“The rest of the world may have forgotten what a real winter feels like, but not us,”
the Door said.
“Step into our Winter Wonderland, and relive the glories of wintertimes long, long ago.”
Javier chose to visit the Wonderland during a shift in which the vN were leading a
posada
. He followed the couple, dressed as Joseph and Mary, as they walked through pine forests asking shopkeepers and homeowners for a place to stay. It reminded him briefly of his and Amy’s journey through the forests of Washington State. Then he made the memory go away, and focused on his target instead.
The target was ahead of him. He shuffled along through the snow, alone. He was a tad overweight, but not in any way that would hinder him sexually as far as mechanics were concerned. He was also Latino. Javier was already rusty; he wasn’t going to handicap himself trying to do this in English his first time out.
Javier’s first test of the target was how the target reacted to him personally. He made sure to cross the target’s sightline on two separate occasions while the crowd waited for the
posada
to start. Both times, the target made eye contact. Just one furtive look, then a look away. Maybe he was confused. Javier looked like the staff members, but he dressed like the loft suite: a charcoal wool suit with a crisp white shirt and an ice blue tie. It was looser than he would have chosen for looks, but if he needed to jump anywhere, he would need flexibility. For this reason, his shoes were slip-ons without socks.
“Aren’t you cold?” the target asked.
Javier had been waiting to start this conversation for the past half hour. He had his responses already selected, branched, planned for. “Only a little. I didn’t think it would really be this cold.” He made a show of staring at the other guy’s mouth. His target was in the process of growing a vacation beard. It was going pretty well. “Wow. I can even see your breath, it’s so cold.”
The other guy squinted. “I can’t see yours.”
Javier smiled. “I don’t breathe. It just looks like I do.” He used it as an excuse to come closer. “See? Watch my chest. I’m talking to you normally, but…” He pointed. “My chest still rises and falls on meter.”
The other guy stared at Javier’s chest. His gaze moved up to Javier’s throat, then his mouth. When it hit his eyes, Javier knew he had him. The other guy didn’t know it yet, but Javier did.
“Ricardo Montalban,” Javier said, holding his hand out.
The other guy laughed and shook it. “That’s a joke, right?”
“Of course it is,” Javier said. He held his target’s hand for just a second longer than necessary.
“So, you’re traveling under an assumed name? This is your alias?”
Javier held a single finger up to his lips. “Ssh. Not so loud.”
The other guy smiled. “Manuel,” he said.
“Do you go cruising often, Manuel?”
The double meaning still existed, in Spanish. Even in the snowy twilight of the wonderland, Manuel’s blush was visible. He was young, Javier realized. Or at least, inexperienced.
“It’s my first time,” he said.
Of course it was.
“Mine too,” Javier lied. “It’s so… big. I feel like I’ll never see all of it.”
Manuel nodded. “It almost feels too big.”
“No such thing.”
They both laughed at the same time. This was going extremely well. Javier wondered what he had worried about.
“It just feels like a bit too much. I had to get off the boat, today,” Manuel continued. “I went to the rainforest.”
Javier replayed his conversation with Aaron. “Chirripó?”
Manuel nodded. He was about to start saying something more, when Javier began drifting away from the crowd, down the path they’d just walked. It was lit by
furolitos
in waxed paper bags. A false moon hid behind scudding clouds above them. Javier was beginning to understand the romance of winter. He had never experienced the season this way – his coldest Christmases were rainy, and nothing more. But the dry snap to the air, the length and colour of the shadows, they made you want to climb into bed with someone.
“It was really something,” Manuel said. “Hot as hell. And wet. Really, really wet. I think I may have ruined my socks.”
Javier nodded. He understood immediately why Manuel was not getting laid. At least, not by the kind of guys he was attracted to. One did not talk to people who were out of your league about wet socks.
“Did you see any wildlife?”
Manuel shook his head. “Some birds, but nothing big. Even the sloths were hiding. They say there are more jaguars, now, but I’m not sure I believe it.”
“I saw a jaguar, once.”
“In a zoo?”
Javier shook his head. He leaned against the tree. It smelled pleasantly of balsam. It reminded him of Amy. Hiding in trees in the rain, with her and Xavier – back when Xavier was still Junior. Back when he was small enough to carry in the crook of one arm.
“Where, then?”
Javier blinked. “In the wild,” he said. “Not far from here, actually. Years ago.”
Manuel’s eyebrows rose. “Wow.”
“She was just lying right out there on the branch of this huge tree, sunning herself.”
He and she had both been sunning themselves, actually. He was maybe a month old. He’d wandered out on a limb because his father was gone, probably killing drones, and he was hungry and he needed the sun. So he took off all his clothes and lay down on the branch. It wasn’t until he was completely comfortable that he noticed the jaguar above him. She was on another branch, staring at him intently. He still remembered the pink of her tongue against the white of her muzzle. How the inside of her spots was just a little bit darker than the fur outside, as though, as in the legend, she’d been burnt by the very last of God’s fire.
“Were you scared?”
“Only a little.”
Actually, it was a lot. He’d been
very
scared. Big cats tended not to attack people, of course, but he was in her territory and she probably wanted him gone. He had no idea what her teeth could do to hollow-core titanium, but he’d seen the carcasses other jaguars left behind. They dislocated the necks of their prey with their paws. They bit through the shells of ancient turtles. Javier was tough, but he wasn’t that tough. He tried to sit up, but then she started moving, too, so he lay back down. They spent the next hour that way, eyeing each other.
It wasn’t so different from this conversation, really.
“I wish I’d seen something like that,” Manuel said. “It’s hard. I went into the forest expecting to have something happen to me. They’ve worked so hard to preserve it. I thought it would be… more…”
“Magical,” Javier said.
“Yes. That’s right. Magical.” Manuel shrugged. “Stupid, huh?”
Javier shook his head. “It’s not stupid at all.” He ducked his head a little to catch Manuel’s eye. “Really. It isn’t. You fell for the hype. That’s not your fault.”
Manuel rolled his eyes. “It’s no different from coming to this place, then, is it?”
Javier looked around. The Holy Family had reached their destination. The crowd was singing
“Noche de Paz.”
A star twinkled above the trees. After watching it for a moment, Javier realized it was a botfly set to overload.
“Sure it’s different,” he said. “You met me.”
Manuel smiled. “I was told to meet you.”
An instant tension in Javier’s legs readied him for escape. Who had sent this man? He didn’t read like a cop, or even like New Eden. Who were they? And why had they waited this long to make their move?
“Wow,” Manuel said. “It’s true.”
“What’s true?”
“What they say, about your poker face. You guys are amazing. There’s just…” Manuel waved a hand in front of Javier’s face. “Nothing.”
“Still waters run deep,” Javier said.
Manuel smiled and reached into his pocket. He held out a small key fob. “You’re invited.”
Javier raised his eyebrows. “To what?”
“To a private tournament. The vN are not allowed on the casino floor, and my companion would like to stake you to a game.”
“I’ll beat him,” Javier said.
“My companion is a lady. And she would like to test her skill.”
Javier tilted his head. “Aren’t you enough of a test of her skills?”
“Most of the time.” Manuel offered his arm. “But my lady is nothing if not an overachiever.”
The lady’s accommodations were a loft suite identical to Javier’s on the opposite side of the ship. Hers had a piano, though. It was a real piano; the guts were visible, literally and figuratively. Someone had left a highball glass of water out on a table near it. Adjacent to the piano were a wet bar and a dinner table inlaid with matching mosaic tile, and when Javier entered the room, she stood up from the head of the table.
She was in her late forties or early fifties, judging by her hands and the stiffness in her posture. She was very petite and thin, and had deep purple hair, cut at a sharp angle. She wore multiple loops of black pearls around her neck and down her flat chest. The pearls were perfectly round, with the iridescent pinks and greens of a parking lot oil slick. He had a sudden desire to see what they would look like on Amy.
“I bought them after my first tournament, in Shanghai,” she said, touching the pearls carefully. “The producers wanted a little local colour, as it were. I wasn’t expected to win. They called me
Poker Alice
. It stuck. People still call me Alice, and so can you. Unless you feel like telling me your real name.”
He took her proffered hand and held it in both his own. Hers was dry, and very cool. Warfarin, maybe. Though she could likely afford drugs tailored to her genes.
“Your pearls are very beautiful,” Javier said. “They suit you.”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. An old habit of a professional gambler, he guessed. “I suspected you might be charming, Mr Montalban.”
“It’s just the suit.”
Now she smiled genuinely, and he felt better. She looked at Manuel. “May we have some drinks, please?”
“Of course,” Manuel said, and went behind the bar. He brought out a few bottles of vN-friendly liquids. Unstoppered, they smelled like perfume. “I know the Electric Sheep has this cocktail called a Tears in the Rain, but they don’t make a vN version.”
Manuel used tongs to measure out a grouping of glittering crystals into a martini shaker. “These are druzy-style moissanites that I’ve kept at sub-zero,” he said. “They share the same molecular pattern as a diamond, but they’re made from silicon and not carbon. The interior of this shaker is diamond carbide, so as I shake it,” he started shaking, “the moissanites start chipping off in microscopic fragments.” He shook for another minute, then poured the liquid into a squat, square glass.
Then he opened up a drawer below the bar. Icy mist wafted out. From the drawer, he withdrew a tiny pillbox full of small blue beads shaped like teardrops. Each was about the size of a sesame seed. “These are gelatinized cobalt,” he said. “I make them with calcium alginate and three different water baths.” With an antique silver salt spoon, he drifted the spheres into the glass one by one. Tapping the last few out, he gave the glass a final, gentle nudge to swirl its contents, then handed the glass to Javier.
“Thank you,” Javier said, and raised the glass. The teardrops drifted slowly down through the sparkling suspension. “Do you carry this whole set-up with you on every cruise?”
“It comes with the suite,” Alice said. “Doesn’t yours have one?”
“I never thought to look.”
Manuel used a standard shaker to produce a dry martini for Alice. He shaved a curl of yuzu peel into it, and she and Javier raised their glasses to each other. The drink had no discernible flavour but it was delightfully cold, and quite pretty, and he liked the weight of the glass in his hand. It felt reassuringly solid and real.
“Do you play baccarat, Mr Montalban?”
He blinked. “
Punto banco,
or
chemin de fer
?”
She sniffed. “The latter, naturally.
Punto banco
is a game of chance.
Chemin de fer
is a game of choice.” She arched a pencilled eyebrow. “I thought you would appreciate a game in which there is at least a small measure of free will.”
“I do.” Javier rested a hand on the nearest chair. Opposite the piano stood floor-to-ceiling windows. Beyond the balcony there was nothing, only black. Somewhere, beneath those waves, there might be some trace of Amy and the island. Somewhere dark and cold and awful, where he’d put her because his own personal deck was stacked against him from the beginning. “But there are games, and then there games.”
Alice took a seat. Javier followed. “I made my career on poker and blackjack,” she said. “But it’s all different, now. The security measures are beyond anything I imagined, when I started out. Do you know that it was a computer vision algorithm that picked up my first stroke? It was a transient ischemic attack, one of the little ones. You scarcely even know it’s happening. One minute I was splitting on an eight, and the next there was the casino doctor.”
So he’d been right about the warfarin. She was probably still on a blood thinner of some type. “Casinos have doctors?”
She cast him a pitying glance. “The good ones do.” Her lips thinned. “Or they did. Once. Now it’s all vN.”
Javier sipped. “I thought we weren’t allowed on casino floors.”
“Not here. But these places…” she waved her hand to encompass the ship, “are no good. They’re for punters. The rake is terrible, the commission is too high, the bankroll top-up is automatic. It’s disgusting, the way they take advantage of people. Old people, especially. Do you know how many of the elderly are living on points, on these old boats? There’s free meals and free medical care. It’s cheaper than a home, these days.”