Zeno stared up at the pictures. "For this you had me drive up from L.A.?"
"Lighten up, pal. You can't spend your life writing about Burt Reynolds and Bianca Jagger." Vector told him. "Anyway, it's what's inside that counts."
The photographer stopped to click off several pictures of the front of the tent, then they joined the large crowd listening to Bateman Styles.
"...It is my duty to warn you, friends," Styles was saying, "to stay well away from the front of the stage. Grolo is inside a sturdy cage of tempered steel, but his full strength when the rage is upon him has yet to be tested. Therefore, for your own safety, please stand clear. Everyone will be able to see everything that happens."
He paused and made a mental count of the spectators. "Now let us go in for the first show of the evening. For those of you who cannot fit inside the tent this time, your tickets will entitle you to first admittance at the next show one hour from now by the clock."
The showman stood next to the girl selling tickets and smiled contentedly. When he spotted Ted Vector's camera hag he leaned down from the platform.
"Sorry, sir, no pictures."
Vector looked up in innocent surprise. "What'?" Then he smiled and tapped the camera bag as though he had just remembered he was wearing it. "Oh, this? I don't plan to take any pictures inside. I'm a tourist, you know. Never go anywhere without my camera."
"Well, as long as you leave it in the bag..." Styles said doubtfully.
"Absolutely," said the photographer. He and Louis Zeno paid their money and filed into the tent with the rest of the crowd.
The people were packed shoulder to shoulder in the tent. There was no air circulating except that flowing in through the entrance. The combined body heat was oppressive.
Zeno tucked himself in behind Vector and followed the photographer as he pushed his way to a position near the front. He mopped perspiration from his neck with a handkerchief and stared gloomily at the moth-eaten velvet curtain.
"This'd better be good, Ted. Remember, I could be home among the Beautiful People covering some swinging Hollywood party."
"Sure, sure, I know how you cover those parties - you open a can of beer, sit in your bathtub, and fantasize. Watch now, here comes the man."
Bateman Styles made his appearance at one end of the curtain. It was a refinement he had added since the crowds became too big for him to walk easily through from the entrance to the stage.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the most astounding, the most amazing, the most incredible phenomenon on view in America today. In a very few minutes I am going to pull this curtain aside and reveal to you the Ninth Wonder of the World!"
"What happened to the eighth?" Zeno whispered to the photographer.
"Wasn't that King Kong?"
"Of course. How could I forget?"
Styles gave the two men a stem glance and they fell silent. Then the showman went on with his pitch, the grandiloquent speech rolling smoothly off his tongue in effortless flowery sentences. After many years in the business, Bateman Styles no longer had to think about what he was saying. The sentences, each with a verbal exclamation point, formed themselves and marched out of his mouth while he thought of other things.
He wound it up. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment for which we have waited in an agony of growing suspense! I give you... Grolo the Animal Boy!"
He swept aside the curtain to reveal Malcolm seated on the stool in the confining chimpanzee cage. The boy gazed shyly out at the crowd.
By this time people knew the routine of the act from the reports of others who had seen it. They launched into the derisive hoots at Malcolm without prompting from Styles.
"That's no animal."
"Get off the stage, you fake."
"He doesn't even shave yet."
"Course not, it's a girl!"
"Refund... refund!"
"Booo!"
Louis Zeno took no part in the harassment of the boy in the cage. Nor did he pay any attention to Ted Vector, who was fumbling in his camera bag. Something about the boy's luminous green eyes as they locked on his for a brief moment made the writer acutely uncomfortable.
"Let's get out of here," he whispered to the photographer.
"Are you crazy? The show hasn't even started. Take notes or something."
As always, when the boy began to change, the jeers of the crowd died abruptly. No matter how prepared they were for what was about to happen, the actual transformation on the small stage never failed to shock.
"Jesus," Zeno muttered through clenched teeth.
"See? See? What did I tell you?" Ted Vector had his camera out of the bag now and was holding it down low where it would be concealed from Bateman Styles.
The writer was not listening. He was back in the cabin at the moment he entered and saw torn bits of Abe Craddock everywhere. His stomach lurched, and for a moment he thought he was going to vomit.
"I've seen enough," he said. "Let's go."
"What do you mean? Aren't you going to interview the pitch man or anybody?"
"Who needs interviews? I can make up the quotes, like I always do. Let's go."
"At least let me get some shots of Grolo. Your story is worth shit without pics."
"Well, hurry it up."
Zeno tried not to watch what was happening in the small cage, but a terrible fascination kept pulling his eyes back.
The boy's face had sprouted a coarse black hair. His body had broadened and stretched and changed its shape with a crackling of bones. He had to bend far over as he clutched the bars to keep from banging his head on the low ceiling.
The eyes glowed with deep green fire. The teeth... visions of Craddock's savaged remains swam back up in Zeno's mind.
Vector brought the camera up with no further attempt at concealment and began clicking pictures. The creature in the cage caught the tiny sound. The ears pricked and the great head swiveled toward the source. It gave an inhuman growl; the taloned hands gripped the bars and began to bend them apart.
"You!" Bateman Styles jumped to the center of the stage and stabbed an accusing finger at Ted Vector. "Out! I told you no pictures!"
"Come on," Zeno said, tugging at his friend's arm.
"Just one more."
Click.
The bars separated. A powerful black-haired arm reached through.
"Shit, he's coming out!" someone yelled.
Styles' voice rose above the others. "Get that camera out of here before you get somebody killed!"
Zeno took a firm grip on the photographer's arm and tugged him back through the tense crowd and out of the tent.
"I got some great stuff," he said when they were back out on the midway.
"Yeah, you almost got us ripped apart, too."
"You convinced now?"
Zeno modulated his voice. "It's a good trick. Looked real in the dim lights in there."
"Bet your ass it looked real. How soon can you have the story written?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"Good. I'll develop this stuff tonight and we can hand the whole package to Endicott and collect the rest of the bread." The photographer gazed around the carnival. "You feel like seeing anything else? A couple of the girls in the kootch show aren't too bad, and they go all the way."
"What I feel like," Zeno told him, "is getting the hell out of here. Now."
CAGED ANIMAL BOY TERRORIZES CARNIVAL
The headline sprang out of the copy of National Expo being browsed by the shopper ahead of Holly Lang in the Safeway checkout line. And the picture - a horribly distorted mingling of human and animal features. But the eyes... she knew the eyes. Beyond any doubt, it was Malcolm. Holly snatched her own copy of Expo from the rack and paid for it along with her groceries. She got into her car and drove directly to the sheriff's office.