“Right,” said Lola. “The other choice is just to go on with the plan, on the theory that nobody knows nothin’ about us and everything’s exactly what it looks like. I don’t especially like that idea, either, but at least it leaves us with something to play for.”
“Yeah, I guess I can see that,” said Ernie. He thought a moment, then said, “What if we’re wrong about that?”
Lola shrugged. “If we’re wrong, we find out just how good Phule’s security guards are and just how serious they get with somebody who tries to do what we’re planning on doing. At least there’s a chance they’ll put us someplace Mr. V can’t get to us very easily. Maybe he’ll even accept it as an occupational hazard if we’re locked up somewhere and not come down too heavy on us.”
“Yeah, right,” said Ernie, gloomily. “So which way do you want to play it, then?”
“Dead straight,” said Lola. “Go on back to the casino, joke with Victor Phule about forgetting you’d won, and drop those chips right back in the slot.”
Ernie was flabbergasted. “Throw four thousand pazootlers back down the hole? Do I look like a dimwit to you?”
“Yeah,” said Lola. “But for a moment, there, I thought maybe you were getting the idea. I’ll explain it again. You’ve got to look as if you don’t care about a few lousy chips. Then Phule won’t think you’re just out to get his money. Then maybe he’ll start telling you what’s really going on with his son, who’s the one we want anyway. Get it?”
“I got it,” said Ernie, sourly. “It just seems like we could hold back one or two chips, in case of emergency.”
“Ah, come on, be a sport,” said Lola, with a grin. “Besides, if you pull that lever just right, you might win. Then you’ll thank me.”
“Su-ure, and maybe Victor Phule will disown Junior and put me in his will,” said Ernie. “What did you figure the odds against that jackpot were? Twenty billion to one?”
“Yeah, but somebody’s got to win it,” said Lola brightly. “Why not you?”
“Better me than anybody else, that’s for sure,” said Ernie. “Except I know better than to hold my breath.”
“Go play it anyway,” said Lola. “We don’t have any other choices, so we might as well have fun with the one we do have.”
“Aw right, but don’t blame me if I come back broke,” said Ernie, and he headed out the door and back to the casino.
* * *
“Great Goombah, who dealt this drutz?” growled Euston O’Better, scanning his cards. The game was Red Comet Stud, High-Low, with a buy after the last down card.
“Your good buddy over there,” said Chocolate Harry, who was sitting behind an impressive pile of chips. “You don’t like ’em, throw ’em in. Otherways, there’s a bet on the table you gotta call—or raise.”
“I ought to fold,” said O’Better. “But I guess I’ll look at one more card.” He shoved a red chip into the center of the table.
Chocolate Harry shrugged. “Ain’t no law I ever heard of says you gotta play if you’re afraid of losin’. And that’s the only gamblin’ tip you’re gonna get from me.” He shoved in a blue chip. “Raise you five.”
“Call,” said Sushi, whose own pile of chips was slightly smaller than Chocolate Harry’s, but still a good bit larger than when he’d bought into the game.
L.P. Asho, in the dealer’s seat, looked at his cards. “What the hell, it’s only money,” he said. “Your ten”—he slid a blue chip into the pot—“and mine.” He added a second blue, grinning.
“That’s what I like to see,” said Harry, beaming. “Man knows how to play the game. You still in, Street?”
“Not with these cards I ain’t,” said the legionnaire, turning his cards face down. “Can’t get high or low either one. Why don’t somebody invent a game where middle hand wins?”
“You can call it when it’s your deal,” said Harry. “Meanwhile, we got cards and money on the table, and time’s a-wastin’. You in, Mr. Tay-Shun?”
Austen Tay-Shun took a sip of his drink—bourbon and cactus juice—and contemplated first his own cards, then those visible in the other hands. “I like what I see,” he said. “Call.”
“You can’t like it that much or you’d raise,” said Harry. “Your turn, O’Better. Fifteen bucks to play, jet out for free. What’d’ya say?”
“I said I’d see another card,” said O’Better, putting in two chips. He looked like a man whose word of honor has just been impugned.
Which of course was exactly what Chocolate Harry was banking on. “Here’s the raise,” he said, “and last raise for another blue one.” Plink went his chips into the pot. Sushi rolled his eyes and folded, but the three hunters all called, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The game had been going like this all night long.
“More cards, Mr. Dealer,” called out Harry. “Make ’em good—I don’t want to hear no complaints about how folks came to Chocolate Harry’s to play poker and couldn’t get a hand to play!”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Asho, turning over another card for each of the players. “Read ’em and weep.”
“That’s what the farmer said,” said Tay-Shun. “Or was it ‘Weed ’em and reap’? Har har.” He shoved a red chip into the pot. “Five.”
Euston O’Better snorted. “I don’t know what’s worse, your jokes or my cards. And that’s a mighty sad comment on this hand.” He tossed his hand in and pushed back his chair. “Gotta get me another brew.”
“Help yourself—we got plenty of it,” said Chocolate Harry, gesturing toward the cooler in the back of the Supply shed. He turned back to his cards and shoved two chips into the pot. “Your nickel and my dime.”
“Sarge is nickel-dimin’ us to death,” said Street, looking enviously at the growing pot.
Chocolate Harry snorted. “A man wants to take the boodle home, he got to feed the pot,” he said. “You don’t have to play the game if it’s too rich for your blood—we got a lot of folks on base would like to take some of this money if you ain’t up to it. Hey, Soosh, you think Do-Wop’s up for a game?”
Before Sushi could answer, Street said, “I didn’t say I was givin’ up my seat. Just kibitzing, is all.”
“Whatever you say,” said Harry. “Didn’t want to see a man jump in over his head.”
“Sure you did,” said Sushi, leaning back in his chair to study the visible cards. “You run a poker game every few days, and I never yet saw you tell somebody he couldn’t play because he wasn’t good enough. Or rich enough, for that matter. You might be the most democratic sergeant in the Space Legion, when it comes to taking other people’s money.”
“Well, I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Chocolate Harry. “Even though I have to say you’re wrong. You give me my choice, I’d much sooner take a rich man’s money than a poor man’s. And the reason why is easy …”
“Because there’s more of it to take,” said Sushi and Street in unison.
Chocolate Harry frowned. “What’s wrong with you boys, steppin’ on all a man’s best lines?”
“Just tryin’ to save you the effort,” said Street, grinning—broadly. “You workin’ so hard as it is …”
“Hellfire, there’s a game goin’ on,” said Austen Tay-Shun. “You boys playin’ or not? It’s your bet, ain’t it, L.P.?”
“I’m callin’,” said the dealer. “You in or out, buddy? If you ain’t holdin’ anything better than you’re showing, you best get out while you still got some skin left.”
“There’s one more card before the buy,” said Tay-Shun, unfluttered. “Plenty of time to get better. Call.”
The call went around the table and Asho dealt the remaining players one card each, face down. “All right, pay dirt!” said Tay-Shun, peeking at the card he’d gotten.
“You might have the dirt, but I’m the one who’s takin’ home the pay,” said Chocolate Harry, with a broad grin. He was showing three queens in his face-up cards.
“We’ll just have to wait and see on that there question,”
said Asho. “You can brag all you want about your popgun, but don’t expect it to carry no weight with somebody that’s got a cannon.”
“That’s the truth,” said Austen Tay-Shun. “There’s gas and there’s neutronium, and a man that don’t know which one’s which better keep tight hold of his wallet. I bet twenty-five.”
Chocolate Harry looked at Tay-Shun’s cards. “Must be goin’ low. Bump it twenty-five.”
“And another twenty-five,” said Asho, shoving three blue chips into the pot and grinning broadly.
Tay-Shun raised another twenty-five. “Looks like we got you whipsawed, Sarge,” he said.
Chocolate Harry chuckled deep in his throat. “You talk bad, but it’s the cards that get the last word.”
Sushi had been kibitzing the game, waiting for the next deal. Perhaps that was why he noticed that O’Better, after folding his hand, was taking a long time to fetch himself a beer. He looked around the shed and spotted the absent player standing by a rack of weapons. He had a beer can in his hand, all right, but his attention was raptly focused on the military hardware.
Casually, Sushi made his own way back to the cooler, got himself a cold one, and sauntered over to stand next to O’Better. “You look like a man who knows his way around a gun,” said Sushi.
“Huh?” said the hunter, startled. “Oh yeah, yeah—gotta have some serious weapons if you’re gonna hunt big game, heh heh. I surely do admire some of the stuff you Legion boys have got, though.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty exotic to civilians,” said Sushi. “We use it all the time, so it’s nothing special to us. Then again, we have specialized requirements—most of this stuff would be no use for you. You don’t get much of a trophy if you blow the whole animal to constituent quarks, do you?”
“Naw, I reckon not,” said O’Better, with a guffaw. “But there’s trophies and trophies, y’know? And with some of the critters I hear tell this planet’s got, maybe just stunnin’ the critter so’s you could cut off the head would be fine …” He waved his hand in the direction of a Zenobian stun ray—a weapon that, as far as Sushi knew, was still available only to Omega Company, thanks to the captain’s father’s munitions plant.
“Stun it? Yeah, that’d be triff, if there was some weapon that would do it,” said Sushi, watching O’Better’s reaction carefully. But before the Tejan could say anything, a voice came from the card table. “Hey, Euston, you playin’? We’re dealin’ Chainsaw …”
O’Better gulped, and said, “’Scuse me.” He headed back to the card table, obvious relief on his face. But Sushi couldn’t help but note that both Tay-Shun and Asho were staring daggers at their fellow hunter.
* * *
Ernie sauntered into the Fat Chance Casino as if he owned the joint. Well, why not? Looking and acting confident—putting up a good front—was one of the main weapons in a con man’s arsenal. If nobody thought to question him, he was home free. And, after all, right there in his pocket were chips worth $4000 that he was planning to play with. That gave him just as much right to be there as anybody else—more than most of the other customers, if the amount of money he had meant anything.
His first stop was at the cashier’s window, to change one of the thousand-dollar chips into fifties. The smaller denominations would allow him to gamble with the money over a longer stretch of time, although he’d still be betting amounts significant enough to distinguish him as a big-time player—an “elephant,” in the casino workers’ slang. He would reserve the remaining big chips to play Victor Phule’s thousand-dollar slots, allowing him—or so he hoped—to strike up a further conversation with the weapons magnate.
Ernie was looking forward to renewing that acquaintanceship. He still had hopes of finding out exactly what Phule’s real plans were. They couldn’t possibly be as stupid as trying to win a jackpot big enough to break the bank, as Phule had insisted he was doing. And just maybe, he could find out where Willard Phule was, so he and Lola could decide whether or not to change their original plan of kidnapping the young Space Legion captain who was majority stockholder in the casino. Whether they could convince the people who’d hired them to go along with a change in plans was another problem. Ernie preferred not to think about that one, just now.
He sat down at a blackjack table and played a few hands. The cards weren’t running his way, and he ended up dropping three hundred dollars in fifteen minutes. It was hard to keep his hands from shaking; here he was, frittering away more than his entire daily budget before Victor Phule had tossed him a chip and told him to play the slots. A person with any brains at all would probably pocket the money and get the hell off Lorelei. But, of course, Ernie wasn’t going to do that. Lola was the brains, and she’d told him to come back here and play with it. She didn’t have to tell him twice.
He stood up and wandered over to a roulette table; he’d get worse odds, but the game was more in line with the high roller image he was trying to project. A perky redhead with a really spectacular figure was watching the action—waiting for two or three blacks in a row, then sliding a large bet onto the red, figuring it was more likely to come up now. Ernie had heard somewhere that it didn’t make any difference how many times one color came up, the odds were still the same old fifty-fifty on the next turn of the wheel. That didn’t make sense to Ernie. If you couldn’t trust the law of averages, there wasn’t any point to gambling at all.
Ernie bellied up to the table alongside the redhead. He slipped a fifty-pazootie chip out of his pocket and placed it on the red, right next to hers. Startled, she looked up at him. He grinned at her, not worrying for the moment about what Lola would have to say if she found out about it. Hey, I gotta play the role, he told himself.
The croupier announced the end of betting with the traditional incomprehensible phrase in some forgotten Old Earth language. Impulsively, Ernie pulled a second fifty-buck chip out of his pocket and put it atop the first just as the wheel began to spin. The redhead’s eyes widened, and she turned a very curious sidelong stare at him before returning her gaze to the wheel.
Ernie caught himself involuntarily holding his breath as the wheel spun. He made himself relax. If he was supposed to be a big spender, a hundred bucks shouldn’t be a big deal to him. Hell, a thousand shouldn’t be that big a deal. In a little while, he was going to go throw that much into a slot machine in a couple of pulls, and unless he got really lucky, he wasn’t ever going to see it again.
The wheel slowed, and the redhead leaned forward, showing off a nice stretch of décolletage. Ernie wondered if it was for his benefit, and decided it probably was. He chuckled, and managed to keep from turning right around to stare at her. As interesting as she might be, he had to remember his real purpose here. More importantly, he had to remember what was likely to happen to him if Lola found out he’d been fooling around with some bimbo in the casino. Yes, those were the words she’d use. Then she’d use considerably harsher words directed at him. And unless he got very lucky, the harsh words might be followed by a stream of very hard objects flung in his direction.
It probably wasn’t worth it, Ernie thought, even as the roulette wheel came to a stop and showed the ball resting in a red slot. He—and the redhead—had won. She let out a whoop, and gave a little jump, brushing up against him—on purpose, he was sure. He was going to have to be very disciplined. He was going to hate it, but that was the price a fella had to pay.
Even so he managed to smile as the redhead brushed up against him again and turned her big eyes his way as he scooped up his winnings.
Chapter Twelve
Journal #714
The most common question asked of a legionnaire—at least, by civilians—is “Why did you join the Legion?” The most common answer, in my experience, is “To get a fresh start.” While that answer may not be strictly true in every case, it does possess a great deal of psychological validity. A genuine fresh start in life is a rare thing indeed; even the illusion of a fresh start can lead to a significant alteration in a
person’s outlook. And in fact, more than almost any other institution in society, the Legion does offer a fresh start to those who come to it in search of one.
The fact that so few of its members take any significant advantage of the opportunity is hardly to be held against the Legion.
* * *
Thumper bounded out of bed; it took him only a moment to reach the jangling wake-up alarm and turn the buzzer off. That was all it took to remind him that he was in a new place. It also reminded him, inevitably, of everything that had happened the night before. He shook his head; there was no changing what was past. He quickly washed up, threw on his black Legion jumpsuit, and went out to find some breakfast. Then he would report to Sergeant Brandy’s training squad, as she had instructed him the previous afternoon. It was good being allowed to eat before having to stand in formation—Thumper decided that this was another one of the ways Omega Company was a significant improvement over Legion basic camp.
He loaded up his tray and turned to look for a seat at one of the tables. To his surprise, there were a couple of legionnaires beckoning to him from the nearest table. “Hey, new guy, come sit with us!” said one of them—a small human with a hairless head and a wide smile.
Encouraged, Thumper took one of the empty seats at the long table. “Thanks for the invitation,” he said. “My Legion name’s Thumper. What about you guys?”
“I am Mahatma,” said the one who’d invited him. “And until you came, I was one of the new guys in Omega Company. So you have caused me and my friends to become veterans, for which we owe you many thanks.”
The others introduced themselves: a small human named Super-Gnat, and her partner, a Volton named Tusk-anini; two Gambolts named Dukes and Rube; and two other humans named Roadkill and Street. As it turned out, several of them, including Mahatma, were also members of Sergeant Brandy’s training squad, to which Thumper had been ordered to report after breakfast. “Is this going to be anything like Legion basic?” Thumper asked.
The Complete Phule’s Company Boxed Set Page 130
