Because the little devils were so short, Liu Han was able to see over them to the folding table the fellow had set up. His carriages were about six inches long, made of cast-off bits of cardboard, and used thin sticks for axles. The little scaly devils hissed with excitement as he pulled out a tin can from the box that held his paraphernalia. Out of the can he took one large, black dung beetle after another. He deftly fastened them to the carriages with reins of thread. They pulled those carriages-some of which resembled old-fashioned mule carts, others Peking water wagons-around and around the tabletop; every so often, he had to use a forefinger to keep his steeds from falling off the edge.
Even in the village where Liu Han had grown up, a beetle-cart show was nothing out of the ordinary. By the way the scaly devils reacted, though, they’d never seen anything like it in their lives. Some of them let their mouths hang open in mirth, while others nudged each other and exclaimed over the spectacle. “They make even pests into beasts of burden,” one of the little devils said.
“See, that one has upset the cart. Look at its little legs wave as it lies on its back,” another replied. He tossed a dollar Mex, and then another, to the mountebank. His comrades also showered the fellow with silver.
The little devils paid Liu Han no attention. The only way they would have noticed her was if she’d got in their way while they were watching the antics of the beetles. But those antics had so fascinated them, they weren’t talking about anything else. After a while, Liu Han decided she wouldn’t hear anything worthwhile here. TheTa Cha La was full of scaly devils. She headed up it toward the next group she saw.
When she got up to them, she discovered they were all staring at a monkey circus going through its paces. Like most of its kind, the circus also included a Pekinese dog and a trained sheep. Both men who ran it clanged brass gongs to draw a bigger crowd.
Growing impatient, one of the little scaly devils said, “You show us these creatures, what they do,now.”
The two men bowed nervously and obeyed. The monkey, dressed in a red satin jacket, capered about. It put on masks, one after another, cued by more taps on the gong.
“See how it looks like a little Tosevite,” one of the scaly devils said in his own language, pointing to the monkey. His mouth opened in mirth.
The little devil beside him said, “It’s even uglier than the Big Uglies, I think. All that fuzz all over it-” He shuddered in fastidious disgust.
“I don’t know,” yet another little scaly devil said. “It has a tail, at least. I think the Big Uglies look funny without them.”
Liu Han pretended she was watching the show without listening to the little devils. She’d known they had no proper respect for mankind-were that not so, they never would have treated her as they had. But hearing their scorn grated. Liu Han rocked slowly back and forth.You will pay, she thought.Oh, how you will pay for all you’ve done to me. But how to make them pay? Vowing revenge was easy, getting it something else again.
The monkey went through the rest of its turns, imitating a wheelbarrow man and a rickshaw puller and then playing on a swing at the top of a bamboo pole. The little devils showered the men who ran the monkey circus with coins. After the monkey itself came the Pekinese. It jumped through hoops of different sizes that the men held at varying heights above the ground. Even in her village, Liu Han had seen dogs that could leap much higher. But the little scaly devils admired the Pekinese as much as they had the monkey.
For the finale, the sheep came out and the monkey sprang onto its back, riding it around in circles like a jockey on a racehorse. The little scaly devils had only to look about them to see men on horseback. They caught the analogy, too, and laughed harder than ever. When at last the show was over, they gave the two men who ran it still more silver-they seemed to have an unlimited supply-and went off in search of further entertainment.
“Eee,”one of the men said, letting Mex dollars jingle through his fingers, “I used to hate the little scaly devils like everyone else, but they are making us rich.”
The other animal trainer did not answer. He picked up the gong and started pounding on it, trying to lure more scaly devils to the next show.
He had competition. A little way up the street, a fellow with a horn was playing old, familiar tunes. He didn’t play very well, but skill on the trumpet was not how he made his living: it was just the traditional signal a fellow who exhibited trained mice used to draw a crowd.
And, sure enough, a crowd gathered. It had children in it, and old people with time on their hands, but also a good many little scaly devils. Because the little devils stood and watched, so did Liu Han.
“Hello, hello, hello!” the mouse show man boomed jovially. He was wearing a square wooden box, held on by a shoulder strap. From the box rose a wooden pole two feet high, on top of which were mounted a pagoda, a wooden fish, a little hanging bucket made of tin, and a hollow wooden peach. “Do you want to see my little friends perform?”
“Yes!” the children shouted, loud and shrill as a flock of starlings. The little scaly devils who understood Chinese added their hissing voices to the cries.
“All right, then,” the man said. “You don’t have any cats, do you?” He looked sly. “If you do, kindly keep them in your pockets till we’re finished.”
He waited till the children’s giggles and the silent laughter of the scaly devils subsided, then rapped three times on the side of the box. It had a latched hole in the front. He lifted the latch. Four white mice came out and climbed a little ladder of string and sticks of bamboo. They went through their paces on the apparatus, scrambling down into the bucket and swinging in it, pulling the fish up by the string that held it, running to the top of the pagoda and jumping inside, and scrambling into the peach and peering out, whiskers quivering, little red eyes aglow.
The mouse show man said, “How’d you like to bite down and findthat inside your peach?” The children giggled once more.
The little scaly devils, though, did not react to that with mirth. One of them said, “The Big Uglies have filthy habits-always parasites in their food.”
“Truth,” another said. “And theyjoke about it.”
“They are disgusting,” a third chimed in, “but they also manage to be entertaining. We don’t have beast-shows back on Home to match these. Who would have thought animals-especially Tosevite animals-could learn to do so many interesting things? I spend as much free time as I can watching them.”
“And I,” said the scaly devil who had spoken second. A couple of others sputtered agreement.
Liu Han watched the performing mice a minute or two more. Then she tossed the man who exhibited them a few coppers and walked down theTa Cha La, thinking hard. More little devils congregated in a vacant lot from which the wreckage of a shop had been cleared away. A trained bear was going through its run of tricks there. The scaly devils exclaimed as it wielded a heavy wooden sword with a long handle. Liu Han walked by, hardly noticing.
Nieh Ho-T’ing was always looking for ways to get close to the little scaly devils, the better to make their lives miserable. If trained animals fascinated them so, a troupe of men with such performers might well gain access even to important males, or groups of important males. Anyone who showed Nieh a new way to do that would gain credit for it.
Liu Han scratched her head. She was sure she had a good idea, but how could she use it to best advantage? She was no longer the naive peasant woman she’d been when the little devils carried her away from her village. Too much had happened to her since. If she could, she would take her fate back into her own hands.