Over the course of the next ten games, Oeufcoque’s display grew even more dizzying.
The numbers swirled, flowing and recrystallizing again under Balot’s heightened abilities and Oeufcoque’s new technique.
The flow was the development of logical measurements and predictions, and the crystallization provided an intuitive grasp of the full context.
The cards and odds coming in waves—these data flowed. There was an awareness of things with a beginning and an end or that were new developments. The fluid data consisted of predictions and measurements based on both established patterns and novel events based on cause and effect. They circled, they spiraled, they oscillated, based on her most recent awareness—that was the flow.
The crystallization, on the other hand, was the connection of multiple points, a patchwork of three- dimensional influences. A comprehensive awareness of sights and space.
With no relation to the passage of time, the connections between past events strengthened until the points coalesced into the nuclei of even larger masses still to come. And from that, their location and orientation became fixed—those were the crystals.
The mutual existence of flowing data and crystallized information was the very essence of human knowledge. Without one, the other lost its meaning. When consciousness was dropped into the vortex of the unconscious, the power of intelligence was born. Everyone had it. It was only waiting to be used.
And at that moment, Balot was greedily feasting upon the sensation of that power. Oeufcoque and Balot were tightly connected, their senses bonded.
At the twenty-seventh game, their senses had melded to perceive a deeply vivid image.
Ashley’s upcard, an ace. Balot’s hand, 5-J. The cards were like the muzzle of a gun in Ashley’s hand, thrust right at her.
Balot muttered.
She spoke unconsciously, to no one in particular.
To the somewhat perplexed-looking Ashley, she announced her hit.
Ashley pulled a card from the shoe. It was a 2.
Her voice was soft, but it jolted through the air of tension over the table.
Balot hit. An ace.
Grief sounded in her words, but Balot’s expression was suddenly taken by a vastness that was hard to grasp. Where was she looking? What was she thinking? Her expression was unreadable. But she was looking at something. She had her sights on it.
The Doctor gulped. Bell’s eyes opened wide.
Ashley’s hand moved instantly. Even if the card would bring about his own destruction, his practiced hand drew it without hesitation. Such was his skill.
The card came. Another ace. Balot didn’t stop. Her body felt like a sharp blade slicing effortlessly through her opponent’s windpipe.
Another ace.
Another ace. Balot took a deep breath. 5-J-2-A-A-A-A—
Ashley revealed his hole card. A jack. Ashley stared at the table, speechless. In his place, the Doctor whispered with disbelief. “A push…”
“It seems like it,” said the dealer.
He quickly collected the cards, sweeping them into a neat pile, Balot’s senses attuned to their movement.
Ashley looked down at Balot’s hand. He seemed to stare right through the chips stacked in a neat circle in the palm of her bare hand.
“Do you know why I’m looking forward to the next card?” Balot looked up at him. With a vacant expression, she nodded deeply.
She had become so focused on the game, she had forgotten to think of him as her enemy.
She appeared lost in thought, as if still trying to figure out why her statement was true.
“You do know, then?”
Balot tilted her head.
“You managed to weather my special move, and I’d prefer not to think of it as by chance.”
Finally understanding his meaning, the girl nodded.
“You’ve seen through my shuffle?”
His face was mischievous, but there was a bluster in it that betrayed a small thread of fear.
Balot looked at him and slowly shook her head.
“Then what do you know?”
Her eyes gazed distantly upon the card shoe.
Ashley, his hand still atop the shoe, shrugged and said, “For sure. But I don’t think you have many.”
“But will they arrive in time?” He smiled sharply at her.
She thought for a moment, then answered.
Ashley’s smile froze. For a brief moment, his eyes went completely expressionless. Somewhere deep inside him, his caution toward Balot transformed into animosity.
Balot tapped the table. Ashley’s hand flicked out the cards.
His upcard, a 5. Balot’s hand, J-J.
She looked at the jacks with disappointment. The red and black one-eyed jacks.
Without hesitation, Ashley turned over his hole card. A king. Spades.
Beneath Balot’s left arm, Oeufcoque’s swirl of numbers adjusted.
Some of the suits pressed together, amassing into an iron wall.
With great contentment, Balot watched the dealer draw his next card.
He drew a 6. Twenty-one. He was an overwhelming fortress.
Ashley’s thick hands casually collected her chips. The cards went too.
Balot’s eyes remained on the table as if seeing the afterimage of the cards: 5-K-6 and J-J.
“Have you had enough?”
Balot sensed something behind his mocking words. He was trying to hide the moment of defenselessness born of a hastily built defense.
That held the true meaning of building an impregnable iron wall in this game.
Balot snarced Oeufcoque.
