Cyber Circus

by Kim Lakin-Smith

  “Give me your arm!”

  A figure interrupted the glare of the spotlight overhead. The face that lowered towards him was a timepiece. The roar of the crowd seemed to drop away. Pig Heart could’ve sworn he heard the whir of sprung-wound inner workings. Blood ran from his snout. Multiple blows to his skull had left him in a state of partial consciousness.

  One of the Saints themselves, sent to escort me to the afterlife, thought Pig Heart, and he stretched up an arm, expectant of a soft flow of warmth and their joint accession. Instead, a firm grip fixed around his forearm and there was a tremendous wrench to his arm socket. The shock wide-eyed him.

  In place of a divine being, he saw Hellequin – HawkEye telescoped down. Skin strained over the twin bone ridges at the soldier’s forehead.

  “Come on, you swine!”

  The tent swayed dramatically, swinging them hard against one of the diagonal iron girders. Pig Heart felt a fresh slash of pain in one knee. He stared across the weave of girders and saw the Sirinese perched between the ‘V’ of two enormous struts. The man trained a rock rifle in his direction.

  Pig Heart counted off his last breaths.

  The marks reacted to their first glimpse of the HawkEye soldier, and the Sirinese was knocked off balance by the crush of eager bodies. It was reprieve enough for the pitchman to attempt one last fight for life. He locked his grip around Hellequin’s forearm and together they were rising.

  Pig Heart’s tiny watery eyes took in the speed of their lift, the sides of the tent slipping by in a flash as they shot towards the roof. His stomach flipped as they started a rapid descent. But then the motion swept them sideways, Pig Heart’s jowls dragging back off his tusks, the rush of air cooling his bloody snout. A gridded floor appeared under him and they dropped, landing on the deck in a painful mess of limbs.

  Pig Heart breathed in gulps. He tasted the tannin stench of the zoo. The mesh beneath him reverberated and there was the oh-so-familiar buffering of heated air. He squinted past the rails that enclosed the platform. Lulu’s black trapeze swung towards him, receded far away, then swept back in again. He glanced down and saw Sore Earth drop away.

  FOUR

  Hellequin watched the pitch crew heave the last headless corpse over the rail, the Jeridian having sequestered the heads for her private collection. He imagined the cadaver flick-flacking out the open skirts of the tent below, a smear on the evening sky.

  “Strike me again and I’ll chew your hand off,” Pig Heart muttered behind him. The threat won the pitchman another heavy slap.

  Hellequin turned around, arms folded, and put his lower back against the rail.

  “I don’t recall you adding that enthusiastic muscle to our fight, Lulu,” he said quietly. His HawkEye revolved as he fixated on the ladyboy.

  Lulu lost his steel and looked tearful. “Hellequin, you chastise me? After what the bad man did?” He waved his handkerchief towards the pitchman, now suspended off a great iron hook alongside the ornate egg sack of Herb’s private quarters. A short girder was strapped across Pig Heart’s shoulders – forming a makeshift patibulum such as convicts might be forced to carry – his arms bound to it by hemp rope, his lower body left to dangle.

  “I cannot begin to comprehend why you would save the brute. He stitched us up. He stitched Nim up.” Lulu gave Pig Heart a backhand, the pitchman roaring more in rage than anguish as he attempted to lurch forward. He only succeeded in aggravating the rope burns to his flesh. Wincing, he fell back.

  “Enough, Lulu.” Perched on the steps to his personal quarters, Herb rotated his hat’s rim between his hands. Gone the theatrics and light he reserved for performances. His lips were tight, his eyes hard.

  “You’re all sissies,” pouted Lulu. “Only reason any of us even got wind of D’Angelus’s band was because Hellequin overheard Pig Heart and his bitch conspiring to run out on us.” The ladyboy thrust a finger at the suspended pitchman, just short of a poke in the eye. “We should offload this shitter along with the rest of the dead bodies. See if pigs can fly.”

  “Maybe we will. First we gotta get the facts of what happened back there. Sore Earth isn’t any old pitch – its ripe at the seams. Literally, which is how the mining boys got them great steaming worms eating up the land like they do. There’s traders there, and forges, hardware, printin’ press, apothecary, whore houses. Which attracts marks aplenty, all in need of a night out at the circus and the spending of new-mined dollars in their pockets.”

  Herb’s face pinched. “So I gotta wonder what we gained and what we lost back there. Taking off before the end of our show is gonna stitch us up good. Then there’s the question of the marks we sliced and diced. And for what?” He pointed at the zoo platform overhead. “To save our women, hmm, Pig Heart? Was that the way of it? Thought you’d sell one piece of ass then take exception when D’Angelus wanted a second into the bargain. Ain’t that touching?” Moving up to the top stair – a needless boost to his height since Herb relied on iron will and not size to intimidate – he gestured to the pitch crew as if welcoming their agreement. “Pig and wolf rutting it up.”

  The sourness of the image reflected in the pitch crew’s murmured distaste.

  Herb cut them off with a raised hand. “Only, this ain’t a summer dance and I ain’t no matchmaker.” He fed his hat under an arm and strode down the steps. With the might to hire and fire at will, he caused a small shuffle of polite feet among the pitch crew. A few flopped off their caps.

  Cyber Circus’s king pin eased under the dangling pitchman and brought his head in near to Pig Heart’s.

  “No one asked you to beat on D’Angelus’s men,” he hissed.

  “D’Angelus was gonna peddle Rust as a whore. She’s one of us. Don’t that mean something to ya, Herb?” Pig Heart’s muscles bulged. The hemp rope rubbed against his flesh with a papery whisper.

  “Us? So there’s an us now, hey, Pig Heart? And there was me thinking there was only a you.” Herb gave the pitchman a push, prompting the patibulum girder to rock slightly on its iron hook. Turning away, he stared at Hellequin and slung a thumb over a shoulder. “So what motivated you to keep ahold of this grunt?”

  Hellequin parted his frockcoat and put his hands on his hips. “No carny’s the keeper of the other. That’s what he told me earlier this evening. I decided to prove him wrong.”

  “Ain’t you the fool!” Herb’s mouth got mean. “I don’t know what they taught you about comradeship in the military, but here that don’t mean shit. When it comes to who gets a handshake and who gets spit on, I’m in charge! Only thing you need to worry about is the money in your hand and how to keep them marks happy.”

  Hellequin watched Herb cross back to the steps, the readjustments of the HawkEye transposed into small jerks of his head.

  “And Nim? Isn’t she an asset worth defending?” His tone was measured.

  Herb rested a pulpy arm on the stair banister. He let out a sigh. “Hellequin, Hellequin. Day I start treating Desirious Nim like an asset is the day she’ll pack up her unmentionables and jump ship. You got a hunk of hardware stitched into your eye and you still can’t see the truth about those around you. Nim asks for protection anytime, I’ll see about getting her some muscle offa the crew. But so long as she don’t ask, I’m gonna presume she’s had her fill of guards at the door. I’m gonna presume the real freedom she earns here is worth the imagined dangers.”

  “Nothing imagined about those gimps raping her this evening.” Hellequin drew up to his full height, a hand hovering at the hilt of his sheathed bowie knife. “The pimp was never going to pass up the chance to get Nim back. Why’d you bring us here, Herb?”

  A beetle’s wing of gilt green opened up in Herb’s coach. Nim stepped out of the door and down onto the top step. She wore an angular black robe with a wide red sash.

  “Because, as Herb says, Sore Earth is a rich seam and Cyber Circus is a business,” she said choppily, adding, “Thanks for letting me rest up a while, Herb.”

  The
ringmaster nodded.

  Nim’s spectacular red eyes settled on Hellequin. “D’Angelus’s men. You halted their assault.” She drew the sign of the Saints’ arc across her brow with a fingertip and inclined her head. “I am indebted to you.”

  “You don’t need Saints’ oaths with a HawkEye. The desire to protect is written into my Daxware.” Hellequin’s steel eye was still at last, focused fully on Nim. His hand left the hilt of his bowie knife.

  “So now we get to it!” Herb tapped Nim’s hand as if she was his confidant, but the volume of his voice spoke to all. “The HawkEye didn’t save the pitchman because he thinks us carnies look out for our own, even if they are despicable sell-their-own-motha shysters. Oh no, he saved the pig because his hardwiring gives him no say so in the matter.”

  Hellequin crossed his arms, exposing the frayed fabric badge of the HawkEye platoon on one shoulder – a circle within a circle, stitched in off-white thread. The pocketed grey pants he wore were ripped at the knees. His boots were black clothhod leather, steel plated at the heel.

  “I still think for myself,” he muttered.

  “Oh no you don’t. Not if you work at Cyber Circus.” Herb went to push past Nim. He paused to allow her to step down then put a foot inside his front door. As an afterthought, he turned his head towards the assembled company and shook his hat at them. “Whatta we do with Pig Heart then? I gotta have a chief pitchman and he’s it. Has been for the longest time and I’m loathe to let a good man go. But he’s got a pocketful of dollars from betraying us. So do we sling him overboard or let him chop it in the breeze a while? Pitch crew come and go so I’m gonna stick with asking the main acts. Lulu? I got an inkling I know what you’re gonna say.”

  The ladyboy ran delicate hands over the tutu lace at his hips. “Toss the bastard.”

  “And Hellequin? I’m guessing you’re for keeping the swine alive?”

  Fixated on Nim, Hellequin said, “Let him chop it in the breeze if it will satisfy a need for retribution.”

  Herb’s finger of command passed to Nim.

  “Whaddaya say, Nim?”

  “If the pig’ll sell us out once, he’ll sell us out again.”

  “I’ll take that as a vote to dump his ass. What about you kids?” Herb squinted at the far end of the platform where the fat burp pipes of the heating system wove in amongst the polyps of float bladders. “Come outta the dark a second will ya and let’s get this over with.”

  Armadillidium balls, the colour of inner eyelids and the height of Hellequin’s knee, rolled out into the gaslight. Each pinkish exoskeleton unrolled to reveal a soft inner belly shaped like a child. Two girls, one boy, unfolding gangly red-crusted legs and two great claws.

  “Tip him over,” said one girl. Her face had a puckered quality, like skin soaked in water.

  The other girl gave her sibling a knock on the carapace with a club-hand. “I like the pig man. He rolls me in the dust to buff my shell.”

  “Keep him. His head makes a good scratching post,” said the boy, speaking with the same fat vowelled lisp that affected all three.

  “Two for, one against. So far we’re drawing even.” Herb looked agitated. “Guess it’s left to me to be the one to call it.”

  “What about my say, you sack of shitters?” called Pig Heart, rattling on his cross. Slaver dripped from his mouth to the ground.

  “Forfeited your say the second you pocketed D’Angelus’s blood money,” shot Herb. “Ah, to hell with it. Send the pig overboard. I ain’t got time nor inclination to watch my back for fear he’ll stick the knife in.” He slapped a hand through the air, dismissive of further appeal from Pig Heart, and went to shut the door.

  “Bare men mustn’t kill the pig. Its mine,” interrupted a sibilant voice. Long fury limbs appeared over the lip of the platform overhead and fed slowly down onto the railing enclosing Herb’s personal platform. Rust squatted on the rail, ratty hair amassed at her shoulders, black eyes shining out from a filthy face.

  “Just because you and the swine can’t resist your bestial impulses does not give him room for reprieve,” cut in Lulu. He flinched as the wolf girl leapt down and raced towards him on all fours. She drew up just short of the ladyboy, fingers bracing the metal floor, her muscular thighs skimming sideways.

  “And it with titties and a shlong.” Rust gnashed, a glint to her eye. “Cyber Circus is full of beasts and freaks. The pig is mine. Give it back. I will tear out its heart if it does bad stuff again.”

  “You’re vouching for the pitchman, Rust? It’ll be up to you to keep him in line else I’ll have you tossed back out onto the salt plains where I found you.”

  Rust nodded. Herb slumped at the shoulders, tired with it all.

  “I ain’t no hunk of flesh to be whored out or mithered over.” Pig Heart buckled against the strut at his back. “Hell, Herb, fifteen years you and me have been working Cyber Circus. We’ve been through the lot of it, and you’re gonna rat me out on one mishap?”

  Herb squinted over. “You sold me out, swine. Me! Not the whore. Not the wolf. You sold out my acts and put the real lady here in danger.” He held up his hands and gestured to the reverberating cavern around them. Tenderness came into his eyes, replaced with a razor edge as his gaze returned to the pitchman. “History don’t mean nothin’ if you’re gonna switch sides and play a different game.”

  He thrust a finger at Hellequin. “Bitch gets her wish. Pig Heart stays. But he pays and you’re gonna make sure of it.” His finger shifted to the Jeridian woman. “Name?”

  “Asenath.” The Jeridian titled her chin, exposing her throat piercings. She wore her hair in a giant Mohawk. Her red skin glistened.

  “You will assume Pig Heart’s duties.” He pointed to the hessian sack the Jeridian carried, the bottom of which was wetly stained. His lip curled. “Whaddaya gonna do with those heads anyway?”

  “Remove the skull, scrape out the brains, pack the eyelids with seed, pin the mouth, boil the head in herbs, and rub it with ash to keep the spirits out. Then I string it from the top mast to warn the motherfuckers to leave us be.”

  Herb tugged on his shirt collar. “Sorry I asked.”

  His attention returned to Pig Heart. “One thing the Jeridian’s right about – Cyber Circus has gotta have blood.” He eyed the pitch crew. “Chop him to the breeze, fellas!”

  The ringmaster stepped inside his cabin and slammed the door shut.

  FIVE

  The country of Humock was 3,268,601 square kilometres. Wherever there was a mine in need of burrower drivers and dust handlers, a well shaft to be maintained, or a ranch to be staffed, there were men. And wherever there were men, there was a whorehouse, and a bar stocked with smoke sticks and Jackogin, and a hamam with sweat rooms and soft hands to lather up and rinse the day away. The workers had other needs too – cobblers, general stores, haberdasheries, clothhod stables, armouries, banks, print presses, and apothecaries, alongside markets selling water, bio-toughened sage, soap flakes, and other bare necessities. And while the sun beat down like a curse, and it was difficult to know where the once fertile land began and the deserts ended, Humock was still a promised land in comparison to its neighbours.

  To the east, the bedrock creased to form huge black mountains. Beyond lay the much smaller country of Jeridia, and Sirin, which was tinier still. When the civil war broke out in Humock, both countries had rallied to its aid, but both had endured the fallout in isolation. All that remained of the once fertile Jeridia was a scab of bedrock. Since few of its citizens were able to eek out a living, most became refugees in the dry expanse of Humock. It was a similar story for Sirin. The fists and plated skulls of the Sirinese were useless against the erasing gas wielded by Humock’s militia. Like the Jeridians, the Sirinese were forced to abandon their homes, schools, workshops, spirit huts and graveyards, and cross the border into the selfsame country which had bombed it.

  Ten years on, Humock had become a melting pot for the disenchanted, a place where men were employed to shove
l dust out of the mines in the certainty it would drift back in, where a respected flesh handler like D’Angelus would rather waste the breath of every employee he had if it meant victory over Cyber Circus, and where a Sirinese warrior like Jaxx would work for blood money in an alien land, all the while despising his employer.

  “What’s the state of play, Jaxx?” D’Angelus straddled two squat limestone columns, hands on his hips, trekker’s hat shadowing his face.

  “Das says we can board now. He’s got a handful of men to spare, harnesses for ten in the cargo hold. Machine was used as a dust carrier fairly recently, but we can stick the men in filter masks, tell them to rest their eyes until we come up for air. Supplies are loaded. Das is asking if you want to head north via the swallow hole or stick to the bore tunnels ‘til we reach Haven Springs?”

  D’Angelus took a nip off his smoke stick. “Haven Springs. Swallow hole takes us through the old cave system and I’m not a man to trust in Mother Nature.” He exchanged the smoke in his nostrils for an invigorating breath. “Herb isn’t the sort to skip the dollar. He’ll want to haul up at one of the pitch sites close to Haven, else he’ll have no choice but to hit Zan City to refuel.”

  “Shuck.” Jaxx produced the sound from the back of his throat. “I’m all about avoiding that shithole. And she’s worth it, this Desirious Nim? The whore weaves a pretty dance, but is she worth us spitting time and energy her way?”

  “Oh, this isn’t about Nim anymore,” said D’Angelus, tugging the last dregs off the smoke stick. “Although I intend to reacquire that whore and put her to use. No, this is beyond that. Those circus freaks sliced my boys.” He smiled. His cannibalised teeth shone under the moonlight. “Bet you’d like a rematch with that two-faced pig too.”

  “I’m in no hurry,” said the Sirinese without inflection. “My people have a saying. Walk simply. Find the light.”

  D’Angelus grunted. He dropped the stub of the smoke stick between the limestone columns. “What the hell does that mean?”