Mardock Scramble полностью

Balot watched the shuffle. She felt that she might be able to pick something up—the reason he dealt in tempo with the players’ breathing. Whatever the reason, she had a gut feeling that she’d be able to start using her abilities shortly. She wasn’t about to surrender her fate to luck.

As she was thinking the Doctor said, “I told you you’d enjoy yourself!” The fat lady next to him was grinning in her direction too.

Balot nodded. A calm, composed gesture. The Doctor smiled broadly and engaged the lady in conversation again. He was saying that even an innocent young thing like Balot couldn’t resist the allure of a game like this. In other words, he was covering for Balot’s somewhat unnatural manner.

Before long the shuffle was over, and the dealer handed the red marker to the monocled man, who placed it in the pile of cards. The cards were cut, and round two was about to begin.

–Time to move on to stage two of our plan. I’ll give you the basic tactics.

Oeufcoque’s words appeared in her palm, and at the same time a table containing symbols and numbers started to appear on the other side. Information on how to compare her hand with that of the dealer.

–I’m going to gradually start feeding you more information.

Balot quickly referenced her card against the chart on her hand.

The rows were her card totals, and the columns the dealer’s upcard. Cross-referencing the two showed what move would be tactically optimal under what circumstances.

At the moment, her cards were 9 and 5, a total of fourteen. The dealer’s upcard, 5.

The table showed that the appropriate tactic in these circumstances was S—the symbol for stay.

Balot would have played it differently, but she would have been wrong. Under these circumstances, the best option was not to battle it out but to sweat it out, however odd that seemed to her.

She did as the chart indicated and gave the signal to stay.

The dealer glanced at Balot as he turned over his hidden card. A queen—bringing his total up to fifteen.

The dealer now had to draw another card—those were the rules, as his total was below seventeen. He drew a jack. Total twenty-five—bust. Balot was genuinely impressed.

–And I could have sworn that I should have hit.

–That would have been a mistake under those circumstances. The most common value of a card in this game is ten. There are four different types—the king, queen, jack, and ten. The cards in our hand have little effect on the dealer’s chances of going bust. According to a simple calculation the chance of drawing a ten is 31 percent—four times as likely as any other card.

–The ten factor, Balot answered Oeufcoque unconsciously. She’d had all this explained to her already, but it was different in real life, and she had had to experience it to believe it. Balot straightened herself up and tried to digest the implications of what had just happened.

–So, when the dealer’s upcard is a five, he has a 43 percent chance of going bust. That’s more than two times out of every five. When that happens and you don’t have a strong hand, your best chance of winning is to hold tight and wait for the dealer to self-destruct.

After the payouts were completed, the cards for the next hand were dealt. Jack and 6, total sixteen.

The dealer’s upcard was a 7.

The relevant corner of the tactics grid was highlighted. The symbol was H—hit.

Another unexpected move. Balot would have felt more comfortable staying. But she knew that this was just because she had yet to fully absorb all the information that she had been taught, to assimilate it and make it her own.

Oeufcoque seemed to sense Balot’s self-reproach and jumped in to explain the logic behind this move.