[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Would this be the last poker game--with all
life at stake and every card a mere deuce?
MacPherson shuffled the cards over and over again. His hands were
almost steady.
"Want to place a limit on the bets?" he asked.
His two colleagues who had made the night drive with him from the
University said nothing, but Rothman laughed.
"Today?" he said. "Today, the sky's the limit."
MacPherson rested the deck on the table and watched as Rothman stood
up to look through the barred window at the glittering Arizona desert.
Rothman had got thinner during his months of confinement; his shoulders
were bony beneath the gray hospital robe and his balding head looked
like a skull.
"Are you going to play?" asked MacPherson. "Or is poker too childish an
amusement for a mathematician?"
Rothman turned his back to the window. "Oh, I'll play. When three old
friends from the Project suddenly turn up for a visit, even a madman
will string along."
Shuffling the cards again, MacPherson wished the other men would say
something; it wasn't fair of them to make him carry the conversation.
Professor Avery, who had cut his physics classes in order to join the
morning's party, sat in glum silence. His plump face was pale, and
behind thick-lensed spectacles which enlarged his eyes grotesquely, he
blinked as he watched the flickering cards. Dr. Neill, from Physical
Chemistry, was tapping his toe against the table leg, watching Rothman,
who stood at the window, waiting.
"But we can't have much of a game with only four people," said Rothman.
"We ought to have a fifth."
"Maybe we can find someone." MacPherson walked to the locked steel door
and rattled the rectangular lattice set in at shoulder height, put his
mouth to the metal bars and called out.
"Hey, Joe!"
* * * * *
An attendant in white uniform shuffled into the corridor of closed
doors, carrying a tray with one hand and scratching his head with the
other.
"How about joining us for a game of poker?"
Joe shook his head and grinned. "Not me, Professor! I start buddying
around with the loonies, I lose my job."
"But we're not inmates!"
"Maybe not, but Dr. Rothman is."
"Doesn't prove I'm crazy, Joe," said Rothman. "Conversely, not being
inmates doesn't prove these men are sane."
"It's a fact you don't look any crazier to me than a lot of
professors," confessed Joe. "I don't know. All I know is, _I'm_
not crazy enough to break the rules and lose my job. Besides, you
long-hairs wouldn't stand a chance at poker with me."
Still grinning, he shuffled out of sight down the hall.
MacPherson sighed and went back to the table. "Well, we'll have to get
along with just the four of us."
"There's always the unseen guest," said Rothman, "but you won't need to
deal him a hand. He already holds all the cards."
Neill looked up. "Stop hamming and sit down. Quit making like a maniac.
It's not even a good act."
"Okay." Rothman drew up a chair. "Now what was said about limiting the
bets?"
"Why bother setting a limit?" said Neill. "We're not likely to mistake
each other for millionaires and we all got exactly the same pay when we
were on the Project. Unless your sick pay has had two or three zeros
tacked onto it, you're not going to be making any wild bets, and as for
the rest of us--"
"University professors are still being paid less than nightclub
dancers," said Avery. "You're lucky to be out of the rat race,
Rothman. While we worry about how to pay the grocery bill, you can
relax, eating and sleeping at government expense. You never had it so
good."
"Maybe you'd like to get yourselves committed and keep me company?"
MacPherson rapped the deck on the table. "Stop that kind of talk. We
came here to play poker."
"Did you?" asked Rothman, grinning. "Then why don't you deal?"
"Cut, Neill?" said MacPherson. As he shot the slippery cards over the
table top, each flick of his thumb watched by Rothman's intent eyes,
he regretted this impulsive visit; it now seemed a gesture without
meaning. He wondered whether the others were as nervous as he was.
On the drive over from Los Angeles during the night, Neill had seemed
calm enough and even Avery, who had changed a lot during work on the
Project, had chatted with them unconstrainedly. It was hard to be
certain what other men were feeling, even when you had known them a
long time, but it could not be pleasant for any of them to be visiting
a former colleague who had been removed from the Project directly to a
sanitarium.
"Tell me something," said Rothman as he picked up his cards. "Do you
still think I'm crazy?"
"Don't be an idiot," MacPherson snapped. "Do you think we'd cut our
classes and drive nearly five hundred miles just to play poker with a
lunatic?"
"No," said Rothman. "That's how I know. But why aren't you frank about
it? Why keep on pretending there wasn't a special reason for your
visit?"
* * * * *
Neill was beating his foot against the table leg again and Avery's eyes
were hard and staring as he examined his cards.
"Who'll open?" MacPherson asked. "I can't."
"I can," said Rothman. "I'm betting one blue chip. Listen, Avery, why
won't you look at me? If you think I'm hamming, what do you call your
own act? How long are we going to go on kidding each other? They've
shut me up here, but that doesn't mean they've stopped me from logical
thinking. My three old friends from the Project don't turn up in the
middle of a Friday morning just to calm my fevered brain with a card
game."
"What's wrong with poker?" demanded MacPherson.
"Poker? Nothing. I know--It must be the test. Total conversion of
matter to energy. Not just a minute percentage any more--_total_
conversion. They've finished the set, haven't they? They're ready to
test. They're going to disintegrate Waaku, aren't they? It must be
today. Then this is the day the world ends. Tell me, when is zero hour?"
Neill's cards had slipped from his fingers and he stooped to the floor,
fumbling for them. Avery was bending one corner of a card, creasing it,
smoothing it out, and creasing it again. Nobody was going to answer,
MacPherson realized. They were leaving it up to him.
He spoke sharply. "You're getting onto forbidden ground, Rothman. You
know we're not allowed to discuss the Project with you. We're allowed
to visit you only under the strictest promise not to speak of it at
all. You're certainly rational enough to understand what the therapists
have told you, that you'd get well easily enough if you'd stop
worrying. Forget about zero hour. Everything's going to be all right."