Cirque

by Terry Carr

  “Gregorian is the fire sculptor, isn’t he?” said Alton, leaning forward to look at the girl.

  “Yes,” she said. “He’s supposed to be famous or something. Nikki thinks so anyway. But she thinks she’s in love with him, too. I don’t think she is; I think she’s crazy about Jordan.”

  “Robin, you talk too much,” said a tall man sitting next to the girl, and she abruptly fell silent.

  Annalie found herself staring at the two people beside the vast fireplace, Nikki and Gregorian. Their figures seemed to waver in the air, outlines blurring. The entire Cathedral hall shimmered darkly as perspectives shifted; for a moment she saw the crowd as though she were looking down from the altar, and Gregorian stood close to her, his face set with that intensity that she knew so well. Confusion filled her: Gregorian seemed so familiar, yet at the same time so different from this morning. What was he thinking?

  Then she heard his mind: Nikki seems so happy tonight! Is it just because of the capsule she took, going through all her changes and putting herself back together? But I’ve never seen her like this; there must be something more.

  Nikki was thinking: He’s high from something—not just his fire sculpture either; he’s usually tight and jumpy before a showing. Should I tell him now about Jordan?

  (It’s happening, Annalie thought. My talent is coming back.)

  They felt tentative in each other’s company; they had happinesses they were afraid to tell about. Annalie felt the weight of guilt in both of them, and the connection drew their thoughts together within her.

  They met and merged in Annalie’s mind; Gregorian saw what had happened between Nikki and Jordan, and Nikki caught an instant memory of his encounter with the priestess. Relief washed over them; guilts that a moment before had cut sharply into them vanished. They hugged like old friends.

  “You needed someone else,” Gregorian said aloud. “I think I must demand things you can’t give.”

  Nikki smiled as she stepped back from him. “You may have gotten more than you bargained for,” she said. “Salamander won’t be as easily dominated as I was, you know.”

  That made him laugh. “You’ve never been easy for me,” he said.

  They looked into each other’s eyes, and warmth suffused Annalie.

  She’s there again! someone said in the distance of her mind. Annalie! Can you hear me?

  Instantly she was shocked back into her self. She became aware of the hard-packed earth beneath her, and she drew in a long breath as her vision stabilized: the great Cathedral hall, the high fireplace decorated with intricate reliefs carved into its bonded-brick facade. She saw Gregorian leading Nikki over to the red-haired priestess to introduce them.

  The last voice in her mind had been Livy’s. Livy, back at the monitor’s house, had been able to touch her mind from even that great distance.

  I really am getting well, Annalie thought. But the surge of relief that came to her was mixed with disappointment. Do I really want my talent to come back? she wondered. These last hours have been so wonderful!

  “Service is about to start,” said Alton. “Fire’s coming up.”

  Indeed the flames were rising: red coils of light flickered upward, growing more numerous as Annalie watched. In moments the entire fireplace grate was alight, silhouetting the people on the altar. She saw Nikki and Gregorian move away from the priestess, coming down the steps to take places on the floor near her. Nikki touched Jordan’s arm and smiled as she sat down next to him; Gregorian nodded to him as Nikki introduced them. It seemed to Annalie that Gregorian’s gaze was measuring the teacher, but Jordan only smiled and nodded back.

  The priestess took her place in front of Fire; her long red hair glowed in the light of the flames, her white cape came alive with roseate colorings. Annalie smelled the tangy odor of burning chemicals.

  But before the priestess could begin the service, a small woman went up to her and began speaking intensely; the woman’s face was stern, as though she were warning the priestess about something.

  “What’s Gloriana saying to her?” Robin wondered aloud. She turned to Annalie: “Gloriana’s the Guardian, you know. She’s all upset about that thing that got out of the Abyss.”

  The priestess held out her hands in a calming gesture as she spoke to Gloriana, but the dark-haired woman’s expression grew sharper as she replied. Jamie Halle got up from the crowd and went forward to join the conversation; he seemed to be arguing with Gloriana. Annalie leaned forward, staring at them.

  Again her vision seemed to blur; she felt the heat of the rising Fire behind her now, and Jamie Halle’s face swam into focus close to her. She was saying, “This isn’t your business, Jamie. Sit down!” Every muscle in her body was tight.

  “It isn’t your business either,” Jamie said. “This is a temple service, and you’re interrupting.”

  “I am sorry, but he is right,” said the priestess. “We must begin while Fire is on the rise.” She touched Annalie’s hand gently (no, Gloriana’s hand!). “There will be no trouble here tonight, only a simple service to bring these people into the greater awareness.”

  She fought to control the anger that was rising in her. “I’ve seen your greater awareness! So have all the others here—your vision was broadcast today, remember? Why do you think they’re so frightened? I want your assurance that you won’t send them into a full-scale panic.”

  “My vision came many hours ago,” said the priestess. “I now have more understanding of the Beast; there will be no need for anyone to fear it.”

  “Gloriana, you’re not helping here,” cried Jamie. “Don’t you see? You’re letting your job obsess you!”

  She didn’t like the way he was talking to her—calmly, patiently. And the way he seemed to put so much faith in this priestess—Of course: Jamie had become a convert already!

  She pointed a warning finger at the priestess. “I’ll sit with the rest of the congregation. But I have officers stationed in the crowd—if you let things get out of hand, we’ll have to stop the service.”

  She turned away angrily, and as she went down the altar steps Jamie walked by her side. She felt rather than saw his anxious glances in her direction. So Jamie thought that she was obsessed by her job! Well, obviously he didn’t understand that the kind of responsibility she had couldn’t be shrugged aside. When had Jamie ever had to take responsibility for anything?

  Annalie! Annalie, can you hear me?

  Livy’s voice. But who was Livy? Gloriana knew nothing about the monitor or her assistants.

  —Yes I do! thought Annalie. Livy, I hear you! Are you still there?

  But her vision was fading; she was once more in her own body, sitting between Alton and Robin, and the muscles of her legs were beginning to cramp with tension. She shifted position quickly, stretching her legs out before her and leaning back to brace herself on the heels of her hands. She felt bewildered by the conflicting emotions she’d felt in the people here, and she closed her eyes as she tried to calm herself.

  This isn’t the way it’s always been before, she thought. This confusion; this fragmentation. I don’t have all of my talent back, only flashes of it, and it’s not enough. I’m getting caught in one mind after another, never getting the whole vision.

  Livy! Where are you?

  But there was nothing in her mind now except her own whirling thoughts. Am I fighting it? she wondered. Am I keeping myself from opening enough to hear everyone’s mind? If only there weren’t so much fear here!

  She felt cold and drew the shawl around her. She opened her eyes and saw that Salamander was beginning the service.

  The priestess stood before the swelling brightness of Fire, and as she slowly raised her arms her cape spread around her like great red-tinged wings. For moments she stood motionless, her head thrown back, nostrils flaring as she drew in a deep breath. The crowd in the Cathedral had fallen silent.

  “Behold Fire,” said the priestess, her soft voice carrying clearly in the quiet of the Cathed
ral. The flames leaped behind her, Fire still growing, filling most of the vast grate now. Annalie’s eyes were drawn to the flames as they coiled slowly upward: tongues of red and gleaming black that flicked around and through each other. Rising, continually rising. They moved with unnatural languor, like drifting smoke.

  Gregorian’s artistry, thought Annalie; but the realization did nothing to diminish the hypnotic quality of the sight. She felt herself leaning forward, sensed the rhythms of her breath and blood slowing to match the calm coiling of the flames.

  “Taste Air,” said the priestess, and now she drew in a long, deliberate breath, her dark tunic swelling. Annalie shifted quietly back into a lotus and began to breathe with her. The air smelled clean and clear, faintly pungent.

  “Continue,” said the priestess softly. “Let the purity fill your body.”

  Annalie breathed deeply, matching her intakes of air with the sounds of those around her. She continued to focus her gaze on the quietly rising coils of flame. In a few moments she realized that everyone was breathing more quickly, following Salamander’s lead. She began to feel light, and the flames seemed to merge in her eyes; individual tentacles of flame blended and became one great fire.

  “Now pause,” said Salamander, “and feel Earth beneath you. Experience its vastness; you are touching the entire planet.”

  Annalie could feel the truth of that: this one small spot of hard-packed ground on which she sat was the surface of a world, its size beyond comprehension. Ancient plates of stone half a continent wide drifted beneath her with the patience of eons, and beneath that dreaming crust lay the pressure-boiling magma of the planet’s core: the Fire at the center of Earth. Annalie felt her awareness magnified beyond herself, beyond the Cathedral and all of Cirque; she was a part of the entire planet, the very atoms that made her transmuted from the living dust of her world.

  “There is one more Element of your physical being,” said Salamender. “Erich, open the doors.”

  Annalie heard doors roll back behind her, and immediately the sounds within the great Cathedral altered subtly: the faint, unnoticed echoing of people’s movements and breathing disappeared, and instead there was only the flat sound of open space. Even the low whispers of Fire’s flames faded.

  Beside her, Robin craned her neck to look behind; she whispered, “The whole back of the Cathedral opens up!”

  Jordan touched her hand. “Focus,” he said, and Robin turned back to look again into Fire.

  The flames leaped upward now, dancing a celebration of freedom, reaching long fingers of red and black into the open vent of the huge chimney. Annalie felt the heat of the flames growing; their warmth overwhelmed her from the front even as the cold air from outside began to move in through the open doors behind. But the flames were eerily silent, as though the Fire into which she gazed were a ghost of all Fires that had ever been.

  “If you listen well,” said the priestess, “you may hear the sounds of River Fundament; it flows past our open doors.”

  Annalie did listen; and she heard from afar, as though from the other side of the world, the gentle lapping of water in the shadows of the river edge. It was a soothing sound; listening, it seemed to her that she had heard these sounds forever, that everyone in Cirque had always heard the soft flow of the Fundament as it coursed smoothly through the heart of the city on its way to the Abyss.

  “Water, and Earth, and Air,” said Salamander, once more raising her arms, spreading her pink-tinted cape like some all-enfolding mother eagle. “And Fire. They are the worldly Elements that give birth to life. To you and to me. And as we invoke the sense of these Elements tonight, we create life within ourselves—and the final Element, Spirit.”

  She fell silent. She lowered her arms slowly, leaned her head back and stood motionless as Fire moved behind her, throwing out its heat and light over the heads of the seated congregation.

  How strange, thought Annalie, that I should feel so much life in this room when everyone is still.

  She seemed to float in the air, alone and yet whole in a way she had never known even as monitor of the city. Fire’s warmth was suddenly inside her, a part of her, and she understood that its heat was not just the product of chemicals reacting in a hearth, but something that happened everywhere at every moment in each creature that lived.

  “Let Spirit come,” said Salamander. The great Cathedral was completely silent, awaiting the miracle.

  And suddenly there was a piercing scream behind Annalie, a child’s shrill cry. A man yelled loudly, and Annalie heard thumpings and curses and a rush of rising voices.

  For a moment she continued to float in her dreamlike reverie, then with a jolt she came out of it. She turned to look behind her, craning to see over the heads of the crowd. She saw only confusion, people scrambling to their feet and pressing toward the front of the Cathedral. A kaleidoscope of fragmented thoughts buffeted her mind as the congregation awoke into terror; the Cathedral seemed to shake with the force of it.

  Annalie tried to stand up, but she staggered and fell against Robin, clutching at her to regain her balance. She heard Robin cry, “It’s that thing again! It’s that thing!”

  Annalie stood swaying in the confused mass of people. As she looked to the back of the Cathedral she saw a pale tentacle whip through the air, and there were more screams. People pushed against her, driven forward by the press of bodies, and she grabbed desperately at someone’s arm to keep from going down. Crimson waves of fear pounded at her mind.

  Through a dark mist she saw the crowd parting and falling back as the tentacled creature surged toward her. It was clearly visible now, the matted grey and white hair of its body pulsing rapidly as its tentacles lashed out to clear a path before it. One of those tentacles struck an old man in the chest and threw him bodily through the air to crash against the backs of the fleeing crowd; the old man slid to the floor in an awkward heap. The monster came on with incredible speed, scuttling forward over the cleared dirt floor.

  Pain crushed Annalie, and the room whirled over her; but then it was gone, and her senses were filled with the sharp smell of river-wet tentacles, the salty taste of blood under her tongue. But it wasn’t her tongue, it was someone else’s, for new impressions assailed her immediately. She felt herself gasping for breath as bodies fell and crushed her; she felt her fingers scrabbling vainly against the bonded-brick walls, trying to find escape; she tasted dirt as she was driven headfirst into the ground by falling bodies.

  Somewhere she knew that none of this was happening to her, that she still stood at the front of the Cathedral, staggering back as the crowd fled from the monster; but she couldn’t stop the assault of other people’s minds, and suddenly she realized that she was falling, helpless to control her own body.

  She felt her arm wrenched as someone grabbed her and held her up, and Jordan’s face flashed in her vision for a moment. Arms wrapped around her waist and lifted her; she screamed, feeling tentacles and smelling wet fur, but it was still Jordan, running now as he carried her up to the altar in front of the great fireplace.

  She came back to her own mind then and saw the panicked crowd fanning out below the altar, pushing and shoving to the sides as the tentacled beast drove forward. For one sharp instant she saw it so clearly that she realized it was not fur that covered the heaving body-sac of the creature, but patches of rough bristles quivering with horrible life. She looked for its eyes and found none: it was sightless, a raging beast that scuttled forward, flailing obstacles aside with its tentacles.

  Something sharp lanced into Annalie, and she felt the sting of tears; her throat constricted with horror and … pity?

  Pity, for this blind monster that struck out at everything in its path?

  But the feeling passed as quickly as it had come, and she realized that Jordan had put her down, that she was huddled against the wall of the chimney between Jordan and someone else … the fat girl she had met earlier: Nikki.

  Suddenly she heard a new sound, a sharp crac
kling that cut through the air like parchment being torn. Cries reverberated in the Cathedral again, and she saw several Guard officers in their grey uniforms pushing through the crowd from the sides of the room where they had been stationed. They had their weapons out—heavy proton guns whose beams left faint yellow trails in the air as they fired at the monster.

  Most of their shots were wild; the officers were being jostled by the panicked crowd, and they were firing too quickly. Yellow lines crisscrossed in the air, and the Cathedral walls exploded in small puffs where the beams struck. A young woman in outlander clothing was hit and thrown back, screaming shrilly, and Annalie doubled over as she felt the pain stab into her stomach.

  Jordan pushed her to the floor and crouched over her. “Where are you hit?” he asked urgently.

  “I’m not hit. Please, let me up, we’ve got to—”

  “No, stay down,” he said.

  The whirling panic inside her was growing, flashes of terror beat on her from a hundred minds at once. A yellow beam sizzled over them and struck the face of the great fireplace, sending shards of brick down on them.

  Someone was shouting, “Stop it! Stop it!” A woman’s voice—Gloriana’s? No, someone else.

  Some of the beams had struck the monster; she saw it convulse, rising on its tentacles, and again those great bristled limbs lashed out, flailing through empty air now that the crowd had pulled away. A beam hit one of the tentacles, severing it halfway along its length; the creature recoiled, thrashing wildly. The severed tentacle twitched by itself on the dirt floor, jumping into the air and falling back to soil into a tight ball that shuddered and shuddered as it died.

  “Please don’t kill it! Please!” someone cried. The creature flattened itself to the floor and lay there for long moments, its body-sac heaving convulsively. Then it began to crawl toward the front of the Cathedral, toward Annalie.

  She saw the millipede go toward the creature slowly, and she heard a thin, reed-like voice saying, “Be calm, be calm, you will not be killed. You have come to a holy place …”

  But as the millipede approached the monster its tentacles thrashed out again; one of them struck the millipede and flung it backward through the air. The millipede thudded sickeningly against the face of the fireplace and lay still.