You will always be lucky if you know how to make friends with strange cats.
-Colonial American Proverb
The game was called the Wheel of Life. Like all really good games of 'chance' you don't play the game, you play your opponents.
It had taken me about three hours of drinking and playing and losing and winning to get invited to the Life game. I planned on losing a lot.
Utopia was a low-g casino, so many of the most popular games and the new passengers off the shuttles looking for a taste of risk and danger, would naturally gravitate there.
Once I had arrived, I decided to play the part of the tourist. Darwin had slunk invisibly into the shadows of the dimly lit establishment. A manufactured haze hung in the air, giving the player a sense of security, mystery and old time authenticity like in the vids. To acclimate myself to the staff I had spent the obligatory hour at the bar drinking up enough liquid courage to start gambling away the cash I had. I wasn't actually nervous about losing, it wasn't my money after all. However, I wanted the house to see me as a typical planetside mark.
The first game I had played has an official name to it that most people have never heard. Unofficially it is called Pop. Pop consisted of a large globe filled with three dozen ultra-light frictionless balls. The balls were numbered and in three colors and air currents in the globe kept the balls in constant motion. The point of the game was to observe the ball's motions and predict which one would 'pop' out when the exit tube was opened. The value of the winnings depended on how many people you could convince to bet with you. The balls were all frictionless, but they weren't all the same mass, a fact few people knew. A keen observer of patterns and movement would win this low stakes game fairly easily.
I didn't win a lot, but between wins and losses I came out a little better than even. It is important to remember that if you are going to gamble, you are always playing against the house. If they start to feel like you are winning too much of their money, your gaming is cut short. If they think you came to cheat, other things get cut short as well.
The next game I hovered too was called Tabac. It is a game that involved moving two dimensional squares and circles in three dimensional space. The rules are still a mystery to me, and though I won a few games through sheer luck, I mostly lost and came off a little under.
A few more games around the rooms left me with a small surplus of script, all the while drinking the complimentary drinks and eating the complimentary food. Darwin would slink by my legs from time to time in the darkness, just let me know he was there.
Finally, I was invited to Life. I knew the rules for this game at least, as Gregson had made us study it in depth as an exercise in observation. Again, my goal was to win, but only marginally.
We were playing 4-Hand Life, which meant that there were four colours of cards in the deck, ranging in number from 1 to 9 twice. Each of the three other players seemed new to the game, so I put that face on as well. The hostess introduced us to the rules of the game and provided a terminal where we could review the rules and the 100 winning hands. The stakes were set by the number of players divided by two. That number of cards, two in our case, would be drawn, and zeros were returned to the deck. The bet to enter the game was set by the two non zero cards.
In Life, the element of chance was introduced by the Draw. The real challenge was to play the cards that the player to your right handed you. The rules were simple. Your hand started with twice the number of players. Virtually simultaneously, all players would have to Draw a card, Play a card, Discard a card, Pass the hand. The goal was the build one of the one hundred winning hands, by predicting which cards the opponent to your right would pass to you based on the pattern he was building, while at the same time trying to prevent the player on your left from building their pattern by either playing or discarding a card they might need. The player who built the highest valued hand would win. It was fast paced, to say the least. Games rarely lasted more than a few minutes. Life is short, as they say.
This was my fourth 4-Hand game. I had lost the first two on purpose, and won a modest pot on the last. The player to my right was obviously building colors, a generally rookie move because it seemed easy, but it was too easy to spot. She had three green down, which informed the player to her right which card to discard before passing her his hand. The player to my right was a little more sophisticated. She looked to be building an odd spread, doubled, but could turn it into a double prime if I gave her the right cards. I wasn't about to.
For myself, I was playing a little dumb and would accidentally build a small Fibonacci. I won the hand and feigned surprise, and played again, winning with a basic even colors. I was getting noticed.
I was invited to the 5-hand table, with one more doubled suit in the deck, one thousand winning hands, and two more cards in play. Again, I lost several at first, then won the next four.
The standard limit is 5-hand, in which the stakes were in the three digits. The next level, rumoured but not considered playable, was the 7-hand game. I am not sure why no one played 6-hand. With a minimum buy in arbitrarily set at the 4 digit level, with one hundred thousand winning hands to work towards, it was almost a game of pure chance. Except for me.
Gregson had drilled us in 7-hand, forcing us to lose time and again until we were able to engage our sight, and use the flow against the other players. To spite him, Fred and I had an unwritten, unspoken agreement to push each other to win, handing cards through other players that each of us would need. We were quite the scandal.
Finally, after losing another fairly low stakes 5-hand, I signalled the waiter.
"I need to talk to your banker."
"Yes, sir. This way, sir."
The banker was a thin, wrinkled man with long thinning blond hair that hung limply from his balding head. He looked vaguely familiar though I couldn't quite place him.
"Collateral," was all he said, without looking up.
Time for the real gamble. First the bluff.
"I-I left it in my room." I was acting nervous, refusing to meet his eyes.
"Then go get it," was his disinterested reply. Now for the push.
"I heard that you had a service that could get it for me?"
"You did, did you? Well, you see... that all depends what you left in 'your' room." He bleary eyes were starting to light up.
"It some jewels. Emeralds, I think, maybe some diamonds. Not big, mind you, but I think they might be worth something."
"Now this service... it's very expensive, do you understand?" He was trying to focus on my face through the haze in the room. I all but stuck my head in my bag, ostensibly to find my room key in.
"Don't worry about the key, just tell us which room you left your... jewels did you say?"
"Emeralds, a few diamonds... Valhalla 803."
Now, I had no idea who was in Room 803, but I was pretty sure they knew it wasn't my room. The whole operation seemed to work from a set of voluntary informants, it would appear. No wonder Bobak had trouble trying to track do the thefts. The whole station was stalking each other for gambling money!
"I will front you for an... estimate of the value." the banker said. "Five thousand."
"But the jewels are worth three times that at least!"
"Finder's fee... Mr. Just place your thumb here." No chip, but the DNA Pull was reliable enough for sniffers. Highly irregular, but people have gone to great lengths to avoid paying their debts, up to and including severing their own left hands to lose the chip.
He paused, reading something on his terminal. Just at that moment, my mobile buzzed in my pocket. Timing is everything they say. I reached in and shut it off. I couldn't afford to blow my cover.
"So, Mr..."
"Jones," I suggested. I was apparently in a whimsical mood.
"Yeah, I bet. Mr. Jones, you need to understand that if the collateral... isn't where you indicated, we will need to uh... renegotiate the terms of our agreement. Are we clear?"
"Crystal."
"Your credit is set." I started to walk back to the 5-Hand table. "Hang on Mr. Jones." I turned back, and he was standing, his terminal in his hand. He signalled me back. "There has been a... development." This man seemed a little over-fond dramatic pauses. I just wish he would get to the point. Empires rose and fell before he got through a sentence.
"Are you quite sure that you are, uh... good for the loan?" They operated quickly, I will give them that.
"Absolutely!" I swore.
"In that case, St. Peter want to see you." Suddenly, two goons flanked me. They walked me to a blank wall. One of them poked a few stubby fingers into an invisible pad and the black wall became a little blacker.
"In!" A solid hand pushed my back, while something soft slid by my leg. The door closed behind me, so I kept walking forward. In a few moments I passed through some black curtains.
I recognized the scene immediately. The heptagonal table with the felt inset in the middle. The seven chairs, the large deck of cards. The was a 7-Hand Wheel of Life game.
"Welcome to 7th Heaven Mr. Jones." I turned and my jaw dropped. Welcoming me was none other than the toasted, atomized and the supposedly orbiting Bornam Singer.