The Song of Phaid the Gambler

by Mick Farren

  Phaid glanced towards the boohoom.

  'You better get out of here.'

  The boohoom hesitated, looking confused. Phaid flip­ped him a single tab. The boohoom deftly caught it and thrust a news-sheet eagerly at Phaid. Phaid quickly took it.

  'Okay sure, now get, lose yourself.'

  The boohoom suddenly got the message and scurried away. The dog was close on his heels. Phaid slowly shook his head and moved towards the card table. He glanced down at the news-sheet. The pictures were blurry and the stories ranged between fanciful and wildly inaccurate. What passed for news in these provincial towns was rumour, gossip and tall tales that came in with the boats and caravans. Phaid crumpled the sheet and dropped it on the floor. The two boatmen were still playing their plodding, tab at a time game. Phaid smiled at the waitress.

  'I'll take over now, go get yourself a drink.'

  She smiled her thanks and got up. Phaid slipped briskly into the dealer's chair and pulled back his cuffs.

  'Okay, gentlemen, shall we put a bit of life into this enterprise?'

  No matter how Phaid tried, the night remained deter­minedly dead. A few drunks tried their luck, but after the first time they lost, they seemed to get frightened off. There was even a point when Phaid found himself sitting without any customers at all, just riffling through a cold deck at a vacant table. There were few more humiliating situations for a professional gambler.

  Just as Phaid had almost come to the conclusion that the night was over and that it was high time to shut down the game, another well oiled crowd of river people stumbled into the place and insisted on chancing their luck.

  They weren't carrying any heavy money, but what they did have they threw on to the table with blind drunken abandon. All Phaid had to do was deal the cards and pick up the money. Phaid's spirits definitely lifted. A few more sessions like this and he'd be able to shake the dust of Freeport off his boots.

  After an hour of these steady pickings, Phaid was in a positively benign mood. He accepted drinks from the players and even started exchanging wisecracks with them. It was then that he saw the dog.

  There was no mistaking that it was Ucko the boohoom's companion, and that it also wanted something important. It made its way determinedly through the legs of the revellers. Phaid was mildly suprised when he realised that the dog was making straight for the gambling table. He couldn't for the life of him imagine what the animal might possibly want.

  The dog positioned itself beside Phaid's chair and butted his leg with its head. One of the boatmen laughed.

  'Looks like the dog wants to buy into the game, gambling man.' Phaid peered down at the dog. 'It sure as hell wants something.'

  'Deal it a hand, gambler, or are you afraid of the competition?'

  The dog butted Phaid again. It seemed to be more than a little put out by the laughter. There was a certain urgency about its manner that made Phaid pay attention. He leaned down and spoke to the dog in a low voice. 'You want something with me?'

  The dog butted him again and wagged its tail. Phaid tried to concentrate. Dogs communicated well with boohooms, but didn't do so well with the majority of humans. Cats did better, but then again cats couldn't be trusted to tell the truth. Phaid locked eyes with the animal, but found that all he could get were jumbled, fleeting impressions. The predominant image was one of dim, uniformed shapes moving in the darkness. 'The watch?'

  The dog eagerly wagged its tail. 'What about the watch?' The dog pointed its nose towards the door, but before Phaid could question it again, the river men started to get restless.

  'Hey, what's with the dog? Let's play some cards, huh? Deal up, will you?'

  Phaid waved a hand for them to shut up.

  'What about the watch?'

  Again the dog pointed towards the door.

  'They're outside?'

  The dog wagged its tail once more. The boatmen started getting rowdy again and once more Phaid did his best to silence them.

  'Are you trying to tell us that the watch are about to come in here?'

  The dog's tail doubled speed.

  'A raid?'

  The dog exuded a strange mixture of ecstasy and agitation. Phaid dropped the cards on to the table.

  This time the dog had not only communicated the fleeting image of uniformed watch moving through the darkness, but Phaid could have sworn that he saw a flash of Henk the Rat lurking among them.

  The boatmen looked at him suspiciously.

  'What are you trying to pull?'

  'The dog told me that the watch were set to pull a raid on this place and I for one ain't hanging around for that to happen.'

  It was painfully obvious that nobody round the table believed him.

  'The dog told you that the watch is about to raid the place?'

  Phaid nodded nervously.

  'That's right, and if we know what's good for us we'll get the hell out of here.'

  The nearest boatman's eyes narrowed.

  'You got our cash and now you're looking to run out.'

  The boatman's hand started edging to the curved knife in his belt. Phaid sighed. It was happening again. Nobody in these boondock towns seemed capable of losing gracefully. All round the table faces turned ugly.

  'I think you'd better sit right down and keep on dealing.'

  Phaid was starting to get desperate.

  'I don't need no trouble with the watch.'

  'You don't need no trouble with us, either.'

  While the argument was going on, the oldest boatman had been exchanging glances with the dog. Suddenly he looked up.

  'Hold it, I think maybe the gambling man may be telling the truth. I'm getting something to do with the watch off this mutt.'

  'Ah, come on, it's a shuck.'

  'I dunno. Dogs don't lie.'

  'We're being conned.'

  'If the watch are going to come bursting in here, I wanna be someplace else.'

  Phaid sat very still while the boatmen argued. He knew that all his plans were riding on the whim of a bunch of drunks and he didn't like it. If he just got up and walked away, he'd probably get a knife in the back. On the other hand, if the watch came bursting in he'd also be in trouble. If the watch didn't find an excuse to throw him in the lock-ups, they'd certainly take all his money. His only other alternative was to pull his tube on the boatmen and threaten his way out. That seemed the dumbest of all his options. Thus Phaid sat, quiet, tense and very unhappy.

  Suddenly, as things seemed deadlocked, the oldest boatman stood up.

  'I'm going. I lost some money, but I sure ain't risking a run in with the watch. I believe the dog. I'm a-going. Who's coming?'

  It seemed like Phaid's last chance to make a move. He got to his feet and pointed to a small pile of tabs that lay in the middle of the table.

  'Why don't you divide that up between you and let's get gone.'

  The boatmen didn't hesitate for too long. They started grabbing for the cash. Phaid walked quickly away, head­ing for the stairs without a backward glance. He had to get up to the small room where he lodged and dig out his leather bag from its hiding place. The bag did, after all, contain all his worldly wealth and without it he'd be screwed.

  Phaid took the stairs two at a time, let himself into his cramped little chamber and immediately dived under the bed, groping among the dust and spiders for the bag. He was still on his knees when commotion broke out in the bar below. At first it was just the crashing of heavy boots and a lot of shouting and screaming. Then there was the more sinister roar of a blaster and crackle of a fuse tube. The watch had obviously broken in and some of the customers weren't prepared to go quietly. Making an exit via the barroom was strictly out of the question.

  He went straight to the single small window. The catch stuck at first, but a quick blow with the butt of his fuse tube freed it. Phaid swung open the window. To his relief there was a sloping roof just half the height of a man below the window. Getting out wouldn't be all that easy, however. The only way to man
age it was a wriggle through the small space head first. It wasn't a trick he relished, but with the sound of heavy boots already resounding on the stairs, Phaid knew that he had no alternative.

  There was some moment when he thought he had stuck fast halfway through, but violent struggling finally freed him and he tumbled out on to the roof below. Phaid's troubles were far from over. He found that he was rolling, sliding, trying frantically to both hold on to his bag and stop himself sailing clear off the end of the roof and making the bone breaking drop to the street.

  Phaid only just halted his descent by a hair's-breadth. Once he'd convinced himself that he was all in one piece, he crawled to the front of the building. Three ground cars and a flipper were lined up in the alley outside The Rising Sun. People were being led out, some going quietly, others struggling. A small group knelt around a prone figure on the dirty sidewalk. There had been at least one casualty in the raid.

  Small clusters of officers who seemed to have nothing left to do had gathered around the cars. From their attitudes and postures, it was clear that they were busily congratulating each other for being such fine fellows. The Rising Sun had apparently been put out of business with some style.

  Phaid had no more time to stand around and stare. First priority had to be to get out of town. He didn't have as much money as he would have liked, but he did have the minimum necessary to buy a passage out of Freeport. All he needed to do was lose himself in the night, and then, in the morning, get across town to the field where the big crawlers turned around. He also had to get off the roof.

  Looking around, Phaid discovered that it might not be all that simple. It was a long drop to the street, and quite a formidable leap to the next building. Phaid wasn't exactly delirious with joy about the prospect of jumping from rooftop to rooftop, but there was no other alternative. There wasn't even any way he could put it off. With a sinking feeling, he backed up, got a firm grip on his bag, shut his eyes and ran. To his surprise, he landed, safe if sprawling, on the next rooftop.

  Deciding that he still must have a little luck left. Phaid hurried on. He didn't want some nervous householder to mistake him for a burglar and loose a blaster on him. It took him four more buildings until he found a set of stairs that would take him down to the street.

  The raid on The Rising Sun had made quite an effect on the nearby streets. The loafers and strollers had suddenly decided that they had important business elsewhere. Even the whores had vacated the usual posts under the sidewalk glo-bars and gone indoors.

  Phaid slipped in and out of the silent shadows. He'd expected crowded streets to give him a sense of comfort­able anonymity. With all the crowds melted away, he felt exposed and vulnerable.

  He'd hardly been walking for more than ten minutes when he turned a corner and walked slap into two officers on foot patrol. Both Phaid and the officers stopped. For a long moment they stared at each other. His first instinct told Phaid to stand his ground and attempt to bluff it out. Then a second, much stronger one started urging him to run. While he was still trying to make up his mind, one of the officers raised his weapon.

  'Hold up, you!'

  Phaid listened to the second instinct and ran. There was a flash and roar and the discharge from a blaster seared the wall beside his head. Phaid swung into an alley and pounded down it. While one officer had been shooting at him, the other had whipped out a communicator and started bellowing into it. It would only be a matter of time before reinforcements were on the scene. Phaid knew that he was in big trouble.

  The alley led out into a wider street. Two more discharges flared around Phaid's heels. His breath was coming in laboured gasps, and, as far as he could tell, the two officers were gaining on him. He knew he had to do something drastic. Reluctantly, he pulled out his fuse tube. Dropping the bag, he turned and, using both hands, took careful aim at the ground just in front of his pursuers. He fired three fast shots and the cobbles of the street burned and smoked. The two officers staggered back, temporarily blind from the flash. By the time they could see again, Phaid had vanished down a side street.

  He was by no means out of the woods, though. He might have temporarily shaken off the two officers on foot, but now he had another problem. A watch flipper was coming from the direction of the waterfront. Cruising just above rooftop level, it seemed to be searching the streets one by one. A sun globe in the underside of the craft lit up the ground beneath it as brightly as day.

  The light hit the end of the street that Phaid was in. He looked around desperately. There was no place to run. The best he could do was to press himself into a doorway, but even that was too shallow to give him complete protection from the probing light.

  He was certain he was going to be caught when the door behind him suddenly opened. He would have fallen backwards if a rough hand hadn't grabbed his arm. For a second or more he was completely overtaken by confusion and panic. He was being pulled inside a dark building, a voice grunted at him and he found himself staring into the hairy face of a boohoom. The face smiled.

  'Come. You come.'

  Phaid gave up. The door was swiftly shut behind him. Totally bemused, he let himself be led into the darkness.

  Chapter 5

  Even after a jangled, joyless night in the lair of the boohooms', Phaid couldn't help but be awed be the sheer size of the land crawler. Taller than a five-storey building, its flat, windowless sides were more like cliffs of corroded steel and ceramic than part of a vehicle that actually moved. The dull black heat exchangers along the upper part of the machine that provided most of its power, once it was into the searing heat of the hot wind plains, were like the squat turrets of some sinister castle. The massive caterpillar tracks, wider than many of the streets of Freeport, dwarfed the fuelling gangs that were busily pumping thousands of atmospheres into the crawler's converter tanks through thick, snaking pipes that gleamed with hoar frost from the super-cooled fuel.

  The crawler was a dull, burnt, rusty red. No livery or decoration could survive the white hot winds. The whole of its body work was scarred and pitted by the smoulder­ing rocks and burning sand that were driven like hail in the blaze of the gale.

  For a long while Phaid could do nothing except stand and stare. It scarcely seemed possible to him that such an enormous object could be energised into lumbering, swaying life. Of course, he'd seen land crawlers before. He'd ridden more than he really cared to remember. If he'd been on top of things, he would have marched briskly into the depot, paid the static android who issued tickets and headed for the passenger ramp. As it was, he felt too .numb and exhausted to do anything but gawp.

  The previous night in what had been the bowels of the town had been an education. He had never realised the number of boohooms that could live unnoticed in a small town like Freeport, or the extent of the underground world in which they dwelt.

  After his sudden and seemingly impossible rescue from the watch, he had been led down winding steps, cobweb­bed cellars, even more steps and dim passages until he was finally in the catacomb made up by the town's heating ducts, sewers, storm drains and long forgotten tunnels that must have been built as adjuncts to Harald the Mad's fortifications. He seemed to have walked miles until he reached the straw-filled niche that Ucko and his dog called home.

  All along the way he passed dozens of boohooms. Some rested after a long day of cleaning, carrying and perform­ing all the menial tasks for which there were no available and conveniently programmed androids. Others sat in small groups, apparently talking out the night in a labo­rious series of grunts and ill formed words. Still more, who from their matted pelts and deathly pallor seemed to stay permanently in the darkness of the underground maze, either sat and stared, contemplating some dull, non-human nirvana or scavenged, for what, Phaid didn't care to think about.

  Many of the boohooms, like Ucko, were accompanied by animal companions. Some of these were surface crea­tures, dogs, birds or monkeys. Others petted pale repti­lian things from the sewers and tunnels. He had
even witnessed two boohooms making love, a spectacle that caused him to quicken his pace, even though Ucko seemed inclined to linger and watch.

  Once in Ucko's nest, Phaid had managed only the smallest amount of shallow, disturbed sleep. Things con­stantly scurried and rustled. Somewhere nearby water dripped with a nerve-racking monotony. Ucko snored loudly and even the dog whimpered as it dreamt.

  In the early morning, although Phaid couldn't fathom how the boohoom knew it was morning in that sunless, underground world, Ucko led him back out of the laby­rinth and set him on his way to the field where the crawlers turned around.

  With his head down, and one eye open for the watch, Phaid chose a route that took him through the most crowded of the town's streets. Almost to his surprise he reached the field without a single incident.

  Phaid finally realised that he'd been standing gawping at the crawler like some rustic fresh in from the hills and made an effort to pull himself together. Still on the alert for the watch, he went inside the small, single-storey depot building.

  There was only one crawler going out that day, and after questioning an information android, he found that if he booked steerage for a place called Wad-Hasa Wells, he had his fare and just a little to spare. He reluctantly paid over most of his hard earned cash, took a ticket, and moved towards the boarding ramp.

  Steerage passengers were expected to use a separate ramp to the superior beings who could afford first-class or second-class fares. On the first-class ramp a group of merchants and a fop, in a lime green outfit with exagger­atedly wide shoulders, nagged the android porters about their luggage or watched with bored smiles as the lesser mortals had to carry their own bags on to the crawler.

  Steerage accommodation was notably low on comfort. The section was right at the top of the machine where the swaying was worst, and, once they reached the hot plains, the refrigeration units would be hard pressed to maintain any kind of tolerable temperature.

  Phaid found that he'd been assigned a miniscule cabin, little more than a cubicle. There was a tiny closet, a two-tier bunk and just about enough floor space to climb in and out of it. He didn't like the idea of the double bunk. It could mean he'd be sharing the cabin with another passenger. He fervently hoped that the crawler had been underbooked. Two people in this small enclosed space would make the journey unnecessarily wretched when they moved into the heat.