Menagerie - Martin Day [36]
Diseaeda's collection of dead things.'
' So exploitative,' said Raitak, smiling at Zoe.
The Siamese twins had given Zoe a tour of the entire site.
They quickly surmised her interests, marvelling at her degrees and her range of knowledge, even though Zoe was sure that most of what she said meant less than nothing to them. They had taken her to the primitive generator that powered the lights strung like dew-covered webs over the expanse of the circus. Without thinking Zoe called it a museum piece. Raitak snapped that it had cost Diseaeda half of his profits for one year, that it had come from the edge of the world and was, in fact, a scientific marvel. Reisaz whispered conspiratorially that the Knights of Kuabris didn't know about the machine, and that their licensed
'research' had done little more than develop what was already common knowledge in other regions. Zoe questioned the man in charge of the machine, but it was clear that he didn't even know what principles the machine worked on. For him, it was magic that it worked at all, and a miracle when it didn't break down.
There were many freaks like the twins. She caught glimpses of the tallest man she had ever seen, always edgily on the move, checking light bulbs and the overhead cables.
There was a man with no eyes, his cheeks rising smoothly to meet a furrowed brow of concentration. A rather short-tempered woman with a beard snapped at her when she bent to examine some slowly cooking stew. And then there were the silent clowns, the strongmen, the acrobats, who spent more time on their hands than their feet, and myriad creatures who grazed on the scrubby tufts of grass or paced angrily in cages.
Her interest in alien morphology had in turn led her to the grandly titled Hall of Grotesques, a large hut of dark wood.
Zoe stepped inside, followed by the twins. Raitak held up a lamp, while Reisaz half-turned to secure the curtain with a silken cord. 'Obviously, by evening, the lights in here will be working,' said Raitak.
'It's very cleverly done,' said Reisaz. 'Pools of light, illuminating the dead things just as you turn to the next exhibit.'
'The man who used to look after all this,' said Raitak,
'went mad. Said that the exhibits would move when he wasn't looking.'
Reisaz made a little whizzing sound in her throat and mockingly smacked the side of her head.
'It was very sad,' said Raitak, silencing her sister with a stem glance. 'No one deserves to end up like that.' The twins walked over to the first exhibit. 'Diseaeda ensured that the man was looked after.'
Zoe knew that, as with so many of the twins' comments, the real meaning of the woman's words was simple: Diseaeda is no ghoulish fiend. But Zoe wasn't especially interested in this character reference. Whatever the respect he inspired in the workers and performers, Zoe had been arrested, thrown into a smelly jail, sold at auction, subjected to the most excruciating journey she had ever suffered, and was now working at a glorified freak show. She wasn't in the mood to thank Diseaeda for anything. She opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it. And she promised herself never to complain of space travel again.
'First exhibit: the bones of a dragon,' announced Reisaz.
Zoe peered into the glass cabinet and saw on a mock-velvet-covered plinth a humanoid skull and assorted bones. Only a bony ridge on the forehead - probably false? — hinted at anything beyond the strictly human.
'I'm not convinced,' said Zoe quietly.
'The mummified body of a giant insect,' said Raitak, pointing to the next cubicle. 'Found in the icy wastes in the south.'
'Now that's quite impressive,' nodded Zoe. 'The tissue seems hardly damaged.' She saw myriad faces peering back at her from the creature's compound eye. She turned to ask the twins about the probable age of the creature, and caught sight of an exhibit behind them. 'But this is more my field,'
she announced, striding across the room to the opposite wall. 'It looks like a cryogenic suspension unit.'
'A woman of