by Deva Fagan
"Oh, many things, no doubt. Would you like to know the secret ingredient in Tachyon Toffee Swirl? The last words of the Hermit of Pergola-7? The absolutely best place in the universe to have a spot of tea?"
I try to smile but fail. "I want to hear about the rock. You found out what it is, didn't you?"
"I have ... an educated guess." He pauses. "Did your parents tell you fairy tales?"
"Huh?"
"Bedtime stories, old legends of faraway places? Heroes and quests and curses?"
"My dad learned all sorts of crazy folktales from his grandma. Frogs trapped in wells and monkey kings leaping across the clouds. They always made him sad, though." I hadn't understood why, back then. Now I blink my eyes and wonder if the Ringmaster can see that same look in my face. I cast my mind back through layers of tears and bleakness to happier times. "My favorites were these amazing stories he made up about aliens. I figured out later that he stole half the plots from old movies, but I loved them so much it didn't matter. Reaching the stars was my happily-ever-after." I shake my head. "What do fairy tales have to do with my rock?"
"Let me tell you a fairy tale, Beatrix, and see what you make of it. Some of it Miss Three recovered only recently, from the datastore fragments we found on the Lighthouse. Some I already knew. Some may truly be only a fairy tale." He clears his throat, then begins in something closer to his stage voice.
"Once upon a time there were two powers, the Mandate and the Tinkers. They battled each other in word and deed, both convinced they knew what was best for the universe. Great and terrible were their battles as they warred across the universe. But in time, each faded, drained by the endless conflict. And eventually they disappeared. Some say they died out. Others whisper that they will return one day, to wage their battles anew. All we know for sure is that they left behind their children, raw and inexperienced, to forge a new world from the ashes. And they left an inheritance: of technology, of ships, of gifts hidden in the blood and bones of the new generations.
"But the greatest treasures—their greatest weapons—they hid away in secret. Perhaps to await their own return. Perhaps to await future generations wise enough to use them."
I can't help interrupting. "Weapons? What kind of weapons?"
The Ringmaster drops his storytelling air to give a bemused sigh. "It's an old, old story, worn with time and translation. All we have left are the names and a handful of maddeningly vague details. The Mandate's Treasure is called the Cleansing Fire. I will leave it to your imagination to consider the implications of that delightful name."
"And the Tinkers' Treasure?"
"The oldest stories call it the Seed of Rebirth. They say it holds the essence of the Tinkers' Touch. A power that can reshape a living being, granting it new abilities, new life, whatever it needs to evolve and grow. The pinnacle of their genetic technology."
I have a horrible suspicion of where he's going with this. "And the maddeningly vague details? Let me guess. It's a shiny black stone."
He gives a faint sad smile and taps his nose.
"My rock. You're saying my rock is the Tinkers' Treasure."
"Yes."
"And now the Mandate has it. Because I couldn't keep it safe." I sag against the railing. "How did my parents get their hands on something like that? A pair of scientists on some podunk planet in the Exclusion Zone just happened to find an ancient alien treasure?"
"Your parents were more than that."
"So they were Tinker-touched? Right? That must be it."
The Ringmaster is silent for so long I start to quiver. I want to pace, but I refuse to walk away. I have to see his face when he says what's coming.
"Once upon a time," he begins, "there was young woman, the daughter of an ancient household of great power. This young woman saw much of the ways of her kinfolk, and did not like them. She wished to walk another path. Then a day came when her people captured a grand prize, the greatest treasure of their enemies, bought with blood and death and pain. Terrible pain..."
"Ringmaster?"
He shakes himself, continuing on. "The girl's people threw a grand celebration. They held the future of their enemy in their hands, and they planned to crush it. To destroy it.
"But the girl had already looked upon the treasure and seen its beauty. She could not let it be destroyed, even if it meant defying her family, her blood. So she stole the treasure and ran far, far away. She found a world that knew nothing of her kind, a place where she herself was a fairy tale. And she met a young man who had stars in his eyes. She shared her secret. They fell in love. They had a daughter." He looks at me.
"No. Freaking. Way. My mom was one of the Mandate?"
The Ringmaster eyes me quizzically. "I'll admit to taking some artistic license in the telling of the tale, but between what you've told me and what I've gathered, I believe it's true."
My feet carry me back and forth along the viewing deck, beating into the metal flooring with a reliable, sensible thunk, thunk, thunk. It's about the only thing in my life that is reliable or sensible right now.
"How did I get through the mirror?" I say suddenly, seizing on the first of the hundred questions fogging my brain. "The only reason my hair turned pink was that rock. Right?"
"We don't know that," says the Ringmaster, but the doubt in his voice punches me in the gut. "It could be that you inherited the genetic markers from your father. And even if it is the result of the Seed, what does it matter? You still bear the Tinkers' touch."
"It matters because I don't really belong here." My voice is so sharp now I half expect my lips to bleed. "That's why Miss Three said I was a danger."
"When did Miss Three say you were a danger?"
I halt, crossing my arms. "When you two were in the Restricted Area talking about using 'extreme measures.'"
"Ah. That." The Ringmaster gives the jeweled top of his baton an unnecessary polish. "Miss Three is truly one of a kind. Or three of a kind, to be perfectly accurate. I trust her opinions on a great many things. But where you're concerned, she's hardly an impartial judge. Please believe me when I say that I do not, and never have, believed you to be the enemy, no matter your parentage. And I blame myself for not telling you the truth sooner. I thought ... I was afraid it might hurt you. That it would make you doubt yourself."
"You were right." I press my palms to my temples. My skull feels heavy, stuffed with iron and nails. I run my fingers back through my hair, gripping handfuls. My scalp prickles with pain. "Talk about fairy tales. Here I was, believing I was one of the superheroes, that some ancient power chose me to do great things. But I'm one of the bad guys." A bitter laugh spills out of me.
"Beatrix, I—"
"No! No more lies." My voice cracks. The tears start to leak through. I grab hold of the railing to keep me strong. "You told me I was special. You made me believe it, even when I flunked all the tests. You handed me a dream, even though you knew it was a lie."
"But you are—"
"Don't you dare say it!" I rip my hand away from the barest brush of his fingers. "Don't you dare lie to me again. I can't take it. Really. I try to be tough and all that, but this is too much. I'm in too many pieces. You can't wave your baton and dance them all back together again like that."
I don't bother brushing the tears from my eyes anymore. I run, leaving the Ringmaster and his false dreams where they belong, with the stars that are always going to be beyond my reach.
CHAPTER 17
Rjool
THE NEXT FOUR HOURS ARE TORTURE. The Ringmaster's fairy tales grow sharp claws and tear my thoughts apart. There's no way I'm going to Miss Three's lecture on Core Governance Trade Law, or even the symposium one of the older Techs is giving on Strong and Weak Nuclear Forces. I go to the common room instead and run myself through the Arena at level eleven. Maybe if I can squeeze all the sweat from my body, there'll be nothing left to feed my tears. On my seventh run I make it five minutes, a new personal record. But the truth of who I am turns the victory as hollow a
s my stomach.
I grab what I can from the vending machines on the way back to the dorms rather than face lunch in the cafeteria. I'm not a coward, I'm ... establishing a defensive position. Marshaling my resources for a big comeback performance.
Yeah, I don't really believe it, either. But it's a lie I need right now.
Back in the dorm, I mechanically down a half-dozen energy bars and protein drinks. My stomach rebels at first, but I keep going. I'm going to need my strength to get the Tinkers' Treasure back.
It's my only choice, really. It's not like I'm going to run off and sign up with the Mandate, no matter who Mom was. And sure, I could hightail it back to Earth, make some sort of lame life for myself. It's probably where I belong, but I can't leave yet, no matter how much I want to get away from everything that reminds me of my broken dream. The Big Top may not be my place anymore, but I can't leave it like this, suffering for my mistake. And the next step to finding the Tinkers' Treasure is figuring out what Sirra is up to.
By the time Nola comes in, I'm practically bouncing off the walls between the sugar and my need to do something constructive. Or destructive.
"Trix," she starts off, "have you been hiding in here all—what's wrong?" She steps closer, looking way too intently into my eyes. "Have you been crying? What did the Ringmaster say?"
"It doesn't matter," I say, bounding upright and starting to sweep up the layer of wrappers and drink cartons from the bed.
"Are you sure?"
"He found out what the rock was," I admit. "He called it the Tinkers' Treasure."
Nola gapes for a moment. "As in, the long-lost artifact that holds all the secrets of the original Tinkers?"
"That's the one. So it's pretty much the last thing you'd ever want the Mandate to get their hands on. Basically, I screwed up royally, and we need to get it back before they destroy it. Please tell me this Rjool character is going to need a butt-kicking. I am crazy-ready to thwack something."
"That'll be hard, since Rjool doesn't have a ... well, you'd have to find something else to kick. Here, I brought gear." She tosses me a set of yellow coveralls and a pair of rubbery black gloves. "But we don't want to fight him. He's a Loranze."
"A what?" Following Nola's lead, I pull on the coveralls over my clothing, relieved to finally be doing something. Even if I don't get to thwack anything.
"Ask your know-it-all to show you."
"Oh, my stars," says Britannica when I put the question to her. "A Loranze? That won't do, not at all. Nice young ladies shouldn't be associating with creatures like that."
"No worries for me, then."
My know-it-all tsks me. "I admit that you're a work in progress, dear, but there's potential. So it would be highly unfortunate for you to be fraternizing with one of the Untouched."
"The Untouched?"
"One of the very few races in all the universe not tampered with by the Mandate or the Tinkers. Highly dubious characters, in my opinion. Look."
The viewscreen slides out over my eye. I nearly jump out of my big yellow boots. "Whoa. Now, that's what I call an alien."
Hovering in front of me is the frozen image of something that looks like it belongs on one of those nature programs about deep-sea critters. "Are those tentacles? But those numbers can't be right. Average weight five tons? Average height fifty feet? How did something that big get in here?"
As we make our way to the engineering sector, Nola fills me in. "You can mail-order Loranzelli eggs over the universal net. They come with a tank and everything. It's a big gimmicky thing, and half the eggs don't even hatch, and the other half aren't even real Loranzelli, just some sort of genetically altered cephalopods. The rumor is somebody on the Big Top got a real one, and when they realized it, they tossed it down the recycler. By the time they found Rjool, he was too big to get out easily. No one's ever admitted to being the one who tossed him, though."
We're headed through an unfamiliar part of the ship now. The halls are narrower, and half the doors are plastered with dire warnings about electrocution, radiation, and cataclysmic polarity reversal.
"Anyway," she goes on, "Rjool does a good job keeping the recyclers running. He can handle everything except the one set of auxiliary filters that's on the other end of the recycling zone, and we have those in chore rotation. I've spent about five minutes, tops, down here in the past month, now that he's taken over the water reclamation system, too. But believe me, five minutes is more than enough."
"So he is dangerous?"
"Well, in a way. He likes to talk, and ask questions. Personal questions."
"So, like, he wants to know your favorite color? How does that qualify as dangerous? "
"I'm serious," Nola says. "You won't be laughing five minutes from now. He knows things about all of us from going through the trash. It's like he can read your mind, like he knows all your worst secrets. You step one toe into his lair, and the next thing you know he's pulling out a dirty sock and asking you about the fight you had with your mother last Tuesday. It's amazing. Well, repulsive and amazing." She pauses in front of a large door. "Ready to see for yourself ?"
I am suddenly way less interested in meeting Rjool. All my worst secrets? But I need to find that rock. I sigh. "Are you sure we can't just kick his—tentacles—and make him help us?"
Nola opens the door.
"Never mind," I say. Because by then, I've seen Rjool. He's hard to miss, since he fills up at least half the room. It reminds me of the banyan tree I saw once on a nature special. It looked like a huge grove of small trees, but it was really this one massive tree with all these weird roots dripping off it.
Rjool is like that, except the trunk in the center has five globby eyes and a clattering beaky mouth, and the things dripping out of the air everywhere are tentacles, not roots. They slither. If you can imagine a room with snakes plastered over every bit of floor and wall, you can get how creepy this place is.
Two of the eyes turn in our direction. There's not a lot of space left that isn't full of whispering tentacles, but Nola finds us a bare spot near the center of the room. A hollow, boomy voice fills the room.
"Nooooola. How good to see you again. How is the new skin treatment? Taking care of all that pesky acne?" A thin tentacle wriggles forward, holding an empty jar emblazoned with the animated face of a boy peppered with zits that shrink as he lathers on a blue goop.
"Yes," says Nola in a tiny voice. She looks ready to melt into the flooring.
"And what about that other new cosmetic cream? I know I have the bottle here somewhere..." Tentacles slither around us. Nola gives a low moan. "You know the one," he continues. "The label says it will increase the—"
"Hey," I interrupt. "Do the words not your business exist in your language or what?"
Three of Rjool's eyes turn to ogle me. "And you've brought me someone new. Mmmmm..."
I'm no expert on reading the expressions of banyan tree-squid aliens, but I think he's looking at me like I'm something good to eat.
"We're here to clean the filters," says Nola, rallying herself. "And to ask a favor."
"A favor? Hooohooohoooo ..."
I realize after a moment that he's laughing. It makes all the tentacles shiver. And me.
"There are no favors," says Rjool. "But introduce me to your friend. I looove meeting new people." He clatters his beak.
"I'm Trix," I say, "and we need to get whatever it was Sirra ditched in the infirmary recycling system this morning. And that's all you need to know."
"Oh, ho ... It sounds as if someone has something to hide. A few sordid little secrets, hmmm?" Now all five eyes are staring at me, like they can see right into my soul. Or worse, into my DNA.
I shake myself. Rjool couldn't possibly know about my parents. Even I didn't know until today. He's playing me. "Listen, you overgrown squid, this is important. There might be a Mandate spy on the ship, and this is evidence."
"You care a great deal about this ship, considering you've only lived here for six weeks.
Aren't you afraid to love something so much? What if you lose it?"
Nola steps in, which is good, because I swear I'm about to start tearing off tentacles. "Okay, Rjool," she says, "you know what we want. So are you going to help or not?"
Two large tentacles twist forward across the trunk, like crossed arms. "I can find your evidence. But first, your friend will answer three questions."
"What kind of questions?" I demand.
Rjool waves three small tentacles in the air around me. "Interesting. Your pulse rate has increased considerably since you first entered my domain."
"Fine. I'm not scared of you, or your questions. I just don't want to waste any more time."
"Trix, you don't have to do it. I can find something to bribe him with," says Nola, lowering her voice. "I'll offer him my signed poster of the twins. He's a huge fan of Love Among the Stars"
"No, we're here now, and we need that clue. I'll do it."
"Oh, gooood," says Rjool, clapping two tentacles together. A shiver runs through the rest of the snaky mass. "Now, let me see what I have here. Ah, yes, that's a good starting point." A tentacle curls out, holding a ragged piece of cloth embroidered with a golden letter B. "Tell me about this..."
I lick my dry lips. "It's the insignia from my old school. Bleeker Academy."
"It was the very first thing to come through the system bearing traces of your genetic material. "Why were you in such a hurry to throw it away?"
"It was coming loose, anyway."
"But some of these threads were cut. You went to the effort of removing it."
"Okay, fine, I cut it off. I'm done with that place, with Primwell and the rest of them. It was a nasty, horrible cesspool of a school. And I am not going back. I'd rather get pitched into a black hole."
"You aren't planning to stay on the Big Top, then?"
"I can't—"
Nola's expression freezes the words on my lips. I switch gears. "Is that another question?"
"Only if you want it to be," Rjool says in a voice that runs over my skin like oil.
