“And you’d know this how?” Hellequin watched Nim place a hand against her neck as she smiled, almost as if she was afraid to let the happiness out.
“I was Nim’s valet for a while.” Lulu danced a fingertip around the rim of his beaker, allowing Hellequin time to absorb the fact. Not that it made anything except sense to hear that Nim and Lulu had once been connected so intimately, thought the HawkEye, raking a hand through his hair. He’d knowledge enough of brothels to know top earning girls were cared for at both a mercantile and medicinal level by ladyboys – individuals who posed no threat to the girls sexually and who came in handy as an additional resource for customers with a more eclectic palette. But why had Lulu kept the information secret until now?
“You noticed my absence when D’Angelus came knocking. Yes, I’m not the bravest of souls in a fight. Using one’s fists can be very wearing on the nails.” The ladyboy held up his painted talons to the gaslight. His lips trembled. “I’m nothing to D’Angelus – unlike Nim, he didn’t notice if I lived or perished – but if Herb knew about me and Nim...” Lulu patted his moist eyes with his handkerchief. “I can hear Herb now. ‘Too much baggage. Too much of D’Angelus’s property stowed aboard.’”
“So you follow Nim around like botfly larva,” said Hellequin harshly. His eye piece zoomed in on a bob of swallowed salvia in Lulu’s throat. Fresh hurt.
Lulu stared over at Nim. “It’s hard not to,” he said softly.
Hellequin telescoped in on the soft pink light at Nim’s bare shoulder. “Want to know why I fight for every member of this circus?”
Lulu didn’t answer, perhaps afraid to interrupt the confession.
“Because the Zen monks say there’s not a sin the Saints can’t forgive.”
The admission clearly disappointed the ladyboy.
“You don’t think Religion sits well as my motivation? You’re right.” The twin bone ridges protruded at Hellequin’s brow. “The Zen monks say that, but it isn’t true. My sin is unforgiveable.” He pushed up the sleeves of his faded frock coat. He might have been pushing back deeper layers. “You said Nim had her body modifications forced on her while I chose mine. The truth is I didn’t have a choice either.”
Lulu flicked his white gold dreads. “Yes, in so far as you didn’t lose your sight on purpose. It’s common knowledge the HawkEyes were gifted soldiers who’d developed tumours or got wounded out on field. You lot were given the choice to go blind, or carry a face full of metal and see. See better than almost every other living creature it turned out.” The ladyboy frowned. “I feel for you, honey, I do. HawkEyes helped stamp out Soul Food. When farmers were blindsided by the crop yield, your kind saw through to its rotten roots. Literally as I understand it.”
Images played across the inside of Hellequin’s reengineered retina. Weevils, billions of them, invisible to the naked eye. Masticating Soul Food at a macular level. Transmogrifying the plant feed into poison.
Lulu continued talking. “HawkEyes opened our eyes to the truth then tried to stop us killing each other when the civil war broke out. For that, me...” Lulu circled his hand to indicate the others in the bar. “...we, are eternally grateful. But, my darling, you did choose this lifestyle, and yes, only the Saints know why...”
Hellequin brought his cyborgian face close to the ladyboy’s. “Most soldiers did have a sight fault. But that’s not my story. My choice, if it can be called such, was to undergo the procedure or face being court-martialled.”
Lulu got the same tight-eyed look he’d had when slapping Pig Heart the previous evening, and Hellequin clammed up. Why risk his livelihood, the canvas over his head, his proximity to Nim by sharing any more information? But then he stared across the room and saw a flicker of neon at Nim’s forehead. The short circuit barely registered with her and she continued to share her laughter with Asenath. She had a life aside from the modifications fostered on her, and that’s what he wanted too.
The metal mass dominating his features, draining any true emotion from them, he confided, “My family owned Soul Food Farm. We flew over what was left of it this morning.”
Lulu’s mouth slackened. His painted gaze darted off to the corners of the bar. “Jeepers, Hellequin! That old skeleton? By the Saints, your kin have a lot of blood on their hands.”
Hellequin let the machine in him lead the conversation. “My dad was the biological engineer responsible for splicing the genes that gave us Soul Food – or for poisoning the land as it turned out. I had no interest in the family business. I was a tactician, got a passion for military hardware, skills which led me to sign up to the Humock Guard. My father stuck by his farming methods. I stuck by my unit. Then I got wind of the intention to blitz the farms that had spread the diseased stock, Soul Food Farm being top of the list.” The amber lens burned liquidly. “I guess you’re right. I did have a choice at that stage. I chose to go against my country and warn my family. And it did buy them a little time. But not enough to protect their land long term against the Humock Guard, against me.”
“You took down your own family?” Lulu shuffled in his seat.
Hellequin experienced an echo of the pain he’d felt when ordering his men inside the boundary fence. It prickled his conscience, but only faintly. “By then, I’d already been hauled up before my superiors. There was no other way for my family to have prepared against previous assault attempts as they had without my feeding them data from the Humock Guard base. I received an ultimatum – give an eye or face being court marshalled and most likely shot by firing squad.” He focused on the ladyboy, the concentric rings of his HawkEye whirring as they rotated.
“Two weeks later, I gave my first order as a HawkEye. From my lung basket, I saw a chink in the barricades at Soul Food Farm and despatched my platoon to move on in. The procedure eased the guilt. There are limiters built into my circuitry which inhibit my emotions. Also the imaging process of the HawkEye stores memories in a more compartmentalised format than the brain is capable of. Non-tactical memories are given less priority, their sharp edges blunted.” Hellequin threw back the remainder of his Jackogin. He sighed and rubbed a hand up into his fleshy eye, muttering, “So, that’s my history.”
“Here. Let me buy you another.” Lulu indicated to the bartender. The Jeridian nodded. Uncorking one of the dark blue apothecary bottles collecting dust on a shelf behind him, the man sluiced new measures into their beakers.
Lulu inclined his beaker towards Hellequin and smiled weakly. “So the poor darling is emotionally stunted. I knew there had to be a reason for the cold shoulder.” His smile broke into a coy grin. “You and Nim make a good pair.”
* * *
The Zen monk stood a short distance away. In the silvered twilight, the monk’s habit appeared even more grotesque. The sackcloth hood was a scarecrowish thing brought to life by eyes that glittered while the belt of relics resembled the tools of a witch.
The monk’s stillness unnerved Jaxx. Had the man come to see a Sirinese at prayer? To stand and watch and judge, the only form of condemnation available to a member of a silent order? Jaxx lowered his fists and stared at the monk, perplexed.
“What you doing here?” Eerie confusion settled over him. The monk couldn’t have followed him from the camp. There was nowhere to hide out on the salt plains. There was only endless distance. The crunch of boots over the salt surface, the tug of air at a person’s lungs, the quiet swallow of saliva... he would’ve noticed these things – and not only because he was attuned with the world, but because a man in his profession could not afford to let a stranger creep up.
The monk remained motionless beneath the huge desert moon.
“Sorry to disappoint, but I am a spirit man, father. No disrespect to you, your order, or your followers, but the Saints are too heavy-handed in their laws and precepts to lure me in. Any effort to unsettle me in my prayer will be futile.” Jaxx instinctually brought his fists to his hips again. He felt the depth of the desert pressing in.
His mind swa
m as the monk untied the belt of horrors from around his waist and cast it aside. Jaxx tucked his fists beneath his armpits, unnerved and wary as the monk gathered up the folds of his robe at the thighs and pulled the garment over his head in one swift movement. In the process of doing so, the monk exposed smooth white thighs, a triangle of down, the concave run of flesh from the hip to the waist, the bud of breasts and nut-brown nipples, and, as the garment was cast aside, a young woman’s face. She threw down the robe and stared at him. Her mouth was overgenerous, her eyes wide and knowing.
She walked over to him, her bare feet making small shushing noises on the salt. Jaxx tensed his fists tighter. Blood drove inside his eardrums. She was in front of him suddenly. Her scent, a mix of hops, sweat and the dark, sweet wine offered by the desert tribe. The young woman cupped his face, fingers touching the stitched flesh at his brow plate. She drew his face to hers.
Their lips touched, parted and remoulded. The hands slipped from his face, leaving heat there. Moving down to his waistband, they dug in and dragged the loose linen shirt up. Jaxx let his arms rise. The press of breasts against his chest made him chew the fat of his lower lip. He breathed heavily; it was as if the salt itself had crept inside his lungs. Her mouth was on him, wetting the eaves of his throat, the scarred clavicle where the knives and nails of others had fought back, the brass rings at his nipples.
“Harām.” Sanctity. The word broke free of his lips. A prayer, or a statement of fact as the woman unclothed him, knelt down, and bid him join her?
“Do you speak?” he asked. She was tangling herself in his lap now, easing onto his sex and pressuring down. He gasped, eyes coruscated and drawn to the dome of stars overhead. He went to buck against her, but she pressed her heels to the ground behind, leant back on one hand and forced her own movement, a rhythmic rocking like a grain sheaver passing its blades over crops.
“Do you..?”
The nut of a nipple was crushed into his mouth. He wanted to bite down, feel the choke of its red heart inside his throat. Resisting, he lapped the dappled areole, felt the agonising, glorious tug and slide at his groin, and smashed his hands up beneath her buttocks, clutching her to him.
A name escaped her lips. It began with V, tailing off to a whisper. She broke his mouth feel of her breast and her tongue was a wisp of flavour at his inner cheek, a probe where his top lip met his teeth. He shivered as his mind flooded with snapshots: a huge gridded eye, tiny strands of sensilla at mouth parts, a chitinous thigh. More images came, torn and grainy like burnt-edged photographs. A fibrous wing taking out a slice of teeth. Crabbing insectile limbs that battered and suffocated. Bright blood sprayed against stone. He heard such screaming – the screaming of men – appalling, protracted, dying out. At that same instant, he clawed the soft skin beneath his fingers, felt the high blaze of release, tensed, and at last, softened.
The woman unsaddled. She stood awkwardly, legs cramped, and stretched out.
Jaxx was crying. As tears drained from his eyes, he found it hard to pinpoint why. He forced himself to stand and dress, then stagger over to the spot where her robe lay.
“Here.” He offered it.
She gathered the robe to her but didn’t attempt to put it on. Jaxx understood that once the mask was back in place, the silence would flow again between them. He rubbed the wetness from his eyes.
“Zen monks are eunuchs. You are not ordained into the order.” His waist-length black hair had slipped free of its band. He bunched it back and retied it. When he got no reply, he stared at the woman with a new level of demand.
“Did you see the future?” she said in a rush of words. Softly though, as if the noise of them might cause the sky to fall.
“Future?” He was cautious. He had heard of men returned from the desert and lost to rambling incoherency. Men who claimed to have imbibed fantastic potions, or tasted the lips of seductresses, or bargained away their soul to a crone.
“Did you see him? Tall as a porch post, just as thin. Eyes like lead shot.”
“I didn’t see a man. I saw... death.” The grotesque images were still laid across in his mind: the crisp fold of a wing case, the slash of flesh, chalk mess and shit across a rock face.
He refocused. “Lead shot? That’s a rare breed of ammunition. Most folk rely on rock shot or the blade since the civil war. You’re a stranger. That much is in your accent.”
“The land changes but the dust is everywhere. And it breathes. You hear it?”
Jaxx listened. He could have sworn he heard the long ahhh of air where there was no wind.
“Why the guise of a Zen monk?” His raised eyebrows pressured against his brow plate. “Silence is a dark undertaking. Just you alone with your mind.” To Jaxx, the idea of squashing up inside the flesh case he walked around in was abhorrent.
She was more girl-like then. Generous mouth loose, her mind on other things. “Zen monks accompany the mining worms below ground, and that’s where I lost him. So I search the bore tunnels and, one day, the caverns...”
“The caverns?” Jaxx was still haunted by the mess of images she had conjured in him. “Who’d take you there?” No one in their right mind navigated the caverns. Stories told of a warren of natural caves, otherworldly and bioluminescent. Home to dark things that crawled.
“Not many,” she admitted. “There are places I haven’t managed to explore yet. Wormholes where only a child would fit. A child without bones,” she added eerily.
“Who are you looking for?”
He knew even before she answered that she searched for a lover. Her use of him had demonstrated her loss, alongside a need to remember the taste of masculine skin and feel another’s pulse inside her belly.
“I suspect he’s salt and ore and other minerals by now. The flesh will be gone,” was all she managed on the subject before striding over to him. She touched a hand to his cheek.
“You and I, we’re in the wrong place,” she said softly.
Jaxx felt the world tip. His mind battened down. A great wind howled, dust blew against his skin and he drifted into blackness.
ELEVEN
A hand settled on the bar. Hellequin looked down to see red skin and the whorls of tribal scars across the knuckles.
“This is a good bar, ya?” said Asenath, the Jeridian who’d taken over from Pig Heart to head up the pitch crew. With that evening’s performance concluded, it was she who suggested an expedition to one of the city’s drinking holes. Hellequin had agreed to come once Nim had.
“It’s an interesting choice.” Hellequin eyed the Jeridian. In her buckskin vest and pale leather jeans, she looked no different to any other itinerant worker. Except she’d an edge that came from more than her Mohawk, scarification, piercings, red skin, or the gang tattoo at an ear lobe.
Asenath nodded to the bartender.
“Another shot, Solomon.”
The bartender whipped his cloth up onto a shoulder and retrieved a bottle from the shelf. Uncorking it, he poured himself a measure.
“Let me guess. It was your idea to bring the HawkEye here, Asenath.” He threw back his shot, slid the cup over to Asenath and poured her and Hellequin a shot each.
Hellequin regretted the heat of the liquor in his guts. The Jeridian woman had suggested the midnight jaunt to the bar, which indicated what? His eyepiece zoned in on the beads of sweat at her upper lip, her tongue moistening dry lips.
“What you got me into, Asenath?” he said with a dark tone.
“I’ve a score to settle,” she admitted.
“And I’m gonna help out how?” Hellequin focused on the sickle tattoo at the woman’s ear lobe again. The steel lens captured the image as a photo-plate. He shifted his gaze to the left ear lobe of the bartender; the photo-plate shifted angle to overlay the man’s matching insignia. Hellequin also recognised the way the man’s tongue flicked out to moisten his lips.
“Does all your family live in Zan City, Asenath?” he asked.
The two Jeridians exchanged a glance.
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Asenath told him, “My brother and I are the last of our family. Zan City’s blood worms took our parents and older sister when the Showmaniese sold us out. Sometimes I come back home to remind myself of the stink of those fuckers. Solomon abides their patronage. This bar is his living. I, however, am under no such restrictions.”
Hellequin reeled in his gaze. He stared at Asenath. “And my role in this?”
“To help me add a Showmaniese head or two to my collection.”
“And why would I break the bodies of men I don’t know?”
“For love’s sake,” said the woman bleakly. She swallowed back the slug her brother had poured and indicated the far side of the bar with her empty cup. Nim was attempting to shrug off the wandering hands of a gang of drunks – suited Showmaniese with lemony skin, womanly hands and tight black shining eyes. They reminded Hellequin of large desert cats he’d seen sprawled over rocks, bellies to the sun. At the same time, Lulu returned from the shitting pit outside. His flushed face suggested either the Jackogin had addled his brain or he’d pressed flesh with another in the minutes he’d been gone.
The ladyboy settled back on the stool alongside Hellequin. His gaze went from Hellequin to Asenath to the bartender.
“What is it?” he demanded, mouse-like eyes wide.
“Asenath wants to know if I am going to defend Nim’s honour again. I’m thinking that since Nim has proven less than grateful for my intervention previously, I may need to leave her to fight her own battles,” said Hellequin. He kept the courtesan in his line of sight though.
Cyber Circus Page 9
