Sideshow (25 page)

“Siamese twins,” cried Nela. “How do you know that word.”
The old woman said something in a language Fringe could not understand. The twins replied in the same language. The old woman fumbled a bit with it, as though it might be a language she had not used for a long time. Still, the twins seemed to understand her well enough, and soon the three of them were babbling away like birds on a branch while the old man gloomed at them and the three Enforcers listened with their mouths open.
“Think of that!” Jory cried at last, turning to Fringe. “We’re almost countrymen. Virtually time-mates.”
“They got caught in an Arbai Door,” said Danivon, gesturing at the twins. “Caught and left in limbo forever. And you?”
The old woman cocked her head, regarding him with complete attention. “An Arbai Door! Isn’t the galaxy full of wonders! Now, what’s this about going upriver?”
Danivon’s nose twitched. She hadn’t answered him. She wasn’t going to answer him. His nose told him that. “Perhaps we need you to go along.”
“So lovely to be wanted,” she cried, clapping her hands. “We’ll go, of course. Won’t we, Asner?”
“If you say so, Jory. Whatever you say.” He sighed dramatically. “She’ll get her way no matter what I say, so I just give in right away to save trouble.”
“Now, Asner, that’s not fair.”
“Fair or not, that’s the way things are.” He winked at Danivon. “Women!”
Danivon, casting a glance at Fringe from beneath half-closed eyes, did not respond. She, however, grasped him firmly by one arm and drew him to one side.
“You have to be joking,” she said.
He shook his head at her. “Not.”
“Danivon! She’s … she’s old! Look at her! She doesn’t weigh as much as your left leg from the knee down. Bird bones held together by skin. First sniff of danger, she’ll be dead!”
He tapped his nose and said again, “Not.”
“Isn’t that thing ever wrong?”
“Hasn’t been yet. And what’s it to you? She wants to go. She isn’t your granny.”
Fringe flushed. The old woman wasn’t her grandma, or old aunty. And yet. Yet. “She’s something to me, Danivon. I may not have known it till this minute, but she is something to me!”
“They’re talking about you,” Nela was saying to Jory. “Fringe feels it would be unwise for you to go along.”
“What does she care?” asked Jory with a secretive smile.
Nela persisted. “She’s concerned about the danger to you.” Fringe’s concern for the old woman was welcome to Nela, who did not want to believe Fringe was the amoral monster her earlier words had made her out to be. “Quite frankly, I think she’s sensible to be concerned.”
“Child, you worry too much,” said Jory, patting Nela’s cheek. “I’ve lived a long time. Isn’t that right, Asner? You get to be our age, you don’t worry so much.”
“Doesn’t do any good when you do,” said Asner. “So after a thousand years or so you give it up.”
Fringe, meeting Danivon’s obstinacy, threw her hands into the air and turned her back on him to face the group once more. “Everybody’s crazy!” she cried. “Old woman, you mustn’t do this.”
“What’s this device?” asked Jory, paying no attention to Fringe’s remonstration as she ran her fingers up and down a shiny track on Fringe’s machine.
“It’s a Destiny Machine,” said Bertran heavily.
“A fortune-telling device,” explained Nela.
“Oh, goody,” cried Jory. “Well, then, why don’t we leave it
to the machine. Your machine, Fringe Owldark, to answer your own objections. Show me what to do.”
Fringe sulkily pointed at the levers, and Jory picked three of them to touch, gently. One red. One green. One blue.
The machine trembled. Small bells rang tunefully. Fringe stiffened. She hadn’t arranged for melody. The bells were random; they rang when hit by one of the traveling capsules, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in dissonance, but there was no way to make them play a tune. “In this world of Elsewhere,” they rang. “Elsewhere’s where I go….”
The tune played on. Glittering gems moved out from the center of the device and spun at the far edges, spiraling like a tiny galaxy. One far light gleamed brighter than the rest. It shone, like a little sun. It spun, moving onto a nearer track, circled, coming closer, still closer, then fell into the bin. Abruptly the music stopped, the machine quivered and was still.
Fringe glared at her invention. It wasn’t supposed to stop until it had delivered at least three capsules.
“Now what?” asked Jory, peering into Fringe’s face.
Fringe picked the capsule out of the bin and turned it in her hand, seeking the word she had lettered upon it. It was there, but not in her handwriting. Not in her letters. Not a word she had painted at all.
“Go!” it said.
“Go!” read Asner, taking it from her.
“Go!” whispered Jory to Fringe, her eyes glinting like cut gems in the sidelong light. “Well now, isn’t that nice.”
Houmfon: capital city of the province of Derbeck, a river port half a day’s sail up the Ti’il from its confluence with the Fohm. Cobbled streets, arcades, shaded gardens, and a town square beside the Palace wall where the great iron gates are shut tight and draped with purple. In the Palace, Old Man Daddy is dying.
He has lived a long full life. He has killed all his enemies face-to-face and most of his friends from behind. He has eaten from golden plates and drunk from goblets of pearl (after his taster has tried everything first). He has had seven wives and a hundred concubines (though only one son), and now he is dying. He lies on his canopied bed in the lowest tower room, a rock-walled round beneath the treasure vaults,
his breath wheezing in and out, his eyes rolling blindly beneath their shuttered lids, his hands twitching on the covers as though they needed to grab one more thing, one more time. On the curved benches around the walls sit the dozen chiefs of the chimi-hounds and the dozen high priests of the dabbo-dam. The dabbo-dam holds the manifestation of Chimi-ahm; the chimi-hounds hold the fount of power. Old Man Daddy has held both, but now they are slipping away. His breath rasps and his fingers grab at nothing.
Around the walls the chiefs and the high priests exchange significant glances. Old Man Daddy has been a much loved son of Chimi-ahm, a faithful practitioner of dabbo-dam, a generous patron of the chimi-hounds, no less in his latter days than in earlier ones. Recently Old Man has known he hadn’t much longer, recently Old Man has arranged everything. The chimi-hounds have been paid and new, powerful weapons smuggled in from a category-six province have been put in their hands. The priests have been paid and gifts made at the altars. After the funeral and the proper period of mourning, an election is to be announced. The result of that election, already paid for by Old Man Daddy, is to be foretold by dabbo-dam and assured by the hounds.
It has been arranged. If people do not agree, the hounds will put an end to dissent. Mutterers will go flying, leaking from many holes. Old people. Women. Brats. Blood everywhere. That’s what makes elections. When all the blood is washed away, Old Man Daddy’s only son, Fat Slick, will have been elected Holy-head of Derbeck. In Houmfon, the great image of Chimi-ahm will smile, confirming the work of man. Then there’ll be fireworks and barbecue and everybody singing and no doubt Chimi-ahm himself will come down to walk with the people, for Chimi-ahm (unfortunately) has been doing that frequently of late.
Chimi-ahm, in fact, has become almost as worrisome to his priests as he always has been to the populace at large. Before now, Chimi-ahm usually did what the priests thought best. Now, strangely, it seems to be the other way around.
Still, the knowing glances dart from chieftain to high priest to chieftain again, sliding across the ladder against the wall, the ladder leading up to the treasure vaults. Though Old Man Daddy named him as successor, Fat Slick is a witless wonder, a slob-lipped nothing much. His mama was a luscious though brainless High Houm often possessed by Zhulia the Whore,
the female personage of Chimi-ahm. Old Man Daddy has always claimed Fat Slick was his own get (and who’d have said different), but with Old Man no longer able to say … well, maybe Fat Slick isn’t Old Man’s son at all. Maybe he’s nothing much. Who’s to say who’s been bought and what’s been paid for? Chimi-ahm whispers maybe it’s some other man’s son? Maybe the high priest’s son? Or the son of the boss chimi-hound chief? Or the boss chimi-hound chief
himself
, old Houdum-Bah?
Outside, in the hall, where the long tables are kept stocked with drinks and eatables and sniffables, outside are whisperers, scurriers, fetchers, and mutterers, dressed all in white with white cloths twisted around their heads, naked feet painted blue, backs of their hands painted blue, blue stripes on forehead and cheek, little people, servant people, the zur-Murrey, which means “blue boys” in the old language, the tongue most of the people still speak. The Murrey are as human as the highest of the Houm, but they are beige and small, with stiff black hair that stands up like a brush. Only the paint on hands and feet and face says which color-tribe each one belongs to.
“They won’t go for Fat Slick,” says one of the blue boys to one with yellow feet and ankles, yellow dots beside his eyes and down his jawline. “Fat’s for the chop, the flop, the drop, the long hang down. Fat’s for the pit, the spit.” And giggles then, hysterical giggles, for there’s scarcely a Murrey in the palace, male or female, who hasn’t been handled by Fat Slick in one way or another, none of them nice.
“Ten on sunset,” breathes a green boy to a blue, the keeper of the last breath pools. Ten derbecki that Old Man Daddy will draw his last breath as the sun falls. “Ten more on sunrise!” Ten derbecki that Fat Slick will draw his last at dawn, on the gibbet. Those in power don’t like Fat Slick. Though Fat Slick is stupid—and ordinarily the priests and hounds would prefer somebody not quite bright—for some reason they’ve taken against him. Whisper says Chimi-ahm himself has taken against him! So, money flows like water, up and down in the Palace, everybody betting. Betting makes it more real, more actual, more sure. Oh, to see either one of them dead! Oh, to see both of them dead in the space of one day!
Others of the Murrey, even some of the High Houm, the aristocracy, consider ways of getting out of Houmfon for a
time until things settle down. It isn’t only Old Man Daddy dying, it isn’t only the election, it’s other things too. It’s Chimi-ahm manifesting himself all the time lately, it’s people going to a dabbo-dam and never coming back. So, the Houm think of going off to take care of a sick relative in the country, maybe. Or they think of going down sick themselves, maybe, in some well-fortified back room, and staying in there until well after election: out of sight, out of mind. No point just going to another town. The other towns are no better than Houmfon. If one goes anywhere, one has to get clean away, out into the forests. The only thing sure about Old Man Daddy’s dying is that someone will be set up in his place. So, there’ll be one man going and maybe more than one coming,
and
the dabbo-dam eating people like chug-nuts, forces coming together like the stones of a mill, and who but the zur-Murrey and the jan-Murrey and ver-Murrey caught between those stones? Blue boys, yellow boys, green boys, no matter, the streets and the altars will run bloody when tenancy changes in the Palace. That’s how the old saying goes.
All rou-Murrey when the topman goes. All red-boys when Old Man dies.
Not that the little people don’t run red other times too, whenever the chimi-hounds get aggravated at something!
So, even now, before Old Man Daddy is properly dead, there are people headed upstream or down. It is mostly flatland along the Ti’il, until one gets to the roots of the river where the country rises up into mountains, into forests, into a thousand little knobs and swales and chasms where one can find a scatter of huts set in garden patches, and maybe even a milk animal or two, or a flock of gimmers for meat and hides. Not that the chimi-hounds couldn’t come there; they could and sometimes do; but usually, they don’t bother. Why go so far to kill a few when you can stay in town and knock off dozens?
Downriver is Du-you, the port at the confluence of the Ti’il and the Fohm. Du-you is no good. Chimi-hounds run Du-you, from the docks to the farms along the delta. But along the low banks of the Fohm, east and west, lie miles of reed beds where anyone can disappear. Reappearing is sometimes a problem, what with the blood-birds and the monster chaffers and the gavers that sit on their piled nests of rotting reeds, but those you can look out for. There are islands among the reeds, and people living on the islands. Some of
the people have been careful for so long that the chimi-hounds don’t even know they exist.
It is one of these islands the refugee couple almost happens upon, he and she, well into middle age, found lying in sodden exhaustion, surrounded by a circle of patient blood-birds, some little distance from a nameless village. Such places have sentries well out, and the sentries find them.
“Out along the reed canal,” the sentry tells the headman, Ghatoun. “Lying up in the reeds, half-dead.”
They are not half-dead. A quarter, maybe, from being sucked by chaffers and scratched by swamp briar and covered with bites from stingers, cuffer-noses, and swutches, none of which is usually lethal.
“Who are you?” Ghatoun wants to know. He knows already they aren’t chimi-hounds. A chimi-hound wouldn’t have a woman along.
“Latibor Luze,” says he.
“Cafferty Luze,” says she.
Both are gray at the temples and wrinkled a bit around the eyes. Both have open faces and shining, open eyes, like those of children too young to know about Chimi-ahm, though there is something watchful there, as well. And something sad, but then, in Derbeck, that’s the usual thing.
“And where from?”
“Houmfon, most recently,” the man sighs.
Most recently? And where before that? The headman looks Latibor Luze in the eyes and wonders if he really wants to ask.
“From Beanfields before that,” says Latibor softly, giving Ghatoun a straight look. “Some years. And before that, all over. For a long time.” It’s a risk to tell this to Ghatoun, but not a large risk. Ghatoun’s people wouldn’t be out here, living among the reeds, if they were in sympathy with what goes on in Derbeck.
“Chaffer spit,” Ghatoun mutters to himself. He doesn’t want to hear it. Border crossers! Maybe even agitators, maybe with Council Enforcers after them, and if not Council Enforcers, then surely chimi-hounds, eager to kill off nonbelievers. The very kind of thing that was most dangerous!