Тим Пауэрс - Bugs and Known Problems

Jane started to pull back the Moon of Day card, but stopped herself. If she didn’t play it, she’d never get a chance this good again. The game was the last hope she had to find her six year-old… No. Her daughter would be seven by now, wouldn’t she?

Jane and her three opponents flipped their cards face up. The others eyed Jane with the flat look of practiced gamblers, surely surprised the quiet Indian woman in britches and shirtsleeves was crazy enough to lead with Moon of Day. What did they expect? None sat down for a hand of cards in Gideon’s Saloon unless desperation had driven them at least halfway down the road to madness.

The game was seven-card Sorte. The stakes were luck itself.

“You look like you’ve been on the trails for a long time, dearie,” the schoolmarm said, her tone so polite and friendly it was impossible to believe it was sincere. Jane reckoned the woman intended it that way. “What tribe are you?”

“Guachichil,” Jane lied with practiced ease. It was an instinct every member of her tribe grew up with. Fortune hunters were always on their tail, looking to cash in on the riches to be had from selling their blood to those who knew the ways of spells and conjuring.

The dealer flicked another card to each player. Their table sat in the middle of a crowded saloon furnished as if it was a betting parlor for European royalty. A score of oil lights shone from each of the chandeliers floating a dozen feet above their heads and plush green velvet cushioned their seats. The décor matched nothing else in the border town of El Perdido, its humble buildings painted burnt red by dust that hung so thick you could taste iron in the air.

Jane picked up her card. Black Flower. Her jaws tightened.

“Guachichil…” The emaciated man’s voice was never more than a whisper. “From dead in the center of Mexico, isn’t that right?”

Jane nodded. She tilted the brim of her gaucho hat to keep the light off her pupils. If you looked real close, they weren’t quite round, weren’t quite human. They pointed, ever so slightly, at the top and the bottom, as if she’d had a reptile for a grandmother. And that wasn’t too far from the truth.

“Well it is such an unexpected delight to have you join us,” the schoolmarm said. “Many saloons don’t allow your kind inside.” She plucked a card from her hand and placed it face down in front of her.

Jane pulled The Chained King from her hand and laid it face down. The four players flipped over their cards. As the last round was dealt, Jane struggled to sort out the ranks and realms and trumps her opponents might be working toward. Her head swam. There were too many possibilities.

She reached for her final card, praying the fates might smile on her just this once.

A voice like a cannon blast rang out across the saloon.

“You dumb sumbitch!”

Gideon himself, owner of the saloon and just about everything else in El Perdido, held some confused-looking sap by the lapels. A cigarillo bit between his teeth, he stood atop a dais three steps above the rest of the saloon and smashed a handful of cards over the fellow’s head. He wore a red silk shirt, busy with embroidery, over a hairy body thick with muscle and fat. He put Jane to mind of a costumed circus bear she’d seen once. No amount of dressing up would ever rid the beast of the killing instinct coursing through its veins.

Gideon pitched the man backwards, right off the edge of the dais. By all rights, the fellow should have tumbled feet-over-rear and cracked the back of his skull open on the hardwood below. Instead, the fellow’s heels caught each step, then his feet wheeled and danced him across the room, body titled too far to catch his balance. His clumsy jig took him to the far end of the saloon and out the batwing doors.

The dealer and the soldier chuckled in an easy sort of way that told Jane they’d seen this kind of thing before.

“Doesn’t much care for losing, does he?” the emaciated man said.

“Losing ain’t been a problem for him for, oh, going on six years now,” the soldier said. “It’s all the winning that’s made him so ornery.”

“He’d be the first I’ve ever met who grew tired of winning,” Jane said.

“He lived for the thrill of the wager,” the soldier said. “And then he trumped a Thirteenth rank Endeavor set. He won’t never lose another hand of cards so long as he lives. No thrill to be had in that.”

The luck of the Thirteenth rank was powerful and unending. The Endeavor realm ruled over any kind of effort or undertaking. If Jane had that kind of luck, whatever direction she picked to go searching for her daughter would turn out to be the right one, and before she knew it her little girl would all but fall out of the sky into her arms.

She picked up her final card. Dreamer in Mourning. The schoolmarm had played Three-Tailed Fox followed by Half Coin, and looked to be building a mid-rank set in the Opportunity realm. Jane would have to play her Dreamer in Mourning card to win.

In Sorte, the cards were both the game and the wager. If Jane’s set outranked the schoolmarm’s, she’d win that Opportunity luck, and the schoolmarm would lose it in equal measure. It was exactly the kind of luck Jane needed to provide a clue where her tribe had disappeared to. But she’d be laying down high-rank Coincidence set. If the schoolmarm’s third card trumped her, Jane would likely spend years narrowly missing her tribe at every turn.

Jane squeezed her right hand into a fist, trying to fight off the tremble that had overtaken it. She pulled Black Flower from her hand. It stood little chance of winning, but if she lost her bad luck wouldn’t be so terrible.

“You know, I heard a number of those poor reds down in Mexico were slaughtered two years back when blood hunters came through those parts,” the schoolmarm said, her smile beaming as she played her final card face down. “They were chasing rumors one of the tribes down there were dragons.”

Jane froze with Black Flower between her fingers. The woman had seen the shape of her pupils. She knew what Jane was.

The dealer, the soldier, and the emaciated man all studied Jane. Surely, they could hear her heart pounding like the gallop of unbroken horses. Surely, they realized what she was. She had to run, while she still could. The saloon was full of desperate men, and it wouldn’t be long until one of them tried to collect her blood.

But wasn’t the whole world full of desperate men? If she didn’t take this last chance to find her daughter, how long until one of them caught up to her child?

Are you okay, my precious girl? Are you still alive?

I’m okay, Momma. Grandpa’s taking care of me. I miss you.

Her daughter’s voice in her head was just imagination, nothing more than that. But hearing her daughter say she was alive and unhurt was the only thing that’d kept Jane from losing her mind to madness, even if it was only make believe.

Jane replaced Black Flower in her hand. She drew out Dreamer in Mourning and laid it face down on the table. The schoolmarm watched the change of cards and her tear-strained eye took on a gleam of satisfaction.

The four players flipped their final cards. The schoolmarm had played Cracked Lantern. Jane had her outranked. The schoolmarm’s smile twisted into something savage.

“Well…” the schoolmarm said, her voice hollow.

The ink burned off her cards, illustrations disappearing as wisps of colored smoke rose from them and faded into the air. The Opportunity luck Jane took was Fourth rank, which meant her luck would only last until sunrise, but that luck would be powerfully strong.

The schoolmarm stood abruptly, backing into a man walking past. The whiskey he’d been carrying splashed across the front of her dress, his glass clanked across the varnished floor.