Baccano! - Volume 21 - Chapter Pr

All right, it’s time to gamble.

The moment to place your bets has arrived.

Use every means available to waste time and money with utter abandon.

Waste is proof that you’re enjoying life, so feel thoroughly free to squander that life, too.

Want to test your luck with roulette?

Would you rather strategically knock each other down with poker?

How about a stoic one-on-one with the dealer at blackjack?

Will you face yourself at the slots?

Entrust your fate to the dice at cee-lo?

Have a brush with the secrets of the Far East through chou-han?

Glimpse the depths of a simple world with two-up?

Shout and cheer at a dog fight?

Or will you bet on horses in broad daylight?

You can even think up a new wager right here, if you’d like. There’s a certain fairness when everyone is starting from square one.

It’s time.

That’s right—it’s time to gamble!

Why wouldn’t you enjoy it?!

Go on—bring that sting to each other’s throats and the backs of your eyelids.

Deceive and mislead each other, but keep it clean. I’m not proposing a cheating free-for-all.

In one sense, gambling is leaving everything to chance, but befuddling your opponent is part of the job.

Put on your poker face, or calculate the odds, or watch the dealer’s expression.

Use every trick in the book until you have the others dancing in the palm of your hand.

Gambling may be fun, but it’s no game.

Luck, courage, brains, your mettle as a human being—are proving grounds to assess all these things.

Who is it you want to measure? Yourself or somebody else?

Well, come on, enjoy yourselves.

After all, what you take from each other here will generally be money.

You can also change something more valuable into chips.

This could end up being the last game you ever play.

You may already have converted your lives into chips.

Well?

Isn’t it such a delight to think about?

—The general manager of the Ra’s Lance casino

Digression 3 The Research Results Aren’t Released

2003Somewhere in the world

You want to hear about Szilard Quates?

…Who are you?

I thought you’d just taken one look at me and decided to come tease me for being in a bar.

Who told you about me?

…Well, that’s all right. You don’t look like you’ve come to kill me.

Here, let me introduce myself.

I’m Fil Nibiru.

My name used to be Feldt, and my gender’s different these days. I think I was a little taller back then, too.

So, if you’re bringing up Szilard Quates, are you an immortal?

…No? I see. Good for you.

You came straight to me instead of going to the Fils; I assume you must know at least a little about the situation. If you want immortality for yourself, you’re barking up the wrong tree here.

…Lotto Valentino?

No, can’t say I’m familiar. Although I get the feeling I heard something about it from old man Bilt…

Oh, I see.

That’s where Maiza and the other alchemists are from, huh?

Right. I always meant to pay the place a visit someday. So you’re a visitor from Lotto Valentino.

Why would a plain old traveler want to know about Szilard? Actually, how do you know about the immortals at all?

What do you mean, “It’s a long story”? My story might run long, too.

Well, pay for my meal, and I’ll tell you what I know.

I’ve got no reason to take Szilard’s side, and nothing I’m about to tell you is worth hiding.

Wouldn’t it be faster to ask old man Bilt, though?

Bilt?

Bilt is Bilt.

Bilt Quates.

He’s a descendant of Szilard Quates—his great-great-great-grandson. I’m told he’s the spitting image, but I don’t really know how close the resemblance is.

I mean, if you keep going for enough generations, I guess you’ll eventually end up with a dead ringer for an ancestor.

Although, if you’re born the way I was, everybody ends up looking a lot alike.

Whoops, sorry about that. I got sidetracked.

So. What do you want to know about Szilard?

I still say old man Bilt knows more than I do, but I’ll tell you what I can.

…What was Szilard Quates trying to accomplish?

Hmm… That’s a good question.

What was he thinking when he made me and the other Fils? I’ve heard a little about it, but his overall goal was pretty vague.

If you really want to know about that, it would be faster to ask the guy who “ate” him.

Uh… No, if I told you his name, it might cause trouble for him. Next time I see him, I’ll ask if it’s okay to tell.

I have no obligations to Szilard, but I do owe the immortal who ate him.

This is what old Bilt told me, though.

Ever heard of homunculi? They call them “dwarves in the flask,” among other names. They come up quite a bit in films and novels, right?

Nah, I haven’t actually gone through too many movies or books myself yet, so I dunno how common it actually is. My acquaintance knows more about that mass-market stuff.

Homunculi can’t leave the flask they were born in, but in exchange, they know everything in the universe.

I guess they’re a little like the fairy elders that appear in fairy tales.

There’s a sketchy theory that they’re the will of the cosmos itself, made physical.

Yeah, that’s right. That’s what Szilard Quates was trying to make.

A minute ago, I said his overall goal was vague, but if I still had to sum it all up in one word, it would be…yeah. Everything.

Szilard Quates the alchemist wanted everything in the world.

Even though he already had an immortal body. Actually, it might have been because he was immortal.

He didn’t have a natural life span anymore, so maybe the only times he felt alive were the times when he wanted something.

Point is, Szilard wanted it all.

Money.

Power.

Food.

Women.

Freedom.

Knowledge.

Everything.

Oh, “respect from other people” might have been the one thing he didn’t want.

If he’d wanted that, the immortals’ memories of him might have been slightly more positive.

Either that, or he figured people would respect him automatically as long as he had money and power. I mean, for some people, that’s enough to win them some modicum of respect.

Whoops, I went off topic again.

In any case, it wasn’t just “my place.”

Szilard Quates’s reach extended all around the world.

I hear he had more apprentices than you could count and over thirty laboratories in America and Europe alone—and that’s just the ones Bilt knows about.

He tried to keep the liquor of immortality a strict secret, but otherwise, he left a whole lot of his research to other people.

That means I don’t have a handle on all of it.

Bilt probably doesn’t, either.

Even Szilard may not have had a comprehensive grasp of it.

He overextended himself.

Even after he got eaten, some of those hands and feet of his kept right on living.

In fact, the immortal who ate Szilard’s memories didn’t know about me.

Once an octopus tentacle has latched on to something, not even cutting it off will always make it let go.

Well, Szilard is dead.

If he’d survived, though, he might have gotten outfoxed by those limbs of his.

By guys like me, say.

…What? Was Lebreau working with Szilard?

Lebreau Fermet Viralesque, huh?

Sorry. I don’t know much about where the other limbs reached or who they connected with.

I’ve heard that name, though.

The smile junkie talked to the other Fils about him a lot.

Oh, yeah, sorry. I’ll fill you in on the smile junkie some other time.

That story’s a little too long to tack on to this one.