by Forbes West
“Blackjack!” one of the old women dealers cries out and claps her hands. The other players look pissed, folding up their cards and giving them back to her. They are playing with bundles of red money and casino chips. You take a look at the table between chip bites. One shoe. The dealer is only using one card shoe to deal, so the cards are barely getting mixed up.
You’re pretty good at math. When you were small, you used to play a little casino night with your dad and could always count the cards—you were doing that when you were eleven, twelve years old. You move over to the blackjack table. Treena and Winniefreddie shrug and walk over to the bar to pick up a libation or three. They ask if you want something to drink and you reply, “What do you think?”
You sit down just as another player is leaving. The old woman dealer in a bowler hat gives you the dirtiest look in the world, her wrinkled and over-made-up face seeming to crack with petty hate. “You of age, Missy?” she says.
You stare at her and say nothing. The old woman shrugs. “It’s another planet anyway. Who the beep cares, amiright?”
She starts to deal out the cards. From that one shoe, you think, amazed at how this place is being run. You know from television that casinos back home, in Vegas, usually use six shoes to prevent what you are going to do. With six shoes there would be so many card combinations that no one could ever figure it out. In this half-assed Oberon, they didn’t think of it at all.
You get your first card: a queen. You start to play; beginning very carefully, scoping out the territory, seeing how they flop down. Next to you sits a guy who looks like an older, more beaten up version of Brad Pitt and a very attractive older woman with heavy mascara who is drinking beer from a copper cup. With two other players, the dealer and you, you’ll have no problem figuring the flow of play.
A human waiter comes by and asks if you want a beer. “Of course,” you say. “I’m old enough.” The dealer gives you a fake smile with nice golden teeth. You start to drink the beer, feeling pretty good now. Treena gives you an extra beer. She blows a raspberry after seeing you already have one. You are about to destroy this casino, you just know it. One shoe! Holy Christ, what an opening, you think. You cross yourself in front of everyone before the second deal, muttering a prayer to God, thanking Him and His son.
It is about the fourth deal when you start winning big, figuring what is in the shoe and at play. You get dealt a queen and a deuce—this combination is usually shit, but you know that there’s a nine coming up, and there it is. From then on in, you blow up Livesey’s Green Man.
You play and play and drink and drink, beer after beer, in copper cups and plastic cups, depending on what the Ni-Perchta waiters can throw to you. You see your mountain of chips in clear, double vision, and scoop the mountain into a plastic bucket that somebody handed you earlier. A crowd has gathered, quite amazed at your dexterity and also waiting to see if at any moment you will be hauled off for cheating.
You fall off your stool, still holding the bucket upright, not spilling a drop of beer. You laugh hard, managing to stand up with the cup of fresh beer and the bucket of casino winnings. Seeing that everyone is looking at you, you take a bow. The older woman with mascara is laughing very hard and gives you a thumbs-up. Older Brad Pitt is there, laughing, and you decide to go up and kiss him on the mouth for no particular reason.
“Alright! ‘Kay, thanks, bye!” you yell to the casino, the other salvagers cheering you on as you grope your way across the place to the bar counter where the Page sisters are talking with the bartender.
A bouncer comes over, a thick, big-bellied bastard with a bald head. “I’m the bouncer here, and I am asking if you need assistance to your vehicle,” he says before you respond.
“Why don’t you bounce on over and get me a drink, then?” You wink at him and stumble backwards. He just looks annoyed and leaves.
You manage to face the bartender. “Ch-change ‘em out.” He shakes both his heads, looks at the four Page sisters, and then takes your chips. He opens a door marked Private behind him.
You stand there rocking out to music that may or may not be there.
After five minutes he returns and gives you your winnings. You count the stacks. Five hundred thousand, five hundred Dii-Yaa or, in real money, thirty-five thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars. Not too bad.
You give a few thousand bucks to the Page sisters, who shake your hand, then stuff the rest into every available pocket.
“We gotta be hanging out with her more, man. We gotta. We just gotta, we gotta, we gotta...” Winniefreddie says.
You and the Page sisters keep drinking until all the words coming out of your mouths become slurred and slow versions of themselves. You three laugh the night away and dance in some club connected to the Green Man with people who look like the Manson family. Human bands play typical club songs.
The three of you stumble out of Livesey’s Green Man laughing like the inebriated hyenas you are. Dawn has arrived in the Walled Village. There is still some music playing somewhere.
Exiting Moondog Street, you are back in the true Ni-Perchta part of town, trying to roam back to the Benbow.
Flush with a bit of cash, drunk and happy, you three come onto a disturbing little scene when you exit the walls of the village. Next to a parking lot is a group of humans surrounding a group of Ni-Perchta who are on a makeshift wooden platform. Ni-Perchta guards in armor and in soldiers’ uniforms stand by. Even in the little you can see, there is a handmade sign stating: Dawn Auction of Assigned Persons. An excited Ni-Perchta rambling in Perchta is pointing at the Ni-Perchta in chains. The auctioneer touches their arms, their legs, pats their behinds as he speaks as fast as any auctioneer back home. Some of those in chains are children. A small, weasel-like human is shouting out the translation at the same time.
“What is dis?” you slur, pointing. You still have a plastic cup filled with beer in your hand.
“Assignment auction shit. The Ni-Perchta—if you get caught—caughted, I should say—doing a non-violent, non-religious crime, they sentence you to be bought as someone’s slave for five to fifteen years, unless they release you early. For minor, little transgressions. Failure to respect the Witch-Lord, petty theft under five hundred Dii-Yaa, stuff like that,” Treena says, and then burps. “I’m gonna puke.”
Winniefreddie pats her on the back. She hiccups and gives her a thumbs-up.
“What? Slavery? You kiddin’ me?” you ask. A little Ni-Perchta girl is crying her eyes out as some pedophile-looking human raises up his hand to purchase her service. There’s a sick feeling in your stomach. “Whoa, whoa.” You step forward and take out all your cash. “How much? How much?” Everyone watches as you rush through. The crowd parts to let you in.
You walk back to the Benbow with the Ni-Perchta girl, who holds hands with a couple of other Ni-Perchta kids; you’ve bought them as well.
Treena and Winniefreddie stare at you in wonder. “You just spent all that cash on these little Oliver Twist bastards,” Winniefreddie says. “Jesus, you got some heart. Brains, no. Heart, oh, yeah.”
Treena shakes her head. “No, no, it’s a good thing, Winnie.”
“I got no idea where you can go,” you tell the children, “but you can go.” They look at you in wonder, their eyes wide.
The Ni-Perchta girl speaks haltingly in broken English. “My…my dad…he up that way.”
You turn and see that a Ni-Perchta male has been following you the whole way from the village. He’s tall, regal looking, and afraid.
“Hey! Screw the Witch-Lord! I escaped from his dungeon, and you can all escape too! Fuck the police!”
Winniefreddie looks at you sideways. “You’re that girl?”
You sober up a little, staring as the children run off. “Winniefreddie’s right. That was stupid. Drinkin’ makes you do silly things. There goes, how much money? I still technically own their contracts, right?” You look down at a piece of parchment that was given to you, and then throw it away. You noti
ce it just sits on top of the soil. You kick up some dirt and halfway bury it, then slap Winniefreddie on the arm and start to dance a bit. “All day, all night, all day, all night. What the fuck...” You and the other girls dance and giggle in the morning air.
“Going to get more money, right girls? Right, girls? I went to Spain and saw people partying...”
Winniefreddie and Treena look at you and say almost at the same time, “You’re good people. We’ll be in touch.”
Chapter Ten:
Christmas
You barely manage to wake up, dress, and go to work the next morning. No one is there but Oscar Botha, who’s sitting at your desk with his feet up. He’s already unlocked the front doors. “Happy Christmas, Miss Sarah,” he says. “No family like me, eh? Spending the holiday alone?”
“Jeez, I feel silly. It’s Christmas. No work today.”
“For you,” Oscar Botha says, chewing and snapping his gum and staring at you angrily. He smiles, showing it to be a joke. “I honestly don’t care about working on holidays. I have—had—a family in Mission Hazelden but they went home. I don’t mind working on Christmas.” He seems to get lost in thought. “Ever spend time in Suid-Afrika?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
He grins. “No reason a white girl like you should unless you need to. Otherwise, the blacks there, they’d jump all over you like a pack of wild hounds. Give you something permanent to remember them by. The blacks there—they don’t have education, family, things like us—you and me. Not even like the Ni-Perchta. Be careful out there if you go.”
Your skin crawls a little. “Merry Christmas,” you say, cutting him off.
Botha watches you turn to leave and laughs a little to himself. He goes back to playing solitaire on your computer. “Oh, and Orange?” You turn. “You do know you have tomorrow off as well? And the rest of the week? This isn’t the States, Sarah. We get nine days off for Christmas—Christmas Eve until January second.”
You go back to your downstairs apartment home, avoiding everyone again and sealing yourself into your lair. The radio drones on and on. You down a couple more beers from the refrigerator and notice that there are now Tokyo Sex Whale ones in there; you don’t remember buying them.
You take out your laptop and try to boot it up, but you just see a scrambled screen that’s completely screwed up. You sigh and decide to sit on the kitchen floor. “No more Facebook. What a shame.” You take the laptop and smash it against the tile floor of the kitchen; you pick it up again and smash it as hard as you can against that cold surface, angry, pissed, and enraged. You are on your own here, literally millions of miles away from home. With no one.
“No more Facebook.” You start crying a little bit. “Oh money, money, money, come my way and take me away...” you mock pray.
* * *
You wake up from a three-hour nap and head back upstairs to the Benbow. As you pass through the lobby, you finally see people. Young people with families are getting together, hugging each other, driving off in old cars to God knows where. Oscar Botha is receiving Christmas gifts from residents who seem to either like him or are afraid of him. They nod a hello to you. The Benbow is closed, although the little door clock says that they should be back by now.
Treena is the first one to arrive, giving you a weird look as you’re hovering around the door. You go through the Gate right after her. You help her by cleaning up, and then spend the rest of the day playing Clue, Simpsons Edition, once Winniefreddie comes back.
The Ni-Perchta cook, Tek, hovers in and out of the bar/restaurant area like a specter of ill will, with glowering looks and half-lidded eyes for anyone who dares to look him in the face.
Winniefreddie wins Clue for the second time in a row, and she lets you know it by tossing the board up in the air; the pieces are thrown everywhere. “No more need to play, eh ladies? When I keep winning!” she says, leaving the room dramatically and then returning with a flourish.
The rain has stopped and, while you’re still a bit hung over, you decide to ask them the question you’ve had on your mind all day.
“Okay, guys, here’s what I got planned for us. We are going to get—what was it Tyler, I mean Jaime, was mentioning? A license to go dayhawking, right? Let’s get that going, set up our little business together, like we said last night. We can save up some cash or I can win…”
“Co-op,” Treena says.
“Co-op? Business? What’s the difference?” you ask.
Winniefreddie rolls her eyes. “A co-op is a co-operative—that’s the only sort of business that’s allowed here. No business in the sense of profits to be generated for just one person. Everyone has to get a share.”
“Okay, okay, co-op. We sign up all together and we go and do this.”
Winniefreddie and Treena look at each other and shake their heads. “Not so fast, Sarah. I mean, you seem like a great person but we just met. The Four Lands are a bit...what’s the word I’m looking for? Or phrase, Winniefreddie?”
Winniefreddie coughs into her hand. “Screwed up. We have to think about this. I mean, you got a good advantage with that crazy vision where you can see certain things, but we have to weigh everything. We’ve had a good little co-op ourselves for a while selling off-world beer and running this place. And we have to ask our currently silent partner.”
“It’s goddamn Guy Farson, right? I remember him saying Tokyo Sex Whale on the ship, so stop screwing with me. You guys nighthawk, right? Isn’t that right?”
Winniefreddie and Treena look around to see if anyone heard you talking so loud, but no one is there but Tek. Winniefreddie speaks. “No, it’s not Guy Farson. Okay? Not Guy Farson.” They nod though, indicating yes on both counts.
“It is Guy Farson,” Treena whispers. “But keep it down. We’ll talk more in a bit.”
* * *
You spend some time sitting by the window of the Benbow, sipping on instant coffee as the day turns from dark and stormy to sunny and clear. “Screw off-world,” you say to no one in particular. You think over the events of the last few days, sickened by the death at the Witch-Lord’s Temple and the loneliness of this place. Working at an office millions of miles from home? Screw that. Drink and be lonely? Screw that. You think only of leaving this place now and forgetting this experience.
You go back through the Nemo Gate and see Oscar Botha sitting at the front desk, playing on the computer. Guy Farson is in the front part of the lobby, a backpack in hand and an unlit cigar hanging out of his mouth.
Oscar looks up for a moment and then looks back down at the computer. “You know I have half a mind to just punt you back out there with the rest of the garbage, Guy Farson. You have no legal right to be here.”
Guy walks over and puts his hand on the counter. “Then do it, Apartheid. Otherwise stop giving me lip every time I make a stop-over to a legal settlement.” He smiles at you and nods towards the elevators. You follow him over and ride the elevator down to your apartment. That Charlie Brown Christmas song plays on your old radio as you and Guy say nothing to each other.
“Good to see you,” you finally blurt out.
He nods at your surroundings. “Neat digs here. Very fashionable. Very, very fashionable.”
You nod.
“You thinking about leaving The Oberon?” He stares right at you.
You swallow. “What gave you that impression?”
Guy smirks a little and lights his cigar. “I would. If I saw someone get their head chopped off in front of me and wasn’t ready for it. I mean, I’ve seen some screwed up things: people mind-scorched out in the cities, Ni-Perchta lynching, a Ni-Perchta guy with no legs fighting a Ni-Perchta guy with no arms for money. But I’m sort of used to that.” He blows out some smoke. “You might lose your security deposit with all this cigar smoke. Apologies.”
“How did you...”
Guy smiles and asks you where he can dump his ash. You grab a bowl out of one of the kitchen cabinets and set it down on the glass table in fron
t of him with a clang.
“Have a contact or three in the statue city. You escaped also with a Jaime Van Zandt —your disappeared hubby—from a Witch-Lord Temple. That’s a neat trick. One that hasn’t been done in, oh, forever. Indiana Jones must’ve date-raped your mother twenty years ago.
“You’ve also got the Voice of the Four Winds—that’s a good book to have. A really good book. The Ephors spotted it on you back in Solomon’s Bay. It can be a big help out there in the wastes with those map pages. A really big help. And from what I gathered from Treena and Winniefreddie, you might be a tetrachromat, which is quite the mouthful but very helpful. So with those two bits of information, I realized you’re good for our team.”
Guy puffs out more smoke, filling the room with that aromatic tobacco smell. It is strong but not stinky—probably expensive.
You think about asking him more about tetrachromacy and the book but you don’t care anymore. You really don’t. You just want to get away from all this insanity.
Guy mentions an oil painting at the Benbow Inn. You nod that you saw it while you were there. It's a beautifully done painting of a city that looks at once more ancient than anything on Earth while at the same time much, much more high tech. A post-apocalyptic, ultra futuristic city, all by itself. “That’s a painting of Sargasso-3, one of the last really untouched Antediluvian cities. Treena painted it, did you know that?”
You shake your head.
“I have talked to a contact—he’s a dee jay for a pirate station you might’ve heard of—the Old Man at Midnight. He also scouts out locations and paths to get through the old cities. He buys and sells things. A good man. Now, he did not find this himself but...”
You listen as Guy talks on. You even hear the monorail whistle twice somewhere not too far off, echoing through the mountains. So you think.
He finishes by saying, “That is where your book and you all come in for your time. There is a chance to earn thousands of dollars’ worth of good salvage out there. That city is full of valuable things. You even told the girls you want to dayhawk. Which is not going to happen. I ain’t paying a corporation twenty thousand bucks for something they really don’t own. I did one year and it was literally the gayest experience I had since me and my friend Henry slept in the same bed back in ninth grade. But nighthawking, now we’re talking.