"City of Baraboo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Longyear Barry)

Portions of this work have appeared in Issac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine
This Berkley book contains the complete
text of the original hardcover edition.
It has been completely reset in a type face
designed for easy reading, and was printed
from new film.
CITY OF BARABOO
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with . the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley-Putnam edition published July 1980 Berkley edition / August 1981
All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 1980 by Barry B. Longyear.
Cover Illustration by John Rush.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: Berkley Publishing Corporation,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
ISBN: 0-425-04940-X A BERKLEY BOOK(r) TM 757,375
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
After subtracting the many debts I owe in the researching and writing of City of Baraboo, I find little remaining save the responsibility for whatever inaccuracies that managed to escape detection before they saw print. First, for suggesting the development of the star-circus idea used in one of my short stories, and for many suggestions that should earn him a generously declined byline, my thanks to George Scithers, editor of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.
Special thanks go to Robert L. Parkinson, Chief Librarian and Historian of the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, for taking a highly unreasonable request for information and supplying it. Sincere thanks go, as well, to Betty Austin, Colleen Condon, and Barbara Watt of the Cutler Memorial Library in Farmington, Maine, for their long hours of searching that produced several invaluable circus histories the absence of which would have made this book, at least in its present form, impossible. Many thanks also go to Glenys Gifford of the Mantor Library at the University of Maine at Farmington both for the books she found for me, and for the length of time I was allowed to keep them.
My remaining thanks go to my chief critic, first reader, researcher, copy clerk, and wife, Jean.
To George H. Scithers
and My Wife, Jean
CONTENTS
I The Last Show on Earth 1
II Follow the Red Wagons 49
IE Working the Route Book 77
IV The Slick Gentlemen 107
V Sweet Revenge 135
VI In the Cart 177
Aftershow 208
The Company 212
The Last Show On Earth
EDITION 2142
ONE
Two and a half centuries after August Riingeling's famous sons-the Ringling Brothers-took their first circus on the road in 1884, the "Greatest Show on Earth" was, as well, the last show on Earth. It was a poor three-poled affair stalled under patched canvas on the outskirts of Ottawa. Ans the mud road had given way to rails, and the railroad to concrete and asphalt, the hard road had ended under a blizzard of paper.
The old problems had never left. Fire, windstorms, ice, mud, accidents, rain, shakedowns, breakdowns, and crackups were as common to the trouper as his name. But in an age when the resolution of human problems was taken for granted, no room had been left for John J. O'Hara's circus. Room, the kind needed by a canvas show, was too valuable. The road cost the show seven-hundred credits per kilometer in tolls, while hard, grassy lots near population centers-such as remained-cost the show upwards of thirty-thousand credits for the twenty-four hours the site would be occupied to put on five hours' worth of entertainment. All this, and more, the show had endured. Its road ended at the Ottawa stand when it was faced with that thing feared above all else by
an institution of exception-laws for the general good enforced by incorruptible officials.
"They won't budge an inch, Mr. John." Arthur Burnside Wellington, the show's fixer, had stood before the Governor's desk shaking his aging head. The tall, frail man in black seemed stumped for the first time in his sixty-odd years. He held up his hands, then dropped them at his sides. "I just can't move them."
O'Hara rubbed his eyes, then looked at Wellington. "Patch, have you tried a little sugar?"
Wellington nodded. "Those gillies aren't hungry, Mr. John. Not a bite."
"What about dirt?"
Wellington shook his head. "Never saw a cleaner bunch of politicos. Not so much as a parking ticket. No outside incomes, no affairs, no relatives on the payroll-nothing." Again he shook his head. "Of all the times to run into honesty in govern..." Wellington stopped short, rubbed his chin, then stared at the Governor without seeing him.
"Patch, what is it?"
Wellington frowned, then shook his head. "Probably nothing. Maybe a straw; maybe not." Wellington turned and left the office wagon, deep in thought.
Hours later, midway through the evening show, O'Hara sat in the dark of the office wagon half-listening to the windjammers slamming out notes from the main top. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the chair. Nothing sounds like a circus band. Skilled orchestras sawing and blowing away make good tries but to the ear that had been reared with the windjammers, the difference was considerable. No musician strapped into rigid notes, bars, and rests can imitate the sound and beat of windjammers trained to play to the kootch of a dancing horse or elephant, making it look as though the animal was dancing to the music rather than the other way around.
O'Hara opened his eyes and watched the colored reflections of the main entrance lights dancing on the wall opposite the wagon's pay window. That fellow in Bangor-that writer-had asked why. He had really been puzzled. Circus work was back-breaking, dangerous, and not particularly profitable. Why a circus? The Governor had made an effort at finding the words, but in the end had resorted to the stock trouper's reply: "It's a disease."
The Governor leaned forward, placed his elbows on his desk, and lowered his face into his hands. The disease. It's worse than a disease-an addiction. It's a clawing need that no rube with a
typewriter could ever understand. And so, the ladies and gents of the media get told the same thing that circus people have been telling civilians for uncounted years: "It's a disease."