Sideshow

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “You’re getting your self back,” said Jory, laying one hand on Fringe’s head. “You’re beginning to become yourself, so you’re troubled, as Fringe would be.” She sighed, stroking Fringe’s hair. “I’m glad you are becoming the Fringe I picked out … as a daughter. As an heir. To whom … I would leave what has been mine. I’d hate to have lost you.”

  Fringe looked at her wonderingly, thinking it an odd concern to have at such a time. There would be nothing left to inherit.

  “Let me tell you all a story,” Jory said, settling herself back in the chair and pulling the cat close against her. “Once upon a time, there was a turtle….”

  Nela made a sound, halfway between a snort of laughter and a sob.

  “Perhaps you’ve heard this tale before?” Jory asked. “Never mind. You can hear it again, Nela, and you, Bertran. This story is for all of us.

  “Once upon a time, there was a turtle who lived in a pond: gray reeds and gray mud and gray moonlight falling, which was what turtles see who cannot see color. Not for him the glory of the sunset or the wonder of the dawn. Not for him the flash of a hummingbird’s throat or a butterfly’s wings. For him the liquid sounds of water moving, the slosh and murmur of the stream, the wind in the trees; for him the difference between shadow and darkness. He was content, as turtles are content, to be deliberate in his habits and slow in his pace, to eat leaves and the ends of worms and suchlike fodder, and to think long slow thoughts on a log with his fellows, where he knew the sunlight was warm though he did not know it was yellow.

  “But a time came on an autumn evening, gray leaf and gray thorn and gray mist rising, when he sat overlong on the log after the sun was well down, and the swallows came to drink and hunt on the surface of the pond, dipping and dancing above the ripples, swerving and swooping with consummate grace, so that the turtle saw them as silver and black and beautiful, and all at once, with an urgency he had never known before, he longed for wings.

  “‘Oh, I wish I could see them more clearly,’ he murmured to the bullfrog on the bank. ‘That I might learn to fly.’

  “‘ If you would see them clearly, you must go to the secret sanctuary of the birds,’ said the bullfrog in a careless voice, as though he did not take the matter seriously.

  “And when the turtle asked where that was, the bullfrog pointed westward, to the towering mountains, and told the turtle the sanctuary was there, among the crags and abysses, where the birds held their secret convocations and granted wings to certain petitioners. And this made the turtle think how wonderful it would be to go there and come back to tell the bullfrog all about it.

  “And on the next night, he asked again where the birds went when they left the pond, and the owl pointed westward with its talon, telling him of towering peaks and break-back chasms in a calm and dismissive voice. And again he thought of making the journey and returning, and of the wonder the bullfrog would feel, and the owl, to hear of it when he came back.

  “On the third night, he asked yet again, and this time it was the bat who answered, squeaking as it darted hither and yon, telling of immeasurable heights and bottomless canyons. ‘No one dares go there,’ the bat squeaked, and the turtle told himself that he dared even if no one else could.

  “So, for three nights the turtle had watched, each night his longing growing. And at midnight on the third night, when the bat had spoken and the swallows had departed, the turtle went after them without telling anyone good-bye, slowly dragging himself toward the great mountains to the west.

  “He went by long ways and rough ways and hard ways always, first across the desert, where he would have died of thirst had not a desert tortoise showed him how to get moisture from the fruits of a cactus. And then across the stone, where he would have died of hunger had a wandering rabbit not given him green leaves to eat, and then into the mountains themselves where he would have given up and died many times except for his vision of himself going back to the pond to tell the creatures there of this marvelous and quite surpassing quest.

  “‘They didn’t know,’ the turtle told himself. ‘They had no idea what it would be like. They made it sound easy, but when I go back to tell them what it was really like …’ And he dreamed the cold nights away visualizing himself telling his story to his kindred turtles on the sunlit log, and to the bullfrog among the reeds, and to the owl and the bat, all of whom would be admiring and astonished at his bravery and his perseverance.

  “And so, sustained by this ambition, he went higher and higher yet, gray stone and gray cliff and gray rain falling, year after year, until he came at last to the place the swallows danced in the air above the bottomless void.

  “When they saw him, they stopped dancing to perch beside him on the stone, and when he saw them there, silver and black, beautiful as a night lit with stars, he was possessed once again by a great longing, and he told them of his desire for wings.

  “‘ Perhaps you may have wings, but you must give up your shell,’ they cried. And even as they told him he might have wings, he seemed to hear in their voices some of the carelessness he had heard in the voice of the owl and the bat and the bullfrog, who had told him where to go without telling him the dangers of the way. He heard them rightly, for the winged gods have a divine indifference toward those who seek flight. They will not entice and they will not promise and they will not make the way easy, for those who wish to soar must do so out of their heart’s desire and their mind’s consent and not for any other reason.

  “And the turtle struggled with himself, wanting wings but not wanting wings, for if he had wings, they told him, he would no longer be interested in going back to the pond to tell the creatures there of his journey—that comfortable telling, the anticipation of which had been, perhaps, more important to him than the wings themselves. So, he struggled, wanting and not wanting….”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “And,” cried Bertran. “Tell the ending!”

  “There is no ending,” said Jory. “I do not know what he chose to do.”

  “He should have gone back to his people,” cried Nela. “He’d have been contented there. He’d have told his story in the evenings, and the little turtles would have clapped their feet together….”

  “Yes,” said Danivon. “They’d have danced and drunk beer, and everyone would have asked him to tell it again….”

  “No doubt he’d have enjoyed that,” Jory said.

  “Perhaps, when he had given up his shell, he would have found there were no wings,” said Bertran from some remote corner of himself. “No wings, and no shell either. It is hard to be content with your shell when you have seen the birds flying, but it is hard to choose wings when you aren’t sure where they will take you.”

  “That’s true,” said Jory. “And it’s a troubling thought.”

  Fringe stared at her feet and said nothing, though she felt Jory’s eyes upon her.

  Jory put her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes, her hand moving on the cat’s back, the cat purring, the chair rocking.

  “I didn’t know she knew that story,” whispered Bertran.

  “But she didn’t know the ending,” said Nela.

  “No one knows the ending,” said Fringe, staring at the dust, her mind a tumult of doubt and suspicion. “Each of us has to choose it for herself.”

  Inside the house, Cafferty and Latibor lay close, talking of friends they had known.

  Haifazh, Alouez, and the baby Shira had found a little brook and were wading. Haifazh had never waded before. When she had wakened today, her body had been changed. The cutting and sewing were as if they had never been. For the first time since she was a child, she experienced her body without pain. Now she stood in rippling water, without pain, full of sensations she had never imagined, thankful for this blessing, however brief.

  In the grove by the river, Jacent was talking with a girl, the daughter of two of Jory’s people. She looked something like Metty, though she said her name was Lidasu, and she list
ened while he told her about Heaven, while he even cried a little about Heaven, which he missed very much.

  “Do you have a mother there?” she asked him as she patted him and rocked him in her arms. He hadn’t mentioned a mother.

  “Well, yes,” he murmured. “Though I don’t know her very well. We’re raised by family groups in Heaven, and who our biological parents were isn’t considered very important.”

  “That’s all right,” she said comfortingly. “I’ll be your mother for a while.”

  And in the acropolis, Curvis stalked wildly about, looking for the damned dragons who had, just as Jory said, gone away.

  Asner followed him there and asked him, “What is it, Curvis?”

  “My whole life!” he shouted. “That’s what it is!”

  “It’s everyone’s lives, Curvis. You’re not alone. We’re all in it.”

  “I don’t care about everyone! Not you old crocks staggering around, not any of you. I cared about Danivon! I thought he was something special, but look at him! Mention the Hobbs Land Gods and he’s like an old woman! And he cares about nothing but Fringe! I asked him to get out of here with me, and he won’t leave her. What difference does she make now? Ha? So, the hell with them. Now I care about me, old man.”

  Asner tried to think of something comforting to say and couldn’t. Curvis was raging, not listening. Curvis didn’t want to hear. Curvis wanted to do something, anything.

  While Asner watched impotently, Curvis got into the flier Jacent had brought, took it upward in a tight spiral, and turned away eastward, his actions betraying his intent. Curvis was returning to Tolerance. Curvis intended to find out if the Brannigan creatures had any use for him.

  In the lowe of the evening, Danivon took Fringe by the hand and led her from Jory’s house out onto the hillside.

  “Come,” he begged her. “The end is coming, Fringe. Let’s end as lovers.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Have we time to be lovers, Danivon?”

  “Why not?”

  “To be truly lovers, Danivon? There’s time enough for passion, but it seems an unworthy choice for our last hours. There seems very little point.”

  “Pleasure? Would that be sufficient reason?”

  “Well then, if it would please you….”

  He wavered between tears and laughter, between anguish and anger. “No, it would not please me with you in that mood, lady. Sit by me then, here in the shelter of the trees. If you’re not moved to be my lover, be my comrade. Tell yourself we’re resting up for battle.”

  This she could do. They sat beneath the great tree, not far from the two stones, Danivon with his back against the trunk, Fringe against his chest, his arms loosely about her. The view westward was of the meadows, a wandering streamlet, then a line of forest below the massif rearing its bulk against the horizon, smooth and glowing in the last of the light.

  Seeing them there, Bertran and Nela came up the slope and sat down not far away, the feathered gylph cuddled close beneath a furry arm, in her own place.

  “I keep thinking how I’ve always wanted to be a real girl,” whispered Nela, yet not so softly they could not hear her. “I sound like Pinocchio, don’t I? Wanting to be a real person.”

  “Who is Pinocchio?” asked Fringe, firmly resisting the picture she was getting from Nela’s thoughts.

  “A fairy-tale puppet. A wooden doll who wanted to be real. Just as I did. I wanted to be a real woman. All that time on the sideshow stage, all those years with Aunt Sizzy, somehow whenever I thought about the future, I saw myself as a real woman. With a family and children….”

  “I never thought of myself like that,” said Fringe in surprise. “Never once like that.”

  Bertran said, “When we first started at the circus, I used to imagine finding our father and saying, ‘I’m your son. I’m the boy you went off and left, so look at me. You didn’t need to run away. I’m a man you can be proud of.’”

  “I thought that too,” said Danivon. “I wondered who my father was, why he had let me go. I thought of finding him someday and amazing him with my …”

  “With your manliness,” said Nela, extending a wing and stretching it. “And with your beauty and good sense.”

  Danivon smiled, almost laughed.

  Bertran said, “My other dreams, the swimming, flying dreams, they were only … sensual, I suppose. Muscles and tendons finding an outlet, playing out their purpose in fantasy….”

  “I know,” Nela murmured. “Me too.”

  “I used to make plans for the time we’d be separated,” he went on musingly. “I wanted to be an explorer. I wanted to do all the things, go all the places we couldn’t go. Mountain climbing.” He stretched a furry paw, miming the action. “Deep-sea diving. I wanted to go hang gliding. I wanted to jump out of airplanes….”

  Fringe resisted the surge of their thought, their feelings, firmly rejecting any perception of them except what she could see, what she could hear. She felt their presences within her dwindle, even as Jory had predicted.

  “Instead of giving Nela wings, the device should have given them to you,” she said to Bertran.

  Danivon asked, “Are you reconciled to the device then, Fringe? Do you accept it?”

  “Never!” she replied firmly. “But I can be grateful that it saved me and rebuilt me even though I have told it I will not be possessed, not even for my own good.”

  “It would have been interesting to have the experience,” he said, not remembering he was still having it.

  “You did not think so before. You ran,” she said. It was not an accusation but a statement of fact.

  “I did. I was afraid. I’m not afraid now.”

  “Nor I,” said Nela, turning restlessly in Bertran’s arms, opening her eyes to take in the sky flecked with sunset, wondering at all the memories that suddenly assailed her. Jory’s turtle story, so much like her own. Why had Jory told it?

  “Why did Jory talk about the turtle?” she asked, pulling herself a little away from Bertran.

  “Because it was about Jory herself,” said Fringe with a sudden flash of insight.

  Nela said, “I’ve been thinking about it. That’s how she became what she was … is, by being like the turtle. Because she knew somehow that this … all this is just a sideshow….”

  Fringe considered this. Had Jory known that comfortable lives pass away, that love is only for a time, that beyond human passions and affections and concerns, beyond human destiny lies the dark of the heights, the loneliness of flight, and beyond that … the eternal burning of the stars? And beyond them …?

  The main event? Something other, wondrous, utterly beyond human conception?

  Danivon whispered to her, “What are you thinking?”

  She sat up, her brow furrowed, hearing only his words, not his feelings. “I am thinking of the far stars. And of the times we made love and I told myself it wouldn’t last.”

  “You didn’t really want it to last,” Nela said to her across the little space between them, a puzzled expression in her eyes. “You don’t want to be tied by love. Oh, but I do!”

  Fringe nodded slowly, accepting Nela’s judgment. If there had been something between Danivon and herself, it wouldn’t have lasted, but not necessarily because of Danivon. She herself would have ended it. She might have blamed Danivon when it happened, feeling wounded in that exasperating way one did even when one had provoked one’s own pain, but in truth, she would have done it herself.

  She would have done it herself, because … because …

  “What is it?” asked Danivon. “What is it, Fringe?”

  She shook her head. What was it? It would have been good to give Souile comfort and joy, but not good enough to have been the Professional-class daughter Souile had dreamed of. It would have been good if Char had loved her, but not good enough for her to become the daughter he had wanted. Even during their sentimental clinging, she’d realized they were playing at reality, making promises neither coul
d keep….

  Because of this longing. This need. Which Char may have had as well as she. Though with a tragic difference, for he had dragged others into his dream and then hated them for being there, burdening him.

  Anyone had the right to dream. But only free beings had the right to go questing. Only beings unenslaved by anything, unencumbered by anything, wearing no label.

  As she was. Unlabeled. Not daughter. Not lover. Not Enforcer.

  Certainly not a contented part of the Arbai Device.

  She put her hand between her breasts, where Zasper’s pendant had hung. Just as she is. Had he known what she was, what she wanted to be? Had he known she needed to be an unlabeled thing?

  “Not tied by anyone’s love,” she said, seeing how the words tasted. Were they true? “Not even Zasper’s. Not any longer.”

  “Oh, Fringe,” said Bertran.

  “Not even our friend, Fringe?” asked Nela.

  “Always your friend,” she said. She had sworn so. As for the rest, she didn’t know. She drew herself up and away. Something pulling at her. Something picking at her. Not letting her be. Denying her peace. Nibbling at contentment.

  “What is it?” Danivon asked again, startled by her expression.

  “I want … I want to go. Away.”

  “You ridiculous woman.” He shook his head, shaking her. “How will you go anywhere? You think you can find a safe way out of this? Where is there to go?”

  “Yes,” cried Nela. “Where is there to go!”

  She came to herself, owl-eyed. “Well, maybe nowhere,” she admitted, surprised at this intrusion of reality. “But still, if I could find a way, I would go. I needed to tell you that, Danivon. I would go!”

  Danivon shook her again, wryly angry. “You mean without me, of course. Curvis told me I wanted you mostly because you wanted something else. Maybe he was right.”

  Nela looked up at Bertran and said anxiously, “There is no one right way to be. There are always some who want something else. Even if they’re not sure what it is.”