Blind Shemmy

by Jack Dann

  Blind Shemmy

  By

  Jack Dann

  After covering the burning and sacking of the Via Roma in Naples, Carl Pfeiffer, a famous newsfax reporter, could not resist his compulsion to gamble. He telephoned Joan Otur, one of his few friends, and insisted that she accompany him to Paris. Organ-gambling was legal in France. They dropped from the sky in a transparent Plasticine egg, and Paris opened up below them, Paris and the glittering chip of diamond that was the Casino Bellecour. Except for the dymaxion dome of the Right Bank, Joan would not have been able to distinguish Paris from the suburbs beyond. A city had grown over the city: The grid of the ever-expanding slung city had its own constellations of light and his Haussmann's ruler-straight boulevards, the ancient architectural wonders, even the black, sour stenched Seine, which was an hourglass curve dividing the old city.

  Their transpod settled to the ground like a dirty snowflake and split silently open, letting in the chill night air with its acrid smells of mudflats and cinders and clogged drains. Joan and Pfeiffer hurried across the transpad toward the high oaken doors of the casino. All around them stretched the bleak, brick-and-concrete wastelands of the city's ruined districts, the fetid warrens on the dome's peripheries, which were inhabited by skinheads and Screamers who existed outside the tightly controlled structure of Uptown life. Now, as Pfeiffer touched his hand to a palm-plate sensor, the door opened and admitted them into the casino itself. The precarious outside world was closed out and left behind.

  A young man, who reminded Joan of an upright (if possible) Bedlington terrier, led them through the courtyard. He spoke with a clipped English accent and had tufts of woolly, bluish-white hair implanted all over his head, face, and body. Only his hands and genitals were hairless.

  "He has to be working off an indenture," Pfeiffer said sharply as he repressed a sexual urge.

  "Shush," Joan said, as the boy gave Pfeiffer a brief, contemptuous look-in Parisian culture, you were paying only for the service, not for the smile.

  They were led into a simple, but formal, entry lounge, which was crowded, but not uncomfortable. The floor was marbled; a few pornographic icons were discreetly situated around the carefully laid-out comfort niches. The room reminded Joan of a chapel with arcades, figures, and stone courts. Above was a dome, from which radiated a reddish, suffusing light, lending the room an expansiveness of height rather than breadth.

  But it was mostly holographic illusion.

  They were directed to wait a moment and then presented to the purser, an overweight, balding man who sat behind a small desk. He was dressed in a blue camise shirt and matching caftan, which was buttoned across his wide chest and closed with a red scarf. He was obviously, and uncomfortably, dressed in the colors of the establishment.

  "And good evening, Monsieur Pfeiffer and Mademoiselle Otur. We are honored to have such an important guest, or guests, I should say." The purser slipped two cards into a small console. "Your identification cards will be returned to you when you leave." After a pause he asked, "Ah, does Monsieur Pfeiffer wish the lady to be credited on his card?" The purser lowered his eyes, indicating embarrassment. Quite simply, Joan did not have enough credit to be received into the more sophisticated games.

  "Yes, of course," Pfeiffer said absently. He felt guilty and anxious about feeling a thrill of desire for that grotesque boy.

  "Well, then," said the purser, folding his hands on the desk, "we are at your disposal for as long as you wish to stay with us." He gestured toward the terrier and said, "Johnny will give you the tour," but Pfeiffer politely declined. Johnny ushered them into a central room, which was anything but quiet, and-after a wink at Pfeiffer-discreetly disappeared.

  The room was as crowded as the city ways. It was filled with what looked to be the ragtag, the bums and the street people, the captains of the ways. Here was a perfect replica of a street casino, but perfectly safe. This was a street casino, at least to Pfeiffer, who was swept up in the noise and bustle, as he whetted his appetite for the dangerous pleasures of the top level.

  Ancient iron bandits whispered "chinks-chinks" and rolled their picture-frame eyes in promise of a jackpot, which was immediately transferred to the winner's account by magnetic sleight of hand. The amplified, high-pitched

  voices of pinball computers on the walls called out winning hands of poker and blackjack. A simulated stabbing drew nothing more than a few glances. Tombstone booths were filled with figures working through their own Stations of the Cross. Hooked-in winners were rewarded with bursts of electrically induced ecstasy; losers writhed in pain and suffered through the brain-crushing aftershock of week-long migraines.

  And, of course, battered robots clattered around with the traditional complement of drugs, drink, and food. The only incongruity was a perfectly dressed geisha, who quickly disappeared into one of the iris-doors on the far wall.

  "Do you want to play the one-armed bandits?" Joan asked, fighting her growing claustrophobia, wishing only to escape into quiet; but she was determined to try to keep Pfeiffer from going upstairs. Yet, ironically-all her emotions seemed to be simultaneously yin and yang-she also wanted him to gamble away his organs. She knew that she would feel a guilty thrill if he lost his heart. Then she pulled down the lever of the one-armed bandit; it would read her finger-and odor-prints and transfer or deduct the proper amount to or from Pfeiffer's account. The eyes rolled and clicked and one hundred international credit dollars was lost. "Easy come, easy go. At least, this is a safe way to go. But you didn't come here to be safe, right?" Joan asked mockingly.

  "You can remain down here, if you like," Pfeiffer said, looking about the room for an exit, noticing that iris doors were spaced every few meters on the nearest wall to his left. The casino must take up the whole bloody block, he thought. "How the hell do I get out of here?"

  Before Joan could respond, Johnny appeared, as if out of nowhere, and said, "Monsieur Pfeiffer may take any one of the ascenseurs, or, if he would care for the view of our palace, he could take the staircase to heaven." He smiled, baring even teeth, and curtsied to Pfeiffer, who was blushing. The boy certainly knows his man, Joan thought sourly.

  Am I jealous? she asked herself. She cared for Pfeiffer, but didn't love him-at least she didn't think she did.

  "Shall I attend you?" Johnny asked Pfeiffer, ignoring Joan.

  "No," said Pfeiffer. "Now please leave us alone."

  "Well, which is it?" asked Joan. "The elevator would be quickest, zoom you right to the organ room."

  "We can take the stairs," Pfeiffer said, a touch of blush still in his cheeks. But he would say nothing about the furry boy. "Jesus, it seems that everytime I blink my eye, the stairway disappears."

  "I'll show you the way," Joan said, taking his arm.

  "Just what I need," Pfeiffer said, smiling, eliminating one small barrier between them.

  "I think your rush is over, isn't it? You don't really want to gamble out your guts."

  "I came to do something, and I'll follow it through."

  The stairwell was empty, and, like an object conceived in Alice's Wonderland, it appeared to disappear behind them. "Cheap tricks," Pfeiffer said.

  "Why are you so intent on this?" Joan asked. "If you lose, which you most probably will, you'll never have a day's peace. They can call in your heart, or liver, or-"

  "I can buy out, if that should happen." Pfeiffer reddened, but it had nothing to do with his conversation with Joan, to which he was hardly paying attention; he was still thinking about the furry boy.

  "You wouldn't gamble them, if you thought you could buy out. That's bunk."

  "Then I'd get artificials."

  "You'd be taking another chance, with the quotas thanks to your right-wing friends in power."

  Pfeiffer didn't
take the bait. "I admit defeat," he said. Again he thought of the furry boy's naked, hairless genitals. And with that came the thought of death.

  The next level was less crowded and more subdued. There were few electronic games to be seen on the floor. A man passed dressed in medical white, which indicated that deformation games were being played. On each floor the stakes became increasingly higher; fortunes were lost, people were disfigured, or ruined, but-with the exception of the top floor, which had dangerous games other than organ-gambling-at least no one died. They might need a face and body job after too many deformations, but those were easily obtained, although one had to have very good credit to ensure a proper job.

  On each ascending level, the house whores, both male and female, became more exotic, erotic, grotesque, and abundant. There were birdmen with feathers like peacocks and flamingos, children with dyed skin and overly large, implanted male and female genitalia, machines that spoke the language of love and exposed soft, fleshy organs, amputees and cripples, various drag queens and kings, natural androgynies and mutants, cyborgs, and an interesting, titillating array of genetically engineered mooncalves.

  But none disturbed Pfeiffer as had that silly furry boy. He wondered if, indeed, the boy was still following him.

  "Come on, Joan" Pfeiffer said impatiently. "I really don't want to waste any more time down here."

  "But I always thought it was the expectation that's so exciting to seasoned gamblers," Joan said.

  "Not to me," Pfeiffer said, ignoring the sarcasm. "I want to get it over with." With that, he left the room.

  Then why bother at all? Joan asked herself, wondering why she had let Pfeiffer talk her into coming here. He doesn't need me. Damn him, she thought, ignoring a skinny, white-haired man and a piebald, doggie mooncalf coupling beside her in an upright position.

  She took a lift to the top level to catch up with Pfeiffer.

  It was like walking into the foyer of a well-appointed home. The high walls were stucco and the floor was inlaid parquet. A small Dehaj rug was placed neatly before a desk, behind which beamed a man of about fifty dressed in camise and caftan. He had a flat face, a large nose that was wide, but had narrow nostrils, and close-set eyes roofed with bushy, brown eyebrows, the color his hair would have been, had he had any.

  Actually, the room was quite small, which made the rug look larger and gave the man a commanding position.

  "Do you wish to watch or participate, Monsieur Pfeiffer?" he asked, seeming to rise an inch from the chair as he spoke.

  "I wish to play," Pfeiffer said, standing upon the rug as if he had to be positioned just right to make it fly.

  "And does your friend wish to watch?" the man asked, as Joan crossed the room to stand beside Pfeiffer. "Or will you give your permission for Miz Otur to become telepathically connected to you." His voice didn't rise as he asked the question.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "A psyconnection, sir. With a psyconductor"-a note of condescension crept into his voice.

  "I know what it is, and I don't want it," Pfeiffer snapped and then moved away from Joan. But a cerebral hook-in was, in fact, just what Joan had hoped for.

  "Oh, come on," Joan said. "Let me in."

  "Are you serious?" he asked, turning toward her.

  Caught by the intensity of his stare, she could only nod. "Then I'm sorry. I'm not a window for you to stare through."

  That stung her, and she retorted, "Have you ever done it with your wife?" She immediately regretted her words.

  The man at the desk cleared his throat politely. "Excuse me, monsieur, but are you aware that only games organe are played in these rooms?"

  "Yes, that's why I've come to your house."

  "Then, you are perhaps not aware that all our games are conducted with psyconductors on this floor.

  Pfeiffer, looking perplexed, said, "Perhaps you had better explain it to me."

  "Of course, of course," the man said, beaming, as if he had just won the battle and a fortune. "There are, of course, many ways to play, and, if you like, I can give you the address of a very nice house nearby where you can play a fair, safe game without hook-ins. Shall I make a reservation for you there?"

  "Not just yet," Pfeiffer said, resting his hands, knuckles down, upon the flat-top Louis XVI desk.

  His feet seemed to be swallowed by the floral patterns of the rug, and Joan thought it an optical illusion, this effect of being caught before the desk of the casino captain. She felt the urge to grab Pfeiffer and take him out of this suffocating place.

  Instead, she walked over to him. Perhaps he would relent just a little and let her slide into his mind.

  "It is one of our house rules, however," said the man at the desk, "that you and your opponent, or opponents, must be physically in the same room."

  "Why is that?" Joan asked, feeling Pfeiffer scowling at her for intruding.

  "Well," he said, "it has never happened to us, of course but cheating has occurred on a few long-distance transactions. Organs have been wrongly lost. So we don't take any chances. None at all." He looked at Pfeiffer as he spoke, obviously sizing him up, watching for reactions. But Pfeiffer had composed himself, and Joan knew that he had made up his mind.

  "Why must the game be played with psyconductors?" Pfeiffer asked.

  "That is the way we do it," said the captain. Then, after an embarrassing pause, he said, "We have our own games and rules. And our games, we think, are the most interesting. And we make the games as safe as we can for all parties involved."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We-the house-will be observing you. Our games master will be telepathically hooked in, but, I assure you, you will not sense his presence in the least. If anything should go wrong, or look as if it might go wrong, then pfft, we intercede. Of course, we make no promises, and there have been cases where-"

  "But anything that could go wrong would be because of the cerebral hook-in."

  "Perhaps this isn't the game for you, sir."

  "You must have enough privileged information on everyone who has ever played here to make book," Pfeiffer said.

  "The hook-in doesn't work that way at all. And besides, we are contract-bound to protect our clients."

  "And yourselves."

  "Most certainly." The casino captain looked impatient.

  "If both players can read each other's mind," Pfeiffer said to the captain, "then there can be no blind cards."

  "Aha, now you have it, monsieur." At that, the tension between Pfeiffer and the desk captain seemed to dissolve.

  "And, indeed," the captain continued, "we have a modified version of chemin de fer, which we call blind shemmy. All the cards are played face down. It is a game of control (and, of course, chance), for you must block out certain thoughts from your mind, while, at the same time, tricking your opponent into revealing his cards. And that is why it would be advantageous for you to let your friend here connect with you."

  Pfeiffer glanced toward Joan and said, "Please clarify that."

  "Quite simply, while you are playing, your friend could help block your thoughts from your opponent with her own," said the captain. "But it does take some practice. Perhaps, it would be better if you tried a hook-in in one of our other rooms, where the stakes are not quite so high." Then the captain lowered his eyes, as if in deference, but in actuality he was looking at the CeeR screen of the terminal set into the antique desk.

  Joan could see Pfeiffer's nostrils flare slightly. The poor sonofabitch is caught, she thought. "Come on, Carl, let's get out of here now."

  "Perhaps you should listen to Miss Otur," the captain said, but the man must have known that he had Pfeiffer.

  "I wish to play blind shemmy," Pfeiffer said, turning toward Joan, glaring at her. She caught her breath: If he lost, then she knew he would make certain that Joan lost something, too.

  "I have a game of nine in progress," the captain said. "There are nine people playing and nine others playing interference. But you'll have to wait for
a space. It will be quite expensive, as the players are tired and will demand some of your points for themselves above the casino charge for the play."

  "How long will I have to wait?"

  The captain shrugged, then said, "I have another man waiting, who is ahead of you. He would be willing to play a game of doubles. I would recommend you play him rather than wait. Like you, he is an amateur, but his wife, who will be connected with him, is not. Of course, if you wish to wait for the other . . ."

  Pfeiffer accepted, and while he and Joan gave their prints to the various forms, the captain explained that there was no statue of limitations on the contract signed by all parties, and that it would be honored even by those governments that disapprove of this particular form of gambling.

  Then the furry boy appeared like an apparition to take them to their room where they would be given time to practice and become acquainted.

  The boy's member was slightly engorged, and Pfeiffer now became frightened. He suddenly thought of his mother and the obligatory hook-in service at her funeral. His skin crawled as he remembered her last filthy thoughts ....

  The furry boy led Joan and Pfeiffer into the game room, which smelled of oiled wood, spices, traditional tobacco, and perfume. There were no holos or decoration on the walls. Everything, with the exception of the felt top of the gaming table, cards, thick natural carpet, computer consoles, and cowls, was made of precious woods: oak, elm, cedar, teak, walnut, mahogany, redwood, ebony. The long, half-oval gaming table, which met the sliding partition wall, was made of satinwood, as were the two delicate, but uncomfortable, high-backed chairs placed side by side. On the table before each chair was a psyconductor cowl, each one sheathed in a light, silvery mask.

  "We call them poker-faces," the boy said to Pfeiffer, as he placed the cowl over Joan's head. He explained how the psyconductor mechanism worked, then asked Pfeiffer if he wished him to stay.

  "Why should I want you to stay?" Pfeiffer asked, but the sexual tension between them was unmistakable.

  "I'm adept at games of chance. I can redirect your thoughts-without a psyconductor." He looked at Joan and smiled.