They passed under Houston’s organic freeways. The Rose wanted to stay for a few days. The others insisted they find Sally Guand’ and press on to Galveston. But when Major Moyra Malu led them to Sally Guand’s old offices above the Union Station, the buildings were melted shells and the rails had twisted themselves into one vast, elongated abstract sculpture disappearing in the direction of Los Angeles. Here, as everywhere, black and white lived as best they could, equals amongst the ruins, and miscegeny was not uncommon.
They lost the road some twenty kays from Houston, used up their provisions and were forced to shoot a horse before they got on another trace full of abandoned buses and pickup trucks, which took them across to Old Galveston to find Jasmine Shah, who had been operating a bar on the harbourfront until the local vigilantes busted her huge cache of piles noires. Her dark locks hiding a long, vulpine face, she was ready, she said, to do almost anything, yet she would only come in with them after she had whispered strict conditions to each one in private. She revealed that she, like Major Moyra, was now a shade.
Paul Minct had hesitated after she spoke to him, but then he nodded agreement.
The streets of Galveston were full of whiteys who had failed to fulfil the ambitions they had conceived in Mississippi and Alabama and were now desperately trying to get back to New Orleans, but could not afford any kind of fare. Black travellers were beset by scores of them whining for help.
Sam Oakenhurst was glad when they got aboard the first schoomer available and sailed out into the peaceful waters of the Gulf. He and the Rose now had a better measure of the situation and yet he no longer had faith in his own good judgement. The thought of New Orleans was already beginning to obsess him.
The Rose begged him to rally. ‘It seems Mr Minct does intend to sail into the Fault. Yet why would he insist on your finding us a meat boat?’ (Paul Minct had commissioned Sam Oakenhurst to approach the machinoix.) ‘Does he want us alive when he goes in?’ Both agreed that Paul Minct had needed more partners only after Swift Thom had stirred some memory. ‘How does he plan to kill us?’ Sam wondered. ‘Perhaps he will not kill me until he has made sure of you, Rose. And you are necessary to him, I think. He knows you can help him.’
‘But you, too, are necessary if he is to get the meat boat. You heard him insist. It must only be a meat boat. Has anyone ever volunteered to sail on such a boat?’
‘It is forbidden,’ said Sam Oakenhurst. ‘He knows it is.’
‘Then he demands of you a complex betrayal. Is this how he would weaken us?’ The Rose began to brush her exquisite hair. ‘Who would you betray?’
‘Not you,’ he said. ‘Not myself. Nothing I value.’
‘Betray the machinoix and surely you betray yourself. You have explained all this to me. And in betraying yourself you must betray me. How will you resolve this? It is a problem worthy of Fearless Frank Force.’
She seemed to be mocking him.
‘A moral conundrum,’ she added.
There was a knock on their cabin door: A kiddikin bringing Mr Minct’s compliments and looking forward to the pleasure of their company in a game of Anvils and Pins.
‘I have earned your sarcasm, I know,’ Sam Oakenhurst said. ‘But I am still willing to learn from you. What will you teach me, Rose?’
‘You will learn that it is, space and time, always a question of scale.’ She touched his lips. ‘Meanwhile you must continue to risk your life. And you are sworn to serve me, are you not?’
‘On my honour,’ he said.
‘But in demanding your help I expose you to more than you ever expected,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you do not have the resources?’
‘I have them,’ he insisted.
‘You must draw upon your archetype.’ The Rose took his hand. Tonight her skin resembled fine, delicately shaded petals softly layered upon her sturdy frame. ‘I have lost my home and must destroy the man who robbed me of it. We are only barely related as species, you and I, but it is Time and Scale which separate us, Sam. In the ether we embrace metamorphosis. You and I, Sam, understand the dominating law of the multiverse. We are ruled by multiplying chance. But we need not be controlled by it. I knew Paul Minct in another guise. Now, I think, he clearly remembers me. He can always recall a weapon, that one, if not a woman. This pair, these shadows, are an afterthought. His interest in the Fault could be secondary now. First he must deal with us, for we threaten his existence. Perhaps he is afraid to let us reach the Fault with him, lest he be cheated of whatever it is he has schemed for? Believe me, Sam, Paul Minct will be giving us his full attention for the next few days. These others, they are scarcely real, merely 1st and 2nd Murderers.’
~ * ~
16. J’AI PASSE DEVANTTA PORTE
THE MACHINOIX HAD sniffed his coming. Sam Oakenhurst stood at the rail of the great triple-hulled schoomer and saw through Major Moyra’s glass that his brothers and sisters had assembled to greet him.
Their snorting, half-organic vehicles, dark green and brown with senility, drooled and defecated on the quayside while neither citizen nor armed militia dare show disgust or objection. In their city, the machinoix were ignored for the same reason quakes were ignored in Los Angeles. They were unavoidable and unpredictable.
Mr Sam Oakenhurst tasted their power as greedily as he embraced their kinship. His veins thrilled with the memory of his long courtships under the shutterbox, his lingering initiations, his education in seduction. Beware, he signalled the Rose, for I am enraptured already. I love you, Rose. Only you.
The Rose held fast to him and gave him the strength she could spare. He knew there was no physical danger. Any decision of his would be accepted, for he threatened nothing the machinoix valued. This knowledge was insufficient to steady his nerve. He had to call on his every resource and never reveal a hint of his condition to Paul Minct and his colleagues. The Rose, understanding the importance of this deception to her own interests, gave him more support. She had no choice. He was her only ally and while he lived so did she. And she loved him, she said.
By the time they had clambered down the gangway to the lighter, he was scarcely able to disguise the signs of his massive emotional conflict.
With her help, however, he succeeded. He at last stood four square on the quayside, clutching her arm once before advancing towards the middle vehicle from which oddly tattooed hands beckoned, their fingers fractured and re-set at peculiar angles with inserted precious stones and gold. Gnarled as old hedges, the hands had the appearance of eccentrically made robot digits, jointed and decorated for their beauty rather than their function.
The Rose was casual enough as she turned to inform a nervous Mr Minct that Sam Oakenhurst spoke machinoix perfectly. ‘He is the only possible interpreter. He will get us swift passage to Biloxi’
‘It must be the meat boat.’ Paul Minct was wheezing from his recent climb up the iron waterstair. ‘I know they reserve it for themselves but it is what we must have.’
By arrangement with the ship’s captain they were to stay in Rue Dauphine at the Hotel Audobon, a collection of old iron slave shacks turned into elegant cabines à la mode. The uniformed whiteys who greeted them at the gates were not permitted to take the little luggage the gamblers brought.
These were cabins of choice, let only to passing visitors of their own high persuasion. When they were settled, Paul Minct told them, they must assemble at Brown’s Bar Vieux on Royale, where he would hire the backroom and a couple of simul-bottles. They could thus link up for a rough and ready run-through of their plan to enter the Fault aboard the meat boat. ‘We’ll be going in through Mustard Splash or Ketchup Cave.’
The bottles were the best quality the Rose had ever seen. Major Moyra and Jasmine Shah were experts at handling and conducting them, massaging unstable gases, nursing their milky energy into responsive motes.
Before they had arrived, Paul Minct had refused to tell her why they must go to this trouble when the Terminal’s huge V resource was at anyone’s disposal. He appe
ared to have reasons for not alerting the people at the Terminal to his intentions.
Her instincts told her that this whole charade was part of a complicated plot to trap her before killing her. It was unnecessarily elaborate, she thought.
But it was that which convinced her. Elaboration was Paul Minct’s trademark. It was characteristic of his whole game thus to hide a simple brute intention.
Had he known she was in Guadalajara? If so, even Paul Minct’s affectation for M&E was a part of his plot against her. She was admiring of his mind for detail. She had known him in many roles, but usually he had not recognized her so quickly.
When Mr Oakenhurst rejoined them at Brown’s he seemed introspective but carefree enough, almost euphoric. He told them that they had the machinoix blessing to take the meat boat to Biloxi. This was, they must all understand, a considerable privilege. Moyra Malu said she appreciated the implications. Only Paul Minct accepted the news casually, as if Mr Oakenhurst had done no more than act as a go-between. ‘And how much do these great barons charge us, Mr Oakenhurst, for the privilege?’
‘Nothing, Mr Minct. They act upon my word alone.’
‘Flimsy enough, then?’
Sam Oakenhurst took a glaring interest in the screens, his mood threatening.
‘I am not sure I can stand that smell for such a long voyage,’ said Jasmine Shah. She had changed to red satin, she said, in honour of the occasion. She sported a feathery fan.
‘We must endure it until Biloxi,’ murmured Paul Minct, looking up from the bottles and retorts of his quasi-V, his mask reflecting the brilliant, ever-changing rhythms of the angry pastels. ‘They are unpredictable, are they not, sir, these psychics? Sometimes they seem to need us more than we need them. But I expect they are agreeable people, by and large.’
Sam Oakenhurst knew he had nothing much more to fear until they were actually aboard the meat boat. He took his place with the other four around the viewing bowls which flooded them now in bright blues and vivid pinks, adjusting to a formal plum colour as Paul Minct stroked his backupper to make shapes from the enlivened dust. Some of the images were familiar but many were not. Sam Oakenhurst found them obscene.
‘We have agreed a common principle, my dears,’ Paul Minct seemed a little sanctimonious. ‘And must stick to the rules we form here tonight. Or we shall be lost.’
‘Do we need to be reminded of that?’ Sam Oakenhurst was almost irritable as he studied the bowl, finding some strands on the screen he could use. He wove a showy, challenging pattern.
‘We are a team, Mr Oakenhurst.’ Paul Minct seemed pleased by this offhand display. ‘We can afford no weak links. No, as it were, anti-socialism.’ Sam Oakenhurst guessed Mr Minct had found a tune which he must now rehearse for a while. Mr Minct searched under his veil and plucked at his hideous jowls.
Unusually alert, Sam Oakenhurst studied Paul Minct’s companions and detected a tremor of victorious malice in Major Moyra’s face. The Rose’s warning was confirmed. Certain of his allies, Paul Minct was celebrating a premature triumph.
It will be on board the meat boat. That has always featured in his scenario, I think. I don’t know why, save that he follows a personal aesthetic. Mrs von Bek gave her own attention to the bowls and began a detailed weaving, a story of a planet and its doom, a wonderful miniature. Sam Oakenhurst understood that now she, too, had issued a challenge to Paul Minct. These were the gentle beginnings, the courteous preliminaries of the game.
Upon Mr Minct’s irrational insistence they began the first stage of their simulation, producing a reasonable version of the Biloxi Fault and some sort of boat in which to brave these self-created dangers. ‘Now we sail into Mustard Splash!’ declared Paul Minct, their captain. ‘These murky walls will part, thus!’ A magician, he revealed the blinding azure of a vast colour field. ‘We shall follow a river - thus –-’ A hazier network of silver streams which, with his characteristic crudity, he made into one wide road. ‘This line will respond to the meat boat’s unique geometry. And now we must do our best, dear friends, and make the most of our creative imaginations, for our quest lies even beyond the fields of colour - to find eternal life, limitless wealth! There one shall come in to one’s true power at last!’
~ * ~
Later, in their cabin, Sam Oakenhurst and the Rose agreed that the exercise had been a complicated sham, a violent and exhausting process with no other purpose, as far as they could tell, than to display Paul Minct’s artistic skills. ‘That was not the Fault,’ she said. ‘Merely a surface impression and a bad projection. It was an arcadium, no more. Almost an insult. I wonder why? To convince us? To confuse us? To terrify us? He knows in his heart what truly lies beyond the Fault.’
They were lying together on the wide bed, the light from the swamp-cone turning her brown skin into semi-stable green and giving her face a deep flush. ‘He still needs our good will, Sam. He had expected your challenge no more than had I.’
It had hardly been a challenge. Mr Oakenhurst, hyped on the sensations of his reunion, had merely wished to show that he no longer feared Paul Minct. He had risked their lives on a vulgar display and he now admitted it.
She began to laugh with quiet spontaneity. ‘I have a feeling he did not care to notice, anyway. He was preparing his talents for his demo. Let that hand ride for a while, Sam, and we’ll see what happens.’
He marvelled at her beauty, the peerless texture of her skin, her natural, sweet scent, the ever-changing colours of her flesh, and he knew that his feeling for her was stronger than his bond with the machinoix. Stronger than with his own species.
‘We are defenceless if he decides to take us before the meat boat leaves,’ he said. ‘I’m pretty scared, Rose.’
‘The best way to get out of trouble is to take a risk based on your judgement. You know that, Sam.’ Her touch was a petal on his thigh. ‘Take another risk. An informed one, this time. Make a change. What can you ever lose? Not me, Sam.’
She began to notice the tiny, symmetrical marks on his stomach, like stylized drops of blood.
He refused to tell her what they were.
~ * ~
17. EXITOSDEORO
THE MEAT BOAT left two days later from the quarantine dock, its brooding, over-decorated reptilian bulk almost filling the ancient channel. It was lying low in the water, giving the impression that it had just fed well.
In common with the others, Paul Minct had to steady himself against the smell from the holds. He held a huge nosegay of mint and rosemary to his hidden features, while the strength of the perfume sprayed about by Major Moyra was equally hard to stomach. Jasmine Shah contented herself with her fan and some smelling salts. She seemed lost in her own small fantasy.
They were led aboard by an obsequious whitey tattooed with the machinoix livery. The extravagantly furnished passenger quarters were clearly designed for the unwholesome comforts of the machinoix. It was a great honour, Sam Oakenhurst told them. The majority of quarters reserved for the machinoix were less comfortable. And there were quarters for the blankey slaves much closer to the meat.
He and the Rose stood together in the centre of Paul Minct’s cabin while the huge creature prowled about the edges, the nosegay still pressed to his beaded veil, inspecting the peculiar cups and little needles placed everywhere for a guest’s casual convenience. Sam Oakenhurst reached down to atiny table and picked up one of the razor-edged shot glasses. He gently touched it to the back of his wrist.
‘These colours are so muted,’ declared the Rose. ‘So gorgeous. So rich.’
‘There’s no-one doubts the machinoix ain’t rich, Mrs von Bek,’ chuckled Jasmine Shah, crowding in with Major Moyra to admire the vast chamber. ‘As Croesus, they say.’
‘Could buy and sell the Republic of Texas, even in my day,’ Major Moyra agreed. ‘But they don’t mess with human politics much. Ain’t that so, Mr Oakenhurst?’
‘That’s so, major.’
‘Built for a giant and furnished for dwarves,’ mused J
asmine Shah, making her own tour.
The atmosphere was one of general bonhomie as the would-be murderers saw their end-game laid out, already won.
Their adversaries’ confidence could be useful to them, Sam Oakenhurst decided, and later in their own cabin, Rose von Bek told him she had decided the same. ‘Their eagerness and anticipation can become our weapon. But it is three days to Biloxi. When will he strike, do you think?’
Sam Oakenhurst made a lazy gesture. He thought it would not be immediately. For the first time he was calmly ready for death. He did not much care how he died. He also knew that he could not accept death while his obligation to the Rose remained. He must make himself worthy of her.
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