by Ophidia Cox
THE CYBERKINK SIDESHOW
By Ophidia Cox
LYRICAL PRESS
An imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/
For B.
Acknowledgements
With thanks to Nerine Dorman.
Chapter 1
The sun had not yet set when Constable Sylvia Price parked the police van on the concourse and got out to release Max from his cage in the back, but much of the heat had at last gone from the sweltering July afternoon. As she locked the vehicle, she glanced up to take in the red-streaked sky, the sparse clouds uplit by the sunset looking as pink and sticky as the discarded candy floss littering the pavement.
Sylvia looped her wrist through Max’s leash as she synced herself to him and tried to adjust her uniform, which clung unpleasantly to her every sweaty crevice. The day crowd was dispersing, kids shrieking, youths laughing and swearing on their way home. The litter was everywhere: candy floss, burger wrappers, half-finished polystyrene boxes of chips. Chewing gum. Damn stuff did horrible things to dogs’ paws, and the last thing she needed was for Max to step in it. Filthy buggers.
She gave Max’s lead a gentle tug after plotting a course through the rubbish. “C’mon, lad.” Predictably, he pulled away from her at the first lamppost they passed. A rank odor and a torrent of information at once hit Sylvia through the animal’s interface. Six different dogs had urinated there in the past hour. Sylvia smiled, despite the phantom stench filling her nose. She’d always thought it ironic that sniffer dogs had been interfaced to humans to facilitate tracking down and identifying substances, whereas being interfaced to Max she’d unwittingly learned the signature smells of all manner of dog-related business. It made her wonder exactly who was serving whom.
The main path led down into a patchwork of show gardens. On the left the honeysuckle-garlanded coils of a great serpent rose from a sea of blue and purple pansies. The creature looked to have been sculpted from a wire frame stuffed with earth and coir, from which the flowers grew. Over on the right, water trickled around a perspective-defying Meccano guttering construction like something from an HC Escher drawing. Beyond these a maze had been laid out in ten-foot sunflowers. A garden of genetically modified nasturtiums sprouted a sign explaining they were made as a school project. Each petal bore colorless blobs of letters spelling the name of someone who had died as a result of information terrorism.
Max panted in the evening heat, tongue spilling loosely over his white teeth. The German shepherd sweltered under his thick tan-and-black coat. Sylvia swigged the bottle from the holder attached to her belt, but the water left her mouth dry. No, it wasn’t her. She paused to let the dog drink from the water feature. He continued to pant even after he’d slaked his thirst, water dripping from his muzzle and leaving dark spots on the path where he walked.
The little monorail train rattled overhead as they came to the landscaped open area, paths winding around an army of sinister orange wire-figure sculptures. Cultural regeneration, the government called it. It would be here only for the summer of this year, then all the attractions of the Garden Festival would leave, never to return again, the land sold on for development.
A Ferris wheel towered on the horizon, behind the clutter of the Garden Festival’s myriad attractions. The observation cars would probably have air-conditioning. Sylvia tried to imagine being cool. Summer had been hot and dry so far this year.
To reach the attractions, they had to cross a water garden of lily ponds surrounded by chili plants burgeoning with multicolored fruit. Fast-food stalls and trailers scattered the lawn on the other side. Gaudy signs stood up on the slope: The Museum of Electricity, The Interactive Lifestyle Experience. Sylvia couldn’t see Pikesley objecting to such wholesome and educational stuff, but here and there walked people in small groups, against the flow of the day’s youth exodus–adults dressed as though they were on their way to a heavy metal concert. One of them, a tall woman with kohl-rimmed eyes and long, black hair, glanced at Max and Sylvia as they passed.
A rollercoaster car stood inert at the end of its track, its queuing post empty. The Haunted Manor was likewise deserted. Sylvia presumed the implied ghosts were still there. Virtual Arcade. That one looked like it was still open, although its trade had died down. Behind the window, she discerned the form of a man standing entranced by the heavy headset he wore, reaching out with gloved hands and turning slowly.
Cyberkink Sideshow.
Sylvia jerked her head back to read the sign again. Victor R. Maynard’s Cyberkink Sideshow. This was it. A long queue led up to a giant striped circus tent. A gleaming fiber optic rope outlined the queuing space, running along waist-high posts that resembled giant neon dildos with bulbous heads and ribbed shafts. Sandwich boards placed at intervals along the queue displayed nefarious testimonials. The Greatest Sideshow on Earth. The most depraved exhibit of human sexuality to ever be permitted on tour. Banned in thirteen countries.
People looked away and a lad glared at Sylvia through a faceful of piercings as she pushed her way to the front of the queue. Two bouncers wearing tight leather shorts and jackboots guarded the entrance. Both were heavily tattooed.
Sylvia held up her police ID. “I’m going to need to inspect your premises.”
One of the bouncers folded his arms and pushed up his lower lip while he scrutinized the ID. He patted Max on the head before stepping out the way. Max was inordinately interested in the bouncers’ sweaty shorts, and Sylvia had to pull him away as she passed into the tent. She salivated and swallowed as she walked on, trying to lose the ghost scent.
The great space the tent enclosed was already packed with people serried upon tiers sunk into a depression in the ground. Judging by the length of the queue outside, Sylvia calculated there’d be people turned away. A low barrier at the bottom tier separated the crowd from a center ring with a sand-covered floor and various wooden stages. From the main pole supporting the structure depended batteries of speakers and eight screens arranged in an octagon to face the audience from all sides. Technical staff with black t-shirts swarmed over the equipment, loud crackles and shrieks ringing from the audio system.
It would be best to check now, before the event started. Sylvia stepped down to the first tier and gave Max the thought-command to search. She could tell immediately that these spectators weren’t in favor of the police presence. Feet were shoved into her ankles as she climbed between the seats. People made disgusted faces at Max when he sniffed them. Some of them smelled of cannabis. She would leave them be. It would be injudicious to throw the book at them. She was here to get to the bottom of a much more serious accusation, not stir up trouble. While the general public didn’t approve of the sideshow, they didn’t much like the police either, and it wouldn’t help public relations if the headlines told of the police disrupting the takings of an independent business and mass arrests for petty offenses. What she was looking for was more serious drugs, and the telltale electronic signatures of any information contraband or illegal gadgets.
She managed one lap around the tent, but she wasn’t getting anywhere. Down in the center ring the black t-shirts were finishing up and it looked as though the show was about to begin. Sylvia climbed back up to the upper tier and found a seat up against the tent fabric wall.
A human figure clambered up onto a stage above where a drum kit had been set up. The person’s body was covered in long, flaxen hair, like an Afghan hound. It took its seat and began a drumroll.
The lighting in the tent dropped, and a loud, excited cheer broke out in the darkness around Sylvia. The strident notes of an organ reverberated, and Sylvia instinctively looked up to the high ceiling w
here the pole supported the tent’s roof and the ganglion of wires spread there like jungle vines. When she looked back to the ring, the velvet curtains that concealed the performers’ entrance had parted, and a spotlight stabbed through the shadows to illuminate those who emerged.
A wide figure wearing a Boy Scout uniform trotted into the arena, followed by two others, thin, masked, and in bondage harnesses. The skin that showed between the gaps was covered in hair, but despite this they both had narrow waists in proportion to their hips, and substantial yet fuzz-covered breasts protruding between the leather straps. The first figure held up his hands to rapturous cheering from the audience. He was very fat, and shorter than the other two, the hat obscuring his features. His legs appeared oddly smooth and hairless, and Sylvia couldn’t tell from this distance whether he was a man or a boy. The main screen above the entrance changed to focus in on him, and now she saw from the face under the brim of the hat that he wasn’t a boy, but a man in his early thirties.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” He held up a hand to quiet the throng.
The audience booed and laughed. The main screen showed the man’s expression change to mock offense. “Whores and bastards!” he barked into the microphone, his voice becoming shrill and fierce. Applause and noisy laughter broke out. “It’s my delight to announce the opening and to cordially welcome you all to what I hope you’ll all agree is the greatest freak show on Earth!”
His voice had a nasal timbre and a slight Oxford accent, not at all the sort of voice Sylvia would have expected from someone introducing live pornography. She found herself fixating upon his thick legs as he spoke, her gaze wandering up over his knees to his broad, shapely thighs and his shorts, which strained at the waistband where his belly overflowed. Flesh bulged voluptuously under the yellow fabric of his shirt.
The ringmaster continued. “If my sideshow’s reputation precedes it, which it usually does, most of you may already have heard about our notorious fully interactive main event, which will be opening tomorrow evening. In the meantime, tonight, we would like to offer you a select sample of the entertainments we have on offer. Before the events begin, we do have some rules that we do ask you observe. We merely ask that you do not intrude upon your fellow members of the audience and that you do not engage in copulation or frottage of any sort while you’re seated, and we also ask that you do not throw objects at our performers. So, without further ado, I’d like to welcome the first act! Please give a very warm welcome to our leprechauns!”
Spotlights raced between the curtains and the stage. Riverdance music began, and a host of midgets or dwarves–or whatever the current politically correct name might be for vertically disadvantaged men and women–clad in green rushed onto the stage and began to tap dance. As the dance went on, the midgets started stripping off their clothes and flinging them about the stage, pairing up and cavorting together, until the dance deteriorated into an orgy on the stage floor. The spectators laughed and clapped in time to the music.
Sylvia looked away in embarrassment, finding only other members of the audience. Not wanting to make eye contact with them, she looked down at her feet and at Max where he curled against her ankles, rubbing the soft fur between his ears with her fingers.
At last the leprechauns’ shameful display ended, and they picked up their clothes and bowed and exited the stage to rapturous cheers.
The ring lighting dimmed once more, and a single spotlight sought out the remaining figure of the ringmaster. “So, whores and bastards.” He turned slowly as he spoke so as to address the whole audience. “You’ve seen some dwarves. What would you say if I said I could show you an elf, too?”
The audience answered with a questioning murmur.
“In that case, you might like to look up there.” The ringmaster pointed to a place close to the central pole, in the rigging above him. The spotlight left him and followed his direction up until it came to a stop, illuminating a lithe figure: a petite, small-breasted woman wearing a lot of green leather straps around her torso that covered nothing, thigh-high patent-leather boots, elbow-length gloves and a green felt hat with a fur trim and a dangling tassel.
The little woman bent over backward until her hands touched the wire she was balancing on directly behind her heels. She flipped her legs nimbly over her waist and straightened. In this way, she made her way down the length of the wire to a gantry on the other side, where a pair of horizontal bars was installed, of the sort gymnasts use in the Olympics. The woman began to swing on the bars, occasionally throwing her legs open and flashing her bald vulva at the crowd. Sylvia started and glanced about at the other members of the audience, thrown into self-consciousness. If they’d noticed her reaction, it wasn’t apparent. All of them seemed mesmerized with watching the act. Did all these men expect normal women to behave like this, not to have hair…down there? Did the women here go home and try to emulate this sort of behavior?
At the summit of the final swing, the woman flew off, tucking up her arms and legs as she rolled head-over-heels twice, before uncoiling to grab a trapeze and sail across the room to another pair of bars on the opposite side. After spinning on the bars a little longer, she raised herself vertically on her arms before squaring her shoulders and lowering her hindquarters, so she was balanced upright with her hands gripping the bar, the muscles in her arms knotted and trembling. She curled her back and spread her legs apart, bending her face toward her crotch to sink her tongue between her own labia.
Sylvia was too incredulous to feel shocked or look away this time. Here was a woman performing cunnilingus on herself, in front of an audience, balanced on a bar twenty feet away from the ground. Were these people desperate for money and unemployable in any other career not quite so debasing? Or did Victor R. Maynard, whoever he might be, pay so well it made it worth it?
After maintaining this posture for about ten seconds, the woman unknotted herself and stood gracefully on her toes. She took off her hat, waved it flamboyantly, and bowed to the applauding throng. The spotlight dropped back to the ringmaster on the sandy ground below.
“Thank you to our lovely elf. And if all women could do that, I don’t know why on Earth anyone would have need of men anymore.” The main screen showed him run his tongue over his lips suggestively. Most of the women in the audience laughed. Most of the men booed.
“Now then.” The ringmaster paused to consult a card before throwing it away. “I shan’t say anything about the next act. You can make up your own minds about it.” He pivoted on one foot, turning his back on the audience for an instant as he ushered forward someone behind the curtain. Sylvia once more found herself drawn to stare at his legs, fascinated by the rounded shape the mass of his buttocks made inside his tight shorts.
Egyptian-themed music began to play. The curtains opened and two women danced forth. Both had olive skin, straight, shoulder-length black hair cut level over the forehead, thickly kohl-rimmed eyes and huge breasts that bounced as they cavorted. They wore only colorful sarongs slung low around their hips. Probably this would be an exotic dance with an ancient Egyptian flavor.
A long, thick object reared from the ground, instantly changing from sand-colored to a dark amethystine sheen, and both women screamed. “A snake!” one of them wailed, and the two clung to each other as the snake advanced, another snake rising from the floor behind them. The two snakes began to wind their bodies around the women, coils glistening and pulsing with the motion of powerful muscles beneath the scales, binding the dancers with their backs together while they screamed and feigned feeble attempts to fight themselves free.
They must be genetically engineered snakes. That color change must come from an inserted gene, probably originating from a chameleon. The main screen showed a close-up of one of the women’s trembling bosoms protruding from between coils, a snake head peeking down from the corner, black tongue flickering. The snake had a tiny gem in the center of its forehead, just above the eyes. A mind interface. Someone was controlling them.
“Someone please help us!” one of the women shouted. The curtains parted once more, and there stood a tattooed man wearing a linen kilt, his head and body shorn. In one hand he carried a carved music pipe. He strode forward on the sand, raised his flute to his lips, and began to play.
The snakes responded, slackening their coils, although this was obviously little to do with the music and very much to do with the matching gemlike object on the flute-player’s forehead. They slid away from the women and began to dance with the man, rearing and swaying their bodies in tune to the music, tracing circles around him, and rolling into knotty writhing tangles while changing color all the time. After playing for a few minutes, the musician tucked his flute into the waistband of his kilt and stood still, and the snakes came to him and climbed onto his outstretched arms. They returned to their amethystine coloration and he held them aloft while the audience applauded.
Both women went to the man and sat at his feet on either side of him, and they reached up to the waistband of his kilt. It flopped to his ankles, and a gasp rippled through the audience. Sylvia stared. The man had two penises. They protruded from the nest of his pubic hair like a pair of pythons, bowed together at the heads. The main screen changed to show a close-up, and she realized that in fact his original phallus had been circumcised and surgically split in two down the length of the urethra.
The two women each took hold of one half and greedily thrust their faces into the man’s groin. He stayed in the same position, holding up his snakes, while his face twisted into an ecstatic rictus and his shoulders and thighs started to tremble. When he came, it spurted out of the cleft in the middle of his groin and onto the women’s chins.
He raised his snakes once more, the women rose from the floor of the ring, and all three of them bowed to the applause of the audience before turning and leaving the same way they’d entered.