Sideshow

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Has been,” said the Charge Monitor tersely. “But is something else now, Provost. The damned thing’s real.”

  “Sort of,” said another Monitor, bending over a flickering instrument panel. “Not entirely. Almost.”

  “Make up your mind,” the Provost snarled. “Which is it?”

  “It varies,” the Monitor muttered. “It sometimes is and sometimes isn’t. See for yourself.”

  And they did, watching as the needles flickered and rose and fell. The thing was real, sometimes, for moments. And not real too. Unquestionably, however, real or unreal, the thing was. Not quite synchronized, yet, but it was, nonetheless.

  Boarmus swallowed. The monitors were looking at him, waiting for him to tell them what to do. They would expect him to investigate this, at once. Perhaps they were expecting him to do it himself, but Derbeck was nowhere near City Fifteen and just now it was absolutely essential for him to get to City Fifteen.

  He kept his voice firm and decisive. “We have a team near Derbeck. Danivon Luze’s group. Send instructions from me saying they’re to make an investigation of this manifestation in Derbeck, as soon as possible.” His voice sounded right: concerned but not panicky. Those working as monitors nodded, accepting that he had done the proper thing.

  He thought: New Athens is near City Fifteen. Denial is near City Fifteen. Enarae is near City Fifteen. Zasper Ertigon is in Enarae. I would have legitimate reason to inquire from Zasper Ertigon about Danivon Luze, about Fringe Owldark.

  “I’m going to Enarae,” he loudly informed an underling. “I want to talk to former Council Enforcer Zasper Ertigon about two of his Enforcer protégés. Arrange quick transport and be sure Ertigon will be available when I get there.” Let the dead men listen, let them hear. What he was doing was appropriate. They could not fault what he was doing.

  The underling scurried and returned. “Transport, sir. Down in the garage momentarily. Zasper Ertigon located and holding himself in readiness, sir.”

  Boarmus made no thanks for this efficiency. Though originality and innovation were rare or totally absent in Tolerance, efficiency was the usual thing.

  “Does the Provost wish his travel things packed? Does the Provost wish to take a secretary?” A flunky is what the underling meant. Did Boarmus want somebody along to do the running and fetching. But of course he did.

  “Have my travel things packed, yes. And that cousin of Syrilla’s. That young man. What’s his name?” Boarmus knew what his name was, the one who’d been standing about, spying on him, watching him. The one he’d seen hiding in the corridor last time he’d returned from the Core. Jacent.

  “Jacent, sir.” Jacent of the lambent eye, the laughing mouth, Jacent the manic, the madcap, the servant-hall comedian. The underling smiled, thinking of Jacent.

  “That’s him. Get him.” Youths of that age had been well educated and well trained and were still fresh enough to have some gumption. Five years from now he would have substituted opinion for fact, pose for reaction, and would be useless—as useless as the rest of Council Supervisory—but just now, Jacent would do. Besides, the boy had been hanging about, obviously curious, and he had a certain daredevil air to him, as though he might be capable of more than mere duty. Boarmus would need more than mere duty.

  And in very little time they were aloft, two of them and the pilot.

  “We’re going to Enarae,” Boarmus told Jacent, keeping it to a whisper, his mouth a finger’s width from the boy’s ear. Even if there was some spying little ear on the flier, likely they couldn’t hear him over the whine of the gravitics. “I have reason to think we will be overheard once we are on the ground, so once we are on the ground, you won’t say one word about this. You will accompany me to the hotel. You will go with me to the Swale. That’s a—”

  “I know about the Swale,” said Jacent, preening himself in his excitement.

  Boarmus seized him with scarcely controlled fury. “Shut up! Don’t talk! Listen! In the Swale we’ll meet Zasper Ertigon. I’ll excuse you, and you’ll go off to a gambling house run by Ahl Dibai Bloom. You’ll play a little of whatever game you’re good at, assuming you’re good at anything. You’ll watch for a chance to put this packet secretly into the hands of Bloom himself, letting no one see you do it.”

  The packet was a small one, fitting into the palm of one hand. Boarmus had prepared it after they were aloft, hiding it as he did so. If there was an ear, there could also be an eye. If there were both an ear and an eye, Boarmus was already lost. Best pretend there was neither.

  “Yes, Provost,” mouthed Jacent, set back by the fury but too curious to let this opportunity pass. “Is this about the ghosts?” he whispered.

  Boarmus spun on him, lipping silently, “What do you know about ghosts! Who told you….”

  Jacent flushed and stuttered, aware he had erred yet again. “I saw,” he whispered. “We were exploring….”

  Boarmus drew him close. “You! You were down in the old barracks? You were with that girl who was killed? That boy who disappeared?”

  Jacent quivered on the cusp of denial, unable to bring it off.

  “Tell me,” grated the Provost, gripping the young man’s head painfully with both hands. “Quiet as a moth! Whisper me everything!”

  Fringe dealt with the children-in-baskets matter as she had often dealt with other confusions, by refusing to think about it. She had learned not-think as a child and she used it now. She would not-think about the children or the baskets, she would not-see them again. She became very busy with other things.

  Though Danivon had sought an opportunity to talk to her about the Enforcers’ life, as a prelude—he confessed to him-self—to another intimate encounter, he took a close look at her shuttered face and gave up the notion. She was in there somewhere, but not immediately available. No point in wasting effort.

  In any event, there was no time, for fishponds appeared along the shore, separated from the river and one another by dikes topped with walkways of mud and reeds. Along these walkways the Fisher Folk of Salt Maresh stalked with their burdens of spears and nets. Behind the ponds, in spaces cleared from the reed beds, drying racks stood laden with their strong-smelling burdens among shifting veils of smoke. As the Dove came around a curve in the river, the travelers could see the village on a platform set high on pilings. Storklike men with shaven heads came out of their houses as the Dove approached, the delicate reed-woven houses making a lacy backdrop to their ominously still figures.

  “The Fisher Folk do not bear children,” Danivon said to the twins as he cocked his Enforcer’s bonnet to the correct angle and gave his coat a twitch. “Their religion requires them to be neutered and eschew sensuality.”

  “They live spiritual lives,” said Curvis in a cynical tone, “constantly inspired by the voices of their kindred upon the heights.” He too wore Enforcer dress.

  “It’s the children from Choire, then, that renew their population,” said Fringe.

  Danivon nodded. “Choire retains only those with the finest voices, sending the rest down to become Fisher Folk. The complaint is that Choire has recently been sending far too many.”

  He raised a hand in greeting. The Head Fishers returned the greeting with grim faces. The Dove tied up at a piling set in the shallows alongside the stilt-high village.

  As soon as the plank had been lowered, Danivon and Curvis went across to the village platform where they were offered ceremonial cups of the local beverage and a catalog of complaint, the latter repeated over and over in more or less the same words for some little time. When the complainants were talked out, the two Enforcers beckoned Fringe from her listening post at the rail, assigned her the role of threatener in the upcoming negotiations, and bade her follow as they rounded up the excess youngsters for return to the heights.

  “Where?” Danivon demanded of the Head Fisher who stood beside them on one long leg, the other drawn up, foot in hand.

  “There,” the Fisher gestured, waving at the reed beds beyond
the fishponds. “We told them to build themselves shelters as they would.”

  “Hospitable of you,” grunted Fringe, drawing her polished boot from the mud with some difficulty. “A bit soggy out there, isn’t it?”

  “We have limited room in the village,” snorted the Head Fisher, and indeed, the woven village above them had seemed overcrowded. “They’re old enough to take care of themselves. You’ll find them through there,” and he pointed toward a break in the reed beds, a well-cleared path.

  Danivon swore mildly and stalked off along the dike between the ponds, the other two Enforcers following. The path was obviously well used, with many layers of cut reeds laid crisscross into the spongy soil and tramped down to make solid footing. Though clear, the path was by no means straight, and within moments they had lost sight of the village and were surrounded by dark clattering stalks that stood in impenetrable walls.

  Danivon found himself walking as softly as possible, stopping every few steps to listen.

  His nose said someone … No. Something else was on the path, ahead of them.

  “What?” whispered Fringe, watching his face.

  He made a face, shrugged, put a finger to his ear to tell them to listen.

  The sound came as though he had commanded it, a deep swallowing, as of breath gulped into an enormous maw.

  “What in hell?” murmured Curvis.

  “Where?” whispered Danivon, palms up.

  The other two pointed in slightly different directions.

  Fringe grimaced. “What was it?”

  “Gaver?” asked Danivon of Curvis.

  “Gavers don’t make a sound like that. They roar.”

  They went even more quietly, passing a group of huts that were no more than piled bundles of reeds, unskillfully hollowed to offer shelter. This cluster of squalid dwellings was empty, but another could be seen in a haze of smoke down the trail.

  They went toward it, only to stop in their tracks.

  “What’s that smell?” said Fringe, her nose wrinkling.

  “Three guesses,” offered Danivon, carefully approaching the nearest hut. He put his head inside only briefly, then came away swiftly to stand beside them, gulping air.

  “What?” asked Fringe.

  “A body,” muttered Danivon. “What’s left of one.” Fringe felt a chill upon her skin. “There,” she said, catching movement at the corner of her eye.

  It was a youngster, scrambling away into the reeds with frantic haste.

  Curvis took two long steps and brought him back by the scruff of his muddy shirt.

  Off in the reeds, the sound came again.

  “How long has this been going on?” Danivon asked the mud-bedaubed youngster, who only shivered and gasped, unable to answer.

  “Let him alone,” said Fringe, gathering the boy to her. “Come on, boy. Are there more of you?”

  The child pointed with a shaking hand.

  “Do we dare call?” murmured Danivon, listening with all his attention for the sound to be repeated.

  “Do we dare not,” she replied, standing tall to shout into the silence:

  “We are Enforcers from Council Supervisory, here to take you back to Choire. Come out. You’ll be safe with us.”

  “She says,” muttered Curvis, loosening the weapon at his hip and looking alertly around him.

  The swallowing sound came again, more remote, but with something in it of … amusement? Could that be?

  Dirty faces peered from among the reeds. Children emerged, eleven years old, twelve, some a little older.

  Danivon wiped the face of one youngster with the hem of his shirt. “How long has this been going on?” he asked.

  The boy turned frightened eyes on the three of them. “Every night it gets some of us.”

  “Have you heard anything? Seen anything?”

  The boy shivered. “Nothing, sir Enforcer. We say … we say the ghosts are eating us.”

  “When did it first happen?” Curvis demanded of the youth.

  He conferred with some of the others. They thought twenty days perhaps, more or less.

  Danivon shook his head angrily. “Is this all of you?”

  They counted themselves, taking a tally, one or two going away into the reeds to emerge with others who had been afraid to come out.

  “How many were there supposed to be?” asked Fringe.

  “About a hundred,” said Danivon.

  “There aren’t more than fifty here.”

  “I know,” he grunted, turning to lead the remnant along the winding trail out of the reed beds.

  “The body you saw. How had it been killed?” Curvis whispered to Danivon, not so softly that Fringe didn’t overhear.

  “It had been dissected,” Danivon said flatly. “The organs laid out to one side, this one and that one. From the amount of blood splashed around, I’d say it had been done rather slowly while the kid was alive.”

  “Boy? Girl?” asked Fringe, wondering why she cared.

  Danivon shook his head, saying between his teeth, “An anatomist might be able to tell. I couldn’t.”

  Fringe fought the sickness in her belly, thinking that lately all she’d done was feel sick about this thing, sick about that thing. Maybe Zasper had been right! Maybe she shouldn’t have become an Enforcer. Certainly she wasn’t doing very well at keeping her stomach or her emotions in line, not as well as the two men. Of course, they’d had more practice….

  They came out onto the shore where several of the Head Fishers stood, heads cocked as though listening.

  “Why did you bother to make a complaint,” snarled Danivon. “A few more days, you’d have had no children to complain of!”

  “I told you,” said one Fisher to another. “I told you something was killing them!”

  The one addressed turned away, making a dismissive gesture. “Not our problem.”

  “Aaah,” snarled Danivon. “Not your problem. What makes you think whatever-it-is is going to stay out there in the reeds? Now we’ve taken the children, what’s it going to do? Hah? What are you going to do when it comes into the village? You’ll scream for Enforcers then, sure enough, and maybe they’ll just sit tight at the post near Shallow and tell you it isn’t their problem.” He angrily beckoned to the others, leading them toward the trail that led up the precipitous cliffs to Choire.

  So, thought Fringe, with a glow of warmth toward Danivon, he does have some feelings. He is not totally uncaring. She soothed herself with this sentiment for a few moments, until it occurred to her Danivon might simply have been expressing annoyance at an unreported predator of unknown type. She fretted over this thought until the climb became so steep she had energy for nothing but putting one foot in front of the other.

  Even though they stopped several times to allow the children to rest (“They’re half-starved,” muttered Fringe, to Danivon’s grunted agreement), the journey to the heights did not take long. They were three quarters of the way up the precipice when they rounded a corner in the trail and were met by music.

  Fringe forgot her anxieties, her doubts, the sickness in her belly. There was no room inside her for anything but what she heard. Music pulled them along the way. Even the children’s heads came up as they ascended the final slope onto the stony ramparts, though most of them fell limply onto the stones at the top. Fringe sagged with them, leaning against a nearby wall with her mouth open, feeling nothing but the wonderful sound. She was caught in a joyous whirlwind! She simply stood, unconscious of anything but the music, lost in harmony.

  “They’re bred for it,” Curvis barked as he passed, slapping her heartily on her bottom to bring her to herself. “Which seems to have caused the trouble. Suppose we earn our pay, Enforcer!”

  Recalled to her duty, though still bemused, she followed him to the nearby portico where a group of Choire directors waited, their faces expressing less welcome than annoyance at this interruption of their daily rehearsals. They wore embroidered surplices and carried ritual batons, flourishing the
se to direct the Enforcers into the vacant hall behind them, all with such an air of tried patience and temperamental disdain that it gave Fringe an appetite for the role she had been assigned should the directors prove intransigent. For the moment she merely sat by, a supernumerary, while Curvis and Danivon began the negotiations.

  The complaint and disposition were quoted and explained at length. The directors were not responsive. There was no help for it, they said. The children, and more later, would have to be accommodated in the Maresh.

  Fringe took her dagger from her belt and began cleaning her fingernails with it. “The accommodation your children are offered is perhaps not what you planned. They are being sent alone into the reed beds to live as they may. They are not housed, they are not fed. And something is killing them, painfully and bloodily.” Her words summoned up the memory of those reed beds, the sounds, the smells, and it was with difficulty she kept herself from gulping.

  The directors looked at one another. Fringe tried to read their expressions. Annoyance? Grief? Frustration?

  “Surely, that is the responsibility of the Fisher Folk,” said one at last.

  “Have the children no parents here in Choire to care what happens to them?”

  “We have no families in Choire. We have only music.”

  Fringe threw herself into her role, sighing dramatically and casting her eyes upward. “And lovely music it is. A pity it will be lost to Elsewhere. It will no doubt take many years after the plague for enough voices to be found to sing anything at all.”

  “We are a healthy folk,” said the oldest director in a stubborn tone.

  Fringe yawned and juggled the dagger, its spinning blade spitting reflected light into their eyes. “The people in my home province said so too, and they were healthy enough. Then. Those few who are left no longer brag of their health.”

  “You wouldn’t really …” said a plump young director apprehensively.

  “We would have no choice,” said Fringe, slamming the dagger into a carved tabletop with purposeful barbarism and considerable gusto. “You have changed your ways; you are not maintaining the status quo. You were not a numerous people when you arrived on Elsewhere. Thus, your allocated province is not large. Your hemi-province of Salt Maresh can accept about a hundred children a year, not twice that number! Any over that number, you must rear in Choire.”