Robert Heinlein - A Stranger in a Strange Land

"I'm sure you're right."

"I know I am. He wants sex and blood and money. We don't give him any real blood - unless a fire eater or a knife thrower makes a terrible mistake. We don't give him money, either; we just encourage him to hope for it while we take away a little. We don't give him any real sex. But why do seven out of ten of a tip buy the blow-off? To see a nekkid broad, that's why - and a chance to be paid a double sawbuck for lookin' - when maybe they got one just as good or better at home, nekkid anytime they like. So he don't see one and he don't get paid - and still we send him out happy.

"What else does a chump want? Mystery! He wants to think that the world is a romantic place when he knows damn well it ain't. That's your job� only you ain't learned how. Shucks, son, even the marks know that your tricks are fake� only they'd like to believe they're real, and it's up to you to help 'em believe, as long as they're inside the show. That's what you lack."

"How do I get it, Tim? How do I learn what makes a chump tick?"

"Hell, I can't tell you that; that's the piece you have to learn for yourself. Get out and stir around and be a chump yourself a while, maybe. But- Well, take this notion you had of billing yourself as 'The Man from Mars.' You mustn't offer the chump what he won't swallow. They've all seen the Man from Mars, in pictures and on stereovision. Hell, I've seen him myself. Sure, you look a bit like him, same general type, a casual resemblance - but even if you were his twin brother, the marks know they won't find the Man from Mars in a ten-in-one in the sticks. It's as silly as it would be to bill a sword swallower as 'the President of the United States.' Get me? A chump wants to believe - but he won't thank you to insult what trace of intelligence he has. And even a chump has brains of a sort. You have to remember that."

"I will remember."

"Okay. I talk too much - but a talker gets in the habit. Are you kids going to be all right? How's the grouch bag? Hell, I oughtn't to do it - but do you need a loan?"

"Thanks, Tim. We're not hurtin' any."

"Well, take care of yourself. Bye, Jill." He hurried out.

Patricia Paiwonski came in through the rear fly, wearing a robe. "Kids? Tim sloughed your act."

"We were leaving anyhow, Pat."

"I knew he was going to. He makes me so mad I'm tempted to jump the show myself."

"Now, Pat-"

"I mean it. I could take my act anywhere and he knows it. Leave him without a blow-off. He can get other acts� but a good blow-off that the clowns won't clobber is hard to find."

"Pat, Tim is right, and Jill and I know it. I don't have showmanship."

"Well� maybe so. But I'm going to miss you. You've been just like my own kids to me. Oh, dear! Look, the show doesn't roll until morning - come back to my living top and set awhile and visit."

Jill said, "Better yet, Patty, come into town with us and have a couple of drinks. How would you like to soak yourself in a big, hot tub, with bath salts?"

"Uh, I'll bring a bottle."

"No," Mike objected, "I know what you drink and we've got it. Come along."

"Well, I'll come - you're at the Imperial, aren't you? - but I can't come with you. I've got to be sure my babies are all right first and tell Honey Bun I'll be gone a bit and fix her hot water bottles. I'll catch a cab. Half an hour, maybe."

They drove into town with Mike at the controls. It was a fairly small town, without automatic traffic control even downtown. Mike drove with careful precision, exactly at zone maximum and sliding the little ground car into holes Jill could not see until they were through them. He did it without effort in the same fashion in which he juggled. Jill knew how it was done, had even learned to do it a bit herself; Mike stretched his time sense until the problem of juggling eggs or speeding through traffic was an easy one with' everything in slow motion. Nevertheless she reflected that it was an odd accomplishment for a man who, only months earlier, had been baffled by tying shoelaces.

She did not talk. Mike could talk while on extended time, if necessary, but it was awkward to converse while they were running on different time rates. Instead she thought with mild nostalgia of the life they were leaving, calling it up in her mind and cherishing it, some of it in Martian concepts, more of it in English. She had enjoyed it very much. All her life, until she had met Mike, she had been under the tyranny of the clock, first as a little girl in school, then as a bigger girl in a much harder school, then under the unforgiving pressures of hospital routine.

The carnival had been nothing like that. Aside from the easy and rather pleasant chore of standing around and looking pretty several times a day from midafternoon to the last bally of the night, she never had anything she actually had to do at any set time. Mike did not care whether they ate once a day or six times, and whatever housekeeping she chose to do suited him. They had their own living top and camping equipment; in many towns they had never left the lot from arrival to tear-down. The carnival was a closed little world, an enclave, where the headlines and troubles of the outside world did not reach. She had been happy in it.

To be sure, in every town the lot was crawling with marks - but she had acquired the carney viewpoint; marks did not count - they might as well have been behind glass. Jill quite understood why the girls in the posing show could and did exhibit themselves in very little (and, in some towns, nothing, if the fix was solid) without feeling immodest� and without being immodest in their conduct outside the posing show. Marks weren't people to them; they were blobs of nothing, hardly seen, whose sole function was to cough up half dollars for the take.

Yes, the carnie had been a happy, utterly safe home, even though their act had flopped. It had not always been that way when first they left the safety of Jubal's home to go out into the world and increase Mike's education. They had been spotted more than once and several times they had had trouble getting away, not only from the press, but from the endless people who seemed to feel that they had a right to demand things of Mike, simply because he had the misfortune to be the Man from Mars.

Presently Mike had thought his features into more mature lines and had made other slight changes in his appearance. That, plus the fact that they frequented places where the Man from Mars would certainly not be expected (by the public) to go, got them privacy. About that time, when Jill was phoning home to give a new mailing address, Jubal had suggested a cover-up story - and a couple of days later Jill had read that the Man from Mars had again gone into retreat, this time in a Tibetan monastery.

The retreat had actually been "Hank's Grill" in a "nowhere" town, with Jill as a waitress and Mike as dishwasher. It was no worse than being a nurse and much less demanding - and her feet no longer hurt. Mike had a remarkably quick way of cleaning dishes, although he had to be careful not to use it when the boss was watching. They kept that job a week, then moved on, sometimes working, sometimes not. They visited public libraries almost daily, once Mike found out about them - Jill had discovered that Mike had taken for granted that Jubal's library contained a copy of every book on Earth. When he learned the marvelous truth, they had remained in Akron nearly a month. Jill did quite a lot of shopping that month, as Mike with a book was almost no company at all.

But Baxter's Combined Shows and Riot of Fun for All the Family had been the nicest part of their meandering trip. Jill recalled with an inner giggle the time in - what town? - no matter-when the entire posing show had been pinched. It wasn't fair, even by chumps' standards, since that concession always worked under precise prearrangement: bras or no bras; blue lights or bright lights; whatever the top town clown ordained. Nevertheless the sheriff had hauled them in and the local justice of the peace had seemed disposed not only to fine but to jail the girls as "vagrants."