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.
The air dusts with spray as she mounts the low wall and steps daintily around it. At each prism, she angles her umbrella under the flow, sending water spurting over the heads of the crowd who hoot in delight and sway to the pipe of the calliope.
Coming full circle, she swings the umbrella upside-down, places it on the water and steps inside. Few among the marks hear the soft click of a pressure pad or understand the revolving magnet patched onto a slim track. Instead, it is an apparently cognisant umbrella that conveys its beautiful cargo about the ring.
She casts off her soaked pantaloons. Men whoop and whistle. Her undergarment is of the same wet ribbon as her drenched corset.
The umbrella glides to the centre of the ring. As the lights dim further, she appears as an hour glass silhouette. But the transformation goes further. She is suddenly alight. Her mouth shines, as do the outlines of her breasts, each nipple visible between the slats of her ribbon top, and too the curve from hip to inner thigh and the plump of each buttock.
The song of the calliope is replaced with a discordant clang that gathers pace. Faster and faster the umbrella twirls to the guttural music. And she is a light cell, a blur of shine-shot neon. Colours grease the air in her wake.
“Ask me, the wolf bitch can’t hold a candle to our Desirous Nim” whispered Earl in the glowing dark. “Helluva show.”
Pig Heart stared at the impression of Nim’s form left behind by the light trails. She was seductive in the way a pin-up in a peepshow pamphlet gave him something to jack off to. But she didn’t speak to his essence like Rust. While Nim was all about erotic suggestion, Rust was a force of sexual nature, incapable of manipulation or artifice. Her desires came from instinct, which was how on several occasions now, she’d crawled into his bed and pinioned him, her louse-riddled hair spilling onto his naked chest. Their rutting had a bleak urgency, which was not to say it was without sentiment. He’d found himself longing to join her in her nest, to taste her bloody mouth, while there’d been a suggestion of need in the tug of her hands at his jowls, in her drinking him in.
“Nim’s a crowd pleaser,” he muttered. “Me? I don’t get the appeal of a whore all lit up with directions for awkward Johns.”
“No?” Nim’s neon pinwheel reflected in Earl’s pupils. “Each to their own, hey, Mr Swine Heart. I’m just eager to get our girl back in the stable she bolted from. Mr D’Angelus, though, he’s taken a fancy to the wolf girl. Seems we’ll be depriving Herb of two attractions this evening. And since you were the man to direct our eye here, you get a few extra dollars.” Earl took the band from around a fat bank roll and fanned the notes.
Pig Heart didn’t move, not even when Earl pressed the notes into his hand. Regret burnt inside his chest like a brand. Not only did D’Angelus intend to re-secure Nim but he had his sights set on a new pet, Rust. The pitchman rubbed a sore spot at his brow. What in the devil’s name had he unleashed upon her?
Nim concluded her act and Earl slipped away, leaving Pig Heart alone with his frantic thoughts. There was no way he could take on D’Angelus’s men – grunts with rock rifles slung over their shoulders. At best, he’d maul a couple before they took him out with their impromptu ammo.
He raked a hand through the spines at his head. He could warn Rust, but how’d he explain without admitting his part in Nim’s betrayal? The money they’d paid wasn’t enough for him and Rust to run away on. Hell, it’d buy them temporary shelter with a desert caravan at best. But maybe that would do for the time being.
Lights blazed. The Scuttler children rolled into the ring like balled woodlice. Pig Heart’s gaze darted off to the outskirts of the tent where D’Angelus and his gang appeared distracted by the Scuttlers’ clown antics.
Sweat oozed down the rough matting at Pig Heart’s back. He despised the wolf girl for putting herself in the way. At the same time, he was infested with need for her.
He slipped behind the stage curtain. Backstage was littered with debris: boom trampolines – skins stretched to varying degrees of tautness so each produced a different note when bounced on – alongside sooty fire rings, stage flats painted to resemble cacti, sandships and tunnellers, coils of hemp rope, lighting rigs, and the huge gilt wagon that housed the hoppers. Down the left side ran a wall of flimsy curtaining designed to separate off the dressing rooms from the frantic energy of backstage. Right of him were the crew’s living quarters, rows of tin-rib cells packed in tight against one another and, hard ahead, the steaming lift rig leading to the three platforms above.
Striding past the milling pitch crew, Pig Heart leapt up onto the rig as it began a fresh ascent.
“Howdie, Pig Heart.”
“Got a light, boss?”
Two of his pitch crew rode the rig alongside him. Kid with a beltful of dried rat carcasses – exterminator by trade, Pig Heart suspected, forced into carnival labour by the recent sandstorms which had taken out the year’s glut of land vermin. Also, a red skinned Jeridian with a ladder piercing of two-centimetre-long steel strips down her throat.
It was the woman who touted the smoke stick. Pig Heart tossed over his match book, snatching it from the air seconds later when the Jeridian tossed it back. The lift rattled to a halt at the first of three platforms that were bolted onto the side of the tent above the living quarters and that were supported by a great exposed ribcage of iron scaffold.
“Catch ya later, boss.”
“Thanks for the light.”
The exterminator and Jeridian strode off into the partial dark of the first platform – the mess hall.
An iron lever as tall as man’s hip drove the rig. Pig Heart yanked it towards him. In a burst of steam, the lift continued its assent, past the second platform that housed the ornate carcass of Herb’s personal quarters with its green silk shutters and lingering stench of incense. Up to the third level, the zoo. He stared out across the great hull of the Cyber Circus tent as the rig climbed. Backstage took up one third of the interior. Beyond lay the vast circus ring and, at the far end, the sprawling calliope – a great pulsating mass of sponge, copper filigree and air pipes – with its narrow balcony, spiralling steps and boiler tucked in beneath.
From that distance, the tumbling scab balls of the Scuttler children looked as small as roo rats. Yup, when it comes to Cyber Circus, we’re just amoebas crawling over the skin of the thing, Pig Heart thought to himself.