Circus | Page 2

for the small one,
five for the larger."
"You should have gone to a bank."
"I know that now. I didn't then. Naturally, I assumed that with
everything else so similar, principles of business would also be
similar."
Morgan sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Well, then what?"
Parks poured some more coffee. His face was very pale, Morgan
thought, and his hands trembled as he raised the cup to his lips. Fright?
Maybe. Hard to tell. The man put down the cup and rubbed his
forehead with the back of his hand. "First, I went to the mayor's office,"
he said. "I kept trying to think what anyone at home would do in my
place. That seemed a good bet. I asked a policeman where it was, and
then I went there."
"But you didn't get to see him."
"No. I saw a secretary. She said the mayor was in conference, and that I
would have to have an appointment. She let me speak to another man,
one of the mayor's assistants."
"And you told him?"
"No. I wanted to see the mayor himself. I thought that was the best
thing to do. I waited for a couple of hours, until another assistant came

along and told me flatly that the mayor wouldn't see me unless I stated
my business first." He drew in a deep breath. "So I stated it. And then I
was gently but firmly ushered back into the street again."
"They didn't believe you," said Morgan.
"Not for a minute. They laughed in my face."
Morgan nodded. "I'm beginning to get the pattern. So what did you do
next?"
"Next I tried the police. I got the same treatment there, only they
weren't so gentle. They wouldn't listen either. They muttered something
about cranks and their crazy notions, and when they asked me where I
lived, they thought I was--what did they call it?--a wise guy! Told me
to get out and not come back with any more wild stories."
"I see," said Morgan.
Jefferson Parks finished his last bite of pie and pushed the plate away.
"By then I didn't know quite what to do. I'd been prepared for almost
anything excepting this. It was frightening. I tried to rationalize it, and
then I quit trying. It wasn't that I attracted attention, or anything like
that, quite the contrary. Nobody even looked at me, unless I said
something to them. I began to look for things that were different, things
that I could show them, and say, see, this proves that I'm telling the
truth, look at it--" He looked up helplessly.
"And what did you find?"
"Nothing. Oh, little things, insignificant little things. Your calendars,
for instance. Naturally, I couldn't understand your frame of reference.
And the coinage, you stamp your coins; we don't. And cigarettes. We
don't have any such thing as tobacco." The man gave a short laugh.
"And your house dogs! We have little animals that look more like
rabbits than poodles. But there was nothing any more significant than
that. Absolutely nothing."

"Except yourself," Morgan said.
"Ah, yes. I thought that over carefully. I looked for differences, obvious
ones. I couldn't find any. You can see that, just looking at me. So I
searched for more subtle things. Skin texture, fingerprints, bone
structure, body proportion. I still couldn't find anything. Then I went to
a doctor."
Morgan's eyebrows lifted. "Good," he said.
Parks shrugged tiredly. "Not really. He examined me. He practically
took me apart. I carefully refrained from saying anything about who I
was or where I came from; just said I wanted a complete physical
examination, and let him go to it. He was thorough, and when he
finished he patted me on the back and said, 'Parks, you've got nothing
to worry about. You're as fine, strapping a specimen of a healthy
human being as I've ever seen.' And that was that." Parks laughed
bitterly. "I guess I was supposed to be happy with the verdict, and
instead I was ready to knock him down. It was idiotic, it defied reason,
it was infuriating."
Morgan nodded sourly. "Because you're not a human being," he said.
"That's right. I'm not a human being at all."
* * * * *
"How did you happen to pick this planet, or this sun?" Morgan asked
curiously. "There must have been a million others to choose from."
Parks unbuttoned his collar and rubbed his stubbled chin unhappily. "I
didn't make the choice. Neither did anyone else. Travel by warp is a
little different from travel by the rocket you fiction writers make so
much of. With a rocket vehicle you pick your destination, make your
calculations, and off you go. The warp is blind flying, strictly blind. We
send an unmanned