Sideshow Page 9

  It was during the third European tour, ten years after the twins had joined the show (Turtledove, they told one another, had just won an international violin competition and had fallen in love with a girl named Sylvia Syllabub who played the bassoon), that Bertran and Nela met the Alien. The circus was performing in Rakovnik in Czechoslovakia, in a building constructed for year-round performances of circuses. Bertran and Nela had just left the sideshow after the last performance. The rest of the artists had joined the performers and support personnel to discuss a minor wage problem they were having, something to do with the rate of exchange. Bertran said he and Nela had talked about it enough, that they were going back to their trailer. Nela, as was unavoidable when Bertran made pronouncements, went along. They were still dressed for display: Nela, fluffy and pretty in her sequined and beruffled dress; Bertran, saturnine and handsome in his tails and stiff shirt.

  Both were in good spirits, their mood currently rising after a few days of that episodic and paralyzing depression they had long ago learned to recognize, a depression that physicians over the years had blamed upon the weather, the work, or perhaps on Nela’s ovaries or whatever they were attempting to be cyclical. Nela herself called the episodes NMS, or nonmenstrual syndrome, and both she and Bertran had learned to suffer through them stoically (eschewing any thoughts of suicide until later) in anticipation of the euphoria that very frequently ensued. Bertran was reading a note that had been passed to Nela during the performance, and his current upswing kept him cheerful about it, though he didn’t find the contents honestly amusing.

  “This man wants to marry you,” he said with a wry grin.

  “I know. That’s my fifteenth proposal, Berty. I’ve kept count.”

  “They never want to marry me.” He pulled a long face. “Here I am. Always a bridesmaid….”

  “Well, they want to do what they do want to do, with you.”

  It was true that Bertran had been propositioned from time to time. “Only because you’d be there,” he said. “Your inescapable presence makes the prospect excitingly wicked.” Bertran contorted his mouth as though to spit. He claimed not to be intrigued by those who propositioned him, though he sometimes found Nela’s suitors truly amusing.

  She shook her head, pouting. “I think the ones who want to marry me want it for the same reason. Let’s tell this one yes and see what happens. What’s his name? Ladislav Something?”

  “Poor fish. When you tell him I’m coming along on the honeymoon, he’ll gasp and his little gills will quiver. He probably thinks we’re a fake.”

  She nodded in agreement as they swerved to the right, into the stables, where they moved between two lines of glossy horses, all munching, stamping, looking up with glowing dark eyes to greet whoever was coming through. The twins enjoyed this short detour after every show, and they paused to stroke sleek flanks and soft muzzles, receiving whickers and nuzzles in return.

  “Why do these crazies want to marry me, Berty?”

  “Because you’re exotic,” he said. “Beautiful, but very, very strange. It’s the same thing we’ve talked about before. Some people hunger for the strange because they have not found answers in their ordinary lives. They want to be different.”

  “None of them would trade places with us. We’re different.”

  He thought about it. “Well, perhaps they desire singularity more than difference. They feel their humanity is not all, not everything, not enough. They feel strangeness immanent inside them, and they want to understand it as singularity without displaying it as oddity. They want to be pointed out for their distinction, not because they’re weird.” He looked down at her. “Or, perhaps, they lust after variety, diversity, newness. Who knows?”

  Bertran’s gaiety flattened somewhat as he considered the matter. From time to time, unpredictably, he quivered with indefinable longings and nostalgic melancholy quite distinct from the depressive episodes, times during which he thought he must be yearning for some place he had forgotten or had not yet seen. He called these moods ubalgia, where-pain, but only privately, to himself, never speaking of them, not even to this, his probably dearest and certainly nearest kin. From time to time he dreamed, dark reflections of dreams he had had in childhood, now more erotic and more perilous. He tried not to dwell on these, either, realizing without asking that he was probably not alone.

  During one late, restless night fairly recently, in fact, Nela had spoken into the empty darkness, almost a whisper, as though to herself.

  “I want to sleep. Except I dream about Turtledove, at least he starts out as Turtledove, but then he turns into the heavy little turtle who spied on the birds. ‘Gray thorn and gray leaf and gray wind rising.’” Her voice had seemed to inhabit the darkness like a lost spirit. “And then suddenly he has feathers, and he is Turtledove, really, with wings and he’s reaching for me, calling me, Mommy, Mommy, and I’m trying to find him….”

  Her words summoned a picture of a moon peering through mist while voices from childhood called in the dark, “Berty! Where are you, Berty?” Fog and autumn smoke, and a nostalgia bittersweet. Where had it been? Who had been calling him? Not Mother. She had called “Nai-lah … Ber-tee,” both names, always. Who was it who had called him alone, just him, as though he could answer as the turtle had answered, alone, “Here I am!” That’s what the little turtle had cried when he heard his friends calling, his plodding, heavy little friends, searching for their longlost comrade, high on the windy mountain.

  Caught in his where-pain, Bertran hadn’t responded to Nela’s whisper in the shared dark. Instead, he had lain quiet, pretending he hadn’t heard, and after a time he had fallen asleep. The memory hadn’t left him, though, and it was of that calling voice he was thinking as they emerged from the stables with the last of the sunset in their eyes, a rose-violet glow, bright enough that the figure stepping from behind the nearest wagon was silhouetted against the light and showed, for that moment only, as a stalky and featureless blackness.

  “Please do not be alarmed,” it said. “I am not from your world. May I have a moment of your time?”

  The accent was patrician, if anything, delivered in a mellow though slightly raspy baritone. It was Alistair Cooke’s voice. Bertran immediately guessed it was intended to be reassuring, since anyone with senses would know at once the creature was not human. Not human, not animal, not earthly at all. Bertran had been with the circus for over a decade. He and Nela had traveled over most of the world, the more thickly populated parts of it anyhow, and nowhere had they seen or heard of a striated, very skinny, seven-foot-tall, L-shaped creature with four legs at the bottom and two arms at the top, centaur style, rather pale in color and looking much like a huge stalky vegetable. There were even frilly protrusions at the top and at the joints of the extremities that appeared leaflike.

  Nela thought, from the midst of an icy calm, that if one scattered some facial features at the top of an immense stalk of bent celery, it would resemble what confronted them. Without panic (even while reminding herself she would undoubtedly have hysterics later) she studied the creature as she waited for Bertran to respond. In cases of surprise or emergency, it was easier to let Bertran do the talking because even if she spoke, he would invariably interrupt her.

  “What did you want to talk about?” asked Bertran, his voice betraying no apprehension, though he felt it. It had been a long time since he’d been startled over anything—working circus tended to make one almost startle-proof—but this thing had appeared when he was already feeling somewhat off balance, and there was a definite yaw in his perceptions.

  The Alien took a moment before answering, “We have come from a far place. We would like to talk with you about—our presenting a Boon.”

  The creature’s face wasn’t much. A small vertical orifice that emitted speech, another two or three triangular depressions of ambiguous purpose, several roundish ones that glinted rather like eyes, or at least more like eyes than anything else. It had a strong vegetal smell, also. A summer
y smell. Heavy, but not unpleasant. Like mown hay and gardenias over a faint breath of rain-wet soil.

  “We’ve got some time,” said Bertran. “If you’d like to come to our trailer.” He rather wanted to get out of sight, preferring that this encounter continue without witnesses. The instinct to hide was a holdover from childhood, when any new or possibly embarrassing thing needed to be considered in private before the twins were forced to deal with it in the public gaze. Even if the Alien proved dangerous, it would be better to meet that danger in private. So his blood said, hammering in his ears, no matter what cautions his brain urged upon him.

  The Alien nodded. Since it had no neck, the whole body bobbed, almost a curtsy, the four bottom legs folding and unfolding like springs. They were set at right angles to the body, like insect legs, and looked tacked on. Assembled. Like a plastic toy. Fit pegs A, one through four, into holes B, likewise.

  The twins moved toward their trailer, at first tentatively, then picking up speed as the thing trundled closely behind. Nela hoped the other sideshow people were still involved with their meeting. If this parade was observed, she and Bertran would never hear the end of it. My God, that time the baby goat from the animal act had become enamored of Bertran and had followed them home, they had been baa-ed at by their colleagues for days! What would they say about this?

  The creature had some trouble getting into the trailer. Human-type steps were obviously not spaced well for its legs. Once inside, however, it managed to curve itself into a chair and tuck its bottom appendages beneath and around it, out of the way, showing that it knew what chairs were for, though it obviously needed one of a different shape.

  “My name is m’dk’v*dak’dm#,” [Muh-click-duhk-click-vuh-rasp-dak-click-duhm-gurgle] the thing said, making a chain of mechanical and consonantal sounds.

  “I’m afraid I’d find that a little hard to say,” said Bertran with his most studiedly charming smile. He patted at the sweat along his hairline with an immaculate handkerchief. His breath was slowing. Both he and Nela were growing calmer. The thing did not seem threatening at all. “Would you mind if we called you Celery.” He put the handkerchief before his mouth to hide the fact he was nervously chewing his lower lip.

  “Celery,” the Alien said in a musing voice. “Vegetable. Comestible. Considered worthy. Valued. Often associated with ritual or holiday occasions shared with kin and close friends. In some cuisines, a customary ingredient. No inimical implications. Why not Celery.”

  Bertran nodded and smiled in automatic response as he and Nela moved to their usual places on the small couch across from the single chair. There were some folding chairs in the closet, for occasions when they had more company, but usually the couch, the chair, and the dining table with its two benches were all they needed for seating during tour. They had a larger trailer back home, one they had bought when they stopped sharing with Aunt Sizzy. This small one seemed suddenly very crowded, overwhelmed with aroma and presence.

  “To what do we owe the honor of meeting you?” asked Nela, deciding simultaneously on participation and formality.

  Celery considered this for a moment. “You are the most … the most similar-to-us being with language we have found on this planet. Since we are constrained by the death of our late, illustrious, much valued comrade to provide your planet a Boon, we sought a similar-to-us to hear our offer. Our sensitivity is so great, we cannot deal with those who are not similar to us.”

  Nela and Bertran didn’t need to look at one another to share the questions both of them felt. Bertran’s left arm was across Nela’s shoulders, where it usually was. Nela’s hands were folded in her lap. Their thighs were pressed together, not too tightly. Their heart beat as one. Their breathing was slow, controlled. They understood one another’s feelings completely.

  “Explain, please,” asked Bertran. “We don’t quite understand.”

  “We share certain attributes,” said Celery, its gesture including them and itself. “The persons on this planet are, almost without exception and regrettably, singular, isolated, unable to fully empathize. You are not singular, not isolated. Neither are we, though in appearance we may seem so. While you are side-by-side, we are some-in-one, eventually many-in-one. Our own experience assures us it is the correct way to be!”

  Bertran struggled with this concept and decided to let it pass for the moment. “What is this Boon?” he asked.

  “I will utter in greater detail.” Celery scrunched slightly, achieving a more recurved configuration. “We are a people who have only recently been granted the great concession by the powers.”

  “Great concession?” asked Nela.

  “Permission to leave our galaxy. Permission to … expand.”

  “You need permission?” she said disbelievingly. “From whom?”

  Celery gestured vaguely. “You … you lack the concept. I search your language in vain. I find words: ‘quarantine,’ ‘border guards,’ ‘Ellis Island,’ ‘immigration,’ ‘quota’ … None of them are right. You must simply accept what I say. We have only recently received permission to travel. Now we are on our way. You would call us, perhaps, pilgrims. Pilgrims to the holy land.”

  “I see,” said Nela, who did not see.

  “When in the course of our journey a comrade dies—as is inevitable, for all life hath an end—when our comrade dies, it is our custom to memorialize by providing a Boon to the nearest inhabited place. One Boon. One thing that, in our judgment, will be of greatest value to the inhabitants.”

  “You can do this? Provide this … this Boon? Something of value?”

  “We have done so from time to time.”

  “World peace? Immortality?”

  “We have done peace, yes. World peace is simple. We identify all inhabitants whose racial or tribal loyalties take precedence over their planetary ones and eliminate them. Peace inevitably results. Immortality, however, is one of the exceptions.”

  Bertran and Nela shared a glance. “Exceptions?” Bertran asked.

  “We do not regard immortality as a Boon. Theoretically, it is possible. Philosophically, we consider it an abomination. Also, in multiracial worlds we do not regard extermination of any intelligent race as a Boon, though other races might consider it so. We would not eradicate all your aboriginal humans or all your cetaceans, for example, not that you do not seem to be doing that very well on your own. And we do not regard sharing our knowledge as a Boon, except in limited fashion. If we were, for example, to decide upon the cure of some disease as the Boon for your planet, we would share enough of our methods to provide the cure, but only that. We ourselves have no disease. Unlike your race, which would perish utterly without disease to control its prolificacy, we no longer have use for it.”

  Nela said, “Nobody is going to believe this.”

  Bertran nodded. “She’s right. Nobody is. I can see it now. ‘Freaks Claim Contact by UFO!’ ‘Aliens Invade Big Top.’”

  “Oh, we know you’d be disbelieved,” said Celery. “We have relied upon that and upon your pragmatic realization of that fact. We do not want to be known. Searched for. Noticed. We are pilgrims, not visitors. Our destination is far from here. Only the necessity of memorializing our dead comrades brings us into contact with other races at all.”

  Bertran shook his head. “Then why come to us? Why involve any of the inhabitants?”

  Celery looked embarrassed. Afterward, Nela tried to decide what about the creature had made her think of embarrassment. Perhaps the slight flush of green about the features. Perhaps the slight jerkiness of motion in the limbs.

  “We have already decided upon the Boon for your planet. However, we are going … a long way. We hope to be on time for a particular event that, our great prognosticators tell us, will occur in foreseeable time. If we stay to accomplish the Boon, we may get sadly out of phase. It has been suggested that you might accomplish the thing for us, without compromising our journey, for a suitable reward.”

  “Accomplish what?” Nela’s mouth f
ell open. She found herself unable to imagine anything she might do that would benefit the world.

  Celery scrunched itself once again. “Shortly, within the year, on your planet will manifest a thing originating from a great distance. Let me see. How shall I make it clear to you? Another race of creatures—a race your people will know, in the future, as the Arbai—have adjacently established a transportation and communication network that is spreading automatically throughout the galaxy even though the Arbai, so we believe, either already are or are about to be extinct. The Arbai envisioned a universe unified by their network. One of the, ah, way stations? Nodes? Gateways? Doors? One of whatever you choose to call them will manifest itself on this planet shortly.”

  Nela caught her breath. “How marvelous!”

  Celery nodded, then shook itself, saying yes, no. “Indeed. The Arbai, though a people of inflexible philosophy, have subtle and wonderful intelligences regarding the natural universe. They are capable of marvelous things. But, no, this gateway will not be marvelous for you Earthians, for if it is left here, it will first contribute to great unrest among all the people of Earth, after which it will allow a plague to enter that will exterminate the human race.”

  They stared for some moments, trying to absorb this. “How do you know?”

  “Prognostication is our science. We are very good at it. Not perfect. Nothing is ever perfect. But we know of the Arbai and of their network. And we have seen with our science certain consequences that have happened or will happen. We speak a close approximation of truth when we say the way station, the gate, the door, must be closed if your race is to continue. A close approximation to truth is the best that can be achieved. To anticipate the opening of the door, to close it before mankind ever becomes aware of it, this is the Boon we provide.”

  “And you want us to close it?”

  “We will give you the means. A simple matter. The door will open near where you will be at the time. It will not inconvenience you. And we will reward you for your help.”