* * *
Would you have done it?" he asked her afterward, when they were back on the sawdusted ground among the black shadows from the high, hazy polyarcs.
"I would have tried," she said. "Now it's time for my dances." She squeezed his hand and slipped away in the crowd. As Roan turned to follow, he saw Ithc's yellow eyes watching from the shadow of a ticket booth. Stellaraire's act was terrific. It was an erotic dance in five cultures, and the Chloran part must have been crude enough for the crowd to understand, because they roared with enjoyment.
But part of the dance was for Roan alone, out of the thousands. He liked it; he liked her being his woman, when everybody else wanted her.
"Even I," said a bald, purplish Gloon standing by, "even I can find her attractive. She can dance in such a way as to seem a regal bitch of Gloon. She can be anything you want her to be. Anything you pay her to be. A tramp of rare talent."
Roan whirled with his fists clenched, but the Gloon was already moving off, not even noticing Roan.
He watched the dance to the end, not enjoying it now. There had been other men for Stellaraire, he knew that—even creatures not men. But one other thing he knew: she wasn't any tramp. And there weren't going to be any more men except Roan.
After the dances he watched to see which way she went, but she disappeared through the crowd along one of the aisles.
Half an hour later he was still looking for her, along corridors of smelly canvas and rope, among sagging, faded banners and garish lights and the shouting of hucksters and the blare of noisemakers and the clamor of the crowd that seemed to be everywhere now, flowing among the tents and stalls and poles like a rising flood of dirty water. A grossly fat being in a curly silver wig directed him to Stellaraire's dressing room, after he had asked and been ignored or insulted a dozen times.
But Stellaraire wasn't in her pink, tawdry tent room. Roan stood there undecided, feeling an uneasy sensation washing up inside of him. He wanted her—the reassurance of her. He recalled that she smelled of young trees.
"Where did she go?" he asked Chela, one of the girls who shared the dressing room. "Did you see her?"
Chela was a tiny, graceful saurian, faintly humanoid, with long, heavily made-up eyes. She flapped her artificial lashes at Roan and showed her little teeth.
"Ithc came and got her. He wanted her for something." She looked demurely at the floor and by some trick of musculature curled her eyelashes back.
"There's always me," she added.
"Wanted her for what?"
"Reely!"
"Where did they go? Did you see?"
"No. But Ithc lodges in Quadrant C." She was putting purple paint on her lip scales now, bored with Roan's questions.
He made his way through the rings where shows were going on, pushed through the crowds on the other side. Once, he saw Nugg's heavy, ugly face, and heard him call. "Here, where you think you're going . . . ?" but he ignored him, pushed on through the crowd.
There was a taste in his mouth that was part fear and part something else, he didn't know what. The uneasy feeling was like a sick weight inside him. A clown was shot from a cannon and the smell of gunpowder spread through the tent. Lights went off and on, and colored spots were a kaleidoscope of dancing patterns. Roan went through a slit in the back of the huge tent into cold night air, crossed a path, and went into a smaller one where most of the roustabouts quartered.
"Where's Stellaraire?" he asked of a wrinkled olive-colored being who was sitting on an upturned keg, nursing a vast clay mug with both hands. The oldster let out a long breath. "Working," he said, and winked.
"Where?"
"In private."
There was a sound—a kind of animal moan—from the adjoining room. Roan flapped through two stiff partitions, came into a dim, cluttered room with a mud-colored rug, beaded hangings on the walls, the reek of a strange incense. Ithc stood across the room, the nerve gun gripped awkwardly in his good hand, his gills working convulsively. Stellaraire stood before him, her golden costume torn off one shoulder. One arm seemed to hang limp.
"Dance—ance," Ithc commanded, and aimed the gun at her as though he would shoot. The double voice issuing from his gills seemed to send a shudder through the girl. There were several circus people ranged along the far wall: an underdirector whom Roan recognized, a pair of Ythcan laborers, some minor creatures in second-string clown costume. One with a dope stick blew a cloud of smoke at Stellaraire.
"Come on, dance," he urged carelessly.
Stellaraire took a step back.
"Come—umm here—ere," Ithc said.
She turned to run, and Ithc's finger tightened on the firing stud of the nerve gun, and as Stellaraire fell Roan heard the animal noises again. Roan's body hurt with hers, but he held himself rigid, hidden in shadows. This wasn't a time for gestures. Whatever he did now had to count. He stepped softly back, whirled, ran across the tent where the old being hiccupped into his beer, out into the dark. There were tent stakes stacked there, somewhere. They were pointed at one end and knobbed at the other, and heavy. He groped, stumbling among tent ropes, feeling over damp ground, lumpy refuse, hitting things in the dark. His hand fell on a bundle, and he ripped the twine away, caught up a yard-long, wrist-thick bar of dense plastic.
He ran around the tent to the side that opened on the alley, lifted the heavy flap, stepped into the smell of snakes and Ythcan dope smoke. A small clown in colored rags was just in front of him; beyond, Ithc stood, tall, lean, slope-shouldered, long-necked. He was holding his bandaged hand close to his side, and the other with the nerve gun was held awkwardly out. That was the first danger. Against the gun Roan would have no chance at all. There was no question of fair play; it was simply necessary to save Stellaraire from what was happening to her, in any way possible. And he would have to do everything right, because he wouldn't have another chance.
He gripped the club carefully, stepped quickly past the ragged clown, set himself, and brought the club down on Ithc's gun hand. He had decided on the hand instead of the obvious target, the head, because he wasn't sure where Ithc's brains were; hitting him on the head might not bother him much.
It was surprising how slowly the gun fell. Ithc was still standing, holding his hand out—but now the hand was oozing fluid, and the gun was bouncing off the dusty rug and falling onto a pile of dirty clothing, and Ithc was bringing his hand in and starting to turn. Roan brought the club up again—how heavy it seemed—and aimed a second blow at the back of Ithc's neck; but Ithc was turning and ducking aside, and the blow struck him on the shoulder and the club glanced off and jarred from Roan's hands, and then he was facing the tall, pale-green, mad-eyed Ythcan, seeing the dirty yellow of the gill fringes as they flapped, smelling the penetrating chemical odor of Ithc's blood.
"Owww—owww," Ithc moaned, and brought a foot up in a vicious kick, but Roan leaned aside, caught the long-toed member, and threw all his strength into twisting it back and around, driving with his feet to topple Ithc. They fell together, Roan on top, Ithc's sinewy body buckled under him, and his knobbed knees battered against Roan's chest. But he held on, twisting the foot, feeling the cartilage crackle and break, remembering Dad, and the sounds Stellaraire had made, and he twisted harder, harder . . . Ithc roared a vibrating double roar, fighting now to escape, but Roan reached after him, caught the other foot, tore at it, twisting, tearing, while the now helpless creature fought to crawl away. Then Roan was on Ithc's back, his arm locked around the other's throat, crushing until Ithc collapsed, fell on his face, his legs twitching.
Roan got to his feet. He was only dimly aware of the faces watching, of Stellaraire still moving on the floor beyond her fallen tormentor, of the stink of alien blood and burning dope. He looked around for the club, saw it tangled among unwashed garments on an unkempt heap of bedding by the sagging canvas wall. He caught it up, turned back to Ithc. The alien lay half on his side, his broken feet grotesquely twisted, his gills gaping convulsively. A deep, reedy vibration of agony came from him. Roan brought the club up, and paused, not hesitating, but picking the best spot—the spot most likely to kill.
The yellow eyes opened. "Hurry—urry," Ithc said.
Roan brought the club down with all his strength, noting with satisfaction that the Ythcan's limbs all jumped at once. He hit him twice more, just to be sure Ithc would never bother him again. The last blow was like pounding a side of meat hanging in a kitchen. He tossed the club aside, picked up a dirty blanket and wiped the spattered yellowish blood from his face and hands. He looked around at the circus people who watched. Two of the small clowns were edging forward, looking Ithc over, a little saliva visible at the corners of their beaklike mouths.
"Nobody helped Stellaraire," he said. "Nobody helped me. Anybody on Ithc's side can fight me, if they want to." He glanced toward the club, flexing his hands. He was breathing hard, but he felt good, very good, and he was almost hoping the other Ythcan would step forward, because it had been a wonderful feeling, killing Ithc, and he felt as though he could beat anybody, or all of them together.
But no one moved toward him. The one with the dope stick ground the smoke out on a horny palm, tucked it in a pocket of its black polyon blouse.
"It's your fight. Gom Bulj won't like it; Ithc was a valuable piece of livestock. But who'll tell him? He may not even notice. Who cares?"
"We'll take care of the remains," the small clowns said, clustering around the body.
The others were leaving, wandering off now because the fun was over. Roan went to Stellaraire and lifted her in his arms. He was surprised at how light she was, how fragile for all her sumptuous curving flesh; and how sharp was his need to take care of her.
She smiled up at him. "He . . . must have gone . . . crazy."
"He won't bother you any more, Stellaraire."
Out in the cold night, the blaze of stars, the rise and fall of the mob noise, Stellaraire's arm went around his neck. Her face was against his, and her mouth opened hungrily against his.
"Take me . . . to my tent . . . " she breathed against his throat, and he turned and walked along the shadowy way, aware only of the perfume and the poetry and the wonder of the girl.
In the gray light of Chlora's dawn, Roan worked with the others, dismantling the tents, folding the vast canvasses, coiling the miles of rope, stacking and bundling stakes, striking sets, and packing props and costumes. The wagons puffed and smoked, and hauled everything back up the ramps into the ship, and then they lowered their scraping blades and pushed all the garbage back into the circus grounds where it belonged, with the stripped yellow bones of Ithc at the bottom.
Later, in Stellaraire's room, she poured Roan a glass of wine and sat on his lap.
"I never knew how much I loved you, until you fought Ithc for me," she said.
"Nobody's said anything about him," Roan said. "Aren't they going to investigate his death?"
"Why should anyone bother? He wasn't much use with a ruined hand, anyway."
"But what about his friends . . . "
"You're talking like a Terry," Stellaraire said, and sipped her wine appreciatively. Roan tasted it, too. It was a blossom-pink Dorée from Aphela and it tasted like laughter.
Algol II was a wonderful pale green gold-edged mountain that filled half the immense view screen in the dusty old room that had once been the grand observation salon.
"I've got an idea," Roan said, standing with his arm around Stellaraire's slim waist. "I've been thinking about what you said, about there being a lot of mutant Terrans here, and about the climate being like Terra. Why don't we stay here? When the show pulls up, we'll disappear. Gom Bulj wouldn't go to the expense of coming back after us—"
"Why?" the girl asked, raising her violet-penciled eyebrows. "What would we do on Algol II?"
"We wouldn't stay—just until we made enough credit to leave. I have to get back ho—back to Tambool. Ma's still there, all alone now."
"But the 'zoo is my home! I've never been any other place, since I was ten years old. It's safe here; and we can be together."
"And besides," Roan went on, "Ma will know all about where I came from; maybe who my blood father and mother are. I have to find out. Then I'm going to Terra—"
"Roan—Terra's just a mythical place! You can't—"
"Yes, I can," he said. "Terra's a real place. I know it is. I can feel inside that it's real. And it's not like other worlds. On Terra everything is the way things should be. Not all this hate, and not caring, and dirt, and dying for nothing. I've never been there, but I know it as though I'd spent all my life there. It's where I belong."
Stellaraire took his hand, leaned against him. "Ah, sweetie, for your sake I hope it's really there—somewhere. And if it is," she added, "I know someday you'll find it."
The 'zoo went well on Algol II. Roan was surefooted and nimble on the high wire in the light gravity, only three-fourths ship-normal, and Stellaraire's dance was an immense success with the mutant Terrans, who were odd-looking dwarfs with bushy muttonchop whiskers and bowed legs and immense bellies and no visible difference between the sexes; but they appreciated the erotic qualities of her performance so well that a number of the locals occupying ringside boxes began solemnly coupling with their mates before she had even finished.
Afterward, Roan found Stellaraire by the arena barrier, watching Iron Robert in his preliminary warm-up bout.
"I've planned a route for us," he said softly. "As soon as—"
"Shhh . . . " she said, and put a hand on his arm, her eyes on the spotlit ring, where the stone giant was strangling a great armored creature with insane, bulging eyes. It was already quite dead, and he was mauling it for the amusement of the crowd, which had no way of knowing the beast had died minutes before.
"Listen," Roan insisted. "I have clothes and food in a bundle; are you ready to go?"