Circus of the Grand Design (31 page)

Back in his room, he stood at the windows and looked out. The sun appeared sullen now, bulging and low. The temperature in the room remained comfortable, but near the window the heat pushed at him, thick and lifeless. What of the once-inviting green? He felt lost now, unwilling to face the prospect of the relentless sun, but unable to forsake his responsibility. He turned away from the glare. His bathroom had no windows. In there, he could find comfort. For a time. He twisted the shower tap to cold, lowered himself to the tile floor, and sat under the spray.

~

Lewis examined himself in the mirror, admiring his translucent skin and the shape of his protruding ribs. He felt fit and powerful, energized by the shedding of excess flesh. With his body thus prepared for travel, he needed only the means.

He put on his costume, everything: armor, boots, sword, helmet. The pack from the fishing trip still held some dried fish and a change of clothes; he slung it onto his back and left. In the kitchen, he stopped for more food and water. Arriving at Dillon's room, he entered without knocking. Dillon sat on the floor, surrounded by mounds of books. A spiral notebook lay across his lap and wadded sheets dotted the carpet. He looked up toward Lewis, but made no acknowledgment of his presence. Dark patches showed under his eyes and stubble covered his cheeks and chin. Lewis didn't think he had ever seen Dillon unshaven. Had Dillon been here, working in his room, ever since their last meeting in the dining car?

"I need to take the horse out," Lewis said.

Dillon opened the book on top of the nearest stack and flipped the pages, then held it open with one hand and groped the carpet near his feet, to grasp an ornate fountain pen the size of a fat cigar. He squeezed the chrome top with his lips and unscrewed the pen. With a finger marking his place in the book, he scrawled in the notebook.

Lewis had no time for Dillon's games. "The horse, I need it."

"Endless configurations," Dillon said without looking up from his work. "So many probability models, each giving rise to a complicated series of event calculations...hoped to estimate the parameters by the principle of maximum likelihood... always the same...should never have taken this upon us. Here we are, here..." Dillon's voice faded to a hoarse whisper and he slumped over his books. Lewis turned and left.

In the empty storage car, he confronted the walls, defeated by their smooth surfaces. One of them hid the mechanical horse. He would have to find tools, crowbar, pick-axe...but think! What would he do when he found the horse? He didn't want to think. The windowless room gave him sanctuary from the angry sun, but the bare bulb pulsed, its hue intensifying as if fortified by the outside light, but this light he at least had the power to extinguish. He tugged on the pullcord, filling the room with tactile dark, and lay on the dusty floor with his pack for a pillow.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness. Shapes emerged, glowing pinpricks.

Madness, he had been crazy ever since the Are No fire. Joining this circus train ride to nowhere. But the luminous pinpricks drew him. Some in clusters, others scattered, some bright, a few so dim he thought he imagined them, they covered wall and ceiling...looking like. He laughed a sharp ha! Stars. Constellations. There was Pisces, Aquarius, there was... Pegasus. He jumped to his feet and lunged toward the wall. He touched the dots forming the horse. The wall slid open.

He attached his pack and the bag of food to the saddle and led the mechanical horse to the elephant car and out the portal. Before mounting, he put on sunglasses and his helmet. It was already late afternoon. He rode without choosing a direction, and the horse took him to the river. The marshy, reed-filled bank had dried out and the river's flow had lessened. He couldn't believe how quickly the landscape had changed, the former lushness replaced by parched green turning to brown. He continued upstream along the water's edge, loving the feel of the horse under him, better than a real horse and responsive only to him. Despite the dark glasses, the glare from the setting sun made his eyes water and sting. The river curved to his right, and the ground began a gradual rise; not far ahead, the riverbank on his side thrust into abrupt cliffs. Even with the horse's uncanny ability to guide him, he didn't want to risk traveling the terrain at night. Safer to continue in the morning, and besides, he couldn't find Cybele in the dark.

He laughed. Was that what he was doing—looking for Cybele? His laughter grew hysteric, his belly heaved with it, and he kept laughing until he gasped for breath. He needed to stop, get off the horse and rest, but when he pulled up on the reins, nothing happened. He yanked back hard, again and again.

The ground continued to rise, and the horse veered away from the river with a movement so sudden Lewis had to clench the reins to keep his seat. The slope grew steeper. Not possible to dismount now—he would have to hold fast and wait it out. He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around the horse's neck. The horse lurched up and over a ridge, onto level ground. Below them, far past the river, the sun dipped toward the horizon. The horse took the next slope. Up and up they went. His arms felt numb. Where was Cybele now? Waiting. She knew he couldn't leave her. So close, freedom...gone. He sobbed into the mechanical horse's soft mane. Tired of being manipulated... tired, simply tired. When he returned to the train, he would sleep for a week...feast...one of Cinteotl's birds. The ground leveled.

Lewis sat up in the saddle and tugged the reins. The horse kept moving at a slow trot, but on the level ground he expected its pace to increase. Better, he thought, to drop off here than this hurtling through the dark. If he fell, the horse would stop. It needed a rider to move. Releasing one hand from the reins, he reached behind for the clip holding his pack to the saddle. It resisted his groping fingers; he turned to look and found the clip. While occupied with the strap, he felt the horse leap. He let go of the pack and grabbed for the reins, but the horse landed before he could secure his grip. He sprawled face down in the branches of a dying shrub.

The thump of the mechanical horse's hoofs continued without pause, fading as the distance separating them increased. By the time he sat up to look, the horse had vanished.

His pack had caught on another shrub. The bag of extra food and water remained attached to the saddle. He reached into the pack for his flashlight, slung the pack onto his shoulders, and started in the direction the horse had taken. The terrain ahead appeared to be level enough to travel using the light. His cheeks stung, scraped by the shrub, and his left hip hurt. After about twenty yards he stopped—no point chasing a horse he couldn't catch. He had never seen it move without a rider. Something must have affected its mechanism, the heat maybe. No, not
something
. He pulled a packet of dried fish from his pack. Everything had been too easy: he accesses the horse, takes it out, and lets it choose the direction. She had planned all, programmed the horse to take him, either to her or far from the train, where no one could find him, his punishment for daring to leave her.

Nothing he could do until daylight. He removed his boots and armor; lying on his back, he looked up at the fingernail moon and emerging stars. Come morning, he would return to the train. Too bad he hadn't thought to check his compass when he left the train, but no matter, the river, would be simple enough to follow it back. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them, stars filled the clear sky. Like the night at the acrobats' hut, he had never seen stars so distinct. The size of the sky awed him. He found Orion, followed the line of its belt to Pegasus, and used his compass to fix its position. He would have to mark its movement as the night passed. In the morning he would know his direction.

~

The landscape undulated, flowing in gentle peaks and valleys of varying heights and depths. A bristly tree carpet covered everything, like the stiff fur of some immense animal. The panorama excited him. He had an urge to leap the distances, feeling he could soar over the gulf that separated him from the hills below. The trees still held patches of green but probably wouldn't for long. Though the sunlight was diffuse, its power wasn't. It had been daylight a short time, but Lewis already felt drained from exposure to the red heat.

His position gave him a clear view in all directions. He would need to find a way down, most likely somewhere back along the way he had come. He hated going backward, even a short way—the line he had charted pulled him, but descending here would be too risky.

Sunlight reflected off something ahead. It had to be the mechanical horse. Forgetting caution, he scrambled down the steep hillside. By now the horse would have reached her...hurry then...couldn't be abandoned so easily, she would see. His foot caught on a root, flipping him over. Not now, not this, catch something—he flailed his arms, trying to grab anything that might slow his tumbling slide. He slammed into something that bent forward with the impact but held, and he lay for a time, afraid to move. A spear of branch pushed against his stomach; the armor had kept it from penetrating. Brown needles covered him, shaken loose by his collision with a clump of evergreens. The strap holding his helmet had parted, and it had flown off, somewhere, during his tumble.

He resumed his descent, reaching the bottom without falling again. The river was near, beyond a wall of still-living ferns. Unsheathing his sword, he hacked a path to the water, which flowed shin-high over a stone bed. He undressed and lay immersed, his head pointed upstream. The current tickled his hair, calmed and cooled him, but the sun was a worry. It had reached a point directly overhead. He sat up. The ferns would provide some protection. He tugged his underpants and shirt over his wet body and moved into the shade.

Heat and shadowy half-dreams disturbed his rest. He concentrated on the cold at Are No's house, hoping memories would cool him, and though he tried to summon a dream of the twins, all that came were misshapen images, and the effort of trying to identify them would wake him. After an hour or so of that he sat up. His armor lay piled beside the pack; he would leave it, everything but the sword.

Once across the river, he stopped to pull on his boots and fill his canteen. For protection from the sun, he spread a film of mud over the exposed skin of his face and arms and tied a tee shirt over his head as a bandanna. As he walked up the low bank, he took out the last of his dried fish.

The hills on the this side were lower, eventually leveling into a mossy plain, springy beneath his feet. With no cover, the afternoon sun numbed him. Wouldn't it be comforting to be back on the train, lost in the coolness of the white room? He tried to conjure it around him, shelter in its blank spaces. Breathe, allow the inhale to command the exhale and back again, until breath and steps diverged, each independent. The breath focused him and the steps carried him forward. Dillon had said—Lewis spoke aloud: "We travel on elastic paths of ever-increasing complexity."

He took the cap off his canteen and sipped. If he didn't reach the horse soon he would have to find something edible. Nothing looked promising, all he could see were acres of mossy carpet. He would eat grubs if he could find them, but he had seen nothing but plant life since leaving the train. The sun dipped behind a row of hills; its disappearance cheered him, though a red glow still infested the hilltops. The hills curved around toward the direction he walked. Walking among the hills, that would make a nice change. He had planned to rest when the sun went down and continue later, but the sunset energized him. Into the night he walked.

This once-green place held them, but they could have remained in peace, fishing, exploring, if the climactic change hadn't happened. His fault, his rejection of Cybele. As punishment she had removed the land's fertility, leaving a desolate landscape ruled by an unfriendly sun. If he returned to her, she would set things right. If he could find her...if not...couldn't last much longer out in the sun. This night then, this night. He breathed and walked, movement so steady he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. What need had he for food? The breathing and the walking, nothing else mattered.

The ground sloped upward to meet the hills. Ahead of him, something clattered. He stopped and pulled out his flashlight. Metal reflected in its beam.

"Hey girl, remember me?" He spoke aloud as he would to a horse of flesh. "You've led me along a merry way, haven't you?" The food bag still hung from its strap, but before he could get within a yard of it, the horse shied. "Come on you, I just need my bag." He stepped toward it, but the horse backed away. Stupid, talking to a mechanical horse. Words won't calm it. He didn't want to mount it again. Food, though—he needed something to hook the bag. He reached over his shoulder for the pommel of his sword and leapt forward, swinging the blade out and down. The blade clanged on the horse and caught the strap holding the bag to the saddle. The horse reacted to the sword as though formed from flesh instead of metal. It reared and emitted its harsh, wind-over-an-open-bottle neigh. He stayed close, sliding the sword up inside the strap, and when the horse pulled to his right, the strap parted. The horse moved toward a low ridge and stood near a dark patch of rock.

Lewis retrieved the bag. Tired now, he would wait and eat in the morning. Looking at the night sky, hazy, with no stars visible, he wondered what his companions were doing back at the train. He hoped his actions here, out in the wastes, could help them.

The rising sun woke him. He sat up and looked for the horse, which remained near the darker patch of rock. His sleep had been fitful, laden with imagined sounds, and worries that the horse would trample his prone body. His throat felt as though he had swallowed gravel; he drank from the extra canteen. He had left dried fish and fruit soaking in a plastic dish, and now he ate it, not minding that the fruit had absorbed the fish taste. There was some flatbread too, stale, but he ate it despite his dry throat. He would need the energy today, whatever happened. He laughed, remembering his thoughts of yesterday evening, disdaining food.