Cyber Circus Read online

  Cyber Circus

  Kim Lakin-Smith

  Hellequin, last of the HawkEye military elite, is desperate to escape the legacy of Soul Food, the miraculous plant food that leeched the soil, destroyed his family, and instigated a bloody civil war. For a man awaiting the inevitable madness brought on by his enforced biomorph implant, there’s only one choice. Run away with the circus…

  Drifting above a poisoned landscape, Cyber Circus and her exotic acrobats and bioengineered freaks bring a welcome splash of colour into folk’s drab lives. None more so than escaped courtesan turned-dancer Desirous Nim. When Nim’s freedom and her very life are threatened, Hellequin is forced to fight again. But, even united, will the weird troupe and their strange skills be enough to save Nim and keep their home aloft? That’s assuming, of course, that Zan City’s Blood Worms, mute stowaways, or the swarms don’t manage to bring them down first…

  Welcome to the greatest show on Sore Earth!

  The book also features: “Black Sunday” – a free-standing but associated novelette.

  A tale of desperation, incorporating drought, science, giant burrowing machines, rural magic, racial tension and sensuality in the 1930s Kansas dustbowl.

  Cyber Circus

  and

  Black Sunday

  Kim Lakin-Smith

  For my father,

  Nev Lakin

  CYBER CIRCUS

  ONE

  1937. Sore Earth, population – 3120 souls.

  Darkness. Deep treacly dung-scented darkness. Made incandescent by the appearance of thousands of tiny weak stars in the heavens. The air is a cloak of intermingled breath. Bodies shift. Slowly the stars brighten.

  The ringmaster smiles. He is a squat dumpling of a man. Red suited in tail coat and knickerbockers, with a head that shines under the spots up in the rafters. In his hand, the hat for which he is famed; a crest of soft green velvet, sprouting feathers like spines. Hat of the king pin, owner of Cyber Circus. Herb wields it before the crowd. To the roll of a solitary kettle drum, he slowly, teasingly, places it on his head.

  Applause. A storm of it, whipping up from the front stalls and rolling back. The calliope begins to pipe, contours shining. Fibrous sponge beats behind the ornate metalwork. Air drains through fine copper veins. Tucked in under the ribs of the giant instrument, the boiler is a stomach of greenish glass. Water steams and bubbles inside.

  Herb leaps into the centre of the ring. A dancing maggot.

  “Welcome, one and all, to the sensational, lavational, electrisical, metaphysical Cyber Circus!” A flourish of a hand. Oohs from the crowd. “On this most exhilarating night, you will witness wonders from the outer reaches of our land of Humock where only the devil and lost souls dare venture. I bring you strange people, weird people, and some who aren’t people at all!”

  He runs the circuit of the ring, coattails flapping. “Cower in the presence of Wolf Girl. Feast your eyes on the electrifying Desirous Nim. Behold the half-child half-crab Scuttlers. Marvel at the aerial daring of the tantalising Lulu. Come face to face with a HawkEye...” A nod to acknowledge the audience’s gasp. “Indeed, ladies and gentlemen. A bona fide HawkEye who, wearied of the lone battle, has joined our family of freaks and appears for you tonight, fully armed and watchful.” Herb points two fingers at his eyes then directs the gesture out. “And if that wasn’t enough, on this very stage, inside this very canvas, we will unleash not one but two hoppers!”

  Eerie, the collective stop of breath. Then a shock wave of applause. And Herb is dancing again, hat’s plumage shivering at the impact of each step, the brown egg of his belly poking out from below his braided jacket.

  “Strike up the band!” he calls to the calliope, and seemingly it hears him. The tent fills with watery mechanical music.

  Herb gestures to a painted curtain. He lights his smile.

  “I give you Wolf Girl!”

  * * *

  “How is she?” Lulu’s mouse-like eyes shone with tears.

  “Scared, I suspect.” Hellequin kept his arms folded. His shadow loomed against the silk drops that separated the living quarters from backstage.

  “Oh, my poor baby doll. A downpour of hawk shit on that mark! He’s a suckerloop, a villain!” The ladyboy wrung his hands. Kohl ran beneath his lashes.

  The HawkEye frowned, emphasising the twin bone ridges at his forehead that protected his circuitry. “He’s not a mark. He’s a pimp. A lowlife grubbing in others’ suffering. Herb shouldn’t have set down here. Not if he wants a good clean show.”

  “But what are you gonna do? It’s not like you and Nim are sweethearts.” Lulu dropped his voice. “She gets wind you’re on guard out here and, oh my, you seen the sparks flying offa her recently?”

  Hellequin’s steel eye telescoped. “Just blips in her circuitry. Comes of shoddy workmanship when the mods were installed.”

  Lulu fanned his fingers against his smooth cheeks. “I hope you’re right. I’d hate to scorch this pretty face.” When Hellequin failed to respond, the ladyboy clucked his tongue and popped out a hip. “Not that a hard heart like you would notice. Even with all that fancy hardware.” He waved a hand in front of Hellequin’s face, aggravating the HawkEye lens into fresh adjustment.

  “Bitter much?” Pig Heart muscled his way through the silk curtains, dragging a rope attached to a pallet piled with bone and meat.

  “Drink swill from the donniker!” Lulu flicked his white dreads back off his shoulders.

  The pitchman showed a mouthful of tusks. “Love you too, Lulu.” He dragged a hand across his large glistening nostrils, leaving a smear of blood there. “Come on. Let’s pucker up.”

  “You are a revolting swine!” Lulu danced back.

  Pig Heart arched his back and let out a belly laugh. “By name and nature.” The pitchman tapped his breast. “Whatever dead hog gave me this ticker made sure of that. But I see you checking out my porky ass, Lady Lulu. You wanna piece of this, doncha?” He gave his generous rear a slap. Snorting, he picked up the rope again and started for the entrance to the ring.

  “Nim. Is she going on tonight?” said Hellequin sharply.

  The pitchman stopped. He craned his bristled jaw over a shoulder. “Maybe you ain’t been here long enough, Hellequin, but ain’t none of us carnies the keeper of the other. Nim’s got a problem visiting Sore Earth, it’s her choice to tell Herb, or put up and shut up.”

  Lulu clucked. “Like any of us have a say where Herb chooses to pitch down.”

  “Ever known Herb change his mind once he’s on course?” Hellequin focused on the pitchman.

  The rope fell from Pig Heart’s hands. The pitchman strode back, arms swaying at his sides like joints on hooks. Hellequin stayed rigid, his back to the flow of silk. Lulu skipped on the spot.

  Pig Heart’s pale damp eyes fastened on Hellequin’s revolving lens. “Ten years back, we hit a dust storm. Came outta nowhere so fast it seemed the devil had parted his ass cheeks and farted. We dipped inside the caverns west of Zan City. Seemed there was no way we’d make the gig at an old tunnel town called Drieur. Our only option was to let the marks keep their dollar – which Herb was having none of – or travel under the storm and navigate the caverns.” Pig Heart dragged up a shirt sleeve. His forearm was scarred with three deep lacerations.

  “Hoppers.” Lulu clutched his throat.

  “Some crew weren’t so lucky, which was how Herb ended up changing course. Once.” Pig Heart inclined his head towards Hellequin.

  A tremendous clacking noise prompted all three to stare at the stage curtain.

  “Herb’s getting his iron rattler in a twist. I’d best feed Rust before she sinks her jaws into them marks out there. You kids play nice now.” Pig Heart showed his fat teeth. He took up the slack on the
rope and hauled the pallet after him, meat slopping like jelly.

  Lulu took a lace handkerchief from one cup of his bustier and dabbed his temples. “I need to climb aboard the spring pad. The mood Herb’s been in recently, I’ll be one dead cannonball if I miss my entrance.” He shook the handkerchief towards the silk drop behind Hellequin. “Let’s get in and out of here as quickly as possible. For her sake.”

  Hellequin turned around to see a lamp fire up behind the flimsy walls. The change in light replaced his shadow with an hour glass silhouette. His chest tightened.

  “I got my eye on Nim,” he muttered.

  Lulu waved a talon at the gadgetry stitched into the soldier’s face. “Indeed you have.”

  * * *

  Earl macerated a wad of leaf. “I’d like to play buckaroo with that wild dog!”

  D’Angelus sucked the stub of a Cherokee smoke stick, cheeks working like bellows. “She’d give the John a bang for his buck, that’s for sure.”

  “What they feeding that bitch anyway?” Earl’s voice thickened with revulsion.

  “I don’t know.” D’Angelus flicked his smoke stick, exaggerating the red glow at its tip. The scent lay upon him and around him like the perfumed skin of a woman. “Even if it’s the butchered slop of the Saints themselves, it’d be a price worth paying. Look at her.” He stabbed the smoke stick at the ring where a she-wolf was pawing a cracked femur and slathering marrow into her mouth. The red mane that tickled her coccyx was threaded with gore. Blood streaked her cheeks like war paint.

  Watching from the back of the tent, D’Angelus felt a strange longing. Owner of the Elegance Saloon, he had peddled skin for a lifetime, enjoying many varieties of black, gold and lilied flesh. But all that carnality had done nothing to sate his deepest need. No matter how he mixed tears into their smiles with the lash, or how many of their mouths suckered him, he could not achieve a true, beautified sense of his own fleshness. He wanted to be properly devoured. To be feasted upon.

  “Reckon the circus owner’ll sell her on?” Earl gobbed his mouthful of weed onto the soil floor.

  “Why risk asking? I’m thinking once the wolf girl’s done supping and is stowed back in her cage, the boys just step behind the curtain and attain her.” D’Angelus bobbed his trekker head towards the fifteen strong crew in his employment.

  Earl’s eyes tightened. “They got a HawkEye.”

  D’Angelus revealed a mouthful of recycled teeth, taken from dead men and screwed into the gum. “I betcha the HawkEye is just some bum in a mask. Ink him with a regiment’s colours and the townsfolk who roll in once a year ain’t gonna question it.”

  He watched Earl retrieve a battered tin from his pants’ pocket, pinch a wad of leaf and squash it inside a cheek. The man was all kinds of ugly, thought D’Angelus. He liked that about him.

  “Alright,” said Earl. “‘Cause I ain’t never heard of a surviving HawkEye, only what you get by way of tall tales out at Grenyan’s Bar. Like how they’d take to their lung baskets and be able to spy a jewel wasp infesting a cockroach with her lava from the sky. All those wires and bits of metal inside a face? How’d a man do that to himself, D’Angelus? By the Saints, I gotta tell ya, it’s a dark use to put the body to.” He shuddered and chewed his cud.

  A Saint Sister edged around on a nearby bench, grey wimple angling stiffly from her head to her toes like a shroud. The face which poked out had gone off with age.

  “By every Saint in the blue, will you pair of suckerloops shut your traps?”

  “Beg your pardon, Ma’am.” D’Angelus nipped the brim of his hat.

  The Sister scowled, further corrupting her dried features. She turned back to the action just as the wolf girl sunk her jaws into a side of wet meat and shook it like a dog. Blood sprayed the crowd. The Saint Sister rocked back, hands to her face, muttering in disgust. She kept her seat though.

  In the realm of the circus, blind fascination won out over revulsion, D’Angelus mused. And he liked the wolf girl even more then because her savage nature was on open display and not disguised behind religion and a wimple.

  “Forget the HawkEye,” he told Earl. “Let another couple of acts play out. Allow the wolf to get comfortable in her cage. Then you and the boys head backstage and acquire her.” He broke out his ghoul smile. “Reckon we should introduce her to a new breed of predator. Our clientele.”

  * * *

  Pig Heart manhandled the stripped pallet out of the ring and to one side of the stage curtain. He let go of the rope and eased back his shoulders. Bloody pulp ingrained his hands. Pig Heart resisted the urge to suck his fingers. Instead, he slipped back into the shadows and rooted in a pocket for a smoke stick. He struck a match and applied the flame to the tip. Releasing a piquant mouthful, he let his eyes settle on the wolf girl.

  Rust was performing a weird ballet along the low wall surrounding the circus ring. Her legs were short and scrub-covered, her breasts drained of fat and pendulous, more like teats than the usual soft mounds. She threw back her head and howled to intimidate both enemy and prey. Or was it a call to her kind, wondered Pig Heart? Smoke bled from his wet nostrils.

  Limbs skittering, Rust chased her shadow round the ring. Pig Heart ate her up – the patch of fur between her legs, the scarred flesh of her rear.

  “Quite a performance,” said a nasal voice.

  Pig Heart whipped his head aside. It was D’Angelus’s man, Earl, the one with eyes so small it was impossible to see a chink of decency. Earl tucked in alongside him in the shadows and churned his jaw – sign of a leaf chewer.

  “Not too gory for you?” Pig Heart snorted as Rust found the steak he had disguised beneath a mound of sawdust and, without pausing to brush it off, started to gnaw the meat.

  Earl shot aside a slug of leaf. “Rabid beast ain’t my flavour. Nim, on the other hand..? Well, I sure would like a second taste of that delicacy. When’s her spot?”

  Pig Heart grubbed in the bristles of his chin. He felt rage at the mention of Nim – rage at her for presenting him with this opportunity by returning to Sore Earth, rage at himself for taking advantage of the fact.

  “After Rust’s finished, it’s the aerial act. Nim’s up next after that.”

  “Mr D’Angelus is keen to see what his protégé has been doing with her time these past few months. Travellers off the dust trail claim she’s quite the attraction.”

  The pitchman took a fresh drag. He narrowed his eyelids against the bloom of smoke. “Nim gets menfolk squirming in their long johns, that’s a fact. But not even her kootch show distracts from the true blowoff. Ain’t many folk shared tent space with hoppers, which is how they ain’t never gonna know the beasts are mostly harmless. ‘Cept when they swarm.” A dark impression played across Pig Heart’s mind... the scrape of chitinous limbs, fibrous neck folds, burred tentacles. He took the last lungful off the smoke stick and ground the nub under a boot heel. “Make a good show though,” he appended gruffly.

  “Shame to miss it, but I got a feeling Mr D’Angelus will be collecting on our exchange before this evening’s grand finale.” Earl smiled, teeth gangrenous with leaf pulp.

  Their conversation was interrupted by a grinding noise. A camshaft, fat as a salt pillar, corkscrewed up from the opposite end of the ring, just as the stage curtain drew back so that Rust could make her snap-jawed exit. On top of the camshaft stood Lulu, white-gold dreads cascading over a shoulder, one shapely leg kinked against the other. In a jewelled bodice and tutu, his appearance tricked many assembled below. The air filled with trills of appreciation. The audience’s lust was interrupted by the crack of gun powder and the chime of the propeller’s spring release.

  Lulu flew the length of the tent at a steep trajectory. Catching hold of a trapeze disguised in the black canopy overhead, he swung out over the heads of the crowd, looped back in and dropped down, one leg hooked over the apparatus, arms extended in an upside-down V.

  The crowd broke into applause.

  Pig Heart leaned sideways. “So
, I let you know where Nim was. Time to pay up and I don’t want no carnie roll of one dollar bills with a higher note wrapped around. I want the notes separated.”

  Earl squinted sideways, a touch of mockery to his lips. “We gotta see the merchandise before we hand over the reward for her whereabouts. A creature of integrity like yourself has gotta see that, ain’t you now, Mr Swine Heart?”

  “Pig Heart,” muttered the pitchman. He whipped another smoke stick between his lips and watched the acrobatic antics of the ladyboy. Soon Nim would take to the stage and he could pocket the reward, and none in the troop would be the wiser.

  TWO

  The ladyboy touches down on the apex of a colossal iron scaffold. He curtseys and steps out of view. The lights grow dim. Applause fades out.

  All eyes lift to the ribs of the tent where pearlescent light feeds down to the fibrous mass of the calliope. It breathes. The instrument actually breathes. Folk turn to poke their neighbour and point and nod – they are sure of it. The intricate pipework steams. It speaks to them, the calliope, in a voice that is dry and fluting, its purpose being to distract the crowd from the figures who rush from the wings and unroll thin canvas over the floor of the ring. Hammers chime as Pig Heart’s pitch crew secure the waterproof skin inside the rim of the low wall. They disappear and return moments later, shouldering prisms which they arrange around the outer rim. The calliope sings its strange song. The pitch crew melt back into the shadows.

  The stage is bathed in a soporific glow. Water tumbles from a perforated sluice in the central rib overhead. Secret mechanisms grind into life and the prisms begin to weep like waterfalls. Spotlights burn greenly from below the shallow pool.

  A woman steps from one of the larger prisms as if passing through glass. She is tall as a reed and curvaceous. Her face is full with a pinch of bone at each cheek. Red hair loops down onto pale shoulders. She wears silk pantaloons and a corset of ribbons. In her ears are silver hoops. In her hand is an umbrella.