The Nightingale Circus (13 page)

She turned her eyes from the mime, who had
gesticulated with fluid motions, and she gave Big Dino a long,
pensive look.

“Do you understand?” Big Dino asked. “You’ll
have to stay.”

Instead of an answer, she reached for the
edge of the bot’s chest cavity and looked up as if asking for
permission. When Big Dino gave a slow nod, she crawled back into
the bot and brought it to a sitting position.

Rake and Spinner took an involuntary step
back. Although unarmed, the bot’s fists could easily squash anyone
in the room. A knife slipped into Rake’s hand. Working as a knife
thrower came in handy. He could get her from there before she did
any damage. The bot's armor had closed over her legs, but the head,
chest and arms remained open, and the heart beating fast inside
that deformed body made a perfect target.

“I think we fried some circuits,” Spinner
whispered. He saw Rake’s hand that held the knife and pushed it out
of sight. He had a knife ready too, the tension in his shoulders
gave him away, but he was more discreet about it.

“We’ll fix them.” Rake’s gruff voice brought
the girl’s attention back to him, and he had the acute feeling that
she somehow knew he had electrocuted her. Had she been awake all
this time?

“Will you stay and obey our rules?” Big Dino
turned the previous statement into a question.

The girl closed and opened the bot’s fists
with a dexterity that said a lot about her fine motor skills. She
glanced at Rake’s knife and then peered down at the big dent in her
stomach where the sphere was missing. For a brief moment, her
hairless eyebrows plunged into a frown. And then she opened her
mouth and spoke, “Fei Lin … stay…”

* * *

“Wheee!”

Bang!

Rake groaned and hid his head under his
pillow. Outside his car windows, Fei Lin practiced her new circus
act. She seemed to enjoy being fired from the cannon again and
again, even if she still had problems with the landing. Spinner had
painted the bot in bright colors and added fireworks launchers to
the shoulders. All nice and well, but why did Rocket Girl have to
be so loud?

Riella’s hand searched for him under the
sheets, and he rolled on his side. Well, if he was awake
anyway…

The bomb had gone off in the middle of the
day while Aurore discussed the plans for her sweet sixteen party
with her mom. There were only a couple of months left, and she
wanted everything to be perfect. Dad kept nodding with his nose
buried in the files, agreeing to anything she suggested. As a
still-active diplomat, it wasn’t like they couldn’t afford it. Mom
drew the line at having white horses and doves released on the
patio. Uncle Tem had been kind enough to agree to host the party
inside the Hrad, the big Bratislava Castle, and Aunt Olivia
couldn’t wait to introduce her niece to high society.

The bulky house-help robot arrived with a
tray loaded with refreshments and fruits. Aurore wrinkled her nose
at the bowl filled with cherries and reached for a fizzy drink
instead. “I want a tiara. Real diamonds. I want to have the best
jewelry at the party.”

“Sweetheart, your father is a socialist,” Mom
said. “That wouldn’t look good to his electorate.”

“I didn’t ask you to
buy
them,” Aurore
said in her most reasonable tone. “It will be the biggest event of
the season. Any jewelry house in Europe would be happy to lend us
something.”

Mom tsked, staring at Dad. He raised his eyes
from the files, grinning. “You heard her … she’ll make a fine
politician some—”

A low rumble covered Dad’s voice. The entire
house shook, from the foundation to the roof, as if trying to
uproot itself from the ground. The noise hurt Aurore’s ears and
left a gasping hole in her chest. Concrete blocks flew at them,
smashing everything in their path. The robot turned into a mangled
pile of metal surrounded by sparks in a corner. Mom’s scream was
cut short by a blow to the head, and Dad toppled off the chair and
slammed against the wall behind him. Lucky for her, Aurore didn’t
remember the rest.

She woke up in a room she didn’t recognize,
her head clouded and her body numb. As her eyes focused, they found
Uncle Tem and Aunt Olivia standing by the side of her bed, faces
grim. Their presence was comforting in lieu of her parents, who
must be in another hospital room. But why wasn’t Aunt Olivia
holding her hand? She was big on holding hands.

When she tried to move, Aurore discovered she
couldn’t. “Mom?” She whimpered.

Aunt Olivia pressed a hand over her
thin-lipped mouth and rushed out of the room, but not fast enough
for Aurore to miss the tears running down her cheeks.

Mom?
Surely her parents couldn’t be
dead. She’d been closer to the blast, and she had survived.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart.” Uncle Tem clumsily
patted the bundle of bandages that covered her arm, both arms
apparently. “It will be all right…”

No, it wasn’t going to be. Uncle Tem was
rubbish with children. He and Aunt Olivia didn’t have any, and he
had never shown any interest in his too-young-to-vote niece.
Besides, his campaign motto was
Don’t promise anything you can’t
deliver
, so if he’d felt the need to make that promise, it
meant there was no one else left to do it.

Hit by the realization, Aurore turned her
face away and let the warm tears flow.

From that day on, Uncle Tem made sure to stop
by for at least a few minutes each day. It was a big deal to make
room in his busy mayor’s schedule, but he did it without
complaining. The part of Aurore that hadn’t succumbed to despair
appreciated it. The other part, however, didn’t care about anything
now that Mom and Dad were gone, and she certainly didn’t care about
her injuries not healing the way they should.

“She looks peaceful,” Uncle Tem said one
evening when she pretended to be asleep.

“She’s
not
getting better.” The
doctor’s soft voice was barely audible.

“Well, make her better. Money is not an
issue. Tell me what she needs, and I’ll get it for you.”

A pause followed, during which Aurore
imagined the doctor giving Uncle Tem a judgmental stare.

“You can’t
buy
what she needs.”

Aurore could clearly picture a raised, bushy
eyebrow.
Try me.

“The table protected her torso from the
blast,” the doctor said, “but her arms and legs were totally
crushed. We did our best…” A sigh. “Unfortunately, gangrene is
settling in on her extremities. We will have to amputate soon.”

Loud sobs and a slammed door signaled Aunt
Olivia had left the room. Good. Aurore had long gotten sick of the
woman’s crying. At least now she could listen to the conversation
in peace.

Practical as usual, Uncle Tem asked, “Which
limb?”

“All four.”

Uncle Tem’s gasp covered Aurore’s own little
gasp.

“I see…”

Aurore couldn’t wrap her mind around it. He
wanted to cut her arms and legs off? Sure, they hurt, but … cut
them off? How was she going to dance at her party?

“She’ll need prosthetics, right?” Uncle Tem
asked.

“Yes, but … thanks to the Eastern goods ban,
she can only have second-hand prosthetics. No fine motor skills,
and she’ll be lucky if she’s able to walk again. As for the
cosmetics part of it…” Another sigh. “Only a few months ago, we
would have still been able to find parts, but everything coming
from the East has been repossessed and destroyed to cut our ties
with the enemy. We’re in a very bad place right now, and it doesn’t
do your niece any good.”

The next pause was even longer than the
last.

“How much time do we have?” Uncle Tem asked
with determination in his voice.

“Not long. If we wait, we’ll only have to cut
them higher up.”

“Let me worry about that,” Uncle Tem said,
and for a week, there was no more talk about cutting.

* * *

The pain got worse, regardless of how many
painkillers they pumped into her bloodstream. The doctor was
getting anxious, too.

And then, there was no more hospital and no
more doctors, which would have been worrisome if she had cared.
Aurore took it as a sign she would find peace soon. She might even
be reunited with her parents if such a thing as the afterlife
existed. Still, when she was moved into an ambulance and taken out
of town, she couldn’t help being intrigued by the destination, but
there was no one around to answer her questions.

The car passed by a circus tent with yellow
and blue stripes and pulled up near a train car on its other side.
Two men dressed in clown costumes but wearing no make-up came to
pull her stretcher from the car and carried her to the train. If
Uncle Tem hadn’t accompanied her all the way, she would have been
scared.

The fresh air helped clear Aurore’s head, and
she stifled a small regret that she couldn’t attend the circus this
year. She hadn’t even known it was in town yet as it usually
arrived late in the fall, but news filtered with difficulty into
the isolation ward.

The clowns laid the stretcher on a table and
retreated, leaving them alone in a compartment that must have
occupied at least half of the train car. Pieces of equipment and
metal parts lay discarded on tables and shelves. This looked
nothing like a hospital. It looked like a car repair shop—cars that
had been built in the past century maybe.

A heavy shuffling announced the arrival of a
large man with a green-tinged complexion and dark crusts spread on
his skin. He maneuvered his huge body around the corner of the
table. “Mayor Ternchiev, welcome to my lair.”

They didn’t shake hands.

“This is the patient,” Uncle Tem said,
“Aurore.”

“Hello, doctor…” Aurore spoke in a weak
voice.

The man lifted a finger. “There are no
doctors here, so we don’t do patients. We only deal with
clients
.” He took a long look at her and licked his fat,
dark lips. “You may call me Big Dino like everyone else.” With
that, he picked up a device covered in hard plastic with a long
hole on the side. “Do not worry, Miss Aurore. This isn’t going to
hurt.”

He positioned the device on top of her left
leg, covering it from the ankle to the knee. He studied the image
that appeared on the small screen encased in the device then moved
it higher up her thigh. Murmuring something to himself, too low to
be understood, he repeated the procedure on her other leg. Her arms
were next.

Uncle Tem shifted his weight on the other
side of the stretcher. Aurore admired his patience, as the mayor
wasn’t usually this subdued. “Well?”

Big Dino stepped back and rubbed his chin.
“I’m afraid it’s too late. The gangrene has spread, quite far
actually. A clot can break off anytime and cause a heart attack,
not to mention the infection. You waited too long.”

“I waited for
you
,” Uncle Tem
said.

“We came as quickly as we could. We were
outside Europe when you contacted me. This train can only go so
fast.”

Uncle Tem lowered his head but didn’t look at
her. “Well, you’re here now. What can you do?”

“The left side is the most affected.” Big
Dino approached the table again. “We’ll have to cut above the knee
and elbow … on the right side, below will do, but she’ll lose her
hand and foot.”

Aurore whimpered. “I-I don’t want to lose my
arms and legs!”

“I know, sweetheart,” Uncle Tem said, “but
there’s no other way. You will get new ones.”

“There was a way … if you had let the doctors
remove the dead tissue when the gangrene first started,” Big Dino
said.

“They would have insisted on adding the
prosthetics, everyone would have…” Uncle Tem shook his head. “Our
prosthetics aren’t good enough. Even the black market wouldn’t have
provided anything better. Then, I remembered about your
people.”

“So, what are you trying to do, make sure
she’s either perfect or dead?” Big Dino’s question came with a
little sneer. “You
could
have used some of the available
prosthetics and changed them when something better became
available.”

“And have her go through this again?” Uncle
Tem replied with a frown. “She’s suffered enough. This nightmare
ends now. She’ll get the prosthetics and go on with her life.”
Uncle Tem’s bushy eyebrows lowered over his eyes when Big Dino
didn’t say anything. “Will they work?”

“Yes, they will work,” Big Dino said,
fiddling with the cuff of his jacket. “But you are forgetting
something. My people wear costumes and masks more often than not.
They don’t expect to fit in the real world … or be accepted. This
little lady, however…”

“She will be fine. Her social status will
make her accepted.”

Big Dino’s tilted head hinted he believed
otherwise.

“What exactly can you do for her?” Uncle Tem
asked, and Aurore felt like they were two warriors fighting and the
battlefield was her poor, battered body.

“Four fully functional prosthetics. I have
something in the works, but they need to be adjusted to her
size.”

“She’s still growing.”

“We’ll take that in account. Yearly fixes
will get them to the right size,” Big Dino said. “Normal mobility,
resistance, and sensitivity … unless you want some other features.
That will cost extra, and it will take more time.”

“No, normal will do,” Uncle Tem said. “Of
course, you will stay until she gains the full use of them.”

“That’s not possible. It will take
months.”

“We have a whole summer ahead of us. That’s
when the circus is touring, isn’t it?”

“We can’t stay that long in one place. If the
circus stays more than two or three weeks, the expenses will
surpass the profits once the interest decreases, and the circus
will lose money. We still have a winter to live through.”