The Grand Ballast (33 page)

One day, Bode ventured outside without
makeup. He kept his head down and wore a cap, and he brushed past a
throng of tourists without them seeming to notice. He saw Bettina
out in the yard behind the saloon, drawing water from a well. She
looked up and waved as she turned the crank. Bode didn’t know if he
could retreat at this point, so he continued toward her.

“
Hello!” she called as he
drew near. “Are you enjoying your stay so far?”

“
So far.” Bode reached the
well just as the bucket appeared. “You’re very—I mean, everyone
here’s nice to hide us.”

“
Oh, of course.” She
unhooked the bucket and set it on the ground, her arm muscles
bulging. A bit of water sloshed over the bucket’s rim and soaked
into the dry ground. “You’re something of a folk hero among
us.”

“
I am?”

She smiled. “Yes, well, we
all get
The Rustler
. Read it like a comic book. We have favorite characters. Most
of the Liberators have fantasized about protecting you, at one
point or another.”

That seemed strange to Bode. If there were
people who had wanted to help him, why hadn’t any of them come out
of the woodwork while he was performing? “Well, thanks. I
guess.”

“
Don’t thank me. I’ve never
fantasized about it.” Her smile remained, stealing the harshness
from the words.

“
I’ve been wondering,” he
said, “if
The Rustler’s
said anything about the fire at the Grand
Ballast?”

She studied him. “It said you started the
fire and then fled with two other performers. There’s a reward
offered for information on your whereabouts.”

He hesitated. “I mean, did anyone die? In
the fire?”

“
A man named Lein had minor
burns. Everyone escaped.”

Bode sighed with relief.

Bettina smiled gently. “You’ve been worried
about that?”

“
Yes.” He paused again. “I
don’t understand why no one’s come here looking for me
yet.”

Bettina stiffened slightly. “Well. Just
count yourself lucky.”

Bode eyed her warily, but decided not to
press the issue now. “Do you, um…like living here?”

She nodded. “It’s nice to live somewhere
people are awake. And where I can practice my craft.”

“
Your craft?”

“
Falling in
love.”

“
Oh. Right.”

She tapped the bucket lightly with her foot.
“I fall in and out of love as quickly as the stars blink.”

“
But is it really love?”
Bode was intrigued in spite of himself.

She laughed. “Of
course.”

“
But you can’t make
yourself fall in love. It has to happen naturally.”

“
Nonsense. If I want to
fall in love with someone, I focus only on the things about ’em
that make me feel a bit sunnier, you understand? And if I want to
fall out of love, I focus on the things about ’em that drive me
crazy.”

Bode laughed too. “It’s not that simple. You
can’t fall in love with whoever you want. They have to give you
something back for it to be love.”

“
I disagree. And besides,
everybody gives me something.”

Bode shrugged. “You couldn’t fall in love
with me. I don’t like women that way at all. And you don’t know
anything about me.”

Her smile broadened. “Just gimme a few
days.”

“
What if I don’t want you
in love with me?”

Her forehead wrinkled, and
a shadow seemed to fall over her eyes like a widow’s veil. “Honey,
it won’t hurt
you
any unless you love me back.”

“
But what’s the point?”
Bode asked.

She looked at him. “You were a dancer.
Didn’t you ever get lost in the moment—believe that the only truth
was the story you were telling?” He didn’t answer. “That’s how I
feel when I fall in love.”

THE LIBERATORS

That night, after the rest
of the town had gone to bed, the Liberators returned to the shed
for the first time since Bode and Valen had arrived. They’d been
holding their meetings in the saloon for the past few days in order
to give Bode and Valen time to settle in. But tonight, they
gathered in the barn, sitting on straw bales and old animal
blankets.

What the Liberators
primarily did was drink. Horse Leg had in hand a Finley creation
called a Baboon’s Ass—a red-orange mix of gin, mango juice, and
cherry flavored drink powder. And as they drank, they
talked.

God, they talked. Bode
wanted to tune them out, but Valen seemed so enamored of them that
Bode ended up listening, wondering what the
hell
Valen could find new or
fascinating about their conversations. When they spoke of art, it
was nothing Bode hadn’t discussed years ago with Kilroy. When they
talked about liberating the X-shows, their plans were disorganized,
their ideas foolish.

“
The time has come,”
Bettina said, “to make our recon visit to the farm.”

“
What farm?” Valen
asked.

“
Belvedere.” Horse Leg held
up his drink with a little nod. “A nightmare of a place. The
performers are literally treated like animals. Rumor has it they’re
drugged too dumb to even remember they’re human.”

“
Which is
why liberating it will be a disaster.” Hedda polished her glass
scars with a rag. “We’ll need to—pardon,
but—
herd
them to a safe location.”

“
We think we may have lined
up a cattle truck.” Finley shrugged apologetically. “Cruel irony
yes, but how else will we transport so many people?”

“
So we’re going to visit
Belvedere in a couple of days,” Bettina said. “Disguised as
tourists. We’ll get the lay of the land, and after that…we’ll have
one shot to show up at that farm and set everyone free.”

“
I’d like to help,” Valen
said. “Any way I can.”

Bode stared at him, but
Valen didn’t seem to notice.
Are you
crazy?

“
Why only the farm?” Bode
asked coolly. “There’s other shows. The Hydra Arena, and Vice on
Ice in the north.”

Horse Leg cleared his throat. “We start with
the farm, because we have someone on the inside there. Then we move
to the other shows.”

“
And what about the Grand
Ballast?”

Silence.

Finley leaned forward. “I suppose you’d like
to burn that one to the ground yourself.”

Bode didn’t answer.

Horse Leg cleared his
throat. “The Grand Ballast is, from what I understand, dead.
According to our recon, th—dammit.” His mustache had come unhinged.
He made one effort to put it back, and then ripped it off and threw
it into a pile of straw. “Ah, begone!” He smiled apologetically at
Bode. “I only wear it because the tourists love a good mustache. As
I was saying, without you there, and with the number of people who
turned against Kilroy after his treatment of you in the Hydra
Arena,
The Rustler
seems to think the show’s done for good. Wasn’t there another
performer who went missing too?”

Bode flinched. “Yes. He didn’t make it.”

Horse Leg scratched his neck. “Quite a lot
of equipment was ruined in that fire. I don’t know how determined
Kilroy is to get the show running again. But certainly we can look
into liberating what remains of the circus, once we’ve taken the
farm.”

“
Taken
the farm?” Bode pushed. “I thought the goal was to free the
performers.”

“
Yes, yes! We will liberate
everyone from every show who cares to be liberated,” Horse Leg
said. “‘Take’ is just a figure of speech, son.”

“
And what about those who
don’t want to be liberated?” Fury gave Bode’s words a clipped
quality. “In the Grand Ballast, performers give up their freedom
willingly. They get paid. You’re gonna liberate people who are
already free?”

Finley got on his hands and
knees and crawled closer to Bode, his suspenders straining over his
breasts. “Were
you
free?
Are
you
free?”

Bode closed his mouth on a retort.

Horse Leg offered Valen a softer look. “I
know you want to help with the liberation. But given your status as
a wanted man, I don’t see how you can accompany us to the
farm.”

“
I might be able to help,”
said a low voice from the doorway of the barn.

Bode squinted in the lantern light. A man
stepped forward—nothing but an enormous shadow at first. He stopped
beside Bode and glanced down. Nodded at Bode’s injured hand. “That
needs looked at,” he said.

Bode gazed up at the man. Saw the glint of
his eyes and a wall of teeth.

“
Hello, Skullprute,” Horse
Leg said.

SKULLPRUTE

Skullprute was a doctor. A careful one,
wickedly creative but not a particularly compassionate. He had a
mournful, pensive face and a collection of out of date devices:
calculators and rotary phones, an old movie projector. A package of
ancient, rusty medical tools—not currently in use, he joked. He
worked in Harkville’s hospital—a clay building that looked as if it
would be filthy and roach-ridden. And yet when Bode visited the
next evening to have his injured hand looked at, the interior was
sterile and painted a sunny yellow. The rooms had colorful animal
murals on the walls.

Skullprute’s office, though, featured
posters of oddities. A woman with a metal jaw that hinged like a
snake’s. A man with permanent binoculars attached to his eyes. A
young girl with spikes down her back like a dragon.

“
Skullprute is a man who
takes loneliness very seriously,”
Bettina
had told Bode once.

The exam was quick and efficient. Skullprute
cleaned and bandaged Bode’s hand and gave Bode antibiotics for the
mild infection. “Did they tell you,” Skullprute asked, in his low,
steady voice, “That we were hoping you’d show up?”

“
Uh, yeah. They did.” Bode
tried to flex his hand around the bandage. Something about
Skullprute made him uncomfortable. “Why were you hoping
that?”

Skullprute bobbed his head slightly, as if
to silent music. “Because you’ve done something revolutionary,
setting that tent on fire. I suppose people see you as something of
an inspiration.”

“
You don’t?” Bode
asked.

Skullprute glanced at him, the barest hint
of a smile on his face. Bode didn’t like his eyes. “I have all the
inspiration I need here in this town.”

***

Skullprute had created things that many
Harkvillians admired—Hedda’s glass scars, Horse Leg’s mechanical
limb. He had sculpted the faces of men who wanted to look more like
women and women who wanted to look more like men.

“
I might
be able to do something to disguise them long term,” Skullprute
said that night at a meeting of the Liberators. He was studying
Valen. “A few semi-permanent adjustments. They’d look different
enough to walk around here
without
fear of the tourists. And they could go to the farm, if they were
so inclined.”

When Skullprute spoke,
rifts formed in his voice like volcanic activity under the earth’s
crust, cracking the land suddenly. He’d be talking in his low, dead
voice, and then some blazing feeling would burst upward through
that dull mutter, sending heat and color streaming into all he had
said before and all he had yet to say.

“
What adjustments?” Valen
asked.

Skullprute made a frame
with his fingers and continued to scrutinize Valen. “Injections to
the cheeks. Temporary pins in the lids and brows to change the
structure of the eyes.” He turned to Horse Leg. “What do you
think?”

“
Oh, yes.” Horse Leg bobbed
his head. “If it’s all right with them, of course.” He glanced from
Bode to Valen. “If we all intend to visit the farm posing as
tourists, naturally they will have to be disguised.”

“
I don’t want injections or
pins,” Bode said. “I’ll wear a costume, makeup, whatever. But
you’re not going to change my face.”

He knew he ought to be
grateful for anything that would help him survive. But he didn’t
trust Skullprute—quite apart from not wanting anyone to
semi-permanently change his appearance.

“
Bode’s right,” Valen said
quietly. “No permanent changes.”

And where Bode’s outburst
had drawn no response, Valen’s words had people nodding and humming
in agreement.

Still focused on Skullprute, Bode missed
most of what Horse Leg went on to say about the farm. He decided he
didn’t want to stay anymore in this painted town, with these people
who confused showmanship with art, decoration with passion. Ideas
with action. He wanted back those days traveling with Valen. He
wanted open land and to be lost together. This place stank and was
crowded with dreamers.

“
What are you after?” Bode
interrupted again. “Do you genuinely do this for the good of the
performers? Or are you looking to feel good about yourselves? How
do you know the performers aren’t creating art, that they don’t
feel transcendent, when they perform? You’re planning their fates
and you never thought to ask them.”