Nim stepped forward. “Where did you send those children?”
“And what makes you think they will come back?” Lulu rubbed a hand about his collar bones, mouth budded. “They ain’t the brightest.”
“Because we made a pact.” The woman knelt. She scooped up fistfuls of dust. Her head cocked as she let the dust sift from her fingers. The motes fell strangely, curling in and around her body, spiralling down.
Herb shuffled back. “Where’d you come from, lady?”
“The big old house where the corn grows plump and sweet and Indian Blanket spreads either side the porch.” Her eyes got wild. Tears ebbed. “The dust wrapped me in its soft grey material, and this strange underworld opened up to me.” She pointed at the floor. Her eyes flitted all around the metal-and-fibre circus tent.
Herb arched one eyebrow at the woman, clearly unsure of her sanity. “What do you want with Cyber Circus?”
“I can’t fit into the caverns’ tight spots. If I can just find the shadow of my beloved, I can use it as a template. I can mould him back out of the land.” The woman held up her greyed palms. “The dust told me so.”
“The dust told you, did it? Well, ain’t that hunky-dory.” Herb’s mouth had a sour slant. “And you just thought you’d creep in here and fill the Scuttlers’ tiny minds with your madness? Saints almighty, Hellequin!” Herb threw up his hands. “We’ve gone and bagged us a lunatic. Meanwhile, the only freaks in this company who stood a chance of scouting ahead for us are long gone.” He knitted his fingers and hooked them behind his head, cheeks puffing. “So what now, soldier? What the hell do we do next?”
Hellequin stared up at the gloomy upper reaches of the tent. “We ask the Scuttlers what they’ve found.”
It was a few seconds before everyone else saw the three beetle-backed children come clattering down the inner walls of the tent.
Just at that moment, Cyber Circus gave a tremendous shudder. The weak luminescence inside the ship went out.
Voices. A great tumbling of panicked voices coming from all directions at once. From somewhere off inside the living quarters, the cries of the young sounded, like screeching baby birds.
“Nim.” Hellequin spoke by her ear. “I can see still. Now listen to me. I need you to come with me now.”
It hurt Nim’s ears and heart, this cacophony of fear. Hadn’t the circus suffered enough, she wondered bleakly while feeling Hellequin’s hand slip into hers. He led her away from the chaos. They moved over the alien surface of the rock, boots swishing through dust. Nim allowed herself to be led blindly on.
She heard the approach of the Scuttlers.
“Children. Did you find water on your travels?” she heard Hellequin ask and three high, reverberant voices answer in turn.
“Oh yesee.”
“So black, so stink hot.”
“Where the lady’s ghostman sits, walled up behind rock.”
“Did you find a route that would let this ship get close to the water?” Hellequin cut in.
“We found holes in walls.”
“Nooks and cranies.”
“Spots no bigger than a roo rat. One passageway’s large enough to fit this giant through.”
“I need you to guide us there,” Hellequin told the children.
“Hick pick, would if we could, but circus ain’t lit up anymore,” answered one youngster.
“Nim is about to change that.” Hellequin made as if to stride off, dragging Nim in his wake.
“What now, HawkEye? You gonna act like you own me just because you got to go there with me for free?” Nim yanked her hand free and seethed in the darkness.
Hellequin leant in. Flesh and metal brushed against her cheek. “Trust me, Nim. I wanna see you safe. I wanna see you free. But first I gotta see you.”
His voice was needful and perplexingly genuine. Nim could think of no reason to not allow herself to be led.
After a time, Hellequin stopped and led her hand to a strip of warm metal. “You go up the stairs first.”
Nim felt for the first rise of the steps. She climbed, sensing the stairs spiral around and up, and finally level out onto a narrow platform.
Hellequin stepped up behind her and secured her hand on the rail, his lean frame moulding against hers.
“Nim,” he whispered. “I need you to shine now. Shine with all that rage you got tucked up inside at the men who’ve hurt and torn and choked the fight from you. I need you to hear me when I say I’m a broken man, literally broken because the day the authorities put this biomorph implant in me, they nerve-blocked my emotions. But you light me up, Nim, and I can’t begin to explain how. All I do know is if you shine now with every bit of rage inside you, I will bring you back from that darkness.”
Nim heard the words. They cut her deeply. She’d no desire whatsoever to open up her mind and body to the savageness exacted on her over the years. But one thing she did know incontestably – she was the only light source on board Cyber Circus.
“Fine,” she said, a throb in her voice. “Now back off or I’ll burn out your eyes. Both of them.”
“On past the booger rock.” Ol indicated a huge stalactite to one side of the passage and beat her tremendous front claws in rapture. A smile broke over her shrunken face.
“He and me and she cut marks in the grot they smeared there,” piped up Rind with enthusiasm.
The man with the stitched metal eye was less elated. “They?” he asked in that bleak tone the Scuttlers recognised from the times Herb or some harder hand had beat them when they got clumsy in their act.
“Crawlers,” ventured Tib.
“And they let you live?” The soldier wrestled with the wheel while the ship shook and listed on its last dregs of steam.
“We likes their tickly feather heads,” giggled Ol. The three shared in the fact, laughing like snorting piglets.
The soldier gripped the wheel and got a lock on it. “So the locusts can’t sting you. Nor do they see you as other than themselves. As food.” He steered around the stalactite while the children beat their claws in merriment and tumbled in and out of the viewing pit.
“How much further?”
“A skip and a bit,” said Rind.
“Let’s hope so.” The soldier’s eye whirred. “I’d say we got a few drops of water in the boiler then we’re grounded for good.”
Rind rubbed one of her large red claws over the warm brass surround of the viewing pane. “Poor circus.”
Ol copied her, cooing, “Poor, poor circus.”
“Would you like to help the circus?” said the soldier. His metal eye switched and shifted.
The ship drifted into the cavern on silent wings. Glowing softly, it passed over the black slick of the lake. Pitch men waited up on the gangways near the roof, their young locked in the chambered living quarters. Seeing by the neon light feeding off Nim on the calliope balcony, the crew clutched their limited firearms and barely dared breathe. Below, hundreds of black locusts crawled.
Without the smell of dead kin to attract them, Cyber Circus was just another creature in that vast hive. Men were the fodder and, so far, they were staying in the shadows. Moulding with the ship.
The closer they drifted to the shoreline, the sparser the number of insects. Cyber Circus set down with a soft displacing of dust.
Inside his private pod, Herb put a hand on the door handle and told his unexpected house guest, “My boys know their knots, lady, so don’t go rubbing your wrists raw trying to get those loose.”
He stared back into the opulent gloom. The woman was seated in the chair at his desk, wrists trussed.