“‘How big is he?’ said Twillicker.
“‘Twenty and five,’ said his host. ‘From toe to skull top, twenty and five feet.’
“‘And that eye,’ said Twillicker. ‘Sitting unnaturally in the middle of the forehead like that. It’s real?’
“‘It better be,’ said the host, ‘for the beast has none but that one to see by.’
“‘My God,’ said Twillicker.
“The bones rattled and crunched below as the Cyclops stirred. Both men stopped their conversation, as the thing drew himself to his feet. Standing, the Cyclops was nearly eye level to him. His breath came at him like a hot Mediterranean wind. His eye blinked. A hand, big as a door, came up over the lip of the ledge — Twillicker barely had the wit to step back into the tunnel before it could grasp him. The Cyclops opened his great mouth, and rumbled something that sounded like Greek. Hot, unbreathable air followed them up the tunnel as they backed away from the grabbing hand.
“‘That,’ sputtered Twillicker, as they climbed the stairs to the Texas night, ‘that thing was going to eat me!’
“‘Not likely,’ said his host. ‘The Cyclops likes lamb better than man. But still — better he didn’t get hold of either of us. Because that eye — that eye of his is a hungry eye.’
“‘What do you mean by that?’
“‘What I say. It’s a big eye — a God’s eye — and it hungers for the sight of a man’s soul. It’ll drink that sight right out of you, if you let it.’
“Twillicker spent another three days at the ranch — thinking mostly about what that meant. He didn’t know about getting his soul drunk up — but he surely wanted to see that Cyclops again. He wanted to see him something fierce; it took all his will not to steal down that hole again, and look at the beast once more. How many times, he wondered, could he haul a rube back and back again to see this beast, if it had such a draw on a seasoned ringmaster as Twillicker?
“He came back a month later with the right cash and equipment for moving the creature. By March, he had a rail car rigged up and fresh signs made. By the middle of April, the circus was on the move again, and Nature’s Abominations was back in business.
“There were practical problems. For one thing, the Cyclops was not a professional. It was more like keeping an animal than an employee — as they discovered when our roustabouts tried to use the Cyclops’s strength to haul up the big top outside Denver and three of them wound up in bandages and splints, raving for days from their trials at the Cyclops’s hands. The creature’s unruliness kept him out of the Big Top as well. He couldn’t be trusted around townies without thick bars between he and them, because unlike our old geek Larouche, depravity was no act for the Cyclops. He leered — at everyone, in a measure, but he paid particular attention to the aerialists. One time—” here Clayton paused, and patted Clarissa on the shoulder “—one time he got hold of this girl here. Didn’t he darling?”
Clarissa’s eyes rolled into her head and she trembled for an instant. Then she blinked and nodded.
“Took five of us to get her back,” he said. “Clarissa tore a ligament, and that was it for her on the trapeze. Looked at her for a little long — maybe drunk a bit much of her poor wee soul, hey, girl? And she hasn’t been the same since.
“But for that, no one could deny that with the addition of the Cyclops to our roster, the Twillicker and Baine Circus had turned a corner. Every town we stopped opened its purse to us and our monster. Rubes loved Hall of Nature’s Abominations now that the Cyclops sat in its middle. They forgave the two-headed ewe that floated nearly invisible in a milky brine. They didn’t mind that the geek cage was still empty, or that the two Italians who played the Siamese twins didn’t even look like relations. They hurried past Gerta the Doll Woman and Lois the Chicken Lady. Didn’t heed the resentful glare that our own Wotun the Magnificent gave them, as they sat through his Nine Feats of Strength that raised sweat-beads big as dimes on shoulders and a brow that had one time seemed immense. They each paid their nickels, and gathered in five-dollar crowds in the Hall’s middle for the headline of our show — and listened, as Twillicker himself rolled the spiel outside the curtained-off cage of Polyphemus, Son of Poseidon.
“‘He has seen the Trojan women and sung duets with Sirens and walked the sea bottom at the heel of Poseidon,’ Twillicker would bellow. ‘He has fought Ulysses, battled Odysseus, and shook a fist at great Jove himself! Ladies and gentlemen — I give you — ’
“And their breath would suck in, as the bright red curtains drew from the front of a tall, steel-barred cage.
“‘—I give you Polyphemus! Son of the Sea God Poseidon!’
“And the curtain would open, and the men would gasp, and the children scream — and the women, some of them, would faint dead away at the sight of the naked giant Polyphemus. His lips would pull back from a shark’s-row of teeth, and his great arms would rise to rattle the bars of his bolted-together cage — and he’d take a taste of them with that eye of his.
“And then, as fast as it’d risen, the red curtain would fall back in place, and the next crowd would come through. By the time the circus was ready to pull up, all the crowds were filled with familiar faces. They all felt the same draw Twillicker had felt that first night. By the time the circus left a town, the coffers were filled to overflowing with fresh torrents of silver.
“The Cyclops became a part of the circus like he’d always been there. The cat wranglers and elephant handlers and the roustabouts had all worked out a drill for moving him, from his cage to the railcar and back again — figured out how to feed him without getting too close to those giant hands, those lethal jaws — and devised a way to wrap the ropes and chains around his wrists and ankles and middle, so he couldn’t squirm much. Charlie Baine looked at his books, and understood that for all the food he was buying for his Cyclops, profits were still higher than they’d ever been. As for the freaks, now relegated to second-class oddities in the shadow of Polyphemus? They rattled the change in their pockets and shrugged. Even Wotun couldn’t complain much, about being upstaged by the Greek giant. It was as good as pitching the tent next to the Grand Canyon. Folks’d pay to watch your show, just because it was on their way to the view.
“And the view,” said Clayton, “doesn’t ask for a cut of the nut.”
“But the Cyclops wasn’t just a view,” said James. “The Cyclops felt differently.”
Clayton winked at him. “No fooling you, sir. ’Tis true. The Cyclops felt differently. And why wouldn’t he? For we kept him like an animal, although he was a thinking beast. He stood in his cage, listening to Twillicker holler his spiel, enduring the stares of the glassy-eyed rubes. Submitted to the will of his wranglers. And always he watched. With that great eye he has. He watched and he paid attention. Listened to what Twillicker said, and made out the words. Listened to the rubes muttering amongst themselves. Heard the wranglers and the freaks and the clowns chatter on. Two weeks and a day before the tragedy here—” he gestured behind him to the camp “—he spoke.”
Clarissa the Oracle stood, her eyelids trembling in a sideshow trance. “I am Polyphemus,” she said in a deepened voice. “Son of the Sea God Poseidon.”