Sideshow (26 page)

“Who knows you’re here?” he demands harshly. “Who might be looking for you.”
“Nobody,” whispers Latibor in an exhausted voice. “We’d only been in Houmfon a short time. When we heard Old Man
Daddy was dying, we decided we’d better get out, but before we left, we told our neighbors we were going upriver, to the Viel Gorge.”
“Somebody looking for you in Houmfon?”
“Probably not at all,” says Cafferty. “Certainly not yet. They’d have no reason to. We’re just folk.”
They aren’t just Derbeck folk! Though human enough, they’re too big to be Murrey; too wide-mouthed and high-nosed to be Houm; too sandy-skinned to be High Houm. They are, in fact, distinctive, and Ghatoun doesn’t believe for a minute there won’t be somebody looking for them. Still….
“You believers in Chimi-ahm?” asks the headman very softly, so softly not even his own folks hear him. “You dabbo-dam?”
“No,” whisper the strangers. “We aren’t believers. We’ve never been
taken.”
Could be, as many places as they’ve been, they’re immune to being taken by the hungry ones, Zhulia the Whore, and Chibbi the Dancer and Lord Balal and all the minor manifestations.
“Well then, stay awhile,” the headman says. “Rest.” They both smile gratefully, tremulously, and do rest while the headman speaks to the sentries, doubling their number, putting them twice as far out as usual. So the strangers say nobody’s looking for them. So they say nobody’s missed them. So. Maybe they believe it. That doesn’t mean Ghatoun has to. He’d be within good sense simply to kill them off and send their bodies down the river. Still, wasn’t it that kind of thing what he’d left Houmfon to escape, long ago, not wanting it for him, or for his wife-mate, or his children, or his people. Wasn’t it that kind of thing what he hated most?
Jory and Asner had arrived on the
Bright Winged Dove
, a two-masted river-yat with a crew of eighteen including the captain, and this ship now took the others aboard. Danivon’s troupe now totaled seven, if one included the old folks as part of the show. Danivon, though temporarily elated at Jory’s arrival, was beginning to think of his expedition as notably ridiculous: seven people, two of them so old they could barely stagger, two of them mated like the halves of a scissors, only three able-bodied persons, and one of those a fool woman who attracted
him as no other woman ever had, yet acted like some female Thrasian in purdah. All of them off on a mission to find out what these putative dragons might be, and if that wasn’t a sideshow right enough, and well within the meaning of the term!
“Where do we go first?” asked Nela, excited despite having decided to disapprove of the entire undertaking and everyone in it. If withholding her approval was the only thing she could do, it was at least something. She would not, she had told Bertran stubbornly and at some length, condone.
“We stop at Salt Maresh,” said Curvis, referring to his pocket file. “Too many children have been sent down from Choire, and we’re to Attend the Situation there on our way upstream.”
“Won’t that tell everyone on Panubi we’re Enforcers and not showmen?” asked Fringe.
“According to the captain, the
Dove
is the only ship plying the Fohm at this season,” Danivon replied. “So there’s no one to carry word upstream ahead of us. Besides, stopping at Choire will give us a chance to hear the music. I haven’t been to Choire in years, but I remember the music.”
Fringe asked no more questions. Since the revelations in Shallow, she had been much aware of a recurrent disapproval in Nela’s manner. Fringe was trying to set aside their burgeoning friendship as she had set aside other relationships over the years. Nela, however, refused to be set aside. Despite her occasional coolness, she broke out every now and then with a giggle or a sidelong glance or a whisper to Fringe, as though she’d forgotten to be angry, and when she forgot, Fringe forgot too.
So, they sat near one another beside the rail, watching the delta pass by: the reeds, the gardens, men setting their nets for birds, fishermen checking their lines, gaver hunters sharpening their spears as they dried gaver hides over their smoky fires, women on the stamped-clay threshing floors forking shiny showers of dried grain into the air to let the wind blow away the chaff. Everywhere the color and smell of lilies, everywhere spicy blossoms hanging from the rich muddy banks. Everywhere the little round gossle boats, skimming the waters, like water bugs, darting. Everywhere the plash and murmur of folk. Fringe had seen much apprehension in this place, but not a single weapon. She had heard voices shaking with
fear but not raised in anger. To one reared in Enarae, this equanimity was unbelievable.
“Don’t they ever fight?” she asked Jory and Asner, who had just come up on deck.
“Not the folk of Shallow, no,” replied Jory, while Asner nodded agreement. “They are of calm temperament and cheerful disposition. They work, not hard, but steadily; they make proper occasions to rejoice.”
“With all this peace and tranquillity, I’d think they would have overpopulated their province by now,” Fringe opined.
Jory shook her head. “Their custom dictates that each woman is entitled to keep two living children under a certain age. If she has more than that, they are given to the Fohm.”
Fringe turned from the peaceful scene with a sense that something had shifted inside her. “To the river? Drowned?”
“They are put into a reed basket and sent downstream.”
“Into the ocean? To drown?”
“Except for the few picked up and adopted by Curward sailors, more likely they are eaten by large gavers, many of which throng the delta and middle reaches of the Fohm. A quick death, and sure.”
“But … but …” Fringe wanted to say, “That’s dreadful. That’s terrible.” She said nothing. It was not dreadful, not terrible. It was only diverse, her indoctrination told her. Diversity. Holy diversity. She shut down her momentary disapproval and focused on one of the mind-relaxing exercises she’d learned at the Academy. “Difference is always disturbing,” her instructor had said. “Learn to calm yourselves and accept.”
Nela, however, voiced the thought before Fringe could suppress it. “That’s dreadful!”
“Look about you,” said Jory. “Do the people seem dreadful?” She turned toward Nela and fixed her with a bright-eyed stare. “It is no worse than is done in other places. For example, in your time and country, were there not many children killed?”
Nela said, “Many were, I suppose. But not like this!”
“In your time a primary cause of death in children was by violence, no?”
Nela nodded. “Well, yes,” she admitted. “But the deaths were accidental! Children weren’t specific targets! Or, if they were, it was some crazy person killing them!”
“Oh, I see. If they died by accident, they were not really so dead? It is better to die if your killer is crazy?”
Bertran blurted, “There’s a difference!”
Jory shrugged. “Whether eaten in a basket on the Fohm or killed by a madman with a gun, the children became equally dead. Each form of death is acceptable to its own culture.”
“Of course they weren’t
acceptable,”
cried Nela.
“If they had not been acceptable, something would have been done to stop them. Accidental deaths are usually acceptable, even expedient. And it’s often the business of government to obscure the connections between cause and effect so that expedient deaths will seem to be … accidental.”
“Expedient deaths?” questioned Nela.
“I know what she means.” Bertran turned aside, and they saw sourness cross his face, a fleeting shadow, as on the face of someone who has unwittingly bitten into unripe fruit. “If you are overpopulated, or have an underclass, as in our time, it’s to the advantage of everyone if they kill each other off.”
“One advantage of the Hobbs Land Gods,” murmured Asner. “That there is no overpopulation, no underclass.”
“If you don’t mind being enslaved,” cried Fringe.
“Actually, I’ve wondered about that,” said Asner thoughtfully. “I’ve been places where the Hobbs Land Gods were active, and it didn’t seem that bad to me!”
Fringe backed away from him as though he were contaminated, her face drawn into an expression of disbelieving horror.
“He’s not going to infect you,” said Jory impatiently. “He was just trying to tell you something.”
“I don’t want to hear it!”
“I do,” cried Nela. “I want to hear it!”
“I merely wanted to point out,” said Asner, “that those who were influenced by the Hobbs Land Gods—”
“Enslaved,” spat Fringe.
“Influenced,” repeated Asner. “Those who were influenced were happier and less violent but no less curious or intellectually free than any of us here and now.”
“I don’t care,” cried Fringe. “A slave is a slave.” She turned away, angry and embarrassed. “No matter how the slavery feels to him.”
“I merely remarked—”
“Who are you to remark anything!” demanded Fringe. “You, Asner, who are you, to talk so of the Hobbs Land
Gods? What gives either of you the right to meddle in my … all our lives?”
Jory fixed her with an amused eye. “As to who I am, Fringe Owldark, I have been a number of people: wife and mother to persons long departed, lover and friend of unhuman marvels, savior of humanity (so I have been told), fartraveler, prophetess and guide, bender of time, explorer of the far reaches, and now—”
“And now retired,” interrupted Asner, jabbing her with his elbow.
Jory turned an amused stare on him, concluding, “As for the rest, I meddle when I can. To the extent I am allowed.”
Fringe flushed. “Well, if you’re going to meddle with me, I have a right to know why!” Hot with annoyance she looked down at her writhing hands and worked them, finger by finger, as though readying herself to take up weapons and do battle.
“She’s right, you’ve hectored her and them enough, Jory,” said Asner, turning to gesture across the railings at the surrounding watery landscape. “You’ve philosophized and theorized sufficiently! If Fringe prefers to be miserable in her own way rather than be happy in some other way, it’s her choice. The preference isn’t unique or original with her, so let us discuss something else. Geography, for example. We’re getting near the border of Shallow, at the top of the delta. The water meadows of Salt Maresh will begin to show up soon, with their long-legged fishers. There’s a small river port not far upstream where we’ll be stopping to—”
“Oh, Holy Mother,” cried Nela, staring across the moving waters.
“What?” Fringe looked up.
“Is that your diversity!? Oh, oh, Holy Mother.” Nela leaned and pointed. Following the extended finger, Fringe saw. A basket floating out in midstream, bobbing on the wavelets, carrying a child some three or four years old who held tight to the closely woven rim and cried silently, mouth open, eyes and nose streaming.
“You said babies …” said Fringe to Jory, surprised and offended at this event following so soon upon her catechism.
Jory corrected her, “I said children.”
Nela cried, “Why would anybody … why would they send a toddler instead of an infant. I don’t understand!”
“Perhaps the toddler is a boy and the family prefers a newborn daughter,” suggested Asner calmly. “Or vice versa.”
“Perhaps the toddler is defective in some way,” suggested Jory quietly. “Or, perhaps, the child and its mother simply did not get along.”
The basket bobbed on the river waves. The child looked up, saw them, stretched out its arms, and cried across the water. “P’ease … p’ease….” The river flow swept the basket on past, the child’s voice still rising in a wail of fright. “Oh, oh, pick Onny up, p’ease. Pick Onny up….”
Bertran heaved himself away from the rail, Nela thrashing in his wake, sweat beading both their foreheads. “I can’t believe this,” Bertran snarled. “I can’t….”
Where the basket bobbed, something large and many toothed raised itself from the water and gulped hugely.
Fringe turned blind eyes away from the water, shutting out the sight, driving out the memory of it. Such things were. Diversity implied both pleasure and pain, both justice and injustice, both life and death. That’s the way things were. She excused herself and stalked off, brushing by Danivon as she went.
“What’s the matter with her?” demanded Danivon, who had just come from below.
Asner pointed where the basket had been and explained in a low voice, “A big gaver came up from below and gulped down the child. I think Fringe was upset by it.”
Danivon snarled. Well, he had told her, back in Enarae, that some places on Elsewhere would have disturbing habits. She should have prepared herself then! What did she think he’d been talking about? Table manners? One couldn’t go getting outraged over every child floating down the Fohm, over every skull on the rack at Molock, over every bloody pile of street-corner corpses in Derbeck. And what would she say when she saw the women in Thrasis! Well, she wouldn’t, luckily, since women Enforcers didn’t go into Thrasis, which thought reminded him to fume once more that there was no good use for Enforcers who were unsuited to the work.
So far as Danivon was concerned, that included most women Enforcers. He started to say so, angrily.
Then, noticing the tears running down Nela’s face, the expression on Bertran’s, he decided to say nothing for the time being. Their faces reminded him that Fringe was not the only one being exposed to true diversity for the first time. There were things several of them had to learn about accepting diversity without getting upset. There were things
about being a Council Enforcer—or being in an Enforcer’s company—which undoubtedly took a little getting used to.
Night comes on the river, and dark. The people go to their rest, all but one. Jory stands at the railing of the
Dove
listening to the chuckling water. The voice that speaks inside her head is familiar as her own, dear as a lover, treasured as a friend she has known forever.
“Evil here, woman. Growing day by day. You feel it.”
A sigh comes, vast as hurricane winds, and Jory’s hair stirs in the breath.
She can feel the evil. She nods and says tiredly, “The question is the same one I’ve been asking all along, where’s it coming from? Evil comes from unchecked power; only Council Supervisory has power; but this evil is not theirs. Where is the power from which it comes?”
A feeling, as of a frustrated shrug.
“Not from outside.”
“Not from outside, no. It’s from here, on the planet. But where? It’s everywhere. There seems to be no focus, no place of origin….”
“Not Tolerance?”
“Well, I thought so at first, but where in Tolerance? Not Boarmus, poor fellow, doing his muddled best. Not Council Supervisory. They parade their cruelty openly, calling it diplomacy, calling it expediency, as governments always have. But still, they have a certain gentle-folkian standard that prevents their being brutes, rather reminding me of the democracies, back in the centuries of my era. Wanting to be good, you know. Wanting to be on the side of the angels. Able, once in a while, to muster the support needed for a brief crusade, but never able to continue in righteousness for long against the demands of opposing constituencies.”