“There is no carnival in Budapest. Are you sure your friend saw it in Hungary?”
“Yes.”
“But he did not say where?”
“No.”
“I am sorry. I cannot help you.” The clerk was impatient. “If there is nothing else—”
“No.” Robert rose to his feet. “Thank you.” He hesitated. “I do have one more question. If I wanted to bring a circus or a carnival into Hungary, would I have to get a permit?”
“Certainly.”
“Where would I go for that?”
“To the Budapest Administration of Licenses.”
The licenses building was located in Buda near the medieval city wall. Robert waited for thirty minutes before he was ushered into the office of a formal, pompous official.
“Can I help you?”
Robert smiled. “I hope so. I hate to take up your time with something as trivial as this, but I’m here with my young son, and he heard about a carnival playing somewhere in Hungary, and I promised to take him to see it. You know how kids are when they get an idea in their heads.”
The official stared at Robert, puzzled. “What is it you wanted to see me about?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, no one seems to know where the carnival is, and Hungary is such a big and beautiful country—well, I was told that if anyone knew what was going on in Hungary, it would be you.”
The official nodded. “Yes. Nothing like that is permitted to open without being issued a license.” He pressed the buzzer, and a secretary came in. There was a rapid exchange in Hungarian. The secretary left and came back two minutes later with some papers. She handed them to the official. He looked at them and said to Robert, “In the past three months, we have issued two permits for carnivals. One closed a month ago.”
“And the other?”
“The other is currently playing in Sopron. A little town near the German frontier.”
“Do you have the owner’s name?”
The official consulted the paper again. “Bushfekete.
Laslo Bushfekete.”
Laslo Bushfekete was having one of the best days of his life. Few people are lucky enough to spend their lives doing exactly what they want to do, and Laslo Bushfekete was one of those fortunate few. At six foot four and three hundred pounds, Bushfekete was a big man. He sported a diamond wristwatch, diamond rings, and a large gold bracelet. His father had owned a small carnival, and when he died, the son had taken it over. It was the only life he had ever known.
Laslo Bushfekete had grandiose dreams. He intended to expand his little carnival into the biggest and best in Europe. He wanted to be known as the P.T. Barnum of carnivals. At the moment, however, he could only afford the usual sideshow attractions: the Fat Lady and the Tattooed Man, the Siamese Twins and the Thousand-Year-Old Mummy, “dug up from the bowels of tombs in ancient Egypt.” Then there was the Sword Swallower and the Flame Eater, and the cute little Snake Charmer, Marika. But in the end, all they really added up to was just another traveling carnival.
Now, overnight, all that was going to change. Laslo Bushfekete’s dream was about to come true.
He had gone to Switzerland to audition an escape artist he had heard about. The pièce de résistance of the act was a routine where the performer was blindfolded, handcuffed, locked in a small trunk, then locked in a larger trunk, and finally lowered into a tank of water. It had sounded fantastic over the telephone, but when Bushfekete flew to Switzerland to see it, he found that there was one insurmountable problem: It took the escape artist thirty minutes to escape. No audience in the world was going to stay around staring at a trunk in a tank of water for thirty minutes.
It had looked as though the trip had been a complete waste of time. Laslo Bushfekete had decided to take a tour to kill the day until it was time to catch his plane. As it turned out, that ride changed his life.
Like his fellow passengers, Bushfekete had seen the explosion and raced across the field to try to help any survivors in what they all thought was a plane crash. But the sight that had confronted him was incredible. There was no question but that it was a flying saucer, and in it were two strange-looking little bodies. The other passengers stood there gaping at it. Laslo Bushfekete had walked around to see what the back of the UFO looked like, and then he had stopped, staring. About ten feet in back of the wreck, lying on the ground out of sight of the other tourists, was a tiny severed hand with six fingers and two opposing thumbs. Without even thinking, Bushfekete had taken out his handkerchief, scooped up the hand, and slipped it into his carryall. His heart was beating wildly. He had in his possession the hand of a genuine extraterrestrial! From now on you can forget all your fat ladies, tattooed men, sword swallowers and flame eaters, he thought. “Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, for the thrill of a lifetime. What you’re about to see is a sight that no mortal has ever seen before. You are looking at one of the most incredible objects in the universe. It’s not an animal. It’s not a vegetable. It’s not a mineral. What is it? It’s part of the remains of an extraterrestrial…a creature from outer space…This is not science fiction, ladies and gentlemen, this is the real thing…For five hundred forints, you can have your photograph taken with the…”