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the crate and walked over to the back wall, shaking his head and muttering about young folk today. Leaning against the wall was a stack of broad wooden boards half covered by a tarpaulin. This he whipped off in possibly the weakest theatrical flourish Cabal had ever seen, to reveal that the boards were signs—battered and peeling, but signs nonetheless.

    “Here you go. Here are your sideshows. ‘See! From the Mysterious East! The Enigmatic Cleopatra! Three Thousand Years in the Tomb Yet Still the Most Beautiful Woman in the World!’ Good, eh? What’s this one? ‘Marvel at the Bat-Faced Boy! Direct from the Darkest Jungle!’ Woooooh! Scary stuff, isn’t it?”

    “The sheer preponderance of exclamation marks is terrifying in itself.”

    “That’s just traditional. ‘Gasp! At the Log-Headed Girl!’ That can’t be right.” He probed at the flaking paint. “Surely it should say ‘ Dog-Headed Girl’? Oooh, no. It does say ‘ Log-Headed.’ That’ll pull the crowds.” He nodded confidently at Cabal.

    Cabal had lost patience with the Little Old Man’s drivel. He stood by the open door watching Dennis and Denzil’s painfully slow progress along the trackside with the mildest interest possible.

    “Oh, yes,” he said over his shoulder. “They’ll come from miles around for this. ‘Roll up, roll up. See the world’s largest collection of antediluvian signage. Gasp at the decrepitude. Be astounded by the grammar. A fascinating show rivalled only by the lint in your navel.’ I’ll have to fight them off with a stick.”

    The Little Old Man narrowed his eyes and thought carefully.

    “That’s sarcasm, isn’t it?”

    Cabal looked out at the Flatlands again. He really didn’t care anymore. This whole thing was another of Satan’s dim-witted jokes. He had no idea why he bothered.

    “Yes,” he replied. “That’s sarcasm.” He turned and walked over to the stack of signs. “This is a pointless enterprise without personnel. I don’t have any.”

    A sound made them turn to the door. Dennis had reached it and was just contemplating how best to climb up when Denzil—who’d got the rhythm of walking worked out to his satisfaction but hadn’t yet appreciated the myriad complications involved with stopping—walked into him. They both fell out of sight. After a moment, there was the sound of a slow and considered fight.

    “Well, none worth speaking of,” Cabal corrected himself. “If I’m not even to be provided with people to try to make something of this mess, then you might as well have these forms back now.”

    The Little Old Man cackled.

    “How can you say that, Johannes? Don’t you like a challenge? Where’s your sense of adventure?”

    “Easily outweighed by my sense of being made a fool of.”

    “But you have been provided with people. Sort of. Look around you.”

    Cabal looked around him. He was still alone in a grimy dump of a boxcar with only the dubious company of the Little Old Man. “I am looking. All I am seeing, however, are candidates for landfill. What are you getting at?”

    The Little Old Man went to the centre of the car and swept his arms around to encompass all that was lying about the place. As a dramatic gesture, it might have been at home in musical comedy. Light musical comedy. “Here are your people, all around you.” He reached into a box and pulled out a bone that Cabal immediately recognised as a human femur. “Here are your riggers”—he dropped it and plucked a ball of hair from a sack—“your barkers”—he put his hand on what Cabal had assumed were rolls of cloth leaning in the corner. “Your concession-stand holders. Your whole carnival is here. Just use a little”—he tapped his temple—“imagination.”

    Cabal walked over to inspect a roll. “What do you mean?” He looked closely at the material and belatedly realised what it was. “This,” he said dryly, “is human skin.” There was no reply. He looked around, but the