Circus Galacticus (20 page)

"That'll be hard, since Rjool doesn't have a ... well, you'd have to find something else to kick. Here, I brought gear." She tosses me a set of yellow coveralls and a pair of rubbery black gloves. "But we don't want to fight him. He's a Loranze."

"A what?" Following Nola's lead, I pull on the coveralls over my clothing, relieved to finally be doing something. Even if I don't get to thwack anything.

"Ask your know-it-all to show you."

"Oh, my stars," says Britannica when I put the question to her. "A Loranze? That won't do, not at all. Nice young ladies shouldn't be associating with creatures like that."

"No worries for me, then."

My know-it-all tsks me. "I admit that you're a work in progress, dear, but there's potential. So it would be highly unfortunate for you to be fraternizing with one of the Untouched."

"The Untouched?"

"One of the very few races in all the universe not tampered with by the Mandate or the Tinkers. Highly dubious characters, in my opinion. Look."

The viewscreen slides out over my eye. I nearly jump out of my big yellow boots. "Whoa. Now, that's what I call an alien."

Hovering in front of me is the frozen image of something that looks like it belongs on one of those nature programs about deep-sea critters. "Are those tentacles? But those numbers can't be right. Average weight five tons? Average height fifty feet? How did something that big get in here?"

As we make our way to the engineering sector, Nola fills me in. "You can mail-order Loranzelli eggs over the universal net. They come with a tank and everything. It's a big gimmicky thing, and half the eggs don't even hatch, and the other half aren't even real Loranzelli, just some sort of genetically altered cephalopods. The rumor is somebody on the Big Top got a real one, and when they realized it, they tossed it down the recycler. By the time they found Rjool, he was too big to get out easily. No one's ever admitted to being the one who tossed him, though."

We're headed through an unfamiliar part of the ship now. The halls are narrower, and half the doors are plastered with dire warnings about electrocution, radiation, and cataclysmic polarity reversal.

"Anyway," she goes on, "Rjool does a good job keeping the recyclers running. He can handle everything except the one set of auxiliary filters that's on the other end of the recycling zone, and we have those in chore rotation. I've spent about five minutes, tops, down here in the past month, now that he's taken over the water reclamation system, too. But believe me, five minutes is more than enough."

"So he
is
dangerous?"

"Well, in a way. He likes to talk, and ask questions. Personal questions."

"So, like, he wants to know your favorite color? How does that qualify as dangerous? "

"I'm serious," Nola says. "You won't be laughing five minutes from now. He knows things about all of us from going through the trash. It's like he can read your mind, like he knows all your worst secrets. You step one toe into his lair, and the next thing you know he's pulling out a dirty sock and asking you about the fight you had with your mother last Tuesday. It's amazing. Well, repulsive and amazing." She pauses in front of a large door. "Ready to see for yourself ?"

I am suddenly way less interested in meeting Rjool. All my worst secrets? But I need to find that rock. I sigh. "Are you sure we can't just kick his—tentacles—and make him help us?"

Nola opens the door.

"Never mind," I say. Because by then, I've seen Rjool. He's hard to miss, since he fills up at least half the room. It reminds me of the banyan tree I saw once on a nature special. It looked like a huge grove of small trees, but it was really this one massive tree with all these weird roots dripping off it.

Rjool is like that, except the trunk in the center has five globby eyes and a clattering beaky mouth, and the things dripping out of the air everywhere are tentacles, not roots. They
slither.
If you can imagine a room with snakes plastered over every bit of floor and wall, you can get how creepy this place is.

Two of the eyes turn in our direction. There's not a lot of space left that isn't full of whispering tentacles, but Nola finds us a bare spot near the center of the room. A hollow, boomy voice fills the room.

"Nooooola. How good to see you again. How is the new skin treatment? Taking care of all that pesky acne?" A thin tentacle wriggles forward, holding an empty jar emblazoned with the animated face of a boy peppered with zits that shrink as he lathers on a blue goop.

"Yes," says Nola in a tiny voice. She looks ready to melt into the flooring.

"And what about that other new cosmetic cream? I know I have the bottle here somewhere..." Tentacles slither around us. Nola gives a low moan. "You know the one," he continues. "The label says it will increase the—"

"Hey," I interrupt. "Do the words
not your business
exist in your language or what?"

Three of Rjool's eyes turn to ogle me. "And you've brought me someone new. Mmmmm..."

I'm no expert on reading the expressions of banyan tree-squid aliens, but I think he's looking at me like I'm something good to eat.

"We're here to clean the filters," says Nola, rallying herself. "And to ask a favor."

"A favor?
Hooohooohoooo
..."

I realize after a moment that he's laughing. It makes all the tentacles shiver. And me.

"There are no favors," says Rjool. "But introduce me to your friend. I looove meeting new people." He clatters his beak.

"I'm Trix," I say, "and we need to get whatever it was Sirra ditched in the infirmary recycling system this morning. And that's all you need to know."

"Oh, ho ... It sounds as if someone has something to hide. A few sordid little secrets, hmmm?" Now all five eyes are staring at me, like they can see right into my soul. Or worse, into my DNA.

I shake myself. Rjool couldn't possibly know about my parents. Even
I
didn't know until today. He's playing me. "Listen, you overgrown squid, this is important. There might be a Mandate spy on the ship, and this is evidence."

"You care a great deal about this ship, considering you've only lived here for six weeks. Aren't you afraid to love something so much? What if you lose it?"

Nola steps in, which is good, because I swear I'm about to start tearing off tentacles. "Okay, Rjool," she says, "you know what we want. So are you going to help or not?"

Two large tentacles twist forward across the trunk, like crossed arms. "I can find your evidence. But first, your friend will answer three questions."

"What kind of questions?" I demand.

Rjool waves three small tentacles in the air around me. "Interesting. Your pulse rate has increased considerably since you first entered my domain."

"Fine. I'm not scared of you, or your questions. I just don't want to waste any more time."

"Trix, you don't have to do it. I can find something to bribe him with," says Nola, lowering her voice. "I'll offer him my signed poster of the twins. He's a huge fan of
Love Among the Stars
"

"No, we're here now, and we need that clue. I'll do it."

"Oh, gooood," says Rjool, clapping two tentacles together. A shiver runs through the rest of the snaky mass. "Now, let me see what I have here. Ah, yes, that's a good starting point." A tentacle curls out, holding a ragged piece of cloth embroidered with a golden letter
B.
"Tell me about this..."

I lick my dry lips. "It's the insignia from my old school. Bleeker Academy."

"It was the very first thing to come through the system bearing traces of your genetic material. "Why were you in such a hurry to throw it away?"

"It was coming loose, anyway."

"But some of these threads were cut. You went to the effort of removing it."

"Okay, fine, I cut it off. I'm done with that place, with Primwell and the rest of them. It was a nasty, horrible cesspool of a school. And I am not going back. I'd rather get pitched into a black hole."

"You aren't planning to stay on the Big Top, then?"

"I can't—"

Nola's expression freezes the words on my lips. I switch gears. "Is that another question?"

"Only if you want it to be," Rjool says in a voice that runs over my skin like oil.

"Give me another, then. Let's get this over with."

Rjool rumbles with laughter. Creep. "Here's a promising little trinket," he says. Something sails toward us along the sea of tentacles, bobbing like a round, hot-pink boat.

"Trix, that's the teapot you got for the Ringmaster. But you worked so hard bargaining for it! Why did you throw it out?"

"Yes, Trix, why?" echoes Rjool.

"It's broken. Look—the handle has a big chip in it."

"Mmm-hmmm, yes." Rjool nods, and I think I'm off the hook until he adds, "But that chip came from rough contact with the recycling system filters. In other words, after you threw it away. If you want my help, stop lying and answer my question."

"Why do you care? What's it matter to you?"

"I simply find it intriguing that someone would go to the effort of acquiring an object so calculated to please a particular someone, and then immediately throw it away. It bespeaks a troubled relationship, veering from intense friendship to petulant rage."

"I am
not
petulant," I snap. "He lied to me! He made me believe—"

"Yes?"

"That's your answer," I say. "That's what you get. You want more, make it question number three."

"Very well. I think you've made it clear. That leaves one question." Rjool's eyes quiver, all five of them goggling at me like I'm a freaking science experiment. "It so happens that an odd recycling deposit came down from the infirmary earlier today. The dusting of skin cells I took matches the genetic signature of Sirra Centaurus." He holds something in one loop of tentacle, but it's so small I can't make out what it is.

"So you've got what we want. Give me the question already."

"You're very eager to prove she's the spy. Why is that?"

"That's a no-brainer. Of course I want to find out who's feeding information to the Mandate. You remember them, right? The enemy who wants to destroy us all?"

"But you seem
particularly
eager to prove that Sirra is the spy. You're even willing to go through her garbage to do it." He brandishes the thing in his tentacle. "This could be something perfectly harmless. It could even be quite personal. And yet you're prepared to sweep that all aside to indulge your own curiosity. Maybe what I should be asking is whether the words
not your business
exist in
your
language."

"It's not the same thing!"

"Isn't it? Please, explain..."

"It's—Well, at least I'm trying to keep this ship safe. You're doing it for kicks."

"But you would be happy if you could prove Sirra was the spy, wouldn't you?"

I bat aside a tentacle as it tries to slide up along my arm. "Okay, yes! Maybe because then I don't need to feel so guilty for landing her in the infirmary. There, you've got it, proof I'm a rotten person. Happy now?"

"Yes, this is quite stimulating. Much more entertaining than the usual games. But I still need the truth."

"She's just so—" I clamp down on the words, holding them in. Oh, Rjool is clever all right.

"Perfect?" he finishes. "You can't stand to see someone shining so brightly, when you're worried your own light is only a reflection."

I open my mouth to protest, already shaking my head. "Yes." The word slips out before I can catch it and stuff it back deep inside.

"Hmmmmmm..." is all Rjool says.

I draw a long breath, trembling with adrenaline. Remember the mission, I chant to myself, curling and uncurling my fists.

"Okay," says Nola abruptly, "that's three. We're done. Hand over the clue, Rjool."

A single tentacle slips forward to drop a small nub of metal and plastic into her outstretched hand. "A pleasure, Trix, Nola. Do come again."

I force myself not to run from the room under those five goggly eyes. Out in the corridor I let myself sink against the wall. I'm shaking even worse now. Nola's looking at me like I'm some broken gadget she doesn't know how to fix.

"I'm okay," I say. "Is he always that twisted?"

"I guess it's the only entertainment he's got, stuck down here. But Trix, are you
really
okay? Do you need to ... talk about anything?"

"No!" I wince. "Sorry, didn't mean to shout. But the last thing I want right now is more talking. Let's see if it was worth it. Is that a datastore?"

"Looks like one." Nola searches the wall with a slight frown. "Need to find a port, and we can see what's on it. There's one, down that way."

We head back along the corridor. Nola taps the wall, revealing a screen, keypad, and various other mysterious buttons and lights. "Ready?" She looks to me, holding the datastore up, ready to plug it into one of the sockets.

I nod. "Let's see what Sirra's been hiding."

"Huh. It looks like a bunch of medical files."

Images begin flipping across the screen. They look like EKGs and MRIs and all those other funky medical acronyms. Then I spot an X-ray of a hand, with a shadowy overlay of spikes along the back, and recognize it, even before we get to the videos of his face. Etander, smooth-skinned and gorgeous, changing to Etander, tormented and bristling with spines.

"What
is
this?"

Nola shakes her head. "There's a pre-recorded videostream. Here, I'll play it."

The gray static clears to an image of a man's face, hidden by a featureless mask. When he speaks, his voice is deep and oddly off-kilter. "We're disappointed, Miss Centaurus. We thought you understood our position and were prepared to deal seriously with us. But you have not delivered the promised payment in full. You know what is at stake. Do you want the entire Core to learn the truth about your brother? If you value your mother's position and the reputation of your family, you will transmit the remaining funds at once. You have one week, or we release the files."

The screen goes dark.

"Whoa," is all I can say. I slide the datastore out of the wall.