Sideshow (22 page)

“Not quite,” said Curvis.
“That’s all I know,” she said.
Curvis shook his head. “They wrote books, which have been translated and can be found in the Files, though they don’t make much sense to humans. And they built cities. Actually, there’s quite a bit about them in the Files, if you’re interested. It’s true, though, that they’re extinct.”
“Well, tell about the Hobbs Land Gods, then,” asked Nela.
Fringe said, “Some time ago, quite a number of generations,
the human settlers on a farm world called Hobbs Land discovered …”
“Were discovered by,” amended Curvis.
“… a kind of parasitic growth that propagates through soil and rock and into trees and buildings and flesh….”
“A kind of net,” said Curvis.
“A root system,” corrected Danivon. “That grew in people.”
“And animals,” said Fringe. “That is, intelligent animals. And other races.”
“How dreadful!” cried Nela. “Couldn’t they kill it?” “They didn’t try,” said Danivon.
“They liked it,” said Fringe with disgust. “And I would appreciate being allowed to tell this story without interruption. After all, it was my ancestors who fled from the Hobbs Land system, not yours!” She glared at Curvis and Danivon.
“I didn’t know that,” said Danivon. “Enarae was settled by people from the Hobbs Land system?”
“I’ll tell it my way, all right?”
The others subsided.
“From your tone, I assume this thing, this fungus or whatever, did not kill the people or animals involved,” said Bertran, with such distaste as to imply it had been far better had the stuff killed them instantly.
“It did not kill them, no,” said Fringe. “It mushed them up with animals and other races until they could all sort of read one another’s minds and it made them into something they called Fauna Sapiens.” She shuddered dramatically. “The point is, of course, that they were all enslaved by this thing, humans and other races both. Once enslaved, some of them sneaked into the galaxy spreading the stuff around!”
“Saint Sam,” said Curvis, interrupting once more. “Wasn’t it Saint Sam?”
“Saint Sam was the one who went through the Arbai Door in search of the Thyker prophetess. However, before all that, people went from Hobbs Land to the other planets in the system, to Thyker and Phansure and Ahabar. My forefathers were weapons engineers who lived in one of the northern provinces of Phansure. Our people would not be enslaved! Before the Gods got to their province, they fled all the way across the galaxy to Enarae the First. Even that turned out not to be safe, because the Gods kept spreading.”
“And no one could kill them, it?”
“Once it had hold of you …”
“It must be like a drug,” said Nela firmly. “Something addictive. We had that, in our time. Drugs that could be absolutely lethal, you could know they were going to kill you, but you used them anyhow.”
“But this wasn’t a drug and it didn’t kill you,” corrected Fringe. “That was it, you see. It didn’t. But it did make people not people anymore. Not human. That’s why my ancestors ran away!”
“How, not human!” demanded Bertran. The three Enforcers looked at one another and shrugged. “Not human,” muttered Fringe. “That’s all. Enslaved, like I said!”
“Why did people like it so much if it wasn’t like a drug?” asked Nela in an obstinate voice. “I mean….”
“Because,” said Fringe, “it sort of … got rid of a lot of their problems, I guess.”
“Well, drugs do that. Or seem to.”
“No, this really did. That’s what made it so insidious.”
“What kind of problems?” asked Bertran.
Fringe shrugged. “Problems between people. Environmental problems. You know, problems. The kinds people have.”
“That would be insidious,” he murmured. “You’re saying it was benign, then. Beneficial.”
“If something makes you a slave, how can it be beneficial,” cried Danivon, shivering angrily. He found the discussion intensely disturbing. “Even if you’re … superficially more … peaceable, if you don’t do it yourself, if it’s imposed on you …”
Bertran felt argumentative. “Well, in our time, in our religion, for example, we might say a man incapable of solving his problems by himself could do so by God’s grace. Would that have made him a slave to grace?”
“It’s not the same thing,” Danivon said furiously. “You might have had enough of this grace to solve your problems, but it would still have been just you, individually, not everybody all mushed up together….”
Bertran said, “You’re talking about some kind of hive mind? People lost their own personalities? Their own minds?”
Fringe nodded slowly. She hadn’t thought about it in those terms before, but that sounded right. “No diversity,” she added. “They were all alike. Not like here.” All of Enarae—
all of Elsewhere—believed this was true. It was the ultimate horror. “They all thought, believed, acted the same.”
The twins regarded each other with a measure of skepticism. “In our world,” said Nela at last, “there were certain authoritarian regimes that regulated what beliefs people could have. At least, the beliefs that could be publicly spoken of.”
“We have those too,” said Danivon. “Molock, for example. Also Derbeck. And there’s a whole bunch of totalitarian provinces over by the Throckian Gulf.”
“People could be imprisoned, or tortured and executed, for saying or writing things indicative of the wrong attitude?” asked Nela.
Danivon nodded. “Yes, that’s true in Molock and Derbeck too.”
“Or for trying to escape?”
“Yes. That’s also true in Thrasis.”
“We had some societies that were divided along racial lines, with one race being enslaved by another,” Bertran went on.
“Derbeck again,” said Curvis. “Where the High Houm lord it over the Murrey, and the chimi-hounds over them all.”
“Or where the military ruled the civilians….”
“Frick,” said Danivon. “In Frick if you’re not from a military family, you’re nothing.”
Nela took up the inventory. “Though there were also some supposedly freedom-loving countries, though they had rather burdensome bureaucracies….”
“New Athens,” said Danivon. “They make a big thing out of freedom in New Athens, but even they know they’re slaves to their bureaucracy. They make jokes about it, but they don’t really think it’s funny.”
“We had so-called benevolent despotism in some places. Where a strong man ran the country but most of the people approved of the way he did it.”
“Sandylwaith,” said Curvis. “High Lord Say-so in Sandylwaith. You obey the law—and the law’s sensible mostly, for it’s a peaceful, lovely place, Sandylwaith—and you get along fine. But if you break the law, there’s no second chance. High Lord Say-so will have your ears off first, then your feet and your eyes next, with what’s left of you sitting in the square as a warning to the populace.”
“Dreadful,” shuddered Nela.
“Well,” Danivon offered judiciously, “there’s no crime or violence to speak of in Sandylwaith. No thievery. No rape. The people there like the system, even though you might say they’re all slaves of the Lord. Of course, what happens when the current High Lord Say-so dies, who knows? Some of them haven’t been so sensible.”
“We had religious dictatorships, run by old men, hereditary cultists, where women had no rights at all,” Bertran said.
“Thrasis,” said Curvis. “We don’t even send female Enforcers to Thrasis. Women go veiled in Thrasis; they are property, first of their begetters and then of whoever they’re sold to. If their owners die, they go into the towers of the prophet, for the prophet owns all otherwise unattached females in the country.”
“They are all his property,” said Fringe, making a face.
“Enforcers do not have opinions on the internal matters of provinces,” said Danivon in a mocking tone. “Don’t make faces, Enforcer!”
He was right! She hadn’t even realized she was doing it. She flushed.
“Of course,” Danivon went on, “in Beanfields, men have about the same status as women do in Thrasis. Mother-dear rules in Beanfields, and every man is owned by his mother. Not his real mother, but his surro-mother. Whoever his real mother gives him to. When male Enforcers go there, a female Enforcer always goes along as their mother. Otherwise they’re up for grabs.”
“And this is the diversity you are sworn to preserve?” asked Nela.
“There are one thousand and three provinces,” said Fringe. “We have mentioned only a tiny few of them. On Elsewhere, mankind is free to be whatever he can, or will.”
The twins thought about this for a time before Bertran asked, “Let us suppose one of the women of Thrasis wishes to escape. Or one of the—what did you call them? The Murrey?—one of the Murrey from Derbeck? Let us suppose a civilian from Frick grows weary of being ruled by soldiers. What recourse have they?”
“I don’t understand,” said Danivon. “Recourse?”
“Are they free to leave?”
“Of course not,” said Fringe. “Persons must stay in their own place, in the diversity to which they were born.”
“But …” Nela offered, “if they try to escape, aren’t they
being
diverse? I mean, even
more
diverse, when they choose to be something else?”
“Where would they go?” asked Fringe gently. “There’s no place for them. Except for the middle of Panubi, all the places are taken up.”
“Whether there is any place for them or not, if they cannot leave, then Elsewhere is not devoted to what
I
would call diversity,” said Bertran. “All of its people are imprisoned in their own systems, though each system may be different.”
“What would you call it then?” asked Danivon curiously.
The twins thought about this for a time. It was Nela who spoke at last.
“I’d call it a people zoo,” she said. “Just like zoos on Earth of long ago, with all the people in habitats.”
Fringe and Danivon shared a pitying glance. Poor things. They had no idea what they were talking about at all.

THREE

7

The sideshow arrived in Shallow late one afternoon when the ship dropped anchor near a lagoon of blue lilies, a scene of such tranquillity that it was only the muttering among the sailors that told the travelers something was amiss.
“What are they going on about?” Curvis asked of the captain.
“They’re wonderin’ where the people are,” he said in a puzzled voice. “And so am I.”
“People?”
“The folk of Shallow. Every time we come in here they’re swarmin’ about in those little round gossle boats, but today’s like there was a sign on us sayin’ ‘plague.’ Where are they?”
The question was partially answered after some little time when a bargelike vessel moved toward them from far across the lagoon.
“What is that?” asked Danivon, pointing toward the building from which the vessel came, a sizable structure with several wings set on pilings above the water. The piazzas running the length of each floor spilled with flowering vines, like gardens piled in terraces above the water.
“Heron House,” the sailor said. “An’ that’ll be the Heron House gainder-yat comin’ to get you. Best get your bundles up.”
“Heron House?”
“You folk are goin’ upriver, so you’ll need someplace to bide until your river-yat comes. That’s it: Heron House, built and managed by the Heron family of Shallow, them that run
the yats. You’ll stay there unless you fancy growing webs on your fingers and paddling upriver in gossle boats, the way most folk in Shallow do.” He looked about them at the empty water and amended his discourse. “Usually do, that is. I’d like to know what’s happened to ’em all, I would.”
So would we
, thought Danivon.
So would we!
They brought their bundles up, though their preparedness did nothing to hurry the approach of the gainder-yat, which took its own good time, making several lengthy stops on the way. Waiting was not unusual in Shallow, so said the Curward sailors. “Slow folk in Shallow,” they said. “Deep folk in Deep, and wearisome folk in Salt Maresh.” Even when the boat finally arrived, it stood a distance from the Curward vessel while those manning it looked them over and whispered to one another in fearful voices.
Danivon’s nose twitched painfully. Something badly awry here. The people from the hostelry were extremely apprehensive, no question. Fearful they were, but of what?
Eventually the Shallow folk decided the Curward vessel held no risk, and the gainder-yat came close enough to gather them into its capacious wide-bottomed self before wallowing away across the lagoon, its sculling oar plied by half a dozen web-fingered folk who started at every sound or movement their passengers made.
Except for a few cleared waterways leading toward the hostelry’s entry float and stairs, the lagoon was carpeted with the blue-flowered lilies. Long-toed birds ran across the pads, snatching at jewel-winged flies and being snatched at in turn by toothy gaver snouts that emerged explosively from among the leaves. From the edge of the lagoon something made a melodic thumping among the reeds, as though on a set of tuned drums.
“A new place,” cried Nela. “Bertran, a new place.” She clapped her hands, determined to be joyful.
Her twin stared morosely at the water, thinking of diving, of swimming, of disporting himself like a penguin, like a seal. Or even like one of those toothy gavers with their sleek hides and webbed feet. Alone, of course. Unencumbered. If this expedition turned out well, he might return here, alone, unencumbered. He did not speak of this to Nela. It seemed a bitter thought when she was trying so hard to seem happy.
“A new place,” he agreed, imagining the water flowing along his naked skin, imagining that skin sleek from hip to
shoulder, not bulged and emerged as it was, not shared, but his own. As always, these thoughts brought a mingled feeling, part guilty pleasure, part hopeless pain. It would never happen. Though he dreamed and dreamed, it would come to nothing.
They docked at the Heron House float. Web-handed folk dressed in wraparound skirts came to take their bundles and precede them up the wide stairs to three adjacent rooms at the end of a corridor. They were told food would be served shortly on their shared piazza, at the end of which woven panels had been pulled across to give them privacy.
“Someone or something important to us is going on here, in this place,” remarked Danivon to nobody in particular as he leaned over the railing. “I can smell it. But there are no public rooms! How are we to find out what’s going on?”
“We’ll do what we planned to do all along,” said Fringe as she went to stand beside Nela and Bertran, who were already leaning across the railing. “We’ll do our sideshow business down there on the float and see who gathers.”
“What a beautiful place,” said Nela, taking Fringe’s hand and squeezing it affectionately. “Lucky people of Shallow, to have settled here.”
“Lucky indeed,” said Danivon moodily. “For I doubt they were given any choice in the matter.”
“Didn’t the people who fled here settle where they liked?” asked Bertran, puzzled.
Danivon shook his head. “They were met by a Frickian army and assigned where to go by Supervisors. Since the people of Shallow already had webbed hands and feet, the Supervisors did at least give them a wet province, for which I suppose they were duly grateful.”
Fringe turned toward him, her eyebrows drawn together in a thoughtful frown. “I’d always assumed Council Supervisory was selected to run the planet after all the original Brannigan people died. Who were they then?”
Danivon snorted. “I’ve already made the mistake of asking that question. Files said it had no information. My rule has been that when Files is silent, it is better not to pursue the matter.” He laughed ruefully, almost silently. “I broke my rule and asked the question a second time. Since then I’ve been smelling trouble.” He’d been smelling something a good deal worse than that, but no point in frightening the others.
Still, he could not completely disguise his apprehension,
and Fringe was stabbed by sudden anxiety. Since their first meeting she had thought of him in bold bright colors without shadows, one of the hero-type Enforcers much touted at Academy, one of those Zasper called the fireworks boys, who skated always on the edge of risk, laughing at death, fearless and puissant. What she had heard in his voice was simple fear, however, which she well recognized. With a pang of conscience, she remembered the transmitter cube in her pack. Perhaps he had good reason to be fearful. Perhaps that was why Boarmus had told her to deliver the thing privately.
Certainly a puzzle! She glanced at Danivon from under her lashes, seeing his brooding face fixed upon something distant and invisible. Despite all the rules she had set herself to live by, all her rejection of involvement, a part of her yearned to comfort him or, at the very least, share his concerns. A colleague could do that. She could offer him friendship at least.
No. It would only end in pain, she told herself sternly. Friendship wasn’t what he had in mind. Friendship wasn’t what
she
had in mind, either. Leave well enough alone!
You’ve survived pain before, so use that
, a leering voice inside her whispered.
Use it to get the job done!
She flushed guiltily as she felt Nela’s hand on her own, squeezing it.
“Your heart’s in your face, lady.”
Fringe flushed. “Not my heart, Nela. Quite a different part of my anatomy, I’m afraid. And I didn’t know it showed.” She flushed and cast a sidelong glance at Bertran.
“Berty doesn’t listen to girl talk.”
Nela and Fringe had engaged in a lot of girl talk on the voyage. Chitchat about themselves and their feelings. Bertran, who had been an unfailing listener (even with his eyes fixed on a book to pretend noninvolvement), wondered at complexities in Nela he had never known of. Complexities and affections, for Fringe was Nela’s first real woman friend, and Fringe was genuinely fond of Nela, a situation he found both ironic and amusing. Fringe should, he told himself, have been equally fond of them both, though she obviously was not. Of Bertran she was almost as wary as she was of Danivon.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Fringe replied now, compressing her lips, making a face. “I’m not going to get involved, Nela. It wouldn’t be sensible.”
Nela heard the self-doubt in the words and shook her head
in sympathy. “I guess I can understand. Though I sometimes think I’d give … well, a lot, just to have the chance to get involved.”
Beside her, Bertran took a sudden breath, and she came to herself with a start, aware he might well have misunderstood—or understood too well.
“Sorry,” Nela muttered, looking around desperately for something to change the subject. She pointed toward the long-toed birds stalking across the lily pads. “Remember the story we told on the voyage, the one about the turtle who wanted to fly?” she said brightly. “It’s a pity our turtle didn’t choose those birds to emulate instead of swallows. Waders, not fliers. Turtle might have done quite well as a wader.”
Now it was Bertran who flushed guiltily, aware his thoughts would have been as wounding to Nela as her words had been to him. Perhaps he should make up his mind to stay a wader himself. It might be more profitable than this endless wanting!
All this private agonizing was interrupted by a flap-footed woman of Shallow who bustled onto the piazza to hang lamps above the long table and set it with plates and goblets preliminary to the arrival of two servitors bearing covered platters of food. They looked, so Fringe thought, like frog angels: webbed hands, wide mouths, and bright halos of frizzed hair glowing in the lamplight.
“Can you tell me who’s staying here?” Danivon asked them.
“Persons,” the woman answered, gesturing with a webbed hand. “Women from Beanfields, people from Choire and from Salt Maresh. Some prophet’s men from Thrasis. Come to buy fish or baled fye fiber, mostly.”
Danivon persisted. “Have you heard any rumors of strange things happening lately? Here or up the River Fohm?”
One of the servitors shivered, almost dropping the platter he was carrying. He was, Fringe thought, a very frightened frog angel, his face drawn and pallid.
His fellow came to take the platter from him, and they murmured together.
“Tell me!” Danivon insisted. “I know something’s wrong. What’s happened?”
“Noises,” said the second man, almost belligerently, his arm about his friend. “Noises coming from the reeds. And
people go out in the gossle boat, then there is only the empty boat. His son went in a gossle boat to fish. That’s all we found, the empty boat, but there was … flesh in it.”
The other man gasped, gulped, and fled.
“Have you seen anything at all?” asked Danivon, more gently.
The woman answered soberly, “Some people have seen shining places in the reeds. Sometimes … sometimes dead people, or parts of what might be dead people. Maybe that could be gavers, but gavers don’t leave flesh neatly cut.”
The man nodded abruptly. “We hear also of dragons.”
The sideshow exchanged glances among themselves.
“Dragons?” Danivon prompted.
“We have not seen them here. The men of Thrasis bring word of dragons. They see them from their borders, off in the distance.” The servitor shivered again. “Is it the dragons, taking our people?”
“We don’t know.” Danivon shook his head. “We’d like to find out. Can you tell us anything else.”
They shrugged. Abruptly the woman said, “You asked who was staying here. I forgot the old people.”
“Old people?” breathed Fringe.
“The old woman. The old man. Very old.” She mimed a tottering ancient, stumping along with a cane. “We have never seen people so old. They ask the same questions you do. What have we seen? What do we think? They are away, just now. Soon they will return.”
“Where are they from?” asked Curvis. “What province?”
“Noplace,” said the servitor firmly. “We asked them, and they said noplace.”
He shivered again, making an apologetic gesture, then he and the woman slipped away, like frogs into a pool.
“I take it you expected that information?” asked Bertran with a curious glance at Danivon, as he pulled two chairs close together for himself and Nela.
Danivon, who had started at the word “noplace,” came to himself. “Dragons, yes. Disappearances here in Shallow, no.”
“There was that in Tolerance too,” said Fringe.
“What do you mean?” asked Danivon.
“There was a disappearance in Tolerance just before Fringe and I arrived there,” said Curvis. “And a mysterious death. Two youngsters. I’d forgotten to tell you.”
Danivon’s face paled.
“Talk about that later,” said Nela firmly. “I don’t want to hear about such things over dinner. Did you expect to hear about old people, Danivon?”
Danivon took a deep breath. “I didn’t expect to hear anything about old people, no.” He sat beside them distractedly, paying no attention to the plates they were passing about. “How do we find out more about these dragons?”
“We’ll set up the sideshow on the landing float,” repeated Fringe, watching Danivon from beneath her lashes. “People will see us from these porches and come down to see what we’re doing, and we can ask about dragons. That was the idea, after all, wasn’t it?”
Danivon looked up distractedly. “I suppose that was the idea, yes,” he grunted.
“Evening? Morning?” Curvis demanded, annoyed by Danivon’s distractions.
“Not enough light this evening, it’s already getting dim. We’ll wait for daylight. Tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow,” agreed Fringe thankfully. She longed for an evening spent alone, now that the crowded voyage was over. She would bathe, lengthily. She would luxuriate in quiet. She would wash her hair!
Will you now?
her conscience demanded.
And what about the transmitter cube Boarmus gave you for Danivon?
This fretted her, making her sorry she had remembered it. Danivon was sharing a room with Curvis, however, so she couldn’t simply take it to him. But soon they would go upriver in a boat no less crowded than the Curward vessel had been. No privacy there!
She dithered, wondering how to get him alone without being obvious about it. Well, shit, he was an Enforcer and so was she! There were all those covert Enforcer signals she had learned and almost never used. All she had to do was wait until Curvis was out of the room.
Though Curvis seemed determined not to leave the room. He stuck to Danivon like glue. When he did leave at last, Danivon was right behind him.
“Danivon,” Fringe said, getting him to turn in the doorway. “Sleep well.” She made the surreptitious gesture that requested a private meeting.