided hair took the next stool, and Havana, the fat-boy, sat at the end.

Horty looked first at the driver -- looked, stared, and dragged his eyes away in the same

tense moment. The driver's sagging skin was indeed a grey-green, dry, loose, leather-rough.

He had pouches under his eyes, which were red and inflamed-looking, and his underlip drooped

to show long white lower incisors. The backs of his hands showed the same loose sage-green

skin, though his fingers were normal. They were long and the nails were exquisitely manicured.

"That's Solum," said Havana, leaning forward over the counter and talking across the two

girls. "He's the Alligator-Skinned Man, an' the ugliest human in captivity." He must have sensed

Horty's thought that Solum might resent this designation, for he added, "He's deef. He don't

know what goes on."

"I'm Bunny," said the girl next to him. She was plump -- not fat like Havana, but round --

butter-ball round, skin-tight round. Her flesh was flesh colored and blood-colored -- all pink

with no yellow about it. Her hair was as white as cotton, but glossy, and her eyes were the

extraordinary ruby of a white rabbit's. She had a little midge of a voice and an all but

ultrasonic giggle, which she used now. She stood barely as high as his shoulder, though they

sat at the same height. She was out of proportion only in this one fact of the long torso and

the short legs. "An' this is Zena."

Horty turned his gaze full on her and gulped. She was the most beautiful little work of art

he had ever seen in his life. Her dark hair shone, and her eyes shone too, and her head planed

from temple to cheek, curved from cheek to chin, softly and smoothly. Her skin was tanned

over a deep, fresh glow like the pink shadows between the petals of a rose. The lipstick she

chose was dark, nearly a brown red; that and the dark skin made the whites of her eyes like

beacons. She wore a dress with a wide collar that lay back on her shoulders, and a neckline

that dropped almost to her waist. That neckline told Horty for the very first time that these

kids, Havana and Bunny and Zena, weren't kids at all. Bunny was girl-curved, puppy-fat

curved, the way even a four year-old girl -- or boy -- might be. But Zena had breasts, real,

taut, firm, separate breasts. He looked at them and then at the three small faces, as if the

faces he had seen before had disappeared and were replaced by new ones. Havana's studied,

self-assured speech and his cigars were his badges of maturity, and albino Bunny would

certainly show some such emblem in a minute.

"I won't tell you his name," said Havana. "He's fixin' to get a new one, as of now. Right,

kid?"

"Well," said Horty, still struggling with the strange shifting of estimated place these people

had made within him, "Well, I guess so."

"He's cute," said Bunny. "You know that, kid?" She uttered her almost inaudible giggle.

"You're cute."

Horty found himself looking at Zena's breasts again and his cheeks flamed. "Don't rib him,"

said Zena.

It was the first time she had spoken ... One of the earliest things Horty could remember

was a cattail stalk he had seen lying on the bank of a tidal creek. He was only a toddler then,

and the dark brown sausage of the cat-tail fastened to its dry yellow stem had seemed a hard

and brittle thing. He had, without picking it up, run his fingers down its length, and the fact

that it was not dried wood, but velvet, was a thrilling shock. He had such a shock now,

hearing Zena's voice for the first time.

The short-order man, a pasty-faced youth with a tired mouth and laugh-wrinkles around his

eyes and nostrils, lounged up to them. He apparently felt no surprise at seeing the midgets or

the hideous green-skinned Solum. "Hi, Havana. You folks setting up around here?"

"Not fer six weeks or so. We're down Eltonville way. We'll milk the State Fair and work back.

Comin' in with a load o' props. Cheeseburger fer the glamorpuss there. What's yer pleasure,

ladies?"

"Scrambled on rye toast," said Bunny.

Zena said, "Fry some bacon until it's almost burned -- "

" -- an' crumble it over some peanut-butter on whole wheat. I remember, princess," grinned

the cook. "What say, Havana?"

"Steak. You too, huh?" he asked Horty. "Nup -- he can't cut it. Ground sirloin, an' I'll shoot

you if you bread it. Peas an' mashed."

The cook made a circle of his thumb and forefinger and went to get the order.

Horty asked, timidly, "Are you with a circus?"

"Carny," said Havana.

Zena smiled at his expression. It made his head swim. "That's a carnival. You know. Does

your hand hurt?"

"Not much."

"That kills me," Havana exploded. "Y'oughta see it." He drew his right hand across his left

fingers and made a motion like crumbling crackers. "Man."

"We'll get that fixed up. What are we going to call you?" asked Bunny.

"Let's figure out what he's going to do first," said Havana. "We got to make the Maneater

happy."

"About those ants," said Bunny, "would you eat slugs and grasshoppers, and that?" She

asked him straight out, and this time she did not giggle.

"No!" said Horty, simultaneously with Havana's "I already asked him that. That's out, Bunny.

The Maneater don't like to use a geek anyway."

Regretfully, Bunny said, "No carny ever had a midge that would geek. It would be a card."

"What's a geek?" asked Horty.

"He wants to know what's a geek."

"Nothing very nice," said Zena. "It's a man who eats all sorts of nasty things, and bites the

heads off live chickens and rabbits."

Horty said, "I don't think I'd like doing that," so soberly that the three midgets burst into a

shrill explosion of laughter. Horty looked at them all, one by one, and sensed that they

laughed with, not at him, and so he laughed too. Again he felt that inward surge of warmth.

These folk made everything so easy. They seemed to understand that he could be a little

different from other folks, and it was all right. Havana had apparently told them all about him,

and they were eager to help.

"I told you," said Havana, "he sings like an angel. Never heard anything like it. Wait'll you

hear."

"You play anything?" asked Bunny. "Zena, could you teach him guitar?"

"Not with that left hand," said Havana.

"Stop it!" Zena cried. "Just when did you people decide he was going to work with us?"

Havana opened his mouth helplessly. Bunny said, "Oh -- I thought ... " and Horty stared at

Zena. Were they trying to give and take away all at the same time?

"Oh, kiddo, don't look at me like that," said Zena. "You'll tear me apart ... " Again, in spite

of his distress, he could all but feel her voice with fingertips. She said, "I'd do anything in the

world for you, child. But -- it would have to be something good. I don't know that this would

be good."

"Sure it'd be good," scoffed Havana. "Where's he gonna eat? Who's gonna take him in?

Listen, after what he's been through he deserves a break. What's the matter with it, Zee?

The Maneater?"

"I can handle the Maneater," she said. Somehow, Horty sensed that in that casual remark

was the thing about Zena that made the others await her decision. "Look, Havana," she said,

"what happens to a kid his age makes him what he will be when he grows up. Carny's all right

for us. It's home to us. It's the one place where we can be what we are and like it. What

would it be for him, growing up in it? That's no life for a kid."

"You talk as if there was nothing in a carnival but midges and freaks."

"In a way that's so," she murmured. "I'm sorry," she added. "I shouldn't have said that. I

can't think straight tonight. There's something ... " She shook herself. "I don't know. But I

don't think it's a good idea."

Bunny and Havana looked at each other. Havana shrugged helplessly. And Horty couldn't

help himself. His eyes felt hot, and he said "Gee."

"Oh, Kid, don't."

"Hey!" barked Havana. "Grab him! He's fainting!"

Horty's face was suddenly pale and twisted with pain. Zena slid off her stool and put her

arm around him. "Sick, honey? Your hand?"

Gasping, Horty shook his head. "Junky," he whispered, and grunted as if his windpipe were

being squeezed. He pointed with his bandaged hand toward the door. "Truck," he rasped. "In

-- Junky -- oh, truck!"

The midgets looked at one another, and then Havana leaped from his stool and, running to

Solum, punched his arm. He made quick motions, pointing outside, turning an imaginary

steering wheel, beckoning toward the door.

Moving with astonishing speed, the big man slipped to the door and was gone, the others

following. Solum was at the truck almost before the midgets and Horty were outside. He

bounded catlike past the cab, throwing a quick glance into it, and in two more jumps was at

the tail gate and inside. There were a couple of thumps and Solum emerged, the tattered

figure of a man dangling from his parti-colored hands. The tramp was struggling, but when the

brilliant golden light fell on Solum's face, he uttered a scratchy ululation which must have been

clearly audible a quarter of a mile away. Solum dropped him on to the cinders; he landed

heavily on his back and lay there writhing and terrified, fighting to get wind back into his

shocked lungs.

Havana threw away his cigar stub and pounced on the prone figure, roughly going through

the pockets. He said something unprintable and then, "Look here -- our new soupspoons and

four compacts and a lipstick and -- why, you little sneak," he snarled at the man, who was

not large but was nearly three times his size. The man twitched as if he would throw Havana

off him; Solum immediately leaned down and raked a large hand across his face. The man

screamed again, and this time did surge up and send Havana flying; not, however, to attack,

but to run sobbing and slobbering with fear from the gaunt Solum. He disappeared into the

darkness across the highway with Solum at his heels.

Horty went to the tailgate. He said, timidly, to Havana, "Would you look for my package?"

"That ol' paper bag? Sure." Havana swung up on the tailgate, reappeared a moment later

with the bag, and handed it to Horty.

Theodore Sturgeon - The Synthetic Man

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