Circus of the Grand Design (28 page)

Dawn put an arm around the redhead's shoulders and spoke softly, encouraging her, but Lewis felt too uncomfortable to respond. He had performed in front of obnoxious crowds before, and Gold had told him that someone had once thrown a bottle that made Leonora fall off her elephant. But these were rare occurrences, individuals in an audience, not, as it appeared here, the collective will. Barca shared Lewis's unease, arguing with Dillon about unacceptable abuse to his elephants.

"At least I've got armor," Lewis said to no one in particular.

Dillon went out to start the show, and Lewis watched from behind the flaps. There was scattered applause when the acrobats finished, but yelling overpowered Miss Linda's poetry. Cheers sounded when Bodyssia's capybarabears tore apart the bird.

"No elephants today," Jenkins said.

Gold went out for his act, after which Lewis and Perry made their entrance. A boom of applause and cheering greeted them.

"Let's make it a good one," Perry whispered as they raised their swords. He trotted his horse out about twenty feet and turned to shout at Lewis: "I am Thaliard of Antioch. And who art thou, mean knight?"

The rest followed as usual until their mock combat. They crashed their swords, and someone yelled: "Six to one for the flap on the shiny horse!"

Slashing and parrying vigorously, they fought, but the crowd jeered. When Lewis slapped away Perry's sword and the jockey yielded, the audience yelled its displeasure at the bloodless ending. He and Perry rushed the rest of the lines. "In this hope I live," Lewis said in closing.

"You better hope you live," a man yelled.

Lewis and Perry left the arena without bowing to the crowd. Dillon waited in the staging area; he told them to stay on their horses. Most of the crew had already left, only Dillon and Barca, with Percival the elephant, remained. Guarded by the Percival, they returned to the train.

"I hate leaving the tent," Dillon said. "But it might not be possible to retrieve it."

Lewis went to the dining car, where everyone had gathered to see what was happening outside.

"Did anything happen to you guys?" Dawn asked Perry.

"Nothing physical," Perry said. "But I'm not used to demands that I hack my friend to pieces."

"And I for one don't like juggling the disgusting slop they threw at me," Gold said.

Several people emerged from the back of the tent. A larger group exited from the front. They converged. The wind had picked up, and great clouds of dust swirled. A large woman advanced a few feet and gestured to the train, then at the others, but first one, then four, then the rest ran for the dubious shelter of the town.

Dillon materialized in the doorway. "As soon as the sun descends, I would like volunteers to help take down the tent."

At nightfall, the entire crew met in the elephant car. They covered their faces with cloths, and when the portal opened they surged forward like soldiers disembarking on a hostile beach. Dillon watched the town while Jenkins showed them how to take apart the tent pieces and expel the air. They began strapping the bleachers and bundled tent pieces onto Clytemnestra and Percival. Paladin remained on the train.

Lewis stayed in costume, feeling safe beneath mail and helmet. Flying dust obscured the town. Dillon emerged, moving quickly toward them.

"They are coming," he said.

Clytemnestra knelt while Dawn supervised its loading. Barca had already taken Percival back to the train.

The dust-wind ebbed, revealing a group from the town, led by the large woman. She yelled and ran at them, waving a heavy staff. Lewis drew his sword, but something struck his shoulder and he lost his grip. With his other hand, he groped for it in the dust. A body flopped near him, its face bloody. The ground shook. Lewis gripped the sword and swung, clumsy in his left hand. A huge sound reverberated. What terrible beast had these people unleashed? Figures fled, and a shape emerged, Paladin, galloping madly as he did in performance; he trampled through the mob. The sound of Lewis's breath and voice came to him; he hadn't realized he was yelling. A hand touched his shoulder.

"Let's go," Bodyssia said. She held a staff of knotted wood, taken from the large woman who had led their attackers.

Dust covered the floor of the elephant car. Miss Linda stood to one side, with a clipboard; she checked Lewis and Bodyssia off the list.

"Just Barca and Paladin," she said.

"Back to the dining car," Dillon said. "Jenkins and I will wait, and secure."

In the dining car, Perry set Gold's broken arm and Cinteotl sewed up a gash in Cirill's thigh (the most serious injuries). Cinteotl slathered everyone's cuts and bruises with a thick, foul-smelling paste.

Everyone cheered Barca's entrance. Miss Linda placed a wreath of vines and flowers over his head. The windows blurred.

The tension from their conflict in desolation-town lingered. Cirill and Gold argued, then fought, over use of the lounge; Bodyssia would talk to no one and spent most of her time grumbling at the weight machines. They visited a town composed of barges and houseboats moored in an immense, weed-choked lake, where they performed on a platform built over several barges. The barges reminded Lewis too much of the town where that man had drowned. Their first day, someone went backstage during the closing promenade and stole Gold's juggling knife. The next morning, the redhead refused to leave the train, claiming that evildoers lurked everywhere. At a performance in an amphitheater in the middle of a large, clean, and ordered city, a man sitting in the front row heckled Bodyssia during her act. When he appeared backstage later, she hit him in the face, then picked him up and threw him.

During this period, Lewis was buoyed by the constant presence in his room of Cybele. From her he drew comfort in the midst of increasing chaos. It became more difficult to leave her for performances, and at their conclusion he would rush back to the train, sometimes even reaching it before Miss Linda. He gave up interaction with the rest of the crew. Meals were difficult. With Cybele refusing to go to the dining car with him, he would eat quickly and return. Eventually, he began bringing food back to his room.

~

One evening, while eating at his desk, his stomach lurched. The window cleared, revealing a green meadow with snow-topped mountains beyond.

"There'll be a show soon," he said.

Cybele sat on the floor with her legs crossed and eyes closed. He needed to find Perry to prepare for their act, but instead found himself crawling toward her lap. Someone knocked. Cybele pinched his lips shut, and he stroked her breast to show her that he had no intention of responding to the knock.

Bodyssia's bellow sounded from outside, "Showtime."

Cybele released his lips and he kissed hers. They made love over and over, varying positions each time. Her orgasms grew in intensity, her cries so loud he thought they would bring the entire circus crew to their door. He felt such power he wanted it to continue forever. Their lovemaking brought change, carried a flow of new life into the circus. His passion grew so large that he melted into her, viewed the room from inside her body, saw his surroundings in a milky haze, breathed through her layers of skin, absorbing the limonene scent of her internal organs.

Then for a time they slept. When he awoke, the windows had clouded again.

~

During one of Lewis's visits to the dining car he encountered Dillon hunched over a table, clutching a black, egg-shaped object. Dillon's appearance, pale, with dark smudges under his eyes, startled Lewis.

When Lewis reached the counter, Cinteotl shook his head. "I offered him root tea, I offered him myrrh brandy. Nothing."

Lewis wondered whether Dillon was ill, or suffering from some self-inflicted torpor in which his mind wandered along complex trails leading to private realms. Cinteotl packed Lewis some food. As he walked away, Dillon turned toward him, freezing him with blank, unfocused eyes. Could Dillon see him? He took a step toward Dillon's booth.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

Dillon turned back to the dark shape he held. Lewis tried to get a better look at it, but Dillon, as if feeling Lewis's gaze, moved his hands to cover it. Lewis shifted the hot packet of food back and forth in his hands. He had to return to Cybele. Dillon could take care of himself.

"Everything emanates from the audience," Dillon said. His voice was hoarse, far from its normal smooth and mesmerizing quality. "A full and excited house provides power far beyond anything manufactured. But lately...energy of the wrong sort...full of conflict and mistrust." He looked down at his object, addressing his comments to it rather than Lewis. Beneath the object's dark surface, something shimmered, like the figurine Cybele had given him; he slipped a hand into his pocket to test its warm reassurance.

"We live on tracks that move ever forward," Dillon said. "On rails laid from complex principles and variable flow. We are the caretakers of passion and power. So difficult to reverse course...concentrate on good fortune." He raised the object to eye level, then lowered it. "Perhaps our next location will provide...if not...responsibility mine alone."

Cinteotl appeared with a large mug. "Root tea. Drink now." Dillon slipped the object into his lap and lifted the mug. He closed his eyes and drank.

~

Lewis woke from another dream of the soft, vibrating hill. He kept his eyes shut, trying to retain the dream's gentle mood. Cybele lay beside him, and from her radiated, not heat exactly, more an electromagnetism coupled with the subtle, but always present scent of citrus. He moved a hand to her leg, resting his palm on her thigh, and he wondered what it would be like if they were joined, branches of the same tree. He recalled her first visit, when he had imagined himself being absorbed by her. He had no idea then, no idea at all.

Thinking he would shower and go to the dining car, he slid a leg off the bed and tensed his muscles to get up, but before he could move, she pressed a hand to his chest. He relaxed his body. His stomach rumbled, and she slid her hand down to cover the spot. Her touch numbed him and he lay unmoving, staring at the ceiling, which seemed far away and mysterious in the darkened room.

A knocking startled him—someone at the door? But no one knew where he was, not here, lost in a sphere separate from his former companions. He turned his head toward the sound. Everything seemed so far away, the floor, the wall. Hearing Perry's voice call to him, he sat up. As he opened his mouth to respond, he turned to look at Cybele. She smiled, and her smile cut off the words before they could emerge. Perry knocked again, harder, then pushed against the door, but it held fast.

"Have to open the door," Lewis said, his voice hoarse, but instead of getting up he reached for Cybele and, mimicking her, placed a hand on her stomach, palm flat, fingers pointing toward her face. A current, he thought, a circuit undisturbed, from you to me and back again. He lay beside her and closed his eyes.

Days of sunshine fell through the windows of their room and, as though fueled by the light, Cybele grew. She reached his height, then surpassed him, so gradually he didn't notice until she was Bodyssia's size. Soon, she would be too large for the room; her head would butt the ceiling. Lewis sat in the middle of an immense bed, and Cybele lifted him to her breast as a newborn.

"My child, I will nourish you and make you strong," she said, and he cried, clutching her breast with his miniature fingers, filling his mouth with her nipple, drawing forth the vitality he needed.

He awoke with his mouth clamped firmly over one of her nipples. He pulled away and felt a milky sweetness on his lips and in his mouth; he swallowed. The liquid flowed down his throat to settle in his stomach. He lay on his back and stared up at the white ceiling.

Again he awoke with his mouth over a nipple. She stroked his head as though he were a pet, or a child.

Not knowing if he was awake or dreaming, he watched a patch of sunlight move across the room. Particles of dust floated in its path, hovering and spinning. Wishing he were among them, he reached toward the dust, but couldn't grasp the particles. The sunlight made him think of his companions on the train, and he wondered what they might be doing. His mind wandered in a maze of rooms filled with Dawn's chirping voice, Bodyssia grunting as she exercised, Miss Linda reciting a poem, Gold juggling half a dozen red apples, but he couldn't see their faces. Each was a blur with a name, and later, even the names faded.

Trying to picture his companions, he saw only Cybele's breasts and was unable to look away. He put his face between them. Then he was calm.

Again and again, with his lips pressed to one of her nipples, he awoke. She stroked his head. He slept.

Sunlight floated into Lewis's room, real sunlight, aglow with expectation. Cybele, a soft anchor beside him, her breath in his ear like wind pushing a sailing ship. Waves slapped the hull, a slow, rhythmic force that relaxed and invigorated him. He had traveled so long in this ship that it felt like the only home he had known, and the crew, his only family. But the captain drove them farther and farther out, past archipelagos covered in green, past jagged volcanic outcroppings that could tear out the hull, toward...Only the captain knew.

Once, Lewis would have questioned everything, demanded to know the captain's plan, but now, he conserved energy for future encounters. Down in his cabin, the winds and reasons seemed far away, with his companion as his only care. She slept on, and her sleeping fortified him. But when the sunlight crossed his eyes, it awakened in him a desire to be away, among flowers, trees, and flowing water. Without looking out the window, without thinking of Cybele, he dressed and hurried to the caboose.

The train stood on a ridge, above a river. No buildings in sight, only the steep slope falling to the water and across, a wave of subtle hills. Everywhere was green, ferns and shrubs and spiny-leafed trees with bare trunks and conical tops, a vivid green, like the first onslaught of spring, fighting its way back from the death of winter. The sweet, warm air intoxicated him. He sat, staring at the water a hundred or so feet below. The sheen of the river drew him. The hillside here was too steep to descend, but there would be time for that later. For now, all that mattered was the sun and surrounding green.