Sighed the Snake, page 26
Sighed the Snake
A Poker Boy Story
Dean Wesley Smith
Sighed the Snake
Copyright © 2012 by Dean Wesley Smith
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover Design copyright © 2012 WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Dmitry Pshek/Dreamstime
Smashwords Edition
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Sighed the Snake
A Poker Boy Story
One
“Poker Boy, the aliens are back.”
Stan, the God of Poker, said those exact words to me as I sat in his office next to my sidekick and girlfriend, Patty, aka Front Desk Girl.
His office, glass-walled and floating invisible somewhere high above the Las Vegas strip, had felt cool and comfortable when we had entered from a hidden door at the MGM Grand Casino. The view just took your breath away as Las Vegas stretched out below, surrounded by desert and then mountains in the distance. The walls were invisible, so it felt as if Stan had put office furniture on a floating carpet. Only pictures of great poker players on the walls lined out where the room started and the air outside ended.
As we got seated, a United Airlines jet passed silently to our west, just below us, headed for the airport. I could only imagine what the passengers I could see through the window on that jet would have thought if suddenly Stan’s office had become visible out their windows, with Patty and I sitting in front of his desk.
Sometimes Stan kept his office dark and dingy, like a back room at an old, downtown casino, straight out of the mob days. That was when he was in a bad mood or things were threatening. When he let it float above the city, as it was now, you knew Stan was feeling pretty darned good about life with the Gambling Gods.
But his casual statement about the aliens returning rocked me, and I studied his smiling face. Even with my black leather superhero jacket and Fedora-like superhero hat on, I didn’t have the power to get a read on Stan. No one could get a read on the God of Poker, which was why he had the job. So I reverted to the most logical way to get an answer. I asked him.
“This makes you happy, the aliens being back?”
Patty had sat forward in her seat at the comment from Stan, her long brown hair flowing over her white blouse and dress slacks, her new uniform for work. She had just recently taken a job as customer relations at the MGM Grand Casino and Hotel, and we had been having lunch in the nifty little Greek place just off the downstairs promenade when Stan called us.
When I’m in Vegas, Patty and I not only work cases together, we are an item. Actually, she’s my only item whether I’m in Vegas or not, but I haven’t figured out a way to tell her that just yet. As Poker Boy, I’m not known for being a ladies man, or for having just one woman in my life either. I wasn’t sure how she would react, but knowing Patty, she probably already knew. She seemed to sense things about me before I did. I figured it was one of her many superpowers. Thank heavens she didn’t play poker.
“Actually,” Stan said, “not so much happy as satisfied. I won the pool.”
“The pool?” Patty asked, glancing at me with those wonderful brown eyes of hers before looking back at Stan.
“We had a pool as to when they would return,” Stan said, his smile getting bigger. “I got it to within a month. We started the pool the day after they left.”
“They’ve been gone since the late 1950s,” I said. “I’m impressed.”
Stan smiled even larger. “Thanks.”
“So, why are we here?” Patty asked, shaking her head and sitting back. She worked the hotel side of the gambling industry. And even though she was a superhero working under Laverne, Lady Luck herself, Patty sometimes just didn’t understand the nature of a gamblers’ need to bet on things. The Gambling Gods had bets running all the time for one thing or another. It was what they did. The alien pool was no surprise to me.
“We need you two to make contact with their representative, find out what they are planning, that sort of thing. Right now he’s sitting in a 2-4 no-limit game at the MGM Grand.”
“Not over at the Bellagio, huh? I wonder why.” I would have figured the aliens could afford the higher stakes.
“Not a clue,” Stan said.
Now it was making sense to me. I hadn’t been a superhero long enough to have met the aliens the last time they visited the planet, but from what I understood, they loved to gamble, which was why the Gambling Gods ended up being their major contact with the planet Earth. The world governments at the time had hated that, but in the end, had to live with it. I doubted anyone in the current world governments had even been briefed that aliens actually existed, let alone the Gambling Gods. The Gods, and the superheroes like Patty and me, tended to stay under the radar as much as we could.
“Is the alien any good at poker?” I asked, smiling at Stan.
Stan laughed. “Not a clue. He’s new. Go find out.”
The wonderful view from Stan’s office faded, and Patty and I moved from sitting in front of Stan’s desk to walking down the hallway toward the MGM Grand’s poker room. Always took a second for the mind to adjust when Stan did that.
Two
The poker room at the MGM Grand had been remodeled a few years back, and now was in the shape of an hourglass. It usually had a good ten games going at any one time, and ran daily tournaments that were pretty popular around town. They catered mostly to tourists, with a few local pros working the room. The big money and high-stakes games had moved over to the Bellagio a number of years back, but the MGM still had a loyal following and they spread a good game and ran a tight room.
“So, what do we do now?” Patty asked, clearly worried about meeting a real-life alien.
“Stop at the counter and stay close until I figure out what the guy wants. I’m going to take us in as much under cover as I can manage.”
I had no idea why I was taking those precautions. It just felt right, and as a superhero and a poker player, I had learned a long time ago to trust that feeling.
Patty reached over and squeezed my hand, then let go, which was a good thing. I always found it hard to concentrate when Patty was touching any part of me. Some parts more than others.
As we neared the room, I brought up my Don’t-Pay-Attention-To-Me superpower and covered both of us. Someday I was going to have to give that superpower a better name, but describing the effect it had seemed as good as any name for the moment.
I got a rack of five-dollar chips from the front counter and moved toward the 2-4 no-limit table against one drab-colored wall. Four men and two women sat around the table. The two women were clearly together, clearly from some Midwestern state, and pretending to be in over their heads. They didn’t even notice me.
The guy in the number four chair was a local pro named Dan, and he managed to see through my cloak and nod as I sat down. Dan stood no more than five feet tall, and usually wore a dress shirt and tan jacket that made him look more like an accountant taking a break from the office than a professional poker player. But I knew he was as sharp and mean as they came and made good money every day at this table. I had no intention of tangling with him.
The other two men were tourists, both with drinks in front of them, and both more interested in the women than in playing poker. That left the guy wearing a snakeskin cowboy hat, sunglasses, and a western shirt, sitting in the seat to the right of the dealer. The weirdest thing about the guy was his tiny nose and almost complete lack of chin. It was as if his face just sort of blended down into his neck and into his black shirt collar.
I sat down in the chair directly across the table from him and slipped the five hundred in chips out of my rack, stacking them neatly as he watched.
He lowered his sunglasses just enough to show me his dark, black eyes, then grinned without showing any teeth. “Poker Boy, I presume.”
Dan jerked at the mention of my name, then just stared at me. Clearly, my reputation had gotten ahead of me. I ignored Dan and focused on the alien.
I got nothing, no read, no sense of any emotion at all.
I dug deep and put my best superhero Poker Boy poker-read on him, getting almost nothing but a strange, dark feel. That was getting me nowhere.
“I don’t think I have had the pleasure,” I said in return.
“Just call me Snake,” the alien said, his voice as close to a hiss as I could imagine a human voice sounding.
I hated snakes. I didn’t mention that to him. More than likely, he knew. Instead, I just nodded.
I folded the first two cards the dealer fired my way without looking, then watched as Snake glanced at his and folded as well. He had very thin hair sticking out from under his hat that looked combed back over dark scalp, and he also clearly had a dandruff problem, since flakes kept falling on his black shirt.
“It’s been a long time,” I said, aiming at him as much of my Make-Them-Relax superpower as I dared use. “At least fifty years.”
“Nah, that wasn’t my people,” Snake said, again grinning under his sunglasses without really opening his mouth. His leather-like skin sort of moved in waves up his neck to his mouth and then back down and I thought for a moment I heard a faint rustling sound. “We haven’t been here for a goo
d ten centuries at least.”
Oh, crap! Stan wasn’t going to be happy with that information. More than likely it meant he hadn’t won the pool after all. And he hadn’t told me that there was more than one alien race out there.
I felt my stomach tighten into a tiny fist. I hoped like hell Stan and Lady Luck were listening in on this. And I hoped like hell I had managed to keep my best poker face on when Snake told me he was with a different alien race than we were expecting.
“So, what brings you to our little corner of the poker universe?” I asked, forcing myself to stay as calm as possible.
“Why does anyone come to Las Vegas?” Snake asked, glancing at the two women who were ignoring our conversation and flirting with the two men. One of the women had just pulled the last pot and both were laughing about their luck. I had a hunch they were better than just lucky and this flatlander hick routine was just a ruse to take money. And the two guys were going to be more than happy to give it to them.
Dan, the pro, was just shaking his head at their antics and mostly watching me and Snake. I would wager he wasn’t real pleased at how his favorite table had shaped up today.
“So,” I said, keeping my attention focused on the alien, “you came across vast distances in space to vacation, gamble, drink, and have sex?”
He nodded, glancing at the two cards the dealer had just given him. “That pretty much describes it.”
He put a chip on his cards and again sort-of smiled at me, the rustling of his dry skin clearly loud enough to hear this time. It sent shivers down my back. Did I mention that I really, really hated snakes? Especially snakes with a bad dandruff problem.
He raised a smooth hundred and Dan folded at once.
“But mostly,” Snake said, again pulling down his sunglasses just enough for me to see the pitch black eyes behind them, “I’m here to see if I can beat the best poker player in the game. You up for a little heads-up action, Poker Boy?”
Now, I had to admit that having the alien call me the best player in the game stroked my ego just a little. I knew I was good, but I didn’t think of myself as the best by a long ways.
“What did you have in mind?” I asked as I glanced at my cards and flipped the low pair of fours back at the dealer. Any two cards that would cause that kind of raise from Snake had a small pair beat from the start.
“We each start with a million in chips,” Snake said. “When one of us has them all, he wins. Blinds level at five hundred, one thousand.”
Every sense in my body, and a couple of my superpowers as well, were screaming there was more to this than a simple game for a million bucks.
“So, what would you do with my million, assuming you won it?” Actually, it would be the Gambling God’s money, not mine. I was fairly rich, but not rich enough to risk a million against some alien.
Snake smiled again without opening his mouth. Again his skin made that dry rustling sound and I tried not to show the shiver that was running up my back. This guy could really be helped by a little lotion.
The dealer flipped me a pair of tens this time around, and I folded them like they were a seven-deuce off. No point in actually playing at this point in the conversation. One of the women giggled and raised and both of the suckers staring at her chest called. Dan and Snake both folded.
Snake reached down under the table and pulled up a golden apple, placing it on the rail in front of him. “I assume you don’t remember this.”
I stared at the apple for a moment. The thing shone in the casino lights, begging for someone to take a bite out of it. My stomach clamped up so tight, I could hardly breathe. I was talking with a member of the alien race that had caused the legend of Adam and Eve. It sure had been a while since they had been here.
A very, very long time, actually.
“Plucked right from the Tree of Knowledge, I bet,” I said, keeping my calm exterior as poker-faced as I could, pretending to not really care.
Snake’s thin, eyebrows raised above the top edge of his sunglasses. I had surprised him, and for the first time, my poker sense told me this alien had a weakness.
“I am impressed,” Snake said. “I was led to understand that your race in general had no long-term memory, that you destroyed your past, or worshipped it for monetary gain.”
“For the most part you’re right,” I said. “But you still haven’t told me what the real bet is.”
Snake tapped the apple with a long finger. “Contained in the apple is the design and basics for a good dozen major inventions that would forward your race into the stars.” He touched the thing again. “Anti-gravity, time control, teleportation. It’s all in here.”
I didn’t mention to him that the Gambling Gods already had all of those things and humanity would discover them in their own sweet time. I wanted to see exactly what he was after in return.
“Nice,” I said. “Worth a million I would say.”
Snake shook his head, the rustling so loud this time that even one of the guys staring at the women’s chest looked around.
“Your money means nothing to me,” Snake said.
“I assumed as much,” I said, glancing over at where Patty stood near the main desk. Her eyes were wide and now Stan and Laverne were standing beside her. Clearly they were listening.
I gave Snake the old poker stare. “So what do you want in return if you win?”
“Political sanctuary,” Snake said. “And twenty of your acres of land with a privacy dome over it so I can build my own climate-controlled garden to live in.”
“And if I win?” I asked.
“You get the information in the apple and I will leave the planet and never return.”
I glanced at the poker front desk where Patty now stood alone. Clearly Stan and Lady Luck had heard and were off doing what they needed to do.
“Give me fifteen minutes to talk to my boss, and I’ll see what I can do,” I said, pushing my chair back and standing.
Snake put the apple away and nodded, glancing down at his new cards. “I’ll be right here.”
I motioned for the dealer to watch my chips and deal me out, pushed my current cards back at the dealer without looking at them, and headed toward Patty.
Three
We were ten paces down the hall away from the poker room when we suddenly found ourselves in Lady Luck’s big office. Stan was pacing in front of Laverne’s desk, and she was tapping her fingers, staring at a blank screen on her wall beside her desk.
After a moment an alien that looked exactly like the guy sitting in the poker room came on the screen. Only this guy wasn’t hiding his snake-like body with four arms and two legs. He was also golden colored, with streaks of red and blue and bright orange along two sides. I had no idea how large he was compared to the guy downstairs, but he seemed much, much larger on the screen.
Who knew that alien life in the universe would develop from snakes as well as monkeys?
“Laverne,” the snake said in perfect British English. “It is always a great pleasure.”
“The pleasure is all mine, Commander,” Laverne said, bowing slightly.
I just stared, more than likely my mouth open. Not often you see Lady Luck herself bowing to anyone.
“I was expecting your call,” Commander said. “I assume you have encountered the Lacit fugitive.”
“He is sitting in one of our poker rooms as we speak,” Laverne said. “He has challenged Poker Boy to a wager: an apple’s-worth of knowledge against political sanctuary in a heads-up game of no-limit poker.”
Commander shook his head. “They do love that old apple trick. Their entire race seems to never tire of it. They cause more damage to young cultures than any other race.”
“I’ll take your word for that,” Lady Luck said.
Commander frowned and glanced around at something off screen before going on. “We are not scheduled to arrive for another seventeen of your hours. You would do us a great favor by stalling him without giving him political sanctuary. We have been chasing this fugitive for a great deal of your time.”
“What will he do if we don’t agree to his challenge?” Laverne asked.
