Free States

15. TWO STEP DELLA TEXAS

AFTER THEY HAD traded the Ryman’s and two samsonites for ponies at the Flooding Whisper horse ranch just west of San Augustine they made better progress into Golden Birches, where pale light shuddered and huge crows flapped amongst the black lattice of the distant treetops. They arrived in Lufkin to discover that the Pennsylvania Rooms were still run by Major Moyra Malu, the shade of an elegant old swashbuckler who had fought with K’Ond’aa Taylor at Pampam Ridge and had carried the flag to victory for Charles Deslondes in ‘07.

At Paul Minct’s suggestion she was to be their fourth, but not before another week’s gaming had all parties apparently satisfied. Then they took Major Moyra’s good Arabs and headed through the milk tides down to Livingston where Paul Minct sought out Herb Frazee. The ex-president of the Republic was giving demonstration hands of Cold Annie and telling Tarot to what was left of Livingston’s polite society. He refused Mr Minct’s invitation but suggested they look up Mrs Sally Guand’ in Houston.

The road to Houston took them through Silver Pines. The strange, frozen forest was cold as death nowadays, said Paul Minct, but once there had been fires burning on every mound. They came out into foothills above a summer valley. ‘There’s Houston.’ Paul Minct pointed. The huge city had recently melted and reformed into a baroque version of itself. Its highways made arabesques, glorious in the sunlight. Yet even here the uneasy terrain threatened to vaporize, become something else, and Sam Oakenhurst yearned for California where Pearl Peru, he had read, was a living celebrity.

They passed under Houston’s organic freeways. The Rose wanted to stay for a few days. The others insisted they find Sally Guand’ and press on to Galveston. But when Major Moyra Malu led them to Sally Guand’s old offices above the Union Station, the buildings were melted shells and the rails had twisted themselves into one vast, elongated abstract sculpture disappearing in the direction of Los Angeles. Here, as everywhere, black and white lived as best they could, equals amongst the ruins, and miscegeny was not uncommon.

They lost the road some twenty kays from Houston, used up their provisions and were forced to shoot a horse before they got on another trace full of abandoned buses and pickup trucks, which took them across to Old Galveston to find Jasmine Shah, who had been operating a bar on the harbourfront until the local vigilantes busted her huge cache of piles noires. Her dark locks hiding a long, vulpine face, she was ready, she said, to do almost anything, yet she would only come in with them after she had whispered strict conditions to each one in private. She revealed that she, like Major Moyra, was now a shade.

Paul Minct had hesitated after she spoke to him, but then he nodded agreement.

The streets of Galveston were full of whiteys who had failed to fulfil the ambitions they had conceived in Mississippi and Alabama and were now desperately trying to get back to New Orleans, but could not afford any kind of fare. Black travellers were beset by scores of them whining for help.

Sam Oakenhurst was glad when they got aboard the first schoomer available and sailed out into the peaceful waters of the Gulf. He and the Rose now had a better measure of the situation and yet he no longer had faith in his own good judgement. The thought of New Orleans was already beginning to obsess him.

The Rose begged him to rally. ‘It seems Mr Minct does intend to sail into the Fault. Yet why would he insist on your finding us a meat boat?’ (Paul Minct had commissioned Sam Oakenhurst to approach the machinoix.) ‘Does he want us alive when he goes in?’ Both agreed that Paul Minct had needed more partners only after Swift Thom had stirred some memory. ‘How does he plan to kill us?’ Sam wondered. ‘Perhaps he will not kill me until he has made sure of you, Rose. And you are necessary to him, I think. He knows you can help him.’

‘But you, too, are necessary if he is to get the meat boat. You heard him insist. It must only be a meat boat. Has anyone ever volunteered to sail on such a boat?’

‘It is forbidden,’ said Sam Oakenhurst. ‘He knows it is.’

‘Then he demands of you a complex betrayal. Is this how he would weaken us?’ The Rose began to brush her exquisite hair. ‘Who would you betray?’

‘Not you,’ he said. ‘Not myself. Nothing I value.’

‘Betray the machinoix and surely you betray yourself. You have explained all this to me. And in betraying yourself you must betray me. How will you resolve this? It is a problem worthy of Fearless Frank Force.’

She seemed to be mocking him.

‘A moral conundrum,’ she added.

There was a knock on their cabin door: A kiddikin bringing Mr Minct’s compliments and looking forward to the pleasure of their company in a game of Anvils and Pins.

‘I have earned your sarcasm, I know,’ Sam Oakenhurst said. ‘But I am still willing to learn from you. What will you teach me, Rose?’

‘You will learn that it is, space and time, always a question of scale.’ She touched his lips. ‘Meanwhile you must continue to risk your life. And you are sworn to serve me, are you not?’

‘On my honour,’ he said.

‘But in demanding your help I expose you to more than you ever expected,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you do not have the resources?’

‘I have them,’ he insisted.

‘You must draw upon your archetype.’ The Rose took his hand. Tonight her skin resembled fine, delicately shaded petals softly layered upon her sturdy frame. ‘I have lost my home and must destroy the man who robbed me of it. We are only barely related as species, you and I, but it is Time and Scale which separate us, Sam. In the ether we embrace metamorphosis. You and I, Sam, understand the dominating law of the multiverse. We are ruled by multiplying chance. But we need not be controlled by it. I knew Paul Minct in another guise. Now, I think, he clearly remembers me. He can always recall a weapon, that one, if not a woman. This pair, these shadows, are an afterthought. His interest in the Fault could be secondary now. First he must deal with us, for we threaten his existence. Perhaps he is afraid to let us reach the Fault with him, lest he be cheated of whatever it is he has schemed for? Believe me, Sam, Paul Minct will be giving us his full attention for the next few days. These others, they are scarcely real, merely 1st and 2nd Murderers.’