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been able to double it once, and only picked up six points. Then the Citizen won again: eight men, redoubled, for thirty-two points. The score now stood at 96-6. The next game could finish it.
    Still the Citizen’s amazing luck held. Had he, after all, found some way to cheat, to fix the dice? Stile doubted it; the Tourney precautions were too stringent, and this was an important game, with a large audience. The throws had to be legitimate. Science claimed that luck evened out in the long run; it was difficult to prove that in backgammon.   Stile’s situation was desperate. Yet there were ways.   Stile knew how to play the back game specialty, and now was the time. When his position looked good, he doubled; when the Citizen was clearly ahead, he doubled. But the Citizen retained a general advantage, so Stile’s doublings seemed foolish.
    Stile used the back game to interfere with the Citizen’s establishment on his home board. Because most of Stile’s men had been relegated to the bar, he had them in ready position to attack the Citizen’s men as they lined up for bearing off. This sort of situation could be a lot more volatile than many people thought. “Double,” Stile said, turning the cube.
    “You’re crazy,” the Citizen said, redoubling in his turn.   Stile hit another blot. He needed more than this to recover a decent position, but it helped.   The Citizen threw double sixes. That moved his blotted man all the way from the bar to one space from the end.   His luck was still more than sufficient to swamp whatever breaks Stile managed.
    Stile doubled again, though he was still obviously behind. The Citizen, when his turn came, laughed and doubled once more. Now the cube stood at sixty-four, its maximum. “You really want to go down big, tyke!” They were reduced to five men each; the rest had been borne off. The game was actually much closer than the Citizen realized. Stile had already won the advantage he sought. If the game had proceeded with only Stile’s first doubling, and he won by two men, all he would have would be four more points. If he lost by the same margin, however, the Citizen’s four points would put him at one hundred for final victory. But now the cube stood at sixty four, so that a two-man win by the Citizen would give him the same victory by an unnecessary margin—while the same win by Stile would give him 128 points, at one stroke enough for his final victory. So he had in effect evened it up. Instead of being behind by ninety points, he had only to win two points. The Citizen had been foolish to permit the doubling to go to this level; he had thrown away a major advantage.
    “I hear some of these animals can change to human form,” the Citizen said. “I guess an animal in the form of a woman could be a lot of fun to a lonely man.” Was there anything this slob did not know about Phaze, or any limit to his crudity of insinuation? Stile allowed a little ire to show, deliberately.
    “It is a different frame, sir, with different natural laws. Those animals have human intelligence.”
    The Citizen gleefully pounced on this. “So you have sampled the wares of the mares and the britches of the bitches!” He was hardly paying attention to the backgammon game in his voyeuristic lust. He wanted to make Stile angry and, in seeming success, he was letting the means preempt the ends. This was always ethically problematical, and often strategically unsound. The Citizen was setting himself up for a fall. If only the luck evened out!
    Stile had a good roll of the dice. He hit two blots, and the Citizen hardly noticed. “I don’t see that it is any of your business, sir, no disrespect intended.”
    “With animals!” the Citizen exclaimed, smiling broadly.
    “You admit it!”
    “I don’t deny it, sir,” Stile said, obviously nettled.  
    “And did they bother to change form each time?” the Citizen demanded, almost drooling. He was hardly looking at the board, playing