The Outpost (8 page)

“I always assumed that we’d get together sooner or later,” I replied, walking forward and shaking his hand. “So when I got your kind invitation, I decided it might as well be sooner.”

“Your presence honors my poor establishment,” he said. “I trust you will join me in a game or two of chance.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” I said.

“Excellent!”!” he said. “A number of local dignitaries have expressed interest in watching us compete. Would you have any objection to—?”

“Bring ’em in,” I said. “I
like
crowds.”

“A gentleman as well as a gambler,” enthused High Stakes Eddie. “I really
am
delighted that you agreed to come.”

He waved his hand over a small cube on the table, the door dilated, and half a dozen men and women entered the room. Eddie handled the introductions: one was a mayor, another a general, a third was the planetary governor, and I remember that one large, fat woman was the system’s greatest opera diva.

They took their seats, and High Stakes Eddie directed them to be silent once play began or run the certain risk of being unceremoniously thrown out.

The woman who was the Queen of Clubs that night brought in a dozen unopened decks of cards, half a dozen pairs of brand new dice, and directed a burly young man to set up a roulette wheel at the far end of the huge table.

“What’s your choice, Bet-a-World O’Grady?” asked High Stakes Eddie.

“I’ve always been partial to poker,” I admitted.

“Then poker it is,” he said. “You mind playing with real cards? I hate computers.”

“Suits me,” I answered.

He tossed a deck to me and waited for me to open it. I inspected the cards, and satisfied myself that it was an honest deck.

“They look good to me,” I announced. “Shall we begin?”

“Name it.”

“Five-card stud.”

“Stakes?” he asked.

“Whatever you want.”

“How’s about a million credits to ante, and you can only bet in multiples of five million,” he said. “Sky’s the limit.”

There was a sharp collective intake of breath among our six spectators.

“I accept,” I said. Then I paused. “I hope my credit’s good here.”

“Up to twenty billion,” he replied. “After that I’ll need collateral.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Cut?”

He cut the cards, and I started dealing.

I won the first hand with jacks and sixes, he won the next with three kings, and then I won four in a row with a straight, a full house, and a couple of nothings that were higher than
his
nothings. When the dust settled, I was up almost two hundred million credits.

“You’re as good as they say,” said High Stakes Eddie, taking a sip of his drink. “Shall we try a little draw now?”

“It’s your deal,” I acquiesced.

We split the next six hands, and pretty much split the pots as well. Then I won three in a row, and I was suddenly up half a billion.

“Let’s make it a little more exciting,” he suggested

“I’m open to suggestions,” I replied.

“Let’s cut the cards for a billion.”

I nodded, ignored another audible gasp from the guests, reached out, and cut to a nine. He smiled, flexed his fingers, reached for the remaining cards, and cut to a six.

“How about two billion this time?” he said.

“And then four billion, and then eight billion, and then sixteen billion, until you finally win one?” I said. “That’s not gambling,” I said. “That’s mathematical inevitability.”

“All right,” he said, a little heatedly. “What would you rather do?”

“Do you
really
want to make it more exciting?” I asked.

He looked around the room and then nodded, as I knew he would. There was no way he was going to lose face in front of his friends.

“How much money have you got on hand here?” I asked.

“In this room?”

“In the whole casino.”

He did a quick calculation in his head. “About eighteen billion credits.”

“And you own the Monte Carlo system, right?”

“All fourteen planets.”

“Including mining rights?”

“Of course.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s your half of the bet. For my half, I’ll put up all the money I’ve won here, plus fifteen billion I’ve got on deposit at the Bank of Deluros, and the deed to all nine planets in the Taniguchi system. They discovered diamonds in the asteroid belt there last month.”

“What’s the bet?” he said, eyeing me warily.

“One hand of face-up draw, winner take all.”

“Face-up draw?” he repeated. “I never heard of it.”

“Nothing to it,” I said. “We turn all the cards face-up, and instead of dealing, we each choose five cards. Then we can discard up to four cards and draw four more. It’s just draw poker with everything face-up and out in the open.”

“We’ll tie. You’ll deal yourself a royal flush and stand pat and I’ll do the same.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll stipulate that you win all ties. My cards have to have you beat, not just tied, in order for me to win.”

“Say that again.”

I repeated it.

“And there’s no suit preference like in bridge?” he persisted. “A three of clubs is as high as a three of spades?”

“Right,” I said. “And I’ll tell you what else: I’ll go first, so you can have the advantage of seeing what I do before you commit yourself.”

Well, he spent the better part of five minutes asking me all kinds of questions, but it was just like I told him, and finally he and I signed a document agreeing to the terms I had outlined.

And that’s how I broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

“Just a minute!”!” said Three-Gun Max heatedly. “What kind of fools do you take us for?”

“The usual kind,” answered O’Grady with a smug smile.

“There’s no way you can win that bet!”

“Don’t take
my
word for it,” said O’Grady. “Who’s the brightest man in the Outpost?”

“Einstein.”

“Ask him.”

“He’s blind, deaf, and mute,” said Max. “And if that ain’t enough, he’s never played poker in his life.”

“Just a minute,” said Big Red. He turned to me. “Tomahawk, can you have Reggie transmit all the rules to the little computer Einstein always keeps in his hand?”

“No reason why not,” I replied.

“It’ll take him hours just to learn the rudiments of the game,” protested Max.

“You don’t know Einstein,” said Big Red confidently.

I gave Reggie his instructions, and he started whirring and humming, and so did Einstein’s machine, which then started tapping out some incomprehensible code on the palm of his left hand. After about twenty seconds Einstein smiled, the first time his facial expression had changed since he’d shown up a few months ago, and he tapped a message onto his computer’s sensors.

Reggie whirred again and then spoke in his dull monotone voice. “Einstein says O’Grady can’t lose.”

“Well, if Einstein ain’t the stupidest genius on the Frontier, I sure don’t know who’s running ahead of him!” exclaimed Max.

“You’re absolutely certain that Einstein and I are wrong, are you?” asked O’Grady.

“Damned right.”

“Are you willing to bet a hundred credits on it?”

“Real cards, just like you used on Monte Carlo?”

“Right.”

“Fresh deck, same rules?”

“Fresh deck, same rules,” agreed O’Grady.

Max pulled a hundred-credit note out of his pocket and tossed it onto his table. “You’re on.”

O’Grady sat down opposite him, and I broke open a new deck and brought it over to them.

“You go first,” said Max.

“I know.”

“And remember: I win all ties.”

O’Grady spread the deck out, face-up, so that we could see all 52 cards. I figured he’d pull himself a royal flush, or at least four aces. Instead he started sorting through them until he had pulled out all four tens.

Then he turned to Sahara del Rio, who was staring over his shoulder. “You pick my last card, my dear.”

“But I don’t know the rules of the game,” she protested.

“It doesn’t matter,” O’Grady assured her. “Just reach out and pick one.”

She shrugged, ran her hand over the cards, and finally picked a deuce of clubs.

“Thank you, my dear,” said O’Grady. He looked across the table at Max. “Your turn.”

Max reached out and promptly picked up all four aces and a king.

“Very impressive,” said O’Grady. “Four bullets.”

“Let’s see you beat
that
,” said Max cockily.

“I shall endeavor to,” promised O’Grady. “Time to discard and draw now, right?”

“Go ahead.”

O’Grady dumped three tens and the deuce, then pulled four cards and built himself a straight flush to the ten.

“Your turn again, Max,” he said.

Max stared at his hand, and then at O’Grady’s, and then at his again.

“
Shit!
” he bellowed.

“You see?” said O’Grady. “My straight flush beats your four aces, and since all the tens are gone, not only can’t you create a royal flush, but the highest straight flush you can build will be nine-high.”

“What if I’d started with a straight flush instead of four aces?” asked Max.

“Same result. You can’t create one that goes any higher than the nine.”

“Just a minute,” said Hellfire Van Winkle. “Suppose he’d picked four nines. You can’t stand pat, because he can draw four aces or a straight flush to beat your four tens. What do you do then?”

“Discard three tens and the deuce and build a royal flush,” answered O’Grady. “He can’t match it, because all the tens are gone.” He reached out, picked up the hundred-credit note, folded it in half, and slipped it into a pocket. “An inexpensive lesson, especially considering how often I’m sure each of you is going to use it once you leave the Outpost.” Suddenly he smiled. “Just don’t ever try it in the vicinity of Monte Carlo IV … they don’t have much of a sense of humor about it out that way.”

“You got any other scams you want to tell us about?” asked Max.

“Not for a lousy hundred credits,” said O’Grady. He looked over and saw Willie the Bard scribbling away. “Hey, you’d better not be writing all this down!”

“That’s the Bard,” I said. “He writes everything down.”

“He writes
everything
?” repeated Catastrophe Baker.

“Yeah,” I said. “He’s our historian. Someday he’ll make you famous.”

“I already got a little more fame than I can handle,” protested Baker.

“And
I
don’t want millions of people reading about what I did on Monte Carlo,” chimed in O’Grady. “I don’t mind telling a handful of people out here at the edge of nowhere, but I don’t want it written up in a book. I might want to use it again sometime.”

“Not to worry,” said the Bard. “It’ll be twenty, maybe thirty years before I’m ready to publish.”

“How long have you been working on this masterpiece?” asked Baker.

“Since Tomahawk opened for business.”

“And how many pages have you written?”

“I lost count years ago. But after pruning it down, I’ve kept about four thousand.”

“You halfway done yet?”

“Probably not.”

Baker smiled. “Who’s gonna publish this thing?”

“That’s not my problem,” answered the Bard with an unconcerned shrug. “My job is to write it.”

“I never did understand artists.”

“Hey, we make as much sense as anyone,” put in Little Mike Picasso. “And maybe a little more than most.”

“Hell, maybe you do,” admitted Baker. “Truth to tell, I’ve only known one real artist.”

“A painter?” asked Little Mike.

Baker shook his head. “An opera singer. Ever hear of Melody Duva?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“The Diva Duva,” said Nicodemus Mayflower admiringly. “I’ve seen a couple of her holos. She had a gorgeous voice. Whatever happened to her?”

“She was the victim of an unhappy collision of art and science,” answered Catastrophe Baker.

“Sounds like a story coming up,” suggested the Reverend Billy Karma.

“Not much to tell,” said Baker. “She was built like an opera singer, which is to say she weighed in at maybe 350 pounds. She loved low-gravity worlds, where she could move with the grace of a dancer. Last time she ever performed was on New Samarkand, in a revival of
Tosca
.”

“I’ve seen the holo.”

“You must have seen an earlier version,” said Baker. “This one ran only one performance, and no one ever captured it.”

“What happened?”

“New Samarkand is a temperate world, and they hold most of their operas and symphonies and other shindigs at this huge outdoor amphitheatre,” began Baker. “Anyway, there’s a scene at the end when Tosca commits suicide by throwing herself off the top of a tall tower they call a battlement. Ordinarily they’d toss a couple of air mattresses down on the stage, out of sight of the audience, to break her fall—but Diva Duva was so, well,
large
, that they figured she was sure to bust something, so instead of mattresses they put out a hydro-trampoline to break her fall.”

“A trampoline?” asked Max, frowning.

Baker nodded. “She plunged down so fast you could almost hear the wind whistle around her, hit the trampoline full force, and shot straight up. And like I told you, New Samarkand is a low gravity world. She reached escape velocity and wound up crashing through the cargo hold of a mining ship out near one of the planet’s moons.” He sighed. “Next day they got rid of the trampoline and put in a swimming pool for her understudy.” He shook his head sadly. “Nobody ever thought to ask the poor girl if she knew how to swim.”