Sideshow (13 page)

They were on the terrace outside Syrilla’s living quarters: she standing at the railing, he seated at the table where he lingered over the delicacies Syrilla’s Frickian cook had provided. Frickians made excellent servants as well as soldiers; there were several thousand of them employed at Tolerance, and a great many more employed back at Heaven. Jacent was fond of Frickian food, though he was not fond of much else he’d found at Tolerance.
Syrilla persevered. “I mean, do you believe they are primitives? Really? From before first dispersion?” She sounded not only puzzled but apprehensive, and Jacent looked at her covertly from beneath his abundant lashes, wondering at her tone. Why apprehensive? The creatures, however spidery and archaic, could do no harm.
“Well, of course, we’ve all asked Files what Files thinks,” he admitted, meaning we, the youngsters, the lower orders, the dilettantes and chatterers who had not yet learned discretion, those who did the routine work of maintenance and monitoring until they were old enough to do something essential and even more boring. “Files does not
disbelieve
it. Files went searching through the old, old records and found several widely separated accounts of contacts with this Celerian race. A very old, old race, or so Files extrapolates, who were leaving our little spiral on their way somewhere else, who said, according to the strange twins, they had been granted the concession to do so!” He laughed. The idea was amusing. Who and what had granted this supposed concession? They had talked about that a great deal, down in the warren below the Great Rotunda.
He sobered at her expression and went on, “Also, joined human beings
are
occasionally born in primitive societies, even here on Elsewhere. Files has found references to that, as well.”
“I know all that,” said the Supervisor fretfully. “But I have never heard it theorized that the Arbai Doors could be used for time travel. In fact, I’ve always been assured that time travel is impossible!” She whined, perhaps a little hysterically.
Why should the subject of time travel be so upsetting? Particularly when there was quite enough here in Tolerance to be upset about without borrowing trouble?
“Well, of course, the technicians have talked that to shreds. The current theory seems to be that when these persons demanifested the Arbai Door on Earth all those millennia ago, they caused some kind of malfunction that prohibited their going anywhere at all. They were simply sidetracked into nothingness for some thousands of years … on their way here.”
She turned and stared at him. “There was no time travel?”
“No. No time travel. Merely an extremely lengthy hiatus in their awareness.” He smiled, noting the tension going out of her shoulders, her neck. Interesting. “Files tells us there have been other strange incidents with Arbai Doors. For example: A woman went into one on a planet called Grass millennia ago and turned up a thousand years or so later (absolute time) on a planet called Thyker. She had aged a great deal but was not, you know, mummified or anything. The only way she could have lived all that time was through some such lapse or series of lapses. The Door engineers and technicians are greatly agitated and interested. I am told they have not been so wrought up since the machines in City Fifteen came up with a cure for our newest plague before we’d even used it.”
Syrilla stiffened. It was considered not nice to mention such matters except during official sessions. Plagues and assassinations and small, limited wars were necessary in maintaining diversity, but casual talk about them could make one seem coarse and unfeeling. She made a moue at the boy, shaking her head very slightly.
“Sorry, Aunt Syrilla,” he murmured, flushing, aware he’d breached convention again. There were so damned many things one didn’t say! Or do! At least, not in social contexts. Sometimes he doubted he would ever learn to behave properly. Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly resentful
about this place, he doubted he wanted to! There was something very wrong here at Tolerance, something that none of the old folks would identify or admit to, but something that made them jumpy and peevish nonetheless. Jacent kept his facial expression pleasant, giving Aunt Syrilla no hint of what he was thinking.
She waved away his apology and turned to the forest once more.
“Something about this troubles you?” he said in his prettiest voice, hoping the tone would excuse the presumption and make her forget he had been gauche. He very much wanted to know why she cared.
“Yes,” she cried. “Yes, Jacent. No one seems to have thought what time travel would mean. It would mean that the Hobbs Land Gods could go back in time and get here before our people came, and then … It could mean they are here now. On Panubi. That possibility has been mentioned, but I didn’t take it, well, you know, seriously. But now, well … we
don’t
know what’s on Panubi, so they
could
be there. Boarmus is concerned about Panubi. He has sent Danivon Luze to find out about … all this business of dragons. It could be enslaved ones, you know. Not dragons at all. We don’t really know what enslaved ones might look like.” She shuddered, her face becoming momentarily skull-like and horrid with fear.
He gasped silently, terrified by her terror, then waited, holding his breath.
At last she spoke again. “It’s disturbing, Jacent. The idea that the Hobbs Land Gods might actually be here, now. Just waiting to leap out at us, take us over, enslave us as well….” She sighed, patted her forehead, and then whispered, “I have dreams about it sometimes. Like smothering. Like not being able to breathe. Like being stuffed into some impossibly small space until I’m all … smashed.” She swallowed, painfully, tried to smile.
“Of course, if there is no time travel, my concerns are … without foundation. The people from the past are merely … as you say … harmless.” She laughed, lightly, while fear danced madly behind her eyes.
Jacent was more than merely interested. He was intrigued! He did not think he had ever been as afraid as she obviously was. And though he’d learned in school to dread the Hobbs Land Gods, he’d never really thought about them. Oh, he’d
seen the docudramas, all about how Elsewhere was set up as a refuge from the Gods, about Lady Professor Mintier Thob and Madame Therabas Bland, about Subble Clore and Orimar Breaze and the rest of the committee members, how they’d come here all that long time ago. None of it had ever frightened him.
It obviously frightened Aunt Syrilla. He felt it best not to pursue the matter. So, he said nothing, and the silence extended.
“What is to be done with the strange twins?” she asked at last. “I haven’t heard what has been decided. Are they to be sent to Heaven?” Though the subtropical island of Heaven was reserved as a homeland for Supervisors and their Frickian servants, a few members of other races were allowed to live there also, if they were harmless or interesting or had talents the machines couldn’t duplicate.
“Rumor is that Danivon Luze has a use for them,” Jacent replied. In the lower regions, that rumor was causing endless speculation. In the lower regions, Danivon Luze himself caused endless speculation. The mystery of his origins made him quite the romantic figure, somewhat to Jacent’s annoyance. “Only a rumor, of course.”
“Oh, my,” whispered Syrilla, remembering what Boarmus had said about Danivon Luze. Such a complicated knot that would make: Danivon, and Panubi, and dragons that were maybe really enslaved by the Hobbs Land Gods, and the strange twins from the past.
“Oh, my,” she said again.
Fringe had intended to startle the Executive at the Hall of Final Equity. Meant to scare the piss out of him, if truth be told. Executives and Professionals, by and large, gave her the gripes. She understood why this was so, but understanding did nothing to change her feelings. She resented the Executive and Professional classes in their entirety, and had done so as long as she could remember—at least since she’d been given those damned E&P dolls as a child.
She had privately acknowledged the resentment when she turned sixteen and realized, suddenly and undeniably, that though she’d always been told she was a Professional, there was no chance she could retain that class. For most of a year she had heard her schoolmates talk of the Professional training
they would be starting, the businesses they had been bought into, the apprenticeships their families had paid for. Though Grandma Gregoria had always talked of the Professional class as being governed by a kind of natural law that guaranteed that its children became Professionals in their turn, no training, no business, no apprenticeship had been arranged for Fringe. No start-up money had been set aside. Some essential part of the natural law had been left out in her case.
It was ironic, Fringe reflected, that Souile had been born Trasher and had rebelled against that class early to raise herself up, while Fringe had been born Professional class and had not realized she had to rebel against anything until it was too late! Now she had only a short time of free schooling left and no resources beyond her own energy and determination. Being honest with herself, as continuing association with Zasper was teaching her to be, she knew the best she could do for herself at this late date was retain the level Souile had achieved. If she was unwilling to be a Trasher, which she was, she would have to be a Wage-earner. Though it wasn’t admirable, it was respectable.
She had learned a degree of pragmatism from Zasper and from Ahl Dibai Bloom, both of whom advocated action rather than what Zasper called “wiffling around.” “If you’re going to wiffle around once you know the facts,” Zasper often said, “might as well have no brain at all.”
So, she would not wiffle. The first step was to switch from Professional education level to Wage-earner training level at school. The one had been theoretical, the other would be entirely practical. She already knew she was better with things than people and very good at working with her hands. Once enrolled in training, she asked her instructors to help her find a job, and one of them referred her to a nearby weapons shop where she was hired to make adjustments and repairs during the late afternoons and evenings. All of these rearrangements of her life, job included, were accomplished in less than ten days from the time she made the decision. Zasper, when she told him of it, said she showed gumption and good sense, that he was proud of her.
No one else seemed to care. Though Fringe made no attempt to hide what was going on, neither Souile nor Char seemed interested. Of course, they were both preoccupied with other things. Char was not often at home anymore.
When there, he shut himself up in his study and was outraged at interruption. Souile had grown even more withdrawn in recent years; she emerged less and less often from her room, and when she did, she seemed not to see what went on around her.
So matters went on, with Fringe’s life largely unregarded, until one evening she arrived home to be met at the door by old Nada, who had obviously been waiting for her. This in itself was a rarity. Nada and Aunty spent most of their time in their room, quibbling with each other.
“Fringe girl.”
“Yes, Nada.”
The old woman twisted her hands against her abdomen and blinked her watery eyes. “Your ma, she died today.”
Fringe could think of nothing to say. What went through her mind, unforgivably, was that it should have been Nada because Nada had had so much more practice at dying, but Nada was standing there, peering nearsightedly at her, and Fringe saw herself, as though from a distance, with her mouth gaped open and the only words she could think of unsuitable to the occasion.
“Where’s Pa?” she choked out, evading what was happening.
“Char’s in his study. The door’s locked. Ari’s locked himself in too. Fond of her, he was. Liked her best of his children.”
“Aunty?”
“Upstairs. Crying. She’s been crying all day.”
“Bubba?”
“At his school, you know.”
“Where’s Ma? You know. Her …”
“Gone,” whispered old Nada, tears running down her cheeks. “Char had her taken already. She’s gone.”
Fringe hugged Nada because she knew of nothing else to do, because she needed to hang on to something, and they cried together though they were unable to offer any words of comfort. Fringe kept trying to remember when the last time was she’d seen Ma, or when the last time was she’d seen Ma acting like a real human person who laughed and said sensible things and seemed interested. Fringe couldn’t remember when that had been. If that had been ever, it had been a very long time ago. Years. Maybe when Fringe was a child, long, long ago.
And what could she say to Souile’s mother? That Souile had died of stress, of trying too hard, of walking a tightrope with Char and his folks pulling from one side and Ari, Nada, and Aunty pulling and tugging from the other, even her daughter a disappointment to her? That she’d died of mood-spray and of being eaten alive? Fringe didn’t say that. She didn’t say anything. She felt guilty that she did not grieve, then grieved because she felt guilty.
Two days later she came home to find the Tromses gone as well. Char had sent them to the so-called Pighouse, the provincial home for elderly indigents.
“But, Pa, you can’t just … They lived here!”
“No more.”
“But this was their home.”
“No more,” he said. “I can’t take any more. I couldn’t do anything while your ma was alive, but they’re not my folks. They’ve got another daughter; they’ve got a son. Let them do it! I can’t do it anymore.”
It was the first time Fringe had thought about the Tromses having other children. There’d never been any evidence of them. She hid herself away in the module to consider the matter. Was she glad Nada and Ari and Aunty were gone? Would she go visit them? Would it be better to do that or not to do that?
“By the way,” said Pa over supper. “I want you to move out of that damned module. You can move back in the room where you used to be.” His voice was harsh and demanding, and he did not look at her when he spoke. She understood it not as a suggestion but as a command, though she could not fathom the motivation behind it. Was she now to be a daughter again, she who had not been a daughter for years?
She hadn’t been in the room in years, either. She stood in the door, peering at dusty surfaces, unlit panels, at a clutter of keepsakes, at the circulation units the old women wore on their feet and hands to warm their always-cold extremities, at the so-called Auto-nurse, actually little more than a timed medications dispenser and monitor. The room smelled of old women, sour-sweet, vinegar, and dried flowers. It hissed with old voices, old coughs, and sniffles and whines.