Chapter 11
CONNECTING ROD
01
Everyone waited patiently for Balot to finish wiping her face with the cloth.
Ashley didn’t even ask what she intended to do for the next game. Neither did he collect the cards in
preparation for the shuffle. He just waited for her.
When Balot eventually finished wiping the tears from her face and looked up, there was Ashley,
holding out the box. The box full of golden chips.
Those on the floor watched in stunned silence as Balot reached for the box and took a golden chip, one
with the OctoberCorp emblem etched on its face. When Ashley said, And now please choose your other
one, the whole crowd seemed about to faint. Balot checked for the last OctoberCorp emblem—the final
piece of the puzzle—and once she’d located it, she gingerly took the chip into her care along with the
other three.
“Perhaps you might be able to share with me—only if it suits you, that is—just what it is about these
chips that you’re seeking?” Ashley said as he placed the box—now deprived of a third of its golden luster
—back into place.
Balot casually slipped the chips into her glove—as if they were unimportant—and answered him.
–I made the trade too, I think. Like the mermaid with the sorceress. So that I would be able to
walk, in a manner of speaking.
“So that’s what you’re aiming for, is it? To be able to walk properly?”
–I think so.
Ashley nodded, greatly impressed. Or so it seemed, but then he frowned.
It wasn’t Balot’s fault, though—indeed, his sudden change of demeanor was nothing to do with her and
everything to do with the barrage of words that were now assaulting his ears through his earpiece. Balot
knew immediately who was haranguing him so—not so much from the voice, but from the words
themselves.
If the vicious words of recrimination were anything to go by, this was indeed a cursed man, the man
whose life was full of the emptiness of his own creation.
Balot watched Ashley as he winced and then cringed under the vicious barrage of recriminations and
insults. Somehow she found it funny.
–The owner of the casino, perhaps?
“As you say, miss—very perceptive of you. Looks like we’ve not just entered a minefield but also
stepped right on top of a charged mine to boot. I am sorry about this—I would have liked to present a
more professional face to you…” With the last words, Ashley’s glance flickered toward Bell Wing.
“It’s a bit too late for that, Ashley. You’ve long since fallen for this girl,” Bell Wing pointed out,
bringing him back down to earth. Ashley grinned good-naturedly. Balot thought she’d seen this smile once
before somewhere.
He turned back to Balot with the same expression and continued. “I have one round left to win
everything back fromyou and finish you off, apparently. Otherwise it’s the flamethrower.”
–Flamethrower?
“Pink slip. His dismissal papers,” Bell Wing explained. Ashley bowed to confirmthis—just so.
“Looks like this is how it’s going to end for me, then. One more round is nowhere near enough time for
me to find a way to beat you. It might be a different story if we had another ten rounds or so, of course, but
by then I’d probably be rooting for you anyway; I’m sure I’d want you to win by the end, which would
kind of defeat the whole object, wouldn’t it? Hmm, what to do…”
–Please call the owner of the casino here. I want to return these chips to him in person.
Balot felt the information on the third chip being sucked out from within her glove as she spoke.
Ashley was rarely lost for words, but he was now. He turned to look at Bell Wing.
In turn, Bell Wing was no less surprised. The two dealers looked at each other in silence for a while,
trying to work out what was behind this sudden turn of events and what it could mean.
When the silence was eventually broken it was in the formof a roaring laugh fromAshley.
“Man, you really got us, didn’t you. Are you saying that it was never your intention to try and break the
bank here?” Ashley’s fine-whiskered face was now creased in laughter, as if he’d just been subjected to a
barrage of the most hilarious comedy known to mankind.
Balot nodded, and Ashley looked up to the heavens. “In other words, you’ve already found what
you’ve come for. A target that we never even knew about and still don’t know the details of… Incredible.
Well, you know what? I may be here as the yojimbo, but my job is to protect the casino—I’m not a
bodyguard. The owner will just have to fend for himself. And if you’re after him, miss, I can’t say I rate
his chances too highly.”
Bell Wing was nodding too—she had finally understood it all.
Ashley looked back at Balot, then placed his massive hand over his equally massive chest. “I’ll be
praying for you, miss, that your magic spell lasts as long as possible.” His tone of voice was now
dignified and polite, in such contrast to his raucous laughter of a minute ago that Balot wondered whether
she had dreamed that laughter.
–Thank you.
Ashley’s infectious grin emerged again, and he walked away fromthe table.
≡
Balot looked over in the direction Ashley was moving and snarced Oeufcoque softly.
–That dealer—he’s a lot like you, Oeufcoque, you know.
–You think so? In what way?
–In many ways. He just is, kind of. He has his strict side but also a gentle streak. And he’s a
unique personality.
–Just your type, then.
–I guess so. Jealous, much?
Oeufcoque didn’t reply right away. He left a short pause—signifying that he was somewhat
preoccupied with the delicate operation involving the million-dollar chips—before answering.
–I’m not aware of any such symptoms, no.
–That’s a shame. You’re allowed to be a little jealous, you know.
–Sorry about that.
Oeufcoque was apparently unaffected, and Balot felt a bit disappointed. But then more words floated
abruptly up on her hand, as if Oeufcoque was spitting the words out in spite of himself.
–I was frightened back then when I was removed from your hands. I thought you might be throwing
me away.
–But I want to use you, Oeufcoque. In exactly the way that you want me to.
She patted her gloves gently as if to reassure him that this was indeed the truth. She stroked him like a
mother stroking her baby’s face to tell it that it was special, beloved, wanted.
It dawned on Bell Wing that Balot was up to something. “Are you speaking to someone, young lady?”
Bell Wing was as sharp as ever.
Balot just nodded, truthfully.
–Yes. I’m speaking to someone who helps me out.
“Your guardian angel, no doubt.”
Balot smiled. Then she turned her eyes to the table. The deserted table.
She needed to compose herself, to prepare for the man who would soon be arriving here.
As if she too were inside the trunk of the car that had contained the corpse of Ashley’s brother.
This was a battle fought over the right—the privilege—of starting everything anew.
≡
“They’re coming,” Bell Wing whispered.
Ashley led the way, taking his characteristically large strides, flanked by two other men. One of them
was the man Balot had been expecting all along. The other she didn’t recognize. Ashley’s demeanor
wasn’t so much that of an employee escorting his bosses to a gaming table as that of a jailer leading
condemned prisoners toward their place of execution.
Oeufcoque gave Balot the full briefing so that she was absolutely prepared for what was to come.
–It’s Cleanwill John October. One of the leading directors of OctoberCorp. He’s Shell’s direct
supervisor, as it were, but he’s also the father of the woman Shell’s planning to marry.
The man that Oeufcoque was describing was also a giant. Not just big or fat. This was something else;
his body was a mass of solid flesh. The stereotype of fat people was that they tend to have happy, jovial
faces, but this certainly wasn’t the case here. The man wore a black sneer that seemed to look down on all
the other people on the casino floor. His eyes oozed disgust at the fact that he even had to look at Balot.
Balot, in turn, found his expression so repulsive that she struggled to think of a reason why she shouldn’t
just shoot himdead right then and there as a service to all of humanity.
The moment they arrived, Ashley stood stock-still and did his best to blend into the background like
one of the decorative plants—he knew his role was over.
The lump of meat fromOctoberCorp glowered at Balot with pure disdain.
Suddenly, Balot picked up a million-dollar chip in her hand and tapped it lightly against the table,
spinning it around casually as if it were a one-dollar coin. A coin that had the OctoberCorp emblem
emblazoned on it.
This seemed to have the desired effect—if she couldn’t shoot the two men dead in their tracks, this
was a damn good substitute, and their reactions were almost as satisfying.
Shell’s and John’s faces went blue simultaneously. They both seemed equally fit to burst, likely to
spew forth torrents of bile and rage at any moment, but they both managed to keep it in, just about, nostrils
flaring, and Balot wondered how much more it might take before they spontaneously combusted.
Cleanwill John October’s eyes narrowed, and he spoke.
“Get the chips back from this girl. Fail and you’ll meet the same fate as the coin being spun round and
round.”
Shell’s face went blank—he was like a hit man who had been ordered on a suicide mission—and he
moved into the dealer’s position.
His Chameleon Sunglasses glinted muddy blue.
≡
Shell’s posture straightened the instant he took his position at the table. It was as if his whole body had
transformed into a machine.
This man was now standing before Balot because he had to. He was prepared for the inevitable. He
was ready.
Shell took off his rings. His seven rings, each one adorned with a Blue Diamond. Those repulsive
little jewels made from the ashes of his mother and the six young girls he’d killed. Balot had been
destined for ring number eight, but here she was now, watching with a blank face as the rings were placed
on the table.
Back when Balot was with Shell, it used to be her job—one of her jobs—to look after those rings
during the Shows. Now the rings just lay silently on the table, their jewels shining up at her like frozen
tears.
Shell put away the cards that had been used for the previous match and took out a new set.
He started shuffling—a shuffle familiar to Balot, one that she remembered from long ago. She
remembered that there was a time when she had found it beautiful, elegant. That was only a few months
ago, but it seemed like many lifetimes past. Now Balot could see that Shell’s movements might have been
smooth and flashy enough, ideal for impressing the punters, but there was very little substance to them—
he was nowhere near as skilled with the cards as Ashley, for example.
Whirlpools of numbers swirled around at the base of Balot’s left arm as the pile of cards was
prepared. Balot reached out for the transparent red marker and took it in her hands before Shell had the
opportunity to offer it to her.
Balot’s eyes met Shell’s for the first time since that night in the AirCar.
She sensed his eyes opening wide behind his sunglasses.
His eyes were filled with a deep, deep anger—and at the root of this was an overwhelming fear that
Shell couldn’t even understand, much less come to terms with.
Balot felt the dregs of an old memory dredged up from the murky past: the memory of Shell lecturing
her ever so calmly about the definition of love. The words popped into her head, then disappeared again
as soon as they came—but not before she had said themout loud.
–You’re going to be the prettiest little ornament there is. Everyone’s going to admire you, and
respect me. Because I have all the money and love that anyone could ever want.
Silently, Balot thrust the red marker into the pile of cards.
–Just do as I say, and everything will be all right.
A faint, scornful sneer played across Balot’s lips as she said the words, and she jerked her head at
Shell—and the cards—to indicate she was ready.
Shell’s face was peculiarly shy at this moment. What was he feeling? Embarrassed? Bashful?
At the very least he seemed to recognize that the words that Balot had just spoken were quotations,
phrases that he had once said to her, even if he couldn’t remember actually having said them. He had
made long-forgotten promises, and now he was being held to account.
Stuck for words, Shell focused his attention on the cards at hand, cutting them, preparing them.
That handful of movements told Balot everything she needed to know about just how much control
Shell could still exert over the cards—and how much control he had lost.
She waited for Shell to finish placing the cards in the card shoe, toying with the four million-dollar
chips in her hands, as if to say I hold your heart in my hands.
–I’m not the impatient sort, my dear. I like to take mytime.
With these words, Balot placed a chip in the pot.
It wasn’t one of the golden chips. Rather, it was an ordinary hundred-thousand-dollar chip. Shell had
evidently been expecting one of the million-dollar variety, and he gulped, then eventually exhaled deeply.
–Let me peel your layers off one by one, mylittle one.
Balot smiled as she spoke. By now, Shell wasn’t the only one to have realized that she was quoting
verbatim words that Shell had said to her, once upon a time. The others around the table were listening
with keen interest.
“You filthy gutter-born whore…” Shell muttered, touching the card shoe as if in some sort of warped
act of purification.
The Doctor and Ashley scowled when they heard his words. Only Balot and Bell Wing remained
unaffected, unflinching.
Shell flicked the cards out of the card shoe. Violently, recklessly, like a hotheaded teen rebel quick to
snap out his jackknife and lunge at the opponent who had enraged himso.
Balot dodged the blade in a deft movement, then crushed all resistance with a single blow.
–There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, mylittle one.
Shell continued dealing, trying to appear unconcerned.
–You look a little frightened, but don’t worry, I like it that way. It makes you look even more
alluring.
Balot continued to smile a seraphim’s smile at Shell, who by now was gritting his teeth so hard it
seemed like he was about to break his own jaw.
She was smiling, but her eyes blazed with her true feelings of animosity.
Balot took those hate-filled eyes off Shell for a moment and refocused on her cards. She was deciding
what she wanted of him, how she wanted him. She was going to release him from the waiting—the worst
part, that moment before the customer told you just how he was going to enjoy you. Just as Balot had
suffered in the past.
Her eyes snapped back up toward Shell, and she called out her move.
–Now, open your legs wide, little one, and show daddy what he wants to see…
Then, when Shell showed no sign of understanding, Balot rephrased her instructions.
–Stay.
A fat vein started visibly throbbing in Shell’s temple. He struggled to suppress his fury as he flipped
over his hidden card. Slowly. Not in order to put his opponent off. No—Shell moved slowly because his
foul, abject mood meant that he physically couldn’t move any faster.
The game had begun. Balot’s farewell game to the casino, her lap of honor. A game just for her.
≡
Ashley and Bell Wing were the first to realize what was going on.
The Doctor knew already, of course, as it was none other than the Doctor who had hatched the plan in
the first place.
The only ones who remained oblivious to the end were the man fromOctoberCorp and Shell.
Shell’s mind wasn’t even able to comprehend the possibility that something was going on—that he
was being played—or, if it was, he soon suppressed those errant suspicions. The only thing that Shell
knew was that he was winning, over and over, just as he did in life, and his victories were all he had to
hold on to fromamid his shame and disgrace.
For Shell was winning. From the very first hand up to the ten-game mark where they currently stood,
the cards seemed to be going his way.
The Doctor’s plan was unfolding nicely. Your target is the golden yolks—don’t touch any white or
shell. If you do end up getting some along the way, be sure to return them immediately once you’ve
reached your objective. Balot understood what she had to do. The only question left now was the matter
of timing. So that the plan would achieve its maximumeffect.
It was around the twelve-game mark when it happened. The upcard was 9, Balot’s cards were 3 and 8.
The melee of figures at the bottomof her left armshowed her what she needed to do. Balot hit.
The card she received was a 6. Then she hit again, a 2. Total nineteen. At first glance it looked like
her recklessness had paid off. In particular to the man from OctoberCorp, standing behind Shell and the
chips, glaring over all he could see.
Balot glanced up at himbefore calling out her intention to stay.
Cleanwill John October, the man from OctoberCorp, wore a fearsome expression. Unrelenting and
relentless. As if he wouldn’t permit Shell to lose a single hand, let alone the game. An impossible
demand. Like ordering himto play Russian roulette with an automatic pistol.
Shell turned over his hidden card. An ace. Shell had won, by the narrowest of margins.
“Ha!” John yelped in satisfaction. Shell smiled even as he looked on at his cards with a grim
expression.
Shell was hanging on by a thread, and he knew it. Balot was on the crest of a winning wave, on the
ultimate winning streak, and yet she was somehow suppressing it. Leaving the door open to Shell. Cutting
himsome slack, giving himsome rope—for what?
She was planning something. He could smell it. Even in his present state, Shell was still Shell, and he
was usually the first to pick up on this sort of thing.
But it was already too late. The race had already begun: a drag race, where speed was everything and
the first to cross the finish line took it all—and then mid-race Shell realized that the finish line was
actually a chicken run straight to hell, and yet he couldn’t slam on the brakes or he would lose, and lose
everything. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Balot’s hundred-thousand-dollar chips had run out. Before long she had also exhausted her supply of
fifty-thousand-dollar chips too, and was on to the ten-thousand-dollar chips, burning through them
steadily, one after another, like a chain smoker his cigarettes.
What did the others in the casino—the players, the dealers—make of such a scene?
Let me help you with that, they would have been thinking, most probably. They would have taken the
chips in their hands and ran fromthe casino as quickly as their legs would carry them.
It was only common sense, after all—winning streaks didn’t last forever.
This girl and the lanky man beside her had lost it—they were suckers for pushing on past the point that
their luck had run out, for not knowing when to quit while they were ahead.
Now their recklessness had driven the casino mad, forced the house to call in its big guns, and their
chips were crumbling away like an asphalt road under a jackhammer. An unstoppable force—and one that
nobody had any inclination to try and stop.
The whole floor seemed to feel this way.
And this was what Balot and the Doctor needed in order to bring the final act to an end on the requisite
bang. How would the regulars who haunted this place react toward those who had just wandered onto
their turf and won a fortune, and not even a small one at that? Some would be prepared to kill the
interlopers to steal their newly acquired riches. Others might try and team up with them, use them to win
big for themselves. It wouldn’t just be the other customers who felt this way but many of the dealers too,
no doubt. Either way, they were a veritable hornets’ nest, ready to sink their opportunistic stingers into
those who won big—another hurdle for Balot and the Doctor to contend with.
The best way to subdue the angry hornets was to smoke them out and put them to sleep. To do this,
Balot needed to lose big, and conspicuously. If she was seen to stumble, to trip and drop her fat purse in
the gutter, to watch its gold contents irretrievably washed away by the effluvia—well, then she’d be of no
more interest to the swarm that was only after one thing. Indeed, once they’d seen she’d lost, and lost
everything, they’d see her as jinxed and avoid her like the plague.
Even so, Balot still had to win in her own way.
She had to bring verisimilitude to their little act. More importantly, she had a bad debt she needed to
pay off.
The upcard was 5. Balot had a queen and 2.
–Stay.
Waiting for the dealer to bust.
Shell’s face showed his despair even before he turned his card over. No doubt he already knew the
distribution of the cards, helped by information fed in from his earphone and the watchlike device on his
wrist.
All that was left for him to do was entrust everything to luck and flip his hidden card. His face hoped,
prayed, begged, for total victory—no more the basic self-control expected in even a rookie dealer.
The card was a king. He then went on to draw another card—queen. Total twenty-five. Bust.
John’s face erupted in nuclear fury as he watched Shell silently paying out to Balot. His face turned
black.
Balot waited for her next move, gauging her timing perfectly.
She snapped one of the golden chips into place on the table. The sound was like a judge’s gavel when
judgment was passed down. Shell and John sprang to attention.
The air was icy with tension. Balot said and did nothing, waiting silently for her next card.
It felt good to be able to stare down an opponent without having to say anything—particularly an
opponent to whomBalot had nothing to say.
Shell’s blood was as thick as molten wax as he forced his hand over to the card shoe to deal. As he
dealt, his fingers withdrew one of the cards and dealt the one just below it, out of turn, so that he received
a card that was meant for Balot. A blatant switch.
Ashley and Bell Wing saw right through the clumsy maneuver, as did Balot.
The upcard was an ace. Balot’s cards were a king and jack.
–Stay, Balot called immediately.
Shell flipped over his hidden card with his leaden hand.
The card was a 4. Total fifteen. He went on to draw a 7. The ace in his hand was now worth only one,
bringing his hand to twelve.
Then he drew a 9. He had reached his total of twenty-one. Shell had won.
02
–Never doubt. It’s the road to ruin.
Shell looked up at Balot, confused.
–The recipient of love shouldn’t have any doubts. No need to trouble yourself with questions.
Behind Shell, John chuckled to himself.
Shell collected the golden chip with hands that couldn’t quite stop quavering, then took in the cards for
the discard pile.
Shell understood all too well what had just happened. The way the cards had been dealt was ace, king,
4, jack, 7, 9.
In other words, before his switch the cards had been arranged king, ace, 4, jack, 7, 9.
Had Shell not made his move, Balot would have had blackjack, and not just any old blackjack. The
ace and jack of spades: a payout of 11 to 1. Her million-dollar stake at that level of payout would have
been an atomic bomb, blowing the casino to pieces.
Then it hit Shell; he had worked it all out. Where exactly Balot had inserted the red marker: right
below the ace that had just been dealt. She had known exactly how and where he was going to cut and
based her own play around that.
Shell was completely under her thumb. She’d even planned exactly how he was going to win, forcing
his hand, quite literally. He felt a deep malaise welling up inside himself. He was on the verge of
screaming as his pride and confidence were ripped to shreds.
John, on the other hand, was delighted to see the golden chip return to its box, welcoming it home like
it had been his own kidnapped daughter released from incarceration. Hardly surprising, considering the
chip represented his own dirty money.
It wasn’t even so much the money itself that was at stake for John and Shell but the very fact of its
existence. If, as a result of the transfer of large amounts of cash—a large payout, for example—they came
under scrutiny from the authorities and their money-laundering scheme was discovered, it would be far
more than the actual cash that John and Shell both stood to lose.
Balot’s aimnow was to find the right timing to lay down the final three golden chips.
She threw around more of the ten-thousand-dollar chips for the next few rounds, waiting for her next
chance. Then, just as she was getting ready to place the next million-dollar chip, an old memory came to
mind.
Something she had once seen on television. Aborigines—native peoples under the protection of the
Commonwealth. A funeral, a wake, but a festive occasion. The aborigines had great respect for Mother
Nature and celebrated a person’s return to her bosomvia the ceremonial slaughtering of a cow.
The reason she’d ended up watching such a program was simple: she had misheard the announcer and
thought it was going to be a programabout abortion.
Abortion, abortionist, abortive—Balot was only half paying attention to the television when she
thought she heard something along those lines. She was surprised, therefore, to find out that the program
was about a completely different topic.
She kept on watching, though, if for no other purpose than to try and dispel the images that her mind
had conjured up. That was how she’d learned about aborigines. Where was she when she saw that
program? Yes, that was it—the place she’d been at before her last brothel—the Date Club, in the waiting
room.
There were a number of girls working there. The clients would phone in, having seen the details on a
flyer or poster, and the man in the office—reception, really—would then send out the girl that most
closely matched the client’s request. In between assignments the girls waited around in interminable
stretches of tense boredom. The girls would do what they could to alleviate this with magazines,
television, books, or by attending to their manicures. It helped blot out other, more unpleasant, thoughts.
Occasionally, though, these other thoughts would still seep through. Much in the same way that Balot
ended up watching the programon aborigines—to try and take her mind off a more unpleasant thought.
The aborigines in the program didn’t just revere death—they also feared it. The reporter explained
that this was all tied to their deep respect for the jungle. Balot understood immediately. She could relate
to the animals being offered up to nature—she knew what it meant to be a sacrificial lamb. And she knew
that this was a scene that played out everywhere.
It the city, people feared one another. Society was divided into those with power and those without,
and if it was social interaction that helped to dissolve that fear of each other, it was also social
interaction that served up scapegoats—sacrificial victims, a necessary and inevitable function to keep
society running. Balot was always hearing such stories fromher customers and the other girls.
Stories of sadistic men who could only get their kicks by torturing people, or religious nutjobs who
had to follow a precise set of bizarre rules in the correct sequence in order to get off, or men who
selected the right girls—or boys—to fulfill their fantasies to the letter, choosing their costumes and the
scenery, ordering them around like a theater director would his actors. These men may not have
physically been taking machetes to the throats of their livestock, but they were doing the equivalent to the
hearts and minds of thirteen-year-old girls.
The Date Club that Balot worked at was one of the better brothels—one of the safer ones, anyway.
The club paid taxes, or at least the man at reception said it did. We’re virtually a public service.
In other words, they’d covered their backs against charges of violating the protection of minors law.
Those places that operated under the radar, avoiding such “unnecessary expenses” as taxes—it stood
to reason that these were the most dangerous of all.
The pimps weren’t always strangers, either. One of the girls, before she worked at the Date Club, used
to be pimped out by her father on a regular basis. She’d already been with nearly a hundred johns by the
time she was sixteen—most of her “clients” being his friends, drinking buddies, or customers at the
watering holes her father frequented. Then one day her father found himself in deep trouble with one of
her clients and mysteriously disappeared fromthe world. The girl carried on living, surviving, through the
profession that her father had taught her so well. As if that was her way of showing her filial love and
devotion.
At the club the girls swapped gruesome stories of how girls who plied their wares from street corners
had a tendency to meet a bad end. One girl recounted to Balot a particular tale as if she were talking about
a horror novel. How one of her friends ended up wasting away in the hospital, her bones shattered, her
body jelly. Girls beaten to death by their violent men had looked a prettier sight.
Apparently the dead girl used to refer to herself occasionally as a bomb. A ticking time bomb. Her
friend only understood why when she saw the diagnostic charts at the hospital. The dying girl had AIDS
and had been slowly dying from it for many years, working the streets all the while. Then the dying girl
told her how she had ended up infected with such a disease. She had been raped one day on her way home
fromschool.
Since then she had lived only for her work. For revenge. On her deathbed, she dreamed of all the
bombs that she had spread, hoping they would explode in a fiery blast inside the men to whom she had
successfully passed on her disease.
Then there were the girls who worked in groups to ensnare the big earners.
Not just ensnare, either—often their behavior would descend into blackmail, forcing their marks into
handing over increasing amounts of money under the threat of public disclosure. The gangs often ended up
getting sucked into larger criminal organizations—some girls went voluntarily, others in order to protect
themselves from the backlash from the disgruntled blackmailee. The girl who told Balot this story was
one of the former group, having joined a large criminal gang by choice, but she had run away shortly after
realizing that she had made a mistake. Men do understand on some level that women feel pain too, she
said, but what they don’t realize is that the pain we feel has just as much impact on us as it does on
them. Pain couldn’t fight gravity and always flowed downhill toward lower ground, finding the path of
least resistance. However bad life at the Date Club was, it wasn’t as painful as the alternative.
Well, at least nothing like that ever happens here. This was the platitude so often used as the moral
of one of the girls’ horror stories—so much so that it became a cliché. The man at reception said so. The
girls, who had grown so used to their jobs, said so. It became a mantra, an inoculation; so long as you
spoke those words, no harm would ever befall you. But danger came in many shapes and sizes. It wasn’t
just the unknowable future that could be dangerous—sometimes danger came in the form of shadows from
the past that had finally caught up with the present. Danger could grow and expand to fill any void.
There were teenage outcasts from society, man-boys with no place in the world and at their wits’ end,
who abducted middle school girls to use as their slaves. There were middle-aged, outwardly respectable
government officials who walked past children’s playgrounds at the same fixed time every day, hoping to
catch a glimpse of the young children that they were sexually attracted to. There was the Peeping Tom
who had focused all his attention on one girl, and when the object of his affection failed to show any
gratitude for his solicitude he raped the ungrateful bitch before dragging her to the local registry office to
forcibly marry her, at which point he was promptly apprehended by the police.
A seventeen-year-old did some babysitting on the side to earn some pocket money, and she committed
unspeakably cruel atrocities to over ten different children before she was caught and the alarm raised.
When asked by the district attorney what could have possibly motivated her, her honest reply was that she
thought that was what love was. Such was the reality of how her own parents had treated her.
People who labeled themselves as sadists or fetishists operated a network. Some of them were out in
the open, appearing in the media, proud and unashamed of their otherness, and were recognized as
outcasts. Different, maybe. Alien, definitely. But not necessarily dangerous per se.
But then there were the other aliens—the ones who didn’t go out of their way to call themselves
sadists or fetishists. Not because they weren’t, but because they considered themselves to be absolutely
normal. They had no more humanity in them than a giant shredding machine: flick their switches in the
right way and they’d rip anyone to pieces without a moment’s hesitation, whether a complete stranger or
their own flesh and blood.
These people weren’t particularly complicated, not in terms of what they wanted out of life. Their
motivations were really quite straightforward. The only thing that was at all complicated was the process
that they needed to go through to get what they wanted.
Sunny side up—the good life: no worries, no boredom, no contradictions.
A desirable goal for people from all walks of life, rich or poor. Ask a child why she had run away
from the Welfare Institute, ask a rapist why he repeatedly committed the most horrendous of atrocities,
and the answer would be the same: I wanted to be happy. It was the only answer there could be.
On the program Balot had watched about the aborigines, they didn’t actually show the moment the
animals were slaughtered.
As is always the case on live television, they showed you up to the moment the machete was held high
in the air, ready to strike. Then they cut to the scene straight after that, in which the cow was already
engulfed in flame, the part where the blade ended the animal’s life being excised in order to preserve the
viewers’ sensibilities.
Or was it to say to the viewer You see this sort of thing every day anyway, so why should we bother
showing it to you now?
It was no more than what the viewers did—and had done to them—on a regular basis, after all.
Why did Ashley deliberately choose to enter the trunk of the car his brother died in?
It was to know the hand that brought the machete down. To understand the truth about the scene cut
fromthe television program. To understand what had been lost.
The thingAshley needed to know most of all was whether he still had the will to carry on living, even
after the blow had been struck.
If the whole world took to arms against each other, brandishing their machetes, would he be able to
survive?
There came a point in all people’s lives when their fundamental belief, their trust in the basic decency
of human nature, was challenged, shattered. What Ashley needed to know was whether he would ever be
able to pick up the pieces.
Balot realized that she now held a machete to her own heart. In order to discern exactly what she was
made of.
And to determine which way the blade was heading. If people lived their lives under the vagaries of
fate and fortune, then Balot would be the one to challenge her destiny—by working out for herself which
way she needed to strike.
≡
“Why…why are you doing this?” Shell groaned. He couldn’t keep it in any longer.
His eyes were wavering between two points: Balot’s face and the third million-dollar chip, which had
just been placed in the pot as Balot’s next bet.
–Never doubt. No need to trouble yourself with questions.
After Balot said this she waved her right hand. Lightly. Goodbye. Then she mimed closing the door on
him. Just like Shell once did to her. Shell didn’t understand what any of her charade meant, exactly. But he
did understand, in a vague and uneasy way, just quite how serious was the crime he had committed.
“Are you saying that I somehow took advantage of you? Used you? For what, exactly? This is crazy!
I’ve even forgotten your face, what you look like…”
Balot tapped the table to show her impatience for her next card.
She knew that Shell had just spoken the truth. She had no problem with that. If Shell wanted to believe
that he was innocent, let him believe that he was innocent—for now. All Balot knew was that she had to
do what she had to do to this man who treated his own memories as so many bargaining chips.
The upcard was a king. Balot’s cards were 5 and 6.
Balot hit and drew an 8, at which point she stayed.
Shell just shook his head and turned his card over.
Another ace. A glorious victory for Shell.
“I… I just wanted to help you. I gave you what you wanted. I even had a proper citizen’s ID made for
you, one with a decent past, not the one you had. I saved you…”
This was Shell’s last-gasp effort at explaining his actions. It was his lawyers who had come up with
this plan. Just as the Doctor had come up with Balot’s. Shell was very satisfied with this story as an
explanation. Balot’s very existence was a thorn in his side; she was like the one viewer who burst out
laughing at the most inappropriate moment at the screening of a serious movie. She was ruining
everything!
How was he to deal with such a person?
There was only one possible answer. Silence her. That was the reason Shell kept a permanent roster
of assassins in his pay.
Shell yearned for drama, romance, to fill the gaping hole that was left in him when he obliterated his
memories. He wanted someone to console him, soothe the pain of the death of that part of him, to make the
whole sordid process seembeautiful. And he had chosen Balot for this role.
The problem was that Oeufcoque had also chosen Balot. So that Oeufcoque could fight. To find
meaning in his life—to fight in the hands of someone who needed to use him.
The little golden galloper of a mouse needed a jockey to ride him, someone who would accept him
warts and all. A rider who could use himproperly and at the same time appreciate himas more than just a
mount to be used.
To Shell, on the other hand, Balot was no more than a sacrificial lamb to be offered up on the altar of
his ambition. Balot had no intention of ever returning down that path.
The last of the four million-dollar chips was finally released to return home to the other side of the
table. Balot threw it into the pot like she was tossing a coin down a wishing well.
The golden chip was retrieved and slammed shut into its holding box just as the red marker appeared.
Game over.
Balot rose fromher seat and handed her one remaining chip—a ten-thousand-dollar piece—over to the
Doctor beside her.
The Doctor rolled the chip around in the palm of his hand thoughtfully, as if he’d fallen foul of the
classic gambler’s cliché—If only we’d stopped when the going was good.
A solitary ten-thousand-dollar chip. At one point they’d managed to swell their seed money of two
thousand dollars by a factor of two thousand, and now this was all they had left.
The Doctor did the only thing that anyone with an ounce of adventure in them could do. “I wonder if
we could keep this chip as a souvenir?”
Ashley smiled. “Well, since you’ve come this far…” He glanced at Shell’s face to get the house’s
permission. He gave it, and as he now had his hands full with a reinvigorated Cleanwill John October
instead of the feared nuclear meltdown, he was now radiating electricity.
“That should be fine, sir. Do feel free to take it as a memento of today’s great battle,” Ashley said
respectfully, and the Doctor clutched the chip tight in his hands for all on the floor to see.
The Doctor’s act, and indeed the whole play, was now brought to a close. This was the climax.
“I wonder if I might be permitted to walk you to the casino entrance?” asked Ashley. Bell Wing stood
beside him, silently asking the same question.
Balot accepted their offer wordlessly and graciously. The Doctor, too, gave his tacit consent.
The four of themleft the VIP room, watched by a throng of other customers and dealers.
“Do you have any concerns about finding your way home?” Ashley asked. Shall I show you another
route? he was asking. A hidden escape route?
“Thanks for the offer, but we had all that double-checked before we arrived.” The Doctor confirmed
that it had all been cleared in advance with the limousine company, and that Ashley need not worry.
Ashley shrugged his shoulders, impressed as ever with the thoroughness of the Doctor’s preparations.
“Really, anyone would think you were a pair of professional bank robbers,” he added.
Eventually the four of them stopped in front of the somewhat surreal intersection between the casino
and the hotel.
Balot looked straight into Bell Wing’s face. Her eyes asked whether they would ever be able to meet
again.
“I’ll still be a croupier and I’ll carry on spinning the wheel. Not here, but some other casino. That’s
not for you to worry about. If you do feel like it then I’d welcome a visit fromyou anytime.”
–Thank you. And goodbye.
“Sure, goodbye,” said Ashley.
“Goodbye,” said Bell Wing.
03
–Just wait a minute!
Shell’s voice was on the other end of the cell phone. He sounded like a swimmer confronted by the
sudden appearance of a fin right in front of his face.
Boiled was pressing down on the gas pedal so hard that it almost burrowed into the floor of the car.
He sped down the highway, one hand on the wheel, the other holding Shell’s voice to his ear.
“You’ve had your capital returned to you, haven’t you? You still have the source of the trade you’re
planning?”
–It’s not that. Something’s wrong. How can I put it—I don’t feel any better.
“Better?”
–It’s as if they deliberately gave it all back to me for some reason…
“I need their location. Set someone on their tail, and I’ll take care of the rest.” Boiled’s voice was as
unconcerned as ever, and he spoke with crushing finality. I know all I need to know, he was saying.
–Please. Boiled. Make them disappear. Make everything disappear. I want my flashbacks gone.
“I understand. That’s my usefulness, after all.”
Boiled cut the call. With the same hand he activated the FrontView Screen. Normally it wouldn’t come
on except to warn him that he was over the speed limit, but now a translucent light display flashed up,
displaying a map of the casino and its environs and Boiled’s current location.
“I know your escape route—Oeufcoque.”
A red line extended fromthe casino to display a predicted route. A blue line extended from the marker
signifying Boiled’s location, and the line stretched ahead until it intersected with the red line, running
parallel with it thereafter.
Just then the other side of the FrontView Screen was splashed by a drop of water. For one moment
Boiled’s attention turned not to the screen nor even the highway beyond it, but up to the skies.
Scattered droplets of rain soon turned into a sheer downpour, millions of lines streaking down the
windshield.
Boiled’s eyes turned back to the road. Unconsciously, his mouth started forming words.
“Curiosity—that’s right. I wanted to use you, to see what it would be like…”
It was hard to believe, but true. Boiled’s hand went up to his chest, as if he were trying to physically
suppress the confusion rising up inside him.
For a moment, he couldn’t cope, and the bewildering sensation of not knowing himself spread across
his face.
The unstoppable feeling rose to his throat, stuck there, and then eventually erupted out in the form of a
thunderous laugh. There was no trace of humor in his voice, no sign of the milk of human kindness
showing in his face, and yet he laughed and laughed and laughed.
The windows trembled. The roaring laughter continued. Real thunder, now, and lightning could be
seen on the other side of the windshield, amid the ever-thickening downpour.
Boiled continued to laugh, the primeval sound echoing into the night. “Oeufcoque! I wanted to use you!
Just use you!” He was exploding. Every bit as terrifying as the thunder outside.
And unstoppable. “That’s my usefulness! That’s right, that’s my usefulness! To get back what I’ve
lost in life, to make up for everything I’ve done! Come back to me, Oeufcoque. I’m going to give you my
own usefulness!”
≡
“Let’s go home.” Oeufcoque spoke fromBalot’s right hand after she’d put the gloves back on.
A gentle shower of rain fell on them. Balot felt the rain through her gloves. What she didn’t feel was
any strong sense of victory. All she felt was a shaky sense of relief.
The red convertible’s sensors had picked up on the rain, and by the time Balot arrived at the car park
the car was covered by the roof that had automatically emerged fromthe rear side.
“You haven’t forgotten anything, have you?” the Doctor asked with a gentle smile, and Balot waved
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