Sideshow

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “For the women of Thrasis, no doubt,” Jory said to Curvis. “And for the Murrey of Derbeck. When they arrive.”

  “Who put them there? Who built them?”

  “Well, Curvis, the encampment wasn’t here when I left, and I didn’t see it built. No doubt we shall find out soon enough.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Noplace,” she said.

  “Who’s there?” he asked angrily.

  She shook her head wearily. “Let it come as a surprise to you, Curvis. As it did, once upon a time, to Asner and me.”

  He was not interested in a surprise. He was not interested in anything that was happening. He wanted to be wherever Danivon was.

  She turned away from him without a word. It was obvious he was staying on the Dove merely because there was nowhere else to go.

  12

  In Derbeck the god Chimi-ahm killed twenty or so of the Houm and amused himself thereafter by dancing upon their bones. The Houm had neglected an esoteric detail in their reverence to the Great Lord.

  In Enarae two ganger tribes staged a pitched battle in the Hall of Final Equity, which ended several days later with all the gangers, the entire executive staff of the Hall, and numerous bystanders either dead or about to die. The battle had been over a question of precedence between Guntoter and a new goddess called Magna Mater.

  In Choire several singers died of exhaustion following a three-day marathon hymn of praise for Most Gracious Lady Thob, who had lately acquired an insatiable thirst for adulation.

  On one of the Seldom Isles, a formerly pastoral tribe howled and drummed lengthily before sacrificing one of their more likely virgins to the Gods of the Golden Faces, who had recently manifested themselves at the back of a shallow cavern along the shore.

  In Tolerance, the Enforcer Lodge went into emergency session, adjourning after a lengthy meeting to send the Master with a delegation to the Provost.

  From the mezzanine of the Great Rotunda, Boarmus saw them coming. Everyone saw them coming, not that there were all that many people sitting around looking. Most people spent their time hiding these days, and who could blame them? Of those few present, however, no one missed the marching feet, the nodding plumes, the grim expressions. The only surprising thing about it, Boarmus thought, was that they had waited so long.

  “Master,” he greeted the leader of the group, somewhat drunkenly. He’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to drown his too intimate knowledge of what was going on.

  “Provost, sir.” The Master looked at his boots, trying to find a diplomatic way of saying it and finding none.

  “We’ve just been having an emergency meeting. It’s clear we can’t go on like this. We’re being chewed up and spit out! We’ve got Enforcers going out on routine missions getting maimed, murdered, disappeared! We’ve got whole provinces on the brink of breakdown! What in the name of all Enforcement is going on?”

  “I’ve been hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you,” whispered Boarmus, looking furtively around him.

  “Tell us what? Tell us the world is falling apart?”

  “I’ve been hoping it would settle down.”

  “What would settle down?”

  Boarmus sighed. “What’s happened is, we’ve got a god … gods.”

  “The Hobbs Land Gods,” cried the Master, going into a defensive half crouch, as though to repel any attack of creeping divinity.

  “No, no,” whispered Boarmus. “Far from it.” He looked around again, wondering what was watching him, what was listening. Well, the hell with it. They could hardly expect discretion at this stage of their game. Not as obtrusive as they’d become. He leaned forward and in a rapid narrative, punctuated by tears, chest heavings, and futile poundings of the table with a pudgy fist, he told the story beginning with Brannigan Galaxity, back in the long ago.

  “So,” he concluded, “we’ve got these … these … gods, who used to be professors at Brannigan, using us for playthings. And we don’t know what to do….” Which was an understatement. The entire Council Supervisory, what was left of it, was as baffled, frustrated, and frightened as Boarmus himself.

  “You’re aware there are several provinces where the death rate now far exceeds the birth rate?” the Master asked.

  Boarmus nodded hopelessly.

  “You’re aware that over in Morlub the suicide rate is so high the place will probably be totally depopulated within a few days?”

  Boarmus nodded again. “I follow the monitors,” he murmured. “The ones that are left. It’s happening everywhere.” Greatly daring, he’d checked Files and found historic examples for everything that was happening, including mass suicide at the behest of religious leaders. Remarkably, there were a few provinces where sweetness and jollity prevailed, almost as though the Gods had decided to try a controlled experiment. Pain here. Pleasure there. See what’s most satisfactory. So far, they’d come down heavily on the side of pain.

  “Is there some way I can keep my Enforcers from getting killed?” the Master persisted. “What would you suggest?”

  Boarmus licked his lips. “Propitiate them.”

  “And how in hell do we do that?”

  “I don’t know. Processions, maybe? Sacrifices? Rituals of some kind or other.”

  “And while we’re doing all this propitiating, what do we do about Enforcement?”

  Boarmus shrugged. “What they’ll let you, I guess. Before you send anyone out on a mission, maybe it would be a good idea to find out which side the gods are on.”

  He tried to sound positive, even while carefully not mentioning he’d learned to his dismay that quite often the gods were amused by being on several sides at once.

  When Nela and Bertran next woke from their exhausted slumber, Fringe was sitting cross-legged beside the entry to the larger cavern, peering through it as though to decipher some riddle. When she saw them moving, she came to help them sit upright.

  “Is there any of that food left?” asked Nela. “I feel so weak.”

  “Lots of it,” Fringe replied, fetching a handful of the dry flakes to divide among the twins and the disconsolate pocket munk that was perched on Bertran’s shoulder. When they had eaten a few mouthfuls and pushed away the rest, she fetched water in her cupped hands for them to drink, then offered the wet kerchief with which she had washed her own face.

  “If I look like you do, I look like death warmed over,” Nela said to Bertran as she rubbed the grime from her cheeks.

  “I’m afraid it’s one for all and all for one,” he said, trying to smile. In fact, he thought, if he looked like she did, death wasn’t even warm.

  “Did anything happen while we were out of it?” Nela asked.

  “I had another interview with them,” said Fringe, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the faces. “What do you think they are?”

  As soon as she asked the question, she knew it wasn’t a wise thing to have done, but Bertran was already answering her.

  “Something that was once human, once alive, but is now … not alive. Something that is at least partly mechanical, and no longer at all sane,” he said.

  Fringe put her finger to her lips and looked upward, shaking her head.

  Bertran sighed. Well, yes, they were probably overheard, but what difference did it make? “It could have been more careful of us,” he said emphatically. “It didn’t seem to mind hurting us.”

  Fringe agreed. The things didn’t mind hurting. Seemed to enjoy it, in fact.

  “What did they want this time?” asked Nela.

  “Oh, the usual,” she said from a dry throat. “A few threats. They intend to hurt us again, rather badly if we don’t do what they want.” Though she’d tried to think up gentle words while they slept, there was no easy way to say it.

  “Which is?”

  “Answer a question for them.”

  “Gladly,” said Nela. “Our lives are an open book. Anything at all they’d like to know.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that kind of que
stion.”

  “What is it?” asked Bertran apprehensively.

  “They want to know what the destiny of man is.”

  The two stared at her disbelievingly, Nela fretfully rubbing her shoulder and chest where the pain was worst.

  “You’re joking!” she blurted.

  “No,” said Fringe, wishing she could say yes, all a joke, all a funniness, let’s get out of here and forget it. “Not a joke, I’m afraid. They really want to know.”

  “But isn’t that the Great Question? The one you and Danivon have talked about? The one all the people on Elsewhere were supposed to answer sooner or later?”

  She nodded. It was indeed.

  “But how …” Nela was speechless. She tried again. “Even if we came up with something, how would we know if we’d answered it correctly?”

  “We’ll know,” said a voice.

  Afar, on the golden wall, a face peered at them, a mouth moved. “We’ll know. The populace will acclaim the answer. The truth of it will be self-evident.”

  The three were silent.

  “Come now,” said the voice, one of the female voices, Fringe couldn’t tell which. “Come now. You’ve been guilty of blasphemy, you know. If you were more loving, more adoring, more worshipful, you wouldn’t call us insane. But we won’t punish you for that. Not now. Not if you give us the answer.”

  “If all of Elsewhere couldn’t answer the question in a thousand years or so, how the hell do you expect us to answer it?” cried Nela, tried past endurance.

  The air sparkled among them. On the far wall, the faces came alive, focused, avid, while pain surged through nerves; while their muscles jerked and danced; while flesh burned, then chilled, then burned again.

  When it was over, the twins were blue and gasping. Fringe herself was in little better shape, though still able to curse silently at the creatures on the far wall who were watching her eagerly, waiting for her, for any of them to do or say something more.

  Bertran’s hand was on her own. He pressed gently, saying, Be silent. Be silent. Don’t give them any excuse to hurt us again. The faces were like the hecklers at the sideshow. One could escalate a mere heckling to physical violence if one wasn’t careful. Certainly these beings were in the mood for it.

  Fringe was silent. The red haze in her eyes faded. Tears dripped unheeded. She closed her eyes not to see the faces staring, waiting, ready to do something else, offer some further pain, some further horror.

  The pain had left a sick exhaustion in its wake. She slipped into a half faint, half slumber, conscious of where she was, yet adrift. Bertran’s hand was still on hers, still pressing hers. When she opened her eyes again, she saw only darkness.

  “They’ve turned out our lights,” she said stupidly.

  “To encourage concentration,” Bertran whispered, only a hand-breadth from her ear. “No doubt.”

  “Bertran and I have been discussing things,” Nela whispered in her turn. “Our chances and all that.”

  “We don’t believe they’re good,” Bertran offered.

  “We’ve thought of dying, lots of times,” Nela confessed. “But the idea of doing it here, now, in all this darkness, all this pain, is revolting! Though maybe we will want to die, before they’re through with us.”

  Bertran cleared his throat. “We have this thing we’d like to try. It may mean nothing, but then again …”

  “It can’t hurt anything,” Nela offered.

  “Ah?” said Fringe.

  “We’re really not able to move around. We wondered if you’d mind finding us a loose rock, something about the size of a fist.”

  Obediently, Fringe felt her way to the rocky wall and along the base of it, hefting stones, returning with something only a little larger than asked for. “Will this do?” she asked, feeling for his hands.

  Bertran took it. She sat beside him once more, feeling the muscles in his arm and shoulder moving and bunching as he hefted the stone.

  “This should do nicely,” he said. “Nela, you ready?”

  “More or less,” she whispered.

  He took something from around his neck and put it on the ledge near Fringe’s leg. “Keep your fingers away from here,” he instructed. “Nela?”

  “All right,” she said.

  They spoke together, in hushed voices, slowly, very clearly. “We want to know what the destiny of man is, and we want the things persecuting us to believe the answer and let us alone.”

  Bertran hammered downward with the stone, once, twice. Brilliant blue light lit the cavern momentarily, then vanished with a cracking sound, as though the mountain had broken asunder.

  “What the hell was that?” demanded Fringe, rubbing her eyes where jagged afterimages swam against the darkness.

  “When Celery came, all that long while ago,” Nela said, “it left us this little transmitter thing. When we decided on our payment, Berty and I, we were supposed to speak it, then smash the transmitter. So we just did.”

  “But that was thousands of years ago!”

  “I know. We don’t really expect it to work. The Celerians are all gone….”

  Long gone, it appeared, for nothing happened.

  Nela sighed. “I supposed it isn’t possible that we might actually answer the question?” She tried to say it cheerfully. It was up to all of them to keep their spirits up, she no less than the other two, though all she wanted to do was curl up against the stone and retreat into thumbsucking silence. “The show,” Aunt Sizzy was wont to say, “may not have to go on, but we don’t buy groceries unless it does!”

  “Men have probably come up with all possible answers by now and discarded them,” said Bertran.

  “I’ve never thought about the Great Question much since I was a kid,” said Fringe. “It hasn’t seemed relevant, somehow.”

  “Oh, but yes.” He laughed, the sound teetering on the edge of control. “Think of how much time and effort it would have saved if we’d only known what man’s destiny actually was. Think of our time, all the fundamentalist fascists versus the civil libertines; all the liberals throwing our money at the poor versus the conservatives throwing our money at themselves; all the male versus female controversies, all the revolutions, sexual, political, and economic. How marvelous if we’d only known what was important and what wasn’t!”

  Fringe was amused despite herself. “What did you think man’s destiny was?”

  He heaved a deep, obviously painful breath. “Nela, what did we think man’s destiny was? When we were children.”

  Nela made a slight humming noise, as though to advise the darkness she was thinking, or as though she might be clenching her teeth to keep from crying. “Well, let’s see,” she said at last in a tight voice that barely hid hysteria. “As good Catholic children, our destiny was to be guilty over sex, to have lots of babies, and to partake of the sacraments sufficiently often to assure we’d go to heaven when we died.”

  “Right,” said Bertran. “And in the fundamentalist church down the block, they learned their destiny was to be guilty over sex, to worship the flag (in defiance of the first and second commandments), and to be born again sufficiently often to assure they’d go to heaven when they died, though I’m not sure whether it was the same heaven or not. In fact, the only real difference between us and them was whether we ranked sperm or the flag slightly ahead of god.”

  He laughed, choking, then groaned.

  “So heaven was your destiny,” said Fringe. “Or having lots of babies.”

  “Oh, yes,” murmured Nela. “The only excuse we had for overpopulating our world was that it wouldn’t matter in heaven.” She tried to laugh but couldn’t manage it. The laugh turned into a sob.

  “Nela, Nela,” said Fringe, falling to her knees before them and taking Nela into her arms. “Hey.”

  “It’s just, just I’m so scared,” Nela whispered. “I’m so scared, Fringe. It’s so dark, and I feel so sick.”

  “We’re not very good at this,” Bertran quavered. “Not
very good at being brave.”

  “You’re the bravest people I’ve ever known,” said Fringe firmly, patting them gently, knowing it to be true. “You two really are! You’ve been brave and gallant all your lives. You’re just not good about showing it, or bragging about it. But listen, I swear to you … I swear to you both, I am your friend, and I will do everything in my power to see that nothing bad happens to you!”

  Nela sighed. Under Fringe’s stroking hands she seemed to relax, to give way. “It’s just being … how we’ve always had to be.”

  “Well, that’s what bravery is,” Fringe murmured, holding them closely. “Being what you have to be, without whining about it. That’s what Zasper says, anyhow.”

  “Maybe that’s man’s destiny,” Nela said. “Just to be brave.” She took two or three deep breaths, easing herself.

  “That gives us three answers,” said Fringe. “Babies, heaven, bravery.”

  “Which will get us absolutely nowhere,” Bertran offered. “Nothing so simple is going to satisfy those … beings! The Great Question ranks right up there with the quest for the Grail, with seeking the philosopher’s stone or catching a unicorn. Our race is obsessed with quests and questers. As children, we dream the quest before we dream the thing quested for. No doubt some of us are born for the attempt. No matter what shape of box we find ourselves in, we keep struggling to be free!”

  Fringe listened to the longing in his voice and was chastened.

  He sighed. “How did this Great Question thing get started on Elsewhere anyhow?”

  “It wasn’t started here. It was started a long time ago at the biggest educational institution in the known universe, Brannigan Galaxity. But once the Hobbs Land Gods had destroyed man everywhere else, the question could only be answered on Elsewhere,” Fringe replied.

  “You’re sure man was destroyed everywhere else?”

  “Well, of course. Once the Gods took over …”

  “You’re sure they did take over? I know you’ve said that, but are you sure?”