Sideshow

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Zasper threw up his hands and glanced at Jory, saying softly, “What shall I say? Have you words of wisdom, woman?”

  “Few, if any.”

  “If you think of some, will you tell me?”

  “Fringe is one of my people. And the twins could well be. I want them rescued as much as you do.”

  “Zasper,” cried Danivon once more in a fever of impatience.

  Zasper shook his head, pulling his braid over his shoulder and tugging at it with one hand, making his head bob sidewise, a gesture he made rarely and only when considerably disturbed. “Danivon, let me think!”

  “There’s no time to think!”

  “I wish you’d admit you’re in love with her,” Zasper said in exasperation.

  Danivon started to deny it. He started, his nose twitched, he sneezed violently. It was the truth. He loved her. Love occupied him all at once, like a strange new tenant that had moved in instantaneously with all its furniture, cluttering the cupboards and corners of his mind. There had been nothing there but the open rooms of himself through which he had moved as impulse took him. Now he stumbled over love’s chattels in every doorway.

  “I didn’t know I did love her,” he said stupidly, almost silenced by the realization.

  Zasper said, “Well, everyone else knows it, so you may as well join in! If you’ll admit it, you’ll know the reason for your misery, at least, and then you could try thinking. You owe it to her and the rest of us to stop this jittering and stuttering and move cautiously, professionally, in an Enforcer-like manner.”

  Curvis patted Danivon’s shoulder, trying to seem sympathetic, though in fact he was not. Danivon’s way with women was nothing new to Curvis, but Danivon in love was. Unacceptably so. “Do you smell she’s alive, Danivon?” he asked, hoping the answer might put an end to their speculation.

  His hopes were dashed. Danivon nodded. Yes. Oh, by all he had ever believed in, yes, he smelled she was alive.

  While Fringe and the twins slept, a way was opened silently into another, larger cavern. When they woke once more, feeling sick and unrested, they saw that one side of the rocky room had become a rough archway crisscrossed with sparkling lines. An energy barrier, Fringe told herself, though not a kind she was familiar with. They could look through into the space beyond, a very large high-ceilinged cavern with a towering complexity of well-lit gold at the far end.

  Nela and Bertran, who had struggled to their feet with considerable pain, joined her at the opening and shook their heads in wonder.

  “It’s a church,” said Nela.

  Fringe had seen churches. There were a few of them in Enarae, different sorts, mostly used for things like weddings or status achievement ceremonies—ancestor chapels, most of them, though there were a few dedicated to one or another of the ancient Phansuri gods. This one was a good deal more impressive than any she had seen before.

  “What kind of church is it?” Fringe asked in a whisper.

  Nela shrugged. “Not Christian. No cross. Not any kind I recognize. No Buddhas or anything, though that thing up in front looks like an altar. I’m sure it’s a church, though it doesn’t smell like a church.”

  It smelled oily, resinous, chemical, redolent of some other time or place. It was an unnatural smell in this place. She was about to comment on this when the voice came.

  “Bow down. Kneel and put your foreheads on the floor. Show respect.”

  Fringe, staring around herself stupidly in an effort to find the source of the voice, felt some inner part of her gripped agonizingly. She fell, flopping on the stone like a caught fish.

  “Now you two,” said the voice. It was a woman’s voice, full of a sickening motherliness.

  “Get down,” muttered Bertran, dragging Nela down beside him. Fringe got her legs under her, and Bertran put a hand on her shoulder, keeping her from rising. “Stay down,” he urged in a whisper.

  “Oh, yeah,” she gasped. “Yeah. That’s a good idea.”

  “Put … your … foreheads …on … the … floor,” repeated the voice in the manner of a teacher with the stupid pupil, a trainer with a dog.

  They did so awkwardly.

  “This is how you show reverence,” said the voice with sweet satisfaction. “You will do so whenever you leave us or approach us. You may approach us now.”

  Fringe risked a glance. The sparkling net across the door had disappeared. She helped the twins up, both of them gasping and obviously in pain. Together they stepped through the archway and walked slowly along the smooth center line of the larger cavern. On either side the floor was rough and boulder-strewn, but this center aisle was smooth. At the end of it was a rail, and beyond the rail an altar and the complicated golden wall they had seen from their cell.

  “Faces,” breathed Nela.

  Faces covered the wall, golden faces, carved or cast or living, but in any case moving, watching, eyes blinking, lips pursing, nostrils flaring. Faces stacked on faces, some with hands folded beneath their chins, some with hands cupped behind an ear, some with necks fading into the hair of the face beneath, rows and stacks of them, male and female, old and almost young, bearded and shaven, bald and hirsute, hooded and bare, ranks of them from the level of Fringe’s knees to far above her head. A thousand pairs of eyes slept or peered or stared or winked. A thousand mouths gaped unconsciously or moved restlessly as though chewing, tongues lolling from some, teeth showing in some. A thousand noses protruded, some turned toward them, twitching, dripping, sniffing. Here were the faces of all those in the Great Question Committee, their likenesses preserved. Fringe and the twins had no idea who they were.

  When the voice came, some of the faces to the lower left of the wall moved their lips synchronically.

  “We are Magna Mater,” they said. “You may bow down again.”

  They bowed down again, Nela crying out as they did so.

  “What’s the matter with her?” the voice said carelessly.

  “You hurt her,” replied Fringe in an angry voice. “Bringing her here. You’re hurting both of them, making them bob up and down like this. They’re not built the way I am.”

  “Will she die?” asked another voice in an interested tone.

  Fringe looked for the source of the voice, finding it in an idealized woman’s face, lofty browed, wide-eyed, but with its mouth twisted in malicious concentration.

  “She may,” said Fringe. “And if so, they both will. Is that what you want?”

  The eyes watched, the lips moved. “Address me as Gracious Lady Therabas Bland! Is that what we want?”

  Around this face, a group of others came to life, blinking, mouthing. “Is that what we want?” the faces chorused, like an echo.

  “No,” said the first voice from another idealized face, some distance from the second. “Not yet. Not now. Before we instruct them in their duty, they must learn to pray to us.” Around this face, others echoed its lip motions.

  Two groups, Fringe thought, watching them closely. And both groups together accounted for about half the faces on the wall. No, damn it. There was another thing present. Not speaking. Only watching. She caught the glimmer of its eyes and shuddered.

  “What shall we pray for?” asked Bertran with a pained grunt. “What prayers are you pleased to grant.”

  Silence.

  “You may pray for rest,” said a face from the second group at last. “Pray to Gracious Lady that she will be pleased to grant you rest.”

  “And food,” said Fringe stubbornly. “We pray for food, for if we don’t have food we will die.”

  “And food,” said the voice grudgingly. “You may pray for food as well. Can we make food?”

  “We can make food,” said the other. “We can make anything.”

  “Pray for food then. Perhaps we will grant it. And you will pray for enlightenment, to assist you in your duty.”

  They prayed for rest, food, enlightenment: Nela and Bertran with practiced phrases and a tumble of parochial school adulatories; Fringe haltingly, in t
he manner of someone making an assigned speech, keeping her eyes on the faces as she did so, watching for any signs of reaction. Of the faces that were awake, most seemed hypnotized by their words.

  When they had done praying (and they were kept at it for some little time), the lower left group of faces demanded that they do reverence once more before they were allowed to retreat to their cell. Fringe went eagerly, the twins with tottering steps, barely able to move.

  In a rocky niche beside the ledge they found a heap of dry powdery flakes that smelled vaguely foodlike. They tasted the stuff without enthusiasm. Possibly it would sustain life, though it would never provoke appetite. As they picked at the flakes, Bertran’s breast pocket moved, and from the top of it a tiny head appeared to fix them all with bright beady eyes.

  “Hope is never a lie,” it said conversationally. “Hope could keep her alive. All three of them alive.”

  It was Zasper’s voice.

  “Who was that?” whispered Bertran, patting the pocket with one trembling hand.

  “My friend Zasper,” muttered Fringe, her breath quickening in sudden hope. “A friend, Berty. Someone trying to help us.” She reached out to the munk, offering shreds of the foodstuff, which it ate as they were doing, without enjoyment, before burrowing down once more in Bertran’s pocket.

  “I think we will rest again,” said Nela, after choking down a mouthful or so of the stuff and drinking from Fringe’s cupped hands. “I think we must, Fringe, even though we just woke up. We feel all torn inside. Maybe resting a bit will let us heal….”

  “Rest,” Fringe agreed worriedly, her eyes on the larger cavern. After she had helped the two of them squirm their way onto the ledge and had covered them as warmly as possible, she sat at the door to the cell, watching the distant faces from beneath lowered lids. Whatever animated them seemed to come and go. Now it had gone elsewhere, for a time at least. The faces were like dolls’ faces now, shiny and expressionless, mouths curved into bows, eyes wide or shut, without lines, without individuality. They were not flesh that showed life graven upon itself. They were only symbols of life. Two groups had spoken. Maybe not groups, exactly. Maybe two entities made up of individuals, with not much difference among the individuals involved.

  When she had been a girl at school, much had been made of popular E-or P-class girls who had their own coteries. All members of a coterie had sounded much alike. Their vocabularies were similar, their habits of thought. They dressed much alike, made the same gestures, laughed at the same things. By observing one of the sycophants, one could say certainly, “That’s one of Lorry’s clique, that’s one of Ylane’s.” The same was true of these faces. Now that they were quiet, she could see the resemblance among them. The group to the right, the Gracious Lady group, had a straight-lipped, satisfied look. The group to the left was greedy, a bit puff-cheeked, like fat babies, wanting sweeties. And all of them were like those damned E&P dolls Souile had given her so long ago. In her mind she could hear an infant wail, a doll voice. “Am I not beautiful. Do you like my hair?”

  What did they want, really? Surely not this pretense at adulation. Were they so infantile that this mockery of worship served? Love me if you will, and if you won’t, I’ll make you!

  And that other presence. The one she knew was there, the one that hadn’t spoken yet. What did it want? Not love, she was sure of that.

  What duty did a human person owe things like these? Never mind what was owed. If it was something she could do, she would do it at once. Both Nela and Bertran were gray-faced, obviously suffering. The damned things had hurt them! The twins needed help they couldn’t get in here.

  Sighing, she crawled onto the ledge where the twins slept, stretched out beside them, and closed her eyes. Beneath her superficial calm, she felt terror. But then, Enforcers often felt terror, often went in fear of their lives. That’s one of the first things she’d learned at Academy, how to handle terror. Beyond all terror and pain was always the simple fact: One would live or one would die. One had only to find out which and do it with élan, whichever it was. The only real challenge, as Zasper had often said, was to be sure one didn’t wiffle around.

  Dark came on Thrasis. The province seethed as Derbeck had done. It was said foreign persons, including at least one man, had invaded the towers. The Prophet was enraged. Men gathered to plan retaliation for this dishonor. The ship on which the interlopers had traveled was anchored out in the river. On the morrow it would be boarded and the people taken to the court for trial before they were beheaded. Until then, it was sufficient merely to describe what vengeance each man would exact when the strangers were captured. Guards were set to watch the ship, but no one thought to set extra guards on the towers.

  Those on the Dove went to their cabins to lie sleepless, considering various unpleasant futures, while on shore the guards fell into profound, inexplicable slumber. The gates of the tower nearest the river opened and Haifazh came out carrying her child upon her shoulder. She stood for a moment all alone before the opened gates, then she cried out once—only once. It was like the sound of a treble trumpet, silvery and remote, sounding equally everywhere, near and far, as though it came from or was augmented by some other throat than hers. Everyone in Thrasis heard it, but only the women knew what it meant. They came out, women and girls, some eagerly, some reluctantly. They carried their babies and daughters, all of them there were. They had been given the choice. The choice would not be given again. There was evil coming, and this was the only chance they would have. Choose. Even the reluctant ones could not lose this one chance.

  Some, mostly old ones, fearful of change, chose to stay, but none chose to have their babies or daughters stay. Mothers and daughters stood in argumentative clots, pushing and dragging at one another. The Houses of Retribution opened their doors and their inhabitants poured out. In the Houses of Retribution only a few remained behind, old women all, those who had ruled the others with their canes. In the Courts of Removal the departing women picked up all those still living and carried them along.

  In the houses of the town, where women were kept in their so-called bowers, windowless cells emptied themselves down hidden stairs to high-walled gardens, and over those walls into the night. No one saw the women go. It was almost as though something hid them, preventing them from being seen. Here and there locked doors stood between women and the outside world, doors to which women had no keys, but the doors opened long enough for the women to come through, then locked again behind them.

  Here and there in the gardens women crouched, weeping, waiting until the gate was locked once more with themselves inside. These were too frightened to go. These would rather die than take action themselves. Passivity had gone too deep.

  Those who went, went in darkness, first to the banks of the Fohm, then westward along the river to the great wall that separated Thrasis, westernmost of the provinces, from the unknown lands beyond. The wall stretched from the depths of the river as far to the north as any man had ever gone. It had been there when the first settlers came. There was no way around it or under it or over it. Still, as the women waited silently, the wall began to fall, stone by stone sliding silently down from the top, stone by stone piling at the bottom, stone by stone heaping up to make a giant stairway over which the women could clamber. No sound as they went, no sound as they climbed, tugging one another from above, pushing one another from below, the dozens and hundreds and thousands of them finding their way in the dark as though a way were illuminated for their eyes alone.

  As the last of them climbed, a few more came running, weeping, those who had delayed, who could not make up their minds until the last minute, until they thought of remaining here almost alone.

  West of the wall they found a road shining vaguely in the moonless night, and the women went down that road, hastening as they could, helping one another along. When all had passed over the wall, the stones rose up once more, stone on stone until the wall stood as it had always stood, massive and impassable. The bord
er of Thrasis was unbreached, secure. Beyond the wall, as the last woman passed, the road furred itself with green grass and herbs and small flowering trees that sprang up like mushrooms. A road reached on before, but there was no road behind. No tracks were left, no trail. There was no way back.

  The false light of dawn whispered at the edge of the world. A tiny wind came from the east, betokening, so the early-rising sailors on the Dove said, a stronger breeze with the morning. The captain woke and argued with Asner whether it was safe to cross to Beanfields or whether it would be better to do as Jory had asked, avoid the southern bank altogether and head upriver at the best possible speed.

  On shore, the tower guards wakened without realizing they had been asleep. They had nothing to report to the guards who came to relieve them at dawn. In the town of Thrasis, men rose and went about their affairs, in no whit alarmed at the silence in the bowers. Women’s quarters were usually silent. Women with any sense did not attract attention to themselves.

  A single early-rising buyer came to the tower nearest the river to obtain a breeder as a manhood gift for his son. He was accompanied by a vizer of the Prophet, and they strode self-importantly through the outer courts and into one of the smaller sales halls. A day before the old women who worked as inspectors had been instructed to examine certain women, previously selected by age and appearance, to be sure they had been properly cut and sewn as children to guarantee their purity.

  The small sales hall was empty. The vizer strode into the nearest corridor, bellowing, only to be greeted by vacant echoes. There was no one in the tower except a few old women cowering in an upper room. He ran out of the place in frantic haste, and there followed a great consternation of guards and officers and men galloping this way and that. Not only was the one tower virtually empty, but so were all the towers. Not only the towers beside the river, but many of the bowers in the houses of the city as well. Not only in the city, but in the palace of the Prophet himself, and in the countryside where in remote and hidden areas invisible forces had sped women on their way. Even in the most distant parts of the province, the story was the same. In all Thrasis there were only a few hundred women left, many of them old.