Èryuè 1st 250X (cont.)

Fortunately for Prasong that night, the show went without a hitch. In fact it was a resounding success given the amount of people that turned up. Polis elections were always some of the busiest times in the city, each party eager to drum up public enthusiasm with seasonal tax breaks and increased bonuses.

With money to spare there were only so many places that people could go to enjoy themselves - the biggest draw was the City Circuses. The various tents were packed with patrons, their gigantic canvas domes filled with explosions of light and sound. Loud bursts of applause poured out every time a flapped door was throw open.

Circuses were the hidden gems of the Polis' nightlife, clusters of glistening fairy lights strung across the darkened streets of the various city ghettos.

The scene was awash with painted performers, coloured swirling smoke, sweet-smelling popcorn, synthetic hot dog vendors and sequin clad girls twirling flaming batons up at the night sky.

Prasong's eyes followed the taut lines of the towering tents up to a palette of swirling smog and ink drop clouds.

JJ said that back in Darhan Polis you could see clusters of stars during the winter months, but in Podolsk you'd be lucky to glimpse the underbelly of a starcraft through the smog and the light pollution.

Prasong's performance dazzled the crowd in its usual fashion as he swung and leapt across the lofty heights of the Big Top. He glided gracefully between the cobwebbed network of steel wires, dangling metal hoops stuck to them like flies.

Prasong’s makeup tonight was a chalky white with dappled grey detailing, making him look like some kind of snow cat. He was wearing a leotard of metallic silver that shimmered like poured mercury and there were matching pointed cones on his fingertips to resemble claws.

The show concluded in a deafening cascade of enthusiastic applause and raucous cheers. Prasong beamed round at the audience, bowing deeply before clambering down the metal ladder from the aerobatics platform.

His over-used muscles felt sorer than usual, probably the result of having to do a Dust run on the same day as a performance. Prasong rubbed tentatively at his neck whilst crossing the caravan park towards his bunk house.

Glancing around, Prasong noticed JJ stood by the costume tent. The other boy was telling jokes and chuckling loudly with some of the Circus' workers, throwing his head back in open laughter.

JJ’s hair was soft and sandy coloured with golden skin and hazel eyes. A moment later, he caught Prasong’s eye and gave the smaller boy a mock salute.

Prasong snorted, blowing back a kiss with an exaggerated wink. He wasn't known to be the friendliest towards the other members of the Circus but he found himself more patient around JJ's easy smiles and provincial humour.

Prasong knew that kids like JJ often travelled illegally to the larger Poleis such as Podolsk to find work. Most of them hoping to earn enough to be able to send credits back to their struggling families in the poorer territories.

Inter-Polis immigration, although tricky, was certainly not impossible, as fake passes could be obtained from forgers. Or, if like JJ, you didn't have the spare cash for such purchases you could always pull a 'cabin crawler' and stowaway in the sometimes hollow storage compartments below the Venae carriages.

However, you had a one in three chance of getting in a 'shocker' by mistake. A 'shocker' was an electricity-buffer part of the undercarriage that connected with the charged tracks below. JJ had told Prasong that out of the five kids he had travelled from Darhan with, only he had made it to Podolsk Polis.

"I got lucky," JJ had shrugged after admitting the story, "I think the box I originally squeezed into was a shocker but I changed before we left the station 'cause a guard was doing checks down that half of the train."

Prasong had retorted with a joke about how it may still well have been a shocker judging from JJ's unruly mop of hair. The other boy had made an indignant noise and shoved a dusted sweet bun from his plate into Prasong’s face, making them both laugh and cough in amongst clouds of flour.

After the clouds parted however, and they went back to chatting about other things, there was still a bitter taste left in both their mouths - like rusted electricity. The taste never really left anybody's mouth when they talked about how their lives had been, it just changed tang.

Prasong looked up at the familiar scene in front of him, trying to shake the grim feeling that was settling his stomach.

Behind the lines of tents and corrugated iron shacks that housed the temporary and seasonal workers, lay the permanent residences of the Circus gang. Narrow townhouses of crumbling brick held together with a framework of black metal guttering.

Prasong nodded to the door guard as he slipped inside and wearily climbed up the narrow staircase that led to the attic bunks. His room was as far away from everybody else's as possible, apart from Sakura's.

The other girl had been placed in the bunk opposite, not that she ever spent much time in there. The pretty and plump gang pet was most often found in the Ringmaster's private chambers. Prasong knew that the rest of the Circus kids whispered about the two of them behind their backs but he couldn't bring himself to care.

Prasong only had enough energy for a limited amount of smiles and he couldn't afford to waste them on people who weren't paying. That and all the other workers smelled like sewer rats anyway. Apart from JJ, his scent was a mix of popcorn and smoke.

"Hey Prasong..."

Prasong jumped as he heard a timid voice creep out from the shadows of the second floor landing.

"Aicha?" Prasong frowned as he peered into the darkness. "What are you doing this side of the residences?"

"Just...waiting," Aicha shrugged, drawing forwards and allowing the light from the nearby window to illuminate her face, the twinkle of lamps outside catching on a jewelled nose stud. Aicha was very short, with a sharp bone structure, brown eyes and curly black hair.

Her skin was a shade of brown perhaps paler than it should be, due to repeated bouts of illness and malnutrition. She looked to be in her early twenties, although it was hard to tell with the kind of face she had. Her eyebrows were coarse and straight, the hair was still flecked with glitter from where it had probably been copiously applied earlier.

"You finish your set already?" Prasong asked unsurely, he had thought that the dancing girls were still meant to have a few performances left.

"The Ringmaster...he's having me re-trained," Aicha murmured helplessly.

"Tell me about it," Prasong muttered before sighing and stretching to crack his back. "What's he put you on then? Plate spinning?" Prasong laughed grimly to himself as Aicha shook her head miserably.

"Chimeras," she told Prasong, who hissed in response.

'Chimeras' was the stage name given to the big cat show, the actual cats themselves were more vicious than visually impressive. They had been bred from hybrid strains of Central Territory lynxes and leopards, although they acted more like stray street dogs.

The only real reason they were in the show was because it was a novelty for a City Circus to have an animal act nowadays.

That, and the Ringmaster had gotten them cheap, smuggled in from a smaller, notoriously dubious Polis about four hundred miles east of Podolsk.

Prasong wasn't sure that they weren't just mongrel street dogs that someone had cut the ears off of to make them look more feline. The beasts were certainly snappy enough for that to have been the case.

"I thought Klementina was running the Chimera set?" Prasong asked, feeling confused. Klementina had volunteered to move to the animal trainer position from fire dancing years ago.

"Jaska slipped during his routine," Aicha explained, grimacing.

Prasong groaned, Klementina and Jaska were twins. Whenever one of them did something wrong or made a mistake, the Ringmaster would invariably punish the other one for the fault.

Jaska was one of the boys in another of the acrobat troops, their specialty was throwing and catching each other whilst swinging on the ropes above the arena.

"So what happened to Klementina?" Prasong asked dully, not sure if he really cared to hear the answer. Although whether it was because he was afraid of what he might learn, or whether he was afraid to learn that whatever it was no longer affected him, Prasong wasn't sure.

"The Ringmaster cracked his whip during the Chimera set," Aicha whispered in a hushed voice, "he was standing really close to them on the sidelines and he did it right during the ball routine," Aicha continued before flinching her hand in a snapping motion, "set one of the cats off."

"There wasn't any black bunting in the cook shack today?" Prasong frowned, that was normally the tradition when a worker lost their life.

"Oh Klementina didn't die!" Aicha exclaimed with a horrified expression. "She just lost a few fingers."

"Oh," Prasong offered stiffly.

"Jaska was furious, apparently he was screaming at the Boss," Aicha nodded gravely, "he was saying stuff like 'I slipped - it happens! Maybe if you actually let someone do some maintenance on those platforms from time to time!'"

Aicha contorted her face as she mimicked Jaska's voice perfectly, the same way she'd always been able to pick up on dancing routines so quickly.

"What did the Boss say?" Prasong asked, leaning back against the wall to let Aicha continue telling the story.

"Oh, well he said something like 'I understand, you slipped - of course! How foolish of me. Then you'll understand when my hand slips next time I'm holding the whip during Klementina's performance.'"

"Of course he did," Prasong sighed, wondering why a man with seemingly such little care for his Circus would bother himself with the odd screw up in the routines.

The Ringmaster was like that though, he spoke with that silky educated voice of his, reeled you in, made you think he was going to be your friend and then just snapped without warning. He rarely raised his voice though, no, the tone he'd adopt would be far more frightening.

Aicha was certainly doing a good impression of him and Prasong knew he was lucky to have never ended up on the boss' bad side. The majority of Prasong’s performances were flawless and he'd never gotten nabbed by Droids on a Dust run.

"Where's Jaska now?" Prasong questioned absently. Aicha shrugged and pulled a face, "Dunno. Probably with his sister in the fix-up tent."

"Klementina's tough," Prasong nodded, "you'll be back to dancing soon enough."

"I'm working both," Aicha said hesitatingly as Prasong sucked contemplatively at his teeth. Working two performance sets in the Circus was never fun. Prasong himself often worked both trapeze and contortion and it often took its toll on his body, despite being a helixed.

"So..." Prasong made himself re-focus, "why are you waiting here?"

"Waiting for people to go to bed," Aicha shrugged again cryptically and Prasong decided he was too tired and not curious enough to try and probe for more information out of the small girl.

"See you later then," Prasong nodded, turning to walk back up the stairs.

"See you..." Aicha trailed off weakly making Prasong pause then shake his head as he continued up towards the attic.

After arriving at his room and putting all thoughts of Chimeras and missing fingers out of his mind, Prasong stared despondently round at the nearly empty space. He wondered what out of his few possessions he should pack and take to Bobik's residences in the Tau zone.

All Prasong owned was a curious assortment of discarded items that he had found and collected from the Polis streets over the years. He huffed, kicking at the dust balls littering the floorboards before crossing over to lay down on the bed.

Staring up at the stained ceiling, Prasong let his mind drift to images of the dark haired boy from earlier that day. Asylum escapee or not, he couldn't help but wonder what the hell the kid could have possibly done to elicit Droids and real-live cops chasing after him. Before Prasong had noticed the tunic he had thought perhaps the boy was a gang-pet or a dustrunner like him and JJ.

They were sometimes picked up and milked for information by the police...but no, no one would go near a helixed with five rings. That and the dark blue of his clothes had been unmistakable, the boy had definitely come from the Polis Asylum.

Prasong wasn't sure how often inpatients managed to flee from the high security mental facility but he didn't think it could be that frequently. There had been a story in the papers a couple of years ago about an older man who had gotten out due to some staff shift roster screw up.

He had killed a couple of street kids and a government worker by the time he was recovered. Claiming his fractals had told him to 'release them from this darkness'. Prasong hated stories like that, the press ate them up and were always eager for more, ready to be dished out as veritable 'helixed horror stories' to the hungry public.

Of course some helixed were dangerous, of course they were unstable, but it didn't mean that all ringed were.

The Ringmaster was clearly a psychopath in his own right, it didn't mean necessarily that all non-helixeds subsequently followed suit. Having said that, Prasong struggled to think of anyone he had met in the Polis who hadn't at least once displayed psychotic tendencies.

It was as if the smog drew it out of everyone like some kind of emotional osmosis. Perhaps JJ? Although he was just as much a street kid as the rest of them, Prasong had never seen JJ be deliberately cruel to anyone. Arrogant and ignorant sure, but not cruel.

Prasong knew that he could be cruel. He guessed some people, such as JJ, were like fast swimming fish, opening up their gills to let all the crap of the Polis flow through them and out the other side, taking from it what they needed to survive.

The rest of them, Prasong thought miserably, needed thicker shells and pincers in order to survive.

Prasong stretched his arm out above his head, massaging his shoulder and wincing from the ache. The room was half illuminated by the lights from the Circus outside and he could just make out the tattoo on his left wrist.

It was the law that all helixed children were marked in the same way - with a design of a mutated DNA strand. Prasong let his hand fall back beside him on the bed with a sigh, tracing the emblem absently with calloused fingertips before he fell asleep.