Charley took the cigarette out of his mouth with his right foot, held it for a second and put it back.
"I'd be normal," he said. "I'd be just like everybody else, professor. And what do I want anything like that for?"
Professor Lightning tried everything, but it wasn't any good. "Fame," he said, and Charley pointed out, calmly and reasonably, that the kind of fame he'd get from being an experimental subject was just like being a freak, all over again—except that it would wear off, and then, he asked, where would he be? Professor Lightning talked about Man's Duty to Science, and Charley countered with Science's Duty to Man. Professor Lightning tried friendship, and argument, and even force—but nothing worked. Incredible as it seemed to the professor, Charley was content to remain a freak, an Armless Wonder. More, he seemed to be proud and happy about it.
It was too bad that the professor didn't think of the one argument that might have worked. In the long run, it wouldn't have made any difference, perhaps—but it would have cleared matters up, right there and then. Because the one workable argument had a good chance of succeeding.
But, then, Professor Lightning really didn't understand carny. He never thought of the one good argument, and after a while he gave up, and went away.
Of course, that was several days later. Professor Lightning told Charley that he was leaving for New York, and Charley said: "What? In the middle of the season?" Then he told Wrout, and Wrout screamed and ranted and swore that Professor Lightning would never work in carny again. "I'll have you blacklisted!" he roared.
And Professor Lightning shrugged and smiled and went away to pack. He took all his notebooks, and all the cages with little animals in them, and he didn't seem at all disturbed. "I'll find another subject," he told Charley, when he left. "When they find out what I've got, in New York, they'll provide me with subjects by the hundred. I did want to help you ..."
"Thanks," Charley said honestly.
"... But that's the way things are, I suppose," Professor Lightning said. "Maybe some day you'll realize."