The Grand Wheel

ELEVEN

‘Here it comes,’ Jerry Soma said.

He and Cheyne Scarne were sitting in a small cocktail lounge aboard the Wheel transport Disk of Hyke. The big ship was moving into the Cave of Caspar; as it did so, it had briefly intercepted a narrowbeam transmission from one of the big military bases there. The communications-room was now putting through the decoded signals to anyone who cared to hear them.

Soma hunched over the small speaker unit, listening to the stream of disconnected messages. Much of it was machine talk – one computer reporting to another. But there were enough verbal messages, many of them informal, to tell the tale.

‘Goddam,’ Soma said, almost gloating. ‘Just hear it. What a mess.’

‘I wonder how people are taking this in solsystem,’ Scarne tendered.

‘Closing their eyes to it, that’s how they’re taking it,’ Soma said. ‘Going around in a dream. The real truth won’t hit them until they find themselves under siege.’

He switched off the speaker. ‘I heard something interesting just there. Something about an alien randomness machine. Maybe we’ll be investigating that.’

‘You think the Hadranics will really get across the Cave?’

‘Sure they will. Then the war will really start.’

Scarne spoke with difficulty. ‘The Wheel ought to help. Instead of…’

He tailed off. Instead of making matters worse, was what he meant.

For civilization was being threatened on two sides. If the Hadranics didn’t make mankind their property, Marguerite Dom would gamble it away.

Perhaps contact with the Legitimacy had affected his attitudes, Scarne thought. Everything seemed crazy to him now: a civilization practically run by gamblers, reckless enough to throw it on to the gaming-table.

Earlier he had talked the matter out with Soma. Although contemptuous of Scarne’s newly-revealed background, he remained cordial and had been forthcoming. Where Dom was concerned, he was quite specific.

‘Dom has a need for real hazard,’ he had said. ‘It goes right to the core of his being. It’s a mystical thing with him. Religion, almost.’

Yes. Scarne recalled what Dom himself had said. Not formal laws, but hazard and contingency, lay at the basis of existence. Therefore a life lived contingently was the true life.

To the Legitimacy, of course, such an outlook was insane. They were on the side of formal laws. And yet Dom was vindicated: for here was the Grand Wheel setting out to meet others of like nature, gamblers who controlled, possibly, civilizations larger and more powerful than anything mankind had seen.

Soma noticed his pensiveness. ‘You’re looking glum, Cheyne,’ he said. He leered. ‘Missing Cadence, eh? You’re going to have to show your worth before the Chairman gives you another woman.’

The medallion on Scarne’s lapel chimed, informing him that Dom wanted him. He finished his drink, rose from his seat and left without another word.

Crossing a spacious hallway, he glanced at the murals depicting Lady, Johnny Diceman, the Queen of Cups, and other members of the ill-organized gamblers’ pantheon. How long, he wondered, before this mythical lore crystallized into a formal religion? Another century or two? He was certain that already Marguerite Dom believed, quite literally, in the existence of these supernatural personages.

How did Dom really see the coming contest? As an exercise in the worship of Lady?

Scarne passed on, heading for Dom’s apartments, savouring the particular atmosphere which the Disk of Hyke shared with no other Wheel establishment he had ever visited (including the roving gaming-ships which plied the fringe worlds) – the sense of special activity, the peculiarity in the acoustics which lent every sound a feeling of echo and distance. The transport was massive, a private world of its own. Aboard were all the people Dom wanted for the jaunt: the mathematical cadre, some council members, certain technicians. And, of course, his team of trained players.

Events had moved suddenly. Word had come that the game was arranged, and a time bracket set. The venue (chosen by the host, as was his right) came as a surprise: not some place well outside man-controlled space, towards the heart of the galaxy, perhaps, the probable home of the Galactic Wheel – but the Cave of Caspar, at the present time heavily invested by Legitimacy forces. The location made Scarne feel uneasy; no one knew the reason for it.

Entering the section of the ship set aside as Dom’s domain, he fought to calm himself. Each time he was called to Dom’s presence he found it harder to reconcile the various feelings he had for the man, fascination, even a certain degree of loyalty, fighting with feelings of disgust and the belief that he alone was in a position to sabotage the potential disaster.

The door to the chairman’s quarters closed behind him. Instantly he was enveloped in the oddly illusory quality of Dom’s apartments, where nothing that one looked at directly was what it had seemed to be out of the corner of the eye. He kept his eyes downcast, not wanting to be distracted by the visual tricks, to glimpse corridors that became blank walls, to be attacked by colourful monsters that turned out to be still-life paintings.

Like all Dom’s domiciles, the apartments had been meticulously constructed according to his personal tastes. Scarne walked through an arrangement resembling a set of Chinese boxes: one room opened on to a smaller room which opened on to a yet smaller room, and so on until the series ended in Dom’s favourite interior: a minute room in which all space was cunningly used, and which could comfortably contain no more than two people.

In this case the tiny room was painted a brilliant yellow and was decorated in the style known as decadent-baroque. Dom smiled a welcome as Scarne entered.

‘Ah, Cheyne, please sit down. I want to try out a new gambit I have been thinking over. Take up your cap, will you?’

As Scarne had anticipated, it was to be a training session. In the corner of the room stood an identity machine. He sat opposite Dom, avoiding his eyes while he fitted on the skullcap and took hold of the silver rods to complete the circuit.

Scarne was by now Dom’s favourite partner; it was certain they would be paired in any team games against the galactics. As the identity machine went into operation the two of them disappeared into one of the mind-games Wheel theoreticians believed most effective as training techniques.

Together they faced a situation accessible only to abstract thought. It was a game distilled to an essence, consisting of basic symbols capable of being translated into a thousand real games. Dom was sure they would encounter something like it when they played the galactics.

Eventually they came out of it. Dom removed his skullcap and sat deep in thought. They had won, but only because the random distribution of elements at the beginning of the game had favoured them.

‘Let’s try it once more,’ the Chairman said. ‘I’m not sure.’

Scarne emerged from the second round feeling tired. For some minutes they discussed the new gambit. Then Scarne sighed.

‘Did you hear the narrowbeam that was picked up from inside the Cave?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Dom drawled. ‘All rather predictable. There was one intriguing item, though…’

‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you?’ Scarne said heatedly. ‘What’s liable to happen if the Hadranics break through?’

Dom raised his eyebrows. ‘Really, I thought it would all have become clear to you by now, Cheyne. That’s the very reason why we have to get into the game with the galactics before very long. We may need somewhere to go.’

Scarne pondered these words, light breaking on his understanding. If the Legitimacy lost to the Hadranics, it would mean the end of the Wheel’s pitch – possibly the end of humanity as at present constituted. The hard-headed Wheel leaders did not care particularly about mankind – only about themselves, and the continuation of the Grand Wheel. Contact with the galactics offered the promise of other pitches to move into – other races to set up business among, perhaps, or whatever was available in the ambience of the supra-galactic syndicate.

The rats were looking ahead to the time when they might have to leave a sinking ship.

Once again Scarne felt the sinister coldness that surrounded Dom. The most basic of all loyalties – species identity – was absent in him. Perhaps that loyalty had gone instead to the Grand Wheel.

‘You really think the Legitimacy is going to lose, don’t you?’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t lay any bets on their winning.’

Scarne grunted. ‘And I thought you were being reckless. In fact, you’re hedging your bets. Backing both horses.’

‘Oh, but we could lose, and the Legitimacy could win. It’s still a gamble.’

‘The Legitimacy will win,’ Scarne said savagely. ‘They have to win – they must.’

He should, as Dom had pointed out, have seen more clearly what the tactic was. But his plain disbelief that the worst could happen had constrained him. The Legitimacy had always seemed so solid and immovable.

Scarne was familiar with all details of the yellow room. He glanced to where an antique ormolu clock gave the time as three minutes to ten. He knew that the clock signalled each hour with pleasant bell-like chimes.

In his mind a plan that had formed several days previously reached a point of decision. He came to his feet, ignoring Dom’s quizzical gaze, and turned to a secretaire that occupied nearly the whole of one wall of the miniature room.

Dom showed remarkable presence of mind. He sat calmly while Scarne, his movements only partly screened by his back, opened a drawer and took out a case containing two handmade single-shot duelling pistols. Dom had shown the pistols to him himself when giving him a guided tour of the room’s treasures. Like the ormolu clock they were antiques, three hundred years old and copied from weapons nearly a thousand years older.

Scarne took a single cartridge from the ammunition box. He now had it in his power to kill Dom outright, but he had known all along that he would never bring himself to do that. The second course, however, was acceptable – probably, to both of them.

He loaded one of the pistols, then replaced them both in their velvet-lined box, turning it over several times before returning to his chair.

Placing the box on the table, he removed the lid and spun the box several times. He could not be sure, now, which of the pistols he had loaded.

‘What is this, Cheyne?’ Dom asked in an equable voice.

‘I want to play another game,’ Scarne said, tersely. ‘A fifty-fifty game. That’s a real game, isn’t it? – one randomatics can’t touch. An even chance for both of us.’ He swallowed. ‘Only one of these pistols is loaded – I don’t know which. Take one. When the clock chimes the hour, we both fire.’

Dom chuckled lightly. ‘Ah, I understand. You want to stop me from reaching our appointment, but you wish to do so with honour.’ He paused. ‘There used to be a game not dissimilar from this, called Russian roulette. I have heard of this version, also. A form of duel suitable for confined spaces, I believe.’ Without hesitation he picked up one of the pistols by its curved and polished stock, cocked it and pointed it at Scarne’s heart.

Scarne did likewise, his movements heavy, his muscles rigid.

They were sitting barely two feet apart. After a brief glance at the clock, Scarne fixed his eyes firmly on the Chairman’s chest. The fingers stood at one minute to ten.

He reminded himself that while he had removed the element of skill from the encounter, the luck factor remained. Still, he did not think Dom had experimented with luck recently.

Dom was smiling, his face creased in a manner that might have indicated strain, or else simply amusement – or, more likely, excitement. For his part, Scarne could feel the blood draining from his face as the seconds ticked away on the ormolu clock. But he kept the barrel of the gun levelled steadily at Dom’s heart, and a deepening silence enveloped them both.

In that silence, the clock suddenly chimed the first of ten strokes. Instantly Scarne squeezed the trigger.

The hammer fell with a dull click. And after that, the silence became even deeper.

Dom had not fired.

The Chairman chuckled. Opening the chamber of his gun, he removed the cartridge. Then he took Scarne’s weapon from his nerveless fingers and replaced both pistols in their case.

Now he laughed whole-heartedly. ‘How interesting! It seems that you owe me your life, Cheyne! Perhaps I shall have occasion to remind you of it – a debt is a debt.’

Carelessly he tossed the pistol case on to the secretaire. ‘That was a stimulating experience,’ he congratulated. ‘Now, Cheyne, I would like to try the gambit just one more time…’