The Nonesuch and Others Read Online Free PDF

other hand his rather suspect legs were hidden in floppy track-suit pants. (No weight-lifter this one, I thought, not with his sparrow legs…but I certainly wouldn’t want to take him on at arm-wrestling.)
    And then there was a girl contortionist in black and silver tights, walking on her hands with her feet behind her neck. She would “walk” a few paces in this mode, then pause and swing her body to and fro like one of those rocking plastic birds pecking at water. She worked this up to such a pitch that I thought her face would surely smack into the earth with the next swing; but after she got down close enough to snatch up a dandelion flower between her teeth, then she was done. And uncoiling herself, she proceeded to hop around on one foot while hugging the other leg vertically in front of her, its knee up under her chin and the toes on its foot pointing at the sky.
    And finally there was the Tattooed Man, who also played the part of team barker. Now, I had seen his sort before, but never one with as many tattoos as this. On a spare, loose-limbed body not a single inch of space was wasted; he looked like the Illustrated Man from that story by Ray Bradbury. I was fascinated by the animals, the faces, the designs, the mazes, the colours. He was young; he’d spent half his life under the needle; he was in himself an art form and a graffiti gallery combined!
    These weird people…just looking at them…it was all so strange, so startling, so dizzying, that in combination with the beer it set my head to spinning again, though at the time I had thought the fumes were beginning to clear.
    The time…? How long had I been at the fair, anyway?
    In the dazed, uncomprehending fashion of a man who has had too much to drink, I studied my watch: a little after ten twenty. Me and the Three “G”s had left the pub, oh, around nine, so I had been here for something over an hour. No sign of my erstwhile companions. But then again, who needed them? And that was definitely the booze speaking. I’m not normally that dismissive of my friends.
    And the tattooed barker was up on a box shouting, “…cheap at half the price! So come on in, sir, madame, lads and lasses, and see us do our stuff. See the Monkey Lady, Jimmy the Legless Boy, Freddy the Fly, and Bela the Human Pincushion. Plus me and the gang here, all with new things to show you. As for myself—why, I could show you tattoos that even my wife hasn’t seen! So roll up, roll up! It’s cheap at half the price! Your money back if you aren’t completely astonished! Come on and take a chance, and be amazed when you visit the weirdest show on Earth!”
    The Freak Show tent was on the outer rim of the fair, which was probably why it wasn’t attracting too much attention. There was something of a small crowd, but its people had only come on the scene to see what all the shouting was about. The center of the fair blazed with light and activity, like the hub of a miniature star-cluster. Here on the outer rim, however, where there was more space between the wagons, tents, and kiddy rides, this was more like the galaxy’s spiral arm: the light was dimmer and the shadows longer. And beyond this outer circle—there where the field reached out toward open country—that was like deep space, as dark as the hour.
    Looking up, the stars above the center were faint, made dim by light pollution; here on the rim there was something more of a sparkle to them; outside the fair’s perimeter, they were like jewels strewn on black velvet. There was nothing to distinguish the sky from the earth…the night was a sea of darkness, or a wall of fine black mesh that rose on high, sprinkled with stars in its upper regions.
    As I stared at one small cluster of stars, they momentarily vanished—just the slightest blink of an eye—and as quickly reappeared. I supposed that a cloud, or perhaps a waft of fairground exhaust, had passed between. But then there was movement out there, too, in the smoky