The dealer couldn’t take his eyes off Balot—they were still glued to her as he flipped his own hidden card over.
The dealer had two 9s—total eighteen. A draw with Balot; the Doctor was defeated.
Balot asked Oeufcoque a question as the cards on the table were collected.
–What are we trying to do now?
–Humans have a natural tendency to order things in their mind, to put things into neat boxes so that they can better understand them. We need to make sure that the visual cues we give off are consistent with that—in other words, we need to look as we’re supposed to be feeling.
–I don’t understand at all…
–For example, when you’re thinking about something you really like, your eyes look to your left. When there’s something you don’t like the idea of, your eyes shift to your far right. When you think about something you admire, they fix on a point in the distance somewhat to the left. Oh, there are plenty of individual variations on the theme, of course, but statistically speaking most people tend to have the same “tells”—there’s a fixed pattern. Those who are skilled manipulators can train themselves to be able to read people by just their eyes and body language, working out their opponent’s thoughts and feelings without them even saying a word.
–This dealer is checking me out?
–Of course—it’s one of the basic principles of psychological manipulation. As I said, not just eye movements but also the positioning of your hands and feet, the way your face is turned, the slope of your shoulders: all these are supposed to be a map, a diagram to someone’s current psychological state.
Balot looked at her cards and couldn’t help but feel a scowl, even if she didn’t show it. Had the dealer really been watching her so all along? Like a Peeping Tom? It wasn’t a nice feeling.
Determined to destroy the picture that the dealer had so assiduously drawn, Balot now shifted this way and that. Then sometimes she would confuse him further by refusing to respond at all to the cards, keeping her posture frozen. It didn’t take much. The dealer, who had been ruling the roost at his table, manipulating the players every which way, was now dancing to Balot’s tune—and he didn’t even realize it.
She would smile aimlessly, apropos of nothing, and the dealer would be forced to smile back. Then she would go all grumpy, causing the dealer to turn serious, wondering what the matter could be. Before long, Balot was sure that if she asked him to jump, his only response would be “How high?”
–I think the time is now ripe to enlist the Doctor to our cause.
As Oeufcoque spoke, Balot noticed that a new strategy chart appeared on her left hand—the Doctor’s moves.
Balot waited for the Doctor to bust, then offered to help.
–Looks like I’m better than you at predicting the cards, Uncle. I’ll give you some tips on what you need to do to win.
The Doctor raised a finger and wagged it from side to side, as if to say his pride wouldn’t permit him to take advice from a girl. “Don’t you worry about me. It might look like I’m losing at the moment, but you never know when my luck might start to turn.”
Balot smiled, but under the table she nudged the Doctor softly with her tiptoe. The Doctor nudged her back. Confirmation. He’d understood the plan. However many sensors there may have been overhead, none of them would have been able to see under the table, surely? There wasn’t any watching the customer down there. Not usually.
Starting from the very next hand, Balot fed Oeufcoque’s instructions to the Doctor under the table.
First, one tap on the side of the Doctor’s foot. The signal to hit. The Doctor hmmed.
Then the dealer brushed against his earpiece and whispered a few words into the built-in microphone.
Balot intercepted the electronic transmission in order to eavesdrop on it, a reflex reaction now. She snarced the electronic waves, turning them to sound waves inside her head.
Balot was stunned by the message. It was a transmission to the observation room. Asking them to check the cameras. To check if she was somehow giving the Doctor a signal.
She sensed the piercing gaze of the dealer bearing down on her face like the muzzle of a gun. She was about to turn and meet his gaze when Oeufcoque stopped her.
–Don’t look at the dealer. It’s just a trick to try and catch out people with guilty consciences. To smoke them out of their den. Stay still. You’re not doing anything illegal.
Yes—this was an accomplished dealer, and they couldn’t overlook that fact, even when he was starting to fall under their spell. All it took was his intuition—a sixth sense, almost—to work out that something underhanded was going on. Still, it was as Oeufcoque said: as long as they weren’t caught in the act, there was nothing the casino could pin on them, however suspicious they were. There were limits to the dealer’s abilities. And there was no way for the casino to tell for sure whether the pair at the table were indeed sitting ducks, or whether they were a ticking time bomb, biding their time before going off with an almighty bang, leaving only a huge bill in their wake.
Balot stuck to the important hands, giving the Doctor his signal as subtly as she could. Two nudges of the foot to stay, one to hit. Three when he had to double down. On the rare occasions he was supposed to split, Balot was to tug on his sleeve as if to hurry him up.
The dealer seemed to be picking up on many of these signals, or so she thought, but then he appeared to lose interest, as if he had been worrying over nothing. Balot’s efforts at misdirection had obviously paid off.
Suddenly it occurred to Balot to inject a bit of life into the proceedings. She wanted to revive the sitcom atmosphere of earlier, get her double act with the Doctor back on the road. She prodded his arm playfully.
–I’ve got it, Uncle! I’ve worked out a foolproof plan to win.
The Doctor’s eyes opened wide in surprise. The dealer, caught up in the moment, did the same.
“What sort of plan?” asked the Doctor.
–Before I go into that, I want to change some of my chips.
“Well, it’s not me you should be asking, then, is it? Ask Mr. Handsome over there on the other side of the table.”
Balot nodded and turned to the dealer to offer him a single thousand-dollar chip.
–I’d like to change this into a thousand one-dollar chips, please.
Time stood still as the dealer and the Doctor turned to stare at Balot.
–That way, I’ll be able to make a thousand bets with just this single chip!
The Doctor was the first to break the silence. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Balot puffed her cheeks out in a sulk. It was a convincing act, if she did think so herself. She was sure that this was one of the skills that she had picked up since she first met Oeufcoque.
“Look, gambling is fun precisely because there’s an element of risk. It’s a nice idea you’re suggesting, but it’s kind of missing the whole point of what a casino is about. Please—if you want to play a game, let’s think up one that involves trying to win as much as we can, not one that just involves trying to survive as long as we can…”