"Mr. Pilo!" one of the acrobats cried. The three of them rushed over, bowing and groveling most pleasantly.
"Hello, chaps," said Kurt, and here came his cunning plan. "I need three brave volunteers to test the structural integrity of my culprit cage. Care to do the honors?"
They could hardly wait to. One after the other they climbed in. "Very good," said Kurt. "Now just sit patiently while we find some more brave volunteers."
"Happy to help, Mr. Pilo," said one of them, bowing. "Any luck with the real culprits?"
"Aren't you clever!" said Kurt, but said no more. The acrobats glanced at each other uneasily.
Kurt pulled the same routine at the lion tamer, who gazed for a while at the caged acrobats. They looked just a touch wary now. Kurt's smile was serene. The lion tamer weighed the situation up, sighed heavily as if he knew just what was up and had long expected something like this. Into the cage he went, where he sat in the corner, his face in his hands.
Mugabo put up no more resistance than the others. "Cage treek now, new magic, pff," he muttered, but he went right on in. Kurt himself locked the door and loped off, gesturing for the cage to be wheeled behind him to the middle of the showgrounds for maximum public shaming. Only then did Kurt let on. "Your plan was bold, your wits were sharp. But your one mistake was posing for incriminating photographs!"
The acrobats looked at each other in confusion as Kurt loped away. "What the hell is he talking about?"
Kurt took a pleasant stroll during which he contemplated punishment—those performers had also poked him, albeit rather gently. For starters he would sit by the cage, staring at the guilty parties, studying treachery itself til he knew its every nuance, facet, and protestation of innocence. Til he could spot it from across the showgrounds before it reared its head, perhaps develop a pre-emptive punishment system. Then, he supposed, they'd need to be executed rather brutally—flesh eating ants, perhaps, or maybe via lawnmower as a message to the others.
And what was this? More excitement! Shouting—yes, panicked shouting, and the voices unfamiliar! Kurt prowled towards it to see. His smile slowly went flat, his brow furrowed in confusion. No show was scheduled for today, and yet, why, here were several tricks. Rather nervous looking, physically fit tricks who, breaking usual conventions, looked to be heavily armed with automatic weapons, grenades, pistols, protective gear, night vision goggles, and an unmistakable air of can-do spirit.
"Hm," said Kurt. How had this come to pass? Some mistake of the ticket collectors? And no one was turning the music box. Why, half the circus was still asleep. Kurt wrung his paws together, a touch unsettled. The tricks were in a rather impressive formation they'd clearly rehearsed, and were shouting orders at each other. Their guns pointed in all directions, with little beams of light from mounted torches, though none of them had fired a shot, not yet. "I had better turn that music box myself," said Kurt, at once proud of the idea. He went to do just that, breaking into a jog and a sweat.
•
Several minutes prior, Dean stood panting with his hand at rest on the sledgehammer. Deeby may have done it without this much exertion; the broken parts of the music box were scattered around his and Jodi's feet. This was one hell of a leap of faith in Jamie and Curls. He felt certain they'd messed it up, but there was no choice: they had to proceed as planned. "Check the veil," said Jodi. "Can you see through it?"
"Nope."
"I look like Emerald?"
"Yep."
Anything else in the small cramped space that looked like a spare part was also shattered, but Dean had seen these carnies fixing things and knew they were far from safe. In a couple of minutes, they might have the music box repaired.
He lit a match under the glass beaker, melted the powder within, drank it. "I wish, once my face paint goes on, to forget the past week spent with Jamie and to be filled only with a desire to impress any female I see. I wish when the face paint comes off, to have the memories returned." To Jodi he said, as he began to smear on the face paint Jamie had stashed for him, "You know what to do?"
"Yes, but your friend had better fucking hurry."
"I'm not going to argue with that."
Jodi held an ear to the door. "Something's going on out there . . . I hear shouting . . . I think they're here! Hurry up, go!"
The face paint was on. Dean looked into the hand-held mirror they'd brought, and Deeby gazed at his beloved. "Sup," he said coolly, popping a bicep.
•
Jodi swallowed, tried for Emerald's distant composure—she'd done a little acting in school plays but this, naturally, was a whole different assignment. "My love, there is but one way into my heart, and I will be yours eternal. Let none pass through this door. Prove to me your strength."
Debby spat on his palms, rubbed them together. "That is probably one of the weirder ways into a woman's heart that I have ever heard of. Wouldn't you rather hear some shitty beatnik poetry while sweat drips down my pecs and I promise you a whole bunch of stuff that's just never going to happen?"
His response was not quite what Dean had predicted, but she stuck to the script anyway. "It can only be this way. This is the only way into Emerald's heart. You want to impress me, don't you?"
"Whatever floats your boat. By heart you mean pants, right?"
"Whatever you like," she said, nervously listening to the sound of approaching footsteps. Deeby's shirt ripped as his torso inflated. Someone twisted the door handle; he snapped it off, crushed it in his teeth, glanced to see that Jodi had witnessed the display, then threw himself against the door. "Bring it on," he said.
"Hm! How puzzling." Kurt's voice. "To which employee have I the pleasure of speaking with? What might you be up to in there?"
"Shut up," Deeby explained.
"The situation is rather urgent," said Kurt in firmer tones. "We rather pressingly need the music box. Be a sport and let me in."
The door pushed an inch or two. Deeby let it give that much, then shoved it back. He screamed like a Viking, again checked Jodi for any sign of approval. She feigned a yawn.
A slow, "Oh, ho ho," sounded outside.
•
At first the marines whispered to each other that this was part of the drill, some kind of computer simulation—no other explanation was possible. Some virtual reality thing, like they did with pilots, though what in God's name the point of it all may be, none could guess. "Why do we bring live ammo for a computer simulation or VR?" someone asked, which pretty much shot that theory to death and made each of them realize, with slowly dawning understanding, that they were in a very weird place and, just perhaps, just possibly, in real trouble. One by one, safeties on their guns were snapped off. Weird faces began to peer out at them from doorways
and windows.
"Freeze! Get down on the ground. Get down, now!"
•
When Jamie returned to the showgrounds, four groups of marines stood in a roughly circular formation. The lights mounted on their guns pointed out in all directions. He counted twenty-two of them, but maybe others had ventured deeper into the circus. They were shouting but not shooting—probably a good thing for the moment. Someone yelled at him to freeze and get down, which was jarring since he'd gotten used to not being seen. Down here, where the troops were made a part of the circus reality, it would not be so easy to hide.