Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [36]
Beyond a nebulous dislike of the militia and the government, Lin was not a political being. She sat back and looked up at the stars through the violet haze of the suspended lantern. She thought about the last time she had been to a fair: she remembered the mad palimpsest of smell, the catcalls and screeches, the rigged competitions and cheap prizes, the exotic animals and bright costumes, all packed together in a seedy, vibrant, exciting whole.
The fair was where normal rules were briefly forgotten, where bankers and thieves mingled to ooh, scandalized and titillated. Even Lin’s less outrageous sisters would come to the fair.
One of her early memories was of creeping past ranks of gaudy tents to stand next to some terrifying, dangerous, multicoloured ride, some giant wheel at the Gallmarch Fair twenty years ago. Someone—she never knew who, some khepri passer-by, some indulgent stallholder—had handed her a toffee-apple, which she had eaten reverentially. One of her few pleasant memories of childhood, that sugared fruit.
Lin sat back and waited for her friends to finish their preparations. She sucked sweet tea from her sponge and thought of that candied apple. She waited patiently to go to the fair.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Come try, come try, come try your luck!”
“Ladies, ladies, tell yer fellers to win you a bouquet!”
“Spin in the Whirligig! It’ll spin your mind!”
“Your likeness affected in only four minutes! No faster portraiture in the world!”
“Experience the hypnagogic mesmerism of Sillion the Extraordinary!”
“Three rounds, three guineas! Stand for three rounds against ‘Iron Man’ Magus and take home three Gs! No cactus-people.”
The night air was thick with noise. The challenges, the shouts, the invitations and temptations and dares sounded around the laughing party like bursting balloons. Gasjets, mixed with select chymicals, burnt red, green, blue and canary yellow. The grass and paths of Sobek Croix were sticky with spilt sugar and sauce. Vermin scampered from the skirts of stalls into the dark bushes of the park clutching choice morsels. Gonophs and cutpurses slipped predatory through the crowds like fish through weeds. Indignant roars and violent cries sounded in their wake.
The crowd was a moving stew of human and vodyanoi, cactus, khepri, and other, rarer breeds: hotchi and strider and stiltspear and races the names of which Isaac did not know.
A few yards out from the fair, the darkness of the grass and trees was absolute. The bushes and boughs were fringed with bunting of ragged paper, discarded and ensnared and slowly shredded by the wind. Paths criss-crossed the park, leading to lakes and flower beds and acres of untended growth, and the old monastic ruins at the centre of the huge common.
Lin and Cornfed, Isaac and Derkhan and all the others strolled past enormous contraptions of bolted steel, garishly painted iron and hissing lights. Delighted squeals sounded from little cars swinging on flimsy-looking chains above them. A hundred different manically cheerful tunes sounded from a hundred engines and organs, an unsettling cacophony that ebbed and flowed around them.
Alex munched honeyed nuts; Bellagin salted meat; Thighs Growing a watery mulch delicious to cactus-people. They threw food at each other, caught it in their mouths.
The park was thronging with punters, throwing hoops over poles, firing children’s bows at targets, guessing under which cup the coin was hidden. Children screamed with pleasure and misery. Prostitutes of all races, sexes and descriptions sashayed exaggeratedly between the stalls or stood by the beerhalls, winking at passers-by.
The party disintegrated slowly as they passed into the heart of the fair. They hovered a minute while Cornfed showed off his archery. He ostentatiously offered his prizes, two dolls, to Alex and a young, beautiful whore who cheered his triumph. The three disappeared arm in arm through the crowd. Tarrick proved adept at a fishing game, pulling three live crabs from a big swirling tub.