Of course, I’ve had it a long time. They don’t make things like this any more, it’s not the same these days, now everything’s becoming stable again. I guess life’s better most, these days, but you don’t get the great stuff. Take a look at the workmanship. That only happened during the crazy years.

You look too young to remember those times. The upheaval, and the years that followed. Wild times those were. You couldn’t count on any kind of reality.

But getting back to the coat. It wasn’t always mine, like it wasn’t made for me. A lot of guys wore it but lost it, but I wound up with it, and some said the coat had a mind of its own. It was made for a guy named Lonesome Billy who came in from the edge wearing it. But he got fused, and it fell into the hands of a fella called Rough Murph. Then he was lost in a warp, and nobody saw the coat until it was found among the stuff that Old Doc left behind when he died. It went through the hands of maybe a dozen people until Mo the Roller won it in a game of anti-up.

It never struck me at first that I really wanted to own the jacket. It was only when I’d seen Mo walking around in it for a while that I began to feel that it ought to be mine.

Now I wasn’t like some of the boys back in those days. I knew men who’d shoot a fella if they took a fancy to his coat or boots. I wasn’t like that, though. If I was going to score that coat, I was going to do it fair and square.

First thing I did was try and trade with Mo for it, but he wasn’t having any. Even though I offered him a new alphaset and twenty zone markers he turned me down flat. After that I played him at anti-up in the hope of winning it off him, but after I’d lost my twenty markers, I slung the alphaset over my shoulder and quit.

The next thing I tried was to hire some good ol’ boys to lift the jacket while Mo the Roller slept, but he woke up and shot two of them. The rest ran away, and still I didn’t have the jacket.

To tell you the truth, round about the time those boys came back empty handed I began to despair of ever getting my hands on this here splendid garment. I’d sit around in the same bar as Mo the Roller for most of the day, just looking with envy at that fine, fine coat. It was too much. I just started to go to pieces. Then the pool truck rolled in. YOU DON’T SEE POOL TRUCKS now gravity and the law of motion and what have you are just about settled back to normal, but in those days, when you were never sure which direction things might fall, let alone bounce or roll, a pool truck was the only place you could shoot a game. Of course, it was field pool, which is a mite different from straight, traditional gravity pool, but only in details.

This particular truck was only a ninety footer, and carried just one table, not much compared to the big five hundreds with six tables and a cocktail lounge, but it was okay.

Of course you got to remember that most of the space in a pool truck is taken up with the stasis generation, which is what makes the balls behave something like they’re supposed to, and the power scoops that drive the whole thing. On this particular one there was enough room for a table, a bar plus a couple of hookers, and small as it might be it sure was a fine sight, with its chrome body reflecting its neon flashers and the crew in their yellow suits and shades sitting up there in the cabin looking, you know, cool.

Directly I saw the pool truck come gliding by it struck me. I knew Mo was the anti-up king, and that he was pretty good at pitch ‘n’ twist, twelve card arhoolie, and even blind sevens, but I’d never heard of him to play pool.

Now round this time, I fancied myself as kind of nifty with a pool cue, and the idea took hold of me that maybe I could win the coat from Mo in a game of field pool or even-plane snooker. I hailed down the captain, and after a bit of haggling I chartered the truck for a set of games, on pay-by-the-day, winner-pays. Then I had him drive me over to the bar, and I walked right in and challenged ol’ Mo.

Now ol’ Mo the Roller was never one to turn down a challenge. No way. He followed me right back, out of the bar and into the truck. Once we were inside, the captain sealed the ports and took off.

After a few initial twists and shudders, the field became real smooth, with the floor definitely being the direction of down.

Out the window, you could see that chequered plain. That’s what they always look like. A chequered flat plain, stretching to the horizon. A LOT OF PEOPLE these days think that tripleforms were mean and hostile, but the truth was that if you left them alone, they’d leave you alone. The only thing you had to watch out for was a disrupter coming by.

Anyhow, after a bit of experimental walking around, Mo and I got down to playing.

The first game was for real chicken stakes, you know, half a marker, and deliverately I played real sloppy. But bad as I was, Mo played even worse and I won the half. I didn’t believe he could really be that bad.

The second game he played better, but I still won. I began to get real confident. I let Mo win a couple of games and gradually pushed up the states.

It was just getting into real money when the captain announced we had to strap ourselves in, on account of how he was moving out. Seems our field had attracted a disrupter and it was ripping across the control zone, straight towards us.

So anyway, we strapped ourselves down, the captain slammed the truck into drive and we hightailed it out of there.

It took a while to find the next zone that we could set down in. We had to go through the fringes, the Sadomak-sector, which, I can tell you, was a place I always kept well clear of. Inside the truck we were okay, of course, but on the outside it was bad. Those shifting fields could tear a body clean in half while folks stood around and laughed.

Those folks in Sadomak were something else, too. From the truck window you could see women driving chariots hooked to teams of maybe a dozen naked men, wielding long whips so the men screamed as they ran. You’d see the same with men driving women, and I even caught a glance of one of their mass hangings, tiers and tiers of folks choking and kicking while the crowd screamed for more. They were even selling postcards of it.

I’ve met folks who took sightseeing trips round the fringes, but I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

After a lot of searching around the captain found us another zone and cut in the field. One of the hookers racked up the balls and Mo and I fell into playing again. IT SEEMED THAT SOMEHOW the shift had spoiled Mo’s game, because he took a beating. He lost eight games straight, but each time he seemed anxious to up the stakes to try and get his money back, yet each time he lost.

By the start of the ninth game, I’d taken over a hundred markers off him, and still he wanted to play. Trouble was, I’d just about cleaned him out. Old Mo doesn’t know what to do until I suggest, casual like, that he play for the coat.

"The coat," he says, "I don’t know about that."

"Tell you what," I say, "I’ll put a round two hundred down against your coat."

Mo the Roller thinks about this for a while, then shrugs.

"Two hundred against my coat, all on one game. Okay, you got a bet."

So we start playing, and straight away I realize that all the time Mo has been playing me for a sucker. He was shooting pool like an ace. I couldn’t do a thing, he had me cleaned out after three breaks. I’d lost my money, and I’d lost the coat.

How do I come to have the coat, you ask.

Well, as luck would have it, I’m standing there, feeling kind of down in the mouth, when the alarm sounds. It’s another disrupter coming for our field. A real big mother, this time, and fast. The captain did his best to get us away, but before he could pick up speed, it’s overtaken us, and we’ve been sucked in.

There are no words to describe what it’s like going through a disrupter, so I’m not even going to try.

Eventually I wake up on this flat plain. There’s no sign of Mo, the captain, the hookers. I’m just lying there, all alone and bare-ass naked, and a little way off is Mo the Roller’s coat, only there’s no Mo inside it.

I never did find out what happened to Mo and the rest of them. I expect they got rearranged and ended up in one of those other places, but that’s the story of how I got this here coat.

I got the feeling it’s time for another drink.