"Sure. I should tell you, though, I'm asking for a transfer to one of the ranch towns. Being a pump jockey isn't my thing. And I don't like those guys from the Holes. They remind me of the Circus flyboys".
* * *
Tuesday nights there were political and social lectures about the miserable lives of those in the Kurian Zone. Valentine hadn't seen anything of the Seattle area, but it must be a hellhole in comparison with some of the most wretched corners of the Caribbean, so black did they paint the picture.
"Their only relief is death", Thunderbird boomed, backing up the mousy little refugee who gave that week's lecture. Foot-high letters painted on the wall under the ceiling read, Are you a SHIRKER or a DOER? "We'll pick this up in the conference room in fifteen for those who want to know more. Card tournament tonight, grand prize is a four-day weekend at the next quarter-moon party at the Outlook".
"What's the Outlook?" Valentine asked Thunderbird as the Bears rearranged their folding chairs to make room for the poker tables.
"That's a big resort in the mountains. Beautiful area. Sort of a retreat and conference center for the Free Territory. Sometimes we even get visits from the Old Feds at Mount Omega".
"I thought that was a myth", Valentine said, though he knew differently. The last refuge of the old United States government was part El Dorado, part Camelot, in Freehold urban legendry.
"No, it's real enough. Going there's a bit of a letdown, though. It's not as impressive as it sounds".
The poker tournament got going, a fairly basic game of five-card draw with jokers wild. Each player started out with small stakes, a hundred dollars in chips, and when he accumulated five hundred dollars he could move to the five-hundred-dollar table.
The "grand prize" table required a three-thousand-dollar buy-in.
The laurels would go to whoever managed to reach the ten-thousand-dollar mark.
Valentine was lucky - first in betting and then in card strength - for his first two hands and shifted to the five-hundred-dollar table. Other men who'd abandoned the tables made sandwiches and passed out low-grade beer, apple ciders, and "Norridge Cross", a wine from some pocket in the Cascades. Valentine stuck to coffee.
The men at the five-hundred-dollar table were serious players, and Valentine languished there until after midnight, until he got a feel for their respiratory tells. Using the hearing he'd acquired as a Wolf gave him an unfair advantage, he supposed, but a card table knew no law but Hoyle.
He was the last of six seats to join the championship three-thousand-dollar table.
His luck returned the first two hands, thanks to three kings and then a dealt flush. After that promising start, he began to fight a long, slow, losing battle against a Bear named Rafferty, who called him on a bluff. Rafferty's black ringlet hair, long as a pirate's, brushed the felt-covered championship table as he gathered the lost chips.
Thunderbird checked in occasionally to offer a joke and console the losers, and then returned to the bull session in the corner of the conference room.
With a full house Valentine assayed forth, and Rafferty folded. Valentine played the next hand cautiously, and eked out a win with three of a kind, causing two others to drop out. Another Bear demolished all of them the next hand, and then retired to bed, yawning, as a winner in his own mind but unwilling to hang in for the grand prize.
The Bears ate, drank, played, ate, and drank some more. Bear metabolisms could tear through six thousand calories or so a day and still feel underfed.
Card playing provides its own kind of late-night tension, and Valentine gave in to it as the advantage shifted between him and Rafferty, both built up enough so that they could not hurt each other. The other two at the table just played along out of interest.
Valentine drew into a straight, judged Rafferty doubtful, gulped down the last of his second glass of wine, and went all in. Rafferty laid down four of a kind, plus a joker.
"Good night, David", Rafferty said, gathering the chips and draining a tankard of beer. "I'll give your regards to the Outlook". He whipped a thong off his wrist and gathered up his hair, then did the same with his chips.
"I don't know anyone there who can accept them".
Rafferty cocked his head. "Never been?"
"No".
"Oh hell, well, take the prize", he laughed. "You hear that, Thun-derbucket? I'm offering up my poor winnings to our newcomer".
"Don't you always get thrown out after half an hour anyway, Riffraff?" Thunderbird called back. "But duly noted".
"Give me a ride in your whirlybird sometime, eh?" Rafferty said.
"Gladly", Valentine replied. "Interested in flight?"
"No. I want to take a crap over downtown Seattle from a whizzing great height".
"Spoken like a patriot", one of the losing Bears commented.