“Oh—” She made a face and shook her head. “That’s their idea of excitement. Or morality. Or something.”
“Who’s ‘they?’”
“The Rampant Order of Dumb Beasts. Another neo-Thomist sect.”
“Oh?”
“They sprang up about six weeks back. If they keep sprung for another, I may move back into your side of town. Well, I suppose—” She shrugged—“they have their point.” She swiveled her jaw from side to side, touched it with her fingertips.
“What are
they
into?”
“Putting an end to meaningless communication. Or is it meaningful ... ? I can never remember. Most of them used to belong to a really strict, self-mortification and mutilation sect—you saw that eye? They disbanded when some of the shamans managed to do them—
selves in by particularly lingering and unpleasant means. They’d completely given up on verbal communication; and two of the leading-lady gurus—as well as one of the gentlemen—had their brains publicly burned out. It was pretty grim.”
“Yes,” he said, on the verge of giving a small, sympathetic shudder. But she didn’t. So he didn’t.
“Apparently, some of the former members who survived—they didn’t even allow themselves a name, back then; just a number: a very long, random one, I believe—have gotten together again around more or less similar principles, but with a, I guess you could call it, more relaxed interpretation: The Order of Dumb Beasts ...” She shook her head. “The fact that they
do
talk, you see, is supposed to be a very subtle sort of irony. It’s the first time they’ve bothered me. They
are
a nuisance—next time, I just may nuisance back!”
“I can imagine,” he said, searching for some point in the unpleasantness to take the conversation on. He found none and floundered, silently. She saved him again with: “Come walk with me,” and smiled, beckoning with her head.
Smiling back, he ducked his in relief; and came. Seconds later, she turned (on a turning he had often seen and never thought about), then glanced back at him again.
He said: “Have you noticed? To meet a new person here in Tethys is always like entering a new city
... ?” He’d said that before, too.
In the narrow way, gray walls either side (under the black ceiling), she glanced at him, considering.
“At least, it’s always been that way with me. A new friend, and they invariably have an appointment or another friend on some street you’ve never been on before. It makes the city—come alive.”
Her new smile mocked slightly. “I would have
thought to
someone like you all places in the city looked alive,” and she turned down an even narrower alley.
He glanced at the glowing, red (for the u-1) numbers of the street’s coordinates up on the wall, follow—
ing. Then the thought, But
why
am I following? overtook him. To dispel it, he overtook her. The young man Bron had hardly noticed leave the archway ahead suddenly turned his back to them, crouched, then leaped, flinging his arms, and his hair, up and over; feet—red socks flashed between frayed cuffs and fringed shoes—swung through air and over, after hands: coppery hair swept the ground. Then he was right side up. Then another back-flip. Then another. Then he bounced, whirling, arms out for a brief bow. Shirtless, in tattered pants, panting a little, with hair hanging over his shoulders, straggling across his face, he (a lot cleaner than the gorilla Bron had just rescued her from) grinned. And she, again, was smiling: “Oh, come on! Let’s follow fom!”
“Well, if you—” He still wondered why he was following
her.
But she grasped his hand! He thought of it with the exclamation. And thought, too, That’s the first thing that’s happened today that deserves one! And
that
thought (he thought) was the second ...
!—which began an infinite regress of pleasure, only interrupted as she took his wrist now and pulled him around a corner: In the small square, a refuse can blazed, flaking light over the dark-haired girl’s guitar; she turned, strumming slowly. The music (the acrobat preceding them did a final flip and, staggering and laughing, stood) quickened.
Some man started singing.
Bron looked for him and saw the poster—mural rather—across the back wall:
A winged beast with near-naked rider rose through thrashing branches, the rider’s expression ecstatic, flexed arms bound in bronze. Reins of chain hung slack on the left, pulled taut on the right, with the mount turned against them.
Someone had set up a hand-lamp, with a swivel beacon, on the gravel; it put a bright pool over the rider’s jackknifed thigh. The beast’s scales were tight where the creature’s neck turned out, and wrinkled where one of its legs bent.
A dozen people stood near the fire. One woman, seated on a crate, suckled a baby: in the warm draft from the burning can, her chiffon lifted and fell.
Bron saw the rope from the overhead black ... swaying. He could only follow it up some thirty odd feet; which meant it could have been tied to a support hidden in darkness thirty-one feet above them, or, indeed, one up three hundred. (From the swing’s frequency, it was more like thirty-five.) Someone was sliding, slowly, down: gold chains hung from her toe-rings. At the end of each, small mirrors spun in the firelight (fire dots sped over the mural); the rope slipped and slid, around her calf, around her waist, around her overhead arm as, descending into the glow, she watched the company. When she halted—was she the model for the rider? Those bronze gauntlets, that leathern skirt ... ?—the highest head was some two feet below the lowest mirror.
Some of the people were swaying to the unseen singer’s song.
He’d just caught the last half-dozen words, when: “Look ... !” he whispered, pulling the woman to him. “Isn’t that the man who punched ... ?”
His companion frowned toward where he’d nodded (her shoulders moved beneath her short, gray cape), then looked back at Bron (shoulders settling) and whispered: “Look again, when she sways into the firelight ...”
He’d dismissed the “she” as a slip of the tongue, when the muscular creature with the fur-bound thigh and arm, matted hair and ulcerated eye, swaying among the dozen others swaying, shifted weight: Bron saw, across the hirsute pectorals, scars from what must have been an incredibly clumsy mastectomy.
Someone
in front stepped aside so that a wavering edged shadow fell away: obviously from the same bestial sect, however naked and grubby, this
was &
woman—or a castrate with chest scars. Neither had been the case with
the
gorilla assailant.
The singing went on.
Now, how (Bron looked away so as not to be noticed staring) could I possibly have mistaken
her
for that other? (Others had joined the singing. And still others.) Her face was wider; underneath the dirt, her hair was brown, not blue; from her neck hung only a single, rusted chain. The song she sang (among the dozen others singing) was beautiful.
The voices were rough; seven-odd stuck out, raucous, unsure, off-key. But
what
they sang—
Bron felt his hand squeezed.
—kept rising, and rising over itself, defining a chord that the next note, in suspension, beat with beautifully. His back and belly chilled. He breathed out, breathed in, trying to inhale the words, but catching only: “... all onyx and dove-blood crinkling ...” to miss a phrase and catch another: “... love like an iced engine crackling ...” which, in terms of the dozen words he’d first heard, was profound. The woman on the rope began a high descant over-soaring the melody.
Chills encased him. His eyelids quivered.
The acrobat, legs braced wide, shoulders and long hair back, face up—sparse red beard scraggled just under his chin—sang too.
Voices interwove, spiring.
His ears and tongue felt carbonated.
His scalp crawled with joy.
Something exploded in the refuse can. Red sparks spattered over the rim, spilled on the gravel. Sparks, blue-white, shot up in a four-, a six-, a dozen-foot fountain.
Bron drew back.
“No, watch ...” she whispered, pulling him forward. Her voice sounded as if it reverberated down from vaulted domes. Awed, he looked up.
The fountain was up over two dozen feet!
Sparks hit the shoulder of the woman on the rope. She was chanting something; he heard: “... point seven, one, eight, two, eight, one, four ...” She paused, laughed, let go with one hand to brush sparks away. For a moment (as though she recited some mystical countdown) he thought her image on the mural would tear loose and, flapping, spiral the bright pillar into the holy dark. The guitarist bent over her instrument, hammering on with her left hand and, with her right, flailing furious chords. People began to clap.
He raised his hands, clapped too—weakly: but it shook his whole body; he clapped again, wildly off-rhythm. Clapped again—had the song ended? There was only the quiet chanting of the woman on the rope, her voice measured, her eyes fixed on Bron’s: “... five, nine ... two ... six ... one ... seven ... five ...”
Bron clapped again, alone, and realized tears were rolling one cheek. (The sparks died.) His hands fell, swung, limp.
The red-haired acrobat started another flip—but stopped before he left the ground, grinned, and stood again. To which Bron’s reaction was near nausea. Had the flip been completed (at the silence, the baby pulled from the woman’s breast, looked around the square, blinked, then lurched again at the nipple and settled to sucking) Bron realized he would have vomited; and even the incomplete handspring seemed, somehow, incredibly
right.
Bron swallowed, took a step, tried to bring himself back into himself: it seemed that fragments were scattered all around the square.
He was breathing very hard.
I must be incredibly overoxygenated! Purposely, he slowed his breath.
His body still tingled. Anyway, it
was
exciting! Exciting and ... beautiful!—even to the point of nausea! He grinned, remembered his companion, looked for her—
She had moved over near the people at the smoking can, smiling at him.
Smiling back, he shook his head, a little bewildered, a little shaken. “Thank—” He coughed, shook his head again. “Thank you ...” which was all there was to say. “Please ... Thank you—”
Which was when he noticed that
all
of them—the girl with the guitar, the woman on the rope, the still panting acrobat, the woman sitting on the crate with the baby, the matted-haired woman with the scars and that eye, and the other dozen around the extinguished can (a sooty trickle of smoke put a second vertical up beside the rope)—were watching him.
The woman who had brought him glanced at the others, then back at Bron. “Thank
your
She raised both hands before her, nodded to him, and began to applaud.
So did the others. Half of them bowed, raggedly; some bowed again.
Still smiling, Bron said, “Hey, wait a minute ...” Some negative emotion fought for ascendance. As the woman stepped forward, he fought back and, for the moment, won. Confused, he reached for her hand.
She looked at his, a little puzzled, then said, “Oh ...” and showed him the palm of hers (a small metallic circle stuck to the center) in explanation; perhaps because he didn’t appear to understand, she frowned a little more, then said, “Oh—” again, but in a different tone, and, with her other hand, took his, clumsily; well, it was better than nothing. “This is a theatrical commune,” she said. “We’re operating on a Government Arts Endowment to produce micro-theater for unique audiences ...”
Behind her, somebody picked up the lamp (the beam swung from the mural), turned it off. The woman with the mirrors hanging from her toes was climbing the rope, hauling herself back into the dark.
“I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have.” Again the gray-caped shoulders moved with gentle laughter. “Really, you’re the most appreciative audience we’ve had in a while.” She looked around. “I think we’ll all agree to that—”
“He sure is!” a man, squatting before the refuse can, called up. He seized the can’s rim, yanked. The can opened. The acrobat, on the other
side,
caught one
half, pulled something,
and—clank!—clash!—clunk!—the whole thing folded down into a shape the two of them lifted and carried off into an alleyway.
The rope climber was gone:
the
rope end, jerking angrily, went up, and up, and up into the black—
“I hope you didn’t mind the drugs ... ?”—and disappeared.
She turned over her palm again with its metal circle. “It’s only the mildest psychedelic—absorbed through the skin. And there’s a built-in allergy check in case you’re—”
“Oh, I didn’t mind,” he protested. “Cellusin, I’m quite familiar with it. I mean, I know what ...”
She said: “It only lasts for seconds. It gives the audience better access to the aesthetic parameters around which we’re—” Her look questioned—”... working?” He nodded in answer, though not sure what the question was. The hirsute, scarred woman took hold of one of the poles edging the mural and pulled it from the wall, walking across and rolling the loose, rattling canvas with great swings.
“Really ...” Bron said. “It was ... wonderful! I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever ...” which, because it didn’t sound like what he’d intended to say, he let trail. Behind the mural was a palimpsest of posters. The last of the canvas came away from: “Look what
Earth
did to
their
Moon! We don’t” The rest had been torn off:—
want them to do it to us\
he supplied mentally, annoyed he knew it but not from where. Like lyrics of a song, he thought, running through your head, that, basically, you didn’t like. The woman dropped his hand, nodded again, turned and walked across the square, stopping to look up after the rope.
Bron started to call, but coughed (she looked back) and completed: “—what’s your name?”
She said, “My friends call me the Spike,” as one of the men came up, put his arm around her shoulder, and whispered something that made her laugh.
The variety, he thought, that subsumes her face between mild doubt and joy!
“We’ll be in this neighborhood for another day or
so” (The man
was walking away) “By the way, the music for our production was written by our guitarist, Charo—”