House Operator
Imagination – December 1957
(1957)*
Randall Garrett & Robert Silverberg
(as by S. M. Tenneshaw)

At poker, Rafferty knew he could beat any man alive. Now, needing money badly, he walked into the Ganymede Casino looking for a patsy ...

-

	RAFFERTY WAS A gambler of the old school. He didn't believe in any of the fancy electronic gadgets that the casinos went in for these days, didn't much care for the psionic games of chance and other tricky and probably rigged affairs. Give him a good poker game any time, and he would be happy.

	He stood in the door of the Ganymede Casino, outlining himself against the gaudy lights flashing within, standing there patiently. Inside, the rich and would-be rich of a dozen planets were enjoying themselves, playing the brightly-lit games and throwing money a-round in handfuls.

	Rafferty waited for some attention. His hand slid to the bulky roll in his pocket—one hundred hundred-credit bills, 10,000 smackers in all. It was all Rafferty had.

	He was here to triple it, or else.

	Tomorrow 30,000 had to be handed over to Lee Walsh. It was the result of the one mistake Rafferty had made.

	Walsh was a big-time gambler, with ulcers and high blood pressure and ten million in the bank. Rafferty was straight middle-time, a man who genuinely enjoyed his chancy profession. And Walsh had said, "Why don't you play something I like to play? All the time poker, poker, poker. Why don't you switch to something else."

	"I like poker," Rafferty said. "I win at poker. Why switch?"

	Walsh seemed to stiffen. "Let's have a little game of planet-faro, Rafferty. Just you and me. I'm tired of all this poker."

	"I don't like planet-faro. It's a lousy game. All those flashing lights—it's more like pinball than honest-to-darn gambling."

	"You ain't chicken, Rafferty?"

	"Chicken?"

	"Yeah. Let's try some planet-faro."

	So they did—and Rafferty had sat by leadenly while Walsh cleaned him out. Thirty thousand shiny credits clown the drain, and the debt due tomorrow at noon. You didn't welsh on Walsh, either. It was sort of a slogan.

	Rafferty didn't have the thirty thousand. He had two alternatives: he could scrape up the cash somewhere and hand it over, or he could grab an out-system liner and get going toward Aldebaran, and hope to live. He wouldn't—not for long.

	He decided to scrape up the cash. And there was one sure way to do that. Poker.

	Poker was getting to be an unpopular game, and there were two reasons for it. One was the advent of more popular new types of gambling devices; the other reason was that Rafferty was so good it didn't pay to compete against him. He often had trouble getting up a game. People tended to slink away when they heard Rafferty wanted to play poker. He played it hard and he played it mean, and he didn't lose too often.

	That was why he had come to the Ganymede Casino. On the big pleasure-moon, anyone could find some sort of game going—and if he couldn't, the house would be glad to provide some competition. Rafferty didn't much like the idea of playing a house operator, but he was confident.

	He patted the ten g's and waited. After a couple of minutes an impeccably-dressed man in tails came over to him and smiled courteously.

	"Yes, sir?"

	"My name is Rafferty. I'm looking for a poker game in the house. There one around I can get into?"

	The impeccable man frowned slightly. "I don't think so, Mr.—ah—Rafferty. Wouldn't you care to try our Roto, or the planet-faro, or robot roulette? We—"

	"I want to play poker," Rafferty said. The chips were down now; he had to stick to his specialty.

	"Well, I'll see what I can do. Would you wait here, please?"

	Rafferty waited. He waited while the impeccable man cruised around the huge gameroom, murmuring gently to someone here, someone there. In all cases the response was the same: a shrug, a curious glance in Rafferty's direction, a quick and emphatic shake of the head.

	No one wanted to play. Usually Rafferty could count on some fool millionaire anxious to try to best the great Rafferty at five-card stud. Not today, though. There were no takers.

	"I'm sorry, Mr. Rafferty; I couldn't seem to promote a game. But the planet-faro—"

	"Poker," Rafferty said.

	"Would you object to playing a two-handed game with one of our employees?" the usher asked suddenly. "Naturally he'll be staked by the house, and I think you'll find him fit competition for you."

	Rafferty chewed at his lip. He needed the money—and if the house operator was staked by the casino, it might be possible to cart off quite a load.

	"Okay," he grunted. "Bring on your shill."

-

	THE USHER LED him to a small, highly-polished card table in the back, and signalled to a man waiting to one side.

	"Mr. Steel, this is Mr. Rafferty."

	"Hello," Rafferty said.

	"Pleased to meet you," said the other. His voice was a soft purr; his face, an expressionless mask. Rafferty smiled. He was quick to size up his opponents, and this time he could tell he was up against a good one.

	"Chips?"

	A house girl had come by. She was clad only in a strip of something filmy across her breasts and another round her middle, and she had a trayfull of chips. Rafferty casually handed her the hundred bills and accepted his stack of chips. She also gave him an unopened deck of cards.

	"Care to?" Rafferty asked, offering the cards to his opponent.

	"No. Go ahead."

	Methodically Rafferty broke the seal, spilled the cards out, flipped the jokers to one side, and riffled through the deck. There were fifty-two of them, all right, and they looked good. He started to shuffle.

	The first few hands passed quickly. Steel was a quiet, noncommittal player who seemed to have a tremendous reserve of calmness. It wasn't too surprising, thought Rafferty, considering it wasn't his dough at stake. But a shill has professional pride.

	The first three deals were in the nature of warmups, and Rafferty emerged from them twenty or thirty credits to the good. He felt the cards moving the right way; luck was with him tonight. He wondered if he could come away with a million. The Casino had no limit.

	Fourth hand he decided to experiment with some offensive tactics. Steel dealt; Rafferty scooped up his cards and looked them over. Jack, Four, Eight, Seven, King. Spade, club, spade, heart, diamond. Coolly he fanned the cards out and pushed a hundred credits toward the middle of the table. Steel saw him.

	"How many?"

	"I'll stand pat."

	"So will I."

	"Five hundred," Rafferty said.

	"See that and raise it a hundred."

	"I'll bump to two."

	"I'm with you," Steel said. "What do you have?"

	Without a facial flicker Rafferty exposed his hand. "Jack high. You?"

	"You beat me. It's your kitty."

	Rafferty scooped the pot in, frowning inwardly. He'd made his bluff—but Steel had been bluffing right along with him. It was only luck that the little man hadn't been holding a Queen.

	Rafferty pulled Jack high again on the next deal, took three, came up with nothing and folded. On the next hand both men played it cautiously and Rafferty dropped fifty credits when Steel's pair of kings took his tens.

	Next deal, Rafferty again came up with nothing. Inwardly he cursed; the cards weren't coming as well as they had. He decided to bluff again, since the previous attempt hadn't yielded any information about his opponent's tactics.

	This time he pushed the bet up to a thousand before calling.

	"Three sevens," Steel said.

	"You beat me," Rafferty said, and collapsed his hand.

	"Mind if I look?" Steel said.

	"Yes," said Rafferty. He was surprised; it was a rank amateur's trick to ask to look at a hand that had been tossed in. Coming from a cool customer like Steel, it didn't make much sense.

	But slowly Rafferty began to fathom the way his opponent's mind worked. And slowly, as his genius for the game asserted itself, Rafferty began to win.

	By 2100 his pile of chips totalled near fifty thousand. It was enough to pay off Walsh and still come out with a comfortable profit for the evening's work—but Rafferty didn't want to quit. He didn't play the game that way.

	He decided to go for a killing. He had Steel figured, now and he could take the house for a fortune.

	Nursing three jacks and a pair of fours, he pushed the betting higher and higher. Steel kept right with him.

	"Three thousand? I'll see you and raise one."

	Without letting expression cross his face, Rafferty pushed a few more credits out. Then a few more. Then a few more. Five thousand credits hung on this deal, now.

	He remained totally blank-faced. That was the secret of poker: never to tip off an opponent to anything. Steel was good, but Steel kept giving himself away.

	Like now, for instance. Perhaps the shill didn't know it, but his right eyebrow was twitching faintly. So far, every time Steel had bluffed a weak hand, that eyebrow had twitched.

	Well, now Rafferty had him. He had a full house; it was going to take a bunch of fancy cards to top it. And Steel was almost certainly bluffing.

	"Six thousand," Rafferty said.

	"Seven."

	"Seven five."

	It reached nine. Finally Rafferty said, "Okay. What do you have?"

	Casually Steel lowered his hand. Jack, Queen, Queen, Queen Queen. That made four Queens.

	He hadn't been bluffing.

	And Rafferty was out nine thousand credits.

-

	HE KEPT HIS COMPOSURE, but inwardly he was disturbed. By all rights Steel had to be bluffing—but there they were, four queens.

	The game progressed. A few curious onlookers had gathered. By playing cautiously, Rafferty started piling up chips again. His winnings mounted to a hundred thousand, hundred fifty. He had Steel figured now for sure.

	But it wasn't as sure as all that.

	Rafferty staked five thousand on a straight flush. Steel saw him and added five hundred on top of it.

	"I'll go with you," Rafferty said. "Here's another thousand." Straight flush, Queen high. Only three hands could possibly beat him—and one of them was a royal flush. It didn't seem likely. Besides, the lower corner of Steel's mouth was drawn back, as it usually was when he had a fairly good hand and was playing it big.

	The chips flew out madly. Rafferty watched the pile grow; neither man would let the cat die. Ten, twelve thousand credits now. Fifteen. In thirty years of poker, Rafferty had never had fifteen thousand credits riding on one hand. But he was sure he had it.

	"What are you holding?" Steel asked finally.

	"Straight flush, Queen high." He started to reach for the chips.

	Steel's mild, purring voice interrupted him. "What suit?"

	For the first time that night Rafferty's composure left him. "C-Clubs," he stammered.

	"Spades," Steel said sweetly, and put down the eight to Queen, inclusive and consecutive.

	It just didn't figure, Rafferty thought glumly. He wasn't as annoyed over the wild improbability of two straight flushes the same hand as he was because he had failed to guess Steel's facial reaction properly. He'd been dead wrong.

	He got wronger. Steel sat calmly without saying a word except when necessary, and gobbled in the chips. It seemed to Rafferty that Steel was reading his every move.

	He was holding two pair, and played it big. Steel stayed right with him, and when the payoff came:

	"Three fours."

	Three fours won. But Steel wouldn't have ridden that far on the trio unless he knew pretty well that Rafferty didn't have much to show. He seemed to know. And as the game progressed, he grew less and less readable himself. It was a strange reversal for Rafferty, who was accustomed to detect his opponent's idiosyncrasies within three deals and to play them mercilessly from then on.

	"Two kings," Rafferty said.

	"Two aces."

	Rafferty looked down at his pile of chips and counted them. Eight hundred credits left. Eight hundred lousy credits.

	It was just enough to book passage to Aldebaran. Rafferty slumped in his chair.

	The gambler in him urged him to go on, to try to win the thirty thousand he needed and clear out. But another part of him told him it was futile; Steel was getting sharper and sharper, and it was inevitable he'd lose even the remaining eight hundred. He didn't want that to happen.

	He rose stiffly.

	"Had enough?" Steel asked.

	"I think so."

	"I hope I haven't discouraged you. We can still play some more, if you like?"

	"What's the use?" Rafferty said hollowly. "I can't win. And at least this way I'll be on Aldebaran tomorrow when Walsh and his gunmen come looking for me."

	"What's that?"

	"Never mind." Rafferty turned away, scooping up his remaining chips. He cashed them in and shambled out the door, still unable fully to understand that for the first time in his life he had met his master at the poker table.

-

	AFTER RAFFERTY was gone, the impeccable usher came over to Steel, who was sitting patiently by the huge pile of chips. "You clean him out?" "Just about," Steel said. "He had a little left to book passage with."

	"It looked bad for a while, there. He was better than a hundred thousand ahead of you."

	"It took me some time to detect his playing patterns," the house man said. "He was very, very good. He's the best player I've ever encountered."

	"But he couldn't beat you, natch!"

	"Hardly. Once I had penetrated his defenses, he was at my mercy." Steel rose, smiling blandly. "I took 9200 credits from him. It's thirsty work. How about a drink?"

	"Sure thing," the impeccable man said. "I guess I can spare a drink for the best house operator this casino has." He took an oilcan from his jacket and inserted it at the back of Steel's neck. The robot grinned happily at the lubrication; his soft photonic eyes beamed.

	"I enjoy playing poker," Steel said. "But someday you must enlarge my circuits so I can take part in planet-faro too. It looks like a very interesting game."

The End