Sideshow

  The devices asked the people of Beanfields where the captives were, but the people of that province knew only this mother’s old boy or that mother’s young boy or some other mother’s black-haired boy or yet some other mother’s boy who plays the flute. No one knew who Zasper was or Danivon. No one knew their names. Those who were asked could not answer, and so died.

  The network did not stop growing, even while Beanfields was being reduced to a suffering fragment of itself. While parts of it were lethally involved in the villages, the rest of it pushed on toward the west. Less than an hour after Danivon set sail across the Fohm, the network reached the Great Wall and began to burrow through it. Getting through rock was not difficult, merely slow. The network had been extended through rock in many parts of the world.

  Patiently it drilled its way, eventually arriving on the other side as infinitesimal metallic points. Each of these points was noticed by the ubiquitous fibers that grew throughout noplace. The fibers attached themselves to the emerging network and disassembled it, molecule by molecule, tiny part by tiny part. As soon as one molecule of it was extruded through the wall, it was corrupted and eaten. No sensor lasted long enough to report this effect. The network simply reached the Great Wall and then vanished.

  Great Slitherer and Subble Clore were at first too busy to notice. They were still fuming at the escape of the two Enforcers, at the fact the network had not caught them, at the strange creatures upriver who had not died when the machines were told to kill them. All these matters were distracting them at a time when they wished to think of other things—the rules and ritual of Clore adoration, the catechism and theology of Breaze worship.

  Breaze had decided that he would require his followers to believe illogical things as evidence of their faith. He would require them to believe that Breaze had created Elsewhere and all its people in one day, out of nothing, exactly one thousand years ago! But … (a master stroke) he would leave evidence in Files to contradict this! Thus they would have to disbelieve the evidence of their own senses in order to believe in Breaze!

  When he got to this point, a small voice asked why he had given men such senses in the first place? Why had he given them intelligence if he intended to forbid its use?

  Great Slitherer couldn’t remember creating men, though he knew he must have done so. He couldn’t remember why he had given them the ability to weigh evidence and make judgments for themselves. Why had he given them intelligence?

  Preoccupied with such questions, Breaze did not notice the network had stopped at the wall. Preoccupied with similar notions, neither did the others of the Core. As time passed, no word came; as more time went by, even the little mobile ears and eyes beyond the wall fell silent. So long as they had remained aloft or afloat, they had continued to function, but as each of them had touched soil or the branch of a tree or the stony summit of a hill, it had stopped being. Eventually, all had stopped being, and the noisy flow of messages from the west dwindled into silence.

  Great Lord Crawler had moved on to inventing a marriage ceremony, something very arduous and esoteric involving ritual defloration and genital mutilation. Clore had devised an ingenious new form of sacrifice. It was some time before they became aware.

  They peered, then howled, their noisy protest going out through the network, among the nodes. Messages came back, not so sanguine and dismissive as before. Magna Mater had also run into the wall when she had tried to get through it from the north. Therabas Bland had made the attempt from the south and failed.

  The failure infuriated them all. They got into their god forms and stalked toward the center of the continent, trampling the provinces in their rage.

  In Tolerance, Jacent crept quietly down a deserted corridor toward his aunt Syrilla’s door. Most people these days were staying in their own quarters. The monitors had given up all pretense of keeping the status quo. Many Enforcers had departed for their home provinces, and the few that remained dressed like ordinary people. Only the Frickians seemed more or less immune to what was happening. Nothing seemed to bother them greatly. Some of them had been killed, but Frickians never made a fuss, even when they were being dismembered. They tended to die silently or disappear as silently. No fun, thought Jacent. No fun at all, which is why the Brannigans left them alone. A phlegmatic people, the Frickians. Boarmus said Frickians would end up being the only survivors and the Brannigans would then be worshiped by Frickians alone. Which was a laugh, because Frickians had been bred to take orders, to be servants and soldiers just as Council Supervisory members had been bred to be bureaucrats and maintain the status quo. How fitting for a self-created god to be worshiped only by people who had been bred to be subservient. How fitting to have all the bureaucrats slaughtered when they were only doing their jobs. Talk about irony!

  Not that Boarmus saw the irony. At least he didn’t say anything about it. Not that he said much where anyone—anything—could hear him. Still, everyone knew about the Brannigans by now. Knew, whispered, but never said it out loud. One said Monstrous Crawler, Great Lord Clore this, Great Lord Clore that. One said Mighty Lord Breaze or Magna Mater. One said Sweet and Adorable Lady Bland. One said litanies, new ones every few days. Heart of Heaven, Wall of Desire, Mouth of Morning. Great Temple of Love. That was one for Thob. One could say things like that, but one didn’t say Brannigan. One pretended not to know about that.

  Jacent tapped softly on Aunt Syrilla’s door. He hadn’t seen her for some days. Somebody ought to check on her, be sure she was all right.

  There was no answer, but then people these days sometimes didn’t bother answering. Sometimes it was better if they didn’t. He tried the door, which was not sealed. He pushed it open. The room inside seemed empty. A little dusty and disarranged, but that was the usual thing these days, with so many of the automatic systems out of order and nobody left to repair them.

  “Aunt Syrilla?” The doors inside the suite were open. He could see all the way through it. The bedroom was empty. The bathroom. He walked through into the wardrobe, lined on both sides with racks and chests and shelves.

  It was almost as if he’d known she’d be there, on the shelf next to the ceiling, her purple face hanging over the edge, the rest of her squashed into an impossibly small space in the corner.

  Jacent made it to the saniton before he was sick. Parts of her had run down the wall, dripped onto her clothing below. He took deep breaths, one after the other, trying not to remember what she looked like. There were a few like this every now and then, strange deaths, impossible deaths, just enough to make everyone imagine the next one would be him, or her. And then some person would claim to have had a vision of what the god wanted, and everyone in Tolerance would dance or sing or chant or engage in ridiculous, meaningless actions, and nobody would be killed for a while. Almost as though the Brannigans had been distracted. Or really had wanted everybody to do whatever ritual it was they were doing.

  When he had recovered enough that he could walk, he slipped out into the corridor, almost knocking Boarmus down as he came through the door.

  “I was looking for you, boy,” whispered Boarmus. “Come with me.” And he set off down a side corridor, dragging Jacent along by the arm as he ducked through a servant’s door, thus avoiding a group of several hundred persons slithering down the corridor on their bellies to the sound of drums and cymbals. Jacent tried to hold him back, babbling about what he’d found back there.

  “I know,” said Boarmus. “I found her this morning.”

  “Where …” breathed Jacent. “Where are we?”

  “Garage,” said Boarmus. “I’m sending you to Panubi.”

  “Me!”

  “You. In a ZT thirty-four, which is the only thing we have capable of getting you there in one swoop. I hope your operational skills are good.”

  “But I can’t fly a thirty-four,” the boy blubbed. “Honestly, Boarmus. I’ve only been in one once.”

  “It’s the only way,” said Boarmus. “Any other type flier, you’ll
have to land and recharge, and the minute you land, they’ll eat you.”

  “You come with me,” begged the boy. “You can fly one of those.”

  “I can’t come with you.” He laughed harshly. “I never thought duty impressed me that much, boy, but this is duty. I’m trying to keep a few of us alive here. If I can.”

  “Send a pilot, then.”

  “What pilot? Where? You see any pilots? You see any maintenance people? You see any messengers? You see any patrols? Use your head, boy. You wanted excitement, now you’ve got it. You either teach yourself to fly this machine or you die pretty soon, as likely all of us will anyhow.”

  Jacent screamed into the weary face before him, “They won’t kill me if I bow down! If I do the rituals and things. If I crawl. They won’t kill me if I crawl!”

  Boarmus shook him until his head flopped. “Maybe not today. Maybe they’ll wait until tomorrow. Then they’ll have a heresy trial, maybe, just for amusement. And they’ll make up new rules and kill everyone who doesn’t know what they are. Jacent, remember Metty. She didn’t do anything to anyone. What did Syrilla do? What have any of us done? Don’t you understand what’s going on here? You expect you can figure out what to do to keep yourself out of trouble. You expect logic. You expect good sense. You don’t understand what’s happening.”

  Jacent took a deep breath and tried to control himself. He’d never thought he would fall apart like this. But there was blood everywhere these days, blood and messy things. Pieces of people falling out of closets and off of shelves. People coming apart right in front of you, while they were working, while they were eating even. One of his friends had his girlfriend come all to pieces while they were making love, right there on the bed, leaving him covered with parts of her while this terrible gulping laughter went on and on. Horror piled on horror, and nobody knowing why or what to do about it.

  “What am I going for?” he said from a dry mouth, trying to control his shaking.

  “You’re going to tell Zasper Ertigon or whoever else you find there—Danivon, maybe—that if he can think of any way to help us, now’s the time. Tell him Enarae’s half-gone. Tell him most of the provinces are nothing but a few dazed survivors wandering around wondering what hit them. Either that or religious processions marching back and forth, with people dropping from starvation and dehydration. Tell him the Enforcers that are left are lying low, pretending to be ordinary folk. Tell him everything’s coming to an end very soon if someone doesn’t do something.”

  “What can he do?” Jacent spoke from sheer amazement that there was anyone who might be thought to be helpful.

  “Nothing,” said Boarmus. “Most likely nothing. But I’ve done everything I can think of, and this is the only thing left to try. There were dragons on Panubi. I don’t know what kind. But Files says dragons are supposed to be … miraculous. Holy, maybe, whatever that means. And if there’s anything holy or miraculous left in this world, we need it to help us. So go, boy. Go!”

  Jacent climbed into the machine and went. He didn’t know how to fly it, but it wasn’t that different from something he did know how to fly. He didn’t know where Panubi was, but the on-board navigator was able to find it. He didn’t know where Zasper was, either, but the model thirty-four knew where the Enforcer post near Shallow was, and those left alive at the post remembered that Zasper had gone west, toward Thrasis and the Great Wall.

  14

  As he made his erratic way above the River Floh, Jacent saw lines of refugees traveling westward along the banks and over the undulating plains. Scattered encampments stood at the Great Wall where people were frantically building ladders and towers. Though bodies lay heaped here and there along the line of march, Jacent saw no signs of human conflict. The refugees had been hunted down, were still being hunted down by the other thing.

  Past the Great Wall the killing stopped. Here he saw only groups on the move, escapees from Deep and Shallow who’d swum past the barrier, and people from other provinces who’d come by boat or raft. The surface of the Floh was still speckled with small craft tacking their slow way upstream.

  When the gorge gaped its narrow throat before him, he prudently chose to fly over rather than through it, and this route brought him in sight of two Enforcers making slow progress along the high trail. By that time Jacent needed company almost as badly as he needed directions. He landed the flier—unskillfully—and took Fringe and Danivon aboard. Danivon, who had noted the sloppy landing, took over the flier, and this allowed Jacent to concentrate on Boarmus’s message. Though made rather incoherent by fear and exhaustion, he managed to convey that Tolerance was being wiped out, that Boarmus wanted a miracle, would they take him to Zasper, who would produce one.

  “I don’t know what kind of miracle old Boarmus expects,” Danivon said flatly. “I know Zasper won’t produce one, because Zasper is dead. I don’t know what kind of dragons there are where we’re going, if any. I left the group in Thrasis, and up until then we’d only seen the one dragony beast the old woman had with her plus some smaller ones said to be its descendants.”

  “Jory’s dragon was impressive,” commented Fringe in an infuriatingly calm voice.

  “That’s true,” Danivon agreed, gritting his teeth. “But it had surprise on its side, and even if there were hundreds like it, they wouldn’t be much use against a world full of killing machines.”

  Jacent wiped tears of weariness from his eyes. “Boarmus was really hoping about the dragons. And I was too.”

  “Then you must hope for some other dragons. Since none of us have been where we’re going, how can we say what we’ll find?” Danivon cast a sidelong look at Fringe, who sat stiffly beside him, saying nothing, wearing the half smile she had worn since she found him at the riverside. If they all saw inescapable horror looming before them, likely Fringe would still be wearing that same little smile.

  “The massif,” she said unnecessarily, pointing ahead of them at the smoothly glowing dome that rose above the center of the continent like a giant carbuncle. “There’s the massif, Jacent.”

  Jacent obediently followed her gaze but was unimpressed by landscape. “Nobody was getting killed inside the wall,” he persevered, unwilling to give up hope. “So there must be something here that can fight the network off.”

  Danivon shook his head. “Keeping an enemy out is different from fighting one off. Withstanding siege is a different matter from winning a battle.”

  Fringe said, “If it’s your safety you’re worried about, likely you’ll be safe here.”

  Jacent stopped trying to hide his tears of weariness and frustration and frankly wept, his voice rising in incipient hysteria. “It isn’t just me. It’s everybody. It’s Aunt Syrilla, only she’s already dead, and it’s Boarmus and all my friends in Tolerance, and my home in Heaven, and …”

  Danivon turned to lay his fingers on the boy’s lips, shutting down the flow. “All and everyone would probably be safe here, boy, but there’s not enough room in Central Panubi for the entire population of Elsewhere, even if we could think of means to get it here. Take hold of yourself. Things are as they are, and no amount of wishful thinking will change them!”

  He took his hand away and Jacent was quiet, no doubt stunned into silent grief. He wasn’t alone. Since meeting Fringe, Danivon had grieved for her as he did for Zasper. Here she was beside him, yet he grieved as though she were dead. Something had happened to her. He didn’t know what, but she was most dreadfully changed.

  He grunted sharply at the sight of the acropolis almost below them and let the flier sideslip toward the shore, landing it like a dried leaf on a stretch of turf. People came running. Jory and Asner limped out from one of the buildings beneath the trees, and those leaving the flier looked beyond them to see dragons standing at the edge of a distant grove.

  Danivon’s mouth dropped open. “So there they are,” he said. “I didn’t really believe in them.”

  “Arbai,” came a treble voice from above him, where a gylph fl
uttered awkwardly, lurching on unsteady wings as it screamed in surprise, “Fringe! We thought you were dead!”

  “What the … who …” croaked Danivon.

  “It’s Nela,” advised Fringe in the kindly-but-impersonal voice that set Danivon’s teeth on edge. “And that’s Bertran in the fur with the webbed feet. I forgot to tell you about them. At the same time I was being put together again, Bertran and Nela were being changed.”

  The winged being fell with its arms about Fringe’s neck. Fringe stepped back, and Nela’s arms fell away.

  “Fringe?” she asked doubtfully.

  “What happened to the three of you?” grated Danivon. He had not asked Fringe what had happened to her; he’d been afraid to know. He had not even looked at her closely since she found him first at the riverside, but now, confronted by these other monstrous changes, he had to look, had to ask.

  “Something fixed them when it fixed me,” Fringe said offhandedly. “Rebuilt them and me.”

  “The Hobbs Land Gods,” said gylph Nela in a wondering voice. “It seems they’ve been here all the time.”

  Danivon felt his heart stop, felt a bloody and violent pressure in his skull, a bursting red geyser, a terror so inbred he couldn’t speak, come from nowhere, about to eat him!

  “Ahhhhn,” he shrieked.

  “No,” said Fringe in a surprised but fearless voice. “I will not accept that! I will not allow myself to be possessed.”

  “It’s all right,” said Jory, to Danivon and Fringe both. “Calm down.”

  Danivon didn’t hear her. He was away from the flier, running in panic through the trees beside the river, he didn’t know where except to get away. He fled through the grove and deep into a bed of reeds where he crouched, blood hammering in his ears. Where had he come to? What disaster?