Sideshow (55 page)

“I, too, can die. I, too, can be killed!”
“We are alike in that.”
“Why should I risk my life for Elsewhere?”
“Because it was important to Jory.”
And again, silence. Fringe stalked forward, her hand before her. It encountered something monstrous and wall-like, something that quivered with enormous life. She stood where
she was, not daring to move. The being burned darkly, emitting grief like an aura.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But she was so tired. She was willing to stand with us upon the massif, fighting until she fell at last, but she was so tired.”
“I, too, grow weary.”
“Will you help me do what she wanted done?”
“It may not be possible to do what she wanted done.”
“We can try.”
Again the sigh. Again the whisper.
“Come then. Let us try.”
She rode, unaware how it had happened that she rode, aware only that beneath her great muscles played one against another, hurricane winds were stilled into quiet breaths; before her trees submitted to the trampling of great talons, the insinuations of enormous flesh.
“Where are we going?”
“Where you wanted us to go.”
“Where the Arbai have gone?”
“Yes.”
They came to an outcropping of rock, hidden among the trees, where a wide, low archway was closed by a monstrous door. Though it was dark, Fringe saw it clearly for it shone with a harsh, obdurate light. She saw great talons gripping the hinges of that door, trying to bend them, straining at them, roaring at them, while they remained yet adamant. The struggle went on and on, and likewise the defeat.
“I can’t break it.”
There was a certain hopelessness in that voice, almost a resignation.
“Given enough time, enough thought, I can do many things. But I cannot break this door.”
Fringe’s head sagged. She slumped, beginning to despair.
Jory had not despaired. Not even at the end. Jory had chosen her; she had no right to despair.
“There must be something,” she cried. “Some way!”
“
Let it go,”
said the great voice.
“No,” she shouted. “Everyone I ever loved, I could have loved better, but I
always
let it go. I did it. Even Char … even him. When the time came for me to give me up, I never could.”
“What vision is this, Fringe Owldark?”
“Me,” she said. “It’s me.” She shook her head in puzzlement, and peered deeply at the shadowed bulk beneath her, as though to confirm her answer there.
“I’m a questing beast, Great Dragon. It’s why Jory picked me. She knew….”
“Knew what?”
he demanded.
“Knew she could find one of us somewhere, for there are always a few of us around.” She ran her hands down her sides, as though to be sure she was present. “Like her. Like Zasper. Like me. We’re the discontented ones. People try to love us, but we keep getting distracted. People give us presents, hoping to please us, but to us they feel like chains and ropes, tying us. They cook the food and pour the wine, and we go unicorn hunting instead. They yell at us and we don’t hear, and they try to nail us down, and we pull out the nails and run away licking the punctures. They tell us we’re being obstinate, and they send us to bed, and we crawl out the window and go wandering. They lock us in a room and they throw away the key. And we slide out under the door.” She laughed. “We leak away, like water.”
“
Like water,”
he agreed.
“Water can wear away a stone, eventually,” she said. “If there’s enough time.”
“But there isn’t enough time. So we’ll leave it, shall we?”
“Wait,” she said, forcing the words past a dry throat and a terrible inward shrinking. Put me down!”
She was down. She stood facing the door, one hand out. When she was a girl, long ago, working in the weapons shop, she had repaired weapons. She knew how they worked. What was it Asner had said about the Arbai Device? That it could create? Well then, let it create.
She visualized the weapon, the structure of the crystals, the intricacies of the circuitry, the shape of the housing, the effect of one part upon another. She thrust her mind at the nothingness in her hand, believing that what she needed was there!
Nothing. More was needed than merely this! She had sent the device away. What must she do to bring it back?
Give up herself. Let it have its way. Be possessed. Enslaved. Willingly, for the device would not work any other way.
Sobbing, she invited it.
It came from the soil beneath her feet, not as an insinuation but as an invasion. It came into her like a swarm, like a tidal flow.
She stumbled, almost falling, her whole being in revolt
against this violence being done to her. From beside her, a mighty claw reached out and held her.
Her mind stuttered. “
Steady,”
whispered a voice inside her.
“Steady now.”
She took a deep breath, focused herself once more. This was the way the weapon had worked. This one she held was different, of course, being larger, more powerful. Vastly more powerful. This one could take down a mountain if that was what was needed.
The firing button lay beneath her thumb.
She pressed it.
The door glowed. The fabric of it howled. Metallic runnels flowed away from it. It sagged upon its hinges. Great Dragon seized it, tore it, battered it down.
Before them a sandy-floored tunnel stretched ahead and downward, into infinity.
“Do you now accept enslavement?”
asked the voice. “If you risk death, can I risk less?” she asked. It was what one Enforcer said to another when they went into battle. A way of swearing loyalty. An acceptance of an honorable end.
“Come. I’ll carry you.”
“I cannot reach what I need through you,” she said. “I must walk.”
“True. The device cannot touch me. So, we will walk together.”
She started down the tunnel, counting her steps, ignoring the feeling that she was no longer herself. Her legs felt different. Her arms. Part of her was no longer available. Part of her substance had been used to make the weapon she still held.
Ignore that. Count the steps. Hammer down the distance with striding feet.
When she reached several thousand, she stopped counting, unable to remember what the next number should have been.
“Will we reach them in time?” she asked.
“In time for what?”
“In time to do what Jory would have done.”
“
Who knows,”
he murmured.
What remained of her leaned for a moment against his side, then turned and began walking once more.

• • •

In far-off City Fifteen, Sepel794DZ watched the ending of man on Panubi. He was enmeshed in his little tentacles, perceiving the slaughter in fear and dismay, fearing the end of the world for himself as for these others, so far away.
Brain dinks led very long lives. They were not subject to disease, and if they stayed at home they were seldom killed. Sepel had always supposed that being a dink had immunized him against fear. He knew now this was not so. Seeing men and women die had not worried him before this. They were they and he was he. Seeing men and women die on Panubi terrified him, for it was clear that Panubi set the pattern for the end.
In the midst of this sickening realization, he received a signal.
“Boarmus here,” said a shaky voice out of nowhere. “Can you hear me?”
“Sepel794DZ here,” the dink replied, uncertain where the message was coming from. All communication with Tolerance had been blocked for some time.
“… lash up …” cried Boarmus, his voice fading and returning. “Put togeth … scraps and bits. Can … tell … what ship?”
What ship? What was Boarmus speaking of. What did he mean, what ship?
“Something approaching,” suggested Files in an insect hum. “Coming toward Elsewhere. Unknown origin. Coming very fast.”
“I heard that,” said Boarmus, suddenly clear as a bell. “Don’t suppose it’ll make any difference. Don’t know how long we’ve got. The gods have left us alone here for the last few days. Can’t tell where they are because all the monitors are gone. Committing a destruction somewhere else, no doubt.”
“Panubi,” Sepel confirmed. “Yes.”
“Oh, damn,” sighed Boarmus. “Oh, hell. I’d hoped … Well, so there’s a few of us left here trying to get as many out through the Door as we can, only nobody knows how to set it, and we can’t find the information. Evidently the Brannigans deleted it from Files. So, we’re just sending people through, hoping they’re coming out at the other end….”
“I have settings,” snapped Sepel. “Prepare to receive,” and it blurted the sequences and instructions in a blare of noise, leaving them at the other end to sort it out.
Boarmus was still speaking. “… nyhow, picked up this ship coming in. Is it coming here?”
“No idea,” Sepel said, “no idea at all.”
Fringe was stumbling with weariness when she perceived a change. It was in the quality of light, perhaps. Or the smell of the air. Mist, there was certainly, and a musty smell as of old rooms. She staggered, leaning against her companion, breathing deeply as she looked ahead. Not far away the corridor ended abruptly in a railing above an effulgent and spherical cavern. They went there, slowly, leaned on the railing, gasping at the smell, the mistiness that hid and then disclosed what lay below: a giant target, concentric rings around a dark center. She blinked, translating what she saw. The bottom quarter of the cavern had been carved into level rings, like an amphitheater. The center was a level floor, bare and empty. On the rings were the Arbai, all of them who were left, a few hundred perhaps, crouched in concentric circles, facing the center, their faces hidden in their hands as though entranced or asleep.
“
Yes,”
said Great Dragon.
“There they are. I know them. They are old and tired. They intend to sleep until all cause for confusion has passed.”
“They must wake for a while,” she said. “They must tolerate being confused. Can you translate for me?”
“They learned to understand Jory; they will understand you.”
She leaned across the railing and took a deep breath. It rattled in her throat, catching there. She had no voice left. Her mouth was dry. She grimaced, trying to set her feet solidly and finding nothing below her that felt like feet. She fought down terror and imagined herself possessed of a mighty voice. A huge voice. A voice like thunder.
“Awaken!” she shouted.
The voice reverberated, its echoes running around the place once and again, like the gathering of an avalanche, which fell at last upon those crouched below. They jerked and started. They stirred. They moaned. They raised their heads and looked about themselves.
“Here,” she cried imperatively.
They looked up and saw her. They spoke querulously.
“Why are they being disturbed?”
the great voice whispered in translation.
“You have not earned repose!” shouted Fringe. “You have a duty to perform!”
They moved sluggishly, as though they were too cold to move. Slowly, slowly they spoke again.
“What duty?”
whispered Great Dragon.
“It is your duty to achieve your destiny,” Fringe cried. “Which is to relinquish all your decisions, to let them go. Decisions are a cause of anguish to you. It is your destiny to lay down this anguish and sleep.”
Much murmuring below. She saw bodies bend, heard voices raised, as though in complaint.
Great Dragon whispered,
“They have outlived their strength. Decision is impossible for them. They cannot even understand what you ask.”
“Tell them, in their own language, I do not ask. I do not pose a question. I simply tell. They are interfering with the destiny of man. The only way they can stop interfering is to relinquish all response, even that of inaction.”
Great Dragon spoke.
Silence. No answer.
“If they will not relinquish it, then I will take it from them. It is a simple choice.”
Great Dragon spoke again.
Those below returned sluggishly to their circles.
“
Nothing”
said Great Dragon.
“They are not capable of responding.”
Fringe held out her hand, trying not to see what hung there at the end of her wrist. It was not her hand, not even a human hand. It was what she needed now, she supposed, but not herself. Ignore that! She imagined that the appendage held within it a device that caused sleep. She had used such devices. This sleep would be so deep and lasting, however, that those caught in it could not wake; could not wake and could not form or keep any intention whatsoever.
The fibers spun, troubled. She felt them roiling inside her. Her will moved them, but there was another will, close and manifest, the will that had created the device, the will that had not been able to use it. She insisted, using the last of her strength in the effort. What little remained of that other will was diffuse, strained, indifferent. It had no strength. It had no determination. It was passing away. It had gone. Fringe’s will burned hot. It did not waver.
The device happened at the end of her arm, made of her
bone and sinew, drawn from her body and mind. She moved what had been her hand, her arm, aiming it downward, sweeping it around and around the circles until she had covered them all. The Arbai fell over sideways, sprawled with their jaws open, their tongues lolling.
She tried to move and could not. There wasn’t enough of her left to move. She was lost, part of the device, gone from her own being.
“
They sleep,”
murmured Great Dragon, recalling her to herself.
Now only the Arbai Device remained. She thought of the device idly, without the strength to direct it. All that remained of herself wanted only sleep and forgetting. The struggle to hold herself apart was beyond her. Someone else would have to do what needed doing.
“Come,”
whispered Great Dragon.
“You are Fringe Owldark. You are Jory’s daughter. You have inherited wonder.”
She struggled to acknowledge this, to identify herself with this. After a long time, she was able to nod, to say doubtfully yes, she might be, perhaps she was Fringe.
“Why, Fringe. Why did you do this? Was it for Jory? For Zasper?”
She could not make sense of the question. “No. No. They’re gone. I didn’t do it for them.”
“Then for whom?”
“Nela,” she said. “I guess I did it for Nela. So she’d have some time to be … what she wants to be. What the device made her.”
“This device is an enigma to me. I cannot feel it. So will it now do what needs be done?”
“Only time will tell,” she murmured, thought she murmured, too weary and lost to know for sure.
“Is there enough time?”
“Don’t know,” she sighed, thought she sighed. “May be too late. How long did it take to get here?”
“A long time.”
The time he meant was measured in hundreds, thousands of years.
The time she meant was not so long. “Is it dawn, outside?”
“Yes
,” said the great voice, very softly.
“Some time ago was dawn.”