Sideshow

by Sheri S. Tepper

  She had learned a degree of pragmatism from Zasper and from Ahl Dibai Bloom, both of whom advocated action rather than what Zasper called “wiffling around.” “If you’re going to wiffle around once you know the facts,” Zasper often said, “might as well have no brain at all.”

  So, she would not wiffle. The first step was to switch from Professional education level to Wage-earner training level at school. The one had been theoretical, the other would be entirely practical. She already knew she was better with things than people and very good at working with her hands. Once enrolled in training, she asked her instructors to help her find a job, and one of them referred her to a nearby weapons shop where she was hired to make adjustments and repairs during the late afternoons and evenings. All of these rearrangements of her life, job included, were accomplished in less than ten days from the time she made the decision. Zasper, when she told him of it, said she showed gumption and good sense, that he was proud of her.

  No one else seemed to care. Though Fringe made no attempt to hide what was going on, neither Souile nor Char seemed interested. Of course, they were both preoccupied with other things. Char was not often at home anymore. When there, he shut himself up in his study and was outraged at interruption. Souile had grown even more withdrawn in recent years; she emerged less and less often from her room, and when she did, she seemed not to see what went on around her.

  So matters went on, with Fringe’s life largely unregarded, until one evening she arrived home to be met at the door by old Nada, who had obviously been waiting for her. This in itself was a rarity. Nada and Aunty spent most of their time in their room, quibbling with each other.

  “Fringe girl.”

  “Yes, Nada.”

  The old woman twisted her hands against her abdomen and blinked her watery eyes. “Your ma, she died today.”

  Fringe could think of nothing to say. What went through her mind, unforgivably, was that it should have been Nada because Nada had had so much more practice at dying, but Nada was standing there, peering nearsightedly at her, and Fringe saw herself, as though from a distance, with her mouth gaped open and the only words she could think of unsuitable to the occasion.

  “Where’s Pa?” she choked out, evading what was happening.

  “Char’s in his study. The door’s locked. Ari’s locked himself in too. Fond of her, he was. Liked her best of his children.”

  “Aunty?”

  “Upstairs. Crying. She’s been crying all day.”

  “Bubba?”

  “At his school, you know.”

  “Where’s Ma? You know. Her …”

  “Gone,” whispered old Nada, tears running down her cheeks. “Char had her taken already. She’s gone.”

  Fringe hugged Nada because she knew of nothing else to do, because she needed to hang on to something, and they cried together though they were unable to offer any words of comfort. Fringe kept trying to remember when the last time was she’d seen Ma, or when the last time was she’d seen Ma acting like a real human person who laughed and said sensible things and seemed interested. Fringe couldn’t remember when that had been. If that had been ever, it had been a very long time ago. Years. Maybe when Fringe was a child, long, long ago.

  And what could she say to Souile’s mother? That Souile had died of stress, of trying too hard, of walking a tightrope with Char and his folks pulling from one side and Ari, Nada, and Aunty pulling and tugging from the other, even her daughter a disappointment to her? That she’d died of mood-spray and of being eaten alive? Fringe didn’t say that. She didn’t say anything. She felt guilty that she did not grieve, then grieved because she felt guilty.

  Two days later she came home to find the Tromses gone as well. Char had sent them to the so-called Pighouse, the provincial home for elderly indigents.

  “But, Pa, you can’t just … They lived here!”

  “No more.”

  “But this was their home.”

  “No more,” he said. “I can’t take any more. I couldn’t do anything while your ma was alive, but they’re not my folks. They’ve got another daughter; they’ve got a son. Let them do it! I can’t do it anymore.”

  It was the first time Fringe had thought about the Tromses having other children. There’d never been any evidence of them. She hid herself away in the module to consider the matter. Was she glad Nada and Ari and Aunty were gone? Would she go visit them? Would it be better to do that or not to do that?

  “By the way,” said Pa over supper. “I want you to move out of that damned module. You can move back in the room where you used to be.” His voice was harsh and demanding, and he did not look at her when he spoke. She understood it not as a suggestion but as a command, though she could not fathom the motivation behind it. Was she now to be a daughter again, she who had not been a daughter for years?

  She hadn’t been in the room in years, either. She stood in the door, peering at dusty surfaces, unlit panels, at a clutter of keepsakes, at the circulation units the old women wore on their feet and hands to warm their always-cold extremities, at the so-called Auto-nurse, actually little more than a timed medications dispenser and monitor. The room smelled of old women, sour-sweet, vinegar, and dried flowers. It hissed with old voices, old coughs, and sniffles and whines.

  That night Fringe trailed into the room, half-swathed in a blanket she had fetched from her module, a cocoon to wrap herself in, a second skin to keep the room from touching her. She lay down atop the bed she’d used as a child, the one Aunty had slept in. She kept telling herself the room was empty, but she felt the usual occupants going about their customary business. No matter that Nada and Aunty were gone away, their ghosts still moved about the room. Not only their spirits, but Souile’s as well. From a veiled distance, they whispered together, about her, about Fringe, saying the things they had always said. She could hear the whispers and guess at the content. She did not fall asleep until almost dawn.

  She went to the Pighouse the next day, to visit them. They sat in chairs, vacant-eyed; the air was thick with the scent of the stuff sprayed about to keep them quiet. When Fringe spoke to them, they nodded slowly, scarcely hearing.

  “Is the food all right?” she whispered. “Nada, is the food all right? Are you getting enough to eat?”

  “To eat,” murmured Nada. “To eat, Fringe girl.”

  And, “Did you know Souile died?” Aunty asked.

  That night, Fringe tried the room again, only to feel their eyes on her, the weight of presences, the force of personalities, the accusatory whispers, the weight of habitude. Their spirits were here, in this house, not there in the Pighouse where their bodies had been taken. Though she could have done nothing to save Souile, nothing to keep Nada and Aunty from the Pighouse, she felt guilty that she had not tried. Maybe she could have found Nada’s other daughter, Nada’s son. Why hadn’t she at least tried? Was she glad? Could she actually be glad?

  She made a faltering attempt to talk about it with Pa. She might as well have talked to a rock. As usual, Pa didn’t talk about things. He merely became angry and told her to get her things out of the module.

  “I’ve sold it,” he muttered, not meeting her eyes. “I’ve sold it. The man’s coming to take it apart and move it today. Besides, you’ll do better in your old room. Look at you, for heaven’s sake.” His voice oozed contempt. “Look at you.” He gestured at her, her chewed fingertips, her rat-tailed hair, her blotchy skin, her tear-stained face. “Look at you,” he repeated in disgust.

  She opened her mouth to try once more, then shut it. There was no point in trying to explain how she felt. She wasn’t sure how she felt, except that with Souile and the old folks gone, she couldn’t stay in this place. Pa had something in mind, some role he wanted her to play, and she didn’t know what it was. No matter what it was, she couldn’t do it. The time was past for that. She couldn’t be a daughter for Souile, so she sure as hell wasn’t going to be a daughter for Char! She could hardly be herself for herself. She could not be some
one else for Pa.

  Back in the shabby module, she totted up the credit chits she’d earned at the weapons shop, the old tattered ones she’d earned working for Ahl Dibai Bloom. They were all there, virtually untouched, enough to keep her for a time if she could find a cheap room near her job and the school. Other Wage-earner youths lived in such places. She spent the afternoon looking, settling for a place no smaller or shabbier than the module had been, with a bed no narrower or harder, a saniton no less functional. The next day she packed up her personal things and moved out, without telling Pa she was going.

  That night she went home at suppertime, sat in her usual place, and waited for Pa or Bubba to ask her where she’d been. Bubba talked about the training program Grandma Gregoria was setting him up in. He was to be Professional class, architect caste. He was full of the thrill of it, the challenge, the newness. Neither of them mentioned her absence. She wondered if they even knew she had moved out. Perhaps where she was, was less important than the module being gone.

  If they found it easier to pretend, she would pretend. She lived in her rented room but went home for dinner whenever she could bear to or was too hungry not to go. Occasionally she went to Grandma Gregoria’s. No one ever said anything about what she was doing, though both Pa and Grandma carped about things in general and Fringe’s many failings in particular.

  When she couldn’t face going home and wasn’t too hungry, she spent her time using junk and discards from the weapons shop to make complicated little machines that spun and glittered and were company of a kind. She rather longed for a pet but could not afford to feed one. Though she knew herself to be unattractive (Zasper said that wasn’t true), male companionship was offered from time to time. Each encounter left her feeling more alone than before, and she told herself she was safer without. She was less likely to make idle comments that others took as commitments or insults, less likely to let her insecurity bubble up in teasing gibes that only made others angry. Alone, she didn’t make mistakes that came back to haunt her. Except for her friendships with Zasper and Bloom, she hadn’t the hang of relationships. People always wanted her to be something else.

  “Men don’t work out for me,” she told Zasper when he asked her about her love life. “I don’t have the right … oh, I don’t know, Zasper. It doesn’t feel right, that’s all.”

  He shook his head, but he did not argue with her. Perhaps love didn’t work for her. There were people like that. Zasper thought he himself was probably one of them.

  Besides, she told him, she got plenty of company at work, where they did approve of her.

  Her job included the provision of target accuracy certificates for repaired arms. Most of the technicians used a firing stand, but Fringe preferred to shoot from the hand, becoming so skillful that her customers came to rely upon her work and her opinion. Even Zasper said, half in jest, that a girl with her target scores was wasted in a repair shop. To hide her pleasure at this, she remarked offhandedly she’d probably inherited the skill from some Guntoter forebear on Earth, thousands of years ago.

  Then one afternoon she went to Grandma Gregoria’s and tried to be mannerly over a plate of grilled fish while Grandma snarled with more than usual vituperation about Fringe’s Trashish and unforgivable behavior and how beneath himself Char had married.

  “If it hadn’t been for your ma,” said Grandma. “If it hadn’t been for those Tromses, you might have turned out to be something….”

  Fringe had been much alone recently. The plate before her was the first food she had had in several days. She was still very young and often frightened. Day by day, she tried to keep bewilderment at bay, tried not to think about anything except the next minute, the next task, holding herself together with endlessly frayed and continually patched resolve. At the sound of the carping voice, something inside her tore. She felt it rip, felt the fabric of her life tear asunder, letting something molten and horrid show through.

  “If I’m a Trasher,” she blurted, “it’s because Pa is so fucking arrogant he took on more than he could manage. Then even though he looked down his nose on the Tromses just like you did, he let them raise me! Then he despised me because I turned out to be just like them. Who else would I have been like? Take your tongue off me and my ma, Grandma, because we both turned out just the way you and Pa made us!”

  It had been then that Gregoria, eyes bulging and mouth spraying fragments of fish in all directions, told Fringe to get out of her sight and never come into it again.

  Fringe went in a mood of cold desperation, not so much angry as chilled and shocked, as though she were bleeding inside. She couldn’t stop trembling. She couldn’t get warm. The only warm place she could think of was Bloom’s, so she went there, or near there, stopping in an alleyway nearby because her stomach cramped, bending her double, and she couldn’t move.

  “Are you sick, Fringe?” asked a voice.

  For a moment she thought it was Nada. The voice had some of that quality, though without any whine to it. The speaker was half-hidden in a doorway, wearing the kind of cloak and hood that tourists sometimes wore in the Swale, tourists who wanted to see without being seen.

  “I’ ll be all right,” gasped Fringe, waving the nosy intruder away.

  “Something happened,” said the hooded woman. “Something bad.”

  “Something,” agreed Fringe, taking deep breaths, suddenly remembering that voice. It was Jory—the old woman who’d followed her around back … back when she was only a kid. “What are you doing here?”

  The old woman put back her hood and came closer, ignoring the question. “You’ve been hurt,” she said. “By somebody who shouldn’t have hurt you, but did.”

  Fringe’s mouth dropped open and for a moment she forgot to breathe.

  “What’s your second name?” the old woman asked. “I don’t remember your second name.”

  “Dorwalk. Fringe Dorwalk.”

  The cramp surprised out of her, Fringe moved around, trying to get a good look at whatever it was behind the woman, something large and shadowy moving there, just out of sight. A mystery. That’s all she needed right now, another mystery intruding on her life.

  The old woman reached out, lifted Fringe’s chin, dried her face with the backs of her old hands. “I’m going to give you a new name,” she said. “In my opinion, that’s what you need. New names often help. New names create new people; new people can leave old habits behind and handle things better.”

  Fringe merely stared stupidly. Who did this … this thing think she was?

  “Owldark,” said Jory. “Your new name. The letters of your old name spell your new name: Fringe Owldark—a totally different person from Fringe Dorwalk, don’t you think? Say it.”

  Fringe, too stupefied to argue, said it obediently, watching the shadowy something shift and move. “Fringe Owldark.”

  The old woman nodded to herself. “Fringe Dorwalk had an uncertain future. Ways were closed to her. She was anxious. She chewed her fingers and cried herself to sleep. But Fringe Owldark is one of my people. I told you that long ago, didn’t I? One of my people, chosen by me to … to do wonderful things. To become something special. Yes, Owldark has a totally different future before her! All she needs to do is go find it.” The old woman patted her cheek, turned, and was dissolved into the shadow. Fringe took a step forward, but the doorway was empty.

  Perhaps she had dreamed it. Likely she had dreamed it. Hunger dreams. Visions. Sometimes she had those.

  “Fringe Owldark,” she said aloud, no longer crying, suddenly wanting to tell Zasper all about it.

  She went to him full of the story, but when she got there he greeted her by thrusting a plate full of food at her and quoting a remark some friend of his had made, touting Fringe’s skills at weapons repair. He said yet again that she was wasted in the repair shop, a remark at which Fringe Dorwalk had always flushed and bridled, not sure how to react.

  Fringe Owldark, however, her mouth full of succulent roast meat and the juices r
unning down her throat, knew with absolute certainty she had indeed been wasted up until now. She was not going to be hungry again!

  “I want you to sponsor me to the Enforcer Academy,” she said firmly, surprising herself as much as Zasper.

  “Ah, Fringe,” he said with a pang, the expression in her eyes reminding him suddenly of Danivon Luze, “nah, nah, you don’t want to do that.”

  Fringe Dorwalk might have equivocated, but Fringe Owldark did not. The request had come from a spewing well of desperation that could not now be capped and ignored. “I have to do something, Zasper. I can’t go back home and I’m barely making it on my own. I’m tired of being hungry.”

  “You can always come here to me! Never a day I’d let you go from this place hungry!”

  “I don’t want to have to go to anybody, don’t you understand! I don’t want to go to anybody for anything. I don’t want to have to depend on anyone. I want to be on my own. I want a place, food, clothes I don’t have to ask for. I’m tired of people feeding me and clothing me and all the time resenting me because I’m not what they had in mind.”

  “I’d never—”

  “I know that! But it would still be you, Zasper, not me! What I want is your sponsorship. Help me. Sometime I’ll pay you back.”

  He sat her down, gave her a glass of black ale, and begged her to listen to him. “Fringe girl, I’ll help you any way I can, but listen. There’s something … something changing on Elsewhere. Was a time when everything was clear and plain, even for Enforcers. These days, things are cloudy. It’s like, like something …”