Mardock Scramble

endurance, Uncle…

“Sure, sure. But there’s no point in enduring needlessly, just for the sake of it. You’ll just end up fit to burst with all the stress that builds up. No need to hold back here—let it all out!”

The Doctor’s cover story had its desired effect of drawing some of the dealer’s attention away from Balot.

The Doctor had sixteen, and hit. The card was a 3. Stay.

It occurred to Balot for the first time that the Doctor wasn’t doing too badly, considering that he didn’t have Oeufcoque to help him out, and he had managed to hold on to his chips and more.

His bankroll, tactics, and chip stats must have been firmly there, inside his head, the Doctor computing furiously behind his facade.

Balot hit on her sixteen, just like the Doctor, but she drew an 8 and bust.

Her six hundred dollar stake disappeared along with the cards.

That seemed to do the trick—the dealer appeared to take his eyes off Balot.

He wouldn’t have imagined in a million years that she was actually card counting. But as soon as anyone showed the slightest signs of playing like they might be doing so, the dealer was programmed to hone in on them, just in case. Proof that he was, indeed, a first-class dealer.

The point tally hovered around the plus five mark for some time. At one point it reached plus nine, but a number of minus cards followed in quick succession. Balot started to feel a little worried—what if the cards continued in this way, never showing a decisive opening? But all she could do was sit there and play the hands that she was dealt.

Then, just as they started getting into the game, something happened. The woman won big—well, it had been bound to happen sometime, probably—and drew a blackjack on a stake well in excess of a thousand dollars. The dealer congratulated her—conspicuously—and at the same time consoled the Doctor, who had bust, the dealer suggesting that he was so close.

“That’s the way the game goes, I’m afraid, sir. Whenever someone wins big, there’s always going to be someone next to them who loses. On the other hand, the opposite is also true, so that’s something you have to look forward to.”

In response, the Doctor turned away from the lady and toward Balot. “It’s not as if we’re going to keep on losing forever. If we need to pay our dues before Lady Luck finally decides to smile on us then so be it—let’s not begrudge her.”

So saying, the Doctor bet on the next hand. Big.

Balot snarced Oeufcoque.

–Did the Doctor do all that deliberately?

–Of course. He waited until the dealer honed in on his target and pounced. He’s playing the dealer in return, turning the dealer’s tricks back on him. This idea that when one player loses, the other inevitably wins. What the dealer is trying to do is to get the Doctor to bet big once the woman starts losing. The woman is caught in the dealer’s snare right now, and the dealer is going to move straight on to the Doctor once the woman’s sucked dry. He’s leaving you till last.

Leaving her till last. The very thought brought up nauseating memories for Balot. The idea that she was dessert, something to be savored at the end of everything. She remembered how one of her customers back in the old days told her that her name made her sound delicious…

Something inside Balot stirred. Something ruthless. So, you want to leave me to enjoy at the end, do you? Well, I’ll be waiting for you, smiling sweetly. I’ll be a juicy, ripe apple, ever so inviting, right up until the moment you bite into me and discover the razor blade waiting for you inside…

These thoughts spun around in Balot’s head as she assiduously tracked the ebb and flow of the point tally. A casual onlooker wouldn’t have been able to spot any rhyme or reason in the fluctuations of Balot’s betting patterns, and neither could the lady, who commented, “What a fickle little thing you are, my dear, flitting from one thing to another. I remember a time when I myself was like that, once…”

Whether it was because she had just won a big payout, or whether it was her natural high spirits, the lady seemed in exceedingly good humor. Balot nodded meekly, as if to acknowledge that she was indeed feeling adventurous, wanting to try out all sorts of different things. The lady nodded back—good for you. Her large hands grabbed an even larger handful of chips, and she poured them out onto the table.

“I wonder if luck is flowing my way yet? I can feel something big about to burst…” The lady’s chips might as well have been large hunks of bloody meat that she was throwing to the piranhas that were the cards.

Far from satisfying their hunger, though, all she was doing was whetting their appetite.

She was right about one thing, though—something big was coming. Balot felt it too. Something from beyond the point tally. Balot tried to pin down this indefinable something of a feeling.

It wasn’t a feeling exactly like the one she had when firing a gun, nor was it like what she felt when she was in hot pursuit of the roulette ball. It was familiar and strange all at the same time, as if there were some sort of pattern, something she was intimately familiar with, except that the stages were all mixed up. She couldn’t quite work out what it was she was trying find; it seemed to ebb and flow, appear and disappear. How to nail it? She thought deep and hard.

By the time they had entered the middle stages of the game, the point tally had increased substantially. From plus five to plus eight, then plus eight to plus eleven.

Got it! It was the moment the point tally had moved from plus eleven to plus thirteen.

For the first time since the game had started, Balot acted as if she were emulating the lady, piling up her chips in a huge, haphazard stack and shoving them onto the board all at once.

The lady noticed and looked at her. So did the dealer. Balot was riding the crest of the wave. The small cards had drawn the wave out, and now the surfing conditions were ideal for the player.

The cards were dealt. Balot received a 9—and another 9. Her attention immediately turned to the upcard: 7. It was a close call, but she had to go for it.

The lady hit on fifteen and bust. The Doctor had thirteen and also hit, and also bust.

Balot touched the cards with her hands for the first time since she sat had down at the table.

–Split, please.

She used her index fingers on either hand to draw the two cards apart, left and right. Then she placed another pile of chips, equal to her original pile, next to one of the cards. She wasn’t so much concerned about what individual cards would come next as what the pattern was.

The dealer drew her new cards. A jack for the card on her right.

–Stay.

Then, in perfect timing with her breathing, an ace for her left hand. Now she had a total of nineteen for her right hand, twenty for her left. Everyone at the table now expected Balot to win.

–Stay.

Balot watched carefully as the dealer turned his hidden card over. She felt the wave ebbing and flowing. Her head grew hazy, her muscles rigid.

The dealer revealed an 8. Total fifteen. This too was part of the overall pattern—and, as the dealer was now obliged to draw another card, the wave wasn’t over yet.

Balot closed her eyes. What’s the most important thing now? she thought.

She wondered whether she should ask Oeufcoque for advice, but that thought was abruptly checked. The answer had been revealed to her as she opened her eyes.

The dealer had drawn a 6. Total twenty-one—Balot’s hands had both snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Her chips disappeared, her cards disappeared. But Balot wasn’t even watching anymore. It wasn’t as if she had anything to learn from this hand. Yet all had become clear. That was all that mattered. She felt the pattern coming together in intricate detail. It was as if the individual hands were miniatures, microcosms for the game as a whole.

And it wasn’t possible to ignore the miniatures, to skip over the hands as if they somehow obliterated the