The Song of Phaid the Gambler

by Mick Farren

  'They got you?'

  Phaid tried to jerk away. He didn't know what the man wanted but he wasn't taking any chances. He was not going to come out of one prison only to be thrown into some new one designed by the rebels. The man, however, was a good deal stronger than Phaid, and he couldn't break away. The rebel seemed to be concerned about something.

  'Did they treat you real bad? You look as though you don't know what's going on. We've come to set you free.'

  Phaid knew that they'd come to set him free. His only desire was to put as much distance between himself and the White Tower as possible. For some unfathomable reason, this rebel was totally unwilling to let him go.

  'Don't worry about a thing. I'll get you out of here. After what you're done for the revolution, you deserve the best.'

  Phaid couldn't think of a single thing that he'd ever done for the revolution. Was the man battle happy?

  'I don't know what you're talking about.'

  'You are Phaid, aren't you?'

  Phaid was instantly wary.

  'Maybe.'

  'Of course you're Phaid.'

  'So I'm Phaid. So what?'

  'I knew you were Phaid. I knew it from the pictures.'

  Phaid was still mystified, but at least the rebel didn't appear to mean him any immediate harm. He had turned and was beckoning to others around.

  'Hey you guys, come on over here! It's Phaid!'

  'Phaid? They got him?'

  'Phaid.'

  'No shit.'

  Phaid found himself being pounded on the back. His hand was being pumped so vigorously that he was afraid that his shoulder would be dislocated or his hand crushed to a pulp. The entire reception was totally bewildering, then it all made sense. It was the holograms and the wanted posters. There was no way for the rebels to know that they were fakes. As far as they were concerned, it had all been the real thing. In their eyes, he was Phaid, the mysterious killer, the lone wolf who execrated courtiers. He was a hero of the revolution.

  He found himself being hoisted into the air and carried shoulder-high to the breach in the wall. People were clapping and applauding.

  'Phaid!'

  'Phaid!'

  His name echoed round the induction area. He started to enjoy the sensation. He would have enjoyed it more if he hadn't realised that there were a number of people who knew the truth and could expose him. Vist-Roxon would keep his mouth shut. Abrella-Lu would probably be in too much trouble on her own account. Streetlife would also guess the truth, but Phaid knew that, if he still lived, he would happily allow himself to be bought off.

  There were a few cops, guards, the Inquisitor and a handful of others who might just have worked out that the whole thing was a deception. Phaid didn't feel he had to worry about these people. If they weren't dead, they'd probably be on the run.

  There was only one person who could really cause him trouble, and in this case, Phaid knew he would do well to worry. That one person was Makartur. There was always the chance that Makartur was dead already, but somehow Phaid doubted it. Makartur was alive and, right at that moment, probably somewhere in the prison sharing the same liberation.

  All at once, Phaid wanted to duck out of sight. He was in an impossible position. He might come face to face with Makartur at any moment, but there was nothing that he could do. Still carried aloft on the shoulders of his admirers, he seemed to have become the focus of atten­tion for the whole crowd. They carried him through the breach and into the open air. It was night, fires seemed to be burning all over the city. All around him, they were still shouting and cheering.

  'Phaid! Phaid!'

  A bottle was thrust into his hands. He took a drink. The raw spirit told him that he was free. As it burnt his throat, he wondered how he was going to deal with this new freedom.

  Chapter 23

  Phaid stumbled and almost fell through the door of the bar. Streetlife actually hit the ground and rolled, cursing loudly. Both men had been drunk for a week, but this, surprisingly, wasn't the reason for their ungainly entrance. They had been innocently walking down the street, albeit a little unsteadily, looking for the next watering hole, when a blaster battle had raged out all around them. The door to the bar had provided the ideal sanctuary from the lethal sheets of flame.

  Fire fights on the streets had been an all too common occurrence since Chrystianaville had fallen to the rebels. As most of those not directly involved had predicted, the revolution was not running smoothly. Law and order had broken down and various rebel factions and even gangs of ordinary, profit motivated criminals fought each other on the streets.

  Something calling itself the Central Co-ordinating Com­mittee of Interim Government had taken up residence in the Palace and seemed to be deadlocked in non-stop debate as to how the future should be organised. They had reportedly spent a full three days in continuous session attempting, without avail, to come up with a new name for the city. Nobody expected very much from the Central Co-ordinating Committee of Interim Government. The Day Oners had walked out inside of a matter of hours, and were now busily implementing their own programmes of terror with no authority save that of the rope and the blaster.

  Not even the Day Oners seemed to be safe from schism and ideological infighting. They had split into two roughly equal-sized groups. On one side there were those known as the Fundamentalists who believed that everything should be done at once, that the living standards of the whole of the city's population should be instantly reduced to the level of the poorest northside immigrant. They wanted all technology stripped away, learning and culture abolished and religion utterly smashed. To this end, they had blown up a number of power and sanitation sub-plants. They would have taken their destruction further had it not been for bands of more moderate rebels who had retained their weapons and were defending the city's major installations against attacks by the absolutist Day Oners.

  The other, less extreme Day One faction were the Pragmatists. They also believed in reducing the city to total primitivism, only they were willing to do it in less painful stages. They considered that the most immediate objective was the extermination of the courtier class and the capture and execution of Chrystiana-Nex and Sol­chaim.

  These two were, in fact, the greatest embarrassment of the whole revolution. At some point during the confusion following the capture of the Palace, the two arch enemies of the people had somehow managed to slip through almost half a rebel army totally dedicated to their capture. Despite a hundred false alarms, no trace of them was found.

  The Pragmatist Day Oners were going about their business with energetic and ruthless efficiency. Basing their operations in the shell of the White Tower, they waged a search and destroy war against aristrocrats and office holders in the old regime. A number of parks and open spaces had been turned into public killing grounds and mass graveyards. Rumours, lies and denunciations flew at both an alarming rate and volume. A single pointed finger could all too easily result in a suspected aristo being dragged off to a summary execution and a mass grave. Accusations were almost never checked by the Day Oners and denunciation became a formidable weapon to be used against rivals, enemies, faithless lov­ers, errant husbands, rich elderly relatives and just about anyone whom anyone else wanted out of the way.

  Although there were no statistics, murder had to have become Chrystianaville's major industry in the days im­mediately after the revolution. The moderates killed the Day Oners, the Day Oners killed each other, the aristos and anybody else they got their hands on. At least six political factions were busily engaged in murdering the members of the other five. It was also open season for private score settling or just plain vicious slaying. Any morning there could be anything up to fifty bodies litter­ing the streets of the city. Quite often they would lay around clear through to the late afternoon. The Commit­tee, despite the many hundreds of hours it had spent in debate, had yet to organise an effective clean-up crew. Needless to day, sanitation was something that didn't impinge on the lofty consciousn
ess of the Day Oners. As a major part of the problem, they scorned the solution except to farm it out to their political re-education groups.

  With the city totally in the grip of terror and random violence, it was small wonder that Phaid had opted to stay as drunk as possible for as long as possible. Another reason was the nagging question of why Solchaim had staged the charade that had turned Phaid into a hero of the revolution, and the worry that maybe the whole of that charade had yet to be played out.

  Being a hero, even a counterfeit hero, did have its compensations. Phaid rarely had to buy himself a drink, which was fortunate since the revolution didn't provide wages for its heroes.

  It did, however, let them pick over the best of the loot. Inside a gentlemen's tailoring emporium whose owner had fled the city when the rebels had closed in, Phaid had gratefully thrown away his prison uniform and outfitted himself with a very stylish version of the standard rebel duster coat. Taking care not to get too fancy (fancy could earn a Day Oner blast in the back), he sorted himself out some soft leather boots, a pair of tight doeskin breeches and a few shirts. A hand tooled belt and a fancy blaster with an obscenely carved opalene handle were prizes worthy of a hero. A wide brimmed slouch hat topped off the killer-bandit ensemble.

  Living up to the killer-bandit role was a little more difficult. Those who believed the myth tended to be respectful and hospitable but they also gave him a lot of space in which to operate. Nobody actually wanted to get too close to the killer of some fourteen or more courtiers. The reputation also kept the Day Oners off his back, it was a massive and sometimes lifesaving plus.

  What the reputation didn't solve was the problem of Makartur. Phaid had heard that the big man was moving around the city, mostly in the company of Flame, the one time exotic dancer. For some reason known only to him, Makartur hadn't exposed Phaid as phoney. Phaid couldn't work this out at all. In a world that was custom made for sneaks, snitchers, informers and denouncers, this seemed little short of a miracle. Phaid wondered if it was because Makartur might think Phaid's reputation was still too strong to drag down, or maybe it was that Makartur feared, if he accused Phaid, that Phaid had enough on him to pull Makartur into the same grave. Whatever the reason, Makartur was biding his time, and Phaid didn't like it.

  Phaid made a few half hearted attempts to locate some of the people he'd known before the takeover. Roni-Vows and Edelline-Lan were among those who had vanished at the same time as Chrystiana-Nex and Solchaim. It was ironic that the one courtier that Phaid knew had survived for sure was that one who had caused him the most trouble. He'd actually spotted Abrella-Lu, ragged, filthy and stripped to the waist, working on a forced labour squad.

  He had been walking down Condine-Nep Avenue, thinking about nothing in particular except where his next drink was coming from, when he'd passed the squad on the other side of the street. The frightened, miserable bunch of women were all too reminiscent of the so-called study group on which he'd found himself. If anything, conditions on this squad were worse than on the work gangs at the Angel of Destiny. The unfortunate workers were secured by lengths of chain attached to metal neck collars. The chains made the task of clearing the rubble left over from the uprising doubly difficult.

  The guards supervising the work were probably the most horrific Phaid had yet to see. They were three burly women who could have easily been cousins of the fear­some but now hopefully late Borkastra. From the way they wielded their flexible clubs, it was plain to see that they had similar dispositions. They were apparently not a type exclusive to the presidential side.

  Abrella-Lu looked haggard and desperate. Sweat ran down her body and her hair was matted with dirt and plaster dust. Strangely, though, in her chains and short, ripped skirt, scarcely more than a loin cloth, she looked perversely sexy. For a moment, Phaid was tempted to pull the Phaid-the-Bandit routine and get her released from the labour squad. He was sure that her gratitude would be quite energetic.

  He was also sure that it would be equally short lived. He knew he was going to leave her exactly where she was. She had caused him too much trouble and brought him too near to death. She hadn't seen him, so he stood in a doorway for a while and watched her straining to move weighty lumps of masonry. There was something satis­fyingly poetic in his being a spectator to her suffering. She also had exceedingly handsome breasts.

  The only person he did manage to find was Streetlife. Everyone else seemed to have been scattered to the wind by the uprising.

  Streetlife had given Phaid a hard time when they first met. He could scarcely believe that Phaid had been dumb enough to go and get himself arrested with one of the immobilised flipper's logic plates in his pocket just as they were about to get out of town.

  'I missed the last fucking train out of here on account of you, you dumb bastard.'

  'I didn't get condemned to death and thrown into the White Tower on purpose. I hope you realise that.'

  The money had all gone. Both Phaid's winnings and the proceeds from Streetlife's rip-offs had been spent on bribing his way out of a succession of firing squads. There was very little for Phaid and Streetlife to do except drift around town, drinking for free on the Phaid myth and hoping for a break to improve their situation.

  There was a lull in the blaster fire outside. Both men stood up and lurched to the bar.

  'Two shots and make it quick.'

  The bartender didn't seem exactly friendly.

  'You two look like you've had enough.'

  'A man can never have enough. With all the pain in this world you can never find the booze to drown it. Two shots.'

  Prolonged drinking had put Phaid in a lyrical frame of mind. The bartender didn't seem impressed.

  'I don't think I ought to serve you.'

  'What are you talking about?'

  'You're drunk.'

  'Sure we're drunk. So what? What's it to you? You sell stuff to make people drunk. What's the big deal?'

  'I don't want drunks in my place.'

  'Listen to him, will you?'

  Phaid appealed to anyone who might be listening.

  'Sweet Lords, turkey. Who else do you expect to get in your place?'

  Streetlife was outraged.

  'You ain't seriously suggesting that we go back out there without even one drink inside us!'

  As if to accentuate his point, the weapon fire started up again in the street. Phaid leaned forward until he was breathing square into the bartender's face.

  'You know who I am?'

  The bartender's face wrinkled as though he didn't like the smell.

  'Should I?'

  'You saying you've never seen me before?'

  'Not that I can remember.'

  'Think about it. Think about it real good. You sure you ain't never seen this face before? Like maybe . . .'

  'What are you trying to pull?'

  'Like maybe on a wanted poster?'

  Phaid's mood had made the full switch from lyrical to bellicose. The bartender took a step back.

  'Lords' mothers, you . . . you're . . .'

  'Right.'

  'Well, that makes it completely different.'

  'Good.'

  'Two shots?'

  'Doubles.'

  'On the house.'

  Phaid and Streetlife picked up their drinks and took them to a table. They had a wide choice of where to sit. The bar was empty. After the first euphoric celebrations, the revolution had not been good for business in the Chrystianaville taverns. People were frightened to go out on the street.

  Streetlife looked thoughtfully at Phaid who was absent-mindedly scratching his seven-day growth of stubble.

  'You really quite enjoy this killer routine, don't you.'

  Phaid threw back his drink in one.

  'It's better than being afraid all the time.'

  'All I'm saying is don't push it too far, else someone's going to come along and call your bluff, and you and me both know it's bullshit. Am I right?'

  'Yeah, maybe. Who gives a f
uck, anyway. I've had just as much as I can handle.' He looked up at the bartender. 'Hey, you! Two more over here, right now.'

  The bartender positively jumped and raced over with a second round of double shots.

  'On the house?'

  The bartender sighed.

  'On the house.'

  Phaid whacked back his drink in one throw once again. He winced and gasped.

  'This is the life.'

  'For as long as it lasts. You liable to get yourself killed.'

  'I've been liable to get myself killed for just about as long as I can remember. I think I'm starting to get used to it.'

  Streetlife stabbed a bleary finger at him.

  'You ain't getting used to nothing. You just drunk.'

  'You can bet your ass on that.'

  Phaid started to giggle. Then the blaster roared in the street again, there was the scream of something that sounded like a boohoom. Phaid ducked and winced.

  'I wish to hell they'd find some other game. All this noise disturbs a man's train of thought.'

  Phaid was just about to yell for more booze when another customer dived through the door. A stray blast hacked a chunk out of the doorframe. The new arrival got warily to his feet. He was a lanky individual in stained rebel garb. He looked at Phaid and Streetlife and slowly grinned.

  'It's getting hairy out there, sure as shit.'

  'Did you see who's fighting who?'

  The newcomer shook his head.

  'How the hell can anyone tell? I, for one, am starting to regret this Lord cursed revolution.'

  Phaid nodded.

  'You ain't the only one.'

  The rebel was looking intently at Phaid.

  'Ain't you Phaid, the one that was on those wanted displays?'

  'Yeah, I'm Phaid.'

  'How about that? You do all that stuff like they said you did?'

  Phaid shook his head.

  'No.'

  'Come on.'

  'If you really want to know, I didn't do any of that stuff like they said I did. The trouble is that nobody believes me when I tell them.'