Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [38]
There were small screams from the crowd. People surged at the little barrier before the cage.
“Back, ladies and gents, back, I beg of you!” The showman’s voice was pompous and histrionic. “You are all in mortal danger! Don’t anger the beast!”
The mafadet hissed again under his continued torments. It wriggled backwards along the floor, crawling out of range of the vicious spike.
Isaac’s awe was waning fast.
The exhausted animal squirmed in undignified agony as it sought the rear of the cage. Its threadbare tail lashed the stinking goat carcass presumably provided for its nourishment. Dung and dust stained the mafadet’s pelt, along with blood that oozed thickly from numerous sores and nicks. Its sprawled body twitched a little as that cold, blunt head rose on the powerful muscles of the snake-neck.
The mafadet hissed and, as the crowd hissed in turn, its wicked jaws unhinged. It tried to bare its teeth.
Isaac’s face curled.
Broken stubs jutted from the creature’s gums where cruel fangs a foot long should have glinted. They had been smashed out of its mouth, Isaac realized, for fear of its murderous, poisonous bite.
He gazed at the broken monster whipping the air with its black tongue. It laid its head back down.
“Jabber’s arse,” Isaac whispered to Derkhan with pity and disgust. “Never thought I’d feel sorry for something like that.”
“Makes you wonder what state the garuda’s going to be in,” Derkhan replied.
The barker was hurriedly drawing the curtain on the miserable creature. As he did so he told the crowd the story of Libintos’s trial by poison at the hands of the Mafadet King.
Nursery tales, cant, lies and showmanship, thought Isaac contemptuously. He realized that the crowd had only been given a snatch of a view, a minute or less. Less chance anyone will notice how moribund the poor thing is, he mused.
He could not help but imagine the mafadet in full health. The immense weight of that tawny body padding through the hot dry scrub, the lightning strike of the venomous bite.
Garuda circling above, blades flashing.
The crowd were being shepherded towards the next enclosure. Isaac was not listening to the roar of the guide. He was watching Derkhan jot quick notes.
“This for RR?” whispered Isaac.
Derkhan looked around them quickly.
“Maybe. Depends what else we see.”
“What we’ll see,” hissed Isaac furiously, dragging Derkhan with him as he caught sight of the next exhibit, “is pure human viciousness! I fucking despair, Derkhan!”
He had stopped a little way behind a group of dawdlers who were gazing at a child born without eyes, a fragile, bony human girl who cried out wordlessly and waved her head at the sound of the crowd. She sees with Inner Sight! proclaimed the sign over her head. Some before the cage were cackling and yelling at her.
“Godspit, Derkhan . . .” Isaac shook his head. “Look at them tormenting that poor creature . . .”
As he spoke, a couple turned from the exhibited child with disgust in their faces. They turned as they left and spat behind them at the woman who had laughed the loudest.
“It turns, Isaac,” said Derkhan quietly. “It turns quickly.”
The tour guide strode the path between the rows of little tents, stopping here and there at choice horrors. The crowd was breaking apart. Little clots of people milled away under their own volition. At some tents they were stopped by attendants, who waited until a sufficient number had congregated before unveiling their hidden pieces. At others the punters walked right in, and shouts of delight and shock and disgust would emanate from within the grubby canvas.
Derkhan and Isaac wandered into a long enclosure. Above the entrance was a sign rendered in ostentatious calligraphy. A Panoply of Wonders! Do You Dare Enter the Museum of Hidden Things?
“Do we dare, Derkhan?” muttered Isaac as they passed into the warm dusty darkness within.
The light ebbed slowly