"Longyear,.Barry.-.Circus.World.2.-.Elephant.Song.-.Uc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Longyear Barry)

And then there came the sickness. Waco had cried and swore to the universe that he would never again love.

And now Bullhook Willy was broken and gasping upon the surface of a planet that didn't even appear in any of the star charts. And the sickness was again upon the snake charmer.

In the box upon his lap were the eggs of five of the twenty Ssendissian snake telepaths that Waco had brought to the show. The eggs were all that remained of the Ssendissians. And the eggs were conscious, feeling their own special sickness for their dead parents.

Waco stood and left the compartment. When he again stood upon the planet's soil, he looked at the huge lake mat began far down the slope from the wrecked shuttle. Beyond the lake was a forest, or swamp. But no humans; nothing to love.

He began walking toward the shore.

THREE

On the evening of that first day, across the huge lake, into the thin edge of the swamp just visible beyond it, the sun was setting. Packy Dern sat on the dew-weighted grass with his arms wrapped around his knees. The few clouds in the sky were black-red edged with gold placed against a sky as scarlet as blood. And, lordy, there had been plenty of blood.

He closed his eyes and held his head down for a moment. "Hell, yes." He lifted his head and looked at the near shore of the lake. The vee-shaped trough cut by the menagerie shuttle's belly began there. It ended in the trees far to his left. To the right of the trough were rock-capped hills. To the left was a ravine cut by the exiting waters of the lake as they flowed downhill toward the south. Considering the alternatives, Fireball had made a great landing.

A practical landing, too.

Bullhook Willy and the thirty-two other troupers who had died had been laid out in the short stretch of trough a hundred yards from the shore. There weren't any dozers or shovels with which to dig graves. And after the bodies were arranged at the bottom of the trough, all those who weren't injured gathered on the two sides. The boss animal man had stared at the bodies

for an instant and then began kicking clods of dirt and grass into the cut. The two hundred and twenty-six troupers standing with him then became animated. With feet, hands, sticks and tears they covered the dead.

Packy shook the image from his mind. Without looking at it, he picked up the mahogany-handled, gold-tipped bullhook that was on the grass next to his own steel and rubber affair. With the warmth of the fine wood against his rough hands, he remembered. Poison Jim Bolger used to carry that hook before his trunk was put on the lot. Poison Jim was a lush, and nobody wants a bulland with a nose like a fire alarm in control of tons of pachyderm.

So he was fired and the bullhand was swallowed up by that strange, cruel universe that existed outside the lot. Then, fifteen years later, the gold-tipped bullhook returned. It was in the hands of a skinny, eighteen-year-old Johnny-come-lately named Willy Kole. The kid never let that bullhook out of his sight. That's why they called him Bullhook Willy. And only ten years later, Pony Red made Bullhook boss elephant man even though there were other hands older and carrying more years with the bulls. No one ever questioned the boss animal man's decision, because the bullhands knew Bullhook Willy, and Bullhook Willy knew which end of a bull the tail was on.

"Hell." Packy picked up his own bullhook, pushed himself to his feet, and brushed the seat of his trousers. He turned and moved up the gentle incline toward the kraal.

"Poison Jim would say 'Boy, I say, boy, hosses go in a corral. 'Zat look like a damn hoss, boy? 'Zat's a bull, boy, an' bulls go in a kraal.'"

And Bullhook Willy would laugh at his own story.

Packy halted at the crude fence the bullhands had constructed out of rocks and the trunks of trees uprooted by the landing of the Number Three car. The fence formed one side of a rough triangle. The second was formed by a sheer wall of stone that seemed to extend forever upwards. The third side was formed by a cliff.

"You don't have to worry about a bull walking off a cliff, boy. Bull's got more sense'n a man. Don't you, I say, don't you know nothin' ?"

And Bullhook would laugh.

Packy reached the fence and climbed up the rocks and logs until he could look over the top. Ghostly beams of white light in the shadows below the reflected red of the rock wall testified

that the show's vet, Mange Ranger, was still working on sewing together Queenie's trunk. Several hands were helping the vet work on the anesthetized pachyderm while two bullhands stood between the operation and the remaining bulls. Just in case.

Packy's bull, Robber, was contentedly yanking up and munching the grass of the compound. Thank the Boolabong for small favors. The grass was edible. Most of the hay and grain feed had been tossed out to lighten ship long before the Baraboo had burned.

Out of seventy-five bulls, thirty-four remained. Most of them had died in the parent ship's bad air, their carcasses tossed out to lighten ship. Nine had died when Number Three went down. Tomorrow would begin the job of hauling the dead bulls and the eighty dead horses from the port carrousel out of the shuttle to join the others in the big ditch. The one hundred and twenty-two surviving horses, Percherons and performing, were strung out at the edge of the trees below the kraal. One hundred and twenty-two horses remaining out of three hundred and fifty. None of the thousand or so other animalsЧbig cats, camels, giraffes, apes, birds, snakesЧnone of them had made it down.

Near the edge of the cliff, her form motionless in the shadows, Ming stood away from the other bulls looking toward the darkness. Years before, it had been Ming on her side while Mange Ranger worked to sew up the cuts and the laser burns inflicted by some airfield yahoo at Port Paolito. That was in '27, fifteen years before O'Hara's Greater Shows took to the star road, in the elephant barn at the show's wintering grounds in Arcadia, Florida, North American Union.

Packy looked at Mange and his crew working on Queenie, 'but what he saw was that night so long ago. Mange had finished working on Ming, and Packy had agreed to sit up in the barn and keep watch. It was very late, and Ming struggled to her feet as the anesthetic wore off. She tested the chains on her feet, snorted, and then bellowed. She fought against her chains for a few minutes, then stood motionless except for her sides, heaving with each hard breath she took.