Cirque

by Terry Carr

  “Go with you to Salamander?” Livy said softly. “Leave the house?”

  Annalie nodded. “Leave it to Mithra; that’s what she wants anyway. We’ll let her have a taste of what it’s like to be monitor.”

  “But you’re sick!”

  “No I’m not.” Annalie threw back her head and twirled, her feet bare in the warm grass of the field. “Oh, Livy, don’t you see? I’ve lost my vision, but I’ve become complete in myself. There’s nothing wrong with me physically! I feel better than I ever have before.” She stopped and looked fully at Livy, trying to project her sense of wholeness through her eyes alone. “This house has been a prison to me for so long, but today I can go anywhere! Come with me, if you love me.”

  “You know I love you,” Livy mumbled unhappily. Her face had gone vague again; she was seeing and listening somewhere else. “But leave Mithra to be monitor?”

  Annalie smiled. “She’s telling you right now to go with me, isn’t she? Livy, you’re not jealous of her, are you?”

  “Of course not. She isn’t ready, that’s all. Not to do it all by herself—and Edouard is sick too.” Livy shook her head, her light brown hair bouncing. “I can’t leave now. And you mustn’t go alone.”

  There was determination in Livy’s face; Annalie knew she wouldn’t be able to change the girl’s mind. Livy is so strong, she thought; she’ll never let her talent disintegrate as I did … out of fear.

  But she can’t see into my mind today. No one can; I’m cut off.

  Annalie sighed, and shrugged. “I suppose you’re right—I should rest. I do feel tired again. Let’s go back inside, and I’ll sleep.”

  The relief on Livy’s face leaped like a flame. “Come on; I’ll have Sherrard make you some hot herb tea.” Livy took her hand and led her back inside the house. As they passed through the door Annalie felt the dimness of the interior fall on her like a shroud.

  She allowed herself to be led to her room, where Livy bundled her into blankets, fussing over her. Annalie lay back and closed her eyes. “I don’t think I want my tea,” she said faintly. “I just want to sleep. You’ll tell Sherrard not to disturb me, won’t you?”

  “Of course.” Livy stood for a moment looking down at her, till Annalie forced her breathing to become slow and steady. Then Livy went quietly out of the room and closed the door behind her.

  After several minutes Annalie opened her eyes and sat up. She tiptoed to her dresser and took from it a woven white shawl, which she wrapped around herself. Opening her door silently, she looked down the hallway: Livy had closed the door to the common room, and Sherrard was nowhere in sight.

  They won’t miss me till I’ve gotten away, she thought, slipping soundlessly into the hall, past the common room and out the front door into the sun.

  Jamie parked his cart under a towering stand of pine trees a few hundred meters inland from the Cathedral of the Five Elements and stood for a while in the shade. It was more than an hour till sundown, so no cart-hoppers had arrived yet for tonight’s service; he was alone in the quiet afternoon.

  A breeze came up, stirring his hair. It brought smells of wide grassy fields and the sound of an occasional bird call. Other than that, all was peaceful: a silent late afternoon in the inner city of Cirque.

  Quite a contrast to what’s happening out on the river, he thought, remembering the broadcast of the attack on the tourist boat. He began walking toward the Cathedral, looking past its high bonded-brick chimney at the lush growths of low trees and flowering bushes that spread down to the river edge. But he saw no sign of either the tentacled creature or the wrecked tourist craft. The river made one last great curve here before plunging into the Abyss; the boat would be downriver around that curve.

  Well, you tried, Gloriana, he thought with a trace of satisfaction. What will you do now that one of them has gotten out?

  He shook his head; he didn’t want to think about Gloriana now. He turned his attention to the high facade of the Cathedral as he approached. Quite an old building, its doors carved with scenes from the past of Cirque. Jamie was no student of history, but he recognized the figure of The Venerable Ram-Tseu in one of the friezes.

  Inside was a high-ceilinged foyer paneled in wood. A young couple wearing outlander clothes sat in the corner; they looked up eagerly as he came in. Jamie smiled faintly and nodded to them.

  “How does one see the priestess?” he asked.

  The young woman said, “Oh, she’s awfully busy today. We’ve been waiting for hours, and we have an audience!”

  “I’m not surprised that she’s been busy,” Jamie said in an ironic tone. All she needs today is a couple of outland questers to waste her time, he thought. Jamie had talked with outlanders once or twice; they were stupefyingly boring, interested only in weather and crop patterns.

  “It has been an exciting day, hasn’t it?” the young woman said. “Those poor people on that boat!”

  “Yes,” Jamie said. The foyer was empty except for these two; he sat on the bench beside them. “Your first visit to Cirque?” he asked conversationally.

  “Our very first!” she said. “There are so many people here, just like in the broadcasts. But it’s almost like home here around the Cathedral.”

  “We’re from Springs Crossing,” the young man said; his voice was quiet, almost apologetic.

  Jamie took him in with a single glance: young, blond, callow, a stocky build and a face without personality. “You see the broadcasts way down there?” Jamie asked. He noticed that there was a door at one end of the foyer, evidently leading into the Cathedral.

  “Most people don’t,” said the woman. “Your faith has to be strong enough to focus; then you can sometimes see and hear things from the city. Salvator and I watch the broadcasts every day when we can.”

  “Cissy works at the processing plant,” the young man said, “changing hydrogen into nitrogen. We met because my dad’s land was going bad, so we called her in, and—”

  “She reconstituted your fields,” Jamie said. “My family did most of the research in transubstantiation two centuries ago. We were in mining.”

  “Oh,” said the woman, Cissy; there was disappointment in her voice. “You’re not really from Cirque then; you just moved here.”

  “We own an estate on the West Edge,” Jamie said shortly. “I grew up in Cirque, and so did my mother, and her mother too.”

  The woman was immediately apologetic; she dropped her gaze as she said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …” She had such a plain face that her embarrassment was painful to Jamie.

  To change the subject, he asked, “Is there someone here I could see to ask for an audience?”

  The young man, Salvator, said, “Well, there’s a disciple who comes out sometimes. I guess you should ask him.”

  Jamie nodded and glanced at the door to the Cathedral. He settled back on the bench, and an uncomfortable silence fell on them. Jamie thought of what Gloriana had said earlier—that he’d be an easy convert once he attended the service here. He smiled to himself. If these youths were an example of the followers of the Five Elements, he didn’t see any chance of his joining them. Of course they’d be taken in by such a temple; they were outlanders who probably knew nothing of the world beyond their small town. No doubt a lot of the less sophisticated citizens of Cirque were followers too. But Jamie had studied comparative religion at the Inner School; he had even toured much of Earth a few years ago, going as far as the cities of the Mississippi.

  He became aware that Cissy was studying him with sidelong glances. When he met her eyes she started, looked away, then turned back to him and said, “I didn’t mean to stare. But aren’t you the man who was in the glider this morning when the Beast first came out?”

  The Beast? Oh yes; that was how they thought of those creatures. He smiled at her. “There was more than one of them, you know. We went back in a gravity flier and searched the bottom. … There must have been thousands of them down there, crawling over each other.”

>   “Yes, we know,” Salvator said. “There was another broadcast when they tried to spray—”

  “One of them got out,” said Cissy. “At the Final Cataract, right near here. It disappeared.”

  “Cissy thinks it might be—”

  “It’s probably coming right for the Cathedral!” she said excitedly. “It would, you know; it hates everything good. That’s what it is—it’s hatred come to life, all our sins grown into those awful monsters …”

  She noticed Jamie’s look of skepticism and stopped talking. Jamie glanced at Salvator, waiting for him to add something. But the young man was watching Cissy, taking his cue from her, and when she fell silent he did too.

  Something jolted inside Jamie: a sense of familiarity. Something about the way Salvator deferred to Cissy, let her do the talking, the thinking …

  Yes, of course: it was the same with him and Gloriana. Jamie always followed her lead; he made suggestions but never decisions. He never really told her when he felt strongly about something, in case she wouldn’t agree. The idea of marrying, for instance; he hadn’t urged her, tried to convince her...

  He shook his head. Why should he think of marrying Gloriana now? She obviously didn’t want him, not as a husband; and she was probably right as usual.

  There were no answers to that problem, and worrying over it was painful. He said, “If I could see the priestess, we could discuss what I saw today. It might help her somehow—don’t you think so?” He addressed the question to Salvator.

  “Well, I don’t know what the priestess—”

  “Oh, yes!” Cissy said eagerly. “Didn’t you say you’d gone down into the Abyss again? That wasn’t broadcast, was it?”

  “Maybe we could all three see her at the same time,” Jamie said, speaking again to Salvator, holding his eyes, trying to draw a response. Salvator’s gaze wavered.

  The door to the Cathedral opened, and a slender boy emerged. He saw that there were now three people waiting, hesitated, then said to Cissy, “The priestess is ready to see you.”

  Cissy stood quickly, taking Salvator’s hand. To the disciple she said, “This man is with us; he should come too.”

  The boy glanced at Jamie and nodded. He led them through the door into the dimness of the Cathedral, where the roof arched away overhead and their footsteps on the hard earth floor were echoless. They came to a large door; the disciple knocked, then opened it and stood aside to let them through.

  They entered a small, spartan chamber lit by a single candle on an altar. Jamie’s eyes were adjusting to the dimness, but the figure of the priestess was backlit by the candle flame so he couldn’t see her features. Her hair seemed afire in the dim room.

  She bowed her head slightly and said, “Great peace to you.” Cissy and Salvator knelt before her, and Jamie stood uncertainly. Should he kneel even though he wasn’t of their faith?

  But the priestess didn’t seem to notice. She touched Cissy’s head lightly, and Salvator’s, and they rose. Cissy said, “We’ve brought someone with us; I hope you won’t mind. He was in the glider when—”

  “I recognized you,” said the priestess, holding out her hand to Jamie. He hesitated, then shook it. “You are welcome here, Jamie Halle,” she said.

  “You even know my name?”

  The priestess smiled lightly and shrugged. “I know a lot about you. For a while today I was in love with you, you know.” She saw his look of puzzlement and added, “During the broadcast this morning I was in the mind of Gloriana.”

  Jamie retreated into silent confusion. Gloriana was in love with him? He was surprised, and then surprised that he was surprised—hadn’t she whispered words of love during their nights together? But she had never repeated them during the days.

  The priestess said, “Perhaps we should talk of that when we have time alone. But there are more important things for us to speak of now; there is the Beast.” She turned to Cissy and Salvator. “You come at a time of great danger. I apologize for keeping you waiting.”

  Cissy said, “We understand. It’s wonderful just to be in the Cathedral.” Her eyes went back and forth from the priestess to Jamie.

  Jamie became aware of someone else in the dimly lit room, a lean man who stood silently to the side, his eyes burning as he watched them. The priestess, noticing Jamie’s gaze, started and said, “My apologies. This is Gregorian, who has fashioned our Fire for the service.”

  Gregorian nodded silently, eyes boring into Jamie. Jamie had the impression of being in the presence of a predatory animal just waking from sleep.

  “You’re a fire sculptor!” said Cissy. “It must be wonderful to work with the sacred elements.”

  “I’m not a believer,” Gregorian said. “I’m more impressed by …” His eyes shifted back to Jamie. “I didn’t see the broadcast this morning, but I did see the one this afternoon when one of those creatures escaped. If you saw them up close, what can you tell us about them?”

  Jamie shrugged, and suppressed a grimace at the stab of pain in his wrenched shoulder. “They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen. Like wild animals, enormous and strong; but I had the feeling … they almost seemed intelligent.”

  “They are intelligent,” said the priestess. “They have the intelligence of eternity, fashioned from hate. And they are not separate creatures, but only one: the Beast. It wants to destroy all life above it on the surface.”

  “But it can’t have any power against the Elements,” said Cissy. “Can it?”

  “That will be up to us,” said the priestess. “We created the Beast ourselves; we will have to focus the powers of the Elements to dissolve it.”

  Cissy said anxiously, “Do you think the Beast will come here? How can we fight it?”

  “Our services tonight will open us to love, not to hate. If the Beast comes, it will find nothing to fight.”

  Cissy nodded, bowing her head, and Salvator followed her gesture. But Jamie met Gregorian’s eyes and saw disbelief there. A sense of horror filled him. “You mean you aren’t planning any defense at all against that creature?” he asked.

  “There can be no defense,” said the priestess. “Only love and the greater awareness of Spirit.”

  “It will see that we’re no different from itself,” Cissy explained eagerly. “That all creatures are made of the Five Elements, that we’re all one holy being.”

  The damp chill of the tiny room seemed to press in on Jamie. Could these people be so naive as to think that the monsters he had seen this morning would respond to their mystical notions?

  “My father was killed by a puma,” Jamie said. “A creature made of your Five Elements, just as he was. But it mauled him so badly that he bled to death. It was a wild animal, and these monsters are no different.”

  “They are different,” said the priestess. “The creatures you saw are not animals—they are sin created into life. And sin is weakness.”

  Cissy and Salvator stared silently at her, belief washing all thought from their faces. But Gregorian looked at the floor, his mouth twisted in something like pain. He said, “Believe what you want, priestess, but I have laser knives in my toolbox, and if that thing comes here I’m going to use them.”

  “No, you mustn’t!” Salamander reached a hand toward Gregorian, then quickly withdrew it. “There is no way to defeat the Beast by fighting. It is part Spirit, no matter how dark; that is what we must reach.”

  Silence filled the small, cold room; for a moment Jamie imagined he could hear the river splashing by outside the walls. He thought of the great Cathedral filled with believers like Cissy and Salvator, meekly sitting on the packed-earth floor while a tentacled monster broke in and attacked the assemblage, tearing at bodies as it had struck at the gravity flier that morning. He remembered seeing his father’s body when it was brought back from the mountains, slashed so badly it was hardly recognizable.

  He met Gregorian’s dark eyes, and understanding flashed between them.

  Are we the only ones who understand? J
amie wondered. Just the two of us?

  Then the candle flared for an instant, and he saw the look on the face of the priestess, lit surprisingly clearly for just a moment. Her green eyes were wide and uncertain.

  Then it isn’t just us unbelievers, he thought. The priestess is afraid too.

  The realization gave him no comfort at all.

  The temporally blind seem incomplete:

  beings who see in portions. Yet they feel more.

  They know uncertainty, and sometimes accept it.

  It takes only a moment.

  —The Book of Causes

  THE FLIGHT to the northern Guard field was a short one. Nikki watched the green fields and the widely spaced villas of the North Edge flow past beneath the Guard flier; once she saw a herd of zebras that trotted away as they droned overhead. Robin, whose spirits had revived quickly once they were off the river, pointed out the herd to the millipede, who smiled impassively as it gazed downward. Nikki listened to the quiet conversation of the grey-haired pilot and the young Guardian, Gloriana.

  “It’s almost dark now,” the pilot was saying. “By the time we could refill the spray tanks it’d be night. There wouldn’t be much chance of finding that thing in the dark.”

  “So that’s it,” Gloriana said. “We let it escape.”

  “We can go back in the morning,” the man said. “What’s it going to do at night anyway, out on the surface where it’s never been? Probably hole up somewhere. You’ve got to remember, it’s lost—probably scared and confused.”

  “But if it’s used to the heat down in the Abyss,” Gloriana said, “what will it do when it gets cold tonight?”

  The pilot shrugged. “Crawl under something, wrap those tentacles around itself and sleep. Or maybe it’ll head back down into the Abyss.”

  “Maybe,” Gloriana said without conviction. “But if it panics, looking for warmth, it might break into one of the villas around here.”

  Nikki sat forward in her seat, reached a hand out to touch Gloriana’s shoulder. “You were trying to kill it, weren’t you? And you still want to.”