The Boneshaker (13 page)

Natalie decided she really wasn't in the mood for sandwiches after all.

"W
HY ISN'T MAMA COMING?
" Natalie asked as she followed Charlie down the street toward the lot on the first day of the medicine show.

"She's tired."

Natalie scowled. That wasn't a reason.

"She's
tired,
" Charlie repeated before she could demand a better one. "And her foot's still sore from last night. That's why Dad went to Mr. Finch's shop."

"I know, I know. Vitamins. Mr. Finch won't even be up yet," Natalie grumbled, glancing over her shoulder toward the pharmacy. "And didn't he just bring vitamins over yesterday? Why on earth didn't he bring
more
if they were going to be gone after a day? And anyway, vitamins don't do anything for you if your foot's sore."

"Everyone's up," was all Charlie said.

He was right, of course. The whole town was out and about, and most everyone meandered toward the empty lot at the end of Heartwood Street, trying to look as if he or she was doing anything else
besides
going to the medicine show. Even Mr. and Mrs. Tilden had turned out. It was like the morning Doc had left; Arcane had taken to the street but didn't really want to be caught there.

At the end of Heartwood the ground rose sharply and the dirt road hooked left, and there it was, ringed on three sides by the swishing green cornfields.

A banner stretched over the entrance to the lot, welcoming them to
DR. JAKE LIMBERLEG
's
NOSTRUM FAIR AND TECHNOLOGICAL MEDICINE SHOW
. The empty field was gone, and in its place was ... well, it was still hard to say exactly what had moved in.

The five wagons and the cluster of tents had multiplied overnight to become a little village. Pavilions of all sizes filled the lot, draped with bunting and streamers that rippled halfheartedly in the breeze. Their faded colors had probably once been bright and festive, but in the sharp morning sun they looked a little worse for the wear. A high web-work of wires stretched overhead, supported here and there by narrow wooden poles; maybe they would string lights up there when it got dark.

Still, it felt like a carnival, with pitchmen calling and a delicious blend of fresh sawdust smells and the scents of different kinds of sugar and syrup and frying things mingling in the air. There was music, so the twinned One-Man Band and cycling pianist must have been around somewhere.

The giant thing on its mismatched, brass-rimmed tires had to be around someplace, too—and Dr. Limberleg's generators, the ones powered by his collection of old bicycles. Including at least one Chesterlane Eidolon, just like hers.

There was no way she was asking for Dr. Limberleg's help with her own bicycle ... but maybe if Natalie could get a good look at his blue Chesterlane, she could figure something out herself.

At the front of the fair, a stage built on the center wagon slowly collected the citizens of Arcane to itself. A painted cloth hung as a backdrop, depicting scenes from the history of medicine throughout the ages. Four spindly chairs lined one side, and an angular black podium stood alone on the other.

"Natalie!" Ryan and Alfred jogged up. "Where do you think the picture show'll be?" Ryan demanded, scowling at the forest of tents as if willing them to part and show him the way straight to the one pavilion he cared about.

Before Natalie could answer, an unseen drum rolled, echoing hollowly through the fair. The small figure of the harlequin appeared on the stairs rising to the stage. On the topmost step it took hold of a rope hanging beside the backdrop, gave one-two-three swings of its arms, and jumped to the ground. The illustrated curtain parted, and a tall figure stepped through the gap to the center of the stage.

"My dear friends, welcome to your very good health!" proclaimed Dr. Jake Limberleg.

He swept his top hat from his head with one gloved hand and bowed, which made his wild hair and his frock coat billow spectacularly. The audience applauded politely. Natalie put her hands on her hips instead. If he wanted to impress her, he was going to have to work for it.

Dr. Limberleg's eyes roved the curious and doubtful faces of the audience from behind the pale blue lenses of his eyeglasses. "We come to you from the doorsteps of your neighbors in Pinnacle," he announced, "where I am pleased to announce we were present for the final days of the now-famous Pinnacle flu!"

All around Natalie people stiffened; hands waving paper fans hesitated just a second in their back-and-forth motion.

"I like to believe we had something to do with bringing about the flu's end." Dr. Limberleg grinned. "But"—had he just looked straight at Mr. Tilden?—"I'll save that story for your own Dr. Fitzwater to tell when he returns."

Murmurs whispered through the crowd. Mr. Tilden frowned slightly. This clearly wasn't what he had expected the snake oil salesman to say.

"Allow me to present my colleagues, the Paragons of Science!" The unseen drum rolled and the harlequin scrambled back up the stairs to perform its leap for the rope once more. When the curtain parted again, the four men who had driven the chariots through Arcane stepped, side by side, onto the stage.

"From New York City," Dr. Limberleg declared, "Dr. Paracelsus Vorticelt, specialist in the arts of Magnetism and Lodestone Healing!"

He swept his arm toward the Paragon at the end of the line, dressed in an angular suit with a high celluloid collar.

He swept his top hat from his head with one gloved hand and bowed, which made his wild hair and his frock coat billow spectacularly.

His walking stick was narrow and white, and like Dr. Limberleg he wore wire spectacles, only his appeared to have mirrors for lenses ... or perhaps it was just the way they caught the sun that made them seem too dark and reflective to see through. He made a short bow.

Then Paracelsus Vorticelt removed his spectacles. His eyes, unblinking and bottomless, seemed to be all dark pupil with only the faintest rim of white. People swayed like cattails as his gaze gripped them, released them, and moved on. Natalie looked at her shoes and watched him out of the corner of her eye until she heard Dr. Limberleg's voice again. Just the memory of looking at Vorticelt made her head hurt.

"From Edinburgh, Scotland: Sir Willoughby Acquetus, expert in the ancient Greco-Roman science of Hydrotherapy!"

The last time Natalie had seen Acquetus he had been wearing a toga. This time, he wore a waistcoat under a long black robe like a university professor's or a judge's. A short white powdered wig sat on his head. He smiled vacantly for exactly three seconds, then returned to examining the silver head of his walking stick.

"What's a paragon, anyhow?" Natalie asked, frowning up at Charlie.

"A paragon is a perfect example of something," Charlie said after a moment's thought.

"Like an eidolon," Natalie said. She'd looked up the word in the dictionary the day before. "
Eidolon
means an image of something, but it can also mean a phantom or an apparition."

"Kind of," Charlie said, grinning at Natalie's recitation. "Only a paragon is a little bit more than that. A paragon is something that shows you exactly how others like it should be."

"So they're the Paragons of Science? These folks are supposed to show us what science looks like?" Natalie glanced from Charlie to the wild figures on the stage. "Is it a joke?"

"They don't look like they're joking," Charlie muttered.

Onstage, Dr. Limberleg gave another flourish of his cape, eyes lighting on Natalie for a moment as if he had heard every word and didn't appreciate the interruption. "From Vienna, Austria," he snapped, "Herr Doktor Thaddeus Argonault, the greatest student of the great Dr. Spurzheim, is the modern world's leading authority in Phrenology!"

Argonault looked by far the most normal of the four Paragons—at least until he stepped forward and doffed his bowler hat, revealing an elaborate network of lines and numbers tattooed right onto his bald scalp.

"And from Paris, France: The Chevalier Alpheus Nervine, world-renowned pioneer in Amber Therapy!"

Natalie didn't need to know what Amber Therapy was to dislike Alpheus Nervine right off the bat; once someone's chased you with a claw hammer it takes a lot to change your opinion of him. He looked as if he'd gotten dressed that morning and then remembered he was supposed to have put on the costume he'd worn for the procession. The floppy boots on his feet and rapier buckled at his waist looked a little strange over rough work clothes.

The Paragons took seats on the spindly chairs while Dr. Limberleg continued his spiel. "No doubt there are those among you who look around this morning and see nothing but quacks. Hucksters." His blue-lensed eyes fell on Natalie again. "
Snake oil salesmen
." She recoiled a little, and for a second Dr. Limberleg's smile widened. "But allow me to change your minds!"

Somewhere out of view, a collection of horns played a fanfare that ended in an out-of-tune squeak that made even Dr. Limberleg cringe before he could stop himself.

He prowled the stage, aiming his leather-clad finger at first one, then another person in the audience. "
You,
sir, are welcome to explore the sciences displayed before you today in the persons of Messieurs Vorticelt, Acquetus, Argonault, and Nervine!
You,
madam, are our guest on a tour of the arts of the healing and curative disciplines!"

A burst of what was probably supposed to be celebratory music erupted from behind the stage.

"You may notice," he added when the discordant tune stopped, "that there are no shills or spielers passing among you with boxes of tinctures and ointments. The reason is merely this: patent medicines and advanced treatments are dangerous! We do not believe in administering as if all ailments were the same, to be salved with a bit of wintergreen and snake oil!"

Natalie glanced at Mr. Tilden, trying to figure out what he might be thinking. The grocer's face was sharp-eyed but otherwise expressionless.

"We will indulge your curiosity and your skepticism for one day as the Technological Medicine Show to establish our credentials, and during this time we will offer no products and indeed no
services
except those that assist the advancement of knowledge. Tomorrow morning, we will reopen as Dr. Limberleg's Nostrum Fair, in which"—and here he stopped and knelt on one knee at the edge of the stage, bringing his too-tall form almost to eye-level with the taller men in the audience—"in which, if we have earned your trust, we will diagnose anyone who wishes to be healed and prescribe an appropriate course of treatment. And now..."

Dr. Limberleg stood swiftly, launching himself with weird grace back to his full height amid a sudden racket of horns and percussion that sounded like a Sousa march gone demented, the volume of which forced him to stop talking and wait for silence again.

He managed to look magisterial for another moment or two before it became clear the noise had gone on too long. The Chevalier Alpheus Nervine turned his head to look sharply in the direction of the painted curtain and whatever it concealed—presumably the One-Man Band. The racket stopped so suddenly that Natalie had an odd feeling of wind in her ears, as if the sound had been sucked not just out of the air but straight out of her head.

"Welcome!" Dr. Limberleg got the showman's smile back on his face and swept his arms high one last time. "Welcome, friends, to Dr. Limberleg's Technological Medicine Show!"

***

"We're going to do this right," Natalie began. Ryan and Alfred nodded. Miranda Porter tapped her foot impatiently. "There's four of us. We'll go in twos and see what we can find." Ryan opened his mouth. "I know, I know," Natalie sighed. "You just want to see the films. Fine. After that—"

"Hang on." An alarmed Alfred glanced at Miranda, edging closer. "I get Natalie."

Miranda shot a venomous look at Natalie through slitted eyes. Ryan shot the same look at Alfred before he struck off to the left with Miranda flouncing along behind him.

Natalie and Alfred went right. "What are we looking for?" Alfred asked.

"Anything interesting. Like that big wheeled thing, or the generators and the bicycles that power them up."

"Films are interesting," Alfred muttered.

Natalie sighed expansively. "We'll find the films. I just want to see what this place
is
first."

They passed the older boys at the ducking booth just in time to see George Sills hit the target dead center. The thin, pale man in the booth had time only to make a tired face before he splashed into the tub below. His joints creaked audibly as he climbed out, making Natalie think of rusty gears. At other concessions, people threw balls at bottles or fed coins into zoetropes that spun still pictures before the watcher's eyes until the images appeared to move.

They passed a clump of curious folks surrounding a harassed-looking Mr. Tilden. Natalie heard someone ask, "Is it true?" Poor Mr. Tilden. It was exactly what he'd been trying to avoid; now everybody thought the hucksters knew something about the Pinnacle flu that the rest of Arcane didn't.