Canto Bight

by Saladin Ahmed

  “Hey,” Kal said in mock offense. “It’s closer to two-fifths.”

  “And you have to make other concessions.” She glanced at him. “Where are you sleeping?”

  “In the spaceport,” he said, grasping at the last chance to salvage some dignity. “My ship’s parked there.”

  “But the ship’s hocked and locked, so you can’t take off—and you can’t even board her. So where are you sleeping? Behind the landing gear?”

  “No!” Kal said, miffed. Then, humbly: “There just happens to be a spot between the thrusters where you can swing a nice hammock.”

  “Because you need your sleep to run your great system.”

  “Some read you’ve got there. I didn’t think I was that easy.”

  “My friend, you’re a clone from Kamino.”

  Great, Kal thought. Drinks and judgment at sunset. “If I’m such a loser, why are you talking to me?”

  “It’s because you’re such a loser. I have a request from a friend.”

  “A friend,” Kal said, staring. “A friend of yours wants to offer me something.”

  “Actually, he wants you to do something.”

  Kal shook his head. “Okay, I get it. Somebody thinks I’m down and out, so you’re going to ask me to do something illegal.”

  “And that would offend you?”

  “No, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”

  “You know Big Sturg Ganna, of course?”

  Kal froze. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Councilor. Some say gangster. Big guy, big trouble.”

  “And you know that fur-faced fellow—the old gray-haired guy, who floated you the loans you’ve been playing on for the last eighteen months?”

  Kal swallowed. “Yes?”

  “Did you know that he’s the accountant for Big Sturg Ganna?”

  His blood chilled. “No.” So that’s what Vestry suspected.

  “But you took his money anyway.” She smirked. “You just thought there was a wealthy investor here, randomly advancing eight hundred thousand Cantocoins to every player pursuing an edge?”

  Kal shrugged. “Canto’s full of eccentrics. Everybody here bets on something.”

  “These people don’t.” Orisha paused in her card play. “They took you on first because your ship was worth something—then when you became a prop player they figured you could be an insider at the casino organization for them. They’ve got a few of those. Finally they asked me to look at a few hours of your play—”

  “You saw the surveillance holos? How?”

  “I mentioned insiders, Kal. Keep up. They wanted me to see whether your system might be anything.”

  “It is!”

  “Surprising thing is I agreed, which bought you some extra time.” She returned to her dealing. “But you’re out of money and out of a job, so…”

  “I’m out of time.” He shook his head. “Well, my ship is the collateral.” He paused. “As you know.” Her prescience seemed less impressive now.

  “Yeah, turns out you overstated the value of that ship, by quite a lot. Not smart. And now that the progressive’s back down to zero—”

  “Hey, I got the Ion Barrage. How was I to know there’d be two?”

  “I saw the images. Impressive. Taken by a moron with a wild card is a bad beat, for sure.”

  “But the system works. They can put me out there and I can hit another—”

  “That progressive took all year to accumulate. It’s not fast enough. And these aren’t patient people.” She moved cards from stack to stack. “The accountant’s request is that you repay the entire amount—eight hundred thousand even—by sunrise tomorrow. Failing that, he would ask that when you wake up, you find a departing starship and walk into its thruster fire.”

  “Do what?”

  “Since you’re already in the spaceport,” Orisha shrugged, “they’re hoping you’ll help them out. And if not, well, they can find a way.” She looked at him sternly. “Oh, and don’t try to hop one of those ships. He’s got people everywhere, and they won’t be the ones you’ll expect.”

  Obviously not, he thought, looking at her.

  “Looks like I won,” she said, admiring the final state of her card pyramid. But only for a moment. She began gathering them up.

  Kal touched her wrist. “Do they really think I can make eight hundred thousand by tomorrow morning?”

  “No. They don’t play, but they’re good with odds. And don’t ask me for help.” She used her other hand to remove his from her wrist. “Frankly, you grinders give gaming a bad name.” She placed her cards in the pouch at her hip and rose.

  Kal considered her words for several moments before his eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute,” he said, hopping off his chair and calling to her. “I almost let you get away with that—playing holy. What are you doing as a go-between for Big Sturg Ganna?”

  She looked back. “The councilor doesn’t send muscle onto the casino floor. The countess wouldn’t look highly on that. I belong.”

  “Yeah, but why you? You’re a champion player.”

  “We’ve all got to get our stakes somewhere,” she said. “Sunrise.” With that, she exited into the card room.

  Kal watched her vanish into the now teeming crowd—and calculated the challenge ahead of him. He had roughly ten and a half hours in which to earn what he’d taken a year and a half to lose.

  Ganzer emerged from a gaggle of revelers, tray of empties in hand. “Still here,” he said. “What did I miss?”

  “Tell you later. I’ve got to go!”

  KAL HAD NO INTENTION OF telling Ganzer later, because he had no expectation of ever seeing him again. It took just four and a half minutes for the player to traverse the quickly filling card room and lobby on his way to the front entrance.

  Beautiful purple twilight bathed the entryway as Kal hit the sidewalk. Ground vehicles arriving at Canto were routed to the underground parkade, a shadowy location that Kal didn’t consider safe under the circumstances. But while most patrons had their own chauffeurs, enough people spent the day shopping Cabranga Street in Old City that vehicles for hire could be found along a pullout. “Where do you want to go?” a Sullustan driver asked him.

  Standing outside the open door, Kal realized he had no idea how to respond. Neither did he know how he could pay for the ride. “How far will this get me?” Kal asked, holding up the lone Cantocoin.

  “You’re kidding, right? I’m not a droid.”

  “Look, I just need to move. Can I ride up front? I can pretend to be your assistant.”

  “Yeah, customers will love that. If you can’t pay—”

  Kal had tuned the driver out. He’d seen something. The trees lining the front of the Canto Casino were Alderaanian chinar, raised from a seed bank at colossal expense. True survivors of a lost world—but far too skinny for anyone to use for cover. This did not seem to bother the Wookiee standing behind one, arms crossed and eyes focused directly on Kal.

  Kal smiled uncomfortably at the Wookiee—who, he now saw, had a comlink in her hairy hand. The titan shook her enormous head at him.

  “Never mind,” Kal said. “I’ve decided to stay for a while.”

  “And the countess’s fortune is saved,” the driver said, triggering the control to close the door.

  The cab pulled away, leaving Kal on the curb. He turned to the Wookiee and shrugged innocently. The creature didn’t respond—but neither did she follow Kal as he walked toward the building.

  His heart sank as he scaled the steps. There was no point in trying to leave the planet, not if Ganna really did hold his debt. Kal had understood that the being he’d borrowed money from probably didn’t offer it out of benevolence; he’d been around enough gambling halls to see all kinds of shenanigans. He just didn’t expect Canto Bight’s breed of criminal to bother with staking card players. It seemed such a low-return, slow-paying enterprise, when compared with fixing fathier races.

  On the other hand, if Ganna’s people could ge
t control of someone like Orisha Okum, they could do just about anything. Including, as she’d suggested, tapping the eye-in-the-sky surveillance feeds in the casino. Ganzer had once shared a rumor that Ganna had a private suite in the building; if true, who knew what kind of operations center he had in there?

  Thinking of the suite gave him sudden hope, if it could be called that. There was another way out: hiding in a place where every room wasn’t under surveillance. And such a place was just off the lobby.

  One of the Canto Casino’s great profit centers was its resort hotel, in the business of charging exorbitant rates to guests—guests whom it then tempted into spending as little time in their rooms as possible. Empty rooms could be a boon. With so few security cams allowed to exist in a structure devoted to privacy, Kal figured he could follow a cleaning droid into a suite and hide. He’d hidden from bombing as a child; sneaking from room to room, living off the pre-stocked refreshments, and sleeping under beds should be easy by comparison. Surely, after enough of this either Ganna’s people would give up—or he’d think of a way offworld.

  He just had to get up into the facility—a task, he discovered, that was more difficult than he imagined. Slipping into the large throng of guests standing before two sets of doors, waiting for the turbolifts to arrive, was easy enough. The continued wait, however, was uncharacteristic for things at Canto.

  “Hey, look who’s here,” called out a voice in the gaggle. “The guy with the good arm.”

  “Wodi,” Kal said, suppressing a sigh. My luck isn’t changing. Ahead of the taller patrons, Thodi stood near his brother, his eyes scanning the numbers on the displays beside the turbolift doors. Kal scowled. They deserved a piece of his mind, for sure—but at the moment he could only afford small talk. “Waiting for a turbolift?”

  “Nope,” Wodi said. “Betting on them.”

  “Against each other?” Kal looked at the sealed doors. “Who’s winning?”

  “Right now, neither of us,” Thodi grumbled.

  “I was doing fine betting against the bellhop,” Wodi said. “But when Thodi got here and started betting against me, the lifts seem to have broken.”

  “You were not doing fine,” Thodi corrected. “You weren’t even looking at where the cars were when you were betting.”

  “Which is important in turbolift races,” Kal said.

  “Of course.” Thodi scratched his rubbery chin. “You see, most people bet on cars that are lower down in the building. My theory is the people at the highest levels have keys that put the cars into express mode. Those drop to the bottom fast.”

  Nothing was moving at all now. Kal looked to the doors, and then the brothers. “How long are you going to wait?”

  “Until someone wins.”

  Or not. “I’m hungry,” Wodi said. “I’ll see you around.”

  No sooner was Wodi out of sight than the turbolift on the right began descending.

  “Hey, Wodi, I win!” Thodi yelled as the car hit bottom.

  A bewildered attendant stepped out, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry, patrons,” he said, as the mob piled in. “I don’t know what happened. It just stopped working for a while!”

  There was no way Kal was making it into that jam-packed car, he could see—but neither did he want to spend any more time around Thodi, not when the minutes of his life might be precious. At last the second car arrived—

  —carrying, Kal saw as the doors opened, a Wookiee of slightly different color. But no better disposition. The brute glared at Kal and shook her head.

  So much for that idea! Kal spun and made for the place most familiar to him: the casino floor. They couldn’t kill him there. Could they?

  MINUTES HAD PASSED IN THE gaming hall without incident, but that brought Kal no cheer. His arms sagged as he walked the aisles from room to room. No low-limit action tonight; just high- and no-limit. So different from the daytime hours. So many people, so happy.

  He’d been a part of it, even when he had no reason to be joyful; he had belonged. Now, without the coat and cape, he no longer looked like he was worthy of being in Canto Bight—and he no longer carried himself as if he had money. “Broke” had a stench. Sooner or later it would offend someone.

  Perhaps sooner. Across the room, he saw Vestry conferring with Pemmin Brunce, the smash-faced head of security—and in his latest mistake of the day, Kal let them see him. The only casino staffer permitted to frown, Brunce would think nothing of pitching someone out for loitering. “If you want to fish around in the payout trays of the slots for spare change,” Kal had once heard Vestry tell a sudden pauper, “go someplace else. Not Canto.” So when Vestry pointed in Kal’s direction, the Heptooinian knew he had to find a game, and fast.

  He walked quickly, looking to and fro. A single Cantocoin could play afternoon zinbiddle, but after dark the minimums had all increased. At a lesser casino on another world, he might expect to find a freeroll, a tournament with no entrance fee. The idea of such a thing here was laughable. Besides, it would take far too long to play, and yield nowhere near enough for his purposes.

  He glanced back to see Brunce on the move, his approach making even the most self-involved patrons—and they were plentiful—clear a path. Kal turned up an aisle only to find it a cul-de-sac, ringed by high-minimum hazard toss tables. No place he could play, not at these prices. He was trapped.

  He pushed into the largest crowd. Someone there had to be on a streak. But there was no hiding in crowds from Brunce, who worked his way in until he was face-to-face with Kal, backing him up against the gaming table.

  “What are you doing, sir?” Brunce asked in a voice that sounded like a thruster revving up.

  “I’m enjoying my stay.”

  “You can’t stay if you don’t play.” Brunce moved closer, as careful as a mountain of muscle could be not to disturb the active gamblers.

  “I’m a spectator,” Kal said nervously. “What’s wrong with that? A lot of people are just watching.”

  “You can’t.”

  Kal thought about making a scene, but couldn’t imagine anyone would hear him, much less care. Instead, he did the only thing he could think of. He reached in his pocket to produce his Cantocoin. “Look! I have a bet.”

  Brunce snorted as he recognized the denomination. “Not enough.”

  Kal’s face fell. Someone taught him to count. “I left my money in my jacket. If you’ll just—”

  With unexpected speed for one of his bulk, the bouncer reached forward, seizing both of Kal’s wrists and cutting him off midsentence. Pinned against the table’s protective railing, Kal lost hold of the coin, which fell backward onto the gaming surface. It bounced once before landing on its side, whereupon it started rolling. Its spiraling journey ended when it fell against a pile of coins on the far side.

  “Bets closed,” announced Thamm, the tiny quadruped who did his croupier job while standing on the table.

  “Here I go,” shouted the snout-faced dice roller, who hurled the polyhedrons in a return trajectory to Kal’s side of the table. They bounced crazily and came to a stop.

  “Three threes,” Thamm declared. “Dodi wins again!”

  Dodi emerged from the throng on the left side of the table, cheering loudly and banging on the railing. “Whee!” It was then that Dodi saw Kal and the counter—and he grew happier still. “Hi, Kal!”

  Brunce loosened his hold on Kal slightly; his feet could at least touch the floor now.

  Dodi made his way to the pair and pointed to the table, where Thamm used his croupier stick like a push broom to add nine coins for every one on the winning square. “I see you put your coin to good use, Kal.” He winked. “Clever of you, adding to my bet.”

  The Suerton finally noticed Brunce, still gripping Kal’s wrists. “Something the matter?”

  “Good evening, sir,” the security officer drawled grudgingly. “I’m on casino business.”

  “Delightful. What?”

  “The minimum on the floor tonight is a hundred.
This player only has one.”

  “Ten,” Kal volunteered, eyes darting to the table.

  “I’m well over the minimum, and he can certainly add to my bet,” Dodi said.

  All this thinking was clearly irritating Brunce, who pulled at Kal’s arm some more. “He doesn’t have enough to be here.”

  “Then just wait a moment,” Dodi said.

  Behind him, the snouted creature rolled the dice again—and Thamm shouted, “The Suerton has let it ride—and trip threes wins again!”

  “Now he has a hundred,” Dodi said. He placed a coin of his own in the massive bouncer’s pocket and grinned pleasantly. “Thank you for taking time out of your duties to visit with us.”

  Brunce, speechless and smoldering, stared at Kal—then Dodi. Then he let the card player go and retreated from the area.

  Dodi patted the inside of the railing table. “I’m out.” Seconds later, Thamm delivered him several stacks of coins. The Suerton then handed a small pile to Kal, who was collecting himself after his rough handling. “Your winnings.”

  “Thank you,” Kal said, catching his breath. “And, uh—thanks for helping out.”

  “We’re all here for fun,” Dodi said. “Silly rules shouldn’t ruin a good time.”

  Kal looked at the coins in wonder. “You…you knew you were going to hit again.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How?”

  That smile again, as Dodi prepared to leave. “I don’t question it, Kal, so you shouldn’t. Have fun.” He patted Kal on the chest and disappeared into the crowd.

  THE PROBLEM WITH LIFE’S MORE important realizations, Ganzer had once told him, was that many came in the middle of the night when one had little chance to do anything about them. Midnight was still a couple of hours off, but Kal’s flash of insight had hit when he was in exactly the right place.