Cyber Circus

by Kim Lakin-Smith

  “If it’s all the same with you, I’d like to stay and watch you gouge out that unnatural eye,” Lars shot back. Hellequin lifted his head. Lars stood over by the door, one leg resting up against the frame, hands in his pockets.

  The ex-soldier batted a hand off his eyebrow in salute.

  “Oh, it’s not so much a question of removing it as establishing its make up,” said the surgeon, pulling on a pair of thin clothhod leather gloves. “I am eager to dissect the arrangement of wires into the brain. The memory is affected some say while, of course, it’s common knowledge the emotions get short-circuited.” She fitted a circle of magnified glass to her eye and leant in, examining Hellequin’s steel attachment with intensity. “The funny thing is that this particular individual seems to have emotional attachment to the whore. Which could be the first signs of the cognitive weakening which eventually drove all HawkEye quite mad. Or it could indicate a reduction in the efficiency of the Daxware hardwiring. In which case, if we are to say this specimen feels as any other intact being, we must also accept that he chose to leave you behind all those years ago, Lars.” Miss Yalda Danan showed her squat black teeth. “The Lieutenant here must have really despised you.”

  “Yeah, well the feeling’s definitely mutual,” said Lars from his spot over by the door.

  Hellequin was in no way defensive of his actions or offended. All he knew was Nim was broken, and properly so, and needed putting back together.

  “Finish your work on Nim first,” he hissed as the surgeon hovered a second gas mask near his face.

  “You see, Lars. Real affection. Or at least an admirable attempt at it. Notice how the natural eye is teary, how the skin strains over the bone ridges at the brow. Talking of which, I may begin with those. Slice back the skin and dig around a little. The pioneers of Daxware made two incisions in the skull, fed the wires in through the brain that way, then re-grafted the bone. These horn-like growths are the result.” The surgeon shook her head in amused amazement.

  Hellequin swallowed a mouthful of bile. His flesh ran hot then cold. “I’m not going to ask you again,” he whispered so quietly the surgeon was forced to bring her ear close to his mouth. “Put Nim back together again or I shall rip your heart out.”

  “Scary little soldier.” Miss Yalda Danan laughed, her face a leathered knot.

  Hellequin saw sweat at the surgeon’s forehead though. He’d worried her; any second she would go for the gas mask and seal him in. Sensing Lars move slightly, alerted to some noise beyond the room, he butted his eyepiece up into the surgeon’s face. There was a millisecond of a different view – of skin cells pressing through to honeycombed dermis – then he pulled away. The doctor was screaming now, hands to her face and cursing up a storm. Hellequin manipulated a wrist bone and wrenched one arm free of his restraints.

  Lars was already on his way across the room, blade readied. Hellequin grabbed a chopper off the tray of operating equipment and sliced through the bonds at his other arm. It took him precious seconds to unbuckle the strap at his waist and sit up. There wasn’t time to attack the restraints at his ankles. Lars was on him, hacking out with his knife. Hellequin forgot the use of his legs, concentrating instead on each fall of the blade. His own knife was missing; he spotted it on top of a steel cabinet at the far end of the makeshift operating theatre. The mechanism of his HawkEye was soaked in the surgeon’s blood and kept cutting out. In snapshots, Hellequin saw the slash of Lars’ blade and the surgeon moving in with the second gas mask.

  “I don’t want you to kill the bastard, Lars. I want you to pin him down again,” she insisted, blood streaming from her cheekbone, voice tight with hysteria.

  Lars’ face shone with triumph as he drove the blade into Hellequin’s shoulder. “This fucker ain’t breaking free of me a second time.”

  Hellequin bucked. His view through the HawkEye lens spattered like a lit candle stub. He tried to focus, stomach clawing as the gas mask closed over his face.

  “Hold him, blood worm, or I’ll have my men outside slice and dice you without aid of anaesthetic.”

  Lars heeded the surgeon. Struggling to make sense of his bearings with his natural eye, Hellequin found his arms pinned behind him. The pain from his stab wound was excruciating but he fought against Lars’ iron grip even as the doctor lowered the gas mask over his face. Hot bursts of steam escaped the sides. Wind mechanisms crunched and wheezed, automatically pulling the straps tight. Hellequin heard the eerie whoosh of gas and tried to keep from breathing. Lars tightened his grip, antagonising the stab wound. Hellequin gasped in spite of himself and choked down a mouthful of the drug. In seconds, he was on the precipice of blacking out.

  * * *

  The door splintered under Asenath’s shoulder. Having torn out the throat of the last sentry with her claws, Rust bounded over. Pig Heart brought up the rear, panting heavily, tusks bared against the pain he laboured under.

  “Motherfuckers!” A scarecrow of a man wearing a Humock Guard duster coat leapt away from one of two stretcher beds in the centre of the room. The man wielded a bloodstained knife.

  “Move away from the HawkEye,” said Asenath slowly.

  The man juggled the hilt of his blade between his hands. Behind him cowered a second scarecrow, a woman once was. Now she resembled a mummified child – skin baked down into wrinkles, bird-bright black eyes – and wore a wreath of tiny bones around her neck.

  “Get out!” The old woman grabbed a small hacksaw off the surgical tray. “Get out, get out, filthy street rats!”

  The three carnie folk saw Hellequin and Nim on stretchers. Both wore large steaming gas masks. Nim appeared unravelled at one arm. Wires and unbolted circuits spilled out from her over a metal tray on a high table alongside her. Hellequin was bleeding through his faded frockcoat, the HawkEye lens gored.

  Having made short work of the men on guard outside the room, the new arrivals took on Lars. He was agile, weaving in and out of Asenath’s attack with her scimitar while delivering a boot to Rust’s collarbone when the wolf girl sprang at him.

  Pig Heart watched the fight from the sidelines initially. He’d been warned to lead the way to the surgeon then take the lead no more, his wounds making it difficult enough for him to stay upright let alone fight. But it was hard to watch the slap of the ex-soldier’s fists into Rust’s bare flesh as she ran at him again.

  “Bite the bugger, gal!” he called from the sidelines.

  Rust craned her mouth, revealing sharp incisors. She tore a chunk from the man’s cheek, reopening one of the two old wounds. He knocked her sideways with an elbow and drove his blade hard at Asenath’s chest. Rust ducked to avoid the surgeon’s hacksaw. She slashed out at the old woman, who fell back awkwardly, sending the tray of surgical instruments clattering down onto the floor.

  Pig Heart lumbered over to where Hellequin lay prone on one stretcher. He tried to make sense of the gas mask then forced a stopcock on the cylinder stored beneath. Batting at the straps that secured it, he must have released something; there was a hiss of steam–driven mechanics and the mask’s straps un-popped.

  “HawkEye!”

  Hellequin didn’t reply. Pig Heart slapped him a couple of times around the jaw.

  “Pig... Heart?” said the HawkEye soldier woozily.

  “Yeah. I may not be a pretty sight to wake up to, but at least that crazy bitch surgeon didn’t get her hooks into you.” Pig Heart squinted over to where Nim lay unconscious. “Unlike your beau, Nim. She’s mauled and then some. Rust’ll make the doc pay though. She’ll gut that bitch good and proper.”

  Hellequin tried to form words. They came out as a soft pop–pop.

  “What’s that?” Pig Heart lent in. He listened and looked up.

  “Rust! Incapacitate but don’t kill that doc bitch. We need her to stitch Nim up again!”

  Rust’s response was immediate. She drove her claws up under the surgeon’s ribs and stopped just short of tearing the skin there. The woman froze.

  “Move and
I gut it,” said Rust by the woman’s ear.

  On the far side of the room, Asenath was floored by a fist. Lars squatted and lent over her, blade at her throat.

  “I did for your kin, Jeridian. Got that great clot of a Shomaniese to show me where the weak ones holed up. I just had to reach in and pick them off. Miss Yalda Danan was kind enough to pay me a hundred dollars a hide and, my my, the work she did with them red skins. Prettied the fuckers right up with wires under flesh and re-bolted bones and animal organs.”

  “And I for one am mighty grateful.” Pig Heart inclined his head towards the surgeon. Rust kept her claws at the woman’s ribs.

  “Hello there, Miss Dannan. Thought we’d find you here. Same address, same love of dabbling with what’s natural and what ain’t.” Pig Heart tapped his chest. “Ticker’s kept me up right these past few years. But there’s been a price. You see that about me, doncha?” Pig Heart showed his tusks. Savageness crept into his voice. “You saved me and re-made me, and the price I paid was to become less man than swine.” He honked in his throat. It came out as a loud grunt. “So I thank you, Miss Dannan, for the life I got given by your fair hands, and I curse you just the same.”

  Pig Heart stared at Asenath. “Just gonna lie there or take that bastard’s head?”

  “She’s gonna lie...”

  Corporal Lars never finished his sentence. He fell over to one side, the grip on his knife slack. It clattered onto the floor and he clutched his hand to his chest. The handle of Asenath’s scimitar protruded from his left set of ribs.

  Asenath stood up. She grabbed the man’s hair in one hand, put a foot to one of his shoulders and dragged her blade out his body. The ex-soldier gasped in reaction. It was his last breath. He collapsed forward. Blood seeped around him in a smooth reflective pool.

  Pig Heart turned back to Miss Yalda Danan who had the look of a frightened roo rat about to be readied for the stew pot. “Now, Miss Danan. I’m going need you to put my two friends right.” He picked a scalpel off the tray and gestured to the wall with its bank of bottled oddities. “Else I may have to get creative.”

  FOURTEEN

  Jaxx awoke. He was lying on the sand, curled up like a child, hands pressed into a prayer against his face. The air was crisp. But he sensed the voracious heat that was to come.

  He swallowed against a dry throat and pushed up onto an elbow. His head swam, a faint sense of nauseous suggesting he had been more directly affected by the drug fumes inside the nomads’ tent than he’d supposed at the time. Nonetheless, he struggled to his feet.

  The rising sun flamed at the horizon. Jaxx was grateful not to have missed Dawn Prayer. Having emptied his bladder in a hot tight spill of urine, he strode off a short way and knelt down in the sand.

  His voice was strong, his devotion faultless. The events of a few hours earlier preyed on his mind though, in particular thoughts of the monk – or as he knew her now, the girl who did speak. He retained a sense of her in the small relaxing of his shoulders, the release of sex having eased the burden of everyday living some. He could still smell her too. Perfume of sweat and womanness layered him.

  Jaxx concluded his prayers and stood. The sun was molten, risen clear of the horizon. He started to walk, measuring out the advance of dawn with every step.

  The camp was busy by the time he got back. Men sluiced themselves down with the contents of clothhod water bladders. Others sat around, devouring flatbread or a bowl full of the starch porridge the wives had cooked up over a charcoal pit.

  Jaxx saw D’Angelus duck out from beneath the flap of one of the smaller tents. The pimp positioned his trekker’s hat on his head and strode over to the cooking pot. In his wake, a couple of the wives emerged from the same tent, blinking against the day and tidying their hair and garments.

  D’Angelus spotted Jaxx.

  “Hi! Hi! Over here, Jaxx!”

  The pimp beat his hands and shrugged his shoulders, shaking off the exertions of his night-time pursuits. He’d a manic glaze to him that morning, prompting Jaxx to wonder if it really paid him to stay in the man’s service. Sure, he’d a better standing in D’Angelus’s little army than most – even more so since D’Angelus’s right-hand man lost his life to the wing of a hopper. But Jaxx felt no personal desire to pursue Herb or any other in Cyber Circus. Even the swine man was just another face in a long list of those Jaxx would murder one day. When the fates prescribed it.

  You and I, we’re in the wrong place. The girl’s words haunted him.

  “You Sirinese and your prayer rituals! Dawn, dusk, and probably all hours in-between.” D’Angelus accepted a small bowl of steaming tea, gesturing to the woman who brought it to bring another for Jaxx. “Well, I’m hoping your prayers will keep us on the right side of the Saints – and, yeah, I know they’re not the recipients of your praise. But it’s the will that matters, ain’t it? Either way, it’s all we got now the monk’s gone.”

  “Gone?” Jaxx recalled the terrible visions he’d seen when the girl had lain with him. His ears played tricks. There was the small murmur of a breeze. Dust seemed to coat his tongue suddenly.

  “When did the monk go?” he asked, careful not to betray the true sex of the monk while uncertain who he was protecting. He suspected himself. The tears that had flowed after she’d finished with him were born of some great sorrow which wasn’t his own. He suspected their coupling had brought about a queer osmosis of emotion – one which both sated and drained him.

  “Wouldn’t know. Must’ve taken to the desert before dawn because there’s no sign of the bastard now. He was a lousy conversationalist anyway.” D’Angelus slapped Jaxx on the arm. He screwed up his eyes as the sun grew in strength, reflecting fiercely off the Sirinese’s metal butting plate.

  Jaxx liked how the pimp was blinded by the light coming off of him. Partly, he wanted the sun to keep beating down and burn up the pimp. But he’d no reason to feel so. Other than a dull headache, a dry throat, and the stench of sweat over his body.

  One of the women brought him a bowl of tea. Jaxx raised it to his lips. The tea was sweet and laced with hot mint. His mind freshened.

  “We’ll drill a shallow trench from here today to Deralisee east of Zan City,” he said between mouthfuls.

  D’Angelus got animated. “Good man, Jaxx. You got the scent of those carney bastards, huh?”

  Not really, Jaxx wanted to say. They weren’t far enough from Zan City yet for him to track the dirigible based on scent alone. But he’d a hunch the troop was on the move again. It was akin to a physical tug, as if some invisible thread connected him with the movement of the ship.

  D’Angelus fed a smoke stick between his lips. “Since we’ve lost the Zen monk, I guess you’ll serve as our good luck charm. Watch you steer us right now, Jaxx.” The pimp cracked a smile. Smoke oozed between the tics of his teeth.

  “I’ll check Das has stoked the boiler with dung cakes and water. Then the men can board.”

  “You do that,” said D’Angelus dreamily, staring out at the expanse of desert. “Stupid bastard monk. If the jackal dogs don’t get him, the dust storm will.”

  Jaxx glanced over his shoulder. A thin brown line had appeared at the horizon.

  “We need to get on our way,” he said.

  * * *

  “Dust’s getting up,” said Herb, staring out the grimy glass on the bridge.

  Asenath signalled one of the pitch crew to relieve her from the frilled ship’s wheel. She joined Herb inside the viewing pit. Framed by gilt pipes and lumpen green matter, the window gave out onto the endless dustbowl of the Garenga Stretch, south of Zan City. The area was vast and barren. When the Hamatan hit, it blew in hardest over the Stretch.

  “I see it.” Asenath felt a dark space open up beneath her ribs. Herb would never turn around, not with D’Angelus pursuing them anywhere north of the Stretch, not when there was money to be made across the desert in the township of Deralisee.

  “Want me to turn her around?” asked the crewman at th
e ship’s wheel.

  You haven’t been with the circus long, thought Asenath. She noted the man’s dust handler stoop. He’d worked that thankless job longer than most, hauling great quantities of dust out of the mines, only to have the storms sweep the mess back in inside the week. If future generations dug up the man’s remains, they’d find his backbone a perfect curve.

  “Try it and I’ll have you keelhauled,” replied Herb succinctly. “Turn Cyber Circus around?” He gave a short, sour laugh. “Like she’d let you anyways.”

  “It might be prudent to set the ship down though.” Asenath didn’t like the look of that dust cloud. She known the circus buffered by some mighty storms. But they’d never flown directly into the Hamatan over the Stretch before. She suspected a storm that fierce would sweep clean everything in its path.

  “Maybe. Maybe.” It was always Herb’s standard answer to the suggestion they delay their arrival to a destination any. Asenath knew it meant diddley squat.

  She felt the first small buffer of swirling air. Herb was right, she thought. The dust was getting up. And pretty soon they’d be in the heart of it.

  * * *

  Installed in the cockpit of Wanda-Sue, the glass hood left up to provide airflow, Jaxx concentrated on tracking Cyber Circus. Having shaken off the haze of his strange slumber, he felt newly invigorated. Loudest of all was the flight path of Cyber Circus. He could taste it on the air – rancid, caramelised.

  “Take us south-east,” he told Das.

  “Yes suree.” The navigator pressed the steering rod away from him and, reaching to flip a couple of valve switches, enveloped the cab in steam. Wanda-Sue got hot under the collar and bucked as if straining against a dropped anchor.

  Das glanced back. D’Angelus slumbered under his trekker’s hat. He glanced over the other shoulder at Jaxx.

  “You know the dusts getting up, dontcha?” The navigator’s voice sounded anxious. “We wanna dive below when we can, but this part of the Stretch is the crust above the old Rongun mines. Tales of swarms aplenty around these parts.”