Free States

1. LLAMADA DE LAS LEJANAS COLINOS

‘YOU’RE LOOKING BETTER, Jack.’ Sam Oakenhurst has recovered from the machinoix torments. ‘Your old self.’

Jack Karaquazian deals seven hands of poker. His skin reflects a million cultures given up to the pit long before their time; his green eyes reveal a new kind of courtesy. Coolly amiable in his black silk and white linen, his raven hair hanging straight to his shoulders, his back set firmly against that howling triumph of Satan, he is content.

‘I’m feeling it, Sam,’ he says.

Mr Oakenhurst picks up his bags. All around him the outlines and shadows of the Terminal Café shift and caper while Boudreaux Ramsadeen practises a graceful figure with Fathima Panosh, the tiny dancer currently favoured by the Terminal’s regulars who come to hear real old-fashioned zee and witness the purity of the high games. Only at Biloxi, where the Fault yells and ululates, can enough colour be tapped to push new limits. And for those who lose too much, there is always the Fault itself, restless and demanding, greedy for energy and offering, perhaps, an ultimate wisdom.

‘On your way, Sam?’ Jack Karaquazian sits back from his game. His fellow players know him as Al-Q’areen. They are shades, men and women ready to risk everything to win nothing but the approval of their peers. They have the dedicated, ascetic appearance of a strict order. The Egyptian smiles, a kindly jackal.

‘On my way.’ Mr Oakenhurst sets his broad-brimmed pale Panama, dusts at his fine cord travelling coat, his buckskin riding boots, his blue cotton shirt and breeches. ‘So long.’

‘Nobody knows what’s going on up there now,’ says Boudreaux Ramsadeen from the dance floor, his brutish face clouded with concern. ‘They say it’s nothing but vapour up in the Frees. Turned all to steam, mon ami. You be better off staying here.’

Mr Oakenhurst lifts a hand to show appreciation. ‘Estrella errante, vieux pard. You know how it is.’

But Boudreaux Ramsadeen will never know how that is. He brought his Café on the train from Meridian to take advantage of the tourist trade. Now he and the Terminal are married to the Fault until the end of time.

(We are all echoes of some lost original, she would tell him. But we are not diminished by this knowledge. Rather, we are strengthened by it.)