While Balot was thinking this to herself, the distinguished croupier had spun the wheel in the opposite direction to the previous spin, and likewise the ball.
The two rotated like twin stars, and No more bets was called.
Just before the ball was about to fall into place, Balot sensed something—it was as if the ball were moving according to someone’s will.
The wheel slowly came to a halt and the winning number was revealed.
“Fourteen red,” Bell Wing called out in a steady voice.
The table exploded. It was her second straight up in a row. Another small mountain of chips moved toward her, and her pile of chips looked for a moment like a mound of rose petals.
A hundred-dollar chip, thirty-five to one, twice in a row. The pile didn’t include the chips she’d bet or the 5 percent commission that the house took, so that meant a total of $6,600 in front of her.
The other punters seemed to be encouraged by this—My turn next!—but Balot just stared at the pile of chips in front of her.
It just seemed too much, as if the money couldn’t possibly be hers.
She wasn’t there for money in the first place, of course. Money was just the means to the end, a step on the stairway that led up to the real target, and all that the money in front of her really meant was that Balot was one step closer to her goal. Thinking about it this way helped keep Balot calm.
–The next game is going to be tricky. Best leave this table well enough alone now.
Oeufcoque’s words rang true, and she saw the sense in them. But Balot wasn’t ready to leave the table, not yet. She started to feel that if she was meant to climb the stairway to the top, step by step, then she might as well enjoy the journey and value each step for what it was.
–I want to stay here just a little longer. I won’t use up all our winnings or anything, I promise. Please.
Oeufcoque seemed to think deeply on this, and he paused before he replied.
–Just remember that your winnings so far are still a long way off from our overall target.
He made no further attempt to make Balot leave.
Balot thanked him and took the next chips in her hand.
She slipped them onto the tableau: 14 red, 2 black. Some of the other punters were watching her to try and ride her coat tails, others figured third time unlucky, and others still were in discussion about the law of averages and how they applied to this table.
Then the ball was thrown in. The wheel spun to the left, the ball to the right. The white ball against the red and black wheel of fortune. The numbers melted together, the ball hit one of the pins, and an invisible hand reached out from the thirty-eight pockets to pull the ball in, one of them ready and waiting to welcome it.
The ball bounced off the dome in the middle and fell.
The ball and the wheel became one.
There was a collective sigh. The wheel stopped, and the winning number was revealed.
Bell Wing had her crystal dolly in her hand.
“Fifteen black.”
The dolly was placed on the layout, over the winning number. The winners’ chips were distributed, and the chips that Balot had staked were taken away by one of the dealers.
“You were so close.” The voice came out of nowhere, it seemed, and it took a moment for Balot to realize that the words had been directed toward her.
Balot raised her head and looked at Bell Wing. Bell Wing, in turn, was looking at Balot. But the croupier had no more to say and shifted her attention back to the rest of the table.
–There’s nothing close about it.
Oeufcoque was the one to say these words, but Balot was already thinking them.
Fifteen black was almost directly opposite 14 red on the wheel.
More importantly, Balot couldn’t work out why Bell Wing had chosen to speak to her.
Was she trying to determine whether the punter that she had used to draw the crowds was the type who might get greedy and go for broke? Or was she trying to demonstrate to Balot that she could manipulate the ball at will and send it to whichever corner she wished?
–Are you going again?
–The first time I won it was because she let me. Now, I want to win for myself. It was a strong answer from Balot. She felt confident that she could do it. She had learned all the strategies the Doctor had taught her. More than that, though, she felt a desire welling up inside herself—a desire to use her newfound abilities, to exploit them fully, to win.
–I think I can, you see.
–Well, I’m here to back you up to the hilt.
Oeufcoque’s answer revealed that he understood what Balot was feeling.
Balot squeezed the chip in her hand before calmly placing it on the tableau.
Chapter 8
EXPLOSION
01
Balot now adopted a different strategy. She started aiming for the lower payouts, bets that would double or triple her stake.
She was currently going after the even money bets that ran down the side of the numbers on the layout.
There were three types of bets. Low/high—that is, 1-18 or 19-36. Odds/evens. Black/red.
Each resulted in a doubling of the original stake. Balot was mainly sticking to low/high as she took in the sensations of the wheel, the ball, and Bell Wing’s fingertips.
There were a number of points she was to take note of, and Oeufcoque conveyed what these were by writing on her left hand. The angle of the bowl’s incline, the shape and number of the metal pins, and the slope of the dome inside the wheel. On top of that she also had to pay attention to the depth of the pockets and note whether they were cushioned or not.
The bias in how the ball landed was determined by the wheel and how it was spun. If the bowl were shallow, the ball wouldn’t bounce as much on its way down. The metallic pins were easier to read when they were shaped like rods, and the fewer of them there were, the easier it was to predict the path of the ball as it ricocheted off them. The steeper the incline on the dome, the more likely the ball was to fall straight down; the deeper the pockets—and the more padding they had—the less likely the ball was to bounce back out of the pocket.
The table that Balot was currently sitting at passed muster on all these points. The wheel was level, and the bowl wasn’t too deep. There were four cylindrical rods, four diamond-shaped ones. The angle of the dome’s incline was more or less forty-five degrees exactly. The pockets were a little over five millimeters deep.
If the wheel had been less ideal then Balot had planned on giving up immediately to find greener pastures elsewhere. But instead she found herself fired up, ready for a challenge
In response to her newfound determination, Oeufcoque’s writing disappeared from her hand to be replaced with something usefuclass="underline" the number of rotations.
The number of times the ball went around and the number of times the wheel went around.
All the while Balot’s bets were progressing steadily from bets that paid double her stake to those that paid triple.
Column bets: choosing one of the three lines of numbers to bet on, excluding the 0 and the 00.
Douzaine bets: choosing one of 1-12, 13-24, or 25-36. This also paid out triple her original stake.