Free States

6. Ml BUENA SUERTE

THE SALOON WAS on the lower floor, a big, bright room full of old-fashioned wooden Kenya-lamps and carved candelabra. On the other side of the archway, in relative gloom, five people were absorbed in a complex game of Hunt the Moth, their eyes golden with concentration as they fanned their acoustic hands with practised pseudo-electronic signals, listening intensely to the subsonics.

(In times like these, when hope fades and our expectations of reality become uncertain, people develop a keen interest in an afterlife, she said. She sang to him in a language he did not know. He begged her to translate. “We are trapped in the glare of their headlights,” she said.)

Elsewhere in the saloon men and women in couples or groups sat together drinking and talking, but it was clear that pains were taken not to disturb the five gamblers as they strove to simulate the serial-linking, the empathetic convolutions, the exquisite arabesques of the powered original.

Looking again at the jugaderos, Sam Oakenhurst knew at once who was the real master of The Whole Hog. Fat body pulsing, he or she sat facing the room. The head, to one side, was hidden by a queerly shaped mask and old dust seemed to fall from its folds. The pale eyes glittered like over-polished diamonds. The top of the creature’s head was scarred and pitted, as if by fire, and a few tufts of grey-black hair sprouted here and there, while a little multicoloured bead curtain, some bizarre chadurrah, hung from the bottom edge of its mask, obscuring the jaw. The only flesh visible was the ruined crown and a pair of large, white hands which also bore the grey scars of fire and sat poised on their tips like obscene tarantulas, pale with menace.

The masked figure was, on its right, flanked by a light-skinned, but otherwise handsome, half-caste woman with greased black ringlets and hard Irish eyes. Her name was Sister Honesty Marvell. She was persona non grata at the Terminal, for taking out an amateur in a massive psychic gambit which even broke the high limits Boudreaux Ramsadeen set for the professionals. When he had made her go for good she had sworn she would return and the second Boudreaux saw her would be the second he died.

(En la playa, amigo, replied Amos Gallibasta when Sam Oakenhurst found him again and asked how he was. The thin giant had grinned, death’s triumph, and snapped his huge fingers. En la playa terminante, eh? Joli blanc! Joli blanc! He had no similar desire to return to New Orleans. The very breathing of the word “machinoix” sent him into uncontrollable fits of vomiting.)

Next to Sister Honesty sat Carly O’Dowd. Mr Oakenhurst also knew her. Mrs O’Dowd sported a man’s suit in the Andalusian style and as always bore an air of disdainful self-sufficiency. Her Moorish good looks reminded Mr Oakenhurst of some legendary toreador. He tipped his hat when she looked up but she could not see beyond her strategies. The two players at the other side of the enmascaro were people Sam Oakenhurst recognized. He could name only one. Popper Hendricks, sagging with the weight of a thousand indulgences, had once been a famous zeestar in the days when touring was still possible, when the population was considerably larger, and when records were still being made. Fifty percent at least of the white minority had fled north or west after the Fault’s effects began to be felt. Even many middle-class people had preferred to go west into the Frees to take their chances on equal terms with the whites, but mostly got caught by the quakes. Hendricks had the sybaritic, bloated look of a heavy oper. The other man, with his huge square head, had the features of an Aztec god. Even his body seemed made of granite. He moved now, slowly. It was as if ten years went by. Mr Oakenhurst found the Indian disturbing but the masked man at the centre of the game horrified him.

In shape the mask resembled a map of the old US. Each State, cut out of an alumite can, had been soldered to the next. Washington bore the distinctive logo of Folger’s Coffee, Texas offered RC Cola and Pennsylvania advertised EXXON oil. From the patchwork of pseudo-metal were suspended the heavy beads, veiling a suggestion of red, wet lips, skin as burned and scarred as the hands and skull.

Mr Oakenhurst turned his back on the table to order a Jax from the bartender, a round-faced whitey who proved unduly surly. To be civil, Sam Oakenhurst asked, ‘What’s your name, boy?’

‘Burt,’ said the whitey curtly. ‘You want another beer, mister?’

Mr Oakenhurst kept his own council. After all, he could soon be facing much more of this behaviour in the Free States and he had best get used to it. He intended to relax. For the first time since he had left the Terminal he no longer depended upon his own will. Whatever problems he found upon the raft, he thought, must seem minor. He was glad there were no power weapons permitted, though he missed the comfort of his Nissan.

From the shadows in the back of the big room came a sudden wheeze, a whine, and an accordion began to play Pierrot, Pierrot, le monde estfou. Some of the passengers swayed to the old tune, singing the poet Armangal’s sad, ironic words. Le monde estfou, my carazon d’or. Le monde estfou, el mundo c’est moi!

A voice from the table, soft and threatening, said ‘Play something else, dear.’

The tune changed almost instantly to Two-Step de Bayou Teche and a few of the couples got up to dance.

The masked man returned his attention to the game.