The Gambler

There was a time (the Gambler said) when all the gamblers in the Network wanted their shot at the Crystal City. Probably still true, most places. Some of us tried to get the word out. Didn’t work too well. Most of the ones who got in, they’re still there.

Not like the Crystal City is easy to get into, either. Five thousand buy-in. Those of you who don’t know what that means—most tables, or gaming houses, have a buy-in. You put up a certain amount of money, up front, to sit down at the table and pick up your cards or dice. Ranges from ‘how they stay in business’ to ‘flat-out train robbery.’ I suppose—what was that?

(“Seems to me it’s the price of the game,” the Gunslinger said.)

Yeah. Price of the game. Or a way to lure you in. See, everyone knows that the higher the buy-in, the better the winnings. So a place that has a buy-in of five thousand, not to sit down at the table, but to get in the door—you know that’s the prize, right?

Well, you do if you’re a gambler.

It took me a long time to build up the five thousand. Played on trains, in saloons, in underground rooms in Foursquare. Got shot at more than once, when people thought that them losing must mean I was cheating. It’s always like that, with some people. They’re so certain that they’re right, even on something like “does she have an ace,” that they’d rather pull a weapon than consider maybe they were wrong.

At any rate. Finally had a five thousand buy-in, plus a generous amount to gamble, because you can’t win if you’re not prepared to lose a few times first. And I got on the train to the Crystal City.

It’s a long way from Foursquare. ‘Course, “long way” is a little funny when it comes to trains. I knew a man once who tried to map the Network. He lost it. Started raving to everyone else about how nothing was real. You’d think that if you got on a train that looks like it’s going west from Foursquare, and it stops at Skeleton Rock, then you can’t continue going west from Skeleton Rock and get to Foursquare again. Man I knew, he first tried to say that the Network must be spherical, to allow for something like that—and then cylindrical, and then like a tangle, because there are too many of those to make a neat shape. Then he invented several extra directions that he figured trains could go in, and then he started drinking. Which just goes to show, it’s best to mind your own business and keep your head down.

But if you’re interested, the train to the Crystal City goes south from Foursquare. Not sure why you’d want to know. You sure as anything don’t want to go.

But I didn’t know that. So I packed up my things, and my money, and I set out.

When the train doors opened, it wasn’t on your usual sort of station. Usually, you’ve got a platform that some people built, and it may be wood, and it may be concrete, and you’ve usually got a roof of some sort, but you’re still outside. This was an enormous crystal room. Glass floors. Glass ceiling—seemed to be angled afternoon sunlight shining through it, but it was broken up into a million rainbow glints, so I couldn’t really see. Crystal doors at the far end, with crystal flowers carved into them or molded into them or however you make shapes in glass. It was like being inside a diamond. I don’t mind telling you, I stopped and stared.

There was a person at my side, very swiftly. Black uniform all trimmed with silver. He said, “Excuse me, madam, but the Crystal City requires a buy-in fee . . .” You can pretty much guess the gist. Really flowery language, at least by my standards.

I took a moment to make sure that he was legit, and not some grifter trying to separate gamblers from their money with a uniform and a bit of smooth talk, but it turned out he was an actual Crystal City employee, and I gave him my money. At least, “employee” is what I figured then. Later, I wasn’t so sure.

I went on into the Crystal City.

I’m not great with words. Can’t really describe how rich this place is. It’s more like a crystal palace than a crystal city. Room after room after room made of glass, glittering like a gem. There are carpets on the floors in the gambling halls, and the carpets are so thick you sink into them to your ankles. The ceilings glitter with the same light everywhere you go, so I figured at first that it was all ground floor, or at least, the lower floor is employees and I hadn’t gotten there. Here and there, there are crystal pillars, and on those, there are generally gold or silver ornamentation. They make it look like it’s a lizard climbing a tree, or something, but the lizard is just beaten gold.

And the games! You can’t imagine the games. Poker and blackjack and craps, like any hall would have, but there’s also games you’ve never heard of. Games with dice and cards, games with cards that you’ve never seen before, full of painted figures of people and birds and lions and creatures you’ve only seen in story books. Of course, they don’t tell you how any of those work, so you stand to lose a lot of money figuring them out unless you meet someone who’s helpful, and everyone who’s helpful in the Crystal City has their own ideas about how to use you. We are all gamblers. I met one man who taught me the rules of a game he called arcanium, played a few practice bouts to get me used to it, helped me out—and then took five hundred off me with a rule he purposely didn’t tell me about. And I couldn’t do anything about it, because the dealer agreed with him.

That’s a thing you should know about the Crystal City. At each table, there’s a dealer, who keeps the rules straight and speaks for the establishment. They wear uniforms, black and silver, and they’re all pleasant and happy to see you.

The entertainment wears those uniforms too. There’s lots of entertainment, for when you’re done gambling, music and dancing and I don’t even know what else. I saw a show where it looked like a man sawed a lady in half and she got up and walked around again. Of course, for all I know, that’s what actually happened, even though they said it was a trick.

Didn’t think about that at the time, though. Just enjoyed myself. Won some, lost some—that five hundred I mentioned—stayed away from craps, because that’s not my specialty, but I played poker with some experts. Dead men would have had more expression. Scary, and thrilling, to go up against someone who doesn’t seem to have any tells at all.

And I won enough to keep going. So I kept going.

The light from the ceiling didn’t change, but I didn’t think about it much.

After a while, I decided to explore a bit. There were crystal halls, of course, leading to other crystal gambling halls, and to theaters, and dining halls that were piled high with the most extravagant food that I’ve ever seen. I stopped in one of these for a moment, got some green stuff that I couldn’t identify, and ate it slowly. It was sweet, a bit sickly sweet, but I suppose a lot of people would like it.

That was when a man said, “Hey, do you have the time?”

Odd way to put it. I pulled out my mother’s pocketwatch—the one thing in my life that I’ve never staked at a table. Looked at it.

The hands were—spinning. Just spinning and spinning.

“I was supposed to meet my wife and kids at Planet Hollywood,” the man said. “There’s a magic show they want to see.”

I’d never heard of that town. “Just go back to the train station,” I said impatiently, and shook my watch.

“Train station? I didn’t know there was a train station in Vegas. Look, I just want to know what time it is. It’s all a little . . .” He trailed off. “All a little . . .”

The watch hadn’t stopped doing that thing, but I looked up at the man.

A moment ago, he had looked normal. Now, his eyes had gone glassy.

“I don’t know what time it is,” I said. “My watch is broken.” My mother’s watch. I had to find someone to repair my mother’s watch. Important to me. You understand, probably. Or maybe you don’t, doesn’t matter. It’s important that it was on my mind just then.

“Still plenty of time for slots!” the man said cheerfully. “See you later!”

I watched him go. A moment ago, he had been concerned about his wife and children back in his home town—what I thought he was saying, he hadn’t made complete sense—and now all he wanted to do was gamble.

I left the dining hall and tried to make my way back to the first gambling hall I’d been in. Maybe I could talk to one of the dealers and ask them if there was a watchmaker in this place. But the halls all looked the same, except for the colors of the carpet and the arrangement of the gaming tables—and I couldn’t recollect the color of the first hall.

I chose the nearest hall. Went to the blackjack table, and leaned over. “Can you tell me where to find a watchmaker?”

“Do you want to place a bet, madam?”

Back in my home town, you didn’t call a woman madam before her first gray hairs came in, at least. “No, I want to find a watchmaker. I have a broken watch.”

“Why not have a seat and place a bet?”

“Because,” I said, “I want to get my watch fixed.”

“Why not have a seat and place a bet?”

“Do you know where to find a watchmaker?”

“Why not have a seat and place a bet?”

There was something bizarre in the way he kept repeating himself—in his fixed, polite smile. I left the table and went to the craps table.

“I need to find a watchmaker.”

“Why not place a bet?”

Couldn’t get her to stop repeating herself either.

So I went out again and tried to find the train station. Maybe the person who took my five thousand would talk to me. Or maybe I would just leave the Crystal City.

Started thinking, maybe I would be better off leaving the Crystal City. Spinning and spinning and spinning, that wasn’t a way I had ever heard of a watch breaking. And the dealers weren’t acting right. And I don’t usually get turned around like I did. There was something wrong going on, and you all know, it’s best to get out of the picture when there’s wrong.

It took me—well, I would have said it took me hours to find the train station, but I learned how wrong that was later. The entryman blocked my way. “Leaving so soon?”

“I’ll be back,” I said. I didn’t think I would be, actually.

“Oh, I’m sorry. There is no way to waive the buy-in for returning patrons.”

“That’s all right,” I said, “I’ll have it.” I could win five thousand. I knew now that I could. Didn’t figure I would, but I could.

“Oh, I’m sorry. There is no way to waive the buy-out.”

“Buy-out?”

“It will cost you thirty thousand to exit the Crystal City.”

I had never heard of a buy-out, and now I knew there was something wrong going on here. Wrong in more than one sense. I told him that was train robbery, he told me that it was what it was, and I went back into the Crystal City.

It was obvious that I would have to win a lot of money, and fast, and that was when I found a smaller door, with a diving bird engraved in the crystal. I pushed it open.

“You’re here to win your buy-out,” the poker dealer said.

I didn’t ask how he knew. “Deal me in.”

There were three other people at that table, and the dealer. Two of the three people looked haunted, and one of them kept shaking her head, as if she was trying to clear it out. I wondered if she was fighting whatever had made that other man say, “Plenty of time for slots.” She wasn’t a threat, and I knew she wasn’t a threat, but I met the eyes of the other two, and clear as day, I saw them think, “I’m going to be the one getting out of here.” So I knew those were the stakes they were playing for.

Then I looked into the dealer’s eyes.

That’s when I started getting scared.

Here’s the thing. I don’t know exactly what the dealers are, in the Crystal City. Not human, I don’t think. Not unless they’ve been there for long enough for all the human to drain out, and Crystal City-ness to drip in . . . that could happen, I guess. Don’t quite know how it works. But that dealer in that room, he wasn’t like the ones that kept repeating themselves. He was alive and aware. Not human, though. Nothing like a human. It’s the sort of thing where you look at someone, and they have skin and eyes and a mouth and all the things they should, but your gut knows, and it keeps expecting the mouth to open and have rows of needle teeth, or the skin to splint and show churning worms, or the eyes to roll back and show black eyes on the other side, as if they were just dice to be spun.

I’ve never played a game of poker like that.

I’ve never played a game of poker so scared. You’re a gambler, you like a little fear. It makes you sharp. But too much is poison, and I could feel myself wobbling on the edge of being poisoned, of showing what I had with my tells, and I knew—everybody knows, if they’re smart—you never know all your tells. Meanwhile the other human players were skating the same narrow line between fear that makes you sharp and fear that makes you clumsy. Meanwhile the dealer—dealt the cards. I didn’t know his tells. I didn’t know if he had any. I didn’t know if trying to study him too closely would make me understand him, but I did know that if I came to understand him, I would be sorry. And that’s where I was.

Don’t know how long we played.

At last it came to a hand when I had a straight, and everyone had folded except the dealer and the person who kept dazing in and out, and I looked at him. If he just came back to reality long enough, if he looked at his cards—

He looked at his cards.

I could see that he didn’t have anything. Could see the flicker of fear in his eyes as he raised.

That left the dealer. And gambling against the dealer was pure chance, because I didn’t know.

I raised.

The dealer called, his eyes on me. If I lost this one, I couldn’t recover, and he knew that, and I knew that.

To this day, I don’t know why he didn’t beat me. You’d think he could change the cards. But I laid down my cards, and I took the pot, and the thrill that ran through my body was like nothing I’ve ever felt, in all my years gambling.

“Excellent game!” the dealer said, and smiled. “Another?”

And I swear to you, I felt a pull in my heart, and I came within inches of sitting down for another. It was only my mother’s watch that saved me. Had to fix my mother’s watch.

“Sorry, but it’s late,” I said. “I’ll be going.”

“It’s never late in the Crystal City.”

“Or else it always is,” I said, and knew as I said it that I was right. “I’ll be going.”

I went back to the station—past gambling halls of all sorts, and now it felt like they were trying to pull at me—and paid my thirty thousand to the entryman, and he said, “What a shame, what a shame. Perhaps you’ll be back soon?”

“Doubt it,” I said, and I got on the train.

Funny thing—by the time we got out of the station, my mother’s watch stopped spinning.

Wasn’t a patch on the funny thing that I noticed when I got back to Foursquare, which was: I didn’t know anyone. Not a soul. Everyone I had known had drifted away, or died, in the seventy years I’d been gone.

My mother’s watch is all I have left of my mother.

And that’s really it for me. Because I don’t have anything to do out here, do I? Nothing to do but chase the next, biggest game, and I know where those are. I spent two years denying it, I spent two years fighting it, but I’m done. I know where I belong. I’m going back, and I’m going to pay my buy-in fee, and I’m going to walk into the glass hall under the glass ceiling where the light never, ever changes, because it’s always too late in the Crystal City.. I’ll sit down at the poker table, and look the dealer in their blank, friendly eyes, and say, “Deal me in.”

There was a short silence. Then the Medicine Seller said, timidly, “You could find new people, surely?”

The Gambler looked at him. “Why?”

“Well—of course—well, because—“

“Never been much of one for making friends. Don’t really have the knack. And when it’s all said and done, I don’t want new friends, I want my old people back. If I can’t get that, I’ll go to a place where I can forget about it.”

“But—well—I just think—well, it seems to me that when things are wrong, the wrong generally wants something from people. Haven’t you found that?” The Medicine Seller looked around for confirmation and met the uncaring eyes of the Gunslinger and the black glasses of the Ghost-catcher. He wilted slightly. “And if the Crystal City wants something,” he continued, a little less certainly, “you haven’t figured out what it wants, and it may be more than you’re willing to pay. Have you thought of that?”

“As near as I can tell,” the Gambler said, “it wants people to stay. No harm in that if you want to. Most townies live in one place their whole lives and never get on a train.”

“Well, that’s true, but surely it isn’t the same thing!”

“Not seeing as how it’s any of your business,” the Gambler said.

The Medicine Seller wilted a little more. “I suppose it isn’t,” he said, “at that. But I do worry about people, you know.”

“Don’t. I know what I’m doing.”

“I wonder why a place like that stays on the Network,” the Businessman mused.

“The trains don’t make our choices for us,” the Ghost-catcher said.

There was a short pause, as there often was after the Ghost-catcher said something.

“I don’t see how people have much of a choice,” the Medicine Seller said, a bit timidly, “if they don’t know how difficult it is to leave. I’ve heard of the Crystal City. Never heard of the thirty thousand buy-out fee.”

The Ghost-catcher’s lips twisted, very slightly. “Nobody ever said it was an informed choice.”

“Doesn’t seem fair,” the Kid ventured.

“Of course it isn’t fair,” the Gunslinger said. “What is?”

The Kid felt his shoulders curl forward and he sagged just as the Medicine Seller had. It stung, having the Gunslinger dismiss him.

“My turn,” the Businessman said, “I think?”

“Yes, you’re right,” the Medicine Seller agreed.

“Excellent. I don’t know how much you know about Foursquare . . .”