Cirque Read online

  The rich lived inside the circle of the Apprentice Quarters. Buildings here were lower, sprawling outward on the ground level in neo-medieval styles; there were courtyards and gardens and the green of oak, manzanita, laurel and plum trees. The river flowed slowly through open fields, winding now as if hesitant to reach its end. Walled villas appeared; private windmills rose behind the walls, lazily turning bright-colored vanes in the morning breezes.

  The River Fundament wound its way inevitably to its destination: six kilometers inside the ring of Apprentice Quarters, the slowly running waters reached the Edge and plunged into space.

  This was the center, the focal point of the city: the Abyss, a vast chasm around which the city had been built. Nearly ten kilometers across, the Abyss was edged with sheer cliffs that dropped into darkness; in the center of the Abyss was only air. It was a gigantic shaft plunging into the earth, bottomless in the memory of humankind, a limitless primal mystery of nature. The River Fundament ended here, emptying into the all-receiving darkness of the Abyss’s depth.

  No one knew what had caused the Abyss. Since the earliest records of history, stretching back into ancient wars, the Abyss had been here. Scientists theorized about a massive settling in the Earth’s crust, a time when nearly a hundred kilometers of land had plunged into the honeycombed spaces of the planet’s interior. Perhaps in an earth tremor, perhaps in a bombardment, or perhaps from the sheer weight of millennia. But few believed the scientists; Cirque was a religious city, and the dogmas of each temple had its believers.

  There were hundreds of temples in Cirque, each with its own conception of the Abyss. But all saw it as a super-natural manifestation, and all believed it was a key to human salvation. Those Christian sects that practiced Confession said that confessed sins were cast into the all-absorbing darkness of the Abyss, and this dogma was common to most of the temples of Cirque in one way or another. The Abyss was a gigantic receiver of all that was dark and evil in human nature, a deep force that drew to itself the hatreds, fears and pettinesses of all people.

  The Abyss was also used as a dumping place for the city’s garbage.

  It had been used in this way since time immemorial. Anthropologists claimed that this was what lay behind the religious practices of expiation, that it had been a short step from dumping physical wastes into the chasm to seeing it as the receiver of sins. Some of the garbage contractors presented themselves as quasi-religious functionaries, claiming that their services were spiritual as well as sanitary.

  The main dumping place of Cirque was on the North Edge near the Final Cataract of the River Fundament, just two kilometers across the river from the Cathedral of the Five Elements.

  “Something interesting is happening in the city,” said Jamie Halle as he gazed dreamily from his breakfast veranda across the great open space of the Abyss. Far across the chasm, the irregular towers of the Eastern Apprentice Quarters stood stark and black against the morning sun. The shadowed precipices of the East Edge, nine kilometers away, reached downward into darkness.

  Gloriana Crest hoisted her willowy body onto the wall of the veranda and looked at him expectantly. “Oh? What could be interesting anywhere but on the Edge?”

  Jamie smiled. “Very little, ordinarily; if city life were more interesting, I might live there rather than pay for the upkeep of this estate. But it seems that today the city has a visitor from afar.”

  “From afar?” she said. “How far? From the sleepy headwaters of Fundament? From beyond the mountains? Or from the Moon?”

  Jamie didn’t mind her mocking him; he indulged in no illusions of self-importance. He was a hereditary mining engineer, inheritor of a vast fund of knowledge that had been expensively encoded in his family’s genetic pattern many generations past. But the knowledge was useless now, Earth’s mineral riches having been played out long since. He was fortunate that his family’s expertise had produced the wealth to allow him to live in a ten-acre villa on the West Edge.

  Jamie said, “I tuned to the broadcast for a while. There’s a foreigner in the city—from Aldebaran, probably. It’s not human.”

  Gloriana raised her eyebrows; the expression was dramatic, since she kept her skin fashionably pale to set off her short-cropped black hair. “Well, by all means you must invite this creature to go soaring with us. You do have room for two passengers in your glider, you know.”

  “Yes, but not if one of them is a millipede. Must be over three meters long.”

  “A millipede!” There was real excitement in her voice. “I’ve never seen one! Where is she? Did you see her? Yes, of course you did. Was that what happened to the man at the Morning Gate? I left that broadcast while he was staring at the sun.”

  Jamie leaned his elbows on the balcony next to her, looking out into the vast chasm. He was twenty-two years old, a slender young man with sun-bleached blond hair and startlingly blue eyes. “I don’t know if it’s female or male. Not all people are divided into sexes, you know. The ones who aren’t are probably saner.”

  She pouted mockingly at him. “Oh, Jamie, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings last night. I have things on my mind, you know—you people with genetic money think bed-play is the only important thing in life. But I have to guard the whole city against transgressions of laws I don’t even believe in. Do you think that’s easy?”

  He frowned, pulling his devolved-sabertooth coat closer around his neck to protect him against the chill of morning. “I just wish you’d let me help with whatever it is that’s bothering you. Gloriana, we’ve been together for two years—I wish you’d talk to me more.”

  “It’s my job, I told you.” She stretched exaggeratedly, her widely spaced breasts rising to swell the green wool dress she wore. Shaking her hair around her ears, she affected a bright smile and said wonderingly, “A millipede from Aldebaran! Oh, I wish I’d kept tuned in! I have such a short attention span. Do you think I’m frivolous, Jamie? Sometimes I think I should apply myself more.”

  Jamie knew she was anything but frivolous. Just twenty-five, Gloriana Crest was the head of the city Guard officers. She had the intelligence and focus of a worldly saint, and she liked to lull people by behaving flightily. He had been fooled at first.

  “If you applied yourself any more, you’d own the Abyss,” he said. “I don’t even know why you agreed to come flying with me today—don’t you have some new set of laws to write or something?”

  She shrugged. “Too many laws only confuse people. What I’d like to do is get rid of some laws that have been on record since before the South Edge was inhabited. Did you know it’s, still illegal to kill bison inside the city boundaries?”

  “You worry too much about your job,” he said.

  “Of course I do!” she exclaimed, jumping down from the balcony. “That’s why I’m here with you. Shall we go soaring, sweet?”

  He nodded and went to the communicator on the breakfast table. Servants had cleared away all but the stim cups. He depressed a color on the communicator and said, “Esteban, is the glider ready?”

  “The catapult will be at full power in five minutes, sir.”

  Jamie turned back to Gloriana. “Let’s go.”

  But she was already past him, bouncing down the side steps of the veranda onto the broad green lawn that stretched to the stone wall at the Edge. Two hundred meters southward lay the glider field, a strip of smooth grey paving that ran directly to the Edge and disappeared through a break in the wall at the precipice.

  Jamie hurried after her, and they walked together in the morning air. The grass was cold with dew; hoppers skittered around their ankles, and the smell of fresh earth rose like incense. The sky was a clear light blue; there was no wind. The sound of the field was an open silence.

  Jamie always felt most alive in the morning. He liked the clarity of the air and the softness of the shadows high up on the distant walls of the great Abyss. It was a time of sharp vision.

  It would be a good morning for gliding, he decided. The day promi
sed to be warm; there would be thermals soon, even away from the Abyss. He was pleased; they could stay up for hours. Gloriana wouldn’t be able to run off so soon today.

  Abruptly he became aware that she had paused and was standing motionless in the middle of the field behind him, looking pensively out into the Abyss. Wondering, he turned and went back to her.

  “Jamie, have you ever considered marrying?”

  “Only with you,” he said. “Never seriously.”

  She turned her deep brown eyes on him, and lie was struck once more by their intensity. “Have you really thought of marrying me?” she asked.

  He felt uncomfortable. Of course he’d thought of it; every man inside the Apprentice Quarters had, and some from outside too. But he’d always tried to avoid hoping. He was a pragmatist.

  “I think of marrying you every night,” he said. “And every morning. Will you marry me?”

  “Jamie, don’t play with me,” she said. She resumed walking toward the glider strip, face bent to the grass. “I’ve really been thinking about it. I don’t know what to do.”

  He walked in silence, wondering. He and Gloriana had talked about marriage, but only as bed-play. And after last night—He shook his head slightly. Gloriana was in a strange mood today.

  “I’ve never thought of marrying anyone but you,” he said truthfully. “And I’ve never thought you’d consider it.”

  “What if I ask you to marry me?” she said, still looking at the grass.

  “If you really want to, I guess I’ll have to think about it. Are you asking me, Gloriana?”

  He managed to feel nothing when he said that.

  And after several seconds he realized she hadn’t answered. He discovered that he too was looking at his feet as they went through the grass, and he became aware that his fur moccasins were wet and cold. And that Gloriana was not going to say anything further.

  They came to the paved strip. He looked ahead and saw the short figure of Esteban positioning his glider in the catapult. The glider was painted blue, sky color, a pale ghost on the runway; its wings spread out like a benediction.

  Taking his hand, Gloriana said, “You think I have a calculator for a brain, don’t you?”

  He forced a grin, feeling as though his covering skin had shriveled away from his face. “I thought you wouldn’t admit you had a brain at all,” he said.

  “Of course I have,” she said shortly, “and you know it. And you know what it tells me, Jamie? It’s not a calculator, you know; it surprises me. Right now, and all morning, it’s been telling me there’s a change coming to me today, that I’d better get ready for it.” She shrugged. “Well, let’s just go gliding for now.”

  He nodded, troubled by her moodiness, and they walked out onto the runway. She jumped lithely onto the wing of the glider and lowered herself into the front seat. He moved in behind her, lowered the bubble over them and ran a quick check on the controls. All was in order; he signaled to Esteban by waving the rudder.

  Behind them he heard the solar engines of the catapult whirring upward to a high whine. Suddenly the glider was flung forward, Jamie was pressed back into his seat, and the low, wide fields rushed past them. The glider hurtled off the runway, over the Edge, and a sharp blast of rising air threw them upward. Jamie handled the controls with practiced ease, sending the glider into a long, slow spiral up into the clear air over the Abyss, where updrafts always rose from the deep inner fires of the planet.

  Jamie usually felt a sense of freedom and joy on these takeoffs: the city spread out below, ringing the darkness of the great Abyss, streets and buildings stretching into the distance. But today he missed that sense of elation; there was an aching emptiness inside him. It was the uncertainty of his relationship with Gloriana. He cursed himself silently for allowing himself to become so dependent on her.

  Gloriana asked, “Where do you suppose that foreigner is?”

  “The millipede?” He thought back, remembering the broadcast. “It went off toward the Winter Gate, looking for the river.”

  “Let’s go that way,” she said. “I like the river from up here; it’s so silent while it flows through the city. I’ve never liked all that roaring and rushing when I’ve seen it from the banks.”

  “All right.” He banked in a long circle to the left. For a moment the low sun flashed dazzlingly in their eyes; then they were flying to the north, climbing.

  Below them the jumbled towers of the Apprentice Quarters cast long irregular shadows that covered the inner estates. The western wall of the Abyss glowed golden, and Jamie saw the winking flashes of windows in the estates on the West Edge.

  He found the river’s Final Cataract, where tons of water plunged off the Edge into blackness—a straight white line of water disappearing downward.

  Suddenly Gloriana said, “Jamie, what’s that?”

  “What?” He had been looking upriver; he had noticed nothing unusual.

  “Below us—behind us. I thought I saw something.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, never mind. No! I saw it again! In the Abyss, far down—there’s something there!” Her voice was excited, and she craned to look over the side of the glider, pressing her face against the bubble.

  He said, “In the Abyss? But there’s nothing—”

  “Yes there is! I saw it! Something white, it looked like, and moving. But that’s not possible; it must have been—” She fell silent, still staring downward.

  Jamie banked the glider to the left, circling back toward the dark chasm. He wondered why he bothered; there could be nothing in the Abyss; there was never anything there. It was simply a gigantic shaft into the earth, bottomless.

  Gloriana gasped, a quick in-and-out breath. “There! There!” She was pointing downward.

  Jamie looked, saw nothing. The Final Cataract plunged straight down into emptiness; green mosses showed against the wall of the Abyss, but that was all. How could there be anything?

  But there was! Movement caught his eye, deep in the blackness of the shaft. Something large and ponderous swelled down there, like an ocean wave rising, gathering and growing. He saw it for only a moment; then it was lost in the dark. He banked again, to the right this time, in a tight turn that made his stomach rise to his throat; he wanted a clearer view.

  But it was gone. He circled twice and saw only quiet blackness below, the eternal dark of the Abyss. He became conscious of his own rapid breathing, felt his heart pounding.

  Gloriana twisted around to look at him. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

  He nodded, licking dry lips. “I saw something, I don’t know what. What did you see?”

  “Let’s go down closer,” she said. “How low can you take us?”

  “Not very far, with these thermals. If only we had an engine plane!”

  “Never mind; let’s go as close as we can.” She peered again over the side as he put the glider into a dive. He felt a moment of forced vertigo as the glider curved downward and he was thrown forward against his gravity harness. The city rose before them and filled their view; the stark blackness of the Abyss leaped up over the nose of the glider as they plunged.

  When the rising winds became too powerful, he leveled out and put the glider into a slow turn to the left that would take them directly over the area where he’d seen that movement. Gloriana stared intently downward as they passed over the Final Cataract. Jamie peered downward too. Blackness, blackness; it seemed to swirl suddenly, and he caught his breath, but then he realized that his vision was swimming. He tried to blink his eyes into focus; the swirling continued.

  “There!” cried Gloriana.

  Something moved—a faster movement this time, a pale darting shape that flicked across his vision and disappeared into the deep shadows. It was gone almost immediately.

  He continued to look; he saw nothing more. Again the darkness began to swim in his eyes, and he looked away.

  The sky was suddenly intensely bright, the interior of the glider bathed in sunlight. G
loriana’s short black hair flashed as it caught the sun.

  “We can’t get any lower,” he said. He kept the glider in a tight circle, fighting the controls to hold it steady amid rising gusts of warm air. He kept seeing that last quick flicking movement in his mind. What could be moving so far down in the Abyss? The back of his neck tingled, and he realized suddenly that he was afraid.

  “It must have been an illusion,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of strange things in the shadows, especially in the morning. And things always seem different from up here—”

  Gloriana said, “No.” Then she shook her head. Two separate actions, almost unrelated.

  “All right,” he said, forcing his voice to be calm. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”

  She was sitting completely still now, looking straight ahead. She said, “You saw it too; don’t deny it. It was huge. At first it moved slowly, but that last time …” She tried to turn around in her seat, but the gravity harness held her. “It was fast the last time,” she said.

  He saw it again in his mind: quick, darting white. It seemed clearer this time. He said, “Yes, I saw that. Like some fantastic jungle vine whipping through the air.”

  “Or a tentacle,” said Gloriana. “Didn’t it seem that way to you? Like something out of the ocean, something that breathed and rolled over and lifted a tentacle into the air.”

  He hadn’t thought of it as anything that alive, and he didn’t want to think of it that way. “It could have been a tree growing on the wall of the Abyss. Maybe a branch came loose and fell.”

  “It wouldn’t have moved that fast, Jamie.”

  “It wasn’t moving fast at first. Remember? It just seemed to waver, to drift. Then there was that quick movement at the end. Like a tree branch cracking, then breaking and falling.”

  She shook her head. “That was no tree branch and you know it.” She turned down her gravity harness and twisted in her seat to face him. “Be sensible, Jamie. What would a tree be doing down in the Abyss? There isn’t enough soil on the sides of the shaft for a tree that size to grow in. And it wasn’t falling, it was reaching up.”