The adult head could hear the footfalls of its quarry drawing nearer; it could hear the children whispering to each other as they approached. It prepared itself to spring.
As it continued to slobber a bubbling waterfall, the baby head started making a funny noise. A kind of soft, rhythmic chirping from deep in its throat. It was the same noise it made whenever they got their hands on a live pig or a goat.
“Quiet,” the adult head warned its counterpart, nose to nose. “If we do this right, we can eat them both.”
“Goo,” whispered the baby head.
Chapter Nineteen
The Magnificent Crecca hurried down the command wag’s narrow corridor. In his arms was a bundle of ghastly, cold limbs. A violently twitching bundle of limbs. A head too heavy for its size leaned against his shoulder. The rest of the Magus’s body was as light as a feather, this a product of hollow stainless-steel replacement bones and Teflon joints. Having to actually touch the creature he so feared, to feel its cold metal and its feverish flesh, made his skin crawl. In order to keep from vomiting at the smell, Crecca had to make a conscious effort to suck in every breath through his mouth.
Sounds of blasterfire raging outside accompanied them to the salon-workroom. The Magus, who was fully awake as Crecca deposited him on the autopsy table, paid no attention to the battle, or what it portended for the future of this incarnation of Gert Wolfram’s World Famous Carny Show. His only concern was ending his own pain and insuring his own immediate survival, which was in jeopardy.
The steel-eyed monster hadn’t completely escaped the dozen or so steel-jacketed handblaster rounds that had imploded his private viewing box’s mirror. Momentarily frozen in his recliner chair, he had been caught in the hail of lead. Through the glittering whoosh of shattered glass, Crecca had seen the sparks fly and heard the ricochets whine from bullet strikes on the creature’s tempered metal parts. In the midst of the surprise barrage, the Magus had managed to turn and bail from the chair. He had hit the floor with a dull thud, barely able to crawl hand over hand, and spurting vile-smelling internal fluids of various colors and densities.
Because of his boss’s unnatural, composite physiology, as Crecca had looked back from the doorway, he couldn’t tell whether any of the wounds were fatal. If the carny master had been sure, he would have left the Magus to die alone on the floor of the box. Even now, Crecca would have chilled the monster himself if he could have been certain of pulling off the deed. Though the Magus was obviously seriously injured, there was no way to judge his ability to defend himself. It was widely rumored among carny folk that once his metal jaws clamped shut on something they could never be pried loose; they would hold on like grim death until the second coming of skydark. In the end, what stayed Crecca’s hand was his fear of failure and its consequences, which were too terrible to imagine.
“Roll the tool cabinet over here,” the Magus commanded, his voice unusually high-pitched, like a tape recording played too fast.
Crecca unlocked the wheels of the tall, red, multi-drawer toolbox and quickly pushed it to the side of the table. As he did so, he saw that the Magus was using both hands to compress one of the prominent, artificial veins that festooned his chest. Between his fingers, the steel flex-piping oozed what looked like dirty transmission fluid.
More disturbing to the carny master than the spreading brown goo was the erratic movement of the creature’s left leg. A mechanical servo located above the synthetic knee joint had been damaged by a bullet hit. There was a deep dent at one end of its titanium housing, and it leaked an oily green liquid mixed with blood. The injury made it impossible for the Magus to control the leg. It jerked and spasmed madly, donkey kicking in the air. In its cage of stainless steel, the Magus’s human calf muscle seized up into a rock hard lump, sinews straining, real veins bulging, then it relaxed, then it seized up again, as if it had a mind of its own.