Free States

14. NO ME ENTIERRES EN LA PRADERA

THE FIRST TOWN they reached was Poker Flats, built in a wide yellow plain in what had been, Paul Minct told them, the old mustard-growing region. Her streets were full of whiteys and mixed couples and she was clearly a town given over almost entirely to license. Poker Flats announced herself as the Theater Capital of the Southwest and her main boardwalk was nothing but vivid marquees and billboards advertising simulatings, using living actors, of the great local V heroes, whose adventures Sam Oakenhurst had already skimmed at Lieutenant Twist’s. These were elaborate dramas concerning the love triangle of Pearl Peru, Bullybop and Fearless Frank Force, or the Quest for the Fishlings, featuring Professor Pop, Captain Billy Bob Begg and her Famous Chaos Engineers. Many of the protagonists were white. White barkers stood outside their booths and called to the newcomers. ‘So true you’d think it was V! Dallas Horizon.’ / ’It’s the net! Ontario Outer.’ / ‘Virtually V! Laramee Deadlock.’ / ‘Frank Force Face To Face! Ludoland.’ Their words were echoed overhead in the baroque calligraphy of the day. Power paint growled with all the brilliant vulgar bellicosity of the old circus towns. Poker Flats had been the first of the roving show cities to take permanent root. Such settlements were all over the Free States now, said Paul Minct, but the biggest were still Poker Flats and Porto Cristo.

Paul Minct insisted they visit the shows and understand the nature of these dramas. ‘Real or fictional, black or white, they represent a breed of our own kind that has successfully escaped the logic of the Fault, discovering new universes beyond our own. There, my dear friends, Chaos and Singularity perpetually war, are perpetually in balance. And sometimes one is no longer certain which is which. Philosophies become blurred and intermingled out there in the Second Ether. This was how I first learned that it was possible to move from one version of our universe to another and survive. We never die, my dear friends. We are, however, perpetually translated.’

What does he mean? asked Sam Oakenhurst.

He understands something of our condition, she told him, but not much of it. He is like those old South American conquistadori. All he can see of this secret is the power and wealth it will bring him. He is prepared to risk his life and soul for that.

Sam Oakenhurst grew fascinated with the legends portrayed on the stages. He talked about Pearl Peru, Corporal Pork, Little Rupoldo, Kapricom Schultz and others as if they were personally known to him. When the time came to leave Poker Flats, he bought several books of scenarios. As soon as they were back on the trail he studied them slowly, from morning to night, hoping to find clues to the versions of reality perceived both by Paul Minct and, in particular, Mrs von Bek. Perhaps the Fault was not the mouth of Hell, after all? Perhaps it was a gateway to Paradise?

Walking beside the Rose, he recounted the tale of Oxford under the Squad warlords. The alien renegades, furious at Oxford’s resistance to their philosophies, informed the citizens that unless they immediately fell to levelling their entire settlement, colleges, chapels and all, they (the Squads) would eat their first born and bugger their old folk. ‘And Oxford, Rose, went the way of St Petersburg and Washington, but not Cheltenham, which is still standing but which has lost its first born. And her old people rarely, these days, walk abroad. ‘ The Squads had come in their black deltoid aircraft. Thousands. ‘They told us they represented the Singularity and we were now their subject race. If we refused to serve them, they punished us until we accepted their mastery. They have conquered, they boast, half the known multiverse and are destined to conquer the rest. Fearless Frank Force is their greatest ace. But nobody knows or understands the loyalties of the Merchant Venturer, Pearl Peru, whom he loves to distraction. His love is not returned. Pearl’s passion is for Bullybop alone. And Bullybop is a thorn in the side of the Singularity. Nobody is sure of her secret identity. Honour demands that Frank Force issue no challenge to his rival, yet Bullybop is marked by the Singularity as an outlaw. Here now is the moral conundrum we must solve before we can proceed along a further branch. There is a road, after all, Rose. There are many roads. And crossroads. I can sense them. We can choose some which exist or we can create our own. But there’s a formula, I know, and I must learn it.’

‘This mania came over one of my men the first time we ever passed through Poker Flats.’ Paul Minct was cheerfully dismissive of the Rose’s fears. ‘They either recover or they don’t. In the end we had to shoot Peter Agoubi, poor chap. Lead on, Mrs von Bek. I’ll take care of Mr Oakenhurst.’

‘It will pass,’ she said. ‘He will regain control of himself soon, I am sure.’ For my sake, Sam, if not your own!

This demand brought him, within a reasonable period, back to his senses, but his lasting emotion was of loss, as if he had been close to the secret logic of the multiverse and able, like her, to navigate a purposeful course through those quasi-realities. He could not make himself throw away his scenarios. He buried them deep at the bottom of his knapsack.

‘It’s unflattering to have a V character for a rival,’ she pretended amusement. They had found some good beds in a ghost town about a hundred kays from San Augustine. She indulged her weariness, her poor temper. ‘What is the actuality of this Pearl Peru? She sailed by accident through the Cloud of Saffron and that made her a heroine?’

In any circumstances Sam Oakenhurst would have decided that it was impolitic to show admiration for a character with whom the Rose seemed to be on intimate terms and whom she disliked. Such experiences were not, he told himself, helping his sense of identity. Once he caught himself yearning for the familiarity of the machinoix shutterbox.

Those people were real, he knew. But what he had experienced as myth, she had experienced as history. He vowed that he must never lose her. He was prepared to change most of his life for her. His curiosity about her was as great as his love. Now, he thought, they are impossible to separate. Our shoots are interwound. Our luck is the same. We are of the Just... He had a moment’s understanding that he had given up his own madness in favour of hers. What had he accepted?

You are sworn to this, she reminded him. From now you must accept only what I determine as the truth. You will survive no other way. Any independent decision of yours could result in my death. You know this, Sam. You have dealt the hands. Now you must play the game, or we are both dead.

This is new to me, he said.

Play it anyway.