Return - Book III of the Five Worlds Trilogy (7 page)

But now, hatred, the other of his appetites, had given concrete form and function to that lust, and made both of Trel Clan’s appetites not only solid, but within reach.

They had become ravenous appetites.

For now, finally, he had found in the Martians something to focus his hatred on. Here, now, was a race within the more general race of contemptible sentient beings, who had done something to directly stand in Trel Clan’s way after helping him halfway.

They had not only subjugated Trel Clan’s planet—but made it extinct.

They had, almost simultaneously, opened the door to the possibility of his lust being fulfilled, and then slammed it shut in his face.

He hated them with depth now; with true unalloyed feeling.

He would make the Martians pay.

He, Trel Clan, former functionary at the Ministry of Foreign Import Trade, Second-Class Division, Expendable Goods on a world that no longer existed, suddenly first in succession to power on a world that no longer existed, would make the Martians pay for what they had done to Titan.

To him.

And so Trel Clan burned within, with two appetites. And waited, faux child.

A
s so often happens, his waiting ended unexpectedly, for Trel Clan was one of those creatures with which serendipity, the most mischievous of the Secondary Fates, has sport.

There were trips. The Titanian children—unlike the Venusian children, who were more prone to reflection and docility—were active of spirit and needed occasional stimulation. There were visits to the great Lowell Zoo, whose menagerie rivaled that of any zoo on any world; indeed, it had been exceeded in excellence only by that in Huygens City, on Titan itself. There were visits to the Martian Hall of Science, surreptitiously known as the Hall of War, since much of its display concerned the development of Martian weapons, ancient and modem. There were visits to the Botanical Gardens, resplendent of the mostly drier varieties of flora, mostly Martian and Earth desert.

And then came a visit to the Circus Venus.

Granted, this was not an educational visit per se. This in itself made the trip unusual—but, as stated, the Titanian children were a spirited lot and needed diversion. And the Prefect thought this the perfect diversion.

“You have made such progress as New Martians that it has been decided you shall have a treat,” he said one morning, before the beginning of Lessons. His Screen image was less formal than usual, less strict, less severe. He almost … smiled.

“And now that you are true Martians, it is only right that you enjoy a treat the way any Martian child would.”

The Prefect’s face hardened slightly. “Let me be direct, here, and say that this trip is for New Martian children only. Venusian children shall complete their Lessons today, as always, so that they may one day return to their own world and rule it in the High Leader’s name and spirit …”

This diversion from the main thrust of the Prefect’s announcement, amid whispered groans of disappointment from the Venusian children, went on and on, during which time Trel Clan tried not to fall asleep.

“… however,” the Prefect said, his face softening again, “let me hope that you New Martians enjoy your visit with Circus Venus. Assembly will commence immediately. That is all.”

The Screen went blank.

“New Martian students rise!” the room attendant ordered; Trel Clan, along with the others of his tribe, stood and readied himself for assembly.

“It’s not fair! The Circus Venus is from our world!” a Venusian child named Carlos whispered petulantly from his seat beside Trel Clan; and Trel Clan, following the manner of all schoolchildren which he had assiduously adopted for his disguise, stuck his tongue out at Carlos as he marched past toward the schoolroom’s door.

T
he trip held no interest for him, and he adopted the blank gaze of neutrality and bare interest that seemed to work for him in such circumstances, keeping him solitary but not noticed. He stared out the window at desert dunes and red sand craters; at clusters of sandstone buildings in morning Martian light; at the beginnings of Lowell City, the spires of office buildings, the dominating tower of the former residence of the High Prefect of Mars topped with its black sickle of iron within a circle; at shorter buildings at the edges of Lowell City; and then, abruptly, at the beginning of the desert once more.

And then, suddenly, tents amid sand.

The brightness was startling and momentarily jostled Trel Clan out of his blank ennui. Against the backdrop of red sand and pink sky, the colors made him blink: cherry-red and snow-white stripes; a green like the skin of limes, liquid blues and pinks and lemons. Tent poles were striped like spiral staircases, green and white, red and white; even now, in the brightest part of the morning, there were Christmas bulbs alight, strung from tent peak to tent peak and pole to pole. Yellow straw covered the desert ground; thick black wires snaked through this forest of hay; tall signs proclaiming the wonders of the circus—SEE THE GIANT MAN OF GANYMEDE! TWO-HEADED LIONS WITHIN!–looked wet to the touch with glistening colors and lurid pictures.

The transport parked in a straw-covered lot; and then, abruptly, they were left to their own devices when the robot attendant said only, “Reassembly in six hours,” and then reboarded the bus to turn himself off for that time.

Clusters of Titanian children entered under the red and white WELCOME! banner stretched like a tortured prisoner between two outward-tilting poles, and, squealing with delight, disappeared to the four corners of the circus amid sounds of barkers and the muffled roars of animals.

Trel Clan, alone, entered blinking behind them.

And soon became lost in wonders.

Though the Circus Venus called itself such, it was really a Martian concoction of interplanetary origin. There had been, before the One-Day War, a circus on Venus of that name, and it had indeed entertained on all the worlds; but after the war, though the Circus Venus’s animal menagerie, props, and tents remained, the Venusian population of the circus had been reduced to zero. It was then that the High Leader himself, on examining the bill of lading when the circus’s physical property had been returned to Mars as plunder, declared that it should rise again.

And rise it did, quickly to become the most popular attraction on Mars.

And when Titan was defeated in the Half-Day War, even more wonders, pillaged from that world’s own amusement attractions, were added to the Circus Venus, making it truly the greatest collection of its kind any of the worlds had ever seen.

It was these later Titanian additions that immediately drew Trel Clan’s interest, and after spending all of his allowable food credits on the sweetest concoction he could find (a mound of purple spun sugar mounted on a paper stick half as tall as Trel Clan himself, with a pastry center: for he had a sweet tooth that his Martian masters never indulged), and after devouring said concoction, he gave his attention over to this section of the circus.

Elsewhere there were amazements galore: the sun had risen high enough to activate the solar rides, and Trel Clan was momentarily distracted to find a clutch of his classmates soaring over his head and calling down to him from what looked to be an unsupported cart; it was only after they had winged away, turning sharply to fly back to where they had come, that Trel Clan saw the near-invisible lucite rails that supported the coaster. Other rides, oval enclosures of lemon and green and jet-black, drove impossibly high into the atmosphere, hovered for a breathless moment, and then, with the attendant squeals of delight and fright of their passengers, plummeted back toward Mars before slowing at the last moment.

“Care to see something really interesting, sonny?” a voice said close beside Trel Clan’s ear, as he watched a man and woman in flaming costumes shot into Ike??? air from what looked like a plasma cannon.

Trel Clan turned to give his interlocutor a blank stare.

The man, who had bent down to accost Trel Clan from a remarkable height, was dressed in clown’s clothing, yellow and red polka dots on billowing satin over a thin frame; his face was bloodless white with a bulbous red nose and frighteningly crimson mouth; his eyes, outlined in black, widened as he poked a long, white-gloved finger into Trel Clan’s chest and smiled.

“Sure, sonny? Biggest wonder of all the worlds!”

The clown stood up, put his hands on his sides, threw back his head, and laughed. “Hoo-heee! Ladies and gentlemen! Children of all worlds! Step right this way to the greeeeeeatest attraction ever! The most stupeeeeeeeendous thing your mortal eyes will ever see!”

They had gathered a crowd, and Trel Clan was jostled by a passersby who had stopped to hear the clown’s spiel. Trel Clan saw now that the man was mounted on stilts, so that he could easily tower over those around him. He spread his hands and smiled.

“Riiiiiiight this way! First show of the day! Riiiiiiiight this way!”

The clown was pointing to a vivid tall sign behind him; but Trel Clan’s own shortness, and the size of the crowd around him, prevented Trel Clan from seeing more than the very top of it: TITAN’S in huge letters, with something nebulous below it. There was a surge of the crowd forward.

“Just tweeenty credits! Tweeenty credits! For the most stupeeeeeeendous sight of your lifetime! Just arrived two weeks ago! Be one of the first to see this close enough to touch!”

The crowd surged again, moving toward the clown, who had stepped aside to register their credits and to let them pass through the center of the sign, which was hollowed into the door.

“Step riiiiiight this way! Always room for one more! Single file pleeeeease!”

Soon the last of the customers were gone, leaving the clown once again towering over Trel Clan.

The clown bent close, smiling his horrid smile. “What’s the matter, sonny? Scared of a little Titanian king?”

Trel Clan, stifling the rush of excitement that flowed through him, looked around the clown’s stilted body and studied the sign that straddled the doorway.

TITAN’S KING! THE ONE AND ONLY JAMAL CLAN! the sign said; these words wrapped around a luridly rendered painting of a man’s head and one arm reaching upward; the man’s torso, limbless save for the arm, was cut off by the opening of the entry.

Pushing credits into the clown’s hand, Trel Clan was drawn to the doorway like a nail to a magnet.

“Hey!” the clown called after him. “You gave me too much!”

The doorway led into near darkness, muffled by thick straw on the ground. Trel Clan found himself in a tunnel with turns, which, it became evident, were part of the attraction. Far ahead he could hear the sounds of amazed voices.

He hit a wall, made a turn to the right, and there was a sudden brilliant light in the wall. There was a diorama within, a three-dimensional depiction of the Half-Day War, with the High Leader himself, the insect-bodied Prime Cornelian, striding over the lifeless bodies of Titanian soldiers. Above, the dark sky burned with the rays of Cornelian’s light soldiers, who spread out in a fan around him, bringing destruction. Magnificently ringed Saturn, half risen, loomed at the horizon, which was on fire.

Stifling rage, Trel Clan moved on, hitting another wall that again turned to the right, revealing another diorama in the wall. This piece of propaganda, a fictitious scene of Queen Kamath Clan kneeling before the High Leader in the ruins of her planet and baring her throat to Cornelian’s metallic fingers, Trel Clan merely glanced at before turning away. Ahead, things had become quiet, and he stumbled on, hitting another wall and a final diorama depicting the explosion that had destroyed Titan, before pushing himself through a dark curtain and suddenly finding himself blinded by light.

The last of the other patrons were pushing their way through another curtain at the far end of the room; there was a railing a`nd behind it a brightly lit cage, barred on all sides, its floor littered with popcorn, fruit peels, and other detritus.

Within the cage, staring out at Trel Clan as he suspended his torso above the filth on the floor by grasping the cage’s top bars with his one remaining hand, was Jamal Clan, King of Titan.

The king’s eyes rolled up into his head and he gibbered, swinging back and forth, drooling. He laughed, letting himself drop into the pile of rotting food on the cage floor; his one arm pulled him around as his mouth opened and closed, pulling in bits of food; the hand and arm, as if possessing a life of their own, shot out to grasp the front bars and then inched up, pulling the torso after it until it was suspended once more, this time with its back to Trel Clan.

Jamal began to sing and rock; and then abruptly he stopped both, the hand making a lightning-quick switch, pulling the body around so that it faced Trel Clan.

Jamal Clan, drooling, looked hard into Trel Clan’s face with sudden acknowledgment and sentience. “I know you … .”

Jamal Clan said nothing.

“You’re … Trel Clan. Twentieth in line. Very clever, hiding as a child. I used to know all these things. I knew who number nineteen was, and fifteen, and eleven, and—”

“Yes, I am,” Trel Clan said. “But now—”

“Now you’re first in line! After me!”

Trel Clan again said nothing.

“I know what you want!” The king laughed. For a moment he began to swing again, drooling copiously, humming a tune to himself. Then he abruptly stopped again, concentrating.

“I won’t die,” he said. “They’ll keep me here, and feed me. That means you’ll always be number two!” Gritting his teeth, Trel Clan was silent.

Looking from left to right, as if afraid of being heard, the king motioned with his head.

“Come closer!” he whispered.

Trel Clan moved as close to the railing as he could. “Come close to the cage!” the king urged.

Looking from side to side himself, Trel Clan ducked under the railing and came close to the cage; there was a foul odor that repulsed him, but he overcame it.

Suddenly, a foot in front of the cage, Trel Clan hit a force field, which repulsed him with a burning shock.

“Ha!” King Clan said. “Ha ha! A little trick! Don’t forget—I’m still king!”