Midway Relics and Dying Breeds: A Tor.Com Original

by Seanan McGuire

Old-style carnivals were built on the ground. A show site would be devastated when the trucks rolled on—local plants crushed, local wildlife displaced and dismayed. The Greenies would never have allowed us to operate like that, and the inability to adjust had killed more than a few of the traveling shows. We’d put together an alternative, in the form of a mobile midway, something that could be assembled and disassembled without damaging the land.

  One piece at a time, the delicate plasteel frame that would form the temporary stage unpacked itself, spreading to cover the field like a blanket. The legs were narrow, fitting into the landscape without crushing more than a few blades of grass, but there were so many of them that it didn’t matter. They would still hold our weight, and the weight of an entire city, if it came to that. The stage itself came next, a racing sheen of clear pseudoglass filling in the gaps between the plasteel legs. It was made of an alloy I couldn’t pronounce, cooked up in a lab that never saw a problem it didn’t think could be solved. As soon as the last gap had closed, the clear gloss turned opaque, and darkened until it was the traditional sawdust gold of the carnival midway. The newly opaque stage formed soft ridges, springing up into a spongy, stable surface that would allow for walking and even running without a risk of slipping.

  Still we held our places, until three of the engineers had walked across that new surface and made the gesture that meant everything was good, everything was going to hold up to what we were about to throw at it. Then, and only then, did the rest of us move.

  Young cousins raced from place to place, dropping small cubes that unpacked themselves into tents, while the uncles and older cousins set to assembling the rides. Seresa and her little crew began setting up the midway, building the individual stalls so quickly that it almost seemed like sleight of hand, even though the games were one of the more traditional parts of our carnival. They would be stocked with useless trinkets and pretty handicrafts for the townies to win, and even as I watched, Bay walked past with the broadsheets giving our prices in the local barter. Two eggs for a game of darts, three good apples for a chance at the shooting gallery. Nothing too out of line; nothing that would cause a potential mark to blanch and walk away from the chance to win a pretty prize, even if that prize would be meaningless in the morning.

  Billie and I moved through the chaos with slow grace, hauling heavy pieces of equipment, helping to shift the rides into position, and generally showing that there’s virtue to having a piece of prehistoric megafauna doing the job of a lot of heavy machinery without requiring the gas or solar charge. Finally, I tugged her reins and she plodded her slow way into the corral that had been designed just for her. There was a mountain of hay already waiting in the center. I slid down from her back and stood stroking her broad, flat nose as several of the cousins unstrapped and removed the howdah. Townies would pay to stand underneath her and gape at her size, even knowing that she was an artificial traveler to our modern age. Knowledge somehow dimmed before the splendor of reality.

  “Lollygagging?” asked a voice from behind me.

  “Keeping her calm before the townies swarm in,” I replied, without turning. “Last thing we want is her getting anxious and stomping some kid into blackberry jam.”

  “You could pay me the respect of facing me while you’re speaking,” said Davo. He was starting to sound annoyed.

  Much as I would have loved to annoy Davo all the way out of the corral, I couldn’t afford that; not now. With a sigh I stopped stroking Billie’s nose and turned to face him, folding my hands decorously behind me. “Hello, cousin,” I said.

  “That’s better,” said Davo. “I want you on gate tonight. Bay can work the corral.”

  My eyes widened. “What? But she’s never—”

  “Because you never let her,” said Davo. “No one is supposed to keep a job all to themselves, Ansley. You know the rules. Share and train, and don’t get greedy. Billie works the corral tonight, you work the gate. There’s no argument here.”

  “Bay doesn’t even like Billie,” I said. The protest sounded weak even to my own ears.

  “Then that’s all the more reason she should be the one taking care of her tonight,” said Davo. “If you get called back to the farm, we’ll need someone to take care of the pony.”

  “She’s not a pony,” I said automatically. “She’s an Indricothere.”

  “I know,” said Davo. His gaze slid past me, landing on Billie, who was continuing to munch her way through the pile of hay like she didn’t realize that anything was wrong. “That’s what makes her valuable.”

  In the end, there was nothing I could do to argue my case. The carnival wasn’t a democracy, never had been, and as a Big Man, he had the authority to change my assignment so long as he wasn’t endangering the animals. Bay could handle Billie around the townies, no matter how much it put my back up to know that she was going to have the chance. I bowed stiffly and turned to walk away, heading toward the skeleton of what would be the ticket booth.

  It’s a cliché, but I could have sworn that I felt Davo’s eyes on me the whole way.

  * * *

  I changed into a long skirt and an old-style blouse before we opened the curtains, leaving my hair loose around my shoulders. The townies liked it when we looked like throwbacks to another time. They enjoyed pretending that our show was exactly as it had been a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago. They could shut out things like the artificial ground beneath their feet or the high-grav safety bars on the roller coaster, but let one of the gate girls wear modern clothes and somehow the con was up. That’s another primate trait: atmosphere and psychological tricks mean more than empirical truths, half the time. Maybe more than half the time.

  “You ready for this?” asked the woman beside me, a laughing brunette whose name I couldn’t quite remember.

  I shook my head.

  She laughed again, and threw the shutters wide. The tide of humanity rushed in, and there was no more time for thought.

  The gate was bustling all evening long, both with prepaid locals who needed to scan their IDs and confirm that they were part of the funding collective that had brought us here, and with lookie-loos from the farms, encampments, and city-seedlings all around us. Even Portlanders who hadn’t chosen to buy into bringing us to town came in, enticed by the sound of the music rolling off the midway or the chatter of people sending giddy on-the-fly virteos to their friends and virtual communities. Seresa and her camp had set themselves to earning their keep tonight, and they were accomplishing their mission with a vengeance. To make matters worse, since we had posted barter sheets, no two paying customers used the same currency. I’d never been in the position of calculating the appropriate amount of change to give for a chicken before.

  “You’ve been dodging gate for too long, cousin,” said the brunette. She accepted a bag of tomatoes from a townie, tossing over two apples to settle the balance between them. “Don’t be ashamed to ask for help.”

  “What, and have you teasing me about it for the next three seasons?”

  She shrugged, showing me a quick, gap-toothed grin, before she went back to handling the press of townies who were anxious for their little taste of carnival. I waved a reader over my head, trying to attract more of the prepaid attendees to my side of the booth. Some of them also wanted to buy tickets for the midway attractions, but that was easier; I had a clear conversion rate for those, and if I made a mistake and credited someone’s ID with too many tickets, no one would ever notice. Our tickets were the ultimate in disposable currencies, good for one night only, gone as soon as we pulled up stakes. As long as the gate was good and the ticket sales were roughly equivalent to the number of tickets exchanged, we weren’t going to be looked at too closely.

  It wasn’t until the clock began sliding toward midnight and the end of carnival time that my brown-haired cousin turned to me and said, “You’re free to go. I can handle the rest of the take without you, and you’ll be more of a hindrance than a help when it comes time to settle ou
t.”

  Meaning she was planning to claim part of my work share for her own. Not enough to make me look delinquent—that would have been cheating family, and while I won’t pretend that we’re above that kind of thing, I hadn’t earned it from her. Still, there was no need to make it too easy. Tilting my head, I asked, “What’s your price?”

  That earned me another of her gap-toothed smiles, and she replied, “I claim twenty percent of your take.”

  Eminently fair, especially given that this was her work area, and she’d been covering for my mistakes all evening. Still … “Twenty-five, and if anyone asks, I stayed here with you all the way through shutdown.”

  “Done,” she said. “I’ll key you in when I lock the numbers.”

  Meaning I didn’t even need to come back to the booth to officially end my shift. “Deal,” I said, sticking out my hand. She gripped it firmly, and we shook to seal our bargain.

  She smiled again as I was pulling away, but there was something wistful about her expression, something that hadn’t been there when we were dealing with the seemingly endless rush of townies. “You don’t even remember my name, do you, cousin?”

  “No. I’m sorry.” Telling her the truth made my stomach twinge a little, despite the fact that there was no point in lying to her now. We’d shaken on it. She wouldn’t break a formal bargain, not even if I was the only witness.

  “It’s all right. I didn’t expect you to.” She turned back to the register. I stayed where I was for a moment before I realized that she had no intention of telling me. Cheeks burning, I slipped out of the back flap, leaving her to her work.

  The night was cool and the air was sweet with the smell of cotton candy and hot popcorn. The hot dog cart and the samosa stand would be shut down by now; most people switched to what they thought of as dessert foods after about eleven, like that would somehow justify the extra calories. I stayed where I was, breathing in that sweet air and waiting for my eyes to adjust to the difference in illumination. The entry gate was placed far enough away that the attractions were like glowing phantoms, close enough to see but far enough away to seem unreachable without passing some invisible barrier. That, too, was a science, part of the great and secret art of The Perfect Carnival, which could be aspired to if never quite achieved.

  Finally, when my eyes had switched themselves from the bright light of the tent to the colored lights of the midway, I began to move. I kept to the edge of our apportioned space, walking through shadows. Anyone who saw me would know me for a carnie; we share a certain carriage, a way of moving when the show is on. It’s half strut, half saunter, and all business, and no townie has ever mastered it. At the same time, I was far enough from the light to blur my edges, and our show was rich with girls who wore their dark hair to their shoulders and their skirts to their ankles. I might be seen. I wouldn’t be known.

  Davo had wanted to keep me away from Billie. Why? It could be taken as a punishment—he knew that she was precious to me, and so he was assigning her to Bay, who didn’t know her like I did. It could be taken as a test run. If he was planning to offer me to Grandpapa as a caretaker for Grandmamma until she passed, and then as her executor and replacement at the Bone Yard …

  I shook my head, chasing the thought away. Davo didn’t have the authority to take Billie away from me. Her genework had been purchased on Uncle Ren’s thumbprint and my own, making me her owner in the eyes of the law. Now that Uncle Ren was gone—

  The shock hit so hard that I actually stopped, my bare toes digging into the spongy covering of our artificial stage. Uncle Ren was gone. Davo was Big Man in his place. He could claim the right to make decisions on behalf of Uncle Ren’s property, and while I was Billie’s owner as much as Uncle Ren was, within the carnival itself, a Big Man’s word was law. Davo could order me to let him trade away my half of her deed, and I’d have no choice but to obey.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I whispered, and broke into a run, hiking my skirt up around my knees to make it easier. Davo had wanted me away from Billie, and he’d wanted me away until close, which wasn’t until two o’clock. He’d given me a job that would keep me busy and distant and out of my comfort zone, and there was only one reason for him to have done that.

  He was really going to do it. He was really planning to sell her.

  * * *

  I came back to my senses when I was halfway to Billie’s pen. I turned and kept running until I came to the low-slung cluster of tents that had been positioned around the edge of the stage, as if to show the people of Portland what good, obedient visitors we were. See? Even our private space doesn’t endanger your precious meadow.

  My tent was in the third row back. This time, the seal was still in place, and there was no need to wait for a connection; the cloud was strong and stable in the space near Portland, undisrupted by natural forces. I called up the Bone Yard and waited, pacing back and forth in the limited space afforded me by the tent.

  He couldn’t. He couldn’t. Oh, but he could, and he would, and that was the real problem; power isn’t dangerous unless it comes wedded to intent, and Davo had intent enough for twenty men.

  “Ansley?”

  My grandfather’s voice made me jump. I spun back toward the screen, jabbing a finger at it, and said, in a tone that was more accusing than I had intended, “He’s really trying to sell her. He thinks I’m going to let him sell her!”

  “Ah.” Grandpapa didn’t have to ask who “he” was, and with that piece in place, the rest of my sentence made perfect sense. “You should calm yourself, my little crow. This much excitement isn’t good for you.”

  “I should—”

  “Someone could hear you.” This time, there was a stinging rebuke in his words, and I caught myself before I could say anything more. He looked at me coldly, assessingly, and not for the first time, I remembered that this was the man who had held us together through these last eighty years, who had sat on the council of Big Men and decided what technology we would embrace and what we would deny as we made our way, unbowed and undiluted, into the ever-changing future. “I do not think you want to be heard right now, granddaughter.”

  “I … I’m sorry, Grandpapa.” I bowed my head, trying to show contrition through my posture.

  His voice was soft as he said, “What would you have me do? You are with the carnival. You chose to stay with the carnival, knowing the way that business is done, knowing the bounds of blood and loyalty and tradition. Davo does what he feels is right for the family. He sees an opportunity to bring home a fortune.”

  “Billie is family too,” I said, raising my head. “She’s my family. Would you sit back and let him sell Bay?”

  “Bay is family by blood, not by adoption,” said Grandpapa.

  “I don’t care. Half the cousins aren’t related to any of us by blood. They’re from other families, other shows that we absorbed. Does that make them worth less? Some of our Big Men aren’t blood relations!” Or they hadn’t been, when they came to us. Marriage and children had solved the lack of ties, binding them to us in the slow and subtle way that we had always practiced. Slow and subtle won more races than most people realized.

  Grandpapa sighed. “No,” he said. “And I can’t even remind you that she isn’t human, because she has voting rights in the eyes of many of the city-states we travel through, even if she’s never chosen to exercise them. Her citizenship belongs to a country of two.”

  And I was her other half. “Do you agree with what he’s doing?”

  He looked away. My heart sank. When he looked back, his eyes were hooded, and he spoke with a painful honesty: “I do, and I do not, and I am gladder than you can know that the choice isn’t in my hands. I can’t stop him, and that means that I am not the one who holds the final responsibility for breaking your heart. Do I think the fortune your cousin is scrabbling for will save my wife, or that he seeks it out of love for her, and not out of the desire to have revenge on you for old slights? No. I have long since come to terms with
the fact that we live in a time where everything we build works better than we need it to, and that includes the diseases we design for our own destruction. But I have loved her longer than you’ve been alive, my crow girl, and I can’t give her up without a fight.”

  I bit my lip, looking at him, and whispered a final question: “What do you want me to do?”

  He smiled faintly. “You were never going to be happy with us forever,” he said. “You refused to come to the Bone Yard before you had earned it, and you’re not a Big Man. You never had the drive for that, or the heartlessness to do what is required to be a Big Man in this world and survive. But you’re not the type who can learn to take orders just because they come from someone who stands above you in a pecking order you didn’t agree to obey. You were always going to need to find your own road through the days between here and Heaven.”

  I looked at him, my shoulders slowly relaxing as my body tried to go limp and my mind refused to let it. He looked back at me, that faint smile still clinging to his lips.

  “You have a question,” he said. “What is it?”

  “The brown-haired cousin who works the gate,” I blurted. “What’s her name?”

  “Nicole,” he said. “Is that really all you have to ask me?”

  Will you hate me for running away? Will you blame me for Grandmamma’s death, even if you say you know that selling Billie wouldn’t help? Would my parents forgive me for this? Am I betraying you? Am I betraying myself? There were too many questions; they swarmed like townies all trying to grab the same ball at a ring-toss game, and they were just as meaningless. Lips pressed into a tight line, I shook my head and held my silence.

  This time, his smile was as wide as the sunrise, and twice as welcome. “You look very much like your mother,” he said. “I love you, my crow girl.” With that, he cut the connection and left me staring at an empty screen. He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t need to.

  After only a few seconds, I turned away. There was work to do, and I didn’t have much time.