A Call to Arms by Robert Sheckley

Author:Robert Sheckley [Sheckley, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

Early in her career, Dureena had come across an aging thief-a rarity, since there really wasn’t a great life expectancy in her trade. He had told her the secret of his longevity.

“There are a lot of distracting things out there.” He had made a vague gesture to take in the entire universe.

“Don’t let yourself get distracted. More people are brought down by distraction than by bad plans.”

Dureena had found that to be good advice. For the most part, she had followed it. It was too bad, she thought, mulling it over afterward, that she hadn’t followed it this time. She was going through the Zocalo…

And then she noticed the man. He was a tall, skinny Earther, dressed in a faded red velvet suit. He had a long neck and a prominent Adam’s apple. She noticed that he had big feet, and they were encased in high-top, lace-up shoes of the kind only rural types wore. He looked like he’d just stepped off the space launch, just arrived at Babylon 5. He had that raw, earnest look about him, the look of a man amazed by what he was seeing and trying hard not to show how much he was impressed by it.

He looked like a small-time carny worker. And he was setting up a game right in the middle of a corridor. She came closer and studied his features. On closer scrutiny, she decided he had two looks: one part of him was a naive country kid, and the other part was a wised-up country kid. She wasn’t sure which look was true. It might be interesting to find out. He carried a folding table under his arm. He set it up, and from one pocket he took three silver thimbles. From an inside vest pocket he extracted a little golden pea, which he held up to show to the few people who had stopped to take a look. He turned it in his fingers, catching streaks of light from the overhead glowbulbs.

He said, “It’s a pea, my friends, just an ordinary pea, but it’s made of gold. Not solid gold all the way through, but twenty-four-carat gold-plated. It’s worth something , friends, maybe a hundred credits. I’ll put this object of intrinsic and artistic value up against your money. Fifty credits secures the bet. But I’ve got cash, too. I’ll wager any amount against an equal amount. I’ll bet you can’t find which thimble the pea is under. The hand is quicker than the eye, friends. Or is it? Watch where the pea goes.”

Dureena knew at once what he was up to. This was a version of an old Earth game called three-card monte. In the playing-card version, you tried to find one card-an ace, perhaps-while the handler moved it and two queens back and forth. In the cup version, you tried to determine which cup or thimble the object was hiding under. Either way, the sucker lost. Although a lot of people knew the game, there were always some who didn’t.

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