by Kage Baker
“Beg pardon? Oh, that.” Mr. Crosley waved a dismissive hand. “As it happens, some fellows at the motel pooled their money and bought my claim. Formed a consortium of some kind, I believe. I was quite amazed. Told them I wasn’t at all sure there were any diamonds there. All that glitters is not gold, as they say. But at least I now have the funds to live out my remaining days here in comfort.”
“That’s something anyway,” said Mona. She hurried off to the bar, where Mr. Cochevelou was just receiving a pint of porter from Mr. Morton.
“Another shot please. Hi, Mr. Cochevelou.”
“Mm.” Cochevelou nodded at her. He leaned forward over the bar and spoke sotto voce to Mr. Morton, or tried to in any case; his voice still carried like a bull’s bellow. “So what’s this I hear about trouble with your Mr. De Wit?”
“I beg your pardon?” Mr. Morton, pouring the shot of whiskey, turned to stare.
“Our Sylvia heard it from our Emilio, who heard it from one of the lads down at the motel. Like he’s been dishonest, or something? Not trustworthy after all?”
Mr. Morton pointed a mute finger at Mr. De Wit, who was seated two barstools down having a quiet glass of beer. Cochevelou gaped at him and blushed red.
“What?” Mary stood up from under the counter, where she’d been tapping in a fresh keg. “Who’s been spreading nasty rumors about my lawyer?”
“I was only saying there’s been talk,” protested Cochevelou.
“What kind of talk?” Mary slammed a wrench down on the counter.
“I don’t know, some nonsense about him being likely to cheat folk,” said Cochevelou, taking a prudent step back from the bar. “I’m sure it’s all vile lies.”
“You’re damned right it’s vile lies,” said Mary hotly. Mr. De Wit shrugged.
“I’m a lawyer. Slander’s a job hazard,” he said, and popped a handful of salted peanuts in his mouth. Mona collected Mr. Crosley’s shot of whiskey and took it back to his table, where he sat looking on with a benign expression.
He dined with apparent good appetite and effusive compliments to Mona on the quality of the cuisine. When the dishes had been cleared away afterward, Mr. Crosley remained at his table. He drew a small case from within his jacket and, opening it, began to lay out a number of slips of pasteboard.
Mona, finding occasion to wander by his table, stopped and peered down. “Hey! Those are, like, the little pictures from Super Solitaire! The, uh, hearts and diamonds and the pointy things.”
“Spades,” said Mr. Crosley. “It’s an old-fashioned deck of playing cards, Miss Mona. The honest kind. Never seen one of these, I expect?”
“Never,” said Mona, watching as his slender fingers flipped the cards down, one after another after another. “I’ve just played the games on my buke.”
“Ah. That’s all most people have done, nowadays,” said Mr. Crosley, with a shake of his head. Having laid out all the cards, he tucked the little case away in his breast pocket and scooped up the deck. He began to shuffle it, in an absent-minded sort of way. The cards bent their backs for him, they jumped and danced across his fingertips, they spread themselves into rosettes and fans with effortless grace. Mona found herself mesmerized.
“An art form, Miss Mona, that’s what they are,” said Mr. Crosley in a soft voice. “And just the ideal thing for friendly games of chance, you know. Sometimes the old ways are indeed the best. You see those casinos in the spaceports on Luna and it’s just so easy for a man to walk in there and lose every penny of his money. Why, those games are all rigged. To begin with, those dreadful electronic machines flashing bright lights and loud noises, what do you think they do to the human ability to concentrate? Just mess it up, that’s what.
“And you know those Luna City croupiers and dealers have all kinds of ways to cheat. Concealed magnets. Or they’ll wear rings with circuitry in them, or nanoprocessor remotes.” He held up one smooth bare hand, innocent of jewelry. “Or they can just program those games to display whatever they want. Why, an honest player hasn’t got a chance. Watching those games, I have often said to myself, ‘Great Goddess Above, don’t those poor souls losing fortunes realize they’re being tricked?’
“But with these, Miss Mona, there’s no way to cheat. No electronic flimflam’s possible, is it, when all you’re playing with is these simple little pieces of pasteboard? Why, you hold them in your own two hands. They can’t lie to you. Honest cards, for a genuine old-fashioned honest game.”
“How do you play with those?”
Mona, startled, looked up to see that a crowd had gathered at the table: a couple of Incan contract laborers, a Hauler and two men from the motel, to judge from their lean and air-starved look.
“Easiest thing in the world. Miss Mona, may I trouble you to bring me some crackers? The little round ones. Gentlemen, if three of you’ll have a seat, I’ll show you poker the way your forefathers played it.”
Thereafter Mr. Crosley came in every evening, and after a substantial meal would draw out his deck of cards, and sooner or later would be joined by persons eager to play. The level of boredom on Mars being what it was, poker had caught on with a vengeance. At first they played for crackers, until Mr. Crosley paid Manco to cast him some little discs stamped with different denominations.
And Mr. Crosley was so soft-spoken, and so self-effacing, that he soon made a lot of friends. Indeed, when the rumors began flying that the consortium who had bought his claim had just shipped a packet of diamonds down to Earth for appraisal (since, for some reason, they did not trust Mr. De Wit’s expertise), many people came to condole with Mr. Crosley for letting a fortune slip through his fingers. They bought him drinks. They bought him dinners. He generally gave a sad and gallant little laugh, shaking his head, and would go right on dealing the cards.
And if he won more often than he lost, few noticed and nobody minded, since they were only playing for clay chips.
The Brick never joined the card games, though he observed keenly from a distance.
One evening when Mr. Crosley was just sitting down to a dish of Proteus Pot Pie, the Brick left the crowd at the bar and came and towered over him.
“Good evening, Mr. Brick,” said Mr. Crosley pleasantly. “May I interest you in an after-dinner game of cards?”
“Don’t think so, mate,” said the Brick. He grinned at Mr. Crosley. His eyes were particularly red and twinkling that evening. He lowered his massive bulk into the chair next to Mr. Crosley’s and spoke in a lowered voice. “No. But I have a proposition in which you might be interested. You look, to me, like a man in need of protection.”
“Gracious, Mr. Brick.” Crosley did not look up as he broke open the crust of his pie with a fork. “Now, why would you think that?”
“Just a feeling. Though it might have its origin in the fact that I had a drink with one of the lads from the Martian Mining Consortium the other day. He showed me one of the stones they’ve pulled out of that gorge over on the north side. Specially nice one he was holding back for his own. I had a look at it with my spectrometer. Damned if the thing didn’t turn out to be a garnet.”
“Oh, what a shame,” remarked Mr. Crosley, taking a mouthful of pie. He chewed, swallowed and added, “You know, I always had my doubts about whether there were any diamonds on that claim. I believe I said so at the time of sale, Mr. Brick. Yes, I’m sure I can produce witnesses who remember I said those very words.”
“And I don’t doubt that for a minute.”
“How did the gentleman take the news, may I ask, Mr. Brick?”
“Oh, I didn’t tell him,” said the Brick. His grin widened. “I reckoned he needed the learning experience. And in any case he and his mates are going to learn the truth sooner or later—either when they hear back from the appraiser’s on Earth, or when they dig a little deeper into that claim and find there aren’t even any more garnets, let alone diamonds. Then they’re going to start looking for the bastard who salted that claim with a bagful of junk from a rock shop. I reck
on that’ll be about the point you start wishing you’d hired yourself a bodyguard. Especially since I’ve heard that a law officer named Thigpen has a standing order for your arrest if you ever set foot on Luna again.”
“Why, Mr. Brick, are you offering your services?” Mr. Crosley looked up with wide and guileless eyes.
“No,” said the Brick. “But there’s someone I’d like you to meet. Oi! Pasang!”
“What?” A Hauler stepped away from the bar, peered through the early evening gloom at them.
“Come and meet a mate of mine. Stanford, meet Pasang Sherpa. He runs the North Pole road gang. Pasang, this is Stanford Crosley. He’s looking to employ a bodyguard. Isn’t there one of your lads down on his luck?”
“Yeah. Eddie the Yeti. In dire need. The ice processing unit’s broke on his rig and he can’t get the parts to replace it. Been living on handouts at the depot. Bodyguard, huh?” Mr. Sherpa tugged thoughtfully on his beard. “He could do that. Oi! Eddie!”
“We Haulers look after our own, you see,” said the Brick.
“A commendable display of brotherhood, Mr. Brick,” said Mr. Crosley.
Meanwhile an immense figure had risen from a distant booth, and came shuffling over. Eddie Peebles was nearly as big as the Brick. His eyes were set very close together, but beyond that nothing much could be seen of his face, covered as it was in beard and mustache. His dreadlocked hair hung down his back. His psuit was shabby, patched here and there with duct tape. He came now and stood beside Mr. Sherpa, with a shy bob of his head. “H’lo,” he murmured.
“Eddie, mate,” said the Brick. “This nice gentleman would like to offer you a job. Whyn’t you tell him a little about yourself?”
Eddie hung his head. “I was in Hospital,” he whispered.
“Were you, sir?” said Mr. Crosley. “Lots of folks from Earth were in Hospital, as I understand. What were you in for?”
“Punching another kiddy.”
“What did you punch him for, sir?”
“He took my sand pail.”
“He was five,” said Mr. Sherpa. “Went into Hospital until he was twenty, when they shipped him up here. Then he had the hard old luck to spend his inheritance on a discontinued model of a Jinma tanker rig. Did all right until it broke. Times have been bad since then, haven’t they, Eddie?”
Eddie nodded, tears forming in his eyes.
“Well, then,” said Mr. Crosley, in the warmest, richest kindly-uncle voice imaginable, “the first thing I’m going to do, Eddie, is buy you a fine hot dinner. Would you like that?”
Eddie blinked. He bent his head and squinted down at Mr. Crosley. “Yes,” he said.
“The second thing I’m going to do is offer you a well-paying job. Are you interested, Eddie?”
“Sure,” Eddie whispered. Mr. Crosley patted the seat next to his.
“You come sit down right here, Eddie. We’re going to be best friends, you and I.”
“I’ll leave you two to talk, shall I?” The Brick rose and went back to the bar with Mr. Sherpa.
“You haven’t been in at your accustomed time, lately, Cochevelou,” Mary observed. She set the shot of whiskey next to the mug of porter. Cochevelou knocked back the whiskey and took a deep drink of the foaming porter.
“Aah! I’ve been working until these two hands are raw. Special order at the forge.”
“And what would that be, my dear?”
Cochevelou turned to survey the room. ‘It’s that poorly fellow from Luna. Crosley. The one plays the cards? Did you know he was a gambler?”
“No such thing,” said Mary. “There’s poker goes on, but he assured me no money’s changing hands. And I’m not such a fool as I wouldn’t watch to see, but it’s only those little tokens they’re playing for. I reckon if he’d won somebody’s month wage, there’d have been fighting in here before now.”
“Ah!” Cochevelou was not often able to score a conversational point, so he savored the moment now. “Well, and I know why he’s keeping his nose clean in here.”
“What’s that? Why?”
“He comes to the forge with Eddie the Yeti, see? Biggest Hauler after the Brick, and apparently they’re partners now. And he says to me, ‘Mr. Cochevelou, sir, will you ever have a look at Mr. Peebles’s Jinma Excelsior?’ And I says to him, ‘No point in that, to be sure; Eddie knows I can’t even make replacement parts for the ice processor. They had to be special ordered direct from China even when Jinma was still making the damned things.’
“And the little man says, ‘Oh, he doesn’t want the ice processor repaired. Wants it removed. We want the tank converted to living space, see? Life support inside, a rear entry hatch, a couple of built-ins perhaps. And more exterior lights.’
“Well, you know, that’s a lot of work. So I quote the little man a fair price, and he doesn’t even blink, just smiles and says he’ll pay half up front and half on completion. And just then, in comes two men, prospectors seemingly, and they’ve murder in their eyes when they see him, and start up roaring about how the little man’s cheated them.
“I grab up an iron bar and Eddie, he does the same. They back off a bit, but the little man puts up his hands and speaks ’em soft like. They say there’s no diamonds on his claim and he says he always had his doubts there were, and didn’t he tell ’em so out straight and honest when he signed over the claim? Which they admit he did, only they say he was counting on them thinking he was lying.
“And then he says, ‘Why, gentlemen, what is this world coming to when an honest man can’t speak the truth and be believed?’ And then what he does is, he tells ’em he’ll gladly buy back the claim, for more than they paid him. Says he’s heard there’s honest money to be made mining iron ore.
“Well, that catches ’em flatfooted. They look at each other suspicious-like, and meanwhile Eddie’s swinging the crowbar in his hand, just a little warningly, you know, and sort of making a growling noise. And the two of ’em mutter together a moment and then say they’ll have to take it up with the other members of the Consortium. And the little man smiles and says, ‘Just as you like, gentlemen’ and they leave.
“Then he turns to me and says, he says, ‘Mr. Cochevelou, sir, I do believe I can offer you a bonus if you can complete the conversion within the next seven days.’
“So I’ve been racing to finish, see, because the clan’s in need just now—they’re like baby birds. You stuff something in one’s gob to shut it up, but there’s four others screaming for food. Or fancy electronics or new tools or clothes or I don’t know what all.”
“Living space, you say?’ Mary knitted her brows. “Like the sleep units behind the Hauler cabs? I thought the Jinma rigs had those.”
“So they do, and so this one already had,” said Cochevelou. “Two bunks and a little toilet and all. You should see it now! I took out the ice processor and cut a hatch through. Then he wanted a sheet of iron put in so as to make a level floor inside, see. Then some benches welded in along the sides, and a couple of fold-up tables. And the cab’s life support extended through, see, and the air supply amped up. And a sort of little booth at one end, with a counter and shelves.”
“So it’s a recreational vehicle, then?” Mary collected empty mugs from along the counter.
“It is not. I’ve never seen the like. I haven’t told you the strangest part, and that’s that he’s wanting lights put all over the outside of the dear thing. All the red and amber and white lights I had in the shop, mind you, and he’s paying a premium to order some purple and blue ones up from Earth as well! When we’ve got it all up and running it’ll look like Times Square gleaming out through the night.”
Mary shook her head. The residents down at the motel had taken to decorating and painting their rigs and shelters, giving the place a grubby carnival sort of gaiety, with scrawled mottoes and lanterns, but this went beyond anything she had heard of. “So they’re going to live in this? Down at the motel, like?”
“They are not,” said Cochevelou. “And
he’s having me overhaul the engine, too, trimming it up for speed. Those old things had eighty-five hundreds in them, you know. If he’s not laden down with a cargo of ice, he’ll need a license to fly when he gets it out on the road and opens her up.”
“Bloody hell,” said Mary. “Tables and chairs and lights and speed.”
“A rolling casino,” affirmed Cochevelou smugly. “He takes it out by the ice depot, there isn’t a lawman can touch him. And if the BAC tries to shut him down, he’ll take his game out to Amazonia.”
The airlock hissed and a throng of men entered: the members of the Martian Mining Consortium, weary and angry and smeared with purple clay. They took a booth and ordered, and before long could be heard shouting as they argued with one another.
CHAPTER 10
The Man from the West
Ottorino Vespucci lay on his back, staring up at the stars and wondering what would kill him first: a malfunction in his psuit or dehydration. Complications from his broken leg came in a distant third in the list of possibilities, since he was fairly certain he wouldn’t live long enough for gangrene to do him in, though something sneaky like a blood clot couldn’t be ruled out . . .
He was frightened and in pain, though not remarkably so considering his present circumstances. The stars shone with such unearthly brilliance! And, after all, he was lying on the surface of an alien world, with a diamond clutched in his gauntleted hand. It was a more memorable death than he had ever hoped for. He imagined it recounted to generations of little Vespucci nephews and nieces: Ottorino Vespucci, yes, that was your uncle who died on Mars. Your great-uncle who was an interplanetary diamond prospector. Your ancestor who dared to do something other than sit on a board of directors, who ventured out into the unknown and died bravely. Never forget him!
It was a shame his career as a prospector was ending so abruptly, but he really had been under the impression that Martian gravity would let him drift down as lightly as a falling leaf when he’d stepped off that cliff. Now, too, he understood why he ought to have purchased a magnesium flare gun, when he saw all the Haulers carrying them.
