Sideshow

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Others of the Murrey, even some of the High Houm, the aristocracy, consider ways of getting out of Houmfon for a time until things settle down. It isn’t only Old Man Daddy dying, it isn’t only the election, it’s other things too. It’s Chimi-ahm manifesting himself all the time lately, it’s people going to a dabbo-dam and never coming back. So, the Houm think of going off to take care of a sick relative in the country, maybe. Or they think of going down sick themselves, maybe, in some well-fortified back room, and staying in there until well after election: out of sight, out of mind. No point just going to another town. The other towns are no better than Houmfon. If one goes anywhere, one has to get clean away, out into the forests. The only thing sure about Old Man Daddy’s dying is that someone will be set up in his place. So, there’ll be one man going and maybe more than one coming, and the dabbo-dam eating people like chug-nuts, forces coming together like the stones of a mill, and who but the zur-Murrey and the jan-Murrey and ver-Murrey caught between those stones? Blue boys, yellow boys, green boys, no matter, the streets and the altars will run bloody when tenancy changes in the Palace. That’s how the old saying goes. All rou-Murrey when the topman goes. All red-boys when Old Man dies.

  Not that the little people don’t run red other times too, whenever the chimi-hounds get aggravated at something!

  So, even now, before Old Man Daddy is properly dead, there are people headed upstream or down. It is mostly flatland along the Ti’il, until one gets to the roots of the river where the country rises up into mountains, into forests, into a thousand little knobs and swales and chasms where one can find a scatter of huts set in garden patches, and maybe even a milk animal or two, or a flock of gimmers for meat and hides. Not that the chimi-hounds couldn’t come there; they could and sometimes do; but usually, they don’t bother. Why go so far to kill a few when you can stay in town and knock off dozens?

  Downriver is Du-you, the port at the confluence of the Ti’il and the Fohm. Du-you is no good. Chimi-hounds run Du-you, from the docks to the farms along the delta. But along the low banks of the Fohm, east and west, lie miles of reed beds where anyone can disappear. Reappearing is sometimes a problem, what with the blood-birds and the monster chaffers and the gavers that sit on their piled nests of rotting reeds, but those you can look out for. There are islands among the reeds, and people living on the islands. Some of the people have been careful for so long that the chimi-hounds don’t even know they exist.

  It is one of these islands the refugee couple almost happens upon, he and she, well into middle age, found lying in sodden exhaustion, surrounded by a circle of patient blood-birds, some little distance from a nameless village. Such places have sentries well out, and the sentries find them.

  “Out along the reed canal,” the sentry tells the headman, Ghatoun. “Lying up in the reeds, half-dead.”

  They are not half-dead. A quarter, maybe, from being sucked by chaffers and scratched by swamp briar and covered with bites from stingers, cuffer-noses, and swutches, none of which is usually lethal.

  “Who are you?” Ghatoun wants to know. He knows already they aren’t chimi-hounds. A chimi-hound wouldn’t have a woman along.

  “Latibor Luze,” says he.

  “Cafferty Luze,” says she.

  Both are gray at the temples and wrinkled a bit around the eyes. Both have open faces and shining, open eyes, like those of children too young to know about Chimi-ahm, though there is something watchful there, as well. And something sad, but then, in Derbeck, that’s the usual thing.

  “And where from?”

  “Houmfon, most recently,” the man sighs.

  Most recently? And where before that? The headman looks Latibor Luze in the eyes and wonders if he really wants to ask.

  “From Beanfields before that,” says Latibor softly, giving Ghatoun a straight look. “Some years. And before that, all over. For a long time.” It’s a risk to tell this to Ghatoun, but not a large risk. Ghatoun’s people wouldn’t be out here, living among the reeds, if they were in sympathy with what goes on in Derbeck.

  “Chaffer spit,” Ghatoun mutters to himself. He doesn’t want to hear it. Border crossers! Maybe even agitators, maybe with Council Enforcers after them, and if not Council Enforcers, then surely chimi-hounds, eager to kill off nonbelievers. The very kind of thing that was most dangerous!

  “Who knows you’re here?” he demands harshly. “Who might be looking for you.”

  “Nobody,” whispers Latibor in an exhausted voice. “We’d only been in Houmfon a short time. When we heard Old Man Daddy was dying, we decided we’d better get out, but before we left, we told our neighbors we were going upriver, to the Viel Gorge.”

  “Somebody looking for you in Houmfon?”

  “Probably not at all,” says Cafferty. “Certainly not yet. They’d have no reason to. We’re just folk.”

  They aren’t just Derbeck folk! Though human enough, they’re too big to be Murrey; too wide-mouthed and high-nosed to be Houm; too sandy-skinned to be High Houm. They are, in fact, distinctive, and Ghatoun doesn’t believe for a minute there won’t be somebody looking for them. Still….

  “You believers in Chimi-ahm?” asks the headman very softly, so softly not even his own folks hear him. “You dabbo-dam?”

  “No,” whisper the strangers. “We aren’t believers. We’ve never been taken.”

  Could be, as many places as they’ve been, they’re immune to being taken by the hungry ones, Zhulia the Whore, and Chibbi the Dancer and Lord Balal and all the minor manifestations.

  “Well then, stay awhile,” the headman says. “Rest.” They both smile gratefully, tremulously, and do rest while the headman speaks to the sentries, doubling their number, putting them twice as far out as usual. So the strangers say nobody’s looking for them. So they say nobody’s missed them. So. Maybe they believe it. That doesn’t mean Ghatoun has to. He’d be within good sense simply to kill them off and send their bodies down the river. Still, wasn’t it that kind of thing what he’d left Houmfon to escape, long ago, not wanting it for him, or for his wife-mate, or his children, or his people. Wasn’t it that kind of thing what he hated most?

  Jory and Asner had arrived on the Bright Winged Dove, a two-masted river-yat with a crew of eighteen including the captain, and this ship now took the others aboard. Danivon’s troupe now totaled seven, if one included the old folks as part of the show. Danivon, though temporarily elated at Jory’s arrival, was beginning to think of his expedition as notably ridiculous: seven people, two of them so old they could barely stagger, two of them mated like the halves of a scissors, only three able-bodied persons, and one of those a fool woman who attracted him as no other woman ever had, yet acted like some female Thrasian in purdah. All of them off on a mission to find out what these putative dragons might be, and if that wasn’t a sideshow right enough, and well within the meaning of the term!

  “Where do we go first?” asked Nela, excited despite having decided to disapprove of the entire undertaking and everyone in it. If withholding her approval was the only thing she could do, it was at least something. She would not, she had told Bertran stubbornly and at some length, condone.

  “We stop at Salt Maresh,” said Curvis, referring to his pocket file. “Too many children have been sent down from Choire, and we’re to Attend the Situation there on our way upstream.”

  “Won’t that tell everyone on Panubi we’re Enforcers and not showmen?” asked Fringe.

  “According to the captain, the Dove is the only ship plying the Fohm at this season,” Danivon replied. “So there’s no one to carry word upstream ahead of us. Besides, stopping at Choire will give us a chance to hear the music. I haven’t been to Choire in years, but I remember the music.”

  Fringe asked no more questions. Since the revelations in Shallow, she had been much aware of a recurrent disapproval in Nela’s manner. Fringe was trying to set aside their burgeoning friendship as she had set aside other relationships over the years. Nela, however, refused to be set
aside. Despite her occasional coolness, she broke out every now and then with a giggle or a sidelong glance or a whisper to Fringe, as though she’d forgotten to be angry, and when she forgot, Fringe forgot too.

  So, they sat near one another beside the rail, watching the delta pass by: the reeds, the gardens, men setting their nets for birds, fishermen checking their lines, gaver hunters sharpening their spears as they dried gaver hides over their smoky fires, women on the stamped-clay threshing floors forking shiny showers of dried grain into the air to let the wind blow away the chaff. Everywhere the color and smell of lilies, everywhere spicy blossoms hanging from the rich muddy banks. Everywhere the little round gossle boats, skimming the waters, like water bugs, darting. Everywhere the plash and murmur of folk. Fringe had seen much apprehension in this place, but not a single weapon. She had heard voices shaking with fear but not raised in anger. To one reared in Enarae, this equanimity was unbelievable.

  “Don’t they ever fight?” she asked Jory and Asner, who had just come up on deck.

  “Not the folk of Shallow, no,” replied Jory, while Asner nodded agreement. “They are of calm temperament and cheerful disposition. They work, not hard, but steadily; they make proper occasions to rejoice.”

  “With all this peace and tranquillity, I’d think they would have overpopulated their province by now,” Fringe opined.

  Jory shook her head. “Their custom dictates that each woman is entitled to keep two living children under a certain age. If she has more than that, they are given to the Fohm.”

  Fringe turned from the peaceful scene with a sense that something had shifted inside her. “To the river? Drowned?”

  “They are put into a reed basket and sent downstream.”

  “Into the ocean? To drown?”

  “Except for the few picked up and adopted by Curward sailors, more likely they are eaten by large gavers, many of which throng the delta and middle reaches of the Fohm. A quick death, and sure.”

  “But … but …” Fringe wanted to say, “That’s dreadful. That’s terrible.” She said nothing. It was not dreadful, not terrible. It was only diverse, her indoctrination told her. Diversity. Holy diversity. She shut down her momentary disapproval and focused on one of the mind-relaxing exercises she’d learned at the Academy. “Difference is always disturbing,” her instructor had said. “Learn to calm yourselves and accept.”

  Nela, however, voiced the thought before Fringe could suppress it. “That’s dreadful!”

  “Look about you,” said Jory. “Do the people seem dreadful?” She turned toward Nela and fixed her with a bright-eyed stare. “It is no worse than is done in other places. For example, in your time and country, were there not many children killed?”

  Nela said, “Many were, I suppose. But not like this!”

  “In your time a primary cause of death in children was by violence, no?”

  Nela nodded. “Well, yes,” she admitted. “But the deaths were accidental! Children weren’t specific targets! Or, if they were, it was some crazy person killing them!”

  “Oh, I see. If they died by accident, they were not really so dead? It is better to die if your killer is crazy?”

  Bertran blurted, “There’s a difference!”

  Jory shrugged. “Whether eaten in a basket on the Fohm or killed by a madman with a gun, the children became equally dead. Each form of death is acceptable to its own culture.”

  “Of course they weren’t acceptable,” cried Nela.

  “If they had not been acceptable, something would have been done to stop them. Accidental deaths are usually acceptable, even expedient. And it’s often the business of government to obscure the connections between cause and effect so that expedient deaths will seem to be … accidental.”

  “Expedient deaths?” questioned Nela.

  “I know what she means.” Bertran turned aside, and they saw sourness cross his face, a fleeting shadow, as on the face of someone who has unwittingly bitten into unripe fruit. “If you are overpopulated, or have an underclass, as in our time, it’s to the advantage of everyone if they kill each other off.”

  “One advantage of the Hobbs Land Gods,” murmured Asner. “That there is no overpopulation, no underclass.”

  “If you don’t mind being enslaved,” cried Fringe.

  “Actually, I’ve wondered about that,” said Asner thoughtfully. “I’ve been places where the Hobbs Land Gods were active, and it didn’t seem that bad to me!”

  Fringe backed away from him as though he were contaminated, her face drawn into an expression of disbelieving horror.

  “He’s not going to infect you,” said Jory impatiently. “He was just trying to tell you something.”

  “I don’t want to hear it!”

  “I do,” cried Nela. “I want to hear it!”

  “I merely wanted to point out,” said Asner, “that those who were influenced by the Hobbs Land Gods—”

  “Enslaved,” spat Fringe.

  “Influenced,” repeated Asner. “Those who were influenced were happier and less violent but no less curious or intellectually free than any of us here and now.”

  “I don’t care,” cried Fringe. “A slave is a slave.” She turned away, angry and embarrassed. “No matter how the slavery feels to him.”

  “I merely remarked—”

  “Who are you to remark anything!” demanded Fringe. “You, Asner, who are you, to talk so of the Hobbs Land Gods? What gives either of you the right to meddle in my … all our lives?”

  Jory fixed her with an amused eye. “As to who I am, Fringe Owldark, I have been a number of people: wife and mother to persons long departed, lover and friend of unhuman marvels, savior of humanity (so I have been told), fartraveler, prophetess and guide, bender of time, explorer of the far reaches, and now—”

  “And now retired,” interrupted Asner, jabbing her with his elbow.

  Jory turned an amused stare on him, concluding, “As for the rest, I meddle when I can. To the extent I am allowed.”

  Fringe flushed. “Well, if you’re going to meddle with me, I have a right to know why!” Hot with annoyance she looked down at her writhing hands and worked them, finger by finger, as though readying herself to take up weapons and do battle.

  “She’s right, you’ve hectored her and them enough, Jory,” said Asner, turning to gesture across the railings at the surrounding watery landscape. “You’ve philosophized and theorized sufficiently! If Fringe prefers to be miserable in her own way rather than be happy in some other way, it’s her choice. The preference isn’t unique or original with her, so let us discuss something else. Geography, for example. We’re getting near the border of Shallow, at the top of the delta. The water meadows of Salt Maresh will begin to show up soon, with their long-legged fishers. There’s a small river port not far upstream where we’ll be stopping to—”

  “Oh, Holy Mother,” cried Nela, staring across the moving waters.

  “What?” Fringe looked up.

  “Is that your diversity!? Oh, oh, Holy Mother.” Nela leaned and pointed. Following the extended finger, Fringe saw. A basket floating out in midstream, bobbing on the wavelets, carrying a child some three or four years old who held tight to the closely woven rim and cried silently, mouth open, eyes and nose streaming.

  “You said babies …” said Fringe to Jory, surprised and offended at this event following so soon upon her catechism.

  Jory corrected her, “I said children.”

  Nela cried, “Why would anybody … why would they send a toddler instead of an infant. I don’t understand!”

  “Perhaps the toddler is a boy and the family prefers a newborn daughter,” suggested Asner calmly. “Or vice versa.”

  “Perhaps the toddler is defective in some way,” suggested Jory quietly. “Or, perhaps, the child and its mother simply did not get along.”

  The basket bobbed on the river waves. The child looked up, saw them, stretched out its arms, and cried across the water. “P’ease … p’ease….�
� The river flow swept the basket on past, the child’s voice still rising in a wail of fright. “Oh, oh, pick Onny up, p’ease. Pick Onny up….”

  Bertran heaved himself away from the rail, Nela thrashing in his wake, sweat beading both their foreheads. “I can’t believe this,” Bertran snarled. “I can’t….”

  Where the basket bobbed, something large and many toothed raised itself from the water and gulped hugely.

  Fringe turned blind eyes away from the water, shutting out the sight, driving out the memory of it. Such things were. Diversity implied both pleasure and pain, both justice and injustice, both life and death. That’s the way things were. She excused herself and stalked off, brushing by Danivon as she went.

  “What’s the matter with her?” demanded Danivon, who had just come from below.

  Asner pointed where the basket had been and explained in a low voice, “A big gaver came up from below and gulped down the child. I think Fringe was upset by it.”

  Danivon snarled. Well, he had told her, back in Enarae, that some places on Elsewhere would have disturbing habits. She should have prepared herself then! What did she think he’d been talking about? Table manners? One couldn’t go getting outraged over every child floating down the Fohm, over every skull on the rack at Molock, over every bloody pile of street-corner corpses in Derbeck. And what would she say when she saw the women in Thrasis! Well, she wouldn’t, luckily, since women Enforcers didn’t go into Thrasis, which thought reminded him to fume once more that there was no good use for Enforcers who were unsuited to the work.