by J. S. Morin
Carl snorted. “I already know when to fold ‘em. I’m thinking it’s time for no guts, no glory.”
Straightening in her seat, Chisholm sniffed. “By all means, hasten your demise. Your company is not so engrossing as to make me wish to prolong it. It is far better to be alone than to be in bad company.”
“Just deal the cards,” Carl said to Gale.
The next hand saw Carl with a pair of queens. “Raise,” he said when the bet came around to him. “Twenty little pieces of paradise.”
“Make it fifty,” Enzio raised.
Carl’s heart quickened.
“There are two hands that throttle queens like a chicken on market day. Do. Not. Call. He’s got either the kings or the aces to beat you. That’s why he raised.”
No. That wasn’t why Enzio raised. He was raising because Carl—or Mort, technically—had gotten him chewed out by his woman. As a guy who’d been on the receiving end of those tirades, Carl knew what it was like. Unnerving. For him, it had been the real threat of physical violence. But for Enzio, it was the prospect of a sizable chunk of the Rucker Syndicate being at Tanny’s disposal.
That was enough to put any player on tilt.
“I raise,” Carl said. He glanced at the diminished stack Mort had left him. “I’m all in.”
# # #
Meanwhile, back aboard the Mobius, the remainder of the crew watched the proceedings on the holovid. Or at least, some spectacle resembling a poker game played out there.
Around the holographic table sat stiff, barely animate representations of the three players and the dealer. The action, such as it was, took place in spurts. The only information leaking out of the game room came via the waitstaff, and details like chip counts and how the hands played out were often sketchy.
“I raise,” the holographic Carl announced. “I’m all in.”
Yomin had adapted a nice rendition of Carl’s voice—no surprise after the number of times they’d had to impersonate him—but Roddy could still hardly believe his ears.
“I don’t care if that nuts-for-brains pilot has aces up his sleeve,” Roddy groused. “That’s a planet with real people down there. He oughta keep that in mind when he’s throwing moon around the table.”
“Aces are 81 percent against a lower pair,” Yomin said, watching the holo feed through her datalens. It was her program adapting the stuunji text feed to holo format, and Roddy had no doubt that she was running an odds calculator as well. “Damn sight better than the odds the stuunji are getting right now.”
“Yeah,” Roddy replied. “But they’re not trying to win the Freeride System. They want New Garrelon. Carl should be working on getting the pirate’s chips.”
“That crack about Tanny was pretty low,” Amy said with a sad smile. “He might have just goaded the guy into taking a bath.”
Roddy popped another beer, shaking his head. “Mistranslation. No way Carl’s that slick. He’s a fast thinker, but his insults don’t pack that kinda punch. He’s a rope-a-dope verbal boxer, not a counter-puncher.”
Yomin muted the feed. “Since when do you know the first thing about boxing?”
“Honey, I know a lot of things you wouldn’t expect. I was playing blues and fixing smugglers’ wrecks before you were born.”
“Be nice if you could figure out a way to help Carl,” Amy said thoughtfully.
Roddy perked up. This was the first he’d heard of anyone willing to play loose with these pirates and syndicate types. “Thought this was a Carl solo special.”
“Carl always has a plan,” Amy pointed out. “He just doesn’t always tell us in advance.”
Roddy hopped down from the couch and stepped up to the holo-projector. He held out a hand that brushed the feet of Carl’s image. “This fine gentleman is the worst planner in the history of not getting dusted on every heist. He gets grandiose ideas all the time. This is about the furthest we’ve let him talk us before putting the kibosh on it.”
“What about stealing the very ship we’re now parked inside?” Shoni asked with both arms and legs crossed. “Hmm?”
“There was also that racing league where you people stole a Squall while billions of people watched live,” Yomin added.
“Mort and Mort,” Roddy said. “It was his magic that bailed us out. Carl doesn’t have that anymore. We might have to come up with a contingency for him losing.”
“Wrong,” Shoni snapped. “Right now, the stuunji are being occupied by the Poet Fleet. If Carl loses, nothing changes.”
“Yeah, that’s not what we’re hoping for,” Roddy pointed out.
Amy sighed. “Yeah, but we’d be in one piece, at least until the new owner or owners find out that Chuck Ramsey isn’t expecting company.”
“Well, that animosity might cause sufficient unrest for the stuunji to enact their own rebellion,” Shoni said.
“Unmute it,” Roddy said. “Tanny’s plumber friend is ready to make his play.”
# # #
Enzio stared.
Under the pressure of knowing he had the guy beat and the fate of New Garrelon was in good hands—trading Carousel to the pirates for it seemed like a point-blank shot—Carl was feeling pretty good. He didn’t dare bring in a backup Carl to play it cool, on the off chance that Mort took the opening to slip into the pilot’s seat.
Enzio continued staring.
Without taking his eyes off his opponent, Carl raised his voice to address the room at large. “What should I do here if he offers me a drink or slips me his hotel room code? I’m fuzzy on man-whore etiquette.”
The room remained abuzz in silence, and Enzio kept studying him.
“No one laughed because it wasn’t funny,” Mort said. “They’ll get their laughs when he calls.”
Carl disengaged the public portion of his brain just long enough to snipe back. “He’s not going to call. Mr. Tanny Rucker here just wants to make sure his sugar-mamma sees him put up a good fight. He can’t call here. When you’ve got a bully in your face, you’ve gotta slap him down.”
“I call,” Enzio said and flipped over a pair of kings.
Carl stared in mute disbelief. In a daze, he turned over his queens.
Rai Kub let out a groan, as did one of the waiters, who lingered near the table with a tray of empty glasses he was supposed to be busing.
“Stand aside, pea-brain,” Mort demanded. “You’ve caused enough trouble for one hand. I might start a war in the criminal underground, but I can’t let you lose this one.”
“Right,” Carl muttered from within his own skull, already receding from control. If there was one place he didn’t want to be right now, it was in his own shoes.
Mort shrugged. “Hey, there are still five cards coming. I’ve got a chance here.”
He felt the increased pressure as Cedric bore down, not allowing Enzio or the pirate’s security wizard to interfere. It made what Mort intended to do all the more finicky. For the time being, he waited.
Gale turned over the first three of the common cards.
Ace.
Ace.
Four.
No help to either of them, but Enzio didn’t need help. The common cards doing absolutely nothing was just fine and dandy for the fine dandy. Mort gently eased the probabilities of a queen being next, but backed away as he felt the tiniest wobble from the magic detector. He was still enough of a technician that he could sense it about to go off without triggering it.
Mort backed down. There was still time to alter the outcome. Worst case, maybe he could blot everyone’s memory of the magic detector blaring like orchestra fire and just magic the chips into his pile.
The next card turned over.
It was a queen.
Mort blinked, then he let out a whoop. “Haha! Suck an egg, pretty-boy. Us working stiffs can get lucky once in a while, too!”
“That didn’t come out quite right,” Carl observed.
Still grinning from his turn of luck, Mort was pretty sure that it had.
With
Cedric’s relief at the shifting winds of fortune, Mort changed the face of the next card Gale flipped. It was a two. Nothing that a two could do for anyone. His only risk was that it might have been one of the cards Chisholm had thrown away earlier in the hand, but she might be willing to second-guess the suit she’d had in the heat of the moment.
Licking his lips, Mort gathered in a chunk of Enzio’s war chest that doubled Carl’s stack. “Come to pappy. See kids? Shove a horseshoe far enough up your ass and good things can happen.”
“Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error,” Chisholm said coldly. She must have been feeling the glove on her throat as she saw her prize being swallowed in vast chunks by the wrong opponent. But to pull out a tired old Cicero bromide… for shame.
“Diligence is the mother of good luck,” Mort quoted back at her. Hmm, Ben Franklin wasn’t really Carl’s speed. Mort needed to lay down some smoke lest anyone suspect the switcheroo. “Bob Dylan.”
“What song is that in?” Carl wondered aloud in his own head. Mort wanted to give up control just to gain an avatar form in there so he could kick a few Carls in the ass.
Enzio took a break from triage over the ruins of his holdings to kibitz. “Tanny told me about your pathetic fetish for ancient music. It’s not even Classical Era. I could see jazz, maybe, or some fusion origins, but that Early Data Era noise rots your brain.”
Mort harrumphed softly. Far be it from him to agree with a Yalie, but he had much the same opinion of Carl’s music. It was fine for drowning out the noise of failing tech all around—it could be downright comforting when the monkey was hard at work getting them all killed—but the ill-tuned instruments and enunciation-free lyrics could be nothing but harmful to the intellect.
Flying cards made a circuit of the table once more, and Mort knew what each of them was before it landed. He’d told them. No more half-baked fiascoes and crossed fingers that someone had peeked at cards Mort might have to replicate. No. This was going to be a professional job of card-sharping the likes of which no sleight-of-hand artist could hope to top.
Cedric had relaxed some. This was going to be easy.
Mort gave a perfunctory peek at a ten and nine of clubs, just to keep up appearances.
He called a bet.
Gale turned over three cards.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
Enzio was holding a pair of sevens. Chisholm had an ace and a jack. One bet. The other raised. Mort called.
Jack.
Chisholm made a pair with it. Enzio had his straight. Chisholm made a small bet, and both Enzio and Mort called it.
Ten.
“Check,” Chisholm stated in genteel monotone. She’d made her play and knew enough that her opponents had something. There was too much out there that had her jacks beat.
Enzio pushed in some chips. “Fifteen.” By Mort’s count, that was a mere third of the fifty-two chips crowded around the magical detector at the table’s center.
“Just to be clear,” Mort said. “When you fold, I’m not going to show you my cards. You’re going to have to live with that. Because I know that you don’t have a strong enough hand to get up and walk back to that woman behind you and explain how you lost to a dumb spacer with the luck of a lottery conscript. I’m all in.”
It took an effort of will for his brush-it-forward hand gesture not to move all his chips telekinetically. Even allowing for the fact that it would give away his use of magic, Carl shouldn’t be able to do it.
Enzio stewed. He fidgeted. Mort had broken that pretty poker face and made the Yale wizard grit those pearly teeth he loved showing off.
Remembering he was supposed to be Carl, Mort laced his fingers behind his back and tipped his chair back.
But Mort wasn’t Carl. He didn’t tip chairs as a matter of course. And the stuunji-made chairs, while sturdy as a Yale coed, weren’t intended for tipping. He overbalanced.
Anyone who has ever tipped a chair past its toppling point knew that weightless feeling of free fall. It was like an amusement park ride without the safety bar. There was no escaping, even with foreknowledge, that helpless rising gorge of fear and the spike of wake-up juice from the glands.
Mort used his magic to steady his fall.
On the table, the detector declared war and trumpeted a battle charge—along with a crash of dishes, a marching band collision, and a rat running through the ladies’ dressing room at the opera.
At the same time, Mort’s knee bumped the underside of the table, halting him before he would have fallen over backward.
“Cheat!” Tanny shouted, pointing to the detector at the expense of protecting her ears.
Gale leaped to his feet. “Hand is nullified. Everyone stand away from the table.” He collected the cards, wincing against the onslaught of audio torment from a foot away as he leaned across.
“Gimme!” Carl shouted, tugging for control. “You fuck-up. Complain about me botching things? Lemme in there to fix this.”
Abashed, Mort slunk back inside.
The din of mechanical noise died down only to be replaced with shouts and recriminations from all sides.
In control once more, Carl sprang into action. “Hey! I bumped the table. You think I wanted to set the fucking thing off? I had that hand won!”
“Physical jarring won’t set off the machine,” Gale said as he began sorting the cards by number and suit.
“He won’t find anything,” Mort assured Carl. “I cleaned up the second he flipped them face down.”
“Why should we believe that?” Carl asked. He jumped back inside his head and forced Mort to the fore. “Bump the table again and set off the thing at the same time.”
Mort obliged, slamming a hand down on the table hard enough to jostle chip stacks. Simultaneously, he goosed the machine, making damn sure it wasn’t able to ignore him.
Again, the machine threw a fit.
This time Tanny covered her ears. “You said it was shock resistant!” she shouted.
Gale appeared to have had his fill of the machine’s racket as well. “It was certified,” he shouted back in a lame excuse for a defense.
“I shan’t be rid of this ringing sensation this coming month,” Chisholm complained at the top of her lungs.
When the machine relented, Mort huffed a breath in put-upon exasperation. “Re-deal the hand. Fuck. Damn it, I was winning…”
At the back of the room, a quiet Rai Kub made his way to the exit, muttering about stress and the need to urinate.
# # #
Once free of the pit trap of angry humans, Rai Kub quickened his feet. He couldn’t run without half the ship shaking—even high-quality human ship-building didn’t account for stuunji mass—but he hustled to the kitchen.
Stuunji naval personnel allowed him entry. Inside, food preparation continued for the players and observers’ comfort. But there was a pantry that needed his attention.
“What is it?” Wen Luu demanded, his breath coming with a puff of fog in the frigid interior. He and five stuunji in officers’ uniforms were donning blaster-resistant armor and checking blasters large enough to tear holes in the hull.
“Please wait,” Rai Kub pleaded. “Give Savior Carl a chance.”
Wen Luu reached up and thumped one of his little hands on Rai Kub’s shoulder. “I will always appreciate what Carl Ramsey has done for our people, but you and I both know he’s no savior. He is a human with a very particular set of skills that makes him a thorn in the side of his own people. But he’s not the solution to all our problems.”
“He’s not,” Rai Kub agreed. “But he’s going to make this work. It won’t solve all our problems. The exiles will be vulnerable to the next major military threat to come our way. But today we can still win.”
Wen Luu rumbled in the back of his throat. “They set off the alarm. Carl is cheating, and they caught him.”
“They haven’t,” Rai Kub insisted. “He convinced them their machine al
so detects sudden physical jolts.”
Wen Luu’s nostrils flared. He was ready for battle. So small, yet so brave. Rai Kub wished he were like the Clapton’s captain.
The kidnapping plan was taking the knife from New Garrelon’s throat by grabbing the blade and attempting to yank it free of the pirates’ grasp. Wen Luu would overpower the players’ escorts and take both Tania Rucker and Emily Chisholm captive. There would be bloodshed. Stuunji were conditioned from childhood to respect their fellow creatures. They had evolved from angry beasts into calm cooperators.
A few, like Wen Luu, had reversed that civilizing influence. He had crewed a ship of stuunji like that. Planetside, they might be prone to criminal behavior. But give them an enemy, and they would fight for the stuunji people to their deaths.
With two hostile wizards in the game room, there was little doubt someone would pay the fertilizer price for the mission’s success.
“Fine,” Wen Luu snapped. “But if the game breaks up, I need you to get your human friends to help subdue the pirates and mobsters.”
Rai Kub nodded hurriedly. “I’m sure they’ll help.”
Of course, Rai Kub didn’t mention that Cedric’s help might wreck the Clapton. He counted on events not coming to that.
# # #
Gale cleared the room. The only ones allowed to remain were Chisholm, Enzio, Carl, and Tanny—who refused to be shut out of a game where she had so much at stake.
“…and waitstaff will be allowed to enter only during hourly breaks,” Gale concluded. “Is that acceptable to all players?”
“It is,” Chisholm said, resuming her seat.
Enzio shared a long look with Tanny. “Yeah. But you’re on thin ice, Gale,” Tanny said. “Lowe, Kaplan, and Kuma might not get a lot of business on Mars if this game goes to shit.”
Gale’s jaw stiffened. Carl, in control of his own body for the moment, knew what was going on in the guy’s head. Reflexes urged him to defend his firm. He probably had retainers and contracts kilometers long keeping him in gold-plated toilets and caviar toothsoap. But one grim pronouncement from Don Rucker could end all of that—and Gordon Gale—in mere moments.