The Song of Phaid the Gambler

by Mick Farren

  Shako's expression was flinty and dangerous.

  'You don't have any rather. You two work together or you stay here and see what the Deemer wants to do with you.' Shako shot Phaid a final contemptuous glance. 'I'll tell you one thing, by the time you reach Chasabad, those dainty hands of yours will be worked raw.' He grinned at Makartur. 'Take him and show him what he's got in store.'

  Phaid quickly discovered that what he had in store was a combination of bouncing, muscle wrenching, bone jarring physical work and mind crushing boredom. All those times that he'd sat in a fancy restaurant, spending his winnings, chewing his way through a prime steak with all the trimmings, he'd never given a thought as to what was involved in bringing the meat to the table. The drovers' machine was the first shock. As it floated a metre or so above the ground, it rode so hard that it was little short of an instrument of torture. When he'd told Makartur he could drive a flipper, he'd had the regular city model in his mind, a low streamlined machine with colourful body­work, a plexiglass bubble to keep the weather out and even an android handler to take over the guidance system when the human occupants had something more interest­ing to do.

  The drovers' machines were something else again. Dome and body panels had gone. The drover rode on a narrow saddle in front of a centre-mounted set of controls. The lanceman behind him didn't get a seat at all. He perched on a small platform, held in place by a system of webbing straps.

  The drovers' flippers were so reduced to basics that even the usual auxiliary power pack had gone. With only a sun catcher supplying energy to the drive, it meant that they were effectively grounded during the hours of darkness.

  Once Phaid had familiarised himself with the handling of the skeletal machine, he found that the routine of the drover was fairly straightforward. Each morning the herd was goaded into motion with shocks from the drovers' lances. Once they were on the move, it was relatively easy to keep the animals on the course set by the drive boss. All it needed was a certain degree of prodding by drovers cruising slowly beside the herd at about a metre from the ground.

  Phaid and Makartur were running in what was known as the drag. This meant riding at the rear of the herd, picking up stragglers and goading them back to the main pack. It also meant that they were constantly being choked and partially blinded by the thick dust cloud kicked up by the hundreds of veebes. Riding the drag was the lowest position in the drovers' pecking order and, as new arriv­als, Phaid and Makartur were stuck with it.

  With no option but to make the best of their lot, the two men had gone to work. Phaid showed a good deal more reluctance than his companion, but even he mastered the basic technique of pulling the flipper up to a height of seven or eight metres and dropping swiftly from behind at a straying beast so Makartur, working as lanceman, could get in a series of swift jabs. The majority of times this would send the animal galloping back to the main herd bellowing loudly.

  Occasionally a particularly aggressive creature would turn on the flipper. A big, shaggy bull veebe was powerful enough to tilt a flipper in such a way that it would spiral out of control and somersault on to the ground. The single knobbly horn on the top of its flat, triangular head was quite capable of twisting a flipper's metal frame or smashing human bones.

  If a veebe did take it into its thick and bad tempered head to charge a flipper, it was down to the driver to swing the machine away from the attacking animal before it could make contact. In the four days that Phaid had been on the drive, only one animal had tried to fight back. Phaid desperately swung the controls and, to his amaze­ment, he and Makartur-missed being gored and trampled by a hair's-breadth. Phaid put it down more to blind luck than good judgement, but Makartur had been suitably impressed.

  Each day, when the sun finally dipped below the horizon and the flippers sank down on to the sand with a soft bump, the lessons in the ways of the drovers still weren't over. He'd stretch his cramped and aching back and wearily make his way to the lumbering transit bed that carried the supplies, the two big water tanks and the field kitchen that provided the focal point of the men's off duty hours. The kitchen was presided over by Thatch, a small, wiry man whose body had been broken by a veebe. He'd been given a bionic patch job by a cheap company surgeon. Cooking up the daily grey, tasteless stew pro­vided Thatch with a rough and ready semi-retirement. He had also appointed himself custodian of drover lore and drover prejudice.

  As outlooks went, the drovers' was one of the least lovely that Phaid had ever come across. Drovers seemed to hate almost everything that wasn't exactly like them­selves. Most of all they hated the veebes and took every opportunity to torment the animals. If it hadn't been for Shako constantly keeping a watchful, protective eye on the merchandise, there probably would have been deaths and serious mutilations among the herd, inflicted by the drovers themselves.

  Their hatred wasn't only confined to the veebes. There were the boohooms. They were universally detested, and every night there were stories of atrocities committed against the mild, inoffensive sub-humans. The elaihim were also high on the drovers' hate list. Higher, if anything, than the boohooms, except that the drovers' contact with the tall, hyper-intelligent beings was strictly limited. The elaihim, with their super-human minds and tall, frail bodies, knew enough to avoid the trails of drovers and the haunts of similar, ignorant, violent hu­mans. The drovers' hatred of the elaihim was based on fear, and therefore much more fierce and implacable. The boohooms were merely convenient victims. The elaihim were something else. They had superior intelligence. There was no way that the drovers could pretend other­wise. What they could pretend, though, was that this superior intellect was dedicated to some nebulous concept of evil. The elaihim were a shadowy conspiracy that could be blamed for all the ills and disasters in the world. The elaihim were more than just the victims for the drovers cruel sport. They were vermin. Despite their obvious culture and sensitivity, in the opinion of the drovers, they had to be eradicated, just like ribbon snakes, snow lupes or the big, savage lizards that prowled the deep forest. They were a dangerous menace, too smart to be allowed to live.

  The drovers didn't exactly hate women, but the attitude was definitely ambivalent. For the drovers, women split easily into two kinds. There were the wives that most of them didn't have and there were whores on whom they spent most of the end of trail pay. Wives were docile, faithful and for the most part totally imaginary. Although most drovers had an overbearing fixation about having sons to follow in their footsteps, hardly any managed to maintain and provide for a family. Whores, on the other hand, were fair game for anything and the drovers talked about them with grinning contempt, although a few particular women did seem to command a certain grudg­ing, familiar admiration. It was ironic that, all too often, when a drover did marry, it was to a prostitute with a yen to reform. After that, more often than not, they would stash the woman on some remote farm and then live with a constant fear that the little woman would be finding her fun with some other drifter while they were away on the trail.

  Farmers, androids, townspeople, clever bastards from the big cities and dumb bastards from the hills all came in for contempt and were all seen as reasonable targets for bouts of random violence. In fact, the only way that Phaid could sum it up was that the drovers didn't like anyone except their own kind, and weren't too fond of each other. Bearing this in mind, he did his best to keep both his mouth shut and himself to himself. As an identifiable outsider, he knew he was a potential flashpoint for trouble.

  Also, Phaid could only stand so much of the talk and boasting that was the nightly ritual around the transport bed. He stayed long enough so he wouldn't be labelled as a snob or a loner, but then he'd take his blanket and find himself a fairly isolated spot in which to get some sleep. The drovers weren't the only thing that sent Phaid early to his blanket. Unused as he was to serious physical labour, the drovers' day left him totally exhausted. Each morning old Hatch's furious wake-up gong always came far too early. Phaid couldn't remember a time when sl
eep had meant so much to him.

  Seven days into the drive Phaid started to feel that either he was becoming acclimatised to the life of a drover or else his brain had now reached a level of one-way numbness that could lead only to atrophy. He was ceasing to be able to imagine any other kind of life, and there were even moments of dull panic when he found himself examining the idea that maybe he was in sort of mobile hell.

  It was on the seventh day, however, that they spotted the dust cloud on the horizon. At the back of the herd, Phaid and Makartur were among the last to know about it. It was only when old Thatch started shouting and holler­ing that they realised something unusual was happening.

  Thatch had halted the transport bed and was standing up staring into the distance. Phaid swung the flipper in beside him.

  'What is it?'

  'Something moving out there.'

  Phaid shaded his eyes against the sun and squinted in the direction that Thatch was pointing. A small eddy of dust swirled and danced. Whatever was causing the dust cloud was both small and a long way off. A week earlier, Phaid would have wondered what all the commotion was about. Seven days on trail, though, had taught him that even the slightest interruption in the monotonous routine was a thing to be savoured.

  Other drovers pulled their machines over to the trans­port bed until there was a small group of them, hanging just above the ground, and speculating on what other people might be crossing the desert.

  'It's too small for a crawler.'

  'A crawler wouldn't be in this region. They stick close to their own routes.'

  'It could be off course.'

  'Crawlers don't go off course.'

  'It ain't a crawler.'

  'So what the hell is it?'

  'How the hell should I know, dumb-bell?'

  Shako skimmed up at high speed and slowed to a halt.

  'Will you beauties get moving, the herd's starting to slow down. Back on the job, what do you think we're running here? A goddamn picnic?'

  'There's something out there, boss.'

  'I know there's something out there, damn you. I got eyes. It don't mean the whole drive's got to come to a halt.'

  'Didn't we ought to check it out?'

  'Sure we'll check it out, but we'll keep moving at the same time.'

  He scanned the assembled drovers.

  'Bork, Vooter, Goldring, Dick, Marris. Go see what that thing is. The rest of you, get back to work!'

  The ones selected to inspect the dust clouds accelerated away, whooping and yelling. The others moved slowly back to their positions around the herd while Shako cursed them.

  'Snap to it, you pieces of shit! I ain't losing time on account of you scumbags want to take time out to sightsee.'

  Despite his constant harangue, the drovers' attention was still on the dust cloud. They merely went through the motions of running the veebes, keeping one eye on the horizon. They seemed to have an almost childish eager­ness to find out what it was that moved out in the distance.

  After what amounted to an intolerable wait, a flipper was spotted on its way back. Once again, almost half the drovers quit their positions and raced out to meet it. Shako roared around, swearing and threatening, but to little avail. There was no way he could get the drovers back to work until their curiosity had been satisfied. The herd slowed to a halt and everyone turned their machines to watch the returning flipper.

  It was Bork who had brought back the news. He pulled up in front of Shako, throwing up a cloud of dust. His face was twisted into a grimace and his eyes seemed to have taken on a touch of madness.

  'Elaihim! It's a party of stinking elaihim!'

  A shout went up all around the herd. Even the veebes became nervous, snorting and stamping their feet. The drovers forgot all about their jobs, and milled around in angry disarray. They appeared to Phaid to be deliberately working themselves into an hysterical fury.

  'Elaihim!'

  'That offal's got to go!'

  'Only good one's a dead one!'

  Shako, still trying to retain some vestige of control, spun his flipper in front of Bork.

  'How many of them are there?'

  'Eight, maybe ten. They got a pair of small transport beds.'

  Shako looked grim.

  'What are the others doing?'

  'Just riding around them, keeping them pinned down.'

  There's been no shooting?'

  'Not yet. I think Marris may have jabbed a couple with his lance but there ain't been no shooting yet. They're waiting to hear from you.'

  Shako seemed undecided. He stared out into the desert while Bork agitatedly jockeyed his flipper from side to side.

  'We are going to get them, boss, ain't we? Huh? We are going to grease those swine!'

  Shako took both hands off the controls of his flipper.

  'Hold it, hold up there!'

  His attempt at regaining the upper hand was little short of futile. Even as he spoke, the drovers were edging their machines towards the open desert. Makartur suddenly leaned forward and hissed in Phaid's ear.

  'Move out, manny. Move out and then go like hell towards those elaihim.'

  This took Phaid totally by surprise.

  'What are you talking about?'

  'I'm not going to stand by and watch a massacre.'

  'You're crazy, there's nothing we can do about it!'

  'We can try.'

  Phaid resolutely took his hands off the controls of the flipper.

  'Not a chance. I don't want any part of this. There's no way two of us can hold off between thirty and forty blood-crazed drovers. I'm sorry for the elaihim, but it's their problem and that's it.'

  Makartur's voice suddenly turned soft and deadly.

  'I'm not arguing with you, little man. Drive this thing and drive it fast.'

  The drovers were already howling their way out to­wards the now growing dust cloud. Phaid folded his arms.

  'And if I don't?'

  'I have my blaster less than a hand's breadth from the back of your head. If you don't move this machine right now, I'll blow you away. Simple as that.'

  'But . . .'

  'Now it's your problem.'

  Phaid dropped his hands to the controls and threw the flipper into foward motion. He turned it in the direction of the group of elaihim and then pushed the power wide open. He let the machine run as close to the ground as possible for maximum speed. Normally he wouldn't have attempted anything so foolhardy. A single rock could have wrecked them, but he no longer cared. Cold awful horror had him completely in its grip. He knew for sure that he must be driving to certain death, one way or another.

  Chapter 8

  'Nobody's going to bother us until we get close to the elaihim. The other drovers will think that we're just racing to join in the fun.'

  Makartur was yelling urgent instructions. Phaid didn't bother to answer. Sick with fear, he let the big man take complete control. He simply did as he was told, allowing the flipper to skim over the sand at top speed.

  'If these drovers act true to form, they'll hang things out for a while. They'll circle the elaihim until they've got them thoroughly terrorised, then they'll go in for the kill.'

  As they came nearer to the uneven confrontation. Phaid saw that what Makartur had said was correct. The small group of elaihim was huddled beside their two transport beds. These were heaped with an assortment of supplies and household goods. A loose ring of slow moving drovers on their flippers kept them pinned down in the one spot. Every so often, one would break from the circle and sweep by the elaihim in a close pass. The lanceman would stab at the tall angular figures. There'd be a scream as the victim reeled back from the shock. Designed to annoy a veebe, it was agonising to a human nervous system.

  The drovers had one other trick. Taking potshots at the highly piled transport beds with their blasters, they could watch with glee as the elaihim tried desperately to put out the small fires this created, while at the same time doing their best to dodge the attacks by th
e lancemen.

  The ring of drovers kept growing as more of them came to join in. It was obvious that the murder of the elaihim was going to be a hideous, drawn out business. The drovers seemed bent on extracting every last possible measure of cruel enjoyment from the situation. Phaid could see exactly why Makartur felt so strongly that the business should be stopped. Where he revolted was at the idea that they had to be the ones who did the stopping. It was too late, however, to do anything about it. Makartur was once again leaning forward and yelling into his ear.

  'The first thing we've got to do is break the circle.'

  Phaid looked at the ring of drovers winding themselves up to the eventual frenzy of slaughter. They couldn't be stopped by just two men. It was nothing short of suicide.

  Makartur pointed from behind Phaid's shoulder.

  'There, that flipper coming round now. The one on the left with the bearded guy driving. You got it?'

  Phaid nodded, but still didn't speak.

  'Okay then. Swing up beside him. Make like you're joining the circle. At the last moment, swerve into him. Broadside his machine as hard as you can. He'll probably turn clean over. It'll snarl up the whole ring and give us time to get under cover by those transports. Then we can figure out our next move.'

  Phaid cut their speed and moved up to the flipper that Makartur had pointed out. They began running alongside it. The bearded driver grinned and yelled something inaudible. He looked as though he was having the time of his life. Makartur tapped Phaid on the back.

  'Now! Swing into him!'

  Phaid took another look at the man. Again he grinned and gestured wolfishly, flashing a set of broken teeth. Phaid could feel sweat breaking out on the palms of his hands.

  'I can't do it.'

  'Swing into him, damn you!'

  'I can't!'

  'Now!'

  'No!'

  'Doit, manny, or . . .'

  Phaid shut his eyes and spun the controls. There was a massive impact and shriek of twisting metal. Phaid found himself thrown violently sideways. For a second he was flying through the air. Then he hit the sand with a bone jarring thud.