Circus Galacticus (21 page)

"So," Nola says, "I guess she's not the Mandate spy?"

"No," says a sharp voice behind us. "She's not a spy. She's being blackmailed."

"Sirra!" Nola nearly shrieks.

Sirra floats in the middle of the hall, her one leg still covered in marshmallow padding, though she's ditched the dressing gown for pants and shirt. Her face is almost as masklike as the man in the video.

"So that's what it was all about?" I ask. "The sneaking around and making secret off-ship communications in the middle of the night?"

Sirra stares at me. "I'd like my datastore back." She holds out her hand.

"And the midnight jump? Was that you, too?"

She gives a short nod. "There aren't a lot of places you can withdraw the amount of hard credit I needed without someone noticing. Hasoo-Pashtung is one of them."

I shake my head, trying to make sense of it. "But if you're not the Mandate spy, why did you care about getting me alone?"

Sirra snorts. "I wasn't trying to get
you
alone. As if you'd be any help. It was Nola I needed. I thought a Tech might be able to do something, and she's the best, so I was going to ask..."

"I could!" Nola pipes up. "I could track them down on the net, maybe even make a hunter app to go after the data itself. I'll start working on—"

"No!" Sirra shouts, her mask crumpling, making her look suddenly younger. She also looks angry, which doesn't surprise me, and terrified, which does. "I've had enough help from the two of you. I'm better off on my own. I'll pay what they want, and then this will all be over. And you are never,
ever
going to speak about it again. Especially not to Etander. Got it?"

"Got it," I say. "Here."

Sirra stares for a long moment at the nub of black and gray in my outstretched palm. She raises a hand, but she doesn't take it. She makes a fist, and as her fingers clench, the datastore crumples, collapsing in on itself.

When it's the size of a gumball, Sirra drops her hand, turns around, and walks away.

ISIT ON MY BED, staring at the metal gumball. A flock of images circles my thoughts. Sirra in the hallway, Rjool gloating over my secrets, Nyl with the Tinkers' Treasure in his hands. My own face in the mirror, pink-haired and hopeful, full of grand dreams of being a star. The Ringmaster telling me the truth.

If I sit very, very still, and try really hard, I can drive them away. The sound of Nola typing at her keypad grows dull, the world turns gray, but I'm still in control. I can't afford to break apart. I have a mission.

"Okay, that ought to do it," says Nola, catching another datastore as it ejects from the wall. "All we need to do is get this to an unprotected netlink and upload it. It'll search out any data matching the parameters I gave it and destroy them. Of course, the blackmailers might have an off-grid backup. But hopefully the hunter app can find them first and cause them enough trouble that they'll think twice about messing with Sirra."

"Sirra was right. You are the best," I say, still rolling the marble in my palm. "Feel any less guilty?"

Nola sighs. "Nope. You?"

I shake my head. "I've racked up enough bad karma at this point I'm coming back as a slug, even if we take care of Sirra's blackmailer. So where do we find an unprotected netlink?"

"That's the trouble. There aren't any, not in public. Only in Core Governance Communication offices, under high security."

"I guess that's my part, then. Is there one here?"

"On Hasoo-Pashtung? Yes, I think so. But we need a plan, Trix; you can't just walk in. And you saw the announcements this morning. We're leaving this sector after tonight's show."

I thunk my head back against the wall and groan. "Just once, I'd like something to work out. We've got no lead on Nyl and the rock, and no way to fix this mess with Sirra."
And you still don't belong here,
hisses a nasty voice in the back of my brain.
Maybe you ought to give up and go home.

"There's one thing I don't understand," says Nola. "I can see Nyl managing to sneak into the Big Top during the show. It's not hard to lose one Mandate agent in a crowd of five thousand. But how did he know it was you, with the image projector on? If Sirra wasn't the spy, could it be someone else? Or
something
else?"

"You mean like a bug? Electronic surveillance?"

Nola bounces up and starts rooting around in her tool drawer. A few minutes later, the room is filled with the stench of hot metal and she's holding up a black wand trailing a spray of wires. She fiddles with a dial along one side of the thing. "There, this ought to detect any odd transmissions. We'll take it to the stage area and see if we find any—oh."

"What? Isn't it working?"

Nola looks up with big eyes. "Yes. And it's registering a signal. Here."

She starts waving the thing around the room, running it over the walls, the beds, even her
Love Among the Stars
poster. I hastily join her, peering over her shoulder at the bug sniffer. There's a small lighted display with a bar of light that wavers up and down as Nola directs the device around the room.

"Check our clothes. Maybe they planted something on us in the bazaar?" I pull out my jacket, still emblazoned with the silvery trophies from my high scores at the arcade. "Check the ribbons!"

She holds the wand to my jacket, but the display doesn't change. "It's not the ribbons." Nola shakes her head, setting purple sparks glittering.

I stare at her. "Here, let me try something."

Taking the bug sniffer, I raise it up to Nola's head. The red bar gets bigger and bigger, and the thing starts beeping like an insane microwave. I'm pointing it straight at the purple fiber-optic swatch she's been wearing ever since Jom said he liked it. The one I gave her. The one that guy at the bazaar gave me.

Nola tears it out of her hair and checks the readout. Then she stares at me. In a rush of motion she flings herself over to her drawer, pulls out an opaque black jar, thrusts the purple hair swatch into it, then slams the lid on it. "Give me an hour," she says. "I'm thinking our luck has changed."

A half-hour later, Nola is muttering under her breath and looking bloody murder at the fiber-optic bug. But she won't rest, and she won't give up. "If they're watching, they know we're onto them," she says. "We don't have long to track them down."

Another half-hour and Nola's got a dusting of metallic powder across her nose and singe marks up one arm, but she's grinning like a mad scientist. "That'll do the trick!"

I check out her newest creation, which looks a lot like a divining rod, except for the rippling lines of electricity that fill the V between the two metal arms. "What is it?"

"It should allow us to locate the receiver for that bug. There must be a relay somewhere nearby, probably out in the bazaar."

"Brilliant! Let's go!" I move for the door.

"Wait, Trix. Shouldn't we tell someone?"

I hesitate. The thought of facing the Ringmaster right now twists my stomach. Besides, it's not like we're after trouble. Just information. "No. We'll look like idiots if we bring a whole war party and there's nothing to find. Don't worry; it's a reconnaissance mission. No heroics, I promise. If we find them, we'll come back for help."

We head out into the bazaar, which is as crowded as ever. I plow into the throngs, giving Nola some space to do her thing. I try to hold my tongue, but after we pass by Supulu's for the third time, I have to ask, "Is it working?"

"Can't get a decent fix," Nola says, grimacing at the divining rod. "Time to try something else." She pulls a fist-size disk out of her pocket, twists a dial on the front, and hands it to me. "Take that. You'll have to get a good distance away from me, though."

"Why? What's it do?"

"It'll help triangulate the receiver location. I left one at the Big Top, too."

"Got it. I'll head for the spice market. Stay in touch." I flick on my know-it-all.

"Be careful, Trix," she says. "Remember why we're here. Reconnaissance. Don't go picking fights."

"Who, me?" I wink as I head off down a side street, following the scent of alien spices.

I convince my know-it-all to show me our locations, overlaid on a map of the bazaar. The triangle between the Big Top, Nola, and me covers about a quarter of the region. "Needle in a haystack," says Britannica, "isn't that the saying on your planet? You really ought to go back and speak to the Ringmaster, dear."

I ignore her. "Hey, Nola, you see anything?"

Nola's voice crackles in my ear. It sounds like she's standing next to a racecar revving its engine. "Sorry for the
—rrrpphsst
—outdoor concert. It's crazy! But I think I've got—
vvrrrroooshhht
—getting a reading nearby!"

"Good work! I'm on my way. Hang back, though, Nola. Reconnaissance, remember?"

"
Wrrrrr
—here somewhere—
squeeee!
—very close!"

The sudden silence is almost a physical blow. "Nola? Nola?"

On the viewscreen, the light marking Nola's position suddenly winks out.

"Nola?" There are screams hidden in my voice, but I won't let them out. This isn't happening. "Britannica, where is she?"

"Dear me. Miss Ogala's know-it-all has gone offline."

I'm already sprinting, taking the fastest route I can find to the spot where she disappeared. Please be there, Nola. Please let it be the concert interfering with the signal.
Please.

The square is jammed with people, rocking out to the racecar band. I search for Nola. Nothing. I keep moving, fighting my way to the light fountain at the center of the plaza. A lanky ebony-carved figure rises from the pool of luminescence, showers of color falling from its hands to dapple everyone and everything in rainbow light. I'm about to hoist myself up onto the statue's shoulders when I catch sight of something shiny on the flagstones. I jump down from the ledge of the pool to snatch it up.

It's the divining rod.

A roll of thunder drowns the caterwauls of the band. All around me people point, gesturing at the sky. I turn, following the fingers, to see a familiar sleek black ship rocketing into the heavens. Nyl's ship.

Nyl's got her. The Mandate has Nola.

***

"What's there to talk about?" I sputter. "We have to rescue her!"

"I simply said we would do well to consider the best course of action," says Miss Three coolly.

"I guess I shouldn't expect somebody with no heart, and no body for that matter, to get riled up. But I don't get why
you're
just standing there," I say, turning on the Ringmaster.

"I assure you I am doing considerably more than that." He speaks through gritted teeth. I recognize, belatedly, the look of intense concentration on his face as he stands with hands splayed across the console. We're on the bridge, which is where Britannica led me when I came rampaging back onto the ship less than ten minutes ago.

"Shouldn't we follow them?" I say, jittering my toes against the floor. "We need to do something."

"It seems to me you've done quite enough, Miss Ling," says Miss Three.

"Don't you think I know that?" My voice echoes from the walls, so hot it should be raising sparks. "I figured if they went for anyone, it'd be me. They
should
have come after me. I'm the expendable one."

Miss Three's thin lips twitch. "At least we agree on something."

"Enough." The Ringmaster's words crack like a whip. "We're about to jump. I suggest you prepare yourselves." The lights blink to orange as the compaction bell begins to toll a warning.

I hastily slide into one of the flip-out chairs, remembering with a twist in my gut that it was Nola who first showed them to me. "So we
are
going after them?"

"No. They're too far ahead, and the Big Top isn't prepared for an out-and-out fight in any case. We need more information. So we're going to visit informative friends."

"You mean to seek the Outcasts?" asks Miss Three. "Ringmaster, I must protest. They are too far outside our sphere. Their ways are too different. You cannot hope—"

"Yes, Miss Three, I can." The lights blink to purple. I stiffen, gripping my armrests as the sickening sensation of reality turning inside out takes over, and everything fades to black.

WE WAIT FOR THEM ONSTAGE. Even partially compacted, it's still the biggest space on the Big Top. The entire troupe is here to meet our mystery guests. We've been docked to their vessel for what feels like hours. I pace between the bleachers, keeping my distance from the others.

"It's only been thirty-point-four-five minutes," says my know-it-all. "Have some patience. Why don't you go sit with your friends?"

"Haven't you been paying attention? I lost my only friend. And anyway, I don't belong here."

Britannica tsks me. "My, my, it sounds to me like someone's feeling guilty. You belong here as much now as you ever did. Open your eyes, dear."

"Whatever. We're wasting time," I grumble, sticking my hands in my pockets and leaning against the railing. Something cool and metallic meets my hand, and for a moment I think it's the rock. I pull out the datastore with the hunter app, the one Nola made for Sirra before getting taken.

I look for Sirra, expecting to find her sitting pretty with her court of Principals in attendance. When I finally spot her, she's up on top of one of the bleachers, sitting with Etander and talking quietly and intently.

On the way up the stairs, I catch bits of their conversation.

"—should have told me," Etander is saying. He's not Hedgehog Boy, but he's on his way, flushed and tight-lipped.

"I'm taking care of it," Sirra retorts. "It's got nothing to do with you."

"It's my fault! We went to those doctors because I couldn't control—" He sees me and breaks off.

I clear my throat. "Hey. Sirra, can I talk to you?"

She's breathing fast, her fingers driving into the spongy stuff covering her leg, leaving deep dents. "I doubt it's anything I want to hear."

"Okay, don't listen. But take this." I hold out the datastore.