Sideshow (24 page)

As a second act, Curvis juggled burning torches, catching them behind his back, Nela and Bertran told funny stories—at least, stories the Curward sailors had assured them were funny, though many of them seemed pointless to the twins—and Danivon went about sniffing at people, either whispering or trumpeting his smellings as he went. “You are in love,” he whispered. Or “Your lost flail is lying under a pile of chaff on the threshing floor,” he said loudly. The crowd cheered, becoming larger the longer they performed.
“All we need is cooch dancers,” Nela said, giggling, almost happily. “And a bearded lady and a contortionist and a lightning calculator.”
“I don’t think these people would care about lightning calculators or cooch dancers,” said Bertran, who was finding the joyous naiveté of the audience irresistible. “We seem to be doing well enough as we are. They certainly accept us as an amusement!”
“Have we attracted any people from Thrasis or Beanfields yet?” Nela asked.
“There, crowded around Fringe’s machine,” said Curvis, indicating various outlanders with Danivon already sniffing among them like a hound on the trail. After a time he beckoned to his colleagues, and they concluded their performance with many bows and congratulations to their audience.
When they had put their heads together, Danivon reported:
“None of the Thrasian or Beanfields people have had any disappearances or funny air or any of that. The men from Thrasis have seen dragons, creatures taller than men but not huge, of various colors, who have been seen to carry things, perhaps tools. Sometimes they wear clothing, and they are always seen at a distance, never up close.” He was speaking to Fringe, as though she were the only one present, a fact that Curvis noted with distaste. “The women of Beanfields have seen them only rarely, though they assert that Mother-dear has decided the dragons are friendly.”
“Friendly?” asked Curvis in a sneering tone. “How would she know?”
“How do Mother-dears know anything?” Danivon shrugged, annoyed, though whether at Curvis’s question or his manner the others couldn’t tell. “Maybe she merely means inoffensive.”
“The fact they have been inoffensive where the local people are concerned doesn’t mean they will be with us,” drawled Curvis. “They may find us offensive. Or rather, you, Danivon. You have some history of being offensive, do you not?”
Danivon said stiffly, “If you’re referring to the reaction of the Inner Circle when I denounced old Paff….”
“Old Paff?” asked Fringe.
Curvis drawled, “A member of the Inner Circle. He had a nasty habit of picking up children from places like Molock or Derbeck and using them to satisfy certain personal desires.”
“What did you do?” Nela asked Danivon.
“I stood on the stairs in the Great Rotunda and denounced him, as I was taught to do in cases of abuse of power.”
“What happened?” Fringe was suddenly interested despite herself.
“Paff killed himself, shortly before I left Tolerance.”
“I don’t understand how you could have offended anyone,”
cried Nela. “They should have been glad you uncovered such wickedness.”
Curvis gave Nela a long look that changed from annoyance to amusement. He turned to Danivon to say jeeringly, “It seems you have not explained our ways to our guests, Danivon.” He turned back to Nela. “The Inner Circle already knew about old Paff. Had known about him forever.”
“Please,” cried Nela. “I don’t understand this. You are saying your ruling circle knew this man was a child killer. It did nothing. What kind of a place is this? Where is your law?”
“Here,” said Fringe, tapping her chest.
“You are the law?”
“Enforcers are the arms and hands of the law,” she said. “I am, and Danivon and Curvis. And the Council is the voice of the law. If there is a situation that needs attending, we Attend the Situation!”
Another silence, interrupted when Nela said in a tiny voice, “So, the three of you are what? Executioners?”
“I rather imagine,” said Bertran in a distant voice. “Hit men. Hit women.”
“Enforcers,” said Fringe stiffly, detecting the brittle dismay in their voices, hurt by it, but not in the least understanding it. “It is an honorable thing to be. And we have honor to maintain.” She badly wanted the understanding no Enforcer would ever beg for.
Nela ignored her tone. “Where does honor enter in?”
Fringe stiffened. “Honor enters in in that we are not skulkers. We do not kill unless we must. Even then, we do not maim, we do not torture. If we kill covertly, we do it only to save apprehension or disorder. When the circumstances require it, we go face-to-face. Honorably.”
“Oh, goody,” said Nela angrily.
“High Noon.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You shoot it out, you and whoever? To see who’s the fastest gunslinger. Is that it?”
Fringe felt herself growing angry at this slighting reference to the sanctity of Guntoter. In Enarae, one did not say “gunslinger” in that scornful tone! “If Council Supervisory has ordered it, yes.”
“So you’re only following orders,” said Bertran.
Fringe wiped all expression from her face and regarded them both coldly. “You seem to have become unfriendly toward me, but I don’t understand why.”
Nela shook her head. “What Bertran means is, in our time there were evil men who did some extremely nasty things, and when they were brought to trial, their defense was that they were only obeying orders, or if not orders, then the wishes of their superiors. It was a cliché in our time, to excuse all crimes.”
“But if they obeyed orders, they did not commit crimes and the men were not evil,” Fringe objected hotly. “If proper authority says we are to do something, and if, as sensible men, we have acquiesced to proper authority, why then—”
“I gather it was not so in your time,” interrupted Danivon curiously.
“No,” Bertran asserted, patting Nela’s shoulder to calm her. “At least not entirely. We did have a good deal of disagreement about what constituted proper authority. It was asserted by many that natural human rights took precedence over the authority of the state.”
“Human rights?”
“The right to peaceful existence in one’s home, to be free of unreasonable harassment, of false imprisonment or torture, to speak freely one’s feelings and opinions, to assemble with like-minded friends, to worship or not, as one liked. If I hear what you are telling me, there are no human rights on Elsewhere.”
Nela shook her head, confused. “But that can’t be, not if Danivon denounced this man because he murdered children….”
“No,” said Danivon, offended. “That’s not why I denounced him. That would have been improper.”
They stared at him, and he at them, neither understanding the other.
“Our job is to protect diversity,” he said through gritted teeth, “the very diversity from which the answer to the Great Question will emerge, the very diversity that is the essence of humanity! In that diversity children are always being killed for any number of reasons. If the killing is proper to that place, then it is proper. But this old man took children across
borders.
He
interfered
in the affairs of a province! Here on Elsewhere, we let one another alone.”
Nela quivered in outrage. Bertran squeezed her shoulder and said softly, “There is much we have to learn about Elsewhere. I don’t think we have the right to comment. Not yet.”
Fringe looked pleadingly at Nela, who turned her head
and stared angrily away over the lagoon. She started to speak, but felt Bertran’s fingers pinching. It was an old signal between them, and they excused themselves. As by mutual consent, they headed toward the sanitary facilities at the top of the stairs.
“What have we come to?” Nela whispered as they climbed.
“Nothing we have any control over,” he replied sensibly. “I think we should take breathing space and withhold judgment.”
“But, I liked her! I really liked her, Berty. I liked Danivon too. And they have no more moral sense than a pig, or a tiger,” she cried.
Bertran shrugged, sending a like tremor through his sibling, as he whispered, “Look, Nela, we grew up in a religious family in a small town. We were educated in parochial school, which you have to admit is hardly a microcosm of things as they are. Then we went to the circus, and except for some raging egos, that was fairly well insulated from the world too. I can’t say for certain that our time was all that different! We’d be wiser not to judge too quickly.”
She shook her head stubbornly.
“Besides,” he went on, “we’re stuck with them, Nela. We haven’t any choice. Even if we decide we detest this world and all its works—including Danivon and Fringe, who, you have to admit, have been damned nice to us—we’re here, with no chance of going anywhere else.”
“I don’t care,” she said stubbornly.
He shook her. “Unless you’re suddenly avid for martyrdom, we can’t toss away friends because they’re not … maybe not the friends we would have chosen at home.”
She bit her lip and was silent.
While Fringe stared after the twins with troubled eyes, the others gathered their equipment into a pile, ready to carry it back to their rooms. They had just finished when a shout from across the water drew their attention from their paraphernalia to an approaching gainder-yat.
Fringe heard the cry and turned, still so preoccupied with what she had been thinking that she thought the old woman on the deck of the yat was Aunty or Nada come alive again. The old thing was staring at her with that alert, fowl-eyed look that had typified Fringe’s kin, a look that seemed to search her soul for something edible. However, as the yat drew
closer, she saw this wasn’t Nada or Aunty, but someone even older, a wisp of a thing, a clutter of bones in a tight-drawn skin. The man leaning on a stick beside her was also very old, though not so old as she, and Fringe recognized them!
Curvis put down an armload of juggling gear and moved to catch the ropes the oarsmen tossed him. The others straightened from their tasks and watched. When the plank shuddered down, the old woman tottered toward it without taking her eyes from Fringe. Something shadowy moved behind her, moved and shifted as she cried out in a shrill bird voice:
“There, Fringe Owldark! Carry an old woman down.”
Fringe, astonished, found herself carrying. She had a confused impression that she was not the only one carrying, but on the landing stage she was the one setting the old thing on her feet once more and keeping an arm around her so that she didn’t blow away.
“Why, girl, you’ve grown beautiful,” the old woman cried, releasing a hand to pat at her cloud of white hair. “Remember me? Jory. Jory the Traveler.”
Fringe repeated the name, “Jory, Jory the Traveler,” as though the title might do something to solve the mystery of this old one’s appearance here, at this far corner of the world.
“Fringe?” said the old woman. “I am disappointed! Don’t you know me?”
Fringe stared at her helplessly. Recognize her, yes, but know her? “When I was a girl,” she said at last. “Long ago.”
“Not
that
long ago! Why, it was I who gave you your name. Did I tell you, Asner? It was I who gave her her name.”
“You’ve told me,” said the old man, pushing between the two of them. He’d needed no help getting down the plank, plunking slowly along with his stick. “Don’t let her fuss you, girl. She does that all the time. Travels around. Meets people. Then pops in on ’em half a lifetime later, all innocence.” He mimed a teacup, lifted eyebrows, “‘Well, of course we met, thirty years ago at the carnival in New Athens.’ ‘Don’t you remember, we shared a dish of thusle custard fifty years ago in Denial.’ Half of it’s sheer fiction, made up for the occasion.”
“This isn’t fiction,” the old woman said with a laugh. “We’ve been down along the shores of Deep, fishing.”
“Did you catch anything?” Fringe asked stupidly.
“Not what we needed,” replied Jory, looking over Fringe’s shoulder to catch Danivon’s glance. He was standing a little
distance away, staring as though his eyes would fall out, his nose twitching. Then he came forward in a rush.
“Who?” he murmured, thrusting in among them. “Now who’re these people, ah?”
“Jory,” muttered Fringe unwillingly, indicating the old woman with her free hand. “And Asner.”
“The people from
noplace?”
crowed Danivon. “Is that who you are? Ah?”
“Asner,” complained the old woman with a hint of laughter. “Did you tell the Shallow people that? That we were from noplace?”
The old man shrugged. “I might’ve,” he said. “When you’ve been as many places as we have, it’s hard to remember where you’re from.”
Danivon grinned and sniffed. “People from noplace. Now isn’t that strange. Someone I know received a rather peculiar … suggestion from noplace. Would you know anything about that?”
They turned on him looks of bland incomprehension, which he met with studied calm.
“What’s on your mind, boy?” demanded the old man in a grouchy tone. “Don’t fuss us, now. Don’t play about making conversation. I can tell there’s something on your mind.”
“How can you tell that?”
“How can you tell when it’s raining, boy! By the water on your head! Don’t waste time. You get as old as we, there’s no time to waste.”
Danivon sniffed deeply, smiled slowly, like a sunrise. “We’re planning an expedition upriver and you seem to be headed that way. Am I right?”
“Think of that,” Jory interrupted. “An expedition. So exciting, expeditions. Moving about, place to place, seeing new things, unraveling mysteries. Even when you think you’ve seen everything there is to see, there’s something else … beckoning.”
Asner regarded Danivon with a skeptical eye. “What’re you wanting, boy? Directions?” He looked up, his eyes widened, he nudged Jory and murmured, “Would you look at that?”
Nela and Bertran were descending the stairs in their synchronized fashion, Bertran’s arm around Nela’s shoulders.
“I do think that’s ziahmeeztwinz,” murmured Jory.
“Joined people,” said Fringe.
“What I said,” the old woman remarked. “Now isn’t that interesting. Wonderful how travel broadens one, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said he. “What’s ziahmeeztwinz?”
“Two babies born joined together,” she said. “Except they’re always two boys or two girls.”
“Not in this case,” said Fringe. “And how do you know about such things?”
“Oh, my dear, a person as widely traveled as I knows bits and pieces about a lot of things.”
“I’ve been in most places on Elsewhere,” said Danivon. “And I don’t know about ziahmeeztwinz.”
“But you haven’t been where I’ve been, boy. I don’t mean
here,”
said the old woman. “I don’t mean
now.”
She smiled sweetly at Nela and Bertran who had, by this time, joined the group. “I’ve never met a pair of ziahmeeztwinz before.”