The Song of Phaid the Gambler

by Mick Farren

  The first thing that he saw was a number of police flippers hanging at the maximum operating height of about four storeys. They seemed to be keeping watch on a mass of people at the other end of the Boulevard. All around where Phaid was standing the police were stiffen­ing and readying their weapons. The Boulevard was rapidly clearing of traffic. Whatever was happening at the other end of Nex Boulevard had plugged the normally constant flow of flippers and transports. Phaid felt he had to do something, but he didn't have a clear idea of exactly what. Then Roni-Vows touched him on the arm.

  'Do you know anything about this?'

  Phaid shook his head.

  'Don't have a clue.'

  Roni-Vows waved to a police underleader wearing a comset attached to his helmet.

  'What's going on?'

  'Who wants to know?'

  Roni-Vows drew himself up to his full height. It didn't amount to much beside the hulking officer.

  'My name is Roni-Vows, and I'm an inner circle cour­tier quite capable of having your brassard if you don't pay me the respect due.'

  The underleader didn't look particularly impressed, but also didn't seem to want to bother with an argument.

  'We don't know for sure. They're calling for a requiem march.'

  'What the hell's a requiem march?'

  The cop shrugged.

  'Who knows what the bastards will do? It's supposed to be some kind of memorial to the ones that got themselves killed in the riots. If it was me, I'd be celebrating. Anything that means there's less of the scumsuckers is good in my book.'

  Phaid glanced sharply at the underleader.

  'Ain't those scumsuckers the people you're supposed to be protecting?'

  The underofficer's face twisted into an ugly sneer.

  'Don't make me laugh.' He jerked an armoured thumb in the direction of the Palace. 'That's where my bread gets buttered, and that's what I protect. The rest are scum­suckers as far as I'm concerned.'

  Roni-Vows ignored the exchange and pressed for more information.

  'Are they peaceful?'

  'So far. The main body of the march is supposed to be women. They're all dressed up in mourning robes. The trouble is that they're coming this way. We haven't intervened yet, but we got orders to keep them out of the Plaza. If they take it into their heads to go all the way to the Palace . . .' he hefted his blaster '. . . they'll find that they have certain problems.'

  Phaid was suddenly very, very frightened. He once again peered down the Boulevard. It was clear now that a large dark mass of humanity was slowly filling Nex Boulevard and moving steadily but relentlessly towards the Palace. Phaid looked to Roni-Vows for the next move.

  'What are you going to do?'

  'I want to see what this turns into.'

  'I've got an idea of what this is going to turn into and I'd hate to be out here when it does.'

  Roni-Vows nodded.

  'I think maybe I'll get myself back inside the Palace.'

  'Do I get to go with you?'

  Roni-Vows shook his head.

  'I'm afraid not, you'd never get past the security.'

  'You mean you're going to leave me out here while all hell breaks loose and you scuttle back into the Palace? You've got the influence. You could swing something.'

  'There's nothing I can do. The Palace is shut up tight as a drum.'

  'Shit!'

  Phaid stared down Nex Boulevard. The crowd was about halfway down the length of it and still coming. Phaid could spot splashes of brilliant orange, the tradi­tional colour of mourning in and around the Republic. The police flippers were still maintaining their hovering positions above the marchers.

  Roni-Vows made a nervous gesture.

  'I've got to be going.'

  Phaid grunted and didn't even bother to look at the courtier. Roni-Vows seemed, for a moment, as though he was going to say something, then he changed his mind and hurried towards the ramp.

  An eerie quiet had descended on the area around the Palace. The crowd moved in near silence. There were no chants. No shouting. The only sound was the shuffling of thousands of feet and the low whine of the police flippers.

  The cops on the Plaza deployed themselves for action. Leaders and underleaders barked orders. There was the crash of metallic boots and the rattle of armour as they took up their positions. A double line sealed the end of the Nex Boulevard, separating the crowd from the Palace. More police remained on the Plaza as a back-up to the front line.

  The tension was working its way up to an intolerable level and Phaid was right in the middle of the cops' tactical

  Eattern. What made it doubly worse was that he now new that the majority of cops probably thought of him as an expendable scumsucker.

  The police stood silently, blasters at the ready. The march continued to roll forward. Phaid looked around for a way out. Before he found one, the underleader to whom Roni-Vows had talked grasped him by the arm.

  'What are you still doing here?'

  'Looking for a way out.'

  'I take it that you ain't no courtier that can get me busted to the ranks.'

  Phaid sadly shook his head.

  'Not me.'

  'Then you only get one way out, friend.'

  Phaid found himself propelled none too gently towards the front line of police. At an order from the underleader, two men stepped back and Phaid was thrust out into the no-man's land between the police and the marchers.

  Despite the danger that he was in, Phaid's strongest emotion was an acute feeling of being totally ridiculous. He obviously couldn't stay where he was, but there was something completely absurd about one man walking down a wide empty avenue to meet a marching crowd many thousands strong.

  Some of the front ranks looked at him curiously, but Phaid avoided their eyes. The march swallowed him up and he gratefully worked his way to the back. By the time he'd found a position in which he felt comfortable, the front ranks were less than a hundred metres from the police.

  As the underleader had told Roni-Vows, the majority of the marchers were indeed women. They were all ages and came from all levels of Chrystianaville society, only the very upper extremes were not represented.

  Solid housewives rubbed shoulders with street women, well fed young girls linked arms with elderly crones from the northside. Some wore their street clothes, others long duster coats that had become an unofficial uniform for the rebels. The highest proportion of the marchers, however, were wrapped in the traditional mourning robe, the orange that was supposed to symbolise the life giving power of the sun, and the black trim that was a reminder that even the sun was ringed around by darkness.

  Although the marchers' intent seemed to be peaceful enough, many had come prepared for trouble. Breathing masks and protective helmets made an incongruous pic­ture under the cowls of a lot of the robes.

  There were men with the march, but most of them walked on the outside edges. They were more like an escort than an actual part of the protest. Phaid did his best to blend in with them. In the rear ranks, nobody seemed to take much notice that he'd joined the procession from the front.

  The march was some fifty metres from the police line when the screen in front of the Palace suddenly came alive in a flurry of menacing abstract shapes.

  A thunderously amplified voice boomed out. It must have been audible to everyone in the crowd.

  'THIS GATHERING HAS BEEN DECLARED ILLEGAL! YOU WILL DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY!'

  The leading marchers faltered for a few moments, then their resolution seemed to crystallise. They continued to move forward. The voice crashed out again.

  'THIS GATHERING HAS BEEN DECLARED ILLEGAL! YOU WILL DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY!'

  This time there was no hesitation. The crowd went on steadily walking. The police snapped shut the visors on their helmets. The voice came for a third time.

  'YOU HAVE IGNORED TWO WARNINGS! THERE WILL BE NO MORE AFTER THIS! IF YOU DO NOT DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY, THE POLICE WILL BE INSTRUCTED TO USE ALL NECESSARY FORCE TO B
REAK UP THIS GATHERING!'

  The front ranks slowed to a halt. The marchers behind continued to move forward. There was some pushing and shoving, but then the message spread rapidly back and the entire march finally came to a standstill. For a while there was an eerie silence.

  Scattered women among the crowd started to sing. The singing was without any words, a kind of low, anguished crooning that rose and fell according to no definable pattern. More and more women joined in. The sound grew until it filled all the air, a total embodiment of loss and desolation. Phaid knew that it was the song for the dead. Its origins went back far beyond the city and the foundation of the Republic. Women sung the song when Chrystianaville had been nothing more than a meeting place of nomadic tribes.

  The voice blasted back at the singing women.

  'YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO DISPERSE! RE­PEAT, TEN SECONDS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !'

  The women continued to sing. A few of the cops started to look profoundly uncomfortable. Their blasters dipped and their menacing stance slumped. They began to show signs of uncertainty. Some of the women in the front ranks picked up on the change. They began to shout over the singing.

  'Are you going to blast women in mourning?'

  'Are you that far gone?'

  'Chrystiana-Nex has bought your souls!'

  'Your mother might be in this crowd!'

  More and more of the police began to show signs of indecision. They were no longer an implacable line of armour.

  Phaid could scarcely believe what he was seeing. It was starting to look as though the police were going to lower their blasters and, if not go over to the rebels, at least do nothing to stop them. Then the voice roared out again.

  'POLICE PREPARE TO ADVANCE!'

  Quite a few of them stiffened at the order, but, signifi­cantly, quite a few didn't.

  'ADVANCE ON LINE!'

  About half of the police front line took a step forward. The other half didn't move. There was hesitation, confu­sion. Phaid stood on tip-toe to get a better look. Incred­ibly, it seemed as though the women had won. The individual cops weren't going to move in on the crowd. They were ignoring their orders.

  Then there was a commotion among the front ranks of marchers. Phaid craned to see what was going on. About a dozen women in a tight group were storming towards the wavering police. They were shouting something and pull­ing weapons from under their mourning robes.

  'Day One! Day One!'

  They opened fire on the police. Bodies started falling. Phaid closed his eyes in horror. He could hear himself yelling.

  'No! No! Don't be so fucking stupid!'

  The Day One women gave the police something they could focus on. They snapped back into their normal role of unthinking, disciplined aggression. All the tension and confusion of the previous minutes were released in one flaming roar. The cops let go with every weapon they had.

  All of the Day Oners were cut down in the first eruption of police fire. They weren't the only ones to get it. The police didn't bother to be selective. There were screams as many of the front ranks of marchers were hit. The previously orderly crowd broke in panic and started bolting in every direction. Phaid was pushed hard against a wall by a huge screaming matron who ran straight into him.

  At the same moment the police flippers overhead discharged a rain of heavy, brightly coloured, yellow and purple gas. The billowing clouds cascaded down on to the crowds below like an evil enveloping fog.

  Chapter 16

  Clawed demons from some childhood nightmare were ripping at Phaid's flesh. Their eyes burned hellfire red in the sockets of skull-like faces. Yellow fangs dripped with corosive slime. Hysteria was welling up in his chest. It threatened to burst his ribcage and blow him apart. He wanted to scream and scream until his eyes split open and he could no longer see the demons or feel the pain.

  The last few shreds of his tattered sanity told him that there weren't really demons all around him, that they were a result of his being gassed. It had to be a psycho­tropic crowd breaker of some kind.

  He kept repeating this over and over. He was sane. There were no demons. He'd just been gassed. The demons faded slightly. Phaid discovered that he was lying on the ground on his left side with his knees pulled tight up to his chest.

  Reality was almost as ghastly as the nightmare fantasy. Those marchers who had breathing masks were fighting a pitched battle with the police. The ones like Phaid who didn't were kicking and screaming on the ground, battling with their worst private horrors. Some had rolled into tight foetal balls, too badly affected by the gas to even struggle.

  A woman had fallen near Phaid. Her head was bleeding where she had been hit by a police club. Phaid crawled over beside her and felt for a pulse. He couldn't find one, so, without further compunction, he removed her breathing mask and pulled it over his own head.

  He took three of four deep lungfuls of filtered air. His head cleared a little and the last of the demons slunk away. He was sick to his stomach, his head throbbed and his eyes streamed uncontrollably, but he could at least see what was going on.

  What was going on didn't please Phaid very much. About the only consolation was that the battle was being fought by those who could still stand. Phaid decided to stay out of it for the present by remaining on the ground with the dead and injured.

  A lot of the women marchers had been killed by the police, even more had succumbed to the gas. Despite all this, though, the police were falling back. The sheer weight of numbers of the marchers on Nex Boulevard were too much for them. They were retreating back on to the Plaza.

  There were outbreaks of shooting as the police with­drew. Some seemed determined to make a fight of it, but others had simply lowered their weapons and were edging back in the face of the advancing women.

  Someone on the women's side had got hold of a hailer and was talking to the cops.

  'Our fight isn't with you. It's with the madwoman who calls herself President and her flunkies. We should not be fighting each other. We are all citizens and we all have suffered under the tyrant. Put down your weapons. There is no need for us to fight.'

  Phaid wasn't particularly impressed with the standard of rhetoric, but it appeared to be working on the cops. One by one they lowered their blasters and spread their hands, not so much in surrender, but more in an indication that they weren't willing to go on.

  Phaid got shakily to his feet and joined the throng that was moving out on to the Plaza. His legs were like jelly and he stumbled frequently.

  All the Day Oners on the march must have been killed during the first frenzy. Certainly there was no one leaping forward, weapons blazing, to challenge the unsteady truce with the police. Phaid couldn't see how the extremist faction could last much longer if their revolutionary tactics were always as suicidal as the examples he had witnessed.

  Nobody seemed to know quite what to do with the truce. The carnage had been too great for jubilation over a glorious victory. Everyone on the Plaza seemed a little stunned. Now the Palace was right in front of them and the crowd hesitated. It was almost as though they'd never expected to get as far, and now they didn't know what to do.

  The screen on the front of the Palace had been dead ever since Phaid had come out of the clutches of the gas. Without warning, it flickered into life. A huge full face image of Chrystiana-Nex stared down on the Plaza like a grim, angry goddess.

  It wasn't the image that Phaid or anyone else was used to. It didn't have the careful lighting and expertly applied cosmetics of the usual propaganda loops. This was the President as she really was, with wrinkles and blemishes. It was clear from the look in her eyes that she was quite, quite mad.

  Phaid could see how she might have once been power­fully attractive, so powerfully attractive that she had seduced a whole nation into giving her ultimate power. She wasn't a handsome woman. She was thin to the point of being bony. Her proud neck was starting to wattle. Her platinum hair was scraped back in a way that added prominence to her already prominent
cheekbones.

  All her magnetism must have come from her mouth and her eyes. Both were excessively large. Her mouth could once have been sensuous, promising the far limits of deep crimson delights. Now it was a steel trap ringed with magenta lip colour. Her eyes also had the potential to make promises of glory but were now solely concentrated on chilling destruction. They were eyes that could not be ignored. They had the hypnotic quality of fixing whoever they were looking at and making it impossible for them to turn away.

  The eyes that glared across the Plaza were as hard as pale sapphires. They seemed to be compelling everyone present to look towards the screen.

  'You are traitors.'

  The voice was a deep, throaty contralto. It started softly but gradually rose in both volume and stridence.

  'Traitors!' Chrystiana-Nex may have been crazy, but her power to hold a crowd had not deserted her. 'You have betrayed my trust in you!'

  The squad of Palace Guards, who had so far taken no part in the conflict, formed themselves into two ranks on the ramp leading to the Palace.

  'I have given my very life to you. I have laid my very being at your feet, spending all my waking hours in the service of this city, this Republic, this people.'

  The front rank of guards knelt down. The second remained standing.

  'You are traitors! I have never asked for gratitude. To be of service was the only reward I claimed. I never asked you to love me. My love for you was enough. I have given you everything but now you trample me under you callous, ignorant feet.

  A second squad of guards doubled out of the Palace, and arranged themselves in the same formation as the first squad, only higher up the ramp.

  'You are traitors. You have brought blood and destruc­tion to the streets of this ancient city. You have looted and destroyed. You have befouled the noble name of Chrys­tianaville. My name. The name that I freely gave to you. Is this the way you repay me? With treason?'

  More guards were now manning the photon cannons. Phaid couldn't understand why the crowd didn't realise what was going on. They seemed transfixed by the giant image of the President. Phaid began to work his way back to Nex Boulevard. The booming voice was well on the way to screaming pitch.