Sideshow

  If the Gods came, she would not be herself in any form, but a slave shape, a used being, a kind of puppet on invisible strings, without even the wits to resent it,

  He laid a hand on hers. “Ah, now, don’t faint.”

  She breathed deeply, noticing it was his hand that trembled. “How melodramatic!” she managed to say. “A good scare tale, hoicked up for the occasion. Did you dangle it there to see whether I’d scream and fall on the floor?”

  He smiled again, a smile that went no farther than his lips. “You didn’t, so you passed. It is remotely possible the Gods could have come here. When something happens nobody can explain, we always suspect the Gods.” Boarmus hadn’t said that, of course, but it was true, nonetheless. True enough that Danivon occasionally woke up shaking from nightmares about it. He too had been taught to fear the Gods, and something long ago in his childhood reinforced that fear. Something he could not even remember, though abandonment might have been part of it.

  “Something inexplicable has happened, has it?” she asked.

  “Dragons,” he said laconically. “Very strange mysterious dragons. Council Supervisory has been appealed to concerning these dragons. So, Council Supervisory in the person of the Provost says, ‘Danivon, my lad, get up a team and go find out. No hurry. Take your time, but find out if there’s really dragons there, or maybe some other thing that looks like dragons.’ One wonders what the ‘some other thing’ might be, of course.”

  Fringe took a deep breath and kept herself still. She had been an Enforcer for a dozen years now. She was of middling-young age, attractive still, but no longer girlish. Still, Danivon’s words were causing an inappropriately girlish reaction—that shivery, half-hysterical negation that comes when one is barely pubescent, that tantrum tumult of the mind, which screams denial at an unhearing world, before one has learned resignation in the face of unavoidable realities. She breathed quietly and reminded herself of who she was, an Enforcer in good standing. A person worthy of respect. She would not panic at the thought of the Gods, or dragons, or Danivon Luze, or any other damned thing.

  Consider dragons. What did honor require an Enforcer to do about dragons? What did her own self-image insist upon? What did her oath demand? And, come to that, what was she more frightened of? The Gods in the guise of dragons coming to Elsewhere, or herself going off with Danivon Luze? She felt the heat of him from where she sat, and she badly wanted advice.

  “What are you thinking?” Danivon asked her curiously.

  “Of a man called Zasper,” she replied soberly.

  Curvis and Danivon exchanged glances.

  Well, so, she thought. It had been Zasper who’d mentioned her name!

  The little animal put his nose in Curvis’s ear and whispered to him. Curvis gave it a square cracker that it took in tiny paws and began to nibble at, turning it around and around, making a perfect circle of it, holding the circle off and admiring it before taking another series of tiny bites around the circumference.

  “What is that?” she asked, wanting the subject changed. The little creature had pale violet fur and a long tail with a fluffy tassel at the end. Its habit seemed to be to drape the tassel over its eyes, half hiding them.

  “A pocket munk,” said Curvis.

  “Not from here?”

  “From the forests along the Roga coast.” He prodded his pocket, and another of the little animals peered sleepily forth. “Amusements,” Curvis said. “And friends. They hear people talking, then they come and repeat what they hear. Or one hears in one place, the other repeats it somewhere else. Most useful at times.”

  Fringe took a deep breath and settled herself. “Tell me whatever it is you came to say,” she demanded.

  “Do you know where Panubi is?”

  “Near the equator, somewhere south of the Curward Islands.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “It’s a continent, a place.”

  “I mean, do you know what kind of place?”

  “Hell, Danivon! A partially settled place with a lot of provinces around the edge and empty territory in the middle. Full of weirds and odds, it’s said, though it’s never really been explored. So I was told at Academy. One of Elsewhere’s little mysteries. Is that where your dragons are?”

  “Indeed. So it’s said.”

  “Send a mechanical, an automatic. Why risk people?”

  “Devices have been tried. They don’t come back with anything useful. Of course, neither have people….”

  Fringe took a deep breath. “No need to impress me, man. Or frighten me, if that’s what you’re attempting.”

  “Listen to her,” said Danivon to Curvis, miming wide-eyed admiration. “Very well, Enforcer. You’re being offered a chance to join an exploration company.”

  “How much?”

  “Would you consider fame? Honor? How about glory?”

  She grinned her bloodletting grin and fingered the fatal-hands dangles below her Enforcer badge. “Piss on that, Danivon. Only dead Enforcers get paid in glory.”

  The two men exchanged a significant glance. “Here’s the deal. Appointment as Council Enforcer, twice standard rate, weapons allowance, all expenses, and a lifetime annuity.”

  She took another deep breath. Of course, employers didn’t offer a lifetime annuity unless the odds were long against there being any substantial lifetime in which to collect. But appointment as Council Enforcer was likely bait! Then she could have a Universal Pass of her own!

  “Who else is going?” she asked.

  He looked uncomfortable as he replied, “A couple people.”

  “Who?”

  “Some strange people. What difference does it make?”

  She shrugged. He shrugged a mocking reply and got up to get another drink.

  “He won’t know for sure who all’s going until he smells ’em,” said Curvis conversationally, one massive forefinger tickling the little animals who lay close to his chest on the table before him, noses on paws, watching her.

  She stared at him, uncomprehending.

  The bald man shook his head admiringly. “He’s got this … this talent. Like … suppose there’s a situation that won’t give. A bad situation. And other Enforcers try this and they try that, and it won’t give. Danivon comes along, and he picks this one and that one and some other one, and he takes them into the situation, and all of a sudden, powee, things change.”

  “How does he do that?”

  “He says he smells ’em.” Curvis grinned at her and winked, as Danivon came back to the table. “Catalysts.”

  Fringe told herself she couldn’t handle any more of this at the moment, not Danivon, not his friend, not the little animals lying there on the table, each with its tail over its eyes, each with a little stack of now-circular crackers, each one staring at her through its tassel, as though waiting for her to do something amusing. She stood up, laying coins on the table for her own drink. “I’ll let you know. Where will I find you?”

  “We’ll find you,” said Danivon, returning to the table.

  She left it at that. As she walked away, she heard her own voice saying, “I’ll let you know. Where will I find you?” and turned to see one of the little animals looking after her. It opened its mouth and said it again, making a comical face. She shook her head and stalked away. Pocket munks, for the love of heaven. Why did they chew things into circles like that?

  When she had gone, Curvis asked, “What’d you think?” He pocketed his pets and stared at Danivon, waiting for an answer.

  Danivon Luze gestured vaguely and stared at the wall for a long time before he said, “Oh, she’s right. I’m sure of that. But something about her’s not quite …”

  “Not quite what?”

  “I don’t know. Not quite solid, somehow.”

  “Looked solid enough to me.”

  “I don’t mean her body, Curvis. Not her health. Not her abilities, which Zasper says are good enough, though I’d like to see her use a weapon.”

&nb
sp; “Well, stick close for a few days and we probably will. Lot of stuff going bang here in Enarae.”

  “True.”

  “Those strange people from who knows when, those twins. Do they smell solid.”

  “For what they are.” He smiled a lazy smile. “I guess.”

  “Why are you taking them along?”

  Danivon slapped the table with his hand, almost angrily. “Damn, Curvis, I’ve told you a thousand times I don’t know! Ask an artist why he’s putting blue in the shadows. Ask a dancer why she bends sideways….”

  Curvis interrupted, “All right. You don’t know why. Do you know if we need more?”

  “All I know is, the team isn’t complete yet.”

  Curvis started to ask how he knew and who next, but caught himself in time. “You want another drink?” he asked instead, receiving no answer at all. Danivon was sitting there, head down, nose twitching, smelling something, his eyes half-closed.

  Sometimes when he got into these moods, he didn’t move for hours. “Shit,” said Curvis softly as he went off into the crowded room to find himself some amusement.

  Danivon, left behind, was wondering the very things Curvis had been wondering, why and why. What might have happened had he been a different child, a different youth? If he hadn’t so early gained a reputation for helpfulness, for example. He’d done that since he was just a kid, shown up when someone needed a hand. Sometimes even before the helpee even knew it, here’d be Danivon, grinning all over his face, explaining, “I smelled you needed somebody.”

  It was true, though no one had believed it at first, not even Zasper. At first everyone thought it was some kind of joke, that someone had put him up to it. Later they learned he really did smell such things. At least, he received information in a way that seemed to him like a smell, whatever it may actually have been, not reliably always, but often enough to be useful. He smelled people needing help; he smelled difficulties that wouldn’t come unraveled; he smelled women lusting after him—or after other people; he smelled solutions to problems; he smelled people who could do things together they could not, or at least did not, do separately.

  He smelled hatred and lust. He could sniff a crowd and tell whether it would become a mob or merely a purposeless pack that would get bored and break up. And though he could never explain what his talent really was or how it worked, Danivon’s nose had become very valuable to Council Supervisory. He had done lots of things for Council Supervisory, though doing their work had sometimes bothered him a lot—though he never let it show. Bothered him, but it had never frightened him until now.

  Why now? Why this smell of trouble? Why this stench of darkness? Why these smoky twinings and luminous blotches, always seeming about to resolve into faces, never quite doing so. Why? Not a dream. He couldn’t remember any such light, any such darkness. A threat, yes, but more than merely a threat. Fear, heart-stopping fear, the nightmare kind he sometimes woke from almost screaming, heart hammering! He heard cries, pleading, as though through some linkage with some other place, an echo of a sound. The stink of sweat, somebody’s sweat, somebody scared and running.

  Not precisely the most hopeful signs and portents with which to start a journey. And why the strange twins from the past? Why Fringe? He might have added her, anyhow, just for the way she looked, the sidelong glance she gave him, the light flickering deep in her eyes, the way she walked and spoke, as though carelessly, but with that tension in the tilt of her head, as though she were waiting for something to happen. Yes, he might have wanted Fringe just for herself, but adding her, adding each of them satisfied that sense within him he called smelling, a kind of rightness, an unquestionability. It didn’t change the overall aroma any. That was still there. Fear stink. Fear all the way down into wherever fear takes root.

  Which was really beside the point. There had been no good way to duck the assignment. Boarmus had said go, and he was going. No threat, Danivon had said to Fringe. No threat. That had been pretty much a lie. He didn’t even believe that himself!

  6

  Tourists from categories eight, nine, and ten often came to the Swale. Tour down, trade up was the policy established by the Supervisors, which meant one usually traveled to and imported from places more primitive than one’s own. While some argued that “primitive” wasn’t the right word at all, the fact was that most tourists in the Swale came for the thrill of danger, came hoping to see someone killed, or maybe to kill somebody. In Enarae, tourists were of no more importance than any scruffy Trasher or Outcaste, so inevitably some of them ended up getting killed instead.

  Though Fringe had long considered the Swale her natural environment, she could not deny its essential quality. Shrines to the Guntoter were ubiquitous. Every recess could and often did hide a thrill seeker. Aware of this, knowing she was on a stage with no cover, she always took a moment at the corner to adjust her boots, check her weapons belt, and see to the fastenings of her clothes. Behind the peepholes could be a thousand eyes, a thousand stares, each fixing her in place like a bug on a pin, booby-trapping the short flight of steps and the few yards of slimy street between her and Bloom’s place. It might be real. It might be a game. How was she to get from here to there while surviving that lethal barrage of eyes!

  Confronted by such obstacles, fancied or real, one didn’t wiffle around! She polished her Enforcer’s badge with the ball of her left thumb, took a deep breath, and went where she chose to go, all in a rush, down the steps and across the dangerous street to take shelter in the entryway of Bloom’s place. Keeping in practice, she told herself, relishing the surge of fear that had accompanied the self-induced panic, knowing it would have been easier but far less exciting to have come in the back way. Safety was for children. So said all Enforcers worth their pay.

  Inside, Bloom bustled up to greet her, extending his legs and kissing her on the cheek, which she resignedly permitted. Bloom would do it when he liked, with fine disregard for sex or age or present affectional situations. Though Zasper had never presumed to kiss her at all, much less in public, Bloom had been kissing her since she was twelve; he wasn’t likely to stop now.

  “Owldark,” he murmured. “Too long, lady love. What’ve you been up to, Fringy?”

  “This and that,” she said in the offhanded Enforcer’s manner that made no admissions of involvement in anything specific. “Here and there.” The hall swarmed with life and noise and was thick with smells: food and drink; sweat and drugs; boxes, bales, and baskets of exotic stuff from a dozen other provinces, brought here as barter. Her nose wrinkled and she sneezed.

  The Bloom made a face at her and shortened his legs, yelling at her on the way down. “There’s a man here from Gaunt’s showing the new gimmicks. They’ve modified the Finalizer seven-aught-nine, would you believe? Twice the kill power with half the weight. Want to see him?”

  She shook her head, making a face at him.

  “No? Looking for work?”

  Fringe preferred to get her contracts at the Enforcement Post, where things were more predictable than at Bloom’s. Not that he was unethical, just that he was casual about contract terms—little things like dates of completion, and acceptable solutions, and getting paid. She grinned and shook her head again.

  “Not that either? How about a game? Want a table?”

  “No weapon, no job, no game, Bloom. I’m looking for Zasper. He been around?”

  “Here now,” admitted the Bloom with a shrug. “Doing badly and welcoming interruption, I’d say.”

  “Where?”

  He jerked his head back, indicating the balcony stairs halfway across the room behind him, then shot high on his legs to watch her snake off through the heaving crowd.

  She wove her way among the revelers: Enaraenians, Sandylwaithians, a few Supervisors pretending to be something else, Denialites, pretending to disapprove of what they were doing, scattered parts of some City Fifteen dinka-jins visiting the Swale to experience reality. Dink eyes darted about, peering; dink noses slunk, s
melling. The modulator boxes had to be across the room somewhere, along with the arms and legs and other parts. She didn’t bother looking for them. Assembled or disassembled, dinks were not her favorite thing.

  Upstairs, she found Zasper in the gambling room nearest the street. Wet river light fell on one side of his face as he glared across the table at a player with his back to her, glared until he saw her, then growlingly excused himself and came out, his face split into a welcoming grin. A strong old hand crushed her shoulder, and she accepted the familiar pain impassively. He led her to a small table near the balcony railing, overlooking the organized chaos below.

  Fringe, who disliked crowds, kept her eyes on Zasper. Though he’d retired from provincial Enforcement a few years back, he still wore his gray hair in the long braid, still looked meaner than a scorched chaffer, still wore his badge with the fatal-hands dangles—on his left shoulder to show he wasn’t active. Retired or not, he hadn’t stopped being her friend. He knew her better than anyone.

  “Heard your pa died,” he grunted now.

  She gave him a look. If he’d heard that, he’d heard the rest of it, as well.

  “Too bad.” He knew how she felt, how she’d always felt. There’d been times he’d known that better than she did.

  She shrugged. “Not why I’m here, Zasper.”

  He raised an eyebrow. She leaned forward and told him about Danivon’s offer. “Yesterday this happened,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it overnight. You give him my name, Zasper?”

  “Well, I knew him when I was at Tolerance,” he admitted, choosing to admit no more than that. “Some call him a wonder boy with fireworks for blood.”

  “But not burned out yet,” she murmured. Oh, no, Enforcer Luze was far from burnt out!

  “No, not so far’s I know. ’Course, he was only a kid when I left there, but friends from Tolerance tell me he’s fatal hands with bells on. He gets results.”

  “Flaming ego?”

  “No. Not that I’ve heard. Not one to walk over bodies in spiked boots. No more than any of us.”