The Boundless Sublime (28 page)

I shrugged. ‘Does it matter? It’s just a rock.’

Pippa smiled, too brightly. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You’re right.’

I remembered the story she’d told, about her boyfriend proposing to her. Did she ever wonder what would have happened if she’d taken that ring? Pippa turned and clambered into the van, and I made a mental note to keep an eye on her. She was weak.

We were blindfolded once more, and Stan drove us out of the Institute and into the world. After an hour or so of bumping and swaying, he told us we could remove our blindfolds.

We were in the city.

Everything was different. New shops and billboards. Buildings had been torn down and replaced with steel scaffolding and construction. I couldn’t believe how much had changed – how long had I been away?

I kept an eye out for Fox. I couldn’t help myself. I wondered where he was, what he was doing. Was he in some kind of Quintus Septum facility? Was he scared? Did he miss us? Miss me?

I saw floods of toxicants, clutching greasy bags of processed food, each one isolated from the world with earbuds and headphones. I watched them fill their mouths with poisons and turn their eyes away from each other. How could people
be so stupid? They were killing themselves, each one in a prison of solitude that they’d built for themselves.

Stan shook his head. ‘Poor suckers,’ he murmured pityingly, and I knew we were all thinking the same thing.

He drove us to the edge of the city and into a public garage. Welling retrieved a dark briefcase from under the passenger seat of the van. Then we continued on foot, winding our way through laneways and arcades.

‘You can’t be too careful,’ said Stan, glancing around. ‘Stay alert. Make sure we’re not being followed.’

I could smell doughnuts and cigarettes and car exhaust and perfume. It was overwhelming. Toxicants jostled us and I stared open-mouthed at them. Couldn’t they see how lost they were? Couldn’t they tell how much
better
we were? Were our disguises really so good? Why weren’t these people humbled before us? Filled with awe?

Stan led us over a footbridge across the river, where boats belched oil into brown sludge and toxicants held hands and pretended to be in love. We followed the riverbank for a while, past restaurants and street performers, until we came to a large building – solid and windowless as a fortress, spreading down the side of the river like a giant hulking beast.

‘Um … where are we going?’ asked Pippa. ‘What does this have to do with balancing the elements to make aether?’

‘You’ll see,’ said Welling.

He brushed some invisible dirt from his lapels and led us into an enormous marble lobby, gleaming shining surfaces and glinting with chrome and brass. We waited by a floral arrangement that was twice my height as Welling went up to a curved sweep of marble counter, where a line of neatly presented people waited, wearing identical elegant uniforms.

When Welling returned, he carried a small plastic card. He led us over to a lift and we got in. The vertical movement
made my stomach lurch, and I was relieved when it finally opened onto a long corridor lined with doors.

A hotel. We were in a hotel.

Welling led us to our room – actually a suite of rooms, with a living room and two bedrooms, one for me and Pippa and one for him and Stan.

We gathered in the living room and sat on the floor, ignoring the comfortable-looking couch and armchairs.

‘We’re not … here to steal something, are we?’ asked Pippa, looking around nervously.

‘Of course not,’ I told her, my voice haughty with superiority. ‘Daddy wouldn’t make us steal. Theft is aphotic.’

Welling nodded. ‘Hera is right,’ he said. ‘What we’re doing is perfectly legal. It’s more than legal. It’s
right
.’

‘So … what are we going to do?’

‘This is a house of lead,’ said Welling. ‘The toxicants who come here fill their bodies and minds with heaviness. The more they spend, the worse they feel. The more money this place makes, the more toxicants come here. It feeds on their greed. We are lifting that burden. We are elutriating the toxicants.’

Pippa frowned. ‘But we’re not stealing?’

Welling shook his head. ‘We’re
winning
.’

Pippa stared at him, realisation dawning on her face. ‘This is a
casino
? What about the aether?’

‘We need funds in order to procure supplies. To make the aether.’ Welling popped open the clips on the briefcase, raising the lid.

‘So … what was the point of all those drills?’ asked Pippa. ‘All the counting?’

Welling flashed her a bright white smile. ‘I’m glad you asked,’ he said. He brandished a flat, rectangular box. I stared at it, the familiar red and white patterns seeming like the most incongruous thing in the world.

‘Have you ever played blackjack?’

16

Welling slid the cards from the pack and fanned them out on the floor in front of us. ‘Each card has a value,’ he explained. ‘The number cards are self-explanatory. The picture cards are all worth ten. In a casino, you and whoever else is playing will be dealt cards. The house also gets cards. The goal in blackjack is to get as close to twenty-one as you can. If you go over, you lose. If you are the closest to twenty-one, you win. Simple.’

We nodded. I was churning with questions. What were we doing at a casino? Why was Welling teaching us to play blackjack? What possible purpose could it serve? Wouldn’t we become contaminated? But I said nothing. Daddy had sent us here. Welling knew what he was doing.

He dealt out cards and we played eight rounds of blackjack. As we played, he explained the rest of the rules and taught us a basic strategy.

Welling won five rounds, I won one, and Stan won two.

‘What’s the trick?’ asked Pippa.

‘It isn’t a trick,’ said Welling. ‘It’s about focus and precision. Clearing your mind and letting your actuality take over. You’ll get the hang of it. The game is easy. The hard part is knowing when and how much to bet.’

He reached into the briefcase again and took out a wad of notes, secured with an elastic band. My heart started to pound. I realised I hadn’t seen money for … how long? Months?

We were each passed a thin stack of twenty-dollar notes. They were smooth and real under my fingers. This wasn’t play-money. This was the real thing. I realised how powerful money was – how just seeing it and touching it made me feel aphotic. Grease and toxins seeped into my fingertips. I shuddered, and put my stack down on the carpet next to me. Pippa was flicking through her bundle. She raised it to her face and inhaled its scent. I felt ill.

‘Downstairs we’ll be playing with chips,’ Welling said. ‘But we can practise with the real thing.’

We played another eight rounds. Welling won four, I won two, and Pippa and Stan each won one. I bet conservatively, and only lost forty dollars out of the two hundred I’d been given. Pippa bet lavishly and was left with only a single twenty-dollar note. Stan started off conservative, but then got flustered at the end and ended up with forty dollars. Welling, however, seemed to know exactly when to bet high. He ended up with over four hundred dollars.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Now it’s time to apply the sublimation technic.’

I blinked. How were the drills we’d done related to this? How could learning how to balance the atomic weight of elements have anything to do with blackjack?

‘It’s just like with the element chips,’ said Welling. ‘When you see a card revealed, you adjust a running mental tally. If the card is between two and six, you add one. If it is between seven and nine, you do nothing. If the card is a ten, you subtract one. Understand?’

It was the same. The counting system was the same. Was … was this what we had been learning all along? I’d
thought I’d been trained in something profound, something that was going to help me reach sublimation. But in fact I’d just been learning to count cards. I glanced at the others. Welling was looking at his cards. Stan was muttering numbers. Pippa met my eyes with a frown, and I knew she was wondering the same thing. I bit back my disappointment. I wasn’t weak like her. I had to trust Daddy. I knew we’d need money for the war – especially since our crops had been destroyed. And what better place to take it from than the darkest house of lead? Welling was right: we were
helping
the toxicants by taking their money, the source of all their greed and heaviness.

Welling shuffled his deck of cards with deft fingers, and I realised why Daddy had chosen him for this mission. He’d probably spent plenty of time gambling in his life before the Institute, when he was a successful stockbroker. Daddy was no fool. He knew how to take our weaknesses and turn them into strengths. How to harness our skills and vices and use them as tools to draw us closer to the sublime.

Welling put down one card at a time. We each counted in our heads, just as we had been doing every morning for the past two weeks. The numbers ticked through my head and soothed me, order in chaos, silencing my questions and doubts. Numbers were pure, elutriating the oily heaviness of the money.

‘Now we will play again,’ said Welling. ‘Pippa, Stan, play as normal. Hera – count as we go. Bet high whenever your count reaches three or above.’

We played another five rounds. I only won two, but I managed to win more money than I lost.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Pippa, your turn.’

Numbers swam through my head as we played hand after hand, and Welling explained betting strategies.

We worked on our blackjack game late into the night, before Welling finally called a halt, and Pippa and I dragged ourselves into the adjoining bedroom.

An enormous king-size bed took up most of the room, invitingly swathed in crisp white linens. A large window overlooked nearby skyscrapers, and I took a dizzy step away when I realised how high up we were. I saw Pippa eyeing the plastic-wrapped pillow mints on the bed. I swept them off the covers and marched into the ensuite, depositing them in the bin so she couldn’t be tempted anymore. Who knew what poisons they contained?

I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror, and felt a stab of fear at the sight of the unrecognisable girl staring back at me. She looked like a skeleton – sallow skin drawn tightly across bone, face gaunt and hollow. I remembered something Daddy had told us.

As you approach sublimation, you will notice signs that your flesh-body is ready to be discarded. Do not be alarmed. Soon, you won’t need it at all.

Back in the bedroom, Pippa was climbing into the bed, but I shook my head with a frown.

‘We want to stay sharp,’ I told her. ‘Alert. We sleep on the floor.’

Pippa opened her mouth as if to argue with me, but closed it again, casting a longing glance towards the fluffy doona and pillows before settling down onto the floor beside me.

I ordered my body to sleep, but the toxins leaking into me through the make-up and synthetic fabric and the pollution of the city had made my body rebellious and sluggish to respond. Beside me, Pippa shifted uncomfortably, rolling from side to side and sighing. I let my breathing slow, so she would think I was asleep. I needed to set a good example.

But sleep didn’t come.

Pippa was restless all night, getting up to use the toilet several times. I hoped she wasn’t sneaking into the bathroom to eat the pillow mints, and resolved to hide them somewhere else in the morning. I could hear the
ding
of the lift out in the hallway, and the low constant hum of air conditioning. I shuddered at the thought of what it might be pumping into our room.

Morning finally came, and Welling tapped on our bedroom door, letting us know it was nearly time to head down to the casino floor.

‘Are we having breakfast first?’ asked Pippa, dark, sleepless pouches under her eyes.

‘No,’ I told her. ‘You don’t need breakfast. Food will slow you down.’

I went into the ensuite to get ready. I eyed the shower, and imagined the feeling of the hot jets hitting my back and shoulders. I imagined lathering up handfuls of soap and shampoo, and breathing in great lungfuls of warm steam.

Hot water was damaging to the skin. Soaps and other chemicals would be absorbed into the body, creating disharmony and sluggishness.

But if we are discarding this body soon anyway, what harm will it do?
asked a pesky voice inside my head.

I put the plug into the basin, and filled it up with cold water, using a hand towel to sponge myself clean. This was better than a shower. The elutriation offered by the cold water was a thousand times better than the simple flesh-pleasures of heat and steam.