Part 18 (1/2)

But the irate gambler was not finished. He was a poor loser, through and through. He followed Paul- not too obviously, because he didn't want to be booted out of the casino, but not too subtly either.

Paul ambled past the ballroom area, where the decade of the seventies was in vogue at this hour; mildly dissonant groups of singers and instrumentalists performed on a raised stage, their emphasis on volume rather than finesse, while people danced singly and in pairs. A young woman in a tight-fitting costume sang into a microphone whose head and stem were compellingly phallic; she held it with both hands, close to her shaped bosom, and virtually mouthed it. Mikes, of course, had been superfluous in the seventies and since; the need being served was symbolic, not practical.

Paul glanced at his pursuer as he circled the stage. The man seemed indifferent to the presentation. Paul found a table at the side and sat down, forcing the man to sit at another table within range of the show, where the decibels were deafening. Loud noise had erotic appeal, of course; that was the secret. Those old-time singing groups had been notorious for their seductions, and perhaps the ”groupies” who had so eagerly sought those seductions had not understood the basis of that appeal. Those who disliked s.e.x were similarly turned off by the volume, without understanding why; their protestations that it was only ”poor music” to which they objected were pitiful from the point of view of succeeding generations.

Naturally a waitress came immediately-a physical, human, female one, another period piece, rather than the efficient modern keyboard table terminal.

”Vodka-straight,” Paul told her, making a tiny motion with one hand to signal negation. She recognized him as an employee and nodded; in a moment she brought him pure water in a vodka gla.s.s. He proffered his credit card, and she touched it to her credit terminal, recording NO SALE. But none of this was evident to the client at the other table. The man had to buy a legitimate drink-and Paul suspected that he was a teetotaler. That kind tended to be. This was becoming fun.

The banjo player stepped forward on the stage for his solo stint, squatting low so that the swollen bulk of the instrument hung between his spread legs, with the neck angling forward and up at a forty-five-degree angle. His fingers jerked on the taut strings at his crotch while the instrument thrust up and down o.r.g.a.s.mically, blasting out the sound. Paul smiled; they might not have been much for quality music in those days, but they had really animated their symbols!

At the other table, the client was averting his gaze, but the sound was striking at him mercilessly. Sure enough, he was a prude. The question was, why had he come to an establishment like this? Was he the agent of a rival casino? That seemed unlikely; he was too clumsy, and would not have bungled the blackjack challenge like that. Could he be an inspector from the feds, checking on possible cheating or other scalping of clients? Again, too clumsy. The days of readily identifiable government agents were long gone; the feds hired real professionals, like anyone else. Could he be someone from the mnem front, making sure Paul was not about to betray them?

No, the only thing that made sense was that he was a poor loser, looking for a way to get even. The man had not even dropped a large sum of credit; his loss was one of status, because he had been outbluffed by Paul and the management, as he should have antic.i.p.ated. No amateur had a chance against the professionals.

The games were honest, and any that were not would be too subtly rigged for a person like him to expose that way. Paul himself could win at blackjack without manipulating the cards at all, simply by keeping track of the cards played and hedging his bets according to the prospects for the remaining cards. Sometimes he s.h.i.+lled for the management by doing just that, demonstrating tangibly that the house could be beaten, drawing in many more clients. Of course it was his mnem-boosted memory that made this possible; the regular clients, as a cla.s.s, could not beat the odds. Lucky individuals sometimes did, of course, but they were more than balanced by the unlucky ones.

That thought saddened him. He would not be able to do that anymore, beat the odds. He had given up a lot when he had quit mnem. Had it really been worth it?

He visualized a young woman falling from a cop-copter. Maybe the mnem backlash would wipe out that memory!

Paul finished his water and got up. The client followed. They walked past the wheel of fortune-and that reminded Paul of the Tarot. Key Ten was the Wheel of Fortune. Certainly these wheels uplifted the clients' fortunes-and dashed them down again! But the Tarot, in turn, reminded him again of Sister Beth of the Holy Order of Vision, the girl he had killed. Full circle, as the wheel of fortune turned. He could not escape himself. And that destroyed something in him.

Paul turned around. The man was right behind him. ”What do you want?”

”I want my money back,” the man said.

Paul brought out his credit card. ”What are your losses?”

”Not that way. I want to win it back. I want to beat you.”

What an idiot! ”You can't beat me. I deal for the house; the percentage is with me, in the long run.”

”I can beat you-playing man-to-man.”

”All right,” Paul agreed, desiring only to be rid of this nuisance. ”Man-to-man.

Name your game.”

”Do you know Accordion?”

”I know it. I never lose, if it is played my way.”

”Your way,” the man agreed. His foolish, pointless pride was really driving him.

”The Tarot deck. Trumps half-wild.”

”Half-wild?”

”Each of the twenty-two Trumps takes any suit card - but no Trump has a number, so it can't jump to any suit card. Trumps are pa.s.sively wild; all they do is disappear.”

”What if the last card's a Trump?”

Not entirely naive! ”That one card's full-wild until designated. Then it freezes.”

The man shook his head in wonder. ”Half-wild Tarot Accordion!”

”Is the challenge still on?” Paul prodded him.

The man scowled. ”Still on. Identical deals, separate cubes, cheat-meters on.”

”Naturally,” Paul agreed. ”For the amount of your previous losses.” This might be fun after all - and the mark had asked for it. ”One game only,” Paul said, to prevent rechallenges.

They went to the Accordion table. They sat in facing cubicles. The mechanical dealer dealt them identical layouts, but they could not see each other's plays.

Paul could almost always win an ”open” Accordion game, because success depended largely on a player's memory of the cards he dealt. If he were allowed to see the order of the cards before play, on the printout screen, even for a single second, his mnem-enhanced memory made it seem as though the entire deck were laid out in a line. He could thus plan his strategy on a seventy-eight-card basis. But even in a ”closed” game like this, where the fall of the cards was unknown, he could still do well, because as each card was played, his memory checked it off, and he had a better notion of what remained to be played. Thus, as with blackjack, his play got sharper in the later stages, while that of the average person did not.

But now Paul found himself in trouble. The mnem was fading from his system, so that he no longer had reliable eidetic recall. He was still a good player, long familiar with the strategies for aligning suits and numbers in potential chains so as to extend his options without giving away his position to his opponent, but he had not realized how much he now depended on his perfect memory. He felt naked without it, uncertain, weak. He could lose-and that bothered him far more than it should have. He had almost forgotten what it felt like to be a loser, and the prospect of returning to that status was not at all attractive. To lose on occasion during one's strength, as a result of the breaks, was one thing; to lose as the result of one's weakness was another. That was what had driven the other man.

Should he return to mnem? He could still do that, he knew. He would hardly be the first-or the tenth or the hundredth-person to try to drop mnem, and fail.

The addiction was more subtle than that of physiological-dependence drugs. Some experts still refused to cla.s.sify mnem as addictive at all. But those people were ivory-tower fools; addiction was more than a physical dependency, as cocaine users knew. A person's fundamental perception of self was involved; if he lost his memory, he lost his ident.i.ty. That was Sister Beth's nemesis. So Paul could admit his error and go back and- No! This was his penance for killing the innocent girl; it might not be rational, but it was final. He would live or die a free man-as she had sought to be free.

Meanwhile, he played. Seven of Cups on Five of Cups; Five of Wands on Tower Trump-oops, he had misplayed. He should have aligned the two fives-no, it didn't make a difference in this case. But he should at least have considered the fives before choosing the other option. On such decisions wins and losses were determined.

Paul moved on, concentrating his play more efficiently, matching suits and numbers to second or fourth piles down, condensing his spread in the fas.h.i.+on that gave this game its name. The frequent half-wild Trumps gave him valuable s.p.a.cing, enabling him to keep the accordion contracted, but of course his opponent had the same advantage. And the man was pus.h.i.+ng him, for in match-Accordion both players had to agree to the lay-down of each new card.

Paul's opponent had evidently seen a play Paul had missed, and had his layout contracted one card smaller than Paul's, so that he could draw two or three cards while Paul's layout was hung up. He knew how to play compet.i.tive Accordion, all right! He had Paul on the ropes and knew it, and never let up.

Try as he might, Paul could not regain the initiative.

The final card was a Trump: the High Priestess, ironically a.s.sociated with memory. Memory-now his liability. Sure enough, she was reversed. The Tarot had uncanny ability to turn up significant a.s.sociations! So now the Priestess was full-wild, ready to help him compress his spread impressively. But he had not antic.i.p.ated this, simple as it would have been to count Trumps, and was able to knock off only two piles. He was left with eight piles: not a good score, for him.

Sure enough: his opponent had seven piles. Paul had lost. He scowled and brought out his credit card.

”No,” the man said, becoming slightly magnanimous in victory. ”Settle in private.”

What did that mean? An exchange of credit was inherently unprivate; it became a matter of instant record in the broadest computer network in the world. So the man did not want money. But the bet had been for money; Paul was not obliged to make any other type of payment.

He shrugged. They left the casino. In the street the man began talking, softly and rapidly. ”You are a mnem addict on crash-cure. I am a federal drug agent.

Your credit will be cut off soon, if it has not been already. That's why I kept you from making any credit transactions; we don't want anyone to know yet.

You're in trouble. Turn state's evidence and we will guarantee that no one ever will know.”

A federal narc! So deliberately clumsy that Paul had entirely misread him!

”I don't know what you're talking about,” Paul said, knowing protest was useless.

”You carried a load that you delivered this morning for the cartel,” the man insisted. ”We've been watching you for six months, along with a hundred other addicts. We didn't nail you because we don't want you, we want the wheels. Your psych profile indicated you were one of our best prospects, because you're honest and intelligent; mnem is a dead end for you. Sooner or later you'd have to break with it, and you had the courage to carry through when you did.