He stepped forward, arms outstretched towards her, palms to the roof, seeing her better beyond the glaring lights. A brown-haired woman, timid as a stray, retracting even as he walked closer, spying the person to her right; a young boy, no more than twelve, similar lank brown hair, freckles on his cheeks. And then Alask saw. For a moment he was stunned, almost stopped in his tracks and forgot his next line, what he had to do. It was as though he was back in the fair years ago, mouth open, staring, mesmerised. The boy looked into his eyes like the Barker once had, comprehending all. Alask was a child again, staring at his feet, reading patterns in sawdust.

The spell was broken. Alask kept going, stopped before the woman, thrust his arms at her.

‘Madam, if you please.’

The crowd was silent. She rolled the first sleeve towards his elbow, carefully, almost in expectation, and it was revealed. She smiled, saying ‘Aaah’, like they always did. The people next to her laughed and clapped, applause spread, cameras beamed the picture to a screen at the rear of the auditorium. Everyone cheered. Alask walked to his original place, showing the audience. It was his ears. He’d had two extra ears grown genetically on his forearms. They were his first augmentations, created in homage to the father of genetic modification, Stelarc the Great, and still his favourites.

‘Would you like to see more?!’

He waved his forearms, the ears along with them, at the crowd, as if to hear better: a good joke, one that always got a laugh.

‘Yeah!’ The crowd yelled.

So he did his next trick, unbuttoning his coat-tails to reveal the perfect nose on his chest. He even made it twitch. The noise was deafening.

‘And now, on with the show!’ Alask roared.

He introduced the first act, Celayn and Meimo, who performed the knife-throwing routine that proved so popular over the years, and stood offstage, thinking about what he had just seen. The boy. The wonderful boy.

Celayn and Meimo held the audience in the palm of their augmented hands. Meimo was an expert with the knife, able to skewer and slice fruit, balloons, even split cardboard with a precision honed by cyborg fingers, usually gloved, but revealed for the purposes of the show. They were light, waterproof, and could even be removed and operated by remote control, which always drew gasps of amazement. Celayn, the beautiful assistant, provided targets for Meimo’s knives, holding them steady until it was time for her to climb aboard the spinning wheel. Meimo unfastened his hands and placed them on a specially prepared metal stand, throwing by remote thought. Each missed by inches until the last four, which hit Celayn in the chest, stomach and legs. The crowd was stunned. Silence fell. Meimo began to cry, fall to his feet, convulse. Someone screamed.