Pippa frowned. ‘But we’re not stealing?’
Welling shook his head. ‘We’re winning.’
Pippa stared at him, realisation dawning on her face. ‘This is a casino? What about the aether?’
‘We need funds in order to procure supplies. To make the aether.’ Welling popped open the clips on the briefcase, raising the lid.
‘So … what was the point of all those drills?’ asked Pippa. ‘All the counting?’
Welling flashed her a bright white smile. ‘I’m glad you asked,’ he said. He brandished a flat, rectangular box. I stared at it, the familiar red and white patterns seeming like the most incongruous thing in the world.
‘Have you ever played blackjack?’
16
Welling slid the cards from the pack and fanned them out on the floor in front of us. ‘Each card has a value,’ he explained. ‘The number cards are self-explanatory. The picture cards are all worth ten. In a casino, you and whoever else is playing will be dealt cards. The house also gets cards. The goal in blackjack is to get as close to twenty-one as you can. If you go over, you lose. If you are the closest to twenty-one, you win. Simple.’
We nodded. I was churning with questions. What were we doing at a casino? Why was Welling teaching us to play blackjack? What possible purpose could it serve? Wouldn’t we become contaminated? But I said nothing. Daddy had sent us here. Welling knew what he was doing.
He dealt out cards and we played eight rounds of blackjack. As we played, he explained the rest of the rules and taught us a basic strategy.
Welling won five rounds, I won one, and Stan won two.
‘What’s the trick?’ asked Pippa.
‘It isn’t a trick,’ said Welling. ‘It’s about focus and precision. Clearing your mind and letting your actuality take over. You’ll get the hang of it. The game is easy. The hard part is knowing when and how much to bet.’
He reached into the briefcase again and took out a wad of notes, secured with an elastic band. My heart started to pound. I realised I hadn’t seen money for … how long? Months?
We were each passed a thin stack of twenty-dollar notes. They were smooth and real under my fingers. This wasn’t play-money. This was the real thing. I realised how powerful money was – how just seeing it and touching it made me feel aphotic. Grease and toxins seeped into my fingertips. I shuddered, and put my stack down on the carpet next to me. Pippa was flicking through her bundle. She raised it to her face and inhaled its scent. I felt ill.
‘Downstairs we’ll be playing with chips,’ Welling said. ‘But we can practise with the real thing.’
We played another eight rounds. Welling won four, I won two, and Pippa and Stan each won one. I bet conservatively, and only lost forty dollars out of the two hundred I’d been given. Pippa bet lavishly and was left with only a single twenty-dollar note. Stan started off conservative, but then got flustered at the end and ended up with forty dollars. Welling, however, seemed to know exactly when to bet high. He ended up with over four hundred dollars.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Now it’s time to apply the sublimation technic.’
I blinked. How were the drills we’d done related to this? How could learning how to balance the atomic weight of elements have anything to do with blackjack?
‘It’s just like with the element chips,’ said Welling. ‘When you see a card revealed, you adjust a running mental tally. If the card is between two and six, you add one. If it is between seven and nine, you do nothing. If the card is a ten, you subtract one. Understand?’
It was the same. The counting system was the same. Was … was this what we had been learning all along? I’d thought I’d been trained in something profound, something that was going to help me reach sublimation. But in fact I’d just been learning to count cards. I glanced at the others. Welling was looking at his cards. Stan was muttering numbers. Pippa met my eyes with a frown, and I knew she was wondering the same thing. I bit back my disappointment. I wasn’t weak like her. I had to trust Daddy. I knew we’d need money for the war – especially since our crops had been destroyed. And what better place to take it from than the darkest house of lead? Welling was right: we were helping the toxicants by taking their money, the source of all their greed and heaviness.
Welling shuffled his deck of cards with deft fingers, and I realised why Daddy had chosen him for this mission. He’d probably spent plenty of time gambling in his life before the Institute, when he was a successful stockbroker. Daddy was no fool. He knew how to take our weaknesses and turn them into strengths. How to harness our skills and vices and use them as tools to draw us closer to the sublime.
Welling put down one card at a time. We each counted in our heads, just as we had been doing every morning for the past two weeks. The numbers ticked through my head and soothed me, order in chaos, silencing my questions and doubts. Numbers were pure, elutriating the oily heaviness of the money.
‘Now we will play again,’ said Welling. ‘Pippa, Stan, play as normal. Hera – count as we go. Bet high whenever your count reaches three or above.’
We played another five rounds. I only won two, but I managed to win more money than I lost.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Pippa, your turn.’
Numbers swam through my head as we played hand after hand, and Welling explained betting strategies.
We worked on our blackjack game late into the night, before Welling finally called a halt, and Pippa and I dragged ourselves into the adjoining bedroom.
An enormous king-size bed took up most of the room, invitingly swathed in crisp white linens. A large window overlooked nearby skyscrapers, and I took a dizzy step away when I realised how high up we were. I saw Pippa eyeing the plastic-wrapped pillow mints on the bed. I swept them off the covers and marched into the ensuite, depositing them in the bin so she couldn’t be tempted anymore. Who knew what poisons they contained?
I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror, and felt a stab of fear at the sight of the unrecognisable girl staring back at me. She looked like a skeleton – sallow skin drawn tightly across bone, face gaunt and hollow. I remembered something Daddy had told us.
As you approach sublimation, you will notice signs that your flesh-body is ready to be discarded. Do not be alarmed. Soon, you won’t need it at all.
Back in the bedroom, Pippa was climbing into the bed, but I shook my head with a frown.
‘We want to stay sharp,’ I told her. ‘Alert. We sleep on the floor.’
Pippa opened her mouth as if to argue with me, but closed it again, casting a longing glance towards the fluffy doona and pillows before settling down onto the floor beside me.
I ordered my body to sleep, but the toxins leaking into me through the make-up and synthetic fabric and the pollution of the city had made my body rebellious and sluggish to respond. Beside me, Pippa shifted uncomfortably, rolling from side to side and sighing. I let my breathing slow, so she would think I was asleep. I needed to set a good example.
But sleep didn’t come.
Pippa was restless all night, getting up to use the toilet several times. I hoped she wasn’t sneaking into the bathroom to eat the pillow mints, and resolved to hide them somewhere else in the morning. I could hear the ding of the lift out in the hallway, and the low constant hum of air conditioning. I shuddered at the thought of what it might be pumping into our room.
Morning finally came, and Welling tapped on our bedroom door, letting us know it was nearly time to head down to the casino floor.
‘Are we having breakfast first?’ asked Pippa, dark, sleepless pouches under her eyes.
‘No,’ I told her. ‘You don’t need breakfast. Food will slow you down.’
I went into the ensuite to get ready. I eyed the shower, and imagined the feeling of the hot jets hitting my back and shoulders. I imagined lathering up handfuls of soap and shampoo, and breathing in great lungfuls of warm steam.
Hot water was damaging to the skin. Soaps and other chemicals would be
absorbed into the body, creating disharmony and sluggishness.
But if we are discarding this body soon anyway, what harm will it do? asked a pesky voice inside my head.
I put the plug into the basin, and filled it up with cold water, using a hand towel to sponge myself clean. This was better than a shower. The elutriation offered by the cold water was a thousand times better than the simple flesh-pleasures of heat and steam.
As the lift doors opened, a roar of tinny music, clacking chips and human voices swept over me. It was utterly overwhelming, and for a moment I hesitated. I could go back up to the quietness of the hotel room. Just for a moment. To gather my thoughts. I wasn’t ready for this. The lights – all bright, all flashing, all artificial. The swirls of light on poker machines and patterned dresses and the riotous carpet. The smells of alcohol and perfume and plastic. It was too much.
Welling shoved me in the back, pushing me out onto the casino floor. ‘Keep it together,’ he muttered between clenched teeth.
We walked past bank after bank of poker machines, each one with its own jaunty, jangling music and flashing lights. Despite the noise, the casino was relatively quiet – it was still morning. A handful of toxicants sat at the poker machines, mostly sagging men with vacant stares and older women clutching handbags. They were barely people, just withered husks, mindlessly pressing a button, over and over. What was the point of being alive? I longed for the Institute, for the simplicity of my days, for the feeling of belonging, of higher purpose. I was so lucky to have it. These toxicants had nothing. They were passing time before the inevitability of death, being eaten alive by their own internal acids.
Overhead, grand coloured swoops of orange and gold gave the room a dim, intimate glow. Waitresses sailed past us carrying trays of drinks, as if in here, mornings didn’t exist, and it was always happy hour. Occasionally there was a shout of delight or dismay from a gaming table. It was a prison, hidden away from natural light and air. Toxicants voluntarily filling their bellies with poison, their brains with emptiness, their actuality with lead.
Black-suited security guards were everywhere, and I felt my heart rate increase as their eyes slid over me. Were they really Quintus Septum agents? Would they see past my disguise?
Someone was shouting behind me, calling out a name. I walked on.
‘Ruby!’ A hand grabbed my elbow and I spun around.
Ruby.
It was someone I had once known, a million years ago. One of Mum’s friends, from a book club she’d been part of. Her face was caked in foundation which sank into her wrinkles, forming powdery beige crevasses. Her lipstick was bleeding into the lines around her mouth, and her teeth were stained yellow from cigarettes and coffee.
Ruby.
The woman peered at me, leaning in. Her perfume was cloyingly sweet, and made me long for lungfuls of fresh air. I held my breath so as not to be polluted by her any further. Her eyes drilled into mine, and it was as though she could see right through me. Then she shook her head and released my elbow.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought you were someone else.’
She walked away, and Welling came up beside me. ‘What did she want?’ he hissed.
‘Nothing,’ I told him. ‘She thought I was someone else.’
‘Are you sure? She didn’t plant anything on you? A tracking device?’
I shook my head. ‘It was a misunderstanding.’
Welling hunched his shoulders uneasily. ‘Be careful. The Quintus Septum have eyes everywhere. We must be vigilant.’
We split up, Pippa, Welling and I each heading to a different blackjack table. Stan was stationed at a poker machine positioned where he could see all of us. Once the count on our table got really favourable, we were to signal Stan, who would then pass the signal on to the others. They’d come over to the hot table and we’d all bet high. That way we were increasing our odds of winning.
I found a table over in a dimly lit corner of the casino floor, near the toilets. A bored croupier sat looking at his phone. I checked to make sure I could see Stan, took a deep breath and slid onto a stool.
‘Bet?’ the croupier asked.
I stared at my stack of chips. How much to bet? Five dollars? Ten? A hundred? Welling had given me two hundred dollars in chips – but I’d forgotten how I was supposed to start.
The croupier sighed and rolled his eyes. The sounds of the casino rose around me like a tidal wave of noise – dinging, humming, squealing. Laughter and screams and such an overwhelming press of humanity – flesh and machines all clanging and pinging and overflowing with grease and money and electricity. Bile rose in my throat, and I teetered on my stool. I was going to faint. My ears were ringing and the lurid carpet heaved around me in ripples and waves. I couldn’t do it. I needed quiet and fresh air.
‘Are you okay?’ asked the croupier. ‘Do you need a glass of water?’
I did, desperately, but I wasn’t going to drink the poison that he called water. Why hadn’t I brought a bottle of sulphurous water with me? I shook my head at him and smiled weakly.
I could do this. I was special. I was close to sublime. I was the master of my flesh-body, not a slave to it.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I pictured Daddy’s calm, smiling face, and felt my racing heart slow.
I was here for him. For Daddy. He believed in me. I had to prove him right. I was special. I was extraordinary.
Daddy’s face blurred and shifted, and became Fox.
Fox.
Fox was a traitor.
But I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t banish his face.
I still loved him.
I knew it was weak. My feelings for Fox were all tangled up in the cravings of my body and I couldn’t separate out which parts of him I loved with my mind, and which parts I loved with my heart and my blood.
My heart ached, but it was good to feel. Anton’s face swam into view as well, and Mum’s, and Dad’s. I breathed deeply, and my muscles relaxed. The noise and clamour of the casino faded into silence, and I opened my eyes.
‘Are you okay?’ the croupier asked again.
I smiled at him. ‘Yes. I’m okay.’
I selected a chip from my stack and slid it across the green felt of the table. The croupier dealt me two cards – a Jack and a Queen, and two for himself, face down. With a deft movement he flipped one of his cards over – a nine. I passed my hand over the cards like Welling had taught me, indicating I wanted to stand. The croupier flipped the other card over – a King. I had won! My twenty dollars was now forty. I could do this. I kept ten back and bet with thirty.
My next hand was a six and a Queen – sixteen. Had Welling said to stand on sixteen? Or was it seventeen? I tapped the table and the croupier dealt me another card. A four. He busted out at twenty-four on his own hand, and suddenly my thirty dollars was sixty.
I won the next round too, and the one after that. It seemed to come naturally – keeping the mental tally of the high and low cards felt effortless, and the chips kept sliding across the table to me. I lost a few, but I placed my bets carefully and before long I was slowly, steadily, making some serious money. The endless drills Welling had put us through were paying off. Even though I was dealing with cards now, instead of elements, the count was familiar and comforting. I felt myself settle into the rhythm of the technic.
After thirty minutes, I leaned back on my stool and surveyed my little pile of chips. One thousand six hundred dollars. I had never owned that much money in my life.
I bet with more confidence, taking more risks and betting larger amounts when the card count got high. I kept a meticulous count, waiting for the magic number to appear so I could signal Stan and get the others to come over. Before long I had five thousand dollars in chips, and was still going strong.
Daddy had been right. It couldn’t be this easy for everyone, or else casinos would all be broke. It was me. It was my own innate powers of thought and analysis, unlocked and free as I approached sublimation.
>
My five thousand dollars quickly became ten thousand.
‘Wow,’ said the croupier, not so bored now. ‘You’re having a lucky day.’
Foolish toxicant. There was no such thing as luck.
He turned over another card, and my mental tally reached +6. Power zinged through me. It was time. I glanced over to Stan, then casually lifted a hand and slipped my ponytail from its elastic, letting my hair settle around my shoulders. Stan stood up and moved sideways to the next poker machine.
I slowed my betting, waiting for the others to join me. Welling arrived first, then Pippa. They ignored me, other than a polite nod of greeting. As far as anyone was concerned, we were complete strangers. They settled at the table and laid bets. Big bets. Thousands of dollars.
‘Sir? Madam?’ said the croupier. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to try one of the private rooms?’
‘Perhaps in a moment,’ said Welling. ‘I’d like to play a couple of hands here first.’
The croupier shrugged, and looked at me expectantly.
I divided my chips in half, kept five thousand, and slid the rest into the centre of the table.
The croupier raised his eyebrows, but dealt anyway. He dealt himself a Jack. Welling got low cards – fourteen. He waved his hand, a frown wrinkling his face. My mental tally climbed to +8. Pippa busted out.
It was up to me.
And I had two Queens.
Two Queens. Welling had told me never to split tens – but I knew that the cards in the deck were high. If I split, then I would win big. Really big.
The avocation was the most powerful I had ever experienced. It shook me to my core, and in an instant, I knew. My hands didn’t tremble as I pushed the remainder of my chips into the centre of the table. I was going to win. I was going to win twenty thousand dollars, and I would take it back to the Institute and Daddy would smile his knowing smile at me, and tell me that he always knew I was special.
‘Split,’ I said to the croupier.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked, looking at me as if I was crazy.
The Boundless Sublime Page 20
