***
The Greatest Show on Three Planets! The sign shouted in vibrant colors, four glyphs and seven languages. Each individual letter or glyph or rune whirled and coalesced and spun from one end of the spectrum to the other, so that they were simply blank outlines when outside Smith's color range. He stood for a moment eyeing the place as the cheerful crowd split and poured around him.
It was cheap and shabby, the tents ragged and patched, the bars on the cages rusted as red as the Martian desert sands. Litter blew in lonely fragments, collected in heaps against booths promising a win with every try.
Smith bought a ticket and entered. He didn't think that what he sought could possibly be here, in this decrepit place.
But he had to be sure.
He wandered around, bought a tiny bag of greasy grain dyed a shocking yellow, munched it absently as he watched the others scurrying in aimless confusion about him.
Did he really want to find it? He wondered. The memory of the thing had poisoned his life for over a century. The fear, the terror, the madness had come back to him in dreams and awake, endless year after endless year. Wouldn't death, when it came to him, as soon it would, take away the everlasting memories? Why seek out it one last sight, when all too soon he would no longer have anything to fear from it?
But the touch. The touch, soft, feather-light, brushing across the surface of his innermost soul and engendering the most ravenous, most incredible desires. He had never been able to forget them, any more than he had forgotten the fear or the revulsion or disgust at it...and himself.
Now, nearing the end, he knew that if he didn't manage to see it one more time—then kill it, as he had promised his friend, long dead now—he would be haunted by the memories through all eternity.
He had stood it for this long. He couldn't bear the thought of standing it any longer.