Ares Express

15

Dazzled by winks of sun from the rim of the silver tea bowl, the boss tanager kept his herd in pace with the slow train. They were handsome beasts, Grandmother Taal admitted, grown sleek on the well-watered Quela rangelands. Muscles moved smoothly under close-fitting striped skins, like acrobatic carnival punchinellos. They had never felt the seat of man, but each bore a patterned plastic ear-tag: owned, numbered, one day to be herded by harrying autogyros, driven up ramps on to a train like this, then taken to the breaking fair at Tzaena-tzaena.

So much for the wide country and the wilds. Grandmother Taal set down the maté bowl, eclipsing the hypnotising blink of sun. The tanagers cantered on, hog-manes bristling, ownership tags rattling. Herd things like to run. Such is their weakness.

The observation car was a glassine cyst on the spine of the last carriage of the ambling High Plains Cruiser, an eccentric rural service out of Hagios Evangelis that stopped at every hillock and hollow before finally creaking to a terminus at Mosquiteaux on the edge of the Big Red. People got on, rode a time, got off, so that the train, though it had many passengers, was never busy. Few went the whole distance. Grandmother Taal was one such transient. The Triskander-Grand Valley Limited Night had made an unscheduled request stop at Strophé, where she had thumbed down the High Plains Cruiser fifty kilometres into its journey. She would ride this train as far as signal NW two twenty-four, then pull an Uncle Billy on the twenty twenty-seven fast mail across the eroded craterlands of Old Deuteronomy.

Therefore, the observation car was sparsely populated. Grandmother Taal had a club booth to herself, to rest her feet on the leatherette banquette, sip her maté through a silver straw, watch the frankly uninspiring landscape flow past, doze and snore knowing that her nearest neighbour, a florid-faced milch-man in quaintly traditional bib-suit and paddy-hat, was five rows away and deeply engaged with the stock prices in the daily gazette. Five rows ahead of him a group of elderly people in funeral whites played cards and nodded gravely to each other. The car’s only other occupants were a family of musicians by the down stairs, making quiet tunes with guitar, zither, tabla and soft handclaps. Strange people, musicians; so much of their souls given out to their creatures of wood and skin and metal, that demanded so terrible a possession when they took them up to play.

Passenger, she decided, is another thing entirely from track, but by no means inferior. She looked out at the rolling green grass and the cantering tanagers. Their perfect mindlessness lulled her off to sleep.

A tinny clink woke her. A boy’s face loomed over hers, close enough to read his teeth stains. He held up the maté straw and set it in the tin bowl. Hairbrush epaulettes and crimson rick-rack around his lapels identified him as a Stuard.

“More maté for madam?” He held up a long-handled biggin. She could tell from the corners of the Stuard boy’s mouth that between one cup of maté and its refill, word of the Asiim Engineers’ disgrace had passed down the High Plains line.

“If you please.”

He refilled the enamelled tin bowl with the aromatic tea. Grandmother Taal fished in her bottomless bag for centavos. The Stuard boy held up his hand, scandalised as if she had offered him her own mummified excrement.

“There is no charge, madam Engineer.”

Grandmother Taal gave his back her oldest and vilest Engineer gestures as he unctuously worked his way down the aisle. The big-faced milch-man had been replaced by an anaemic couple who touched each other’s hands every few seconds. The funeral party had left to perform their obsequies. Across the aisle from their pitch was a sallow-faced young man in a cartwheel hat and duster coat buttoned to the throat. The musicians had opened wicker lunch boxes and were feeding forkfuls of noodles to the tiniest. The tanagers had galloped elsewhere, and the view from the window was of dreary altiplano freckled with upright Deuteronomy farms. The folding vade-mecum told her North West two twenty-four was hours yet at this gentle plod across the trampas. Too dull, this land, these people, this life, for anything other than sleep.

A start. She felt the face before she saw it, or heard the voice. That warm, slightly oily feeling of being observed without your knowledge or permission, that you have been observed for some time. Smell of a watching face. Grandmother Taal opened an eye.

“Madam, your maté has grown cold.”

In her eye was a dapper man of early middle years, slim as a rapier, dressed in a frock suit of crushed plum. He wore no hat, but his hair had been greased and slicked until it shone like gloss paint. Likewise, two long mustachios, waxed and tweaked to the sheen of ebony, swooped away from his upper lip. Grandmother Taal opened her other eye, all the better to three-dee this wonder. Hollow-cheeked, pale, almost olive-skinned. Poor complexion, cratered with orange-peel skin and the memories of childhood pox-scratchings. Eyebrows shaved to the merest hint of expressivity. Over his left eye, a brown leather patch. He carried a cane almost as slender and sharp as his mustachios. He wore gloves.

“I don’t care much for the maté,” Grandmother Taal said. “It is bitter. It has been stewed.”

“Yes,” the man said thoughtfully. “The service on this route is substandard. I may write to the Line Manager.”

“You would be better employed writing to the chief Stuard.”

“Ah!” The man brightened perceptibly. “You have some knowledge of the ways of the iron road. Are you perhaps, track?”

“I am Taal Chordant Joy-of-May Asiim Engineer of Catherine of Tharsis. Now, introduce yourself, or is the place you hail from so negligent of manners that a lady must give her name to a gentleman?”

The young man laughed and bowed.

“I am Cyrene Caius Ankhatiel Ree, and I am a gentleman of India, in Axidy, where, I am glad to say, etiquette flourishes yet.”

Grandmother Taal harrumphed. Middle-aged though his complexion might be, he was still young, callow, vain, long-winded and self-regarding enough to be the most interesting thing on and around the High Plains Cruiser.

“Well, sit yourself down, as that’s clearly what you’re here to ask.”

“You preempt me, madam.”

He parted the tails of his coat and settled into the club chair opposite. He crossed his legs at the knee in a way Grandmother Taal had always thought effeminate and affected.

“So, Cyrene Caius Ankhatiel Ree, where are you travelling aboard the High Plains Cruiser?”

He rested his hands on the handle of his stick.

“Why, precisely nowhere, madam.”

“You travel for its own sake?”

“I travel for the sake of gambling.”

“A notorious vice.”

“Some say. Some say. But they are invariably the ones who have not heard the stakes I offer.”

“I am forty-two years a-sinning, sir. A billion miles I’ve travelled and a billion sights I’ve seen. I am mother to a dynasty, what stake could possibly entice me?”

By a sleight of hand, one lemon-gloved palm suddenly held a deck of cards.

“Years, madam. Years.”

The card backs bore the Amshastria Evenant, dancing one-footed, with her hourglass and plague bottle and halo of skulls. A flick of the fingers and the gambler spread the cards on the tea table in a wide fan. He ran his thumb along the spread, raising a short, sharp wave.

“Ridiculous, young man.”

He squared the deck, riffled and bridged it twice, dealt a swift hand, three down.

“Five card, two up.” He scooped up his hand, fanned them. The allure of the face-down card is irresistible. Against will and wisdom, Grandmother sneaked a peek. Three of Blades, three of Wasps, ten of Hands.

“Bet two,” Cyrene Ree said.

“Two what?”

“As I said, madam, years.”

Nonsense, the inner angel of grandmothers said, but an older, sharper devil said, aloud, “Two it is, then.”

Cyrene twisted her a card.

“Madam has a ten of Cash. And for myself?”

Grandmother Taal turned over the top card of the deck.

“The Spice of Wasps.”

“Raise another one.”

“Parvue your one, and another one.”

“Madam is getting the feel of the game,” Cyrene said, twisting her her final card. “Cash, three. And I get…”

“Hieros of Blades.”

“An ill-omened card, I fear. Vue.”

Grandmother Taal turned over her hand.

“Full house, three and tens.”

Cyrene pursed his lips.

“I am well beaten. Two pairs.” He turned them up, sevens and Spices. “You win.”

Grandmother Taal gasped. Like a gush of stale breath or bad blood, four years went out of her. The stiffness and discomforts that are so much part of a woman of forty-two that they seem almost geographical were erased. Muscles tightened beneath her skin. Bones moved to long-forgotten alignments. Liver blotches on the backs of her hands dwindled like desert rain in the sun. Forty-two no more, if Cyrene could be believed. A woman of thirty-eight. Less, if her luck held.

“There,” Cyrene said. “That simple.” Grandmother Taal studied him. Did the mustachios droop a little, were their tips, the highlights in his shining hair, a little greyed? Did lines sit deeper around the leather eye-patch, had the muscles of the face slackened and slumped?

“I think not,” Grandmother Taal said, but four years were oxygen in her lungs, iron in her blood. Cyrene was already shuffling the cards.

“Another round?”

Grandmother Taal nodded. Cyrene dealt another hand. Grandmother Taal bet three years on a strong opening of two Duennas and the Boss of Wasps, twisted a trash four of Blades and an eight of Cash but still outbluffed Cyrene.

In twenty minutes and two dozen kilometres she had shed seven years. This was electrifying, addictive stuff. It’s meant to be, said forty-two years. I know when to stop, said thirty-five years.

“You must allow me the chance to make good my losses,” Cyrene said, smiling.

“And me to consolidate my gains,” Grandmother Taal said, and for the first time wondered what Cyrene’s true age might be, if he were indeed what he claimed, an itinerant wagerer of years on the world’s trunk lines.

The cards slid across the Formica-topped table. Again, a pair and a ten of Hands. Grandmother Taal anted two years. Cyrene immediately parvued and raised another five. Grandmother Taal twisted a second ten. Two pairs. Seven years. Forty-two, again, or twenty-eight.

“Raise two,” Cyrene said.

“Parvue,” Grandmother Taal snapped. Twenty-six, or forty-four. “Twist.” Her third ten, in Blades. “Vue.”

“What have you got?”

“Full house, tens and twos.” She spread them slowly.

“Ah,” said Cyrene the gambler. He turned up his hand. “Four eights.”

Nine years fell on Grandmother Taal. She gave a small cry as bones sagged, tendons tautened, muscles withered, senses coarsened, aches and complaints flocked in. Looking at Cyrene—with difficulty, a cataract now clouded her right eye—he was as she had first seen him; more so, she thought, with an added gleam in his one eye and a new wave in his sleek hair. He held up the deck.

The gambler’s dilemma. To take the loss, or play for it back. Easy to walk away with a whistle and a resolution when it is only money. Years of your life—years you can afford less than dollars—that is another thing. The problem with playing to get it back is that that is not enough. You play for more. You play for it all. Especially when the stakes are higher than you can afford, and no other game will offer them. I am trapped, Grandmother Taal thought, reaching to cut the cards. Trapped and fooled. Forty-four years, two of them by your own foolishness, and still you have not learned the smell of hustler.

The cards spun across the table and from that game on, Grandmother Taal could not win another hand. Cyrene bet small and sly, a year here, a half-year there, forcing her to fold on potentially strong cards because with every hand, she became less and less able to afford an ante war. And when she did call vue he always had the perfect play, as if that smile that deepened around the corners of his mouth did so because it knew how the cards would turn. There was a further handicap, with every year added to her, she became less and less able to play. She squinted at the patterns as Wasps melted into Blades, Bosses into Duennas, red into black. The rules kept slipping from her grasp, a full house beat what, and was beaten by what? Her fingers trembled as she tried to grip the flighty, silky treacherous things. Walnut knuckles ached. Yet play she must, ask for her draw in a voice she no longer recognised, turn over the cards one by one, lose another year in the hope of winning one back.

She had now lost all sense of how old she was. Flickering motes flocked at the edges of her field of vision. The observation car became filled with a cloying smell like rotting maté and unwashed bodies. Grandmother Taal knew they were the smells and shapes of death. This was how this smiling youth, firm cheeked and full-lipped, intended it to end. This, she suspected, was how he made his way across the world, swallowing lives, a year-vampire feeding on the elderly who, because they could not afford his stakes, craved them all the more.

“No,” she mumbled, mouth filled with the yellow stumps of rotted teeth. “This is not how it ends.”

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” Cyrene shuffled the deck with his quick and nimble gloved fingers. He dealt another round. “I say, shall we play for the big one? Enough of this prettying around. A decade rich enough for you? No? How about two?”

As the gambler dealt the cards, Grandmother Taal’s attention became fixed more and more closely on Cyrene’s eye-patch. Her sense for brown itchily insisted it concealed more than empty socket. If he could see the turn of the cards before they fell, this, her magic said, was where his power was centred. But a crumbling old woman could not hope to wrestle with a man in a stolen prime. But there were other ways. Ways perilous to a crumbling old woman, but worse not to attempt. She wedged her cards into the claw of her hand. Three Hieros.

“Two,” she said. Cyrene smiled, and so did not observe Grandmother Taal slip the pin out of her hair. “Twist.”

Spice of Wasps. Cyrene twisted a Boss of Blades.

“Hm. The Strife Card,” he said, and so did not see Grandmother Taal begin to scratch the word eye into the back of her hand with the hairpin.

“Twist,” she gritted. Curse of the Panarch on her hand, stop shaking! Stop shaking. The Hieros of Hands slid across the Formica. Four of a kind. Keep going. Keep going.

“And for myself,” Cyrene said.

“Stop!” Grandmother Taal commanded. She held up her maimed hand. A bloody eye confronted the blind brown leather patch. Powers boiled between them. Grandmother Taal’s hand shook. She could not hold it up any longer, it was heavy as pig iron, painful as rheumatism, her power was ended. Leather creaked. The eye-patch bulged. Cyrene’s hands flew to keep it down but the strap snapped. The patch catapulted across the carriage. Cyrene let out a wail. Crouched in his eyesocket was a tiny metal homunculus, some machine-demon thing. It turned chromium mandibles on Grandmother Taal and made to leap to safety. Too slow. There was spirit yet in the ancient woman. Quick as thought, she rammed the silver maté straw into Cyrene’s possessed eye-socket, straight through the belly of the demon-thing. Impaled, it crashed to the table, wailing like band-sawn tin. It staggered between the cards, clutching ineffectually at the impaling spear. It tripped over the stainless steel table trim and fell to the floor. Grandmother Taal’s high-heeled boot lifted once and came down with a metallic crunch. She turned to face Cyrene, fumbling at his blind eye.

“You have blinded me!” he screeched. “You terrible old woman!”

“And you have cheated me,” Grandmother Taal said. She laid down her hand. “Four Hieros. Now, shall we see what you have?” She twisted the top card. A second Boss. Looking Cyrene in his single eye, she said, “Vue.”

She flicked over the face-down cards. They were blank. As she stared at them, Grandmother Taal saw the patterns of other cards flicker over them before settling into the six-eyed Boss of Wasps and the top-hatted Boss of Cash.

“You are a despicable creature,” Grandmother Taal said, feeling all her gambled years rush back into her. Infirmities slid from her like cast-off clothes. She felt herself growing, back beyond what she had been, five, ten, fifteen. She was Amma no longer, she was a vigorous, spry woman of twenty-seven. “And no gentleman!” Cyrene slumped back in his seat as the stolen years fell on him like a landslide. He withered. He aged. His body sagged, wrinkles grew up him like strangling vines. His hair greyed and vanished, his mustachios drooped impotently. The hand clutching the silver-tipped cane shrivelled into a claw. He dwindled inside his crushed velvet clothes.

He reached for his deck, his strength, his hope. Grandmother Taal scooped them out from under his grasp.

“No more!” she said. She stood up, opened the window and threw the cards out. They fluttered and spun in the slipstream; amshastrias and blankness.

“No!” Cyrene Ree cried and the cry became a thin, wheedling wail as, before Grandmother Taal’s eyes, all the years that the gambler had stolen over his centuries of existence were returned. In a breath he crumbled, man to eyeless mummy to ragged skeleton to a pile of soil and humus. An empty suit of tailored clothes hung on the leatherette club chair. Brown dirt spilled from the sleeves, frilled collar and boot-tops. Grandmother Taal grimaced in distaste, rang the attendant bell to summon the impolite Stuard boy to tidy up the mess, moved to an empty seat and hunted a compact out of her bottomless bag to greet a face she had not seen in decades.