by Dan Abnett
Factory-grade hooters sounded above the roar of the crowd, and speakers blasted out the bass-beat hook of a popular pound number at inhuman decibels. In time to the music beat, even louder, the vox-horns played a recording of a male voice bellowing "CAR-CAR-CAR-NIVORA!"
Above the wiron sign, pulsing in time to it, and the beat, and the voice, a massive pict screen projected a loop of fast-edit images. There was a split second of a naked woman, body-painted gold, turning an aerial cartwheel, that smash-cut to a fragment of two armoured male fighters clashing chainswords. The screen smash-cut again to a violent half-second of some lidless, yellow-toothed saurian lunging at the camera, followed by a final smash-cut to a bloody, blurry decapitation that segued to white noise/pict-out as if the camera had broken. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! CAR-CAR-CARNIVORA! CAR-CAR-CAR-NIVORA! Over and over and over until the assaulting repetition was one numbing adrenal rush.
Patience Kys let the crowd crush sweep her along to public gate IV. She was gnawing on a meat-stick she'd bought from a ramp vendor, and openly drinking from a liquor flask. She laughed and joked and flirted with the moody hammers and indentureds in the crowd around her, posing with some, and gently dissuading the over-eager advances of others with subtle tweaks of telekinesis. In her tight black and emerald bodice and long net-lace skirts, and with her hair loose, she was just another smile-girl out to shout herself hoarse and drink herself blind at circus night.
Already, she was in with a group, a bunch of tanked-up clansters from the meat-pack sept. They were big men, noisy, filthy, their vat-muscled bodies rippling with studs and piercings and the distinctive acid-tats of their clan. One of them - Lesche - kept passing her his grain-liquor for a swig, and he insisted on paying for her at the turnstile. He thought he was in. His brothers certainly believed Lesche had pulled a high-formal party-girl who was slumming it in the sinks of G for the night.
The hammer's hands were all over her, and she let him, up to a point. They flocked en masse through the gate, pressing forward past the stadium stewards towards the wooden stalls in the attic levels. The cheap seats.
There was a weapons check at the entrance to the attic levels. The stewards let the hammers through anyway - they knew better than to question the drunken, rowdy clansters with that many piercings. But the doorway flashed red as Kys went through. The stewards closed on her, despite the protesting roars from Lesche's group.
"I got no blades," Kys said, straight-faced. "Shush, you," she added to Lesche with a wicked grin. She raised her arms high as the stewards aimed hand-scanners at her body, deliberately accentuating the corseting of her top, her pinched waist and elevated bosom. "See? It's just the wiring in my bodice."
The hammers roared approval. Realising they were on to nothing, the stewards waved her on. She laughed as she ran through, and Lesche grabbed her around the waist. She kissed him as they rambled up into the attic stalls and found a row with a good view over the primary stage.
The circus was filling up. Searchlights swept back and forth across the terraces, illuminating a raving mass of the populace. The pre-game show was just getting under way. The main arena filled the bottom of the stadium's bowl. It was an oval measuring fifty by ninety metres, and it was surrounded on all sides by the rising terraces of public seating. It was not a single showground, but resembled rather the oblate cylinder of a revolver: there were six, circular cavities around the edge of the oval arena, and one large one in the middle. Massive hydraulic systems deep underground could raise or lower performance stages - logeums - into place in any of the cavities. The central one was for the night's headline fight. Right now three of the outer logeums were hissing up into place, venting steam through their exhaust outlets. On two of them, twenty paired teams of knife fighters with silver fish-head helmets were putting on a display of speed bladework with hair's-breadth accuracy. The crowd gasped. Knives in each hand, whirling like windmill vanes. Sparks sliding off meeting blades. Not a single scratch.
On the third outer stage, four twist clowns were pantomime fighting with mallets. They were all big, lumbering mutants, hunch-backed and ogrish, their disfigurements accented by white face-paint, rouged mouths and striped pantaloons. The audience loved them. The whole arena rotated so that everyone could get a decent view of the outer stages.
The out-stage displays continued as more siren fanfares sounded. A huge scaffold cage descended over the main logeum, winched down from the massive lighting gantries and over-stage platforms above the arena. The acrobats dropped down into the cage space, like coins into a collecting box, freefalling for heart-stopping distances before grabbing crossbeams and trapeze struts. They were all female, naked, painted gold. A mighty applause rang out across the stadium as they swung.
Caught, pulled full-ins and struellis, walked over flat bars, spun on wires, somersaulting and flipping. There was no net. The hard arena was thirty metres below the bottom spars of the performance cage.
Lesche slavered at the sight of the nubile gymnasts. He took a tug on his bottle and looked round to pass it to the girl.
But Kys had vanished.
CAR-CAR-CARNIVORA! CAR-CAR-CARNIVORA!
"You! You're late!" Mamsel Scissors squalled. Her voice was high-pitched and imperious, as befitted the circus' troupe-mistress. She pulled up the hem of her long lace skirts and petticoats and stomped across the suspended boarding with her walking cane. It was twilight up here, under the stadium roof and amongst the lighting gantries. The swell of the crowd's roar came up from seventy metres beneath. Gantrymen ran back and forth, hauling tension wires and adding sand-sack counterweights to the pulley systems. Reflected light speared back up through the board cracks in the staging under their feet.
Kara Swole, wearing a flesh-tight bodyglove so transparent she might as well have been nude, was smearing the last squeeze of a tube of gold dye over herself.
"I'm sorry, mamsel," she said.
"Sorry doesn't bring in the punters! Sorry doesn't put on a show!"
"I know, mamsel."
Scissors peered at her, her ancient lined face taught and inquisitive.
"Do I know you?"
"Yes, mam. I'm Kara, mam. You hired me last week."
"Last week? I don't remember..."
"You did, mam."
"I doubt it. You're not right. Too short. Too much bust and hips." Scissors poked a gnarled finger into the giving softness of Kara's left breast.
"But you did, mam. You thought my handspring and diamond combo was particularly fine, and you liked my wire work."
Mamsel Scissors stepped back, her withered hands folded over the knob of her cane. "Show me the move again."
Kara breathed in, and lunged into a handspring that she flicked out of, spun a body-length fly-away in the air and came down stuck. The gantry boarding shuddered under the impact and swung very slightly.
Below, the crowd roared again, but not at her. They were out of sight up here.
"Good," muttered Mamsel Scissors. "Where did you learn that?"
"The Imperial pits, Bonaventure," said Kara.
"I still don't remember hiring you." Scissors went on, "and you're late for the pre-show anyway. I won't have that from my girls. You're sacked."
Kara shrugged. She'd got this far into the circus by passing as one of the acrobat troupe. It was enough. Frankly, she'd got herself up onto the gantry late deliberately. She hadn't fancied risking her neck in the over-hung cage. Once, maybe, she could talk and pass as a dance-crobat, but perhaps, these days, the exertions of the lissom girls spinning below was a bit beyond her.
Still in the part, she frowned. "Sacked?"
The mamsel thumped her cane on the boarding. "Sacked! You heard me! Get dressed and get out!"
Kara walked over to where she'd left her belongings and gathered up her clothes.
"Go home!" Mamsel Scissors screeched.
Kara picked up her kitbag, palmed the compact auto-gun into her left hand, and headed for the ladders.
She was in now. That's all t
hat mattered. CAR-CAR-CARNIVORA! CAR-CAR-CARNIVORA! came the roar from below.
Harlon Nayl leaned on the horn of the freight-rig as he edged it down the concrete slip towards the service ramp. The crowd parted slowly to let his ten-wheeler through. Every few seconds, the crossing stabs of the searchlights blinded him and lit up the drive-cab blood red.
He adjusted his microbead. "Coming up on it now," he whispered. "This better go good."
"Relax, Harlon. Piece of piss." Carl Thonius crackled back.
The shutter ahead was locked down. Stadium officials headed towards him up the ramp, pointing flashlights. They had to push their way through huddles of ecclesiarchy puritans protesting against the barbarity of the circus.
"Now, Thonius..."
Nayl wound his cab window down as the stewards waved at him.
"What's this?" yelled one.
"Meat track for the spoliarum, sir!"
"Yeah? What outfit?"
"Buckanold's Bushmeats, sir..."
"Let's see the slate," the steward said, holding up a hand.
Nayl handed out the data-slate. "Thonius..." he hissed into the bead.
"Scanning now." Carl Thonius said, sitting back from his cogitator. "Five points, three points, one point... we're up. I'm reading the guy's slate coding now... decoding... decoding..."
"Hurry the frig up!" Nayl's voice rasped.
"Got it. Code's clean. Feeding it through to your slate."
"Something wrong?" Nayl asked, peering out of the cab.
"No," said the steward. "No, nothing. A slight registration delay." He handed the slate back to Nayl. "You check out. Go through, bay number fifteen. Open the gate, vehicle coming!"
The shutter clanked up into the arch. Nayl gunned the engine and rolled the freight-rig down into the stadium's choragium. He could feel the thumping handclap and bellowing of the audience above his head.
"Too close, Carl. Too close." Nayl whispered.
"Was it too close?" Ravenor asked.
In the back of the cargo-8, Thonius glanced round nervously from the cogitator at his master. Space was cramped. Between the cogitator set-up and Ravenor's stowed force-chair there was barely room for the interrogator to sit. Frauka and Zael were exiled up front in the dingy cab. The boy was looking back at them through the chipped clearplex divider. Thonius decided he didn't like the boy. His eyes seemed to be everywhere. Thonius didn't like that at all.
"Was it too close?" Ravenor asked again.
"No, no," smiled Thonius. "This is non-wired hacking. I had to wait until Nayl's slate was close to the steward's so I could get clean reception."
"And he's in?"
"They're all in, sir," Thonius said. He looked at the sleek casing of Ravenor's force-chair.
"You're wondering if I'm all right, aren't you?" Ravenor said.
Thonius jumped. "I thought Frauka was switched on!" he declared. "How could you read me like-"
"Frauka is switched on," the inquisitor's voxponder said expressionlessly. "But I have eyes... and can read body language. You keep looking at me, Carl."
Thonius shrugged. "That thing with Bergossian. It wasn't good."
"No, it wasn't. It hurt. I was unwise, and it scarred me. I'm recovering fine."
"But-"
"But nothing, Carl. I probed an insane mind, and almost got caught in it as it collapsed. But I got out. Three days have passed. I'm healing."
Thonius shrugged. He hadn't been there, but Kys had told him how Odysse Bergossan had gone into spasm and then... well, exploded. Messily, she'd said, as if there was any other way. Kys said Ravenor had howled as he struggled free of the collapsing mind. A voxponder shriek. A sound she'd never forget. Monotone. Anguished.
"Fine," Thonius said. "That's good."
He paused and adjusted the wavelength setting of the voxcaster.
"Getting signals. Kys is in. Kara too. Nayl is still mobile."
"Let's get on with this," Ravenor said.
Car-Car-Carnivora!
The booming declamation came from above her, shaking the walls. The audience was joining in, stamping their feet and clapping in time. Bam-bam thump! Bam-bam-thump!
Patience hurried along the dim stone passageways under the seating, watching the glow-globes twitch as the walls vibrated. As. she ran, she unfastened her skirts and let them fall, revealing the tight black and emerald bodice to be the top part of a bodyglove. Now she could move more freely. She adjusted her microbead headset, and pulled on her gloves.
Someone was coming. She sidestepped into the shadows of an alcove. Two stewards ran past, on urgent business.
Up ahead was the hatch entrance to the choragium. A short but heavy-set twist with horns sprouting from his mottled flesh was watching the hatch. Kys slid back against the wall and crept towards him. She picked out a broken bottle on the floor of the passageway and, with a gentle sigh, caused it to skitter and tinkle away from her, past the twist, and past the hatch.
The mutant heard it and turned. His thick, grey fingers raised the power-maul that had been leaning against the wall next to him, and he bent down, searching for the source of the noise.
As soon as his back was turned, Kys danced forward and slipped away through the hatch, flying down the wide metal stairs into the vast understage chambers of the Carnivora.
There was no time to get dressed. Kara dumped her clothes and kit on the landing platform of the ladder-climbs, and continued on down, a gold phantom with a gun in its hand.
The sound coming up at her from the arena below was like a physical force: a beating, deafening solid thing that made the wire-supported ladder-climbs sway. Lights were strobing. She looked down. Thirty metres below her and to her left, the stablights were illuminating the main show stages as the dance-crobats finished their amazing performance and slid down glide-ropes to the central logeum. That stage disk was already beginning to descend into the underfloor, and outer logeums were rising to present the next entertainment: a roped saurian and five drug-numbed twist clowns. She looked away as the biped saurian, maddened by goads and skin-implant agonisers, scored an early point, tearing one of the bemused clowns in two. The crowd, now a quarter of a million strong, bellowed their appreciation. The ladder-climb shook. The whole arena shook. It was a predator-roar, the exultation of a blood-hungry mob.
The ladder-climb wobbled. Gantry men were coming up from below to help the overhead crews winch back the dance cage.
Kara looked left and right, made a quick estimation, and leapt off the landing platform, her weapon gripped between her teeth. She fell five metres and caught one of the guy wires with both hands. The snap made her grunt. She accelerated her pendulum swing and then got her legs up over the wire and slid down it. Quite a show, if the lights had been on her. But she was out in the dark, above the radiance of the lamps.
A few metres from the end of the wire, she let go and dropped into space. She turned a neat cartwheel and smacked down onto the landing of another ladder-climb.
She took the gun out of her mouth and wiped her lips, tasting gold body-paint. The western terrace was ten metres below her, a mass of writhing bodies and waving arms. She unwound a support rope from the landing's bracket and tested it for give. Then she kicked out and swung from the landing across to the roof-spars of the attic tiers. The swing wasn't quite going to do it. She let go and flip-flopped the last few metres, landing on a rafter barely thirty centimetres wide.
Kara teetered on her feet for a moment, arms spread.
Then she ran along the rafter and jumped off, dropping onto a crosswise beam two metres below. When she reached the end of it, she vaulted over a stone divider and landed in a service gallery above the attics.
Two clansters looked round in surprise as she flew in and landed with a slap. They had left their seats for the cool gloom of the upper walk, to share some grin and "lax out" before the main show.
They could scarcely believe their eyes. A voluptuous girl, painted head-to-foot gold and, as far as they were concerned,
butt-naked, had just flown in through the frigging window.
"The circus gets better and better..." mumbled one. They stepped towards her.
Kara was suddenly glad of the cacophony from below.
Nayl rolled the freighter to a halt, expressed the air brakes and pulled on the parking lock. The chamber was like a cavern, dark and damp. Five other trucks were parked beside his. The noise of the circus audience was like remote thunder overhead.
This was the choragium, the understage. For all its size, the circus had more private parts than public ones. Immense cellars and subdecks existed to service the arena. Nayl could hear the hissing clank of the rising and falling logeum platforms as he got out of the cab. The air smelled bad. He could taste the ash-burn of the ustrinum, where they cremated the bodies and waste products from the pit fights.
Nayl walked the length of his freighter and hammered on the backdrop. The tailgate slammed open and Mathuin leapt out. He was carrying a pistol, but Nayl knew the murderous rotator cannon was zipped up in Mathuin's kitbag.
"Put it away," he said, nodding at the pistol. "We've a way to go yet, without attracting notice."
Zeph Mathuin frowned and put the handgun into the pocket of the filthy plastek smock-coat he was wearing. Nayl had one on too... crusted with dirt and dry blood.
They hurried across the chamber, through the bustle of the stewards and crewmen. The floor shook with the transmitted shudder of the crowd. They stood back as three cavea handlers led a muzzled, thrashing ursid through to the stage-gates ready for the next show. Nayl found the chained beast's angry whimpers strangely affecting. He felt sorry for it. Win or lose, it would be bushmeat by dawn.
They crossed a stone pier over a rancid waste-sluice, and passed under a heavy portcullis gate into a warren of understage tunnels. There was activity all around: stage-men shouted for cues, labour muscle wound the chain winches, engineers ran coke carts to stoke the furnaces of the hydraulic engines, and gladiators oiled their bodies in the chrismatories.
They came down another narrow stone corridor into a wide underfloor hall. The spoliarum was to the left, a dank, foetid pit where all the bodies were dumped. Mechanised ploughs swept each descending logeum clean of debris and cadavers, and they ended up in the spoliarum. There, the dead were recycled. Armour and weapons were recovered, and rings and trinkets looted. Human bodies were carted away to the ustrinum for burning. Non-human flesh was sold off by the kilo to buyers from the food markets. Bushmeat was a cheap and ready source for the hive's provisioners. Bear, lizard, twist... it all looked and tasted the same once it was macerated, spiced and roasted on a street-vendor's stick.