“I see your point, sir.”
“Right. But don’t bet any of our money on fencing. I have another idea. Maybe I can win at javelin tennis.”
“The odds against you there are a dozen and one to one. You have never won a match, but due to your popularity, well, there are two dozen and eight players competing, and if you were only average, the odds on you should be two dozen and five to one, when in fact they are less than half that. But how will you plan to win at a game that is mostly luck?”
“Pole-vaulting, and taking the luck out of it. I’ll let you know for sure, Friday afternoon.”
“As you wish, sir. I’ve been doing a statistical study on the betting patterns for your events. Your fame is causing gamblers to bet on you in an irrational fashion. It really is a pity that you won both the fencing tournament and made a world record at the javelin accuracy event on your first time out. It was very profitable at the time, but it’s costing us money now. So many are betting so much on you that they are bending the odds. They are losing more than they are winning by a factor of fully one-third.”
“You mean to say that on the average, betting on me is a bad idea?” Kren said.
“Exactly. Since the second meet of the year, they have lost more money when they bet on the events that you lose than they have won when you win. And I’m including the wagers made by the In Crowd, who are making huge profits, along with everybody else, who aren’t. Winning one event in three, the odds on you should be three to one, or a little less than that, after the house takes its cut. But they’re not. They’re more often two to one, or even less. It’s a quirk of pari-mutuel betting. Your fame is driving down the odds on you, which reduces our winnings. When they bet against you, and we decide to win, we get their money. When they bet on you, they share in what we take. But I don’t see what we can do about it.”
“I do,” Kren said. “Write up two versions of your study. Do one in Keno, or maybe Leno, the scientific language, and make it a properly formatted scientific paper. We’ll get it out in one of the scientific journals. Then write up a simplified, popular version in Deno, and send it to all the newspapers and sporting magazines on the planet. Maybe if the gamblers learn that what they are doing is stupid, we can get the odds on me back up.”
“I’ll get right on it, sir. Getting a paper published as an undergraduate will be a boost to my academic career.”
“You’ll get it published, all right, even if we have to pay them to do it.”
“That is the usual procedure, sir.”
“Oh.”
* * *
On Tuesday, Kren dutifully reported to the director, telling him that he hadn’t seen Kodo, and that he would win the fencing meet on Saturday.
The director nodded and dismissed him, seeming distracted. He left his impressive office early, and was not seen again until the morning of the game.
The temporary coach in charge of javelins had been told to just let Kren do whatever he wanted to do, and Kren spent all of his time on the tennis singles courts, with a series of hapless opponents.
Kren’s thought was that the reason why he always lost at the sport was that he couldn’t know where his opponent was. There was a tall brick wall cutting the court in half, and any sort of signaling between the players and anyone else was strictly forbidden.
The wall was too tall for him to jump up and see over it, but a standard javelin was three and a half yards long, with blunted ends. It was lightweight, slightly flexible, and very strong. Kren thought that he might be able to use it to pole-vault himself high enough to see over the wall, and then, while he was flying up there, to whip the same javelin around fast and throw it downward at someplace where his opponent wasn’t.
What made this maneuver even more difficult was the fact that the rules required him to return the throw in under two seconds.
By Tuesday evening, he had established that the thing was possible, but only if everything was perfect. He had to be near the wall, moving in the right direction, and on his left foot when he caught the javelin very close to the end, but it was possible.
The Mitchegai have a six-day week. They don’t do Wednesday.
By Thursday night, he knew the strategy he had to use. This was to continue lobbing high, easy throws into the middle of the opposing court until just the right one came back to him. Then he would pole-vault, and nail the javelin into the ground.
On Friday, he sequentially beat every single member of the Dren University javelin team three times each. They all swore themselves to secrecy and went out to place their bets. So did Kren, Bronki and Dol.
Also, by this point, Kren and Dol had the plans for the outer fence completed, and had put it out for bids, telling the contractors that the strange shape had been decided on strictly for aesthetic reasons.
They were about to sign a deal with the low bidder when Bronki then got into the act, and within an hour managed to get the price reduced by one fourth, and got a sizeable kickback for herself from the contractor.
Kren suggested that Bronki use that kickback, when she got it, to buy more stock in the corporation. She said that she had been planning to.
Dol and Kren nodded to each other and signed the new contract.
On Saturday morning, Kren dutifully went to the opening ceremonies, and then participated in the fencing tournament. He won without great difficulty. Actually, losing was more work than winning, since he had to make losing look realistic. The crowds cheered, but no one came up and hugged him. The payoff was too small. But Duke Dennon would be happy, or at least not furious with him.
He did nothing unusual at the team tennis game, and for a change they won.
All of his cash, a gross, a dozen and four million, had been bet on the singles javelin tournament, which naturally made him nervous. There were many things that could go wrong.
It took three points to win a game, and he had to win five times in a row. One of his opponents could figure out his strategy, and counter it simply by always playing to the back court. Or, the judges could rule pole-vaulting to be illegal. Or, he could simply screw up, and lose before he had a chance to pole-vault. A single loss would wipe out everything that he had won since he got to the university.
He was beginning to think that betting everything on a single contest wasn’t the best way to go. He swore that from this point forward, he would never bet more than half of his fortune. But for now, his money was already down, and he couldn’t change that.
Kren won the first game surprisingly easily, before he got a chance to try his pole-vaulting stunt. He just kept throwing the javelins into the center of his opponent’s court, and three of them didn’t come back.
The second went well for the first two points, but then he lost two, and was beginning to worry before his opponent lobbed one high and near the barrier. Kren went into pole-vaulting mode and nailed it into the center of his opponent’s field, to win the match. The crowd went wild, and the judges allowed the point, to Kren’s considerable relief.
The third game went as easy as the first one, but on the fourth, he was up against some real competition. He stayed with the program, lobbing them back high and easy, and after over two dozen returns, the right one came in. Kren pole-vaulted for the point.
Someone told him later that it was one of the longest games on record, but all he could do was stick with his strategy, and eventually he pole-vaulted twice more and won the game.
The long game was starting to tell on him. Kren was beginning to tire as the last game started, and when he finally got a chance to pole-vault, there was his opponent, right in plain view, and making an obscene gesture at him.
This involved pointing the two upper fingers of the right hand upward with the other four closed, while moving the hand up and down. It signified “Up your cloaca!”
Something told him to get it over with, so instead of nailing the blunt javelin into the field, for the point, he threw it hard and straight at his gesturing opponent!