Free Spaceland by Rudy Rucker Page A

to spend a couple of days with her sister in Fremont. Took off this morning. We had a little falling-out over breakfast, sad to say.”

    â€œWhat happened?” asked Jena.
    â€œI told her I’m head over heels in love with you, Jena,” said Spazz in his softest, hoarsest voice. I could hardly believe my ears. And then Spazz was letting loose one of his grating laughs, right in my face. “Just joshin’, dude.”
    The three of us got in my Explorer and swung by our house to get some stuff for the trip. While we were at it, we switched cars ; we drove to the airport in Jena’s shiny new frost green VW Beetle. Jena said it would be easier to park. and she was right. We got a great compact-sized space right by the elevator to the gates.

4
    Las Vegas
    Jena had brought her deck of cards along, so we played practice hands on the whole flight down, with Jena dealing and Spazz acting like another player. While we were playing, Spazz wrote a little Java simulation on his laptop to figure out precisely how much my subtle vision was going to improve my odds. The tattooed snake on his right forearm writhed as his fingers typed. A few hundred thousand hands scrolled by in cyberspace, Spazz quietly clearing his throat as he watched.
    â€œIn standard play, you win against the dealer forty-six percent of the time,” rasped Spazz. “With subtle vision, you never have to bust, and your win rate goes up to almost sixty percent.” Three-fifths of the hands, just as I’d thought.
    â€œThat’s puny,” said Jena.
    â€œWell, Joe could look way down in the deck and save his big bets for the hands he’s sure to win. Do you want to try that, Joe?”
    I doubted it. I’m a businessman, not an engineer. “Sixty percent is fine,” I said dismissively. “It’ll pile up.”
    â€œUnless a run of bad luck cleans you out early,” said Spazz, touching his ear stud.

    â€œAre you sure you’ll win, Joe?” asked Jena.
    â€œTrust me,” I said. “The main thing is that we’re very cool in the casino. I’m scared of those casino guys. Don’t you two be hanging on me.”
    â€œYou need us!” said Jena. “We’re your good luck!” She and Spazz leaned their heads together and laughed. They were getting along really well. This seemed like it could turn out to be fun—Jena knew how to handle a wolf like Spazz.
    The conversation turned to where we should stay. Spazz and me had been in Vegas for COMDEX in November; we’d been booked into the three-thousand-room Vegas Hilton right next to the convention center. I suggested we just go there.
    â€œToo plastic,” said Jena. “Anyway, this is on our own tab. I know this great funky place called the Hog Heaven. They call it the Hog for short. It’s an old casino on the Strip with the world’s largest motel right behind it.”
    â€œWhen were you in Vegas, Jena?” asked Spazz.
    â€œI was here in ’95,” she said. “I was doing research for a project on Indian Gaming.” I happened to know that she’d done that trip with Buck Sawyer; it had come a week or two after Jena and I had first met, back when we were working together at a CompUSA in Denver. “I’m half Yavapi, you know,” Jena told Spazz.
    â€œBitchin’,” he said. “I like Native American stuff. A woman at Acoma sold me a little round pot with a hole in it, and with a tiny figure of someone crawling out of the hole. But she didn’t explain it to me. Did you ever hear any legends about anything like that growing up, Jena?”
    â€œJena grew up Norwegian,” I said. “She doesn’t know much about being Native American.”
    â€œShut up, Joe, you sound like my stepfather,” said Jena. “And, yes, Spazz, I know exactly what you’re talking about. A lot of the
Pueblo tribes believe people came from under the ground.