Sideshow

by Sheri S. Tepper

  It was true, not in the coloring, but in the shape of the face and features. Perhaps in the expression, as well. Fringe had often been fearful at that age. And since, she admitted to herself, trying to think of something that would change the subject. “About that lost ring,” she murmured. “That was fortuitous. They were amazed.”

  “I smelled it, even through all this stink,” he said. “Sometimes I do.”

  “What happens if you smell imminent destruction?”

  “I’ll scream loudly and we’ll all run.” He seemed half-serious as he said it, but then he winked at her and caressed her cheek, making her flush. No point in telling her he’d been smelling imminent destruction all day.

  Behind them, Curvis and the twins were busy being amusing. Their hands darted and turned, hiding and disclosing, their teeth flashing, they made jokes, people laughed, though warily. By the time the two groups had worked their way around half the tables, many of the High Houm were calling them by name and jesting with them, as were the Murrey folk.

  The mood of enjoyment did not last long. From some distance outside came a wavering howl that was taken up by the chimi-hounds at the gates and built into a screaming wail. The assembled diners fell silent in one breath, and into that anxious quiet the clamor of a monstrous drum toppled like an avalanche of stones. Reverberations echoed and died slowly as dust fell from the rafters in spiraling clouds. It was the end of any jollity. The Houm pressed in upon their tables, faces blank, voices stilled, faceless as flowers in a garden. The sideshow members strolled casually back to the corner where Jory and Asner awaited them, managing to get settled into anonymity just as Houdum-Bah’s entourage came through the gates.

  A dozen drummers first, thundering on balks of hollowed timber, each carried by four men. Armed men second, big men all, laden with weapons, eyes white all the way around, like panicked animals, sleeveless shirts open to the navel, arms and chests tattooed in patterns of red and violet and black, each finger a different color, those fingers weaving an intricate pattern of signs as the hounds spoke to one another in their secret hand language.

  The translator in Danivon’s bonnet saw the signs and whispered into his ear what the fingers said. “Who put the damned table up there. Houdum-Bah’s table? Of course, Houdum-Bah’s table! Whaddoyoumean, who?” Then more quick signals. “Are they here? There they are. Well, well, won’t they be surprised!”

  Danivon, intercepting hostile or amused glances, believed this last interchange referred to the members of the sideshow, and his wariness deepened.

  Houdum-Bah himself seemed to find nothing suspicious about the high table. He waved his drummers into a line at the foot of the platform as he heaved his huge bulk upon it and sprawled into the central chair. Murrey ran at once with meat, with drink, with bread. Half a dozen of Houdum-Bah’s men mounted the platform and seated themselves on either side of him while Houm got up from the nearest tables on the floor and moved slowly away as the remaining members of the retinue took their places. Within moments, all the entourage was seated and the displaced Houm were edging toward the gates, smiling vacantly as they went, attracting as little notice as possible, leaking through the open gates in twos and threes, vanishing without a word.

  Tentatively, the orchestra began to tootle and bang once more, very softly.

  “What now?” asked Bertran. “Back to the tables?”

  “Not yet,” said Jory. “Let them start eating. Then start where you left off. Stay away from the boss chief’s men unless they ask you to come over.” She sounded very crisp, very young. Danivon peered at her curiously, and she returned the look, winking at him. “I’ve been in similar situations before,” she said. “It’s important to look unruffled. Show fear, and they’ll be on you in an instant.”

  “Enforcers know that,” said Fringe stiffly. “We’re taught that.”

  “Well, of course you are, dear,” Jory murmured. “Of course you are.”

  More fortunes, more coins from behind ears, more scarves from unlikely places, more transport of pocket munks from one place to another. Now, however, the Houm were not entertained, though they very quietly pretended to be, clearly eager to do nothing or say nothing that might attract the attention of Houdum-Bah or his men. Meaningless smiles. Meaningless nods. Words spoken too quietly to be heard. The orchestra went on tootling, plucking, drumming, but even that sound was subdued, attracting little notice.

  “Here, boy,” called one of the entourage to Danivon. “Over here.”

  Danivon bridled.

  “Hush,” hissed Fringe. “Go, bow, be a sideshow, Danivon.”

  “I wan’ my des-tin-ee,” demanded a tattooed giant, a man almost as big as Curvis. “Bring the girlie to tell my for-toon.”

  “She cannot tell fortunes,” Danivon intoned. “But the Destiny Machine may, if it chooses. She does not control it. It does as it will.”

  Fringe bowed, chanted, lifted her hands, then stood away from the machine, pointing at the levers, saying, “The machine is in your hands. Pick what levers you will.”

  A bright orange finger flicked at the levers, two, three. The machine began to whir. Fringe went on chanting, standing well away. She wanted no allegations of interference. At last the capsules fell into the bin, and she gestured for the man to pick them up.

  “Read it,” he cried, his eyes fast upon her face. “You read it.”

  She picked them up at arm’s length and ostentatiously laid them upon the table so they could be seen. Perhaps this animal couldn’t read, but someone at the table probably did.

  “Great … Dragon … Comes,” she read to her own amazement.

  “Wha’s that mean?” the man asked between dirty teeth.

  She bowed, spreading her arms wide. “I do not know, sir. Only the machine knows, and it will not tell me. Something or someone like a dragon approaches, so I would say.”

  “Bring her here!” trumpeted a voice. Houdum-Bah himself, beckoning to Fringe. “Here, come give me my destiny, woman! Be sure it is a good one.”

  Danivon helped her onto the platform and leapt up behind her. Together they moved the machine close to Houdum-Bah. Again Fringe chanted and stood aside.

  The man leaned forward, finicky, picking this lever and that. The machine began, lights moving, bells sounding. Silence fell in the great room. There was only the sound of the bells and the tap of the capsules that fell, one, two, three, four.

  He read them himself. “Comes … Now … Great … Dragon …”

  Fringe could not keep the astonishment from her face. “Wha’?” the boss chief cried, seizing her by the shoulder. “Wha’?”

  “It doesn’t … it doesn’t usually give the same fortune twice,” Fringe said, biting her lip. “This dragon business must be something important.”

  “Wha’ is dra-gone?” he asked.

  She shook her head helplessly.

  He bellowed the same question to the assembled diners. “Wha’ is dra-gone?”

  The orchestra fell silent. Every head was bowed, as for the headsman’s axe. No one had an answer for Houdum-Bah. Then, from her place beside the platform, Jory cried in a hag’s shriek: “Oh, great Houdum-Bah. There are dragons upriver. I have seen them myself.”

  “Wha’?” he demanded again.

  “Big creatures,” she said, coming out into the open space before the platform, curving her skinny arms, extending her bony old fingers, glaring her eyes. “With fangs and spines and plates of hide upon them. And claws, of course. Very fearsome, they are.” She shivered all over, making a sound as though her bones clacked.

  The man stared at her for a moment, his nostrils twitching, hanging between amusement and annoyance. Then he roared laughter, and his retinue laughed with him, a howled cacophony.

  “Houdum-Bah is not feared of beasts, no matter wha’ fangs it has,” cried one.

  “True,” said Jory, capering about as she shrieked laughter. “Great Houdum-Bah need fear no beast, no matter when it comes.”

  “Great
Lord Chimi-ahm will deal with beasts,” the boss chief declared, rising from his chair. He thrust his arms high and trumpeted into the suddenly silent room. “Great Lord Chimi-ahm will hear of this dra-gone. Now call the priests, so Chimi-ahm will hear!”

  The drummers looked expectantly at the doors and pummeled their instruments, making an earthquake summons. The Houm silently left their tables to press against the walls, turning their faces away as though they wished to become invisible. The Murrey ran, falling over one another in their anxiety to get the tables tugged aside to make a cleared space below the platform. Fringe and Danivon pulled the Destiny Machine off the end of the platform and settled among the others of their party, as intent upon being inconspicuous as were the Houm.

  “He’s playing at something, is Houdum-Bah,” muttered Jory, barely audible under the thunder of the drums. “He’s violent and arbitrary toward everyone, but I sense an especial animosity toward us. One he’s covering up for the moment.”

  Danivon sniffed. “True,” he admitted. “The man means a particular violence toward us. Of course he means enough violence toward the world at large to get a great many people killed. So, what happens now?”

  “You’re about to see a dabbo-dam,” Jory said. “So, stay alert.”

  “What does it mean?” whispered Nela.

  “The words? Ah. Dabbo-dam means approach the god, a ritual during which certain followers get touched or inhabited or, sometimes, eaten by the deity. Keep your wits about you.”

  “What will happen?” whispered Fringe.

  “God knows.” Jory chuckled humorlessly. “Whatever it is, it cannot hurt you if you do not let yourself be fooled.”

  The drums fell silent with the entry of the priests, a dozen of them, bony, dirty, skin-headed, rag-robed, bare-footed. They carried bundles that writhed and stank and torches that smoked, bringing tears to the eyes. They brought an altar with them, a tablelike construction suspended between poles, the gilt-horned altar much stained and scarred. When the poles were taken away, the priests took living creatures from their bundles, killed them upon the altar, doused themselves liberally with the blood, then grasped the horns at the four corners of the altar as they chanted in guttural voices, the smoke of their torches rising in a vaporous chimney toward the distant roof beams. The chant was repetitive, three or four phrases reiterated over and over. The drums took up the rhythm. Several of the Houm added their voices to the chant, then more and more of them until all were swaying and muttering.

  “Don’t chant with them,” murmured Jory from the sideshow’s midst. “Move your mouth, but do not say the words. Remember that what you see will not be real. Think about something else if you can. The taste of fruit, perhaps. The pleasures of the bath. I find it useful to think of warm water and soap. I picture it cutting through slime, washing it away.”

  Fringe moved her lips and thought, as suggested, of bathing. Danivon moved his lips and thought of cutting Houdum-Bah’s throat. “Boy,” indeed. Curvis moved his lips and concentrated on the coin in his hand that he was making appear and disappear behind Danivon’s back. Bertran saw him and did likewise, controlling his own fear even as he felt Nela’s fear rising inside him, making him quiver. Nela, trembling, shut her eyes and concentrated upon the turtle. Gray wind, gray leaf, gray fog rising. Poor turtle, coming into such danger.

  Houdum-Bah left the platform to join the priests. He grasped one of the horns of the altar and blended his own huge voice into the tumult.

  Jory whoofed in surprise, as though she had been hit in the stomach. Fringe glanced up to see an expression of astonishment on the old woman’s face and followed her gaze to the smoke where flapping, luminescent flakes had appeared, flakes that gradually joined to one another, coalesced, became a solid thing that shaped itself into a pillar. The pillar gained height and mass, then sprouted roots, branches, became a tree; the tree became a monstrous figure with six arms, six legs, six glaring eyes, six pendulous ears, three sets of great fangs shining from each of its three great mouths that gulped and gulped and gulped again.

  “Great Lord Chimi-ahm,” shrieked the priests. “Ah-oh, ah-oh, Great Lord Chimi-ahm!”

  “Great Lord Chimi-ahm,” moaned the Houm. “Ah-oh, ah-oh.”

  “Great Lord Chimi-ahm,” sobbed the Murrey.

  The manifestation pointed its multiple arms, a finger at this one, a finger at that. Here a Houm cried out, shaken by spasms. There another began to jerk and sway. Others then, until several score were in motion. Like puppets, they twitched and danced, inward toward the circling priests, flopping and prancing while, in their midst, the god gamboled awkwardly, triple mouths gaping. Among the dancers, two hounds pushed the young Houm girl toward the altar, Alouez.

  The child’s face bore an expression of baffled terror. Fringe knew that expression. She had seen one much like that one long ago in the blotched mirror of the module behind Char’s house. Now the child’s mouth opened and she began to scream as she was thrust by an arm, shoved by a hip, knocked and butted forward an inch at a time, unable to resist the violence of the hounds around her.

  “Why did they bring that child,” Fringe whispered furiously. “She’s too young.”

  “They were told to bring her, I would imagine,” said Jory. “I would say that Houdum-Bah ordered her brought.”

  “Why?” she blurted.

  “For himself, of course.”

  Fringe risked a glance sidewise at the altar and saw the boss chief’s eyes fixed on the girl no less hungrily than those of the god looming above. No woman could work as an Enforcer in Enarae without learning to recognize that rapist’s look. “She’s a child,” Fringe cried, horrified and sickened, “only a child!”

  “It is said that Zhulia the Whore prefers to pour herself into children,” said Asner in an expressionless voice. “So Cafferty has told us. Though perhaps it is the male worshipers of Lady Zhulia who prefer the children.”

  “Look,” whispered Jory.

  The tri-une monster in the smoke was splitting. Its three foreheads protruded like the prows of boats, pushing outward, pulling the faces behind them. Eyes followed foreheads, then noses, mouths, jaws as the head came apart into three, each of the three heads striking outward like the head of a serpent, coiled necks following, lashing away from the body, drawing shoulders behind them, then arms, torsos, legs, recoiling then, becoming three beings where there had been only one:

  One wide-hipped with a torrent of smoky hair, a wristlet of skulls, breasts like great melons. One mighty thewed, armored, armed, his maleness carried before him like a spear. One slender, flexible, long-legged, narrow-faced, sexless lips bent upward from a sharp-toothed smile. He. She. It.

  “Zhulia the Whore, Lord Balal, Chibbi the Dancer,” muttered Jory, nodding her head as though confirmed in some private apprehension. “All present and accounted for. Plus some of the minor gods. Look at the hounds.”

  The hounds twitched and shivered, throwing up their furred arms, opening hands that were now clawed, mouths that were now fanged. Hounds indeed, slavering and staring about themselves with red eyes.

  Chibbi the Dancer spun on its toes, arms extended, those arms becoming the spokes of a wheel, the spokes becoming arrows of light that flew out among the twitching Houm, penetrating them. They went on dancing, howling as bones cracked, bodies fell, limbs flailed uselessly. Splintered bones protruded from bloody flesh as the Houm convulsed themselves into wreckage.

  The mighty male form of Lord Balal turned toward Houdum-Bah, moved ponderously toward him where he stood below the platform. Houdum-Bah stripped off his garments and awaited the god, arms wide, eyes half-closed.

  And before them on the floor the little girl shivered as the female form leaned down, touched her, poured into her like water into a hole. The child seemed to swell. Her clothes ripped away from burgeoning breasts, from wide, luxurious hips, from a vulva thatched with thick, shining hair.

  Fringe blinked rapidly, shaking her head, snarling. There was no Lady Zhulia. T
here was only an eleven-year-old girl standing there. Slight. Breastless. Her little ribs heaving as she panted and tried to cover herself when her clothes were ripped away by one of the priests. A little girl, shivering, her eyes wide and lost.

  “No,” said Fringe.

  “It’s their culture,” said Danivon firmly, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “This is what they do.”

  “No,” said Fringe again. “Jory, no. He’ll hurt her. She’s only a child. He’ll rape her. He’ll kill her.”

  “This is what they do,” repeated Danivon desperately. “Diversity, Enforcer!”

  “No,” she said again. “Jory, do something.”

  Jory stared around herself, her face a mask in which surprise and fury were equally mingled. “What makes you think I can do anything, Fringe Owldark?”

  “You can. Somebody must.”

  Jory laughed angrily. “Then you do something!”

  Without thought, Fringe sprang forward, her weapon leaping into her hand. She seized the girl by the shoulder and drew her away from Houdum-Balal, thrusting the child behind her, threatening Houdum-Balal with her weapon.

  He roared with rage, and all the hounds echoed the roar as they came toward her.

  She brushed them with heat, enough to stop ordinary men, but they were too hot with rage to feel it. She thumbed the control and tried again, sending them reeling back, all but Houdum-Balal, who came on, arms outstretched, mouth wide in rage, seemingly untouched by the heat.

  Fringe backed up, suddenly aware she had no support. Danivon and Curvis were not helping her, were, in fact, reaching out to take the child away from her, to return it….

  Jory laughed.

  The laugh fled into the smoke and the drums and returned louder. It went out against the walls and returned, louder. It rattled in the corners and returned, louder yet, growing like summer thunder, booming, cracking. The drums fell silent, and the chanting.

  “Great Dragon Comes,” snarled Jory into the laughter, each word reverberating and growing, each separate, each connected, the whole larger than its constituent words, the phrase bouncing off the walls until it overrode all other sound. “Great Dragon Comes!”