I tasted the sweet blood which oozed from the many spear wounds of heroic, immortal Mars.
I blinded my eyes in the poisonous vapors of Venus’s samite shroud, and washed them clean in cold starlight that fell from the clouds of the Milky Way.
I painted a portrait in the liquid, glowing face of inmost Mercury, and failed to recognize the man behind the face, although I knew him well and remembered his name.
I cast my clothes to the wilderness of wild rock, to giant death-worlds in the arctic solar sea. My fingers touched the rings of Saturn and were not bitten by the cold. I was naked, and I did not bleed.
And the gluttony of my gaze reached further yet, and out and out, expanding ever faster at the speed of light and beyond, shedding glare of its own into the paths of the treading stars.
And I returned to my father, full of the triumph which I could hurl against his ancient wisdom.
But he only replied, “Do not fly as high as your dreams might take you.”
My father advises me still. He is in the asylum. He remembers Icarus. I remember Titan. I am Titan.
Titan Nine
Five-Card Stud
Ever since I first passed through the gate of titan base, I’d been looking for a game of cards. I’d been away from the table a long time. The games in Canaan were tough, but they just weren’t poker. The whole essence of gambling is money. You can’t play poker without cash. I needed something to take the edge off my nerves, and poker was the only thing I knew capable of taking off as much edge as I had accumulated in my weeks at titan. The pressure of what passed for reality in that place was too much for a little guy like me to take twenty-four hours a day without some way I could press back. I needed a smaller place to work for a while — the microcosm of a card game. I needed to spend a few hours in a world where I could lead a whole and effective existence.
Chalk was a purist. A five-card stud man. Five-card stud is the most skillful game in existence, bar none. Far more skillful than chess or go or war. Those games are pure skill, surely, but a game that is only skill merely demands that you beat your opponent. You only have to be better than the next man — and that means that the skill potential of those games has never been explored, except by computers, which aren’t very good at them anyway. Stud is different. In stud, you not only have to beat the man, you have to beat the cards. It’s not enough to be a better player. The best player in the world gets losing hands in direct proportion to the number of opponents. You have to win the game, rather than simply beat your opponent. Opponents are easy — behind the workings of chance there’s the structure of the universe. You need patience, memory, control, perfect understanding not only of the men you want to beat but of the cards you have to beat them with. Nobody faces that sort of a problem across a chessboard. And even if you play perfectly, even if you are the best in the world, you still can’t win them all. Nobody has a God-given right to win at stud. That’s the essence of real skill. You can have it and use it and still lose.
I don’t find it too difficult. I’m not Luis Dalquier, but I’m good. I have style. I’ve played games which have made me sweat, games which have made me grit my teeth. And I’ve played many a losing game. But I always have the style.
I confess to being addicted to the game. I need the game, because it’s the only thing that can involve me totally, can transplant me from the hostile outer world and offer me a haven where I can really be.
I don’t enjoy poker. It doesn’t give me any pleasure, not even to take big money out of a game. In point of fact, I never really play for big money. I never ever had big money to play with. It didn’t make the game any less meaningful. It just has to be real money, and money you need. I play for the rules and regulations, for the laws of the poker universe. It’s a life of its own. But I’m not happier there than here.
I got Goodman to play — he was fairly keen and he knew what had passed between Chalk and me through Hurst. Chalk brought along just one friend — a Lieutenant Hartley. Both were secret agents from the depths of Security rather than toy soldiers like Goodman.
From the moment we picked up the first hand, I guessed that Chalk was a believer. The day he gave up believing in Santa Claus he began believing in the Cincinnati Kid. He was out to get me, and he believed he could do it. It meant a lot to Chalk to see me beaten; I don’t know why, but there are a dozen reasons I could understand. Chalk was the kind of guy who is always out to get somebody. I was victim-of-the-month, that was all. He’d probably faced any number of people he was out to get across a card table, and simple logic said that some of them must have got away. But he was cocksure now, he was keen, and he was confident. That testified to the fact that he was good, but it also testified to the fact that he had a crazy kind of faith in fate and fortune. I was glad to see it, because that made him — ultimately — a loser. I didn’t get cocksure myself, because I knew that every loser in the world wins his share of evenings.
I started to play knowing that I could lose, and knowing that if I did Chalk would treasure the memory till the day he died. It didn’t bother me. Most poker games find more than one schizo sitting at a table, and even if it doesn’t take one to know one, you usually find out.
We began quietly, playing for mediocre stakes. I had a few weeks’ pay to play with. I hadn’t spent a penny in all the weeks I’d been at titan — there wasn’t much opportunity — and I’d been surprised to find out that they were paying me at all. But they were, and quite handsomely, too. Danger money on top. I didn’t know that I was ever going to get a chance to spend it, but it was very useful nevertheless.
I spent the first hour being quiet, finding out what sort of a game it was. I bet the value of my hand, or a little over, and I dropped a couple at the showdown just to let it be known around and about that I told outrageous untruths at times. I didn’t drop much, but I lost fairly steadily. It didn’t bother me in the least — giving money away to begin with is never bad strategy at poker, as long as you give it away in small quantities. The other guys in the game knew what they were doing. We were playing a pot limit and they used it — they didn’t give away much with varying bets. They played moderately, but forcefully. They made their money work. It took some time for me to get an idea of exactly how hard they did work their money. They all lacked imagination. Players who play together a lot often do; their game tends to become stereotyped. Chalk and Hartley were obviously Mutt and Jeff, and Goodman was no stranger to them.
Chalk raised often and he raised high. In order to hold my hands I was forced to raise back, with more or less the same frequency. We were both fairly modest about it in the beginning, but looking four hours into the future I could see that some real money might fly when we got hard down to it. Hartley raised hardly at all, and it didn’t take me long to realize that Chalk and Hartley had what might delicately be called an “understanding.” Chalk raised most often when Hartley had high cards showing, and Hartley was a good, steady caller against Chalk’s raises. It was obvious that when Chalk risked his money, he would far rather it ended up with Hartley than with anyone else, if he were to lose it at all. Goodman played a sound, steady game, but over a period of time Chalk and Hartley’s sandwich tactics pulled his money away in dribs and drabs. He was patient enough, waiting for one he could take them both for a ride with, but it was like shooting craps. Over an evening’s play, he was going to end up slightly down rather than slightly up.
Having Hartley on his side wasn’t really a tremendous advantage to Chalk, because Hartley wasn’t very good. That soon became moderately clear. He was too mechanical, had too much faith in the system — he couldn’t really measure the game to good effect. He kept himself in cash, around the even money bracket, but that was largely thanks to Chalk.
We began playing about ten, and after my poor start I began to make tracks, and until two I won fairly steadily. I backed off from a lot of Chalk’s raises, and with help from the cards I man
aged to draw him out a little and whittle down his cash as well. He wasn’t keen to back down against my raises, and as time wore on he became the game’s prime loser. Hartley dropped a big one to Goodman, which redressed the balance between those two, and at two I was ahead more or less what Chalk and Goodman were down, with Hartley holding par.
The screws really came on in the next half-hour as the betting was driven up by some hands. I lost one big pot to Goodman, and two hands later Chalk cinched me on one I’d thought I’d win. I could see the light of battle in Chalk’s eyes as the pile in front of me dwindled rapidly and I went into the red. He began to push harder, and I folded time and time again while my money walked steadily across the table to him. Then I played three of a kind against a double pair, and magically it was all back with me again. But we still hadn’t whittled into anybody’s stake to any real depth. Chalk made up his mind to take me, and his belief suddenly began to show.
Once, twice, and then again, in ten minutes between 3:15 and 3:25, Chalk and I pushed the pot to its limit, and he lost all three. I practically cornered the market in cash. Goodman was a bit down, Hartley a lot, and Chalk was practically destitute. The stakes were still trifling, of course, so all in all I’d picked up a thousand or eleven hundred. But measured against the game I was the clear conqueror. The major was very upset. We doubled the initial stakes, by mutual agreement; everybody knew it was about due, and we settled back to a quiet routine. Doubling the initial stakes does a lot more than double final pots, because pots tend to increase exponentially, so that small and simple move had made a big difference to the potential of the game. It was time for a rethink. Goodman won some back from me, and Hartley depleted Chalk’s stock even further. Chalk introduced some new cash into the game. He was obviously having a hard time. He dropped his cigarettes while passing on the cards to deal. He picked them up and gave one to Hartley while Goodman and I lit up from our own supply. His eyes were getting hot and red, and I knew the strain was getting to him.
Hartley dealt Goodman a five, gave me a king, and dealt Chalk a jack. He turned himself up a nine. I found that I had another king in the hole. I bet, Chalk called, and Hartley raised. Goodman met it with a careless resignation which suggested that the raise was quite irrelevant to him. I was surprised to see Hartley raise, but I knew that his raises were rarely worth worrying about, and did not seem to figure in his understanding with Chalk. I played possum and called. Chalk reraised by the maximum permissible — the whole contents of the pot. The sequence was unusual, but not unheard of. It was entirely possible that Chalk was raising on the strength of Hartley’s raise. Hartley called the reraise, and so did I. For a first-round pot, it was now quite large. And as it increased, so did the permissible bet.
Nobody improved openly on the next round. My two kings were still beating everyone else. I bet the limit. Hartley ventured another small raise. I figured it was time to stop pretending to be dead, and I reraised. Chalk had to put in a lot to call — a lot more than he’d already risked. He needed a pair — jacks, by preference, because his other card was lower than Hartley’s nine — to even contemplate calling.
He called.
So did Hartley.
And I began to wonder. I’d seen the understanding in operation for several hours, but this seemed to be needless extravagance. After all, I had the high card showing. Hartley had been stamped on twice for his low raises, and showing nine, seven he could hardly be confident. Yet he called.
He dealt the cards. I showed king, queen, eight. Chalk had jack, eight, three. Hartley had nine, seven, six — an outside straight if he had an eight in the hole, but one could hardly imagine him still in the game if that were so.
I bet five hundred.
Chalk only had about five hundred in front of him, despite having brought out his secret reserve. Nevertheless, he said, “Your five hundred with a thousand.” He took out a pen and a checkbook, and he began to write.
Hartley put in his chips.
I sat back to think.
I knew Chalk wasn’t a lunatic. I knew that even a lunatic would be disgracing himself if he raised on that sequence. Did he think that I was a straight and simple liar? How could he afford to raise even if he did? Could any man on Earth really have that much faith in the destiny of a pair of jacks? What the hell could he do if I raised three thousand, as I was manifestly being invited to do?
I flicked the corners of my cards, fingering them nervously. I looked very worried, and Chalk smiled. Hell, I was very worried. Especially when I got an odd sensation about the feel of the cards. They were worn enough, sure, and those we’d been playing with hadn’t accumulated memorable marks. But these just didn’t have the feel of having been played with. They hadn’t soaked up sweat. The wear was old wear. During the light-up between deals, while Chalk had passed on the deck and dropped his cigarettes, they had worked a gypsy switch. It was clear now — Chalk had done the shuffling before he passed on the deck. The deck Hartley was dealing from wasn’t the same one. It was stacked.
“Chalk,” I said, “how much am I worth?”
“Huh?” he said. Polite surprise was written all over his face, but I knew that inside himself he was sensing a real kill.
“Hell,” he said, “you can cover the bet. You got it there.”
“How much am I worth, Chalk?” I persisted. My voice was flat and cold. I was threatening him. I could see the doubts begin to rise.
“How do I know?” he fenced.
“Because you know me better than I do. I don’t keep a close check on all my assets, because most of them are no use to me. But you know what I own. You know my file backward. You know to the dollar exactly how much I’m worth.”
He swallowed, looking puzzled. He knew I wanted to raise, but he couldn’t see what the fuss was for. He knew I had more than three thousand, given what I had in front of me.
“I guess about eight and a half thou,” he said.
I was surprised. But I had every confidence that he was right. There was the money I’d been paid for the mind-reading job, and there was what I owned before I first got put away. All no use, but you can’t take it with you, and they can’t take it off you. It was all on tap. I could bet with it. There was my insurance policy as well (courtesy of titan), but I wasn’t going to die tonight. I thought I could wheedle another ten thousand out of various sources if need be, but I didn’t see that kind of need.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll call your thousand. That squares the pot. But I’d like to lay a little side bet. I’d like to bet my eight thousand, five hundred that you don’t win this hand.”
Chalk didn’t move a muscle. He was frozen.
Hartley went as white as a sheet.
I could imagine the conflict inside Chalk’s mind, hidden behind that sweaty, tight-held countenance. Greed, pure and simple. Not just the big hand to take the guts out of Harker Lee, but the added bonus of total annihilation. And doubt. Hideous doubt. Could anything go wrong? Was I only betting on my kings? Did I have something else to go on? Remember, Chalk had an ace in his hole, and he was aiming to pair it last card. He hadn’t anything yet. He was betting on the sure knowledge of what was yet to come.
“Provided, of course,” I purred, “that we have a gentleman’s agreement about anything we might bet after the last card. You know, I could raise more.” I stressed the word “raise,” deliberately goading him.
He was afraid, but he was determined as well. He knew something was funny, but he knew the cards were stacked his way. He couldn’t go wrong. He couldn’t turn down the opportunity. No way.
“It’s a bet,” he said.
Hartley had put down the cards, waiting for us to settle it. He reached for them again now, to continue to deal. I brought my hand down on top of his.
“Just a minute,” I said. “I want to cut the deck.”
I’m sure the lieutenant looked absolutely ghastly, but my
eyes were firmly fixed on Chalk. I wanted to see him shatter.
And shatter he did.
His jaw relaxed. Sweat seemed to ooze out of every pore on his fat, greasy face. His eyes seemed to have difficulty in focusing.
“You can’t do that,” he breathed.
“Why not?” I demanded.
I smiled. I was superficially relaxed. My heart was going like a hammer, but there was no outward sign. I was in the catbird seat, and I was tightening the straps. I felt Hartley’s hand beneath my own slip back, flaccid and nerveless.
I turned to Goodman.
“Can you think of any reason why I shouldn’t cut the cards?” I asked.
Goodman looked at Chalk, and he looked at me. It was obvious what was happening, and he was remembering that over the years he’d suffered Chalk and Hartley, and their understanding. And he was a good guy. Army loyalty just wasn’t in the race.
“No reason at all,” he said.
“Quite so,” I said. “Now look at it this way, Major Chalk. You have an ace in your hole, right? Don’t ask me how I know, I’m telepathic. That means that there are three aces left in the pack. One of those is scheduled to come to you next card. You put it there, so you deserve to forfeit that one. There are still two more. You can still win, can’t you? You just can’t be sure of winning. Well, that’s poker for you. Can I cut the deck now?”
The major looked at us both, and he knew he was beaten.
“Go ahead,” he said, in a voice that grated because his mouth was stone dry. I’ll swear he still thought he might get one of the other aces. Well, he might have. But he didn’t.
Hartley’s shaking hands took the pack once I’d cut it, and dealt me a third king. Then he paired Chalk’s three for him.
It all served to add insult to injury.
“One dollar,” I said, throwing an odd bill into the middle.
Chalk silently folded his hand.
“That’s right,” I said, wonderingly. “I do appear to have cinch, don’t I? Still, I’ll let you out of your misery. I’ve got three of these. What have you got?”
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