Sideshow (23 page)

“Good night,” he answered absently, eyes on her hands, his surprise betrayed by one soaring eyebrow.
Well, so much for secret signals
, she reflected sourly. Probably
he hadn’t used the damned signals any oftener than she had. Anyone watching his face would have wondered what was going on. She turned, then blushed to find Nela’s speculative eyes upon her.
The tap at her door came late.
“You wanted to see me?” he said softly when she let him in, casting a quick look around the room to see if they were alone.
She had looked over the room as best she could, without obviously searching it, but there was no way to tell for sure that there weren’t spy eyes watching. So, if she were to pass the cube along secretly, as Boarmus had ordered, it would have to be done in the guise of something else. She’d planned the most misleading thing she could think of: an embrace, a hug, maybe even with some kissing and fondling.
“I thought it was time we got to know one another better,” she said throatily, purposefully seductive.
His mouth fell open. “Well.” He stared for a moment, then grinned. “What took you so long, Fringe Owldark?”
She moved toward the chair by the window, barely able to keep herself from snarling at him. The monstrous ego of the man! She took a deep breath and turned, ready to utter the next flirtatious phrase she’d rehearsed, only to find herself against him, her chin pressed into his chest. She tried to step back, but his arms were around her. She started to say something, but his lips were on hers. She had planned on this happening, but not so quickly….
Everything inside her loosened in an unfamiliar way and she couldn’t remember what she’d been going to say. He half dragged, half carried her toward the bed and they fell onto it together, arms and legs already entwined, tangled in their clothing, she dizzy, trying to think of words that would get her out of this, he busy finding flesh to touch. When she thought of something at last, his mouth was still on hers; she couldn’t breathe, then didn’t want to breathe.
After which she forgot about breathing or speaking or doing anything. Anything that needed doing was doing itself. The room was washed by dim ripples of torchlight reflected from the water outside. The only sounds she could hear were the cry of a night bird, the sob of her own breath, the murmur of Danivon’s voice saying not-quite words. Then everything went to pieces in mirrorlike shards, inside, outside, the sky breaking apart, her thought shattering into splinters that
didn’t connect to anything. He said something urgently, but she couldn’t tell what it was. The room rocked on the wavelets, gently, as though it floated.
After a long, quiet time, she opened her eyes and stared through the window at the stars, half in wonder, half in anger. She’d planned this! She’d planned to do this, well, not exactly this, but something like this. But she hadn’t planned … hadn’t planned for the sky to come apart. Damn it. Why had that had to happen! Why had she done it? Why had she thought she could pretend … then pretend she hadn’t?
Angry tears filled her eyes, and she wiped the wetness away with one hand as she reached for her pack with the other, feeling automatically for the comb she’d made sure was there on top, next to the cube Boarmus had given her. Her hand came out, the cube hidden in her palm, the comb in her fingers.
“Danivon,” she said huskily, her voice seeming to come from some unfamiliar place inside her.
“Fringe,” he whispered, inviting her, drawing the word out, making a caress of it.
She refused to understand him as she put her lips against his ear. “Boarmus gave me a message for you.”
He started, but she held him down with her full weight, keeping him from moving, afraid that if he moved …
“Secret, Danivon. He believes he’s being watched. Maybe we are. The message is here in my hand. Take it. Don’t examine it until you’re sure you’re alone, where no one can see. Not even Curvis.”
“Fringe,” he murmured, as in a dream.
“Shhh.” She lay beside him, closing his hand around the cube, holding it in her own. In a moment, he breathed deeply, half asleep once more, and she sat up to comb her hair, hearing the snap and spark as the comb slid down the long tresses. No one was watching, but just in case … just in case. All she was doing was combing her hair. Not braiding it, because she wasn’t an Enforcer, not here in Shallow. She was just a woman kissing her lover and combing her hair. That’s all. Let spy-eyes make what they would of that! She sought her fastener among their tumbled clothing, knotted her hair on the top of her head, and pushed the teeth of the fastener through it, feeling the fangs as though they went into her flesh.
Then she extricated herself bit by slow bit, her clothes, her limbs, her feelings, all of her, back together in one place. So.
Now what was she going to do? She’d sworn she wouldn’t get involved with Danivon Luze, and she’d done it anyhow. She’d let it happen. Lying to herself. Calling it duty when it had probably been lust all the time. She didn’t call it love, didn’t think of that, didn’t let herself think of that, even though she wanted to lie down beside him once more, lay her lips at his throat, lose herself. She wanted to feed on him, sate all her hungers with him, soak him into herself, root herself in him. Be whole with him, whole as she had never been. That’s what love must be for, to feel like that.
At least, so Souile had said once. Love was to make yourself whole. Well, it hadn’t worked for Souile, had it? Or for Char. It hadn’t worked for anyone Fringe knew.
And when it didn’t work, it was worse than nothing. It was regret, sorrow, love sucking you in until you couldn’t move, holding you down, making you stop struggling and taking you over, just as Danivon had done. Like the Hobbs Land Gods. Taking you over. Eating you up and leaving you too stupid even to know you didn’t exist anymore!
She took a deep, trembling breath and told herself she would not, that’s all. If it had really happened, it would be a mistake, so it had never happened. She had given Danivon the message, that’s all. A little playacting. Unthink it. Nothing happened.
She took a blanket and sneaked away silently, out onto the shared piazza where she found a comfortable chair and cocooned herself into it to watch little lights moving among the lilies where the people of Shallow were night-fishing with torches and spears, the gossle boats moving around the lagoon like black bugs with shining eyes. After a time, hypnotized by the moving lights, she slept.
Danivon slept as well, a smile curving his lips. Sometime later he was wakened by a fisherman’s shout and reached out for her, only to find her gone. Half-dressed, dragging his discarded clothing, he looked onto the piazza but didn’t see her buried in the depths of the chair. Puzzled, he made his way to the room he shared with Curvis, finding it dark and silent except for an occasional explosive snore.
The thing she had given him while he lay half dreaming was clutched in his hand. This thing she had said … said what about? Said to be private before he looked at it. He went to one of the sanitary cubicles cantilevered out over the lagoon, a primitive arrangement, but a reasonably private one,
lit by a fish-oil lamp suspended from the ceiling. The light was dim but adequate to show him a standard transmitter cube. Well. So? He went back to the room, inserted the device into his reader, and let it whisper into his ear.
“Danivon, you are in danger,” it said in a whimper that sounded not at all like Boarmus. “There’s a kind of force here on Elsewhere, and it’s after you, after the people with you. It says it intends to kill you. I don’t know if it
can
kill you, but it wants to. When I see it, it looks like a ghost. Maybe it will look like a ghost to you. It’s taking people over, enslaving people, killing people, Danivon. Not the Hobbs Land Gods, Danivon. Another thing. Be careful.”
Which didn’t sound like cold old Boarmus at all. Which sounded so unlike him it sent a chill through Danivon, along with a smell of old, corrupted ice. Boarmus was talking in generalities, in hints and clues. As though to be specific would be even more dangerous—for whom? Boarmus or himself?
“Try to stay alive,”
the cube sobbed in his ear.
“Be very careful! I may need you.”
How long had Fringe been carrying this thing? Since Tolerance? Why hadn’t she given it to him before! Considerably shaken, Danivon wiped out the message and dropped the cube among others in his kit. So the danger he’d been smelling was not merely for the usual kind of risk. It was something bigger than that. Worse. And whatever it was had evidently come to Shallow. Sparkling and noises and people disappearing. Had the danger followed them? Or was it lying in wait?
He lay back on his bed and considered matters. Nothing had changed, except that he knew Boarmus knew. He shouldn’t be furious at Fringe for taking so long, except that he was angry. Last night had seemingly not been what he had hoped it was!
By morning, his feelings were thoroughly confused, sleepiness mixed with erotic longing for Fringe mixed with fury at her for … for being Fringe! He went to her room, went in without knocking, and found her sitting at the window.
“Rude of you,” she remarked in a toneless voice.
“Fringe. Come on, we need to talk about—”
“What about, Danivon?”
“About?” he exploded in a whisper, conscious of Curvis on the piazza, of the twins standing outside at the railing. He came close, reached for her. “About us. About …”
She leaned against him, put her lips close to his ear. “Us,”
she said, still tonelessly. “Colleagues. On an assignment together.”
“No.” He shook her. “About us together….”
“On an assignment,” she insisted, staring coldly into his eyes. “That’s all, Danivon. On an assignment!” She made a gesture, a warning flicker of fingers, another Enforcer sign, this one conveying caution.
He snarled, pulling her close. “You mean you …”
“I mean I was told to deliver it secretly,” she hissed into his ear, barely audibly. “And I tried to do just that, and you’re about to foul everything up.”
“You weren’t pretending,” he said softly. “Damn it, Fringe. You weren’t pretending. And I wasn’t pretending.”
And she hadn’t been pretending. He was right. For a moment her body sagged against him and his arms tightened. Then she pulled away in desperation. “We’ve work to do, Danivon.” Fear dictated the words. She needed him to get away from her, now, leave her alone, before she was lost! “Damn it, Danivon, I can’t afford this!”
He stepped away, seeing the expression on her face, offended by it, not understanding it in the least. He had never forced himself on an unwilling woman! No woman who wasn’t a target for Enforcement had ever, ever needed to be afraid of him, and no woman ever had needed to be afraid of him sexually! But there was no mistaking her expression: she was afraid of him or of herself, and did it matter which?
She turned away, her back rigid, and after a long silent moment he left her there to go trembling away, not sure what he was feeling. Sympathy, maybe? Or grief? What? Maybe anger, that was easiest! Except that anger might be self-defeating, for this mood of hers might depart in time.
Very well. He swallowed anger and decided to give her time.
When she sat near him at the table and served herself breakfast, however, her closed face looked through him, or past him, as she had been looking at him more or less since he met her in the tavern in Enarae. She sat beside Nela, but she didn’t even look at Nela.
“We didn’t sleep well last night. When we did, I dreamed I was that little turtle, in the story,” said Nela, half to Fringe, half to the air.
Fringe said expressionlessly, “It must have been a sad dream.”
“No sadder than the story you told us about the warrior maid and the gylphs,” murmured Nela.
“It’s the same damned story,” said Bertran, sounding irritable. “We are many of us raised on the same stories. In fact, many of us
are
the same stories. At least, so I’ve decided lately.”
Danivon tried unsuccessfully to catch Fringe’s eyes. She turned away from him. He said urgently, “Speaking of turtles, Fringe has a turtle shell in her house. She keeps it upon a pedestal but will not tell me why.”
“A turtle shell?” asked Nela, much interested.
Fringe looked at Danivon and shook her head slowly. “I found it on one of the Seldom Isles, at the top of a tall tree. So far as I know, turtles do not climb trees.” Fringe thought it likely a predatory bird had taken it there, though it could have been Nela’s turtle, seeking the secret sanctuary of the birds. Perhaps it climbed up there and couldn’t get down, and so it died, high up, staring at the sky. Actually, she preferred that explanation.
If you were going to rise to such heights, better do it on your own than be grabbed up and eaten!
“And you will not tell Danivon why you keep it?” Nela teased.
“If Danivon knew me at all, he would know why,” she said wearily, fixing him with her eyes. “I keep it to remind me that even small creatures may have longings for something higher and more wonderful than they have ever known. Even small creatures can try to climb, can refuse to be sidetracked by temptations of comfort and … kindness.”
She had intended to sound cold, but the words came out as a plea.
Danivon flushed. Nela saw and understood, but her twin, his eyes on his plate, missed the exchange.
Bertran laughed ruefully. “You surprise me, Fringe. I might once have thought someone reared in Enarae couldn’t possibly understand ancient Earthians like Nela and me, yet the very fact that we both have similar feelings about our turtle stories tells me we share many of the same feelings.”
“There is not so much real diversity among folk as we are led to believe,” Nela said, trying to lead the conversation to a less emotional level.
This was heresy! Curvis immediately rose to the bait with an impassioned defense of diversity as found upon Elsewhere, while Fringe, with a feeling of relief that they were talking of
something impersonal, made herself concentrate on their performance planned for this morning.
During their voyage from the Curward Isles, Nela had insisted upon stitching a fancy robe and headdress to go with the Destiny Machine, a flowing garment glittering with beads and a tall cap with painted panels falling stiffly on either side of the face. More hype, said Nela. Fringe must look like an oracle, not like an Enforcer! Immediately after breakfast, Fringe got into this outlandish garb and helped Curvis maneuver the Destiny Machine down to the float, stopping long enough to invite a few of the servitors to come have their futures foretold. In the bright light of morning it seemed apprehensions had been laid aside for they chattered about the machine, giggled over their individual fortunes, and raced back into Heron House to tell others. It was not long before there was a crowd gathered around them, all laughing and talking and pointing fingers as Curvis made the munks disappear only to reappear twenty paces away in Danivon’s pocket; while Nela and Bertran did sleight-of-hand tricks to amaze the audience; and finally while Fringe busied herself with all the hypish nonsense Nela and Bertran had suggested, including gong-whacking and the sonorous invocation of recently invented and strangely named powers of past, present, and future while volunteers from the audience had their destinies loudly foretold to great awe and amusement.