Con time, like Easter and Christmas, comes round more or less once a year, and it being the accepted thing for fen to go to these annual festivities, Tom decided he should attend. After all they were reputed to play a lot of cards at cons, and he had a certain system which should enable him at least to keep in the running...
Unfortunately, he neglected to check which games were played at conventions. If you had asked him, he would have confessed ignorance of Pontoon, Brag, Poker and the like. Ah, me...Well, he came to the con, and when the programme was over, in the evening, he hunted around for those who played his favourite game.
But found them not. He saw Bob Tucker at a table with two or three compatriots, and they were handling the pasteboards and casting them onto the table with much the same technique as he used, but on close examination he found they behaved differently. And it was strange there was more than one player per pack.
He shrugged. "These Yanks," he muttered, and continued the search. He saw Bennett, and smiled. Bennett was a noted devotee of cards, and would agree to join him in a game.
There were, however, other fen with Bennett. They looked up as Tom approached. One beckoned. Money was on the table, but they had not yet begun a game. Perhaps because there was again merely one pack of cards.
"Like to sit in?" asked Ron.
"Yes, please," Tom grinned, only faintly apprehensive. So they gambled for money? So what? He still had the perfect system. He drew out a pack, started to shuffle.
"Clean cards!" exclaimed Bennett. His eyes lit up with a fanatic gleam.
Tom laid his cards out. A pile of thirteen, face down. Then the four cards from which began the four descending series, in alternate colours. Finally, the single card on which the ultimate ascending series in suit was based. Tom paused when he finished his basic layout, waited for the others to commence their own and compete to find who completed the game most often.
After a long silence Bennett began to clean his glasses, something I've never seen him do before.
"I am afraid," he said, deliberately, "That we play Brag in this school."
"Brag!" Tom hooted. He swept his cards up and ran from the hall. Bennett stared after him. Thunderstruck, he absently dipped his cleaning cloth in his bheer and smeared his specs. He dealt the cards for Brag, played a disinterested game. Played a second, a third. Won a little, lost a little, hoped the losing little was littler than the winning little. Through the slightly yellow bheer stain on his specs, he began to see strange things, as though they - the glasses - were becoming drunk. He saw, somehow, somewhere, a fan cheating...
Angrily, he rose, saw out of the corner of his eye Bob Tucker also rise from his table. Saw one or two other fen follow...
Saw them abruptly vanish. And came to realise that he too was no longer in the meeting hall.
Tom, his disgust changed to anger and a little bitterness, downed two pints in rapid succession at the bar, then bought a couple of bottles and took them to his room. By Ghod, he would play on his own. His room was furnished with a bed, a chair and a table. The table had apparently been fashioned when fashions were lumpy, from a rebellious old oak which seemed to writhe under the insult of not being permitted to line the bulwarks of Nelson's Victory.
But Tom scarcely noticed. He placed his bheer on the table, laid out his cards. Rubbed his hands, and grinned happily. But for the first game, he would not use his system. He took cards from the pack in blocks of three, laid them face up, and whenever a card fitted with either his descending or ascending series, placed it suitably. But after three or four turns through the pack, no more cards appeared which were usable, and he had to give up. So, for the next three games, he used his system, which looked the normal way of playing, but in actual fact reversed the order of the three-card blocks on each fresh run through the pack. It resulted in the game coming out about fifty percent of the time.
He had just laid out the cards for the fifth game, when he found he was not alone. Facing him across the table were two angry figures, with a background of other mistier ones. The two were Bennett and Tucker. Behind, Phil Rogers, Barry Hall, other fan faces, and Brett Maverick, watching with an amused grin.
"You cheated," gritted Tucker who, being an American, had a hand ready where they carried shoulder holsters.
"No, no, gentlemen," Tom protested, more scared of their actual presence than their magical appearance. "I never cheat. Why should I?"
Bennett leaned his face close to the unhappy Tom. "Egoboo," he snarled, taking out a copy of the Queensbury Rules. British y'know, and all that. Tucker's hand tightened slightly. Hall unwound a bicycle chain and Maverick dropped his accomodating grin and loosened the gun in his holster. He leant forward, arm hovering: "Cheating for money is accepted," he drawled. "And all that happens is you get shot. But you - you are stealing egoboo from everybody else who plays solitaire by winning so many times. And the Laws of Chance can restore the balance only by making everybody else lose ALL THE TIME."
Hall twirled his bicycle chain, lovingly.
Tom began to sob, quietly. "I was not cheating. I was not cheating."
"You won three times in succession," Bennett said, slapping him three times in succession with the Queensberry Rules. "And you cheated. You will play the game naturally a sufficient number of times to restore the balance and distribute the stolen egoboo evenly once more."
And, trembling, Tom played honestly, while he thought of the enormous number of honest games he would have to play to restore the dreadful balance. Better to have cheated for money, and receive the quick clean bullet, accompanied by an advertisement for Tide. Better now to leap for Maverick's gun, and die fighting...
Voices intruded into his mind, "He seems to be doing quite well." "Maybe he'll complete the game." "O, my ghod, not that..."
The game really seemed to be coming out - for the first time, honestly. He concentrated on the cards, played as he had never played before, to vindicate himself, and prove he could win honestly. And gain the egoboo...
And, suddenly, he had won! There was silence.
Then: "It'll be futile," murmured Bennett, "to persue this line of vengeance. Patience is too much his game. And I used to wonder why my luck at the game was so bad..." He stopped, abruptly, blushing, his head hanging low. Tucker chuckled, as he saw the Englishfan's expression. "I, too, never obtained egoboo from patience. But if we were to compel Tom here to join us in a nice friendly game of Poker..."
"Brag," insisted Bennett.
"...I think we could arrange to restore our lost egos. Poker is a magnificent game of skill..."
And Tom, strangely, felt pleased. Thus did he enter into the full spirit of this little-known facet of fandom.
(data entered by Judy Bemis)
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