Sideshow (50 page)

At the bottom of the hill a wandering streamlet wove its way among the reeds, reflecting the gray sky to make silver meanders as it sought the river. He waded up to his hips in mud and rotting vegetation, clutching at the tall stems to keep his balance. At last he staggered out of their shade into a shallow sandy-bottomed lagoon to see a dark cluster of anchored boats, their sails furled and gear carefully stowed. Drying nets were silhouetted against the sky, and the outline of a walkway on pilings above the mud told him he had found the fishing fleet of a nearby village.
“How do you feel about a bit of thievery?” Danivon asked himself as he wiped mud from his face and stared at the walkway in disgust. “Wouldn’t you say we’d earned it? Being such good guys there in Beanfields. Abstaining from any unnecessary slaughter?”
He waited a moment, as though for an answer, then answered himself. “Indeed, we’ve earned a bit of license. If one boat will do, by all means, do one boat.”
He had smelled death behind him since Zasper died. It had come closer since midnight. He thought it would be less likely to catch up if he were on the river.
He tossed up a handful of leaves and saw them spin away toward the west. “The wind’s in the right direction, at least. Won’t need to tack back and forth. Which is a good thing!”
Danivon was no boatman; though he had had the advantage of observing the sailors on their way up the Fohm, he was not at all confident he could get safely across the river.
Still, there was no other choice. He pushed the nearest boat into the river, held to its side while he dunked himself repeatedly to wash the stinking mud away, then climbed in and set the sail more or less as he had seen the captain of the
Dove
doing all the days of their upriver trip. The wind was gentle, barely enough to move them against the current, and he lay wearily in the bottom of the boat, fighting to keep his eyes open, the tiller beneath his arm as he watched the shore creep slowly by. After what seemed an eternity, the wall approached, grew taller, loomed off the port beam, then edged away behind him.
“Now cross over,” said Danivon wearily. “If Fringe and the twins are anywhere, they will be on the other side.”
The little boat had been designed for use in the slow waters and quiet lagoons along the bank. It jigged like a beetle as it inched its way across the wavelets in its reach for the far shore and Danivon thought hopelessly of gavers. He was of the opinion the Brannigans Zasper had told him of had set the gavers against the ship. He was almost certain it had been a gaver that had taken Fringe. A huge and inexorable beast, lunging up from beneath the waves.
Dawn came. The sky lightened. The far shore became visible and drew gradually closer, the undulant banks rising into grassy precipices or falling into mud flats. Danivon steered for a place where the banks were low. At last he felt the keel thrust into the mud and hold there, the boat shivering for a moment before it tilted against the soil and was still. He furled the sail.
“Could we set the sail, do you suppose, to take it home?” Danivon asked of the air. “Back to Beanfields?”
There would likely be no one there to use it. No doubt the Brannigans were making their usual wholesale destruction.
He staggered up the bank, clawing his way the last few feet to the cushiony grasses at the top, then lay there, unable to go farther. At the rim of the sky, the last stars winked out.
“I saw you coming,” said a voice. “I was very glad to see you alive.”
He looked up, taking in the purple plumes against the gray sky of early morning, the polished boots beside his head.
“Fringe,” he breathed, unable to believe it. He stood up, took her by the shoulders, hugged her to him. “Fringe.”
“Danivon,” she said.
He stood back and looked at her, his joyous smile fading. It was Fringe. Her eyes, her face, her voice. And yet, not Fringe. Not Fringe at all. No nervous little movement as she pushed him away a little, no sidelong look. No apprehension in her gaze, saying,
Love me, leave me alone, love me.
Nothing of that at all. Only sureness. Competence. Poise. Certainty.
She smiled gladly. “It is good to see you well. I was worried about you.” Her voice was unworried. “Where’s Zasper?”
Danivon reached out to her, to the gap in her shirt that showed her bare throat. “Where is the pendant he gave you. You wore it all the time.”
She felt at her throat. It was gone, of course. The gaver had taken it when it had taken her head off. “Gone,” she said smilingly, shaking her head. “Too bad. Where’s Zasper?”
Danivon stared at her with his mouth open and his nose quivering. His eyes filled as he heard the pocket munks in chorus repeating what she had said.
“Gone,” they whispered. “Too bad.”
Microdevices moved through the soil of Beanfields, spewing out a million more eyes and ears, a million more miniscule Doors, a million more tiny gravitics, and killers, of course, even though the instructions of the network were clear: Hold certain persons captive, do not kill them! Hold captive Danivon Luze and Zasper Ertigon.
When the network reached the prison at the top of the hill, however, the two were gone. There were only the bodies of two guards killed by one of Clore’s machines, the battered pieces of that machine, and a burned place on the soil. Mechanisms designed to travel overland looked for the two humans but couldn’t find them.
The devices asked the people of Beanfields where the captives were, but the people of that province knew only this mother’s old boy or that mother’s young boy or some other mother’s black-haired boy or yet some other mother’s boy who plays the flute. No one knew who
Zasper
was or
Danivon.
No one knew their names. Those who were asked could not answer, and so died.
The network did not stop growing, even while Beanfields was being reduced to a suffering fragment of itself. While parts of it were lethally involved in the villages, the rest of it pushed on toward the west. Less than an hour after Danivon set sail across the Fohm, the network reached the Great Wall and began to burrow through it. Getting through rock was not difficult, merely slow. The network had been extended through rock in many parts of the world.
Patiently it drilled its way, eventually arriving on the other side as infinitesimal metallic points. Each of these points was noticed by the ubiquitous fibers that grew throughout noplace. The fibers attached themselves to the emerging network and disassembled it, molecule by molecule, tiny part by tiny part. As soon as one molecule of it was extruded through the wall, it was corrupted and eaten. No sensor lasted long enough to report this effect. The network simply reached the Great Wall and then vanished.
Great Slitherer and Subble Clore were at first too busy to notice. They were still fuming at the escape of the two Enforcers, at the fact the network had not caught them, at the strange creatures upriver who had not died when the machines were told to kill them. All these matters were distracting them at a time when they wished to think of other things—the rules and ritual of Clore adoration, the catechism and theology of Breaze worship.
Breaze had decided that he would require his followers to believe illogical things as evidence of their faith. He would require them to believe that Breaze had created Elsewhere and all its people in one day, out of nothing, exactly one thousand years ago! But … (a master stroke) he would leave evidence in Files to contradict this! Thus they would have to disbelieve the evidence of their own senses in order to believe in Breaze!
When he got to this point, a small voice asked why he had given men such senses in the first place? Why had he given them intelligence if he intended to forbid its use?
Great Slitherer couldn’t remember creating men, though he knew he must have done so. He couldn’t remember why he had given them the ability to weigh evidence and make judgments for themselves. Why had he given them intelligence?
Preoccupied with such questions, Breaze did not notice
the network had stopped at the wall. Preoccupied with similar notions, neither did the others of the Core. As time passed, no word came; as more time went by, even the little mobile ears and eyes beyond the wall fell silent. So long as they had remained aloft or afloat, they had continued to function, but as each of them had touched soil or the branch of a tree or the stony summit of a hill, it had stopped being. Eventually, all had stopped being, and the noisy flow of messages from the west dwindled into silence.
Great Lord Crawler had moved on to inventing a marriage ceremony, something very arduous and esoteric involving ritual defloration and genital mutilation. Clore had devised an ingenious new form of sacrifice. It was some time before they became aware.
They peered, then howled, their noisy protest going out through the network, among the nodes. Messages came back, not so sanguine and dismissive as before. Magna Mater had also run into the wall when she had tried to get through it from the north. Therabas Bland had made the attempt from the south and failed.
The failure infuriated them all. They got into their god forms and stalked toward the center of the continent, trampling the provinces in their rage.
In Tolerance, Jacent crept quietly down a deserted corridor toward his aunt Syrilla’s door. Most people these days were staying in their own quarters. The monitors had given up all pretense of keeping the status quo. Many Enforcers had departed for their home provinces, and the few that remained dressed like ordinary people. Only the Frickians seemed more or less immune to what was happening. Nothing seemed to bother them greatly. Some of them had been killed, but Frickians never made a fuss, even when they were being dismembered. They tended to die silently or disappear as silently.
No fun
, thought Jacent.
No fun at all, which is why the Brannigans left them alone.
A phlegmatic people, the Frickians. Boarmus said Frickians would end up being the only survivors and the Brannigans would then be worshiped by Frickians alone. Which was a laugh, because Frickians had been bred to take orders, to be servants and soldiers just as Council Supervisory members had been bred to be bureaucrats and maintain the status quo. How fitting for a self-created god to be worshiped
only by people who had been bred to be subservient. How fitting to have all the bureaucrats slaughtered when they were only doing their jobs. Talk about irony!
Not that Boarmus saw the irony. At least he didn’t say anything about it. Not that he said much where anyone—anything—could hear him. Still, everyone knew about the Brannigans by now. Knew, whispered, but never said it out loud. One said Monstrous Crawler, Great Lord Clore this, Great Lord Clore that. One said Mighty Lord Breaze or Magna Mater. One said Sweet and Adorable Lady Bland. One said litanies, new ones every few days. Heart of Heaven, Wall of Desire, Mouth of Morning. Great Temple of Love. That was one for Thob. One could say things like that, but one didn’t say Brannigan. One pretended not to know about that.
Jacent tapped softly on Aunt Syrilla’s door. He hadn’t seen her for some days. Somebody ought to check on her, be sure she was all right.
There was no answer, but then people these days sometimes didn’t bother answering. Sometimes it was better if they didn’t. He tried the door, which was not sealed. He pushed it open. The room inside seemed empty. A little dusty and disarranged, but that was the usual thing these days, with so many of the automatic systems out of order and nobody left to repair them.
“Aunt Syrilla?” The doors inside the suite were open. He could see all the way through it. The bedroom was empty. The bathroom. He walked through into the wardrobe, lined on both sides with racks and chests and shelves.
It was almost as if he’d known she’d be there, on the shelf next to the ceiling, her purple face hanging over the edge, the rest of her squashed into an impossibly small space in the corner.
Jacent made it to the saniton before he was sick. Parts of her had run down the wall, dripped onto her clothing below. He took deep breaths, one after the other, trying not to remember what she looked like. There were a few like this every now and then, strange deaths, impossible deaths, just enough to make everyone imagine the next one would be him, or her. And then some person would claim to have had a vision of what the god wanted, and everyone in Tolerance would dance or sing or chant or engage in ridiculous, meaningless actions,
and nobody would be killed for a while. Almost as though the Brannigans had been distracted. Or really had wanted everybody to do whatever ritual it was they were doing.
When he had recovered enough that he could walk, he slipped out into the corridor, almost knocking Boarmus down as he came through the door.
“I was looking for you, boy,” whispered Boarmus. “Come with me.” And he set off down a side corridor, dragging Jacent along by the arm as he ducked through a servant’s door, thus avoiding a group of several hundred persons slithering down the corridor on their bellies to the sound of drums and cymbals. Jacent tried to hold him back, babbling about what he’d found back there.
“I know,” said Boarmus. “I found her this morning.”
“Where …” breathed Jacent. “Where are we?”
“Garage,” said Boarmus. “I’m sending you to Panubi.”
“Me!”
“You. In a ZT thirty-four, which is the only thing we have capable of getting you there in one swoop. I hope your operational skills are good.”
“But I can’t fly a thirty-four,” the boy blubbed. “Honestly, Boarmus. I’ve only been in one once.”
“It’s the only way,” said Boarmus. “Any other type flier, you’ll have to land and recharge, and the minute you land, they’ll eat you.”
“You come with me,” begged the boy. “You can fly one of those.”
“I can’t come with you.” He laughed harshly. “I never thought duty impressed me that much, boy, but this is duty. I’m trying to keep a few of us alive here. If I can.”
“Send a pilot, then.”
“What pilot? Where? You see any pilots? You see any maintenance people? You see any messengers? You see any patrols? Use your head, boy. You wanted excitement, now you’ve got it. You either teach yourself to fly this machine or you die pretty soon, as likely all of us will anyhow.”
Jacent screamed into the weary face before him, “They won’t kill me if I bow down! If I do the rituals and things. If I crawl. They won’t kill me if I crawl!”
Boarmus shook him until his head flopped. “Maybe not today. Maybe they’ll wait until tomorrow. Then they’ll have a heresy trial, maybe, just for amusement. And they’ll make up