He drew up suddenly. The monk had stopped in between two upright bars, a wilted thing in a gilded cage. Hellequin magnified the finer details of the figure. The sackcloth mask with its slashed mouth, running stitch nose and eyeholes. Small hands that protruded from the long sleeves of the cassock... a young man’s? No, a woman’s, Hellequin rationalised, and felt no less committed in his pursuit of her.
She leapt then, clearing the scaffold and dropping down to the kited silk of the dressing rooms below. Unlike when Hellequin had tried the same trick, the fabric held under the woman’s lesser weight. She slid down; Hellequin used the grid across his steel eye to plot her trajectory. Calculating the drop off point, he shinned down the nearest vertical pole, hit the floor backstage, ran forward and plucked the woman out of the air as she skidded off the roof.
His arm locked in around her waist. His bowie knife sat tight to her throat. She gulped in air. Hellequin felt the quick pace of her heart where his upper arm grazed her ribs.
* * *
“Queer how that Zen monk up and abandoned us in the middle of the doggone dessert!” D’Angelus sucked his cheeks against his teeth and looked even more sharp-boned. The burrower rattled in its ribs and gave off occasional spurts of thick smoke. It unnerved D’Angelus. He tugged at his neck tie, loosening it in an effort to ward off the sweat. His palms were clammy and he couldn’t help wishing the monk was back in the cab with them, a charm as crucial to the miners as a song bird in a cage.
“Whaddya you say, Jaxx? You think its queer how that monk went about it?”
The Sirinese nodded. He didn’t speak though. D’Angelus wondered if the man was not a fan of journeying below ground either and said, “Not natural for men to be poking about in the dark like this.” But Jaxx gave no indication that he believed it unnatural, but just stayed inert, eyes fixed on the plethora of grit, streaming water and rock fragments assaulting the windscreen.
“Nope, nothin’ right about a man being this far underground.” D’Angelus’ gaze darted about the cab. The confined space reverberated while the apparatus in the dash became increasingly complex to his eyes. A single kerosene lantern lent his surroundings a spectral green glow.
“We’re almost through to the caverns.” The mechanic glanced back at D’Angelus, eyes magnified by his goggles as if he belonged out amongst the swarm rather than riding in the cab. “I’m bringing us in at an angle. If we wanna avoid the locusts, we’ve got to use common sense. They’re gonna want heat, which means bedding down in one of the deeper caverns. They’re gonna want water. Steam off one of the underground hot springs. Throwback to that whole air plant genesis. My thinking is we tunnel in clear of any water source. Thing is...” Das lent forward and rapped one of the large brass dials in the dash. “I got a way of avoiding the wet stuff thanks to this here Diviner gauge.”
“Hold up, fella!” D’Angelus took off his hat and laid it on his lap. Without the hat, he looked older. “What’s the one thing we can guarantee the circus will have to seek out? What makes that flying freak pit stay up in the sky?” D’Angelus smiled, tic teeth dazzling in the gloom of the cab. “Hot air! And they generate it with steam-driven apparatus. Without water, Cyber Circus is just a big old tent stuck underground.”
“If we seek out water, we’re going to have to deal with the swarm too.” Jaxx’s butting plate reflected the sickly glow off the kerosene lantern.
D’Angelus gestured sharply over one shoulder with a thumb. “You’re forgetting we got a whole load of muscle back there in Wanda-Sue’s backend?” He kept up his dead man’s smile. “Plus, there’s nothing like upping the stakes when it comes to trophy hunting now, is there?”
SEVENTEEN
The children crept along the narrow passageway on their soft bellies. Tunnelled out by the water flow millennia before, the passage curved and spiralled; only the Scuttlers with their flexible shells and tiny bodies could have attempted to negotiate it. The dark was punctured by beams off the headlamps each child wore, tied in place by the lady monk who’d produced special ribbons for the purpose.
“Lazurite blue,” she’d said to Rind, adding, “For the queenly one.” Ol got “Red as jewel fruit. For the spicy one.” And for Tib. “The warrior. Green, like the eyes of a rattler.” She’d shown them how to wind the clockwork generators inside each lamp. Then she’d shown them the way. Up into the gods of the tent, to one of the two points where the circus roof steepled. She’d lifted each in turn and they’d scrabbled out the canvas trapdoor there.
“Look for my love in the crags and the black spots,” she’d told them. “Do this for me and I promise you each a free pass to Heaven.”
So they’d crawled through the passage in the rock like worms through dirt, front pincers elbowing forward. The roof of the tunnel was centimetres above their heads. Every so often an insect would be caught in the glow off the headlamps, beautiful weird things in metallic shades.
“Hello, mister beetle. Where you scurrying?” Ol poked the bug, a many legged oddity with huge opalescent eyes. The weight of her pincer crushed it.
Rind was out in front, her little old woman face shrewd as she led her siblings through the chasm. “Shadows can be big. Shadows can be small. Me’s thinking the lady’s love might have tucked further in, where it’s chapel quiet.” She stopped and nosed backwards, “What do he and she reckon?”
“I’s reckon the lady’s a nutcase. Brain gone mushed,” shot Tib from the backend of their procession.
“I’s think she’s an angel,” said Ol, her voice sweet with hope. Underneath her, the bones of tiny dead things crumbled.
“I’s think she’s dangerous. A creeping thing that knows too many secrets and keeps magic in her itty bitty fingers.” Rind poured herself out of the tunnel. Like any other insect, she ran up the wall where the passageway came out, followed by her sister and brother. They climbed the fleshy folds of the rock face, limbs clattering beneath their beetle backs. In and out and over the craggy surface they climbed, spread out to investigate at greater speed. Potato noses poked in at crevices. Claws scooped in at cracks. Dust billowed out into the black world at their backs.
“Nuthin?” Tib called.
“Nuthin,” agreed Rind and Ol in unison.
They entered another fissure and scurried out onto the walls of a new cavern. Their small weak eyes blinked. Bioluminescence coated the distant roof-space and dripped down the walls in great thick loops. Shadows roamed the walls or clustered in at the honeycombed rock. Mandibles dripped. Wing cases chaffed.
“Nasty creepy things,” whispered Tib. He pop-popped his mouth in delight.
They’d seen the one giant locust back at the circus. Landing on Herb’s private platform, it had spied the monk woman and taken to the air again. Now, the Scuttlers were hemmed in by hundreds of the creatures.
“Don’t like it,” muttered Ol.
The children backed towards one another. One of the colossal insects moved in close, its movement impeded by the keratin wing cases and hugely powerful yet overlarge back limbs. Head feathers waved at its neck frill. Cold black eyes switched focus from Rust to Ol to Tib. With the tip of its antennae, the creature felt about Ol, the child closest. The head feathers shivered and the locust returned its attention to processing some stinking matter inside its jaws.
Slowly the children unbuttoned from one another and began to move amongst the swarm. Head feathers brushed against their hoary hides; the stings did not penetrate. Integrating with the herd, the Scuttlers grew in confidence. They took to investigating the pocked rock, where hoppers raised their plated skulls and lazily looked away.
The atmosphere grew increasingly humid as they journeyed down the walls. Below were two great banks of rock and accumulated dust. Between the banks was a wide stretch of water. The surface was phenomenally smooth and shining like black ink. Steam rose up from rock pools in the banks either side. Condensation left a greasy layer over the walls.
This was a proper crawling brew, a witch cave, said Rind.
Ol was more accepting. “Nimble sucky mouths. No different to coyotes at the teat. Lovely damp air too.” She leapt down onto the nearest bank and tipped back to seesaw in her shell, buffering it in the layered dust. Locusts whirled overhead.
“Oh, oh!” cried Tib, the beam from his headlamp dancing over the flying insects like a spotlight. “They’re pretty when they fly.”
Rind, though, hadn’t quite given over her heart to the monsters. Instead she stared at a shimmering slice of rock at one end of the lake. Inside the rock moved a shadow. Tall, man-like, with a long spread of limbs.
“Listen!” she snapped.
All three hushed and listened beyond the click-clack of jaws and whir of looping flight.
“Ca-ca,” said the voice, low and resonant. “Ca-ca... Carrie-Anne.”
* * *
The crew of Cyber Circus stood on the dusty rock surface in the centre of the tent. At the heart of them stood the HawkEye and the Zen monk.
“Move it, move it!” Herb bustled through the onlookers, egg belly leading the way. He stopped abruptly in front of the intruder. Resting his hands on his hips, he rocked back onto his heels and pulled a face.
“Well, ain’t that just the butt-ugliest outfit you ever saw, folk? Mask like that? Sheesh, its gotta turn the milk sour in a clothhod’s udders. And that belt? What ya got dangling there, fella? All that dead stuff hanging about your person? Ask me, it’s unsaintly.”
The carnie folk stayed hushed. Only Herb had the nerve to bad mouth the extremist ways of the Zen brotherhood.
Herb peered at the mask, getting in close as if the more he examined the nature of the thing, the greater the chance he’d find it less despicable. “Way I understand it, you Zen monks make yourselves as hideous and death-riddled as possible so if a Saint just happens to be in the neighbourhood, they’ll judge you a worthless abomination. Now that, my fellow carnies, is self-flagellation!”
He shook his head and rocked back onto his heels. “Not one iota of it makes sense to a Saints fearing man like myself. But enough about the perverse ways of your order.” His eyes grew tight. “What the hell are you doing here inside my circus?”
The monk didn’t reply.
“Silent order.” Herb nodded. “Ain’t that friggin’ convenient.” He held out his hands to include all. “Whaddaya say, folks? Do we keelhaul him some until he learns to use his tongue, same way we chastised our chief pitch man.”
Herb gestured to Pig Heart, who stiffened at the reminder. “And he’s a fella I’ve trusted the care of my circus to for many a year.” He got in close to the mask again. “Want to start flapping those gums now, sonny?”
“He’s no sonny, Herb,” Hellequin said quietly. “You’ll trust me when I say I’ve got a way of seeing things differently and there’s a woman inside that garb.”
The Zen monk turned to the HawkEye in apparent surprise. Rather than suffer the indignity of being forced to do so, the monk removed the hideous headdress.
“You were looking for the Scuttlers? They are on an errand for me and will no doubt discover any other secrets the caverns have to offer in the process.” The woman spoke softly. Her mouth was just a little too wide, but there was sensuality in the face. And sadness to the eyes.
Nim stepped forward. “Where did you send those children?”
“And what makes you think they will come back?” Lulu rubbed a hand about his collar bones, mouth budded. “They ain’t the brightest.”
“Because we made a pact.” The woman knelt. She scooped up fistfuls of dust. Her head cocked as she let the dust sift from her fingers. The motes fell strangely, curling in and around her body, spiralling down.
Herb shuffled back. “Where’d you come from, lady?”
“The big old house where the corn grows plump and sweet and Indian Blanket spreads either side the porch.” Her eyes got wild. Tears ebbed. “The dust wrapped me in its soft grey material, and this strange underworld opened up to me.” She pointed at the floor. Her eyes flitted all around the metal-and-fibre circus tent.
Herb arched one eyebrow at the woman, clearly unsure of her sanity. “What do you want with Cyber Circus?”
“I can’t fit into the caverns’ tight spots. If I can just find the shadow of my beloved, I can use it as a template. I can mould him back out of the land.” The woman held up her greyed palms. “The dust told me so.”
“The dust told you, did it? Well, ain’t that hunky-dory.” Herb’s mouth had a sour slant. “And you just thought you’d creep in here and fill the Scuttlers’ tiny minds with your madness? Saints almighty, Hellequin!” Herb threw up his hands. “We’ve gone and bagged us a lunatic. Meanwhile, the only freaks in this company who stood a chance of scouting ahead for us are long gone.” He knitted his fingers and hooked them behind his head, cheeks puffing. “So what now, soldier? What the hell do we do next?”
Hellequin stared up at the gloomy upper reaches of the tent. “We ask the Scuttlers what they’ve found.”
It was a few seconds before everyone else saw the three beetle-backed children come clattering down the inner walls of the tent.
Just at that moment, Cyber Circus gave a tremendous shudder. The weak luminescence inside the ship went out.
* * *
Voices. A great tumbling of panicked voices coming from all directions at once. From somewhere off inside the living quarters, the cries of the young sounded, like screeching baby birds.
“Nim.” Hellequin spoke by her ear. “I can see still. Now listen to me. I need you to come with me now.”
It hurt Nim’s ears and heart, this cacophony of fear. Hadn’t the circus suffered enough, she wondered bleakly while feeling Hellequin’s hand slip into hers. He led her away from the chaos. They moved over the alien surface of the rock, boots swishing through dust. Nim allowed herself to be led blindly on.
She heard the approach of the Scuttlers.
“Children. Did you find water on your travels?” she heard Hellequin ask and three high, reverberant voices answer in turn.
“Oh yesee.”
“So black, so stink hot.”
“Where the lady’s ghostman sits, walled up behind rock.”
“Did you find a route that would let this ship get close to the water?” Hellequin cut in.
“We found holes in walls.”
“Nooks and cranies.”
“Spots no bigger than a roo rat. One passageway’s large enough to fit this giant through.”
“I need you to guide us there,” Hellequin told the children.
“Hick pick, would if we could, but circus ain’t lit up anymore,” answered one youngster.
“Nim is about to change that.” Hellequin made as if to stride off, dragging Nim in his wake.
“What now, HawkEye? You gonna act like you own me just because you got to go there with me for free?” Nim yanked her hand free and seethed in the darkness.
Hellequin leant in. Flesh and metal brushed against her cheek. “Trust me, Nim. I wanna see you safe. I wanna see you free. But first I gotta see you.”
His voice was needful and perplexingly genuine. Nim could think of no reason to not allow herself to be led.
After a time, Hellequin stopped and led her hand to a strip of warm metal. “You go up the stairs first.”
Nim felt for the first rise of the steps. She climbed, sensing the stairs spiral around and up, and finally level out onto a narrow platform.
Hellequin stepped up behind her and secured her hand on the rail, his lean frame moulding against hers.
“Nim,” he whispered. “I need you to shine now. Shine with all that rage you got tucked up inside at the men who’ve hurt and torn and choked the fight from you. I need you to hear me when I say I’m a broken man, literally broken because the day the authorities put this biomorph implant in me, they nerve-blocked my emotions. But you light me up, Nim, and I can’t begin to explain how. All I do know is if you shine now with every bit of rage inside you, I will bring you back from that
darkness.”
Nim heard the words. They cut her deeply. She’d no desire whatsoever to open up her mind and body to the savageness exacted on her over the years. But one thing she did know incontestably – she was the only light source on board Cyber Circus.
“Fine,” she said, a throb in her voice. “Now back off or I’ll burn out your eyes. Both of them.”
* * *
“On past the booger rock.” Ol indicated a huge stalactite to one side of the passage and beat her tremendous front claws in rapture. A smile broke over her shrunken face.
“He and me and she cut marks in the grot they smeared there,” piped up Rind with enthusiasm.
The man with the stitched metal eye was less elated. “They?” he asked in that bleak tone the Scuttlers recognised from the times Herb or some harder hand had beat them when they got clumsy in their act.
“Crawlers,” ventured Tib.
“And they let you live?” The soldier wrestled with the wheel while the ship shook and listed on its last dregs of steam.
“We likes their tickly feather heads,” giggled Ol. The three shared in the fact, laughing like snorting piglets.
The soldier gripped the wheel and got a lock on it. “So the locusts can’t sting you. Nor do they see you as other than themselves. As food.” He steered around the stalactite while the children beat their claws in merriment and tumbled in and out of the viewing pit.
“How much further?”
“A skip and a bit,” said Rind.
“Let’s hope so.” The soldier’s eye whirred. “I’d say we got a few drops of water in the boiler then we’re grounded for good.”
Rind rubbed one of her large red claws over the warm brass surround of the viewing pane. “Poor circus.”
Ol copied her, cooing, “Poor, poor circus.”
“Would you like to help the circus?” said the soldier. His metal eye switched and shifted.
* * *
The ship drifted into the cavern on silent wings. Glowing softly, it passed over the black slick of the lake. Pitch men waited up on the gangways near the roof, their young locked in the chambered living quarters. Seeing by the neon light feeding off Nim on the calliope balcony, the crew clutched their limited firearms and barely dared breathe. Below, hundreds of black locusts crawled.
Cyber Circus Page 17