Sideshow (42 page)

She shrugged elaborately, not meeting his eyes, then looked up full of sudden intent. “I’m bound to tell you I don’t think this rescue attempt is well thought out,” she said.
“Danivon’s nose says he won’t die.”
“Does Danivon’s nose tell you whether he’ll maybe wish he had?” she asked gently.
Zasper saw something much like pity in her eyes, though he couldn’t say why, for Danivon’s nose had been silent upon that matter.
When the next summons came from the golden faces, Nela and Bertran could not rise. They made a futile endeavor, but their bodies would not respond. Fringe did her reverence alone, went to the altar alone.
“What’s the matter with them?” a new voice asked.
“You damaged them,” Fringe replied. “They need time to recover. If they recover.”
Silence. Then the new voice, possibly a male voice, said, “They would work better if they were apart.”
“True,” said Fringe. This voice was worse than either of the others. The others had been … malicious, perhaps. Childish in a nasty way. But this voice had real hatred in it, real malice, real evil.
“Maybe we’ll take them apart.”
Fringe swallowed bile. “It would have to be very cleverly done,” she said in as quiet a voice as she could manage. “Otherwise it would kill them. Of course, god could do it without
killing them. If they died, we would know it was not god who had done it.”
“Oh, I could do it,” said the voice with a chuckle. “I’ve been learning how. Very interesting too. Very … educational. If I took your friends apart, they’d work better at the duty we’re assigning you, and since only god could do it, you would then know who god is. Correct?”
Fringe moistened dry lips and whispered, “What duty is that?”
“You must answer a question before we let you go,” the voice gulped.
“If we can.”
“No matter if you can or not. You must.”
Anger bested her. “That’s not logical. That’s completely arbitrary. To demand that someone do something he may not be able to do.”
“We have consulted Files.” The voice bubbled with hideous laughter. “Gods often demand that people do things they cannot do or things that are dangerous or onerous or hateful. And when the people fail, gods punish them. Should I be less a god than they?”
Fringe swallowed. “Are you a god?”
“Oh, indeed. I am Chimi-ahm the proud, whom you offended mightily. I am Chimi-ahm the hunter, whom you robbed of his prey. I am Chimi-ahm, monstrous and mighty, all knowing, all seeing.” The voice was swallowed in a great shout of malicious laughter.
Fringe tried twice before she could get the words out. “What’s the question?”
The voice sucked and snickered, “You must say, ‘Oh, High Lord Chimi-ahm …’”
She bit down her rage and hatred, letting only submission show. “Oh, High Lord Chimi-ahm, what is the question we must answer.”
“No, no. You must say, ‘High Lord Chimi-ahm, I am sorry for having offended you by taking away your sacrifice.’”
The words stuck in her throat, and a vise closed about her heart.
“High Lord Chimi-ahm,” she gasped. “I am sorry for having offended you by taking away your sacrifice.””
‘Please accept my unworthy self in retribution …’”
“Please accept my unworthy self in retribution.”
“Ah. Nicely done. Now, the question you must answer is this: ‘What is the ultimate destiny of man?’”
Fringe’s mouth fell open. Whatever she might have expected, it had not been this.
“But that’s the Great Question,” she gasped. “The historic one. The diversity of Elsewhere was expected to answer that question in the fullness of time….” So she had been taught. So she had heard every year on Great Question Day.
“Yes. How clever of you to notice it’s the Great Question.”
“But, we’re only three people.”
“A hundred, a dozen, or only three. You must answer it, nonetheless.”
“Indeed you must,” said the Magna Mater voice sternly.
“You must,” said the other female voice, almost with indifference. “Man must answer the question, and you are man.”
Now Fringe’s nervous glances detected at least four separate groups, each centered upon a spokesface.
“You’re not all Chimi-ahm, are you?” she asked.
“Lord Breaze!” trumpeted a hard and handsome face, heretofore silent.
“Gracious Lady Therabas Bland,” whispered another, a sly voice.
“Magna Mater, Mintier Thob,” another simpered.
They were separate yet united, speaking the same words from a hundred throats.
The one calling himself Lord Breaze said in a kindly voice, “Though I am a newcomer to these councils, my fellow deities tell me god must receive the answer to the question. Reason tells me this is so. Man was made by god to love him. Man does god’s will because he loves him. You are man, we are god. Therefore, you will answer the question.”
Chimi-ahm gurgled menacingly. “And if you will not do it for love, you will do it because otherwise we’ll hurt you and your friends. Then, if you do not answer, we will kill you.” The voice was mechanical and yet lubricious. “Of course, we may kill you anyway.”
“Gods do this,” said Gracious Lady Therabas Bland, golden faces nodding from the high altar piece. “We have read the words of heroes and prophets and priests. Even in ancient times, this was how gods behaved.”
• • •
As soon as Zasper and Danivon had departed in the flier, the
Dove
left the tumult of Thrasis and sailed upriver once more, past the great wall that stretched away to the north as far as they could see.
“Who built the wall?” asked Curvis.
“It was here when Elsewhere was colonized by the Brannigans,” said Jory.
“I thought the world was empty when men arrived.”
“Not totally, no. Certainly not behind the wall.”
“How far does the wall go?”
“All the way around Panubi,” said Asner. “A great circle. Separating what is inside from what is outside.”
More than that they would not or could not tell him, and though Curvis fumed with annoyance and impatience, it did him no good.
They went past the plains where the women of Thrasis had walked, and into a land of rolling hills. The swamps along the shore became rocky banks, the banks became cliffs, and the river narrowed into a foaming torrent between the looming walls of a gorge. Below the gorge, the tiny boats from Derbeck lay empty all along the shore. Unable to make way against the torrent, their occupants had gone on afoot.
At the entrance to the gorge, the crew fished a float out of the torrent, heaved it onto the deck, and hauled in a great hawser, dripping with weed and small mollusks. This was clamped to the towing bitts on the bow, while most of the crew went ashore to trudge westward on a narrow footpath, up the gorge and out of sight. Some hours later the line pulled slackly to the surface of the river, and against the full weight of the river the ship was tugged slowly up the narrow gorge whose towering walls seemed within reach of their arms.
At the far end of the canyon, they came up to the monstrous spool on which the mighty hawser was wound, its huge gears connecting it to the capstan where the
Dove
’s sailors trudged around a well-worn track in company with three huge beasts with flapping ears. When the
Dove
had anchored, the hawser was loosed and the great roller turned freely while the current carried the cable-end float downstream.
The
Dove
set sail once more, leaving the beasts and their keepers behind. Gentle hills took the place of rocky walls and beyond them rolling prairies stretched to the limit of sight. North of the river the fires of an encampment lit many bright tents against a shadowed carpet of meadows.
“For the women of Thrasis, no doubt,” Jory said to Curvis. “And for the Murrey of Derbeck. When they arrive.”
“Who put them there? Who built them?”
“Well, Curvis, the encampment wasn’t here when I left, and I didn’t see it built. No doubt we shall find out soon enough.”
“Where are we going?”
“Noplace,” she said.
“Who’s there?” he asked angrily.
She shook her head wearily. “Let it come as a surprise to you, Curvis. As it did, once upon a time, to Asner and me.”
He was not interested in a surprise. He was not interested in anything that was happening. He wanted to be wherever Danivon was.
She turned away from him without a word. It was obvious he was staying on the
Dove
merely because there was nowhere else to go.

12

In Derbeck the god Chimi-ahm killed twenty or so of the Houm and amused himself thereafter by dancing upon their bones. The Houm had neglected an esoteric detail in their reverence to the Great Lord.
In Enarae two ganger tribes staged a pitched battle in the Hall of Final Equity, which ended several days later with all the gangers, the entire executive staff of the Hall, and numerous bystanders either dead or about to die. The battle had been over a question of precedence between Guntoter and a new goddess called Magna Mater.
In Choire several singers died of exhaustion following a three-day marathon hymn of praise for Most Gracious Lady Thob, who had lately acquired an insatiable thirst for adulation.
On one of the Seldom Isles, a formerly pastoral tribe howled and drummed lengthily before sacrificing one of their more likely virgins to the Gods of the Golden Faces, who had recently manifested themselves at the back of a shallow cavern along the shore.
In Tolerance, the Enforcer Lodge went into emergency session, adjourning after a lengthy meeting to send the Master with a delegation to the Provost.
From the mezzanine of the Great Rotunda, Boarmus saw them coming. Everyone saw them coming, not that there were all that many people sitting around looking. Most people spent their time hiding these days, and who could blame them? Of those few present, however, no one missed the
marching feet, the nodding plumes, the grim expressions. The only surprising thing about it, Boarmus thought, was that they had waited so long.
“Master,” he greeted the leader of the group, somewhat drunkenly. He’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to drown his too intimate knowledge of what was going on.
“Provost, sir.” The Master looked at his boots, trying to find a diplomatic way of saying it and finding none.
“We’ve just been having an emergency meeting. It’s clear we can’t go on like this. We’re being chewed up and spit out! We’ve got Enforcers going out on routine missions getting maimed, murdered, disappeared! We’ve got whole provinces on the brink of breakdown! What in the name of all Enforcement is going on?”
“I’ve been hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you,” whispered Boarmus, looking furtively around him.
“Tell us what? Tell us the world is falling apart?”
“I’ve been hoping it would settle down.”
“What would settle down?”
Boarmus sighed. “What’s happened is, we’ve got a god … gods.”
“The Hobbs Land Gods,” cried the Master, going into a defensive half crouch, as though to repel any attack of creeping divinity.
“No, no,” whispered Boarmus. “Far from it.” He looked around again, wondering what was watching him, what was listening. Well, the hell with it. They could hardly expect discretion at this stage of their game. Not as obtrusive as they’d become. He leaned forward and in a rapid narrative, punctuated by tears, chest heavings, and futile poundings of the table with a pudgy fist, he told the story beginning with Brannigan Galaxity, back in the long ago.
“So,” he concluded, “we’ve got these … these … gods, who used to be professors at Brannigan, using us for playthings. And we don’t know what to do….” Which was an understatement. The entire Council Supervisory, what was left of it, was as baffled, frustrated, and frightened as Boarmus himself.
“You’re aware there are several provinces where the death rate now far exceeds the birth rate?” the Master asked.
Boarmus nodded hopelessly.
“You’re aware that over in Morlub the suicide rate is so
high the place will probably be totally depopulated within a few days?”
Boarmus nodded again. “I follow the monitors,” he murmured. “The ones that are left. It’s happening everywhere.” Greatly daring, he’d checked Files and found historic examples for everything that was happening, including mass suicide at the behest of religious leaders. Remarkably, there were a few provinces where sweetness and jollity prevailed, almost as though the Gods had decided to try a controlled experiment. Pain here. Pleasure there. See what’s most satisfactory. So far, they’d come down heavily on the side of pain.
“Is there some way I can keep my Enforcers from getting killed?” the Master persisted. “What would you suggest?”
Boarmus licked his lips. “Propitiate them.”
“And how in hell do we do that?”
“I don’t know. Processions, maybe? Sacrifices? Rituals of some kind or other.”
“And while we’re doing all this propitiating, what do we do about Enforcement?”
Boarmus shrugged. “What they’ll let you, I guess. Before you send anyone out on a mission, maybe it would be a good idea to find out which side the gods are on.”
He tried to sound positive, even while carefully not mentioning he’d learned to his dismay that quite often the gods were amused by being on several sides at once.
When Nela and Bertran next woke from their exhausted slumber, Fringe was sitting cross-legged beside the entry to the larger cavern, peering through it as though to decipher some riddle. When she saw them moving, she came to help them sit upright.
“Is there any of that food left?” asked Nela. “I feel so weak.”
“Lots of it,” Fringe replied, fetching a handful of the dry flakes to divide among the twins and the disconsolate pocket munk that was perched on Bertran’s shoulder. When they had eaten a few mouthfuls and pushed away the rest, she fetched water in her cupped hands for them to drink, then offered the wet kerchief with which she had washed her own face.
“If I look like you do, I look like death warmed over,” Nela said to Bertran as she rubbed the grime from her cheeks.
“I’m afraid it’s one for all and all for one,” he said, trying
to smile. In fact, he thought, if he looked like she did, death wasn’t even warm.
“Did anything happen while we were out of it?” Nela asked.
“I had another interview with them,” said Fringe, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the faces. “What do you think they are?”
As soon as she asked the question, she knew it wasn’t a wise thing to have done, but Bertran was already answering her.
“Something that was once human, once alive, but is now … not alive. Something that is at least partly mechanical, and no longer at all sane,” he said.
Fringe put her finger to her lips and looked upward, shaking her head.
Bertran sighed. Well, yes, they were probably overheard, but what difference did it make? “It could have been more careful of us,” he said emphatically. “It didn’t seem to mind hurting us.”
Fringe agreed. The things didn’t mind hurting. Seemed to enjoy it, in fact.
“What did they want this time?” asked Nela.
“Oh, the usual,” she said from a dry throat. “A few threats. They intend to hurt us again, rather badly if we don’t do what they want.” Though she’d tried to think up gentle words while they slept, there was no easy way to say it.
“Which is?”
“Answer a question for them.”
“Gladly,” said Nela. “Our lives are an open book. Anything at all they’d like to know.”
“I’m afraid it’s not that kind of question.”
“What is it?” asked Bertran apprehensively.
“They want to know what the destiny of man is.”
The two stared at her disbelievingly, Nela fretfully rubbing her shoulder and chest where the pain was worst.
“You’re joking!” she blurted.
“No,” said Fringe, wishing she could say yes, all a joke, all a funniness, let’s get out of here and forget it. “Not a joke, I’m afraid. They really want to know.”
“But isn’t that the Great Question? The one you and Danivon have talked about? The one all the people on Elsewhere were supposed to answer sooner or later?”
She nodded. It was indeed.
“But how …” Nela was speechless. She tried again. “Even if we came up with something, how would we know if we’d answered it correctly?”
“We’ll know,” said a voice.
Afar, on the golden wall, a face peered at them, a mouth moved. “We’ll know. The populace will acclaim the answer. The truth of it will be self-evident.”
The three were silent.
“Come now,” said the voice, one of the female voices, Fringe couldn’t tell which. “Come now. You’ve been guilty of blasphemy, you know. If you were more loving, more adoring, more worshipful, you wouldn’t call us insane. But we won’t punish you for that. Not now. Not if you give us the answer.”
“If all of Elsewhere couldn’t answer the question in a thousand years or so, how the hell do you expect us to answer it?” cried Nela, tried past endurance.
The air sparkled among them. On the far wall, the faces came alive, focused, avid, while pain surged through nerves; while their muscles jerked and danced; while flesh burned, then chilled, then burned again.
When it was over, the twins were blue and gasping. Fringe herself was in little better shape, though still able to curse silently at the creatures on the far wall who were watching her eagerly, waiting for her, for any of them to do or say something more.
Bertran’s hand was on her own. He pressed gently, saying,
Be silent. Be silent. Don’t give them any excuse to hurt us again.
The faces were like the hecklers at the sideshow. One could escalate a mere heckling to physical violence if one wasn’t careful. Certainly these beings were in the mood for it.
Fringe was silent. The red haze in her eyes faded. Tears dripped unheeded. She closed her eyes not to see the faces staring, waiting, ready to do something else, offer some further pain, some further horror.
The pain had left a sick exhaustion in its wake. She slipped into a half faint, half slumber, conscious of where she was, yet adrift. Bertran’s hand was still on hers, still pressing hers. When she opened her eyes again, she saw only darkness.
“They’ve turned out our lights,” she said stupidly.
“To encourage concentration,” Bertran whispered, only a hand-breadth from her ear. “No doubt.”
“Bertran and I have been discussing things,” Nela whispered in her turn. “Our chances and all that.”
“We don’t believe they’re good,” Bertran offered.
“We’ve thought of dying, lots of times,” Nela confessed. “But the idea of doing it here, now, in all this darkness, all this pain, is revolting! Though maybe we will want to die, before they’re through with us.”
Bertran cleared his throat. “We have this thing we’d like to try. It may mean nothing, but then again …”
“It can’t hurt anything,” Nela offered.
“Ah?” said Fringe.
“We’re really not able to move around. We wondered if you’d mind finding us a loose rock, something about the size of a fist.”
Obediently, Fringe felt her way to the rocky wall and along the base of it, hefting stones, returning with something only a little larger than asked for. “Will this do?” she asked, feeling for his hands.
Bertran took it. She sat beside him once more, feeling the muscles in his arm and shoulder moving and bunching as he hefted the stone.
“This should do nicely,” he said. “Nela, you ready?”
“More or less,” she whispered.
He took something from around his neck and put it on the ledge near Fringe’s leg. “Keep your fingers away from here,” he instructed. “Nela?”
“All right,” she said.
They spoke together, in hushed voices, slowly, very clearly.
“We want to know what the destiny of man is, and we want the things persecuting us to believe the answer and let us alone.”
Bertran hammered downward with the stone, once, twice. Brilliant blue light lit the cavern momentarily, then vanished with a cracking sound, as though the mountain had broken asunder.
“What the hell was that?” demanded Fringe, rubbing her eyes where jagged afterimages swam against the darkness.
“When Celery came, all that long while ago,” Nela said, “it left us this little transmitter thing. When we decided on our payment, Berty and I, we were supposed to speak it, then smash the transmitter. So we just did.”
“But that was thousands of years ago!”
“I know. We don’t really expect it to work. The Celerians are all gone….”
Long gone, it appeared, for nothing happened.
Nela sighed. “I supposed it isn’t possible that we might
actually answer the question?” She tried to say it cheerfully. It was up to all of them to keep their spirits up, she no less than the other two, though all she wanted to do was curl up against the stone and retreat into thumbsucking silence. “The show,” Aunt Sizzy was wont to say, “may not have to go on, but we don’t buy groceries unless it does!”
“Men have probably come up with all possible answers by now and discarded them,” said Bertran.
“I’ve never thought about the Great Question much since I was a kid,” said Fringe. “It hasn’t seemed relevant, somehow.”
“Oh, but yes.” He laughed, the sound teetering on the edge of control. “Think of how much time and effort it would have saved if we’d only known what man’s destiny actually was. Think of our time, all the fundamentalist fascists versus the civil libertines; all the liberals throwing our money at the poor versus the conservatives throwing our money at themselves; all the male versus female controversies, all the revolutions, sexual, political, and economic. How marvelous if we’d only known what was important and what wasn’t!”
Fringe was amused despite herself. “What did you think man’s destiny was?”
He heaved a deep, obviously painful breath. “Nela, what did we think man’s destiny was? When we were children.”
Nela made a slight humming noise, as though to advise the darkness she was thinking, or as though she might be clenching her teeth to keep from crying. “Well, let’s see,” she said at last in a tight voice that barely hid hysteria. “As good Catholic children, our destiny was to be guilty over sex, to have lots of babies, and to partake of the sacraments sufficiently often to assure we’d go to heaven when we died.”
“Right,” said Bertran. “And in the fundamentalist church down the block, they learned their destiny was to be guilty over sex, to worship the flag (in defiance of the first and second commandments), and to be born again sufficiently often to assure
they’d
go to heaven when they died, though I’m not sure whether it was the same heaven or not. In fact, the only real difference between us and them was whether we ranked sperm or the flag slightly ahead of god.”
He laughed, choking, then groaned.
“So heaven was your destiny,” said Fringe. “Or having lots of babies.”
“Oh, yes,” murmured Nela. “The only excuse we had for
overpopulating our world was that it wouldn’t matter in heaven.” She tried to laugh but couldn’t manage it. The laugh turned into a sob.
“Nela, Nela,” said Fringe, falling to her knees before them and taking Nela into her arms. “Hey.”
“It’s just, just I’m so scared,” Nela whispered. “I’m so scared, Fringe. It’s so dark, and I feel so sick.”
“We’re not very good at this,” Bertran quavered. “Not very good at being brave.”