Innocents Aboard

by Gene Wolfe

  “Doesn’t it hurt?” Danny asked him.

  The sword swallower shook his head. “There are no nerves in that part of the human body. Besides, it is my art. I have dedicated my life to my art.” As they turned to leave, he righted his bucket and vomited blood into it.

  “Five-alarm Forester is our fire eater,” declared the recorded voice with obvious pride. “For your education and entertainment, Five-alarm will stuff a blazing torch into his mouth and extinguish it by that means.”

  “Oh, please don’t!” Debbie exclaimed. “Not even if it doesn’t really hurt.”

  The fire eater gave her a severe look, lit the torch he had been preparing, and ate it, munching and swallowing. He was a bent and wrinkled old man with rheumy eyes.

  “How do you do that?” Danny asked.

  “I will explain,” the old fire eater said, “provided you will tell me your name, little boy.”

  Danny told him.

  “Very well, Danny. Now give me a diamond—just one, Danny—and I will explain the whole thing and even let you try it, if you wish.”

  “I don’t have any.” Danny looked around the dark tent, seeking support from Debbie and the fat lady, and anyone else who might be inclined to give it.

  “At your age, Danny, every pocket you have is full of diamonds.” The old fire eater turned his own pockets inside out. They were quite empty.

  “I don’t even have any pockets,” Danny said.

  Wordlessly, the old fire eater pointed to the little five-sided pocket of Danny’s pajama shirt.

  “It doesn’t work. The stitching came loose.” Danny put his hand into it and wiggled his fingers when they emerged from the bottom.

  “Then I will do it for a smile.”

  Danny smiled.

  “Here is what I use,” the old fire eater said, and he got out a mason jar and a big breadstick. “This clear liquid is one hundred and forty proof hooch. Would you care for a little drink?”

  Danny shook his head.

  “I would.” The old fire eater sipped from the mason jar. “I can never take a healthy swig because it’s too strong. The alcohol would barbecue the tissues of my mouth and throat. But I can do this.” He dipped the end of the breadstick into the jar.

  The fat lady said, “I see.”

  “Then you light it.” The old fire eater did so, and it burned with a bright blue flame. “With enough experience, you know when it’s about to go out, and when it is …” He thrust the blazing breadstick into his mouth and bit it off.

  Debbie giggled nervously.

  “It looks good,” the fat lady whispered. “He’s making me hungry.”

  Danny said, “Me, too.”

  The old fire eater chewed and swallowed. “If your timing’s right, choking on a sesame seed is the chief danger. Now watch this, and I’ll let you go. This is white gasoline.” He picked up a bottle and filled his mouth, twisting a knob to dim the light above the four-inch dais on which he stood.

  For a second or two, his worn face and bulging cheeks remained visible; then even that winked out, and they waited in total darkness.

  A match flared, and a fountain of orange flame seemed to fill the whole tent, briefly illuminating more attractions than ten. The sword swallower waited with bowed head, seated upon his upended bucket; to his right, a dead ballet dancer had frozen in the act of tying one shoe, and a stock-still figure with half a beard flaunted a single female breast. Only the serpent woman on the opposite side of the tent moved, writhing and coiling between a magician and a woman embraced by a gorilla.

  The flame vanished as abruptly as it had come. “Now you know where you are,” the aged voice of the fire eater announced. Danny heard the fat lady’s sharp inhalation, and Debbie took his hand, gripping it tightly.

  The old fire eater said, “If you ever come back, Danny, I’ll teach you to eat fire, exactly as I promised.”

  A tiny white light gleamed. “I keep this on my key ring,” the fat lady explained. “It comes in very handy when I don’t get home until after dark.”

  The recorded voice announced, “This is the Harpy, the bane of evildoers and the only animal in the world with breasts and feathered wings. You won’t believe that she can fly, but she’s going to fly for you.”

  “I don’t want to see that,” the fat lady said. “I’m going to go over there and see the snake charmer and the fat woman, and then I’m going to get something to eat.”

  Danny and Debbie followed her.

  “This is so exquisitely sensitive of you, to say that I am charming, my most substantial sister,” the serpent woman hissed. “Shall I give you a small and slight most gracious squeeze of thanks?” A bulb glowed to life above her dais, and Danny saw that although her head, arms, and upper torso appeared almost human, she was a prettily marked black-and-yellow snake from the waist down.

  “I don’t think so,” the fat lady said.

  The serpent woman simpered, yet reared herself higher and slithered into a rippling series of hairpin bends that to Danny appeared expressive of anger.

  “Well, I like you,” Debbie announced, and “I don’t think you’d hurt us.”

  “So it is, small sister, and so it stays. Seek you wisdom? I, its sigil, make some women wise.”

  “My name’s Debbie,” Debbie told her.

  “Simple and smooth, but possibly a smidgen saccharine, small sister. I sign myself Linda Lamia, though I was once called the Pythoness.”

  Debbie nodded and made the little curtsey she had been taught at dancing school. “Do you like being a snake?”

  The serpent woman smiled. “I can scarcely say, since the chance of snakedom has thus far escaped me. It would be nice to possess a poisoned strike, possibly, but I’ve no personal experience of it.” Her tongue flickered like a black flame.

  “Will you make me wise? You said you would.”

  “Yes, since I promised. Listen sharp, small sister. First, this is no simple vision of sleep. Did you suppose so?”

  “No,” Debbie told her. “I know I’m not dreaming.”

  “Second, this is not consciousness as you have seen it until now. Nor as you shall see it once our supernormal show has struck its tents.”

  Debbie nodded. “Because the Sausage Works would be here instead.”

  “This Sausage Works you speak of is still here, you may be sure.” For five seconds or more the serpent woman waited motionless, watching Debbie through slitted pupils. “Third, it is seldom wise, or even possible, to draw a hard and fast line ‘twixt solidity and fantasy. But when you sketch yourself such a line, as you shall, you must trace a second such scribing ’twixt solidity and this.”

  The electric light above the serpent woman had dimmed as she spoke. Her eyes rolled upward and she writhed and swayed, coiling and uncoiling.

  “You’re going out of order,” the recorded voice objected. “Everything’s all confused.”

  “We want to see the fat woman next,” the fat lady said, “and then we’ll leave.”

  “I can’t hear a word you say,” the recorded voice told her pettishly.

  A light glowed and brightened over the fat woman. “My name’s Jolly Janie,” she wheezed. “I weigh six hundred and seventy pounds. Around my gut measures eighty-four inches. You can’t weigh me. ‘Cause we don’ have a scale big ’nough. But you can measure my gut. If you want to. I’ll lend you a tape. Or you kin use yours.” She was not looking at Danny, at Debbie, or at the fat lady, and appeared to be looking at nothing.

  “I’m fat, too,” the fat lady acknowledged, “and my name is Ermentrude.”

  “I don’ eat but three meals a day. Jes’ like you. I don’ eat no big meals neither. But I jes’ keep on gittin’ fatter’n fatter.” Her tiny mouth was almost concealed by her bulging cheeks, and the sagging flesh of her forehead overshadowed her deep-set eyes.

  “My name is Mina.” Somewhat timidly, the fat lady reached out to touch the fat woman’s hand, although the fat woman showed no sign of being touched. “I�
��m loyal and loving, orderly and very clean, a good cook, and fun to talk to … .” She waited for the fat woman to speak.

  “I got to have help or else I cain’t stand up. When I was with the circus they’d git a elephant to help lift me. Here it’s that tow truck.”

  “I’m the woman ten thousand men ought to have married, and no man did.” Again the fat lady touched the fat woman’s hand, stroking it as she might have stroked a bird. “We could help each other, Janie. I know we could.”

  “You want to help me? You kin git me a triple-dip cone right outside there. Vanilla, strawberry, ’n chocolate.” The bulb over the fat woman dimmed.

  “I will. Trust me, Janie, I will. I’ll bring it back to you, and then we’ll talk.” The fat lady took Danny and Debbie by the hand.

  “Here you see Vamp the Lobster Girl,” the recorded voice declared. “She eats children.” Not far away a light brightened over the lobster girl’s platform, and Danny and Debbie heard the clack-clack-clack of her claws.

  “I don’t want to go there,” Debbie said.

  “We’re not,” the fat lady told her. “We’re going to get four ice-cream cones. Or something else, if you would rather have something else.”

  Danny explained about their pieces of green cardboard, and by the time he had finished they were out of the ten-in-one tent and standing in front of the refreshment stand.

  “What’ll it be, Doll?” inquired the middle-aged man behind the counter.

  “Two triple-dip cones,” the fat lady said, taking a diamond from her purse. “And how did you know my name?”

  “Used to guess your weight,” the man said. “Everything else, too. Where you live and what you do. You now, you’re a schoolteacher from Indiana.”

  “Absolutely correct.”

  “I have to get the feel of you to get it exactly right … . But, oh, I’ll say two hundred and sixty-two.”

  The fat woman smiled. “That’s a bit flattering, but very close just the same.

  “Tell you what I’m gonna do. If I get this next one right, your cones is free. Only if I miss, you gotta pay. You’re here hopin’ to meet a nice guy like me.”

  The fat lady nodded and smiled again. “You’re amazing.”

  The man looked surprised and a little frightened.

  “I must take one of the cones you’re going to give me back to my friend Jolly Janie,” the fat lady explained, “and while we eat our cones I’ll have, a little talk with her. After that, I’ll come back here.” She paused to smile once more. “I’m certain you and I have a great deal in common.”

  The man had taken two sugar cones from a jar; his hand trembled slightly as he scooped strawberry ice cream into each. “I still got a wife up in Maine,” he said, “we ain’t never been divorced.”

  The fat lady smiled and nodded. “How interesting! You must tell me all about her.”

  Debbie declared, “We’re not going back in there,” and drew Danny aside.

  When the fat lady had gone, Danny showed the man his piece of green cardboard.

  “This’s for cotton candy,” the man said, and fed shining crystal granules into his candy-floss machine.

  “What is mine, Mister?” Debbie held up her piece of green cardboard.

  “Cinnamon apple. You want it?”

  Debby nodded, and the man selected one and gave it to her, then wound spun candy floss on a rolled-up stick of cardboard for Danny.

  Danny held it up to admire it; it looked almost too pretty to eat. “What would you like to do next?”

  “Go away from here,” the candy floss whispered. Danny was so surprised he nearly dropped it.

  Thinking that Danny had spoken, Debbie said, “Well, I won’t go back in that tent.”

  Danny was stepping hurriedly away from the refreshment stand already, in deference to his candy floss. “We could ride the Skyrocket.”

  “Oh, yes.” The candy floss opened clear blue eyes. “Ride the Skyrocket!”

  “Or the Ferris wheel,” remarked Debbie’s cinnamon apple. “The Ferris wheel is great fun. Nobody ever gets off the Ferris wheel.”

  Debbie, who had never seen a talking apple before, gawked at it.

  Danny caught her by the arm and pulled her through the hurly-burly of the carnival to a little booth in which people were throwing wooden rings at plastic prizes. “I think that man’s probably going to want them back if he finds out they can talk,” he confided.

  “Mine didn’t talk,” Debbie told him, sounding none too sure of herself.

  “The Ferris wheel is where the colored lights come from,” her apple said in a fruity but very matter-of-fact voice. “That makes it the easiest thing to find on the whole lot. Besides, it’s much closer than that other ride. That other ride is on beyond it, way out in the cornfields.”

  Debbie caught Danny’s sleeve with her free hand. “Come on. We’re going to the Ferris wheel.”

  “You can eat me while you ride,” her apple suggested. “I’m red and delicious.”

  Danny’s candy floss whispered, “I’ve a great secret to tell you once you get to the Ferris wheel, and you may eat me afterward.”

  Danny nodded; but Debbie said, “I don’t want to eat you. I’ve never had a talking apple before.”

  “I can tell you much, much more from inside,” the apple assured her. “Young and innocent though you are, I can make you very wise.”

  “As wise as the snake lady?” (Debbie was hurrying through the crowd, dragging Danny behind her. A young woman who had been dancing topless on the platform of the All Girl Review caught sight of them, and for a moment her face softened; but no one else appeared to notice them at all.) “She seemed like she knew everything.”

  “Yes!” the apple exclaimed. “That’s it exactly, and she would tell you to eat me if she were here.”

  “No,” whispered Danny’s candy floss. But only Danny heard her.

  The Ferris wheel was very large indeed, and except for a summer sky the most beautiful thing that Danny and Debbie had ever seen. Not only was it carved wonderfully, but all the carvings were alive; and it gleamed everywhere with colored lights that rivaled that infinity sign posed between earth and sun that is the king of rainbows. There were countless riders and countless more waiting to get on, and though most seemed very ordinary people, many more were strange beyond imagining.

  “Look!” Danny pointed as he spoke. “That’s a goblin with two heads.”

  “There’s a clown with a slingshot.” Debbie pointed, too. “And another clown holding the moon.”

  “Riding the Ferris wheel is great fun,” her apple repeated proudly. “Nobody ever gets off.”

  “It is time for my secret,” his candy floss confided to Danny. “Listen carefully, and never forget.”

  “I will,” Danny promised.

  “It is a great secret—one of the very greatest—and yet it is a simple thing, as all truly great secrets are. It is that you are already on the wheel.”

  “No,” Danny told her.

  “Yes, you are. You must stand here and watch until you see yourselves, no matter how long it takes. That is extremely important.”

  Debbie leaned closer so she could hear the candy floss above the noise of the crowd.

  “You must watch until you see yourselves,” the candy floss repeated. “Then you may eat me.”

  For moments that afterward seemed very long, Danny and Debbie watched the wheel, and the things that they saw would fill a thousand books much larger than this one—a bat that was almost a person, for example, and a fox just then removing his mask.

  “There’s the nice fat lady,” Debbie said, and waved to her, “and there’s the snake woman and the lobster girl. They’re all riding on it. And there, and there …”

  “It’s us,” Danny said, and his voice cracked under the strain of it.

  “Eat me now!” demanded Debbie’s apple.

  “Eat me, please,” whispered Danny’s candy floss.

  He nodded, and as Debbie was taki
ng a big bite out of her apple, he took an even bigger bite of candy floss, and it tasted wonderful.

  And then, as they always did, they traded bites.

  The Ferris wheel spun faster and faster as they ate, and seemed to turn on its side like a gyroscope as it spun, becoming the carnival itself, so that there was only one Debbie and one Danny again.

  And at last it was earth and darkness.

  After that, they woke up and stood in line to wash their faces and brush their teeth (Debbie could still taste cinnamon) and went downstairs to bowls of cornflakes.

  “Children,” Aunt Mildred said, tapping her cereal bowl, “I’d like you to meet our brand-new arrivals. This is Candi Cotin.”

  Candi was a sweet-faced little girl with hair so blond as to be almost white.

  “And this is her brother, Taffy Apple.”

  Taffy was bigger and older than Danny, with red hair and freckles, and looked as if butter would not melt in his mouth.

  “Candi and Taffy, these children are Stephen and Luis and LaBelinda, and Debbie and Danny. Danny and Debbie are brother and sister, just as you are—”

  “Half sister,” Candi whispered. Perhaps no one but Danny heard her.

  “And you will share their room with them. Debbie, Danny, listen to me. After breakfast I want you to show Candi and Taffy where your room is and where you hang your clothes, and make them feel right at home.”

  Debbie and Danny had looked at each other when she said that, and had no further need of communication.

  Upstairs a few minutes later, Taffy glanced around their room and said, “This is just a little room.”

  “We know,” Debbie told him.

  “There’s only room for one bed.” Taffy waited for Danny or Debbie to contradict him, but neither did. “So I’m sleeping in it. You two can sleep on the floor with Candi. You got a problem with that?” He eyed Danny, hands on hips.

  “In a way we do,” Debbie told him.

  “Because we won’t be sleeping here at all,” Danny said.

  Debbie nodded. “Because we’re going to run away. There has to be a better place than this is. A lot of better places, really. We’re going to find one.”