Free States

2. SE ERES RAPIDO DISPARA

WHEN MR SAM Oakenhurst took off for the Free States he had it in mind to heal the memories and still the cravings of his last six seasons at the mercy of New Orleans’ infamous machinoix, whose final act of trust was to introduce him to the long, complex mutilation rituals they believed to be the guarantee of continuing existence in the afterlife.

Ending his stopover at the Terminal Café, where Jack Karaquazian still wagered the highest psychic stakes from what had become known as the Dead King’s Chair, his stoic back against the whirling patterns of Chaos ceaselessly forming and reforming, Mr Oakenhurst was at last able to ask his old friend how things went for him.

‘Not so bad now, Sam, pretty good.’

‘You’re looking better, Jack. Your old self.’

‘I’m feeling it, Sam.’ Jack Karaquazian’s fingers moved abstractedly around the dormant dimensions of a waiting flat game. The other players were unhappy with this interruption but unwilling to risk the Egyptian’s displeasure. He toyed with the dealing plates, himself anxious to begin the next hand. And his eyes looked upon so many simultaneous memories.

Before he walked to the door, Sam Oakenhurst said: ‘Come up there with me, Jack. They got some famous spots in Texas and New Mexico. They’re finding colour every day in California. Don’t you want to visit San Diego while she’s still burning? They say you can walk in and out of those flames and feel no heat at all. There’s people still living in the city, completely unhurt. That’s something to see, Jack.’

Mr Karaquazian wished his friend luck in the West but reckoned he had a game or two left to play at the Terminal. In answer to Sam Oakenhurst’s glare of honest surprise, he recalled the old intimacy of their friendship and said, in words only Mr Oakenhurst heard, ‘I can’t go yet.’ He was not ready to speak of his reasons but if his friend were to ride by again at a later time he promised he would tell what happened after they had parted in the Quarter, when the Egyptian had gone upriver on the Memphis boat.

Mr Oakenhurst tipped his hat to his friend and went to collect his horse from Boudreaux’s makeshift stables.

(Have you heard of the conspiracy of the Just? she would ask. Once the likes of us becomes aware of this conspiracy, we are part of it. There’s no choice in the matter. We are, after all, what we are. And you and I, Sam, are of the Just. You don’t have to like it.)

In common with most who chanced their luck at the gambling trade, Sam Oakenhurst had left his will with the Terminal’s neanderthal proprietor. He took the one good horse he had ridden in on, the sound of Boudreaux’s zeeband still marking the rhythm of his actions.

He was almost in the ruins of Picayune before the tunes had left his head. On his way up, he had seen two corpses, a man’s and a woman’s, half buried in the shallows of the beach; behind them was the distant wall of the Biloxi Fault, howling and groaning and never still.

Picayune was the closest Mr Oakenhurst would let himself get to New Orleans. He had no fear of machinoix enmity. They regarded him as one of their own. But he had found a dark new greed in himself which tempted him back to their stronghold.

Mr Oakenhurst did not feel in any way free of the hunger until he entered the twilight fern forests beyond Nouveaux Iberie. His horse followed a broad, dry road, well-marked and patrolled by the local security committees who guaranteed the safety of all who lived there, or passed through peacefully, and swift death to any aggressor.

Sam Oakenhurst’s plan was to take the road right up past Sulphur. He stopped for the night at a lodging house just above Lake Charles where he was met by the landlord, a veteran of the First Psychic War, his skin scaled with pale unstable colour. Lieutenant Twist said that the road now ran up to De Quincey, beside the Texas Waters, a recent series of connected lochs populated by islands stretching almost as far as Houston and nearly up to Dallas. There were a few paddle-wheelers carrying passengers through the lakes but they were infrequent and unscheduled. Mr Oakenhurst was advised to return to New Orleans and buy a ticket on a coastal schoomer to Corpus Cristi. ‘There’s a weekly run. Calmest and safest waters in the world now. They say all the ocean around the Fault’s like that.’

Mr Oakenhurst said he had decided to take his chances. ‘In that case,’ said Lieutenant Twist, ‘you would be better trying for De Quincey and hope a boat or a colour-rider come in soon.’ He shook his head in admiration of what he understood to be Mr Oakenhurst’s bravery. ‘Somebody help me get out of Louisiana, help me get to Houston town!’ Whistling, he led Sam Oakenhurst to the choice individual accommodation behind the old main building.

Making himself presentable Mr Oakenhurst went, after half-an-hour, to join an acoustic game in a corner of the hotel’s bar, but after a few minutes he grew bored and deliberately let the other players win back most of their stakes, keeping five piles noires as payment for his time. On his way to his cabin he saw a movement high up where the fronds were thinnest and the moonlight was turned to pale jade, some sort of owl. Its eyes were huge and full of hope.

Sam Oakenhurst’s chamber was clean, well kept, though the furniture was old and the bedding darned. A useless V-cabinet stood in the comer. Converted to hold magazines, it dispensed them in return for a few pennies. The magazines were hand-coloured, crudely stencilled versions of old-time V programmes. Mr Oakenhurst put in the coins and the screen opened to offer him a selection.

They were chiefly magazines detailing the escapades of various unfamiliar heroes and heroines - The Merchant Venturer, Pearl Peru - Captain Billy Bob Begg’s Famous Chaos Engineers - Karl Kapital - Professor Pop - Fearless Frank Force - Bullybop - Corporal Pork - violently coloured attempts to reproduce the interactive video melodramas some addicts still enjoyed at the Terminal Café. All the characters seemed engaged in perpetual war between Plurality and Singularity for the domination of a territory (possibly philosophical) called the Second Ether. These unlikely events were represented as fact. The gambler, finding their enigmatic vocabularies and queer storylines too cryptic, replaced them in the dispenser, blew out his lamp and slept, dreaming a familiar dream.

(He had talked to Jack Karaquazian when they were still in New Orleans. He had asked his friend if he would care if he spoke of something that was on his mind.

“Not at all,” the Egyptian had said.

I had this dream, said Sam Oakenhurst. I was standing on this cliff with a pack of dogs and killer blankeys at my back and nothing but rocks and ocean far below and nowhere to go but down when suddenly out of the blue this golden limo pulls up in the air right where I’m standing on the edge and the driver’s eye-balling me. She’s a beautiful woman, real elegant, and she says “Hop in, Sam. Where do you want to go?”

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Any place you like,” she says.

“Well,” I say, “I guess in that case I’ll stick here and take my chances.”

“Please yourself,” she says and she’s ready to start up when I say “Hey, what’s your name, lady?”

“Luck,” she says, puts the car in gear and vanishes. I turn around and the dogs and the men are gone. What do you make of that, Jack?

“Well,” said Jack Karaquazian after some considerable thought, “I guess it means that luck is luck. That’s all.”

“I guess so,” said Mr Oakenhurst. “Well, goodnight, Jack.”

Next morning they played a game of Joli Jean before breakfast and talked about going up to the Frees.)

He had the dream again, exactly as before, but this time he stepped into the limo.

(Jack Karaquazian kept a room above the main casino of the Terminal Café. You could feel the zee coming up through the floor. The room was filled with shadows and flames, ragged holes of verdigris and kidney. “It’s home,” he had said.)