“Why the ‘Thoughtful’?”
“People ponder it like you’re doing.”
“Any takers?”
“Rarely. But they don’t get the prize.”
“There’s a prize?”
“Made you thoughtful again, see. Working already. Quench your thirst.”
“It’s my first time round. Maybe later.”
“Right you are. Press on.”
Jem did so, determined to get it over with. How long he’d been at it he had no idea. It was full night now, the sky filled with stars, streaked with the occasional tektites rushing down.
The next signboard read THE MERMAID, and this time it was Mally by the entrance, still in her flimsy evening finery.
“You know the drill,” she said as Jem stepped inside.
He’d expected someone in a tank, one of the women in a mermaid getup, so what he saw threw him: a large plasma screen showing stars, space, the glowing curve of the world as if seen from low-Earth orbit. Not a still either, he realized, but possibly recorded footage from a station like Skylab had been. In the soft lighting of the tent the effect was powerful, like looking through a window.
“Mally, I don’t get the connection. Where’s the mermaid?”
“I keep asking myself the same thing,” Mally said.
Jem sighed, tired of the trickery, of how off kilter all this was. Why couldn’t they just say what they wanted, spell it out? Let him be on his way?
But there were so few exhibits to go. Without a word he continued along to a signboard reading THE CHEERFUL EXCHANGE OF GASES, whose “attraction” proved to be just as frustrating, as elusively annoying as the rest, nothing but a small tree in a terracotta pot, one of those topiary things like a green ball on a stick. It stood on a low pedestal inside plastic dust-curtains arranged like a makeshift shower stall.
A man in his forties, looking like a pastor in a black suit and plain white shirt, waited inside the entrance, and gestured grandly toward the booth. “Put your head inside, brother, and take a breath of God’s clean air the way it was intended.”
“Just take a breath?”
“Easy in, easy out, friend. One of the Lord’s sweetest gifts. Clear your head. Won’t take but a moment.”
Jem said nothing, just turned and left. Two to go. Only two.
Maybe the obligato was wearing thin. He was feeling unsettled, anxious, vaguely frightened now, more and more aware of how wrong it all was, though the next signboard distracted him a bit. THE ISSUS TRIP, it read, which immediately had Jem recalling his high-school history classes, and how Issus was the town in ancient Turkey where Alexander the Great had defeated some Persian king or other. Curiosity had the better of him. What could it possibly be this time?
Inside he found two large art prints side by side on easels, each under a warm yellow spot, and both dealing with that historical event. A mature-aged woman in spectacles and worn dove-grey suit immediately stepped forward like a museum curator or matronly tour guide.
“On the left we have the Alexander Mosaic dating from around 100 BCE,” she said, “originally from the House of the Faun in Pompeii but presently in the Naples National Archaeologica Museum. It shows Alexander the Great and Darius III in conflict at the Battle of Issus in 333 BCE. On the right you see Albrecht Altdorfer’s 1529 painting The Battle of Alexander at Issus, long regarded as that artist’s best work and presently in the Alte Pinakothek museum in Munich.”
That concluded the presentation, though the woman remained to one side as if ready to answer any questions her visitor cared to ask.
Jem studied the prints for a minute or so — the mosaic with Darius in his chariot, the Altdorfer with its grand view of mighty armies locked in battle — then said, “Thank you,” and went outside, feeling incredible relief when he saw that the next tent along was the two-masted one, the big top.
Was this the final exhibit, the ninth, or had he missed one?
When Jem stepped inside, he found it as empty as it had been earlier in the day. There was just the display case under its fierce white spot. Warm yellow elsewhere, dazzling glare for this single display.
He went and studied the miniature again, found it just as unsettling as before. It was too realistic, as if waiting to move yet confined by these glass sides. It made Jem feel like he was a god peering down, which brought the immediate “Russian Doll” reaction that such a god might be looking down on him. That had him glancing upward instinctively, peering first into the terrible glare, then beyond that fierce core of light to what lay in the shadows to either side: dozens, hundreds, thousands of masks, faces, fixed there, staring down, a vast audience.
Jem blinked, strained to make sure what he was seeing.
Then Mr Fleymann spoke. “So, Jem, what’s it to be? Which three will you pick?”
Jem looked down to find the whole troupe gathered about him, about the display case: Mally in her shift, the woman in the tutu and Doc Martens, the pastor in his dark suit, the curator woman, all of them.
“Is this one included?”
“Of course. If you need more time—”
“I’m ready,” Jem said, and realized he was, that he could choose, had already done so.
“Shoot then.”
Jem hesitated only a moment, getting the exact names clear in his head. “Right. My choices. Skylab Land, the Mermaid, and the Issus Trip.”
Mr Fleymann grinned. Mally did. There were immediate smiles on the faces of the troupe, not just of happiness and excitement, but what looked like genuine relief as well.
Mr F. raised a hand, smoothed his cravat in a nervous gesture. “Now think carefully, Jem. You chose Skylab Land, the Mermaid, and the Issus Trip. Very revealing for us here. Very useful given our specialty. But if you had to pick one of the three, just one, which would it be?”
Jem thought immediately of the Alexander Mosaic. “The Issus Trip. No idea why.”
It was like everyone started breathing again, Mr F., Mally, the whole troupe. There were more smiles, more excitement, sheer relief.
“Good choice!” Mr F. said. “You’ve turned out to be everything we wanted you to be, Jem.”
“What did you want me to be?”
“How we operate, sorry. How we have to operate. All the Heirloom Carnivals.”
“Please. What have I just done?”
Mr F. stretched his arms wide in an expansive, almost hieratic gesture. “You’ve just helped us move ahead. Enabled our next target.”
Now it was Jem who went very still. He understood nothing, but sensed that something awful had just happened.
Mr F. could barely contain his delight. “Good thing you didn’t pick THE WAIT. Many do. Looks so easy.”
Jem made himself stay with the flow. “Just sit there till you get the joke, hey?”
Mr Fleymann’s eyes flashed with a fierce delight totally without mirth. “Sit there till you realize that’s all you’ll ever do.”
“Excuse me?”
“Wordplay again, Jem. How it seems. How it sounds. How it is for us. Names of power every one. That’s what we trade in here.”
And the grin locked, held. It was a grimace that nudged.
Get it? Ged it?
The Weight.
Jem felt a rush of horror. “You’re joking.”
“Try it when we’re done if you’ve a mind.”
“It looks so innocent.”
“So can a throw switch with an electric current running through it. So can a glass of acid looking like water. Need to think a certain way about things.”
Like why a carnival would set up in a desert.
That thought flashed through Jem’s mind, even as he pictured the humble setup of THE WAIT. How many people never left that chair? Had never been able to? Took their ease. Felt the pressure come.