Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top (9 page)

But Horatio only stared at the window and at the distant stars.

“Something’s wrong in the Circosphere, Horatio. What is it?”

Jinkers should have felt invigorated by the news of Brent’s discovery. But . . . But . . . Perhaps she had been here too long. She was a thirty-five- -year-old woman talking to a tortoise. She realised, with some surprise, that she was unhappy. She had friends; she had important work: the most important work in the galaxy. So why did the Circosphere feel so dull and routine? Even in the midst of this latest crisis, time felt dead to her. The magic of the circus had faded for Jinkers. It was something she’d thought would never happen.

“I’m going to put on some lipstick, and I’m going to have a good time. Paint on a smile, eh, Horatio?”

“Do you still want to be an animal trainer, Josh?” Jinkers asked. Sometimes the old tricks worked, she was enjoying herself, a home-cooked meal, the company of Brent and Bella and their irrepressible son, Josh.

“No way, Aunty Jinkers, I want to be a scientist.”

“He had the revelations programme at school this week,” said Bella. When the circus children turned fourteen, certain realities of the Circosphere were explained.

“Yep. I want to spy on the punters, the suckers.”

“I’m not sure that’s what we do here,” said Jinkers, smiling. That was pretty much her own response when she had learnt about the evaluation programmes.

“It’s not spying, you know that,” said Bella. “There’s no secret that we gather data here.”

Joshua scowled.
He looks so much like his father,
thought Jinkers.

“We just don’t advertise the fact. People come here to enjoy themselves and if we gather some useful information at the same time, well, that’s all to the good.”

“Aww, Mum . . . ”

“But a scientist is a fine career choice,” said Brent.

“Better paid than a lion tamer,” said Jinkers.

“Well, I don’t just want to be a scientist. I want to be a super scientist.”

“What do you mean, Josh?”

“I want to spy on the observers, make sure that they’re doing their job properly.”

Jinkers laughed. “A super spy! Marvellous! Did you think that up by yourself? I wouldn’t be surprised if Earth Central did have some spies, as you put it, observing the us. Who watches the watchers? What’s the harm if . . . ?” She stopped, suddenly. “Excuse me. I’m so sorry, Bella, I need to get to my office immediately.” Jinkers ran out of the room and sprinted to her office. She sat at her desk, panting, out of breath.

Before she did anything she needed to think. She needed to think carefully.

Jinkers believed in the ethos of the Circosphere, it was imperative to pull the colony worlds together. The Circosphere created the cohesions humanity needed to prevent fragmentation and division. Jinkers believed in science, she believed that the colonies needed to be observed and monitored.

But she also believed in the life of the circus. She pulled together all the strands of entertainment. She was the ring-master. She was in control of this enormous, multi-stranded palace of observation, of science, of cohesion, of entertainment and of magic. This was her circus. She was the circus. And she knew then, that somebody had got in under the canvas.

Jinkers Morrell said in a clear, distinct voice, “I know you’re there—show yourself.”

Nothing happened.

“Okay then.” She activated her computer. “Have it your own way. I’m reporting this to Earth Central.”

“Wait.” A figure materialised in front of her: a humanoid figure: an alien figure.

“Who the hell are you? How long have you been in my circus?” This was big. This was massive.

“Apologies, Madam Morrell. We are representatives. We have been in your establishment for a few weeks.”

“Where are you from?”

The alien walked around her office. He looked almost human, but not quite. There was an indefinable essence of strangeness cast over his entire countenance. “We inhabit another galaxy, Madam Morrell.”

Another galaxy! Earth Central had dismissed the possibility of sentient alien life in the universe.

The alien continued to traverse her office. Jinkers’ mind was racing. He didn’t
seem
belligerent. Jinkers was riding along her instincts. They had always served her well.

“We are impressed that you identified us so quickly.” The alien picked up a handful of Horatio’s kibble. “There are always a few inconsistencies, no matter how hard we try to blend in. I’m afraid we’ve caused some false readings in your data. Were you expecting us? We were under the belief that your species had dismissed alternative sentience as an implausible possibility.”

“This is my circus,” said Jinkers. “I know what goes on here. Why are you here?”

“We do the same as you, Madam. We observe. What did you say, earlier?” he smiled, an unfortunate occurrence revealing a mouthful of teeth. “Who watches the watchers? Well, we do.” He held out his hand to Horatio, who stretched his neck out and began to nibble the food in the alien’s outstretched palm. “And Madam Morrell, to extend your metaphor: I have a free pass to an outstanding show.”

“A universal spectacular?”asked Jinkers

“Indeed. Madam Morrell, welcome to the greatest show of your life: the Universal Federations of Sentience.” Horatio continued to feed. “We thought that you might like to be the one to announce the news to the rest of humanity.”

The universe just got interesting,
thought Jinkers, as she put the call through to Earth Central.

Vanishing Act

E. Catherine Tobler

Jackson’s Unreal Circus and Mobile Marmalade picked her up a day outside Denver. Jackson wouldn’t stop for a cow on the tracks, but he stopped for this little thing, with her pale hair and paler eyes. Brought the entire train to a stop to scoop her from the tracks with his long arms.

She huddled against his chest, her small body nearly folded in on itself, and we all watched, in confusion and fascination both. The long hem of her dirty shift caught the cow catcher and the remains of said beast.

She was none of my concern, but Jackson placed her in my car and made her just that. He laid her down in the corner, in my favorite chair, my only chair. She looked all the more pale against the blue and gold stripes. Their brilliance had long since faded, but looked new against her washed out skin. Her bare feet were crusted with dirt and muck and I didn’t look much beyond that.

I was working with the quarters when she began to wail, rolling them across my fingers before trying to turn them into nickels. The steam whistle crowed as we crossed the state line, Colorado into New Mexico, and she came alive as though submerged in hot water.

The quarters tumbled off my fingers, onto the floor where they lay as she shrieked, curled her hands over her ears, and moaned. Her face was creased with pain; for a moment, she looked like she’d been raked with hot metal.

After listening to her, I wanted to do the same; curl into a ball and moan. Instead, I went to her. Crouched before the chair and tried to get her to lower her hands.

First thing I noticed was that her hands didn’t feel like hands. She was soft, as though her bones hadn’t yet firmed up. A baby in the guise of a ten year old. Second thing I noticed was the way she went quiet when I touched her.

I thought she would twist away, scream, holler, anything but what she did, which was melt into me, against my chest. Her soft hand curled its way into my shirtfront, her thumb working over the nearest dirty button.

“Stop that.”

Tried to push her out of my arms, I did, but she wouldn’t go. She took to purring like a cat, like the big lions Jackson kept caged in the car behind mine. To keep me in line, he said, but I could make them vanish with a thought. Still, I didn’t like the idea of where they might end up, so I left them alone, and they did the same for me.

The girl’s purring took up residence inside my head, worked some kind of magic and made me tumble toward the mattress Opal had snickered at, but had still come to. And where did that memory come from, I wondered as I drowned inside that rumbling sound. I was lost inside it as though it was a maze. Couldn’t find my way out, so I just gave in and eventually it bled into a familiar dark quiet I recognized as sleep.

Woke to the train slowing again and I wondered if Jackson was stopping for another sprite on the tracks. Stars painted the sky overhead and the air smelled like manure. We’d reached our destination then.

I untangled myself from the boneless girl. She lay as though dead and I moved away as quick as I could. Before she could latch on again. Before she thought to hold me and purr and make me a lost thing.

The air outside was cool, smelled like snow would be on the ground come morning. I pulled my coat around me, rubbed my hands together, and approached the first of the weird sisters as they emerged from their own car. I offered up one hand; Gemma took it, but Sombra’s hand was just as quickly there. It seemed one hand around mine, though I knew there to be two.

The sisters were two halves of the same thing, one light and one dark. Where one was concave, the other was convex. Where one was sharp rocks, the other was smooth water. Sombra’s hair was the night sky while Gemma’s was the stars. And sometimes, they were exactly backwards from that.

Why, I wondered, couldn’t Jackson have placed the little girl in with them? They were women, they’d had children, countless children or so they said. I’d had plenty of women, but no children. Never would. Didn’t need or want them. Would be all too easy to wish them gone and have them vanish.

Sombra and Gemma moved like fog across the ground. Their feet never touched the ground as they drifted away. They wouldn’t help with the unloading; they never did and no one ever expected they would. They floated into the night and dissolved into fireflies against the blackness as they swept and blessed the campsite.

Five long and pale fingers wrapped around my half-warmed hand and I started at the touch. Looked down and found the little girl clutching me, her fingers warmed, water barely contained by skin. She looked up at me and her mouth curled in a crescent moon smile.

I could see now that her pale hair was drawn into disorganized ropes, like the jumble you’d find on the dusty ground after the tents came down, messy on the ends like they hadn’t been tended in a few years. Her mouth was as pale as her skin; her smile slipped away, but her grip tightened and she looked around, as if to ask where and why we were.

“Performin’ here,” I said and tried to loose my hand from hers, but she was having none of it. I walked and she fell into easy step beside me, though her little legs shouldn’t have been able to keep up.

Silas and Lawrence were already unloading the tents. I finally shook the girl’s hand off of mine, swung up into the car, and helped Hunter roll another of the striped cylinders to the door. We maneuvered it around, gave it a swift kick down, and the boys carried it off.

There were twenty-four tents in all. The girl watched me the whole time, perched like an owl on the fence across from the door. Her eyes were almost blue, but as the last tent came down I decided the color was only from the nearest light. She would move away and her eyes would change, no doubt.

“Got a name?” I asked her as I came out of the car and headed back toward mine. She watched me as I took a rumpled cigarette from my coat and placed flame against its tip. Drew deep and exhaled once before she answered.

“You?”

“Ladies first,” I insisted. She was tiny and odd, but a lady nonetheless. Her colorless eyes skimmed over me, then met mine again.

“Rabi,” she said and I choked on the smoke that rolled down my throat.

She snatched the cigarette from my hand, tossed it to the ground and mashed it under her pale toes. I thought I might cough up my stomach, but she brushed her fingers down my arm and I calmed. Instantly, like my mother touching me after a nightmare. I looked at her through the fall of my hair.

“At’s
my
name.” My voice was hoarse. I turned and thumped the side of my car. Painted in silver by Gemma, trimmed in black by Sombra, was my name and my claim to fame. Rabi, Vanquisher and Vanisher Extraordinaire.

The little girl’s mouth twisted and she looked around, searching for another name. Any would do, any name, any word. She looked like a snowflake standing there, eyes flitting from thing to thing, the dirty hem of her shift lifting in the cold breeze. Her skin should have been puckered from the cold, her toes burned from the cigarette, but she showed no discomfort.

Finally she shook her head.

I shrugged. Didn’t matter. She wasn’t mine to name. I’d be damned if I was going to do it.

Work continued through the night. The little girl didn’t seem to tire; she helped where she thought she could, with small things, and took to following the weird sisters when they returned. She was the reverse of a shadow, but the very shadow Sombra should have had right then; as pale as she was dark. And when it was Gemma’s turn to darken, the child could flutter in her wake.

I hauled a rope, helped pull a tent upright. The red and white striped fabric soared against the pre-dawn sky, snapped as the ropes pulled it taut. That cloth shuddered as inner supports were placed thus and so, ribs and organs and muscles to give the beast a chance of standing.

The marmalade stand was up before the sun, which wasn’t saying much as snow had begun to fall. Too many clouds for there to be sun. I crossed the stubble grass, drawn by the scent of Beth’s fresh rolls and marmalade. I bought a small jar of the orange and a bundle of rolls, kissed her cheek and let her squeeze my backside before I walked back to my car.

Found the little girl there, wrapped in the blue blanket with its purple stars. She looked like a ghost and I told her as much.

“Not a ghost,” she said and I saw that she had one of my books. I didn’t have many. It was the atlas she had spread in her lap, and she pointed to a small town. “We are here.”

I nodded as I punched a hole in the bag of rolls. Drew one out, cracked open the jar of marmalade. I tore the roll open next and two fingers sufficed as knife to spread the marmalade. The girl’s attention was drawn away from the book; she watched me spread the marmalade, lift, and eat the roll. Marmalade clung to my lips; I licked them clean and she mimicked the motion.