Shadow Conspiracy (16 page)

“There’s no way to know which way a rebuilt spider would turn,” I said. “It would have different experiences and might make a different choice. Or it might not.”

Kalakos leaned across the plates a little unsteadily. He always got philosophical when his flask was empty. “There might be a place that does know which choice it makes. And I think you hold the key to it.”

“Me?” I was so startled, I forgot my hard-earned grammar. “How so?”

“You see the future.”

“I don’t, sir,” I reproved gently. “I sometimes see the choices people make and what will happen from them. Sometimes.”

“In other words,” Kalakos said with a vigorous nod, “when a man stands at a crossroads, wondering if he should turn left or right to get home, you can see that the right turn will take him safely to his family but a left turn will take him into an ambush of bandits.”

Automatically I looked down at my hands. My left has six fingers on it, but living among circus performers had long ago driven out any hint of self-conscious feeling. “That oversimplifies the case, but yes.”

“I maintain,” Kalakos continued, “that the man turns both ways. That in one place...call it a universe...he turns right and arrives safely home, while simultaneously, in another universe, he turns left and dies. The two universes exist, side-by-side, invisible and insensible to one another, but they exist nonetheless. Before the man makes his choice, there is a single universe. The moment he decides, the universe splits into two, one for each choice, each with its own set of physical laws, occupying the same space at the same time. This happens a million times, a billion times, every time something different could happen.”

“No, sir.” I shook my head again. “When the man makes his choice, the other possibility ceases to exist. I know.”

“Except you exist in
this
universe,” Kalakos said triumphantly. “So you are automatically unaware of the other universes and their outcomes. But you can see each universe a split-second before it is created. You—and your counterparts in the other universes—see the potentials.”

“Rubbish!” I cried, then added quickly, “Sir.”

“Have you ever held up two mirrors so they reflect each other?” Kalakos said mildly.

“Yes. It makes me dizzy.” As did this conversation.

“I’ve often thought that’s what it must be like for you.” Kalakos picked up the spider and idly flipped it over. It was the size of a saucer, with spindly legs. A key stuck out of its back, slowly unwinding. The legs quivered as if in fear or protest. “You stand in the middle and see infinite reflections stretching in both directions, but each one is a tiny bit different.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that, sir,” I said, growing a little tired now. “The spider gets upset.”

“How so?” Kalakos brandished the little automaton. “Is it alive? Conscious? Did you give it a soul?”

I shuddered and wrapped my six-fingered hand round my cup. “You know I didn’t. I meant I’ll have to reset the flywheel, and it’s bloody difficult. What brought up all this talk of other universes, anyway?”

Kalakos returned the spider to the table and leaned back in his chair. He was a tall man, and rangy, appropriate for a circus ringmaster. His black hair had gone grey at the temples, and he wore the expected enormous moustache and sideburns. He probably used to be quite handsome in his youth, but the lines acquired in his forties weren’t kind to him, and I sometimes wondered if I would meet a similar fate, though I didn’t much look like him. I was shorter than he, with the lean, compact build of an acrobat. At twenty-one, I kept my sandy hair short, and my face clean-shaven because with facial hair I looked like an idiot.

“I’m remembering another time, I suppose,” Kalakos said as the spider skittered round in a circle. “And wondering how things might have been different if I had made other choices. Have you ever been to Geneva, Dodd?”

“No, and you keep asking questions you know the answer to. Why is that?”

He chuckled. “Perhaps it’s my own way of determining the future.”

A knock sounded at the door. Kalakos cocked his head, and I sighed. It was always something. No doubt the elephant had broken down. Or the wirewalker had gone into a whorehouse and needed bail money. Or the Great Sabatini had got drunk and made someone disappear again. I glanced at the car door, and felt a familiar sensation steal over me as my talent opened. My talent came and went as it pleased, and I never quite got over the unease it gave me. When I looked at the door, I expected my talent to show me a series of choices stretching out before me as it usually did.

My hand jerked spasmodically round my cup. It leaped from my grasp and shattered on the boards even as Kalakos called for the visitor to enter. Before I could react further—or even speak—the door opened and in strode a stranger—tall, broad-shouldered, in his late twenties. He had deep red hair under a high hat, a wolf’s grin, and wide blue eyes that sparkled in the lamplight. His long black overcoat hung open, revealing a white shirt, black Hessian boots, and a fashionably-cut brown waistcoat.

Kalakos’s face went instantly pale as milk, and he bolted to his feet. “Joseph Storm! As I breathe, can that be you?”

The man’s grin widened. “It can. I’ve just perfected a clown act, and I need a circus position. You can provide one for an old friend, I trust?”

“In the name of our Holy Lord and Father of us all, Joseph,” Kalakos said in a strangled voice, “
where is your brother?”

“Am I being rude? Then, Mister Victor Kalakos,” said Joseph with overmuch formality, “allow me to present my brother, Nathaniel August Storm.”

Into the car came another man, one completely identical to Joseph. Red hair, blue eyes, tailored clothes, everything was exactly the same. Except this man wasn’t smiling. He kept his eyes down, and his posture was uncertain. I, for my part, found myself dizzy and confused, as if I were watching events through a carnival mirror.

Kalakos inhaled and exhaled with quick and shallow breaths. He looked ready to faint. I didn’t feel much better, and I coped by focusing on something else.

“Mr. Kalakos?” I managed to say. “Are you ill?”

Kalakos seemed to remember that I was still in the car. “I...I’m fine, Dodd,” he stammered. “Perfectly fine. Would you excuse us?”

“Of course.” I snatched up the spider and all but bolted for the railcar door. In my haste, I tripped on an uneven board. A pair of solid arms caught me, and Nathaniel Storm pulled me upright.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“Certainly.” Nathaniel’s breath came warm in my ear, and I found myself flushing. Confused, I fled out the door and down the three steps, the spider tucked under my arm. The two larger spiders that waited near the steps rose and skittered after me like obedient puppies.

The Irish summer evening was damp and cool, with a smell of coal and sulphur. Trolleys and horses and carriages clattered past in the street. Merrion Square, the park we had rented within Dublin, was already growing trampled and muddy from our presence, though the Emporium had only arrived last week. In the near distance, the Tilt rose up like a canvas tomb. Smaller tents huddled round it like gravestones. Behind me stood the train, a sleeping iron dragon with the Ringmaster’s car as its tail.

Merrion Square
was an ideal spot for a circus, since a rail spur ran right past it. In a few days, when the audiences began to dwindle, we would pack everything into the bright boxcars and clatter on to another town. Belfast, perhaps, or even London.

I moved a few steps away from the car, still feeling unnerved, and trying to sort out what was happening. When I looked at the door just before Joseph and Nathaniel Storm’s entrance, my talent had shown me two futures, but the power and fear in both had smashed me like a hammer and blinded me to the final outcomes in both. I did know I had seen both devotion and destruction, inextricably intertwined, and I couldn’t sort out which of the two futures would come to pass, or even which one to choose. I was a wirewalker balanced between two extremes, and I feared that I would fall at any moment. The shock of it continued to unsettle me, and I rubbed my extra finger with my left thumb.

“What should I do?” I asked the spider under my arm. It waved its legs without answering. On the ground, its brethren scuttled about my ankles. If they had no specific orders, they tended to run in circles. I had no idea why. It wasted the energy stored in the winding spring, but I couldn’t find a way to make them stop. If I changed the Babbage engines that controlled their actions and removed the tendency, they stopped working entirely.

“Dodd!” Kalakos stuck his head out of the railcar door. His face was still pale, but his nose was red with drink. “Mr. Storm parked his wagon near the Tilt. Have it moved to Clown Alley. We’re adding his clown spot to the main show.”

“What?” I said, startled. “We already have a full show. Who are we to drop from the schedule in order to—”

“Just see to it, Dodd.” And he slammed the door again.

All the next day, the ringmaster hid from everyone, admitting only the Storm Brothers to his locked train. Once in his presence, they remained with him every moment.

“Who the hell are those two?” asked William Myrtle, our strong man. He was barely thirty, but was aging rapidly and looked closer to forty. Myrtle probably thought this was simply due to his nature. I knew differently.

“I have no idea,” I said, “but they open with us tonight.”

The show that evening was a near sell-out. The stands were crowded with families and courting couples and a few single people looking for companionship—the usual sort. Kalakos, in his red-and-white striped shirt and top hat, strode out of his wagon with a tempestuous expression, and no one dared ask him about the Storm brothers, who were nowhere to be seen. Once everyone was lined up outside the ring door curtains, the calliope started playing, and the Emporium processed into the ring.

We began every show with a parade. Kalakos stonily marched up front, waving his cane in time with the music. The great iron elephant followed, its heavy feet thudding on the packed earthen floor, then a rainbow explosion of clowns, then the brassy mechanical horses and their slender girls in white feathered dresses, then the muscular acrobats in their tight red shirts, and more. I strode in with my twelve spiders cavorting about my ankles. The smallest, painted purple, could sit on my hand, and the largest, painted red, was the size of a collie. The Storm brothers were still nowhere to be seen. Strange—most new performers want to be in the opening procession.

The audience applauded and cheered. Children pointed at the elephant. Everyone and everything marched thrice round the ring, and then the human performers scattered to do small spots for the crowd while the mechanical animals continued round the circle. My spiders amused the crowd with small tricks—plucking handkerchiefs from pockets, “kissing” girls and babies, making backflips upon command—while I answered questions. The young men always asked how they worked, and the young women always asked about me. I used to give them small paper flowers, but that annoyed their young men, so I’ve stopped the practice.

One young man with coal-black hair leaned toward me over his cane and murmured in my ear that he would love to discuss certain...automatic functions with me, if only I could meet him after the show? I considered the offer, but abruptly found myself remembering Nathan Storm’s arms around my body in Kalakos’s wagon. A bit flustered, I told the young man I had other plans and quickly moved on.

At last the automata pranced out and we performers cleared the Tilt so Kalakos could introduce the Flying Benjamins, our opening trapeze act. I waited outside with the other brightly-dressed performers, who stood or sat in silence or conversed in low whispers so their conversation wouldn’t carry into the Tilt. I rewound my spiders. Henry Wells, the chief ring groom, opened the side of the elephant to ensure the boiler was stoked properly. The smell of coal smoke mixed with a wet breeze from the River Liffey. My eyes strayed, searching for Nathaniel Storm but not finding him in the press of people. How had he and Joseph forced Kalakos to give them a spot without so much as an audition?

“Presenting,” Kalakos boomed from inside the Tilt, “the amazing Storm brothers!”

Two men darted through the ring door curtains into the Tilt. I ordered my spiders to stay and hurried round to the main entrance. Martha, the ticket girl, nodded at me as I dashed past her and found a place in the shadows near the grandstand.

Joseph and Nathaniel Storm had already leaped into the ring. Here they showed another oddity. In a clowning duo, one was usually a joey in whiteface makeup, and he dominated the other, who played the “wise” fool, or
auguste,
who wore makeup of simple wide circles round the eyes and mouth. Joseph and Nathaniel, however, both wore makeup in the
auguste
fashion.

The men wore identical baggy red polka-dot shirts, sagging blue trousers, and floppy purple shoes. They had artfully tousled their red hair, so there was no need for wigs. The only difference between them was that one twin wore a canary-yellow coat. I couldn’t tell Joseph from Nathaniel, and I was surprised at how much I wanted to. Both men cut handsome figures despite the clown makeup. For a moment I felt Nathaniel’s arms on me back in the railcar, and the crowded Tilt grew warm.

Joseph—I assumed he was the dominant one—paced about the ring, preening in his ludicrous jacket with obvious pride, then looked round in puzzlement and dismay. He had no mirror to see his fine clothes in! He turned to Nathaniel and, tapping one floppy foot, held out his hand with comic impatience. Nathaniel pulled an impossibly large hand mirror from one baggy pocket—and dropped it. The glass shattered.