Homefall: Book Four of the Last Legion Series (7 page)

“All of you will now listen very closely. You’ve got sheet music in front of you. The piece is the ‘Confederation Peace March’. You will learn it until you can play it in your sleep, as some of you have been functioning already, I’ve noticed.

“This is the most important part of being on the show. The ‘Peace March’ is the sign of trouble. Fire. The cats on a rampage. A big clem, a catastrophe.

“When it’s played, all the muscle on the show will start looking to solve the problem, however they can. If we’re under canvas, all the animals will get out, right then, as will the kinkers.

“The talent is priceless, and you, my ham-fingered men and women are not. So after everyone’s altered, you’ll join the roustabouts in solving the problem.”

“Question, sir,” a synthesizer toggler asked. “What if we’re in the ship and something happens?”

“Hit the tune, then get out of the ship. Or follow orders if Gaffer Jaansma’s around.”

“And if we’re in space?”

“Now that,” Aterton mused, “could be a bit of a poser.”

• • •

The woman spun lazily twice high above the net, as a man released the trapeze, and twisted across the open air. Their catcher extended long tentacles, caught them both, sent them flying higher into the air, then had them once more, and they were back at their perch.

“ ‘Kay,” Ben Dill said. “Half the troupe’s human or looks it, anyway. What species are those octopot-lookin’ types?”

“They call themselves
ra’felan
,” Garvin said. “The troupe master says they’ve got about the same intelligence as a low-normal human.”

“Interestin’,” Erik Penwyth drawled. “With half a dozen legs to punch buttons with, and no particular intelligence, we ought to recruit ‘em as pilots.”

“Watchit,” Dill warned.

The
rajelan
had rather tubular bodies, with tentacles dangling at paired intervals. Their eyes bulged ominously from the center body.

“Can they talk?” Dill asked.

“If spoken to politely,” Garvin said.

“
Both
you bastards are being cute today,” Dill complained.

“I assume you signed them,” Penwyth said, ignoring Dill.

The
rajelan
swung back and forth on his trapeze three times, then jumped straight up, toward a rope that crossed between the two high poles. He … or she, or it, for Garvin never found out their sexes, if any, went tentacle over tentacle on the rope across to the other pole, then hooked a trapeze, swung once, and somersaulted down, spinning, into the net.

“Damned straight I did,” Garvin said fervently. “You should’ve been here a couple of minutes ago, when they were throwing ten people around like they were paper aircraft.”

“If they were real fishies,” Dill said, “y’ think they’d be working for scale? See, now I’m getting to your level.”

“I say again my last about pilots,” Penwyth said. “Except p’raps, I was overly kindly about their intelligence being low-normal.”

• • •

“Hit it, maestro, it’s doors, and the crowd’s a turnaway,” Garvin shouted. He was resplendent in white formal wear of ancient times, including a tall white hat, black boots, and a black whip.

Aterton obeyed, and music boomed through the hold, and Garvin touched his throat mike.

“Men, women, children of all ages … Welcome, welcome, welcome, to the Circus of Galactic Delights. I’m your host for the show. Now, what we’ll have first …”

Half a dozen clowns tumbled into view, began assaulting Garvin in various ways, some trying to drench him with water, others to push him over a kneeling clown, still others throwing rotten vegetables. But all missed, and he drove them away with his whip.

“Sorry, sorry, but we’ve got these strange ones who’re completely out of control with us …” Garvin lowered his voice, cut out of his spiel. “When we get a full complement, we’ll have carpet clowns working the stands. Next will come the spec, with all kinds of women on lifts, on horses, on elephants if we get elephants, the candy butchers working the stands, the cats coming through …

“Maestro, sorry to put you through this, but we’ll need bits for each act as they enter.”

“Of course,” Aterton said haughtily. “I, at least, know my business and am hardly a first-of-Mayer.”

Garvin made a face, decided to let it pass.

“Then, after the spec goes out the back door of the tent, or the hold, or the amphitheater … I don’t have the foggiest where we’ll be playing … then we’ll have the first act, which’ll be something I haven’t decided on, maybe some flyers, maybe have some little people working the ground, maybe some pongers, ‘though I haven’t seen nearly enough acrobats.”

He seemed quite at home amid the confusion.

• • •

“Earth cats?” Garvin asked.

“At one time,” the chubby, rather prissy man with a moustache said, a bit mournfully. “Since then, they’ve apparently mutated … and the perihelion of the species are with Doctor Emton’s Phantastic Felines, Who’ll Make You Wonder If You’re Really Superior and Dazzle You. A Fine Act for the Whole Family.”

Garvin looked skeptically at the six lean but well-brushed animals sitting on his desk. They regarded him with equal dispassion.

“Ticonderoga,” Emton said. “Insect. On picture. Catch it for him.”

He pointed at Garvin, but made no other move.

A cat leapt suddenly from the desk up to the mounted holo of Jasith, caught a bug, bit once, and dropped it daintily in Garvin’s lap.

“Interesting,” Garvin said. “But more suitable for a sideshow. Which we aren’t.”

“Pyramid,” Emton said, and three cats moved together, two more jumped on their backs, and the third completed the figure.

“Play ball,” he said, taking a small red ball from his pocket, and tossing it at them. The pyramid disassembled, the cats formed a ring, and began passing it back and forth.

“Hmm,” Garvin said. “We will have projection screens so the audience can see what’s going on … maybe something with the clowns?”

“Clowns,” Emton said, and the six cats stood on their paws, walked about, then sprang cartwheels.

“I’m afraid not,” Garvin said.

“Oh. Oh. Very well,” Emton said, and got up. His cats sprang back into the two carriers he’d brought in.

“Oh … one other thing … I, uh, understand that tryouts are welcome at your dukey?”

“Certainly,” Garvin said, and noted a slight look of desperation about the man. It must’ve been his imagination, but it seemed the cats had the same expression. “We’re happy to feed you. And your animals.”

“Well … thank you for your time, anyway,” Emton said as he fastened the carrier closers.

Garvin, feeling every bit a saphead, said, “Hang on a second. Can I ask you a personal question?”

Emton’s expression was a bit frosty, but he said, “You may.”

“Can I ask what your last performance was?”

Emton looked wistful.

“Last time we were on a show … just one going back and forth, a mud show really, more to keep from getting rusty … actually, was, well, almost an E-year ago.”

Garvin nodded.

“I said something about clowns. Do you have any objection to working with them?”

“Of course not,” Emton said eagerly.

“Perhaps I’m not seeing your act’s full potential, or maybe you could use some new material,” Garvin said. “I’ll buzz our Professor Ristori to meet you at the main lock in, oh, thirty minutes or so.” He hastily added, seeing Emton’s expression, “Sorry, an hour. Time enough for you and your troupe to get fed at the cook tent.”

“Thank you,” Emton said eagerly. “I promise, you won’t be sorry.”

“I’m sure I won’t,” Garvin said, thinking that Jasith wouldn’t mind spending a little of what had been her money this way.

Besides, the creatures might be useful somehow.

• • •

Clowns and more clowns inundated
Big Bertha
until Garvin had more than thirty signed up. He made Ristori clown master, gave Njangu other duties.

• • •

“All right, all right, break,” Garvin shouted. The robot bears’ handler looked sheepish, and the aerialists overhead went back to their pedestal boards.

“People, we’re trying to hit some kind of rhythm here. Let’s take it back, to where the bears just come on.”

• • •

“This much better,” the
ra’felan
told Monique Lir. “Used to be, was real rope nets. If a human not land right … on back of neck … could get hurt. Break leg. Maybe bounce out and no catcher. Bad, very bad.”

The circus “net” was composed of a series of antigrav projectors, all pointed up and inward, now set up in the tent’s center ring. Anyone falling from a trapeze above would be slowed, then stopped two meters above the ground. The net also had the advantage of being almost invisible. Only a small blur could be seen from the projector mouths, so the audience could get the thrill of thinking the performers were chancing death every time they went aloft.

The being rolled an eye at Lir.

“Why you want to learn iron-jaw act?”

“Why not?”

The
ra’felan
reached up with a tentacle and pulled down the rope with the metal bit at its end.

“Good. You put in mouth, just clamp teeth. Hold firm. Now, we pull off ground. Just little.

“You see how easy? Human jaw strong. Now, we teach how to spin, turn, maybe … you look like strong woman … do kicks and things.”

• • •

Njangu eyed the animals skeptically. They looked at him with interest. Not to maybe mention hunger.

There were a round dozen of them, identified by their trainer as lions, tigers, leopards, and panthers.

“You know,” he said, “I’d be a lot happier, a whole lot happier, if the bars were between me and your friends.”

“Ah, there’s nothing to worry about,” the tall handsome man with the scarred face said.

Njangu remembered Garvin telling him once, when they thought they were about to die, why he’d ended up joining the Force — the circus he’d been ringmaster for had turned out to be crook, and the locals had realized the hustles and started a riot. Jaansma saw someone about to torch the horses’ enclosure, went, as he said, “a little ape shit,” and turned the big cats loose on the crowd.

“Yeh,” he said doubtfully.

“Not that the diddlies’ll ever realize how tame m’pussies are,” the slanger — trainer — said. He cracked a big whip, and instantly the inside of the huge enclosure, a huge birdcage almost twenty meters in diameter, was furry chaos, as cats roared, screamed, clawed at the air, sprang from stand to stand, and the trainer was firing blanks from an old-fashioned pistol into the air as he tossed rings through the air, and the animals plummeted through them.

Then all was still again.

The trainer, who said his name was Sir Douglas, grinned, his scar standing out against his near-ebony complexion. “See what I mean?”

“Maybe,” Njangu said. “Uh … where’d you get the scar, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Muldoon … that’s the leopard over there … gets moody first thing in the mornings. And I was being a little pushy.” He gestured. “Accidents do happen, don’t they.”

“They do,” Njangu said, moving toward the cage door. “By the way, what do these fine friends of yours eat?”

“Meat,” Sir Douglas said with a ferocious grin. “As much as I’ll let ‘em have.”

“Have they figured out yet, that
we’re
meat?”

“No,” the trainer said. “But they’re working on it.”

• • •

Njangu noticed Garvin’s habits were changing. Now he would sleep all day, waking at nightfall for a light meal, then doing business all night long, breaking frequently to visit various acts around the ship. At dawn, he’d have a big meal and half a bottle of wine, and retire.

Njangu caught him eyeing Darod Montagna, but so far nothing had happened.

So far.

Besides, Njangu had other business to take care of, with two Intelligence Section assistants. He was interviewing, as subtly and thoroughly as he could, everyone who joined the circus about where they’d come from, what they knew of the collapse, and their own personal travels.

A problem was that circus people don’t especially like to get personal. They were reluctant to say where they came from, but would say “I was with the Zymecas,” or “I came from Butler and Daughter.”

Njangu, so far, was amassing confusion. Some worlds or sectors seemed to have made a decision to declare their independence from the Confederation. Nobody seemed to know what happened to the Confederation officials assigned to those areas.

Other worlds, Njangu found, seemed to have lost contact. Their freightliners went out and didn’t come back, ordered cargoes never materialized, troops were never replaced, and so forth.

A few troupers had specific stories — of expecting an act or a relative to arrive, and no ship ever appeared in their skies, or contracts had been signed, but the transport never showed up.

There didn’t seem to be any single crash, just a series of crumblings.

Njangu had no theories whatsoever.

• • •

“Great gods playing feetball,” Dill said. “They’re goddamned enormous!”

“Nobody really realizes how big an elephant is until they get close to one for the first time,” Garvin said. “Isn’t that right?”

“We would not know,” one of the slim brown-skinned men said.

The other man nodded. “We have been around our friends since … since we were born.”

One of the men was named Sunya Thanon, the other Phraphas Phanon. They had sixteen elephants, all named, plus two babies, no more than an E-year old, Imp and Loti.

“Do you wish us to display our friends’ skills?”

“Not necessary,” Garvin said. “I watched the holo you sent me. You are more than welcome.”

“Good,” Sunya said. “Feeding our friends on our small budget becomes wearisome.” He, like Phraphas, spoke careful, unaccented Common as if he were more familiar with another language.

“But we must caution you.” Phraphas said. “We are searching for a place, and if, in our travels, we find a way to reach it, we must insist on being allowed to leave the show instantly.”

“I suppose that can be arranged,” Garvin said cautiously. “And that place is?”