At the Grand I was lucky enough to get a tour of the Imperial Suite while it was between occupants. I was taken around by the manager, a perfume-scented, self-important little man who informed me in reverent tones that the Imperial Suite was the preferred lodging for the highest nobility and the particular choice of Lord Rupert (the notorious younger son of Lord Anatol, the present Duke of Galaina). He pointed out the high ceilings with their elaborate plasterwork decoration, the exquisite furniture with its look of ancient Terran luxury. A closet stretched the length of one wall. If the visitor's wardrobe were insufficient to fill it, representatives of the city's famed couturiers would gladly come to the room to display the latest styles.
The bedroom was dominated by a huge, canopied, four-poster bed that was covered with silk sheets and a coverlet of white fur. The manager drew the hangings aside and directed my attention to the ceiling of the canopy: a pretty picture of blue sky, white, puffy clouds, and naked, whispering cherubs looking down on the sleeper. At the touch of a switch the cherubs receded, revealing a mirror. "This is a great favorite with Lord Rupert," the manager whispered, giving me a roguish wink.
For the occasional unscheduled collation there was a small kitchenette with a full bar, If the visitor should wish it, he can be assigned a personal servant girl to bring his drink, take his coat, rub his shoulders and draw his bath.
The vast bathroom, with floors of marble and walls of porphyry and alabaster, is ingeniously designed to suit the visitors every whim. He can step into the shower and be assaulted by sizzling needles of spray from jets hidden in the shower walls, or he can step down into a tub the size of a small lake and be caressed by rippling currents that turn hot and cold on command, finally rising from the water into a towel held by waiting hands.
I rather diffidently asked whether the personal servant girl assigned to the traveler also, ahem, assisted him in the bath. The little man looked shocked. Of course not, he replied indignantly. That was the duty of the bathing girls, who would join him in the tub and wash him, and then after wards dry him, comb his hair, manicure his finger- and toenails, and massage the soles of his feet. I asked if there were male bathing servants, too, for women visitors. "Oh yes, for the women," he said, "or for any who wish it." He smiled urbanely. "We cater to all tastes."
You could easily spend a week in Galaina without ever leaving your hotel room, but, there is always a subtle pressure to be up and on the go, to fill the 27 hours of the Galainan day with an endless pursuit of action. For most visitors, action means thelf casinos.
Galaina is said to have more casinos than streets. These range from exclusive private clubs like the Alcazar (patronized by Lord Anatol's mother, the Grand Duchess Gulrune) to hot, smoky, crowded dives where, the drinks are strong and the prudent visitor keeps one hand on his wallet. Most of these decorate their outside walls with gaudy phantasmagorias of lights. Just next to my hotel (which was not the Grand, by the way, or anything like it) there was a casino that all night long kept up a continually changing spectacle, the lights forming patterns of waterfalls, exploding volcanos and bursting fireworks.
Luck Be a Lady
Everybody gambles in Galaina. There are gambling machines on every street corner, in every bar and greasy spoon, even in the restrooms. You can play the simulators, those games with their iridescent exploding displays and their insatiable appetite for coins that allow you to imagine yourself a MechWarrior blazing away at a menacing array of enemies. Feed it enough money and your heat sinks will never overload and your ammo never run out. One night I caught sight of the mercenary soldier I had seen at Alioth Station; he was perched in a simulator blasting away while his friends cheered him on. "Shoot," he said, "never had so much fun in a firefight."
There are tables for three-world roulette with its whirling globe and elegant croupier. Bejeweled ladies sit at the green baize table moving chips and watching the computer display flash numbers in sequence. There are tables for card games--twin aces, cut out, double or run--as well as the older games blackjack and three-five stud.
The serious male gamblers always head for the crap tables. This game, with roots in the Terran 20th century, has evolved from its innocent beginnings into the fastest, hottest, most pulse-pounding method yet devised for winning or losing a fortune in five minutes. It is hard to imagine what the ancients, who docilely waited for a turn to throw a pair of six-sided dice, would think of today's game with its continuous and simultaneous play, its 4-, 6-, 8-,12-,18- and 30-sided dice, its shifting, 3-dimensional surface, its tunnels, valleys and wells, its pyramiding bets and fantastic swings where a player can win 1000 C-bills one minute, then lose it and win it back the next.
Galainans, being inveterate gossip-mongers, love to tell tales of the casinos. There is the story of the mercenary soldier who, having carefully saved up slightly over 3000 C-bills, went straight from the DropShip port to the casino, still carrying his duffle, blew his whole stake in less than an hour, and had to spend the rest of the week hiding in a buddy's hotel room, cadging meals when he could. There is the story of the top entertainer who lost so much at the tables that he had to agree to an exclusive contract with the casino to square the debt. (I heard this tale three times, each time about a different entertainer. My informants all assured me the story was true. One of them claimed to have a brother-in-law who was working in the casino at the time "and saw the whole thing.")
The casinos continually search for new thrills, new variations on the ancient game of betting on chance. It is possible to gamble on the weather, on news events or the arrival times of JumpShips. The week of the Games on Solaris VII is a particularly intense period. HPG transmissions bring twice-daily updates on the fortunes of the contestants and by extension the fortunes of their followers on Galaina. For a solid week no one talks of anything but the Games. The sporting rooms at the casinos are packed with gamblers waiting for the next report. Rumors race through the crowd, betting is frantic and the stakes rise to dizzying heights. In the heat of the action the gamblers forget about everything except the game. They forget what time of day it is, they lose track of their friends and companions, they forget to eat, and meanwhile hardly any of them is aware that they are continually being watched.
Quis Custodiet Custodes Ipsos?
The Galaina Friendship Society maintains a system of continuous surveillance inside the casinos using mutually reinforcing groups of "protectors." An area protector keeps his eye on two or three tables. Floor protectors watch the area protectors. Overhead, through video monitors and one-way ceiling mirrors, the grid protector group monitors the entire room. In addition, floating security teams cruise the room, small groups of fresh-faced smiling youths with discrete communications gear moving unobtrusively from table to table.
One reason for all this surveillance is simply the vast amount of wealth on display, the incredible quantities of chips changing hands every second, a constant temptation to cheating and thievery. The casino employees are all native Galainans, and therefore all adherents to the Church of the True Faith, a fact which more than anything gives them a sense of solidarity with each other and with their employers. Still, Church doctrine emphasizes the unavoidable fact of human frailty, and in a scene of so much temptation the authorities feel better giving everyone an additional motive for adhering to the path of righteousness. The employees seem to agree. One woman, a dealer at a three-five stud table, told me, "I like knowing I'm being watched over. It makes me feel like someone's looking out for me."
If you ask one of these protectors what their job is, the answer you'll probably get is "keeping the game running smoothly." One night I saw an example of what they meant. There was a disturbance at one of the crap tables, an argument between two overeager high rollers that quickly escalated into a shoving match. Within seconds the men were surrounded by GFC security agents. One of the fighters happened to have his face turned towards me. I saw his eyes cloud over, saw him slump into an agent's arms, saw the stun stick return to a holster. Quickly and expertly the men were hustled away from the table and out of the room, and the game continued without interruption. It all happened so fast that if I hadn't been right there I would have missed it.
Nothing is allowed to interrupt the daily round of amusement. All possible sources of discomfort are removed, even the awareness of the high price of these pleasures. If you have an account with a branch of a Galainan bank on your home world (and there are many of these branches operating under a variety of different names), you can arrange for your expenses to be charged directly to your account. Daily HPG transmissions link the branches together, so that the money you lose at the tables today will be deducted from your account tomorrow.
In this way it is possible to run up truly staggering bills. They tell a story about one young wastrel, the son of a powerful Duke (every time you hear the story, a different Duke is named) who lost 10,000 C-bills (or 20,000 or 50,000) in a single night. His father eventually had to come to the planet himself and drag the prodigal home.
Such stories go a long way towards explaining Galaina's reputation as a den of robbers and thieves, a nest of parasites preying on the weak and gullible. To such charges Galainans have several replies. They point out that when a visitor loses a large sum, efforts are made to cushion the loss. The visitor who has been unlucky at the tables will find that his room and meal charges have been paid and that he has free transport back to the JumpPoint. Everyone wants him to carry away a good memory of his visit. And if all this doesn't fully compensate for his loss... well, after all, nobody made him gamble.
Galainans are quick to point out that gambling is not restricted to tourists. Local Galainans, they tell you over and over, are among the most faithful customers of the casinos. This is true up to a point. Although the canons of the Church of the True Faith officially frown on gambling, actual practice is quite lenient. In fact, recent theologians, citing the large subsidies the Church receives from the casino tax, have argued that gambling should be regarded as a form of tithing. In any case, the local parish priest will almost always grant dispensation to go to the casino, knowing that his parishioner, although he will probably lose, will not lose heavily, for Galainan law has long required that citizens, unlike rich offworlders, must pay cash for their chips. The local high roller may wind up the night with an empty pocket, but his bank account will still be whole.
Although gambling is expensive, sometimes spectacularly so, it is not the only costly pastime on the planet. Everything in Galaina costs money. And if the attractions of the casino pall, there are many other places that will be happy to relieve the visitor of his excess cash.
Buyer Beware
When you leave your hotel, runners employed by the shops will crowd around you, and one of them is sure to drag you into one of the many crowded shops along Lord Adolpho Street where, talking all the while, he will load you up with shirts, scarves and neckerchiefs of vibrosilk and alethosatin and jackets of the softest Penclaric leather. Gently but firmly you are made to sit down, your boots are removed and replaced by "corgies," the open-mesh, curled-toed boots favored by the dandies, a bargain at only Cb 59 a pair.
The runners are ubiquitous and unrelenting and they have an uncanny nose for money. Once while I was trying to persuade one of them that no, I did not want to go into his shop and see his flawless Bayindir diamonds, I pointed at an imposing-looking aristocrat who was strolling past unmo. lested. Why didn't he go and bother him? "He's broke," was the immediate reply. I checked later and found out he was right. The prosperous appearance was all show. The man's home world, an agricultural planet, had been devastated by severe floods and a sudden plagues of pesticide-resistant locusts. He was in Galaina trying to negotiate a loan. All this, I gathered, had been known by the runners within minutes of his arrival.
It should not come as a surprise that this world, so given over to gambling and games of chance, supports a flourishing trade in fortune-telling. For a suitable fee you can receive encouraging words about your social and romantic prospects, impressionistic forecasts of political and military events, and tantalizingly incomplete data about winning numbers at the casino. The types of service you can buy range from a simple palm reading to elaborate, personalized fortunes for which you must provide not only the dates and times of events in your own and your parents' lives but also blood and urine samples, brain scans, and retina prints.
The best-known of these practitioners is a stately, bearded mountain of a man who goes by the name of Griba the Zork. From his baroque offices on Commonwealth Plaza he offers subscription services to scores of clients throughout the ner Sphere. It is even rumored that Max Liao has personally sought out his advice and the Liao sends a personal representative to him each month to collect reports.
Pleasure Planet Galaina
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Introduction
A Room at the Inn
A Day in the Country
Lord Anatol, Duke of Galaina
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
by Lee B. Barton
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© Copyright 1988 by Pacific Rim Publishing.
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