Sideshow (54 page)

She said pensively, “I know he can escape them, if he will. He has stayed here such a very long time. He should have gone out exploring once more, as we did together. Or returned
to his old homeworld long ago, to dance with his fellows in the moonlight.”
Great Dragon had stayed for reasons of his own, as Jory well knew, but Asner ignored this. “After all this time, does he still remember his home?” he asked gently.
“I’m sure he does. As I do mine?”
“Do you really remember yours, Jory?” He could not believe she did. He could scarcely remember his own.
She sat and rocked, the question going around and around in her head. It seemed to her she did remember Earth. Lately, she remembered it compulsively, as though something besides herself required the memory. She remembered the sound of larks in the dawn, with the grass gemmed and the air like silver. She remembered the leap of a fish in a pond, the spreading circles of light, the glint of scales, the glancing eye. She remembered trees towering, leaves lilting, the shatter and shimmer of sun in the woods, the cry of cicadas, the squeak and murmur of small furry beasts in the branches. She remembered the smell of green, the feel of growth, the touch of grandeur.
She remembered mountains, shadow on shadow, the creep and crush of stone reared up, the hollows of the furnaces of the deep, great abysses of rock where the fires dwelt, had dwelt, dwelt no longer, filled with blue lakes and clean air, with great, white continents of cloud moving over them like the blessing of a mighty hand.
She remembered the glory of the sea, the waters of the world washing upon its shores, the finned creatures of the sea, the seethe of calm, the crash of storm.
Had that been home? Perhaps not, for she remembered coming away from it, in search of something else. Duty. That had been it. In search of duty.
She remembered Grass, the endless prairies of it, the beauty of its gardens, the glory of its forest, the stunning wonder of its human and alien people. Was that home? She came away from that too, still seeking. Not duty this time, but her given world….
To circling worlds, ringed and glorious, where the fires of creation still burned. To a pavane of suns, remote and marvelous, wearing their planets like necklaces. To human worlds and alien worlds, to places earthly and unearthly. She remembered them all, remembered leaving them all. Which of them had been home?
Perhaps in the end, where one’s love was, was home.
“See there,” whispered Asner, pointing toward the woods.
They came across the meadow: Nela dancing on her lovely feet, moving across the meadow like a princess, joyous and beautiful, with Bertran tall and powerful just behind her, a smile barely lighting his face, his eyes glowing wonder as he came to take Jory’s hands.
So here they were, what they longed to be. Woman. Man. Joy flowed from them into her.
She marveled that there was time for a little happiness yet. No matter that all time would end soon, this they would have to carry into the darkness.
“Fringe?” she asked. She had no way of knowing unless she asked. She could not feel Fringe.
“She’s behind us somewhere,” said Bertran.
They went away with Asner, and soon Fringe came from the woods: a shadow, an uncomfortable presence.
“Well, child?” Jory called.
“Well, Jory?” She came to take the old woman’s hands. “I see the Hobbs Land Gods have finished with you.” Jory looked deeply into her eyes. “Or you with them. So you stand alone?”
“I stand alone, Jory.” “Are you now unenslaved?”
“More than in my past, Jory. I was enslaved then, just as you said. To one thing or another.”
“And now you feel free?”
Fringe smiled doubtfully and shook her head. “How would I know?”
Jory murmured, “At various times in my life, I’ve felt freedom—usually briefly and never completely. As I recall, however, even partial freedom can be disconcerting. Even if one has to deal with it only briefly.”
“Even if it were only for an instant, Jory, I would welcome the experience. I’d trade a longer life elsewhere for that feeling.”
Jory reached up to touch her face. “Then you’re a fool, child. But whoever said we were not, you and I.”
Fringe seated herself beside the rocking chair. “I may be a fool, Jory, but you’re not. That much I’m sure of.”
“What tells you that?”
“The presence of Great Dragon tells me that.”
The old woman cast her eyes down, asking softly, “What do you know about him?”
“Very little. What one can surmise.”
“And what do you surmise?”
“That he could, if he wished, follow the Arbai wherever they have gone.”
“Probably. I don’t know for sure.”
“I think they are no match for him.”
“That may be true.”
“But he won’t follow them, won’t … anything. Because he respects your feelings.”
Jory shook her head slowly. “It seems to me it is less a matter of respect than it is of his own logic, his own ethics. He too chooses noninterference unless his help is sought. And it depends on the cause, and on who does the asking.”
“If you asked?”
“I am incapable of some things. Because of what I am.”
“What are you?” Fringe whispered. “Really?”
“I can’t tell you. Really.”
“You’re not allowed …?”
“Simply can’t. The prohibition is built in. I can’t speak, or think too clearly, of what I am really, or I wouldn’t
be
what I am.” She laughed, a little ripple of real amusement. “Some of us can exist only because we’re not too aware of what we are. We are like the tiny particles from which the universe is made. If we locate ourselves, we can no longer move about our business. So long as we are moving about our business, we cannot say where, or what, we are. But—so I tell myself—if I have chosen well, chosen aright, you’ll figure it out. And then, perhaps …”
They held each other and rocked slowly to and fro while the evening came down around them, each seeking strangely and wondrously for an answer that neither knew.
“Victory,” cried Great Crawler; “Victory,” cried Subble Clore, the words splattering around the limits of themselves like molten lead. “Victory, victory, us the conquerors, them on the run, mop ’em up, make ’em gone!” It was like rounding up rabbits, or sheep. The Brannigans had all their devilish devices in a big, big circle, Clore’s and Thob’s and Bland’s and Breaze’s, all closing in, with the people running ahead, getting tighter and tighter in the middle. Like catching fish in a net!
“What will we do when we get them all in the middle?” someone asked.
“Capture them,” said Orimar Breaze, full of panic fire and eagerness. He wanted to get this over with so he could do something more interesting. “Put them in pens. Teach them to obey. Kill the bad ones.”
“Why are you going to kill any of them?” the small intrusive voice asked, that same voice that had been asking too many questions recently! “Why will you do that? You’ve already killed too many people on Elsewhere. Why are you doing that?”
“No, no,” Orimar snarled. “We haven’t killed that many. There are plenty left here, in different places. It’s just there, where the bad ones went. The ones that didn’t obey us. We have to kill those ones, who don’t obey us.” Orimar could not remember why this was true, but it had become the truest thing he knew. Himself was to be obeyed. Unquestioningly, immediately, to the death.
The small questioning voice, that of Jordel the Engineer, did not speak again. At his last awakening, he had exercised two of the options he had bribed those long-ago technicians to install: he had ordered a body cloned for himself and he had chosen to stay awake until it was ready—very soon now. The others didn’t know. The others had been too busy out in the world, like a pack of dogs chasing chickens. Blood all over everything and still not enough!
The process of reembodiment would take place inside the Core, as it had been designed to occur. Once embodied here, inside, he could intervene on behalf of the people of Elsewhere, if any of them were left. Until then, he could only ask questions, cause small doubts and even smaller delays. He snarled and fumed, knowing the delays wouldn’t be enough. At least two more days until his body was ready. Clore and the others would reach the massif of Panubi sooner than that.
Clore said they would kill only some, but killing was like a fever in them. They compared totals, like hunters shooting birds. Jordel visualized himself a game warden, prowling desperately through the hunt, unable to protect what little was left.

• • •

“Well, so time comes to leave this place,” said Nela, being very brave because what she had become required bravery as a becoming part of itself.
Fringe leaned toward the old woman. “Are you coming, Jory.”
Jory, who had been sitting very still in her rocking chair for some little time, looked up and said, “Yes, of course, child. I’ll ride one of the horses.”
“Asner?” asked Bertran.
“Do you think I’d let her go alone?” Asner asked.
“Great Dragon?” asked Fringe, looking around.
“Do you think I’d let her go alone?”
The voice reverberated in Fringe’s mind. Like a blow on an anvil. Like a tocsin, vibrant with foreboding. Fringe shuddered to her boot tops, struck dumb by this voice.
“How about Haifazh?” asked Danivon, who had heard nothing.
“I’ll come along behind,” said Haifazh. “But for a little time I will stay here, where I have had joy. Here beside the river with my child.”
“Good-bye, then,” Fringe said, giving Haifazh her hand. “Good-bye.”
Good-bye, good-bye. Nela and Cafferty and Latibor. Good-bye, good-bye. Jory and Asner and Danivon. Good-bye, Alouez and Jacent too. Good-bye.
“How far away are the Brannigans?” Nela whispered to Danivon.
“Not far behind us,” he said, struck almost motionless by her beauty. Was this Nela? Little spidery Nela? He cleared his throat. “They’re moving almost as fast as we are. Just as fast as the Arbai Device is retreating.”
Nela dried her eyes on her sleeve and looked up to find someone had brought the horses, already saddled, and both Jory and Asner were dressed for riding.
Fringe moved forward to lift Jory into the saddle. It was the only way she could travel. The old people couldn’t walk fast enough to keep ahead of the Brannigans.
Then they moved away down the meadow, Nela beside Jory, Danivon beside Asner, Fringe striding along with Bertran at her side. Bertran, booted and cloaked and with a great plume in his hat, was full of questions about Enarae, about her training as an Enforcer. Such a little time, he felt, to learn everything he wanted to know about everything!
Cafferty and Latibor were nearby; Alouez and Jacent were somewhere ahead: all of them staring forward as they marched, as though there was something they were going toward. If they looked forward, they avoided looking back. Fringe saw them, or imagined them, as a carved frieze on some great temple of man, marching toward the corner of a mighty structure. They would march forever, turning the corner at the sunset. Not one among them was cowardly or craven. Not one among them was unworthy. Even old Jory, high upon her horse, sat proudly and held the reins like a queen.
So they went, not quickly but steadily, and behind them came the whine and yammer of the machines.
A considerable distance west of Jory’s house, at the top of a low hill, Fringe stood aside to let the others go by while she checked her weapons. From this height she could look across the intervening valley to the place they had so recently left. She saw the meadow and the great tree and even the two stones, gleaming whitely, but there were no horses. No house.
Jory and Asner had ridden on ahead. Danivon was nowhere near. “Bertran …” Fringe called softly.
“I know,” he said as he came to stand beside her.
“Where is the house?” she murmured thoughtfully. “Where are the horses?”
“In the network, I suppose. In the Arbai Device. House, horses, cats probably—I imagine they were all created and maintained by the device. When the device withdrew, it took its creations with it.”
“But the stones are still there,” she murmured to herself. And when he turned to follow the others, she stayed behind for a long moment, staring at the stones.
They went forward again. Strangers mounted the hills before and behind them; strangers moved through the forests at either side. Someone moving off to their left was accompanying the march with the beat of drums, a steady, funereal beat, slower than a heartbeat, growing louder and nearer the farther they went. What had been a loose chain around Central Panubi was becoming a choker, a tight band drawn ever more closely around the massif, a belt of men, women, and children walking steadily toward the center of their ever-diminishing lives.
“If we have to die, I’m glad it’s out here, in the sunlight,” Nela said to Danivon. “I would have hated to die back in that cavern, with those faces looking at me.”
“Yes,” said Bertran, glancing at her over his shoulder. He had given thanks before, but he did it again, to the long-ago God of parochial school, the long-ago holy ones, saints and angels. Even for half a day it was good to stride along beside a beautiful woman, talking of things he had never imagined. He wanted more, but it was good to have this!
Behind them the edge of the world drew in. Behind them the glittering machines of the Brannigans glimmered and howled. Very soon they would overrun all of Panubi. Then they would finish what little was left of Elsewhere. Then, probably, Fringe thought to herself, they would kill one another.
They came at evening to a grove of trees that stood only a hundred yards or so from the edge of the massif. They were weary with that tiredness that is the lesser part physical. “Soul-weary,” Jory said to Nela.
“Soul-weary,” Nela repeated, seeing something beyond weariness in Jory’s eyes. “Are you all right?” she asked, knowing it for a foolish question.
“I’m here,” said Jory. “At least for a time. Though I’ll confess that a long sleep would be welcome….” Not that they wouldn’t all sleep soon enough. She led her horse onto a bit of grassy meadow at the edge of the grove and plucked a handful of grasses to feed the animal, running her old hands over its glossy hide as it munched, laying her cheeks against its soft nose.
She’s saying good-bye
, Nela told herself.
Saying good-bye to all this.
Asner watched them from beneath the nearest tree while Danivon built a campfire and took food from their packs, doing what people were doing all around the circled edge of stone. Asner could see the fires from where he stood, a line of fires, arcing away to the right, to the left, vanishing from sight but continuing, he knew, all the way around. The retreating edge of the Arbai Device was only half a mile behind them, motionless now, as it had recently been at night, as though the Arbai themselves had granted the chill mercy of respite for a last meal, a last sleep, perhaps a last embrace. Beyond that line the little slaughterers jittered and danced, waiting for morning. And behind them, some distance to the east, a thing like a malicious mountain crouched still in the dusk. Great
Crawler, Great Oozer, Mighty Mountain, Lord God Breaze. The other monsters were arrayed like compass points around the massif: Magna Mater and Glorious Lady Bland and the tripartite monster that was Chimi-ahm, Subble Clore.
There had been human stragglers during the day’s travel. Everyone had heard and seen what had happened to those who had fallen behind the line of march, and none of those along the edge of ruddy stone had any illusions about what would happen in the morning. For the most part the campfires burned in terrible silence while people made their last desperate plans, said their last farewells.
Fringe stood for a long moment staring at the hulked shadow of Great Oozer, then, as Asner watched in amazement, took from her pack the full ceremonial garb of an Enforcer and put it on. When she was dressed, she came across the grassy clearing to him, her bonnet in her hand. “Will you come with me, Asner?”
“Where, girl?”
“Where Jory is, Asner.”
“And what are you all dressed up for?”
Fringe brushed at her sleeve. “Why not, Asner? This is what we wear to do honor.”
Danivon raised his head. “What, Fringe?”
“A little meeting,” she said quietly. “If you will join us.” She beckoned to Nela and Bertran, also, and the five of them went into the clearing where the massif rose red against the graying sky.
Jory stood with one scrawny arm over the horse’s neck, her head leaned against the tall animal, the two of them seeming lost in a wordless interchange.
Fringe put on her bonnet and strode forward to give the full Enforcers’ salute.
“Jory,” Fringe said. “Am I your daughter and heir?”
The old woman turned to face her. To Danivon, it seemed that her face was very still and empty.
“Fringe Owldark,” she said quietly. “I picked you for my daughter. You are my inheritor.”
“And what was yours will be mine?”
“All that is mine to give will be yours.”
Asner grunted as though he had been hit, and went to stand beside Jory.
Fringe swallowed the lump in her throat and said, “Then
as your daughter I come to you to say it is time to relinquish, for you cannot do what must be done.”
“No,”
said a voice in all their minds.
Jory bowed her head. “You have always said no,” she whispered. “The years have spun and you have said no. But isn’t it time, old friend?”
Her voice was breathless, with a quality of finality in it that was enough to keep all their eyes upon her. She reached for Asner’s hand.
“Isn’t she right, Asner? Hasn’t it been enough?” she said softly. “Asner?”
“Yes, Jory.” He nodded at her. “As you say. Enough.”
“No!”
said something huge.
“Yes,” said Jory, speaking to that complicated mass of scale and shadow, to all that mighty presence that had been her own love for all the thousands of years. “Yes. We have spoken of this. The time is enough, and done, and over. You are all my estate, and I bequeath you….”
They heard a sound, as though some great mill ground and ground, saw mighty talons reaching out, saw jeweled eyes lit like little suns….
And before them Jory as a shadow fading, Jory and Asner both, the two shadows holding one another by the hand before the shadow of a horse, Jory’s other hand stretched out toward all that ramified glory, at first gently, palm down, as though she granted her hand to be held, or kissed, but then slowly turning on the wrist until it was at last upright, palm out, forbidding, signaling stop, go no farther, do no more.
They two were wraiths, dark against the glory of the departing sun. They were shadows dimming. They were ghosts against the soft glow of the massif. And then they were gone.
A feeling of grief like the washing of a great sea.
Nela said, “Jory? Oh, Jory….”
Then they all cried out at a pain so sudden and horrid that they could not keep silent, the loss of all living, all green, all burgeoning, all sweet and fruitful, all delight. They wept at the loss of all loveliness, all surprise and enchantment. They breathed flame as the air around them wilted and burned and turned to dust. They burned as they held in their hands a gem, glowing with light, the light striking into all their eyes, then dimming, shattering, gone.
Grief. Their own, but not only their own.
Fringe grunted and bent over, as though to compress the
pain into a manageable size. “The stones,” she gasped. “Those stones under the big tree. Jory and Asner were buried there. The people we knew were only part of the device.”
“Like the horses?” cried Nela.
“Like the house and the beds we slept in. Only more … more real. Real enough to walk around out on Elsewhere. Real enough to argue with the Arbai, to try to save us …”
“Think of the strength of will!” whispered Bertran. “So much that even a simulacrum of it was moved to save a world!”
“… but not real enough to be capable of the act that might save us,” Fringe said.
Bertran wasn’t listening. “How long? How long ago did they really die?”
“Long ago. A very long time ago.”
They all heard it, all felt the time stretching out, the years falling like rain, the age that had gone since they had died.
“Will they come again?” Nela cried into the gathering dark. “Oh, Great Dragon, will they come again.”
No sound. Only the vast sorrow retreating as it turned back, its intention clear to all of them. It would return to the meadow near the stones where it had lived and waited, lived and waited, for lifetimes alone. They heard it calling, the great heartbroken sound of a creature calling for its mate.
After a long moment, trembling but resolute, Fringe moved after it.
“Fringe,” cried Nela fearfully.
Danivon tried to catch at her, but Fringe put up her hand as Jory had done, palm upright, saying no, say no more.
Danivon let her go, his face open and vacant, not feeling anything. Not sorrow. Not relief. Later he would feel them both, but now he felt nothing at all.
“Wait for me,” demanded Fringe, running through the forest after a dwindling presence. There was no answer.
“She wanted this,” Fringe asserted. “If you cared for her, you owe this to her.”
“Love
cannot be owed,”
said the retreating shadow. “It
can only be given.”
“And she gave it,” Fringe cried stubbornly. “She kept on giving it. You’re part of the reason she got into this. You’re
part of the reason she came back, kept coming back. Because you were here, waiting.”
Silence.
“You were the core around which her resurrection grew,” Fringe said angrily. “You were the bell that wakened her!”
Still silence.
“So if love cannot be owed, perhaps duty can. Jory was a great one for duty.”
“True,”
said a vast, echoing voice.
“That is true.”
“Or perhaps love can be given still, to do something she wanted to do. As a memorial!”
“Such as …?”
“You know very well. Such as saving the people of Elsewhere.”
“They chose….”
“Do I need to quote Jory at you? None of us could get away from our history far enough to make choices!”
Vast sighing, as of winds, heaving as of a forest in storm.
“Very well. Since you ask, I will do something as a memorial for her. I will save her daughter, the one she chose. That I can do.”
“You’ll save me?”
“I can do that. I can take you with me, away from here, out among the stars. We can continue the journey….”
She breathed deeply, suddenly alight, as though kindled by joy. She could go! As Jory had done! To find … to find whatever it was that lay beyond all human hopes, all human destinies….
She could fly. She could take these offered wings and fly!
She bowed her head. What would Jory have said? Never mind what Jory would have said, what did she herself say! What had she already told herself? Only the unencumbered could go chasing visions. Was she unencumbered?
“Not good enough,” she sighed at last. “Not good enough, Great Dragon. I made a vow. I have friends here. Jory had friends here. She wouldn’t have accepted that.”
A long silence, then a whisper.