The Grand Wheel

FOURTEEN

The lucid globe had clearly carried them a considerable number of light years. Scarne could see, standing out against the starry galactic background, a more brilliant point of light that was obviously a fairly recent nova, and which had not been visible from their point of departure.

He took his eyes from the sky and studied the ground as the sphere fell towards it. The view was so open that, although the sphere contained a stable inertial frame, all within it automatically put out their arms to steady themselves.

The globe touched ground and, to Scarne’s mild surprise, continued to sink into it until the patch of desert they stood upon made a seamless fit with the somewhat lighter soil outside. What had happened to the earth the globe had presumably displaced he could not imagine.

Müller was the first to risk leaving the space bubble. When no harm came to him, the others followed. There was no sign of vegetation on the landscape, but the air was fresh and invigorating, and the gravity, too, approximated to Earth-normal – more signs that the planetoid had been artificially modified. The horizon was considerably less than a mile away. Its clean, sharp line was interrupted in one direction by the outlines of buildings that jutted up from just beyond it.

Where the asteroid’s illumination came from was a mystery. Their bodies cast no shadows. It was as if the air itself was aglow; not brightly, but with a cool, sterile light that, had there been a moon, could have been taken for moonlight.

Dom gestured to the distant shapes. ‘That’s it, I imagine. Let’s walk.’

They kept silence while trudging across the cinder-like soil. Soon their destination revealed itself as a complete installation that could have been a town, a fairground, or any of a dozen other hypothetical sites. Scarne guessed it was some sort of commercial gaming area. The entire planetoid, in fact, could have been an alien version of the game-ships the Grand Wheel deployed on the fringes of man-controlled space.

They walked between modestly-sized nondescript buildings which had a steely sheen. Further off, Scarne saw a large concourse, or midway, lined with booths.

The installation appeared to be deserted. The first indication of life was when a lighted sign began to flash on and off over the entrance to one of the larger buildings which had a domed roof.

‘PLEASE ENTER HERE.’

‘Our own language, too,’ Dom remarked wryly. He led the way through the arched openings and into a sort of foyer. A second archway led to a spacious round chamber beneath the building’s dome. There, seated on a high chair with an expansive crescent-shaped table at the level of his feet, waited one of their hosts.

The creature was humanoid, but considerably larger than a man – when standing, he might easily have stretched eight foot tall. He wore what seemed to be a tailored suit of outlandish cut whose soft colours altered when he moved.

Studying his too-large face, Scarne was struck by a fascinating fact. It was not a human face, the distribution and shape of the features being wrong, yet it reminded him forcibly of the face of Marguerite Dom. It was creased much as Dom’s was, and possessed the same over-ripe magnetism, the same air of decadence and ancient toughness. There, too, were the intensive eyes Scarne had first noticed on Dom – and, by an odd coincidence, they were the same shade of brown.

Dom was faced with a kindred soul.

‘Please be seated,’ the Galactic Wheelman said, indicating the human-sized chairs arranged around the table. His voice was resonant, rich with all kinds of strange overtones.

They complied, Dom taking the centre chair. Once seated, Scarne could see that the crescent of the table continued into a full circle, a fact which had not been evident when they entered the chamber. Or was it only an illusion? They seemed to be separated from the other half of the table by a semitransparent curtain. Behind it were vague seated shapes – their opposite numbers in the galactic team. It was impossible to say whether the curtain was a real physical barrier, or only a screen for some kind of projection.

When they were settled, the seated giant spoke again. ‘It is our custom, in a new session with a new client, to preface the game with a short contest in the form of a general knowledge quiz. Agreed?’

Dom looked uncertainly at Scarne before answering. ‘What is the purpose of this custom?’

‘To sound each other out.’

Dom hesitated. ‘Agreed, provided no bets are made on the outcome.’

‘The winner deals first in the subsequent game, or throws first, depending on the nature of the game, which is yet to be decided. A study of randomatics reveals that an advantage lies with the dealing team.’

‘Very well, we’ll agree to that.’

‘Then we will begin.’

There was a stir behind the curtain. A gruff but well enunciated voice spoke. ‘Three billion light years due galactic west lies a galaxy containing a star designated as catalogue number 6847398472 by the astronomers of a neighbouring galaxy. On the northern continent of the fourth planet of that star, three mountains lie in a straight line, each one hundred thousand feet in height. What is the name given to the most northern of these mountains by the natives of that continent?’

A long pause followed the question.

‘We cannot answer that,’ Dom snapped, then. ‘It constitutes information impossible to know.’

We know,’ the voice rejoindered. ‘The name of the mountain is Kzzozz.’

‘It is now your turn to put a question,’ the giant in the centre of the table said.

Dom thought, and smiled. ‘On the island of Britain, planet Earth, is an inland territory known on old maps as Shropshire county, where there lies a small hill surmounted by a stone monument, close to the ancient town of Telford. What is the name of that hill in the local language?’

‘The name of the hill,’ answered a second, sharper voice from behind the curtain, ‘is Lilleshall Hill, formerly Lulla’s Hill, after a Saxon chief.’

The gruffer voice resumed. ‘What was the event that initiated the war between a water planet and a sulphur planet in the Andromeda galaxy one million years ago?’

‘But there is no way we can know these details!’ Dom protested. ‘We are being subjected to trickery!’

‘There is no trickery,’ interjected the alien in the centre. ‘You satisfied yourself on that score before coming here.’

‘Then our opponents have mental faculties we don’t. It was agreed that neither side would pre-empt the other in that way.’

Very briefly, the giant paused. ‘Only in a technical sense are we in default. One of our players is a psychic who is able to elicit distant, though useless, facts. Since in the game we are to play this ability offers no substantial advantage, his presence is admissible.’

‘It remains unfair as far as this contest goes,’ Dom persisted firmly. ‘We withdraw from the quiz.’

The giant shrugged. ‘Very well. Since we have answered one question, and you have failed to answer any, we have first deal. We will pass on to the main business.’ Scarne could not avoid the impression that he was amused. Perhaps they had been playing a joke on Dom.

The alien shifted his bulk, drawing himself more erect. ‘Games are of many varieties, containing greater or lesser skill, greater or lesser an element of chance. There are board games, and there are games consisting of arrays of independent abstract symbols. These games create their own dimensions, so to speak. What are your preferences?’

‘The latter,’ Dom said.

While the alien spoke Scarne had been receiving rapid mental impressions; his mind was bombarded with vivid images of boards, counters, decks of cards, and so on. Some kind of telepathic machine was at work. The Galactic Wheel man was not relying on words alone to make sure his meaning got across.

‘One of the simplest of these,’ the alien continued, ‘though one of the hardest to play, employs only two symbols and offers equal probability on either of them appearing after a randomizing process, the players calling bets on each result. This can be done, for instance, by flipping a coin. The process is repeated many thousands of times while the players pit their randomatic skills against each other in predicting the throws.’

‘We’ve played it,’ Dom said confidently, ‘but we don’t intend to play it here.’ He pulled out a deck, ripped off the wrapping and spread it on the table before the alien. ‘We play cards. My game is Kabala.’

The alien’s face bent to view the painted cards. ‘Yes, we have studied it,’ he remarked. ‘We have a comparable game, and I suggest it is a game of this type that we now play.’

He pointed to a console that stood on one side of the domed chamber, against the wall. ‘It was agreed during negotiations that the game could not be one in which one but not the other of the parties was versed, which effectively rules out both your Kabala and our game, which we call Constructions. Instead, the designing machine will put together a special game for the occasion, of the same type as both Kabala and Constructions, and will teach it to us by means of mental induction. The experience we have gained in the past with our respective games will thus find a natural application here.’

He clapped his hands, and looked expectantly at the console. For about a minute nothing happened, then a cool, bright light issued from it and seemed to dart, first to Scarne’s eyes, and then into his brain.

He was dazzled by the light: it was like having a spotlight trained on one. He fancied he could feel it, like something icy, alive and intelligent.

And there formed in his mind complete knowledge of the new game. It was a game using a hundred-and-fifty-card deck, as difficult and abstruse as Kabala, if not more so, and bearing many resemblances to it.

Scarne felt as if he had been playing it all his life. He wondered how Dom had satisfied himself that the galactics would not cheat. It was obvious they had an impressive armoury of tricks.

‘You are ready to play?’ the seated alien asked.

The solmen all nodded.

‘A playing team may consist of up to four players, which may reduce as the game proceeds,’ their host continued. ‘We will therefore begin with four a side. You may, between rounds, stand any member down and use substitutes. There is a room nearby where the others can rest, or else they may kibitz.’

‘Understood,’ Dom said. ‘I’ve already got my four picked out.’

The alien moved his hand and suddenly there appeared on the table before Dom an avalanche of little oblong objects in various colours. They appeared to be made of some rubbery material. ‘We have agreed beforehand on the stock represented by these tokens,’ the alien said. ‘The pile before you consists of one million units in various denominations.’

Dom nodded.

Scarne stared in fascination while Dom sorted out his starting team, thinking over what that pile meant. He failed to understand how Dom’s mind could encompass so gigantic and final a fact. But there it was.

When the discarded members had retreated, Dom, with Scarne sitting at his right, looked questioningly at the alien. The creature spoke again, in a cordial tone.

‘We will play for twenty hours, or until your stake is exhausted. The bank cannot be broken – it is inexhaustible. There is only one further point for me to mention. To be able to read an opponent’s facial and bodily expression is held by some players to be part of the game. Since in this case the players are of differing biological species and are strangers to one another it would not normally be possible. We have overcome this difficulty by arranging for visual translation. Your opponents will appear to you to be human beings and vice versa.

‘Let us begin.’

All at once the big alien disappeared, together with the chair on which he had been sitting. Immediately following, the table underwent a transformation. It dwindled, drawing in on itself. The obscuring curtain disappeared. The four men found themselves sitting at a smaller circular table, just large enough to comfortably seat eight people.

Facing them were the alien team, aged perhaps between twenty and sixty. Scarne looked at each of their faces in turn. He could find nothing unusual in them. They were not exactly average human beings – they were average-looking professional card players. They were the sort of people he had been staring at over green baize tables all his life.

The scene was delusively familiar. Even the setting was unremarkable, for the architecture of the domed room was nondescript. It could have been anywhere. It was hard to imagine that so much hung on what would transpire between these eight players in the next few hours.

On the table was a deck of cards that the designing machine had in the intervening minutes newly manufactured. One of the aliens picked it up and inserted it into a shuffling machine. When the shuffled deck was ejected he began dealing it round the table, placing the residue in a shoe dispenser of the type used by the Grand Wheel.

Scarne picked up the ten cards dealt him. They were no ordinary cards. Some carried complicated picture symbolism, like the major arcana of the Tarot. Some of the number cards sported coloured decals which responded to thought. By concentrating, he could change their values.

These shifting cards, an elaboration of the principle of the wild joker, were a feature of the game. Even one’s opponents could, in certain circumstances, change the cards in one’s hand.

Dom was straining at the leash, the excitement already building up in him.

The game began.

Depth after depth.

It was already apparent that Dom had early on anticipated what kind of game they would be called on to play. Mutating cards, changing rules, were features of one of the games Scarne had been taught at the Make-Out Club, under the identity machine.

But here were no machine aids; everything was done by strength of mind. The rules of the game were hierarchical; it constructed itself as it went along in a dizzying spiral of strategy, which made each round a consequence of what had gone before.

The objective of the game was to create a symbolic structure out of the cards according to certain definite laws. There was a range of such structures, each comprising a sufficient number of cards to preclude any other similar system from being assembled from the same deck. To win, a team had finally to hold all the requisite cards and no others, neither one too few nor one too many – and the team leader had to announce the fact without ever having seen what his partners held.

The calling of bets, again the business of the team leader, was a close combination of bluff and intention. At the beginning of a round it was rarely possible to envisage the target system with any accuracy; only later did the outlines of a possible structure take shape. Betting began modestly, leaping prodigiously as events progressed, controlled as much by random influences as by the will of the players. Cards were bought unseen for enormous sums; subtle and pernicious double, treble and quadruple bluffs were perpetrated.

Total concentration was necessary; only someone with complete control over his mental faculties could hope to play a game with so many layers of complexity. As the hours passed Scarne became oblivious of his surroundings; the symbols of the deck enveloped him, seeming to constitute the only reality, a new universe in which he and the other players were trapped and destined to live out their lives.

It was rumoured that Kabala could heighten one’s consciousness. With this game, the promise was kept. Scarne broke new mental ground, his brain working with a speed he had never experienced before. It was like being reborn.

Then, after seven hours, Dom called a break. Scarne brought himself down to earth with difficulty; it was like coming out of a trance.

He was covered with perspiration. So, he noticed, was Dom.

Dom rose, bowing stiffly to the other side of the table.

‘If it’s all the same to you, I would like to play two a side from now on.’

The alien players glanced at one another. As they got the feel of the cards, both sides had by common consent already reduced their teams to three. The leader, depicted by visual translation as young and suave, nodded.

‘That suits us perfectly.’

The solmen took themselves to a buffet on their side of the dome; the aliens retreated to a corresponding facility in their half. Dom’s redundant players, some of whom had been trying to follow the game, gathered round. Dom, however, took a single shot of whisky and spoke only to his co-players.

‘Cheyne,’ he said tensely, ‘you and I are going in together. We’re in trouble.’

Scarne could not help but agree. Although they had won more rounds than the aliens – had constructed more metaphysical systems – the wagering was so complicated that the aliens were actually far ahead of them. Dom’s stock was already one-half depleted.

‘Two points,’ Dom told Scarne. ‘First, we have to concentrate less on systems-building as a target and more on winning side-bets. They can be more important than the ultimate outcome – that’s something they’ve tumbled to sooner than we have. They’ve latched on to the second point well ahead of us, too. The symbols involved in this deck are very potent – much more so than those of the Tarot. It’s possible by means of this game to alter your opponent’s mentality and hence to gain control over it – the team that happens to loses everything. I think they’ve already started building their strategy on that. And some of us have been falling for it. Even you, Cheyne.’

Scarne reflected, thinking over the mental changes he had been experiencing. He nodded soberly.

‘I think you may be right.’

‘We’ve got to win everything back, and then some. Are you ready? Let’s go.’

Scarne downed his whisky and finished his bread roll, then they rejoined the aliens at the table. Each pair of partners now faced one another, and he looked briefly into Dom’s eyes before beginning. It was impossible to tell what the Wheel chief was feeling. Desperation? Fascination? Or only pleasure in the game, still?

It was Scarne’s turn to deal. He sent the cards round the table, ten to a hand, then picked up his own and studied them, the number cards, the stable picture cards, the inner and outer sets.

He suddenly felt the slight mental jolt, like a missed heartbeat, that meant someone was practising thought-change on a card. With surprise he saw that it was one of his own cards that was mutating. He fought back, using his own control to keep the card from transforming. What, he thought, was the object of the manoeuvre? Play had not begun; his opponents had no clue as to the cards he held.

Then he got the answer. The galactics had no idea what the card was, but they could feel his resistance; they knew now that it was a card he wanted to keep unaltered.

Once again they had stolen a small advantage with a trick that could only be used once.

Dom led, with a picture card of the outer set, the card titled the Infinite Ray; he pushed a hundred units into the stakes circle. It was a bold move, a direct challenge. The player following tried to buy the card; Dom refused to sell. Another picture card fell down in answer to the challenge and Scarne, sensing Dom’s intention, added to it a card of even higher value.

Dom had set in train a process that could not be halted. There accumulated on the table a collection that naturally formed the core of a target construction – indeed no suitable system could be assembled without it. The struggle for possession of this package was now inevitable.

As usual, Scarne had developed a rapport with Dom that was almost telepathic. He understood fully that the cards in the centre of the table were Dom’s gambit, a decoy he had arranged while he attempted to win on the side-bets. Scarne’s mind speeded up, his thoughts flashed ahead to strategy and counter-strategy… the possibilities were endless. The deck was capable of a universe of interrelationships, echoing and resonating ad infinitum.

The rapidity of his calculation took another leap, like a starship slipping into over-drive. Then he discovered, with a shock of fright, that he could no longer see Dom, or the domed room, or the cards in his hand.

A white haze surrounded him. At first the haze seemed to be composed of nothing but frosty light; gradually he became aware that actually there was an image in it – an image that, indefinitely reproduced, made up the haze and was everywhere, like certain holo images.

The image was an enigmatic pattern resembling a manic machine, made up of rods and helices, some of which sported glistening blobs and nodules. It was the picture card known as the Apparatus, a card whose meaning was not entirely clear to Scarne. Once his eyes grasped it, the pattern began to move, breaking apart and reforming in a variety of alternative configurations. As he watched, it suddenly broke open, flinging itself out like an enormous disarrayed switch-back, and constructed a bizarre, impossible landscape.

The terrain could not adequately be described in ordinary physical terms. It had no dimensions of its own, only those which emanated from the supporting framework of the Apparatus. The white haze, a frosty fog, hung over everything. Odd objects, made from smaller rods, spirals, and oozing blobs, emerged from and sank back into the interstices.

In the near distance Scarne saw the two galactic partners sitting in their straight-backed chairs, watching him intently. He knew he had to find his way out of here and back to the card table. But how? Mentally he tried to retrace the route his thoughts had taken prior to his arriving in this place, to banish the landscape, but with no result.

‘Cheyne!’

The voice was Dom’s, though he could not say whether he heard it physically or only in his mind. ‘Cheyne, can you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Listen carefully, Cheyne. The symbols in this deck are extremely powerful – even more so than those of the Tarot. The game has unlocked our minds. The galactics are using it to create alternate realities.’

‘Is all this an illusion?’

‘Yes. A resultant level that they, once again, have realized ahead of us. The cards as physical entities are redundant. We are playing mind to mind.’

‘Is this part of the game?’

‘Probably. But – perhaps not entirely. It would be foolish to be dogmatic.’

Briefly, Scarne seemed to see Dom’s face in front of him, struggling to emerge from the fog. ‘How do I get out of here?’ he asked.

‘We can’t – not directly. We have to play…’

Dom’s voice faded, then came back again. ‘They probably don’t know we’re adept at this kind of thing, too. Use the doorway technique, Cheyne. Play a card – counter their realities with ours.’

Scarne noticed that the chairs on which the galactics sat were gliding slowly nearer to him. He sensed menace. ‘I don’t know if I can – not with these cards.’

‘Then use the Tarot. The correspondence is close enough – it ought to work. If we can’t do it they’ve got us beaten; we won’t be able to withstand their mental bombardment. We’ll be changed, and they’ll win.’

There was silence, and Scarne realized that Dom was no longer in communication with him. He was on his own.

Scarne had been taught the doorway technique, as Dom called it, after his mind had been made more pliable by experience on the identity machine. It was in fact a meditative practice employed by ancient Kabalists, by which one projected oneself into each card in turn, identifying with it so completely that it came to life, as if one had stepped through a door into the realm it represented. By projecting into the cards of the major arcana one could explore various facets of the Kabalistic system; by projecting into the court cards, one felt oneself to be glimpsing one of the four worlds of that system – the archetypal world, the creative world, the formative world and the physical world. By concentrating on the numbered cards of the minor arcana, one gained access to worlds dominated by one or other of the four elements as understood by the ancients – fire, water, air and earth.

It was presumably some such method as this that the galactics were now using, the difference being that others besides the practitioner were projected into the realities evoked. Scarne looked down at his hand, and after a few moments was able to see the cards he had held at the table. Some were unique to the deck created for the game, and had no correspondence in the Tarot. Others, however, could easily be cross-identified. He concentrated, and these cards underwent mutation, changing into their Tarot counterparts.

He chose one: the Ace of Wands, Root of the Powers of Fire. He raised it before his eyes, summoning up all his attention in the manner Dom had taught him, driving his full consciousness into the simple illustration of an upright baton round which were twined a pair of snakes.

Something snapped in his mind. The scene erected by the card Apparatus vanished, together with the galactic players who had invoked it.

He stood in the midst of a baking desert that stretched in all directions to a far horizon. The air scorched his throat as he breathed. Overhead was a sun that sent wave after wave of heat pounding mercilessly down, turning the sand into a blazing carpet.

He turned his head. A small salamander-like creature sat on a sun-bleached stone, regarding him with tiny glittering eyes. As he moved towards it the animal skittered away and disappeared into the sand.

If this was a product of imagination then the illusion was well-maintained. Scarne wondered how long it would take the galactic player to answer his move. After that it would be Dom’s turn.

Idly he took a few steps into the desert, feeling the energy draining from him. This was a world dominated by the element fire, arid, inexorable, very nearly lifeless. If something did not happen soon he would have to take steps to leave it.

Suddenly a slab of sand rose up from the floor of the desert on invisible hinges, creating minor cascades of shining grains. From out of the relative darkness stepped a scaly-skinned man-sized creature which stood on its hind legs and appraised Scarne with no sign of fear.

The native’s head was lizard-like, which gave it an air of tough, but wearied, desperation. But its intelligence was unmistakable. Scarne recognized its species straight away: he had seen drawings of it in the Legitimacy archaeological camp site.

He had gone back in time, to the planet where the randomness machine had been found. Either the climate was to become more temperate in the intervening period, or else he was nearer the equator. In any case, despite the inhospitable environment he was seeing the planet before intelligent life had quite become extinct.

The lizard-creature’s unclothed hide shimmered like metal, reflecting the glare of the brassy sky. It beckoned to Scarne, turning and retreating back beneath the raised slab into the cavity below. After hesitation Scarne followed. The slab swung down behind him; he was in a murky tunnel of rock and iron.

After a few yards they emerged into a chamber, only slightly larger than the tunnel itself, in which stood the very same machine Scarne had last seen in the tent of the Legitimacy scientist, Wishom. Now, however, the machine was in its original condition. Its metal casing gleamed, and the crystalline surface sparkled even more vividly than when he had first seen it.

Three lizard-creatures, including Scarne’s guide, were gathered round it. Scarne glanced, in the dimness, at the other equipment which crammed the chamber, and to which the randomness machine was attached. Thick cables led through the walls to elsewhere in the underground warren.

Why did the aliens seem so incurious about his presence? He moved closer to the big drum, gazing down into its scintillating depths. It was hard to say just where its surface began – or if it had a surface. He began to feel dizzy, and drew away.

The native who had led him hither spoke in a voice which, though hoarse and full of superfluous clicks, was nevertheless intelligible.

‘The hopes your people place in our machine will be disappointed.’

Scarne looked at him, deciding there was no point in being surprised that the creature spoke Sol Amalgam, the business language of man-inhabited space that would not be developed for millennia yet.

‘It is not a randomness control?’

‘Only in a negative sense. We had hoped to delay the nova process with it, as you do. But all it can achieve is an increase in destructiveness. It can provoke novae, but not prevent them. Come, I will show you how it works…’

He nudged Scarne forward. Scarne smelled the raw, leathery odour of the alien as they leaned together over the flashing drum. Then his senses were caught and trapped. He was falling, falling amid the brilliantly shining motes, and he knew that he had already left the desert planet, left the dominion of fire.

Events he could not see were taking place. Forces were pulling and tugging at him, this way and that. He was being sped through realms he could no more than glimpse.

The bulbous, full globe of a richly endowed planet swam past him, cities shining and sparkling on its surface like immense jewels. They were gambling cities, entirely given over to the pleasures of the game, inhabited by people who had long ago abandoned any interest in stability.

The planet fell astern of him into the darkness. He hung over a stupendous plane light years in extent, covered with the marks and signs of some gigantic pattern.

Then that, too, vanished. He heard Marguerite Dom’s voice again, sounding fuzzy as if fighting to overcome whatever it was separated them.

The outlines of the domed games-room began to impinge on his vision. ‘Where in Lady’s name have you been, Cheyne! Take a hold of yourself! Play or draw, Cheyne! Play or draw!’

Scarne reached over to the dispenser and drew a card, holding it close to his chest.

It was the Wheel. The Wheel of Fortune.

It was no coincidence that the wheel symbol was as much a feature of the galactics’ game, Constructions, as it was of the Tarot. This version showed a realistic picture – probably a photograph – of a perfectly wheel-shaped galaxy, a freak of nature that no doubt really existed somewhere. The rim of the wheel was well-formed, joined by eight only slightly curved arms to a glowing central hub. Surrounding the galaxy were wave-like symbols to indicate the formless nature of space – which in this case served the same symbolic function as water in the Tarot version.

Almost as soon as he looked at the card the room faded again; by this time his propensity for entering into a card was automatic and irresistible. The forces and scenes he had experienced after leaving the desert planet were, he realized, the result of cards played by the other players sitting at the table. But now, as when he had played the Ace of Wands, he felt that he was temporarily transcending the game altogether, leaving it because of some force innate to himself.

And yet it was not due simply to himself. It was the game that had brought him to this point, the point where he could no longer control either himself or his perceptions. The galactic wheel was rotating, sparkling, flashing, throwing off probabilities in all directions. Then it faded, forming an all-embracing background.

And at the same time Scarne’s mind cleared. He could see it now: the game, in all its details, comprising a mathematical exercise of the highest order. But it was a game in which the players were as much tools of the overall scheme as the cards were.

He seemed to be hovering above the card table, looking down on the four players, two of them genuine men and two who seemed so by virtue of visual translation, frozen in attitudes of secrecy and silence.

But the scene, microcosmic though it was, remained localized only briefly. Because the game was larger. Larger than the games-room, larger than the pre-formed asteroid. Larger than the Grand Wheel, larger than its superior counterpart, the Galactic Wheel.

Larger than the chilling stakes that, ostensibly, were its raison d’être.

Scarne was still beyond the doorway of the card known as the Wheel. Through the ever-expanding field of his vision there floated billions of blazing suns, billions of planets, circling and wheeling in the dark. He saw primeval planets, newly condensed out of gas and dust, building up their long geological ages, spewing forth turbulent atmospheres of volcanic fire, sulphur, methane and lightning.

The game was not abstract. In some manner that even Scarne, as a trained randomatician, could not fathom, it was bringing forth wholly practical consequences though at an immense remove from here. Out of its strategies, its moves and countermoves, life was being evolved on a distant planet.

It became clear to Scarne that this was nearly always how life originated. Without it, the universe would be very nearly biologically sterile – the randomness of nature gave the necessary chemical combinations a prohibitively low probability. In almost every case it was a mathematical game, played between groups of opposing intelligences, that supplied the missing key – providing not only the initial impetus but also influencing the type of life that eventually would develop.

Surprising though this was, the revelation quickly paled into insignificance for Scarne. Because the Wheel card contained even more knowledge. Vaster and vaster became the vista. He saw that there were games and players as far surpassing the Galactic Wheel as it in turn surpassed the Grand Wheel. The game he was engaged on could create an entire biota; yet there were other, bigger games. There were games that could trigger the formation of whole clusters of galaxies. On a fundamental level, there were games that constructed matter and universes out of the gulf of pure randomness.

There was no end to it. On level after level were found the hierarchies of power, merging in an indefinable series into the sea of non-causation. Dom was right – the gods were real. They were the conscious forces that gamed and gambled in the deeper randomatic levels. Scarne could only wonder if he was really meant to see all this: if it was a legitimate part of the game. By projecting into the card he had effectively played the card; but he could not avoid the feeling that something had gone wrong and his perceptions had been carried too far.

Then he felt himself falling. There was roaring all around him.

He was there again.

He had dropped out of structured existence and back into the sea of chaos. It roared all around him, generating numbers and again dissolving them.

But he remained there only moments, because the strain was by this time too great, and his consciousness failed altogether.

When Scarne passed out, the big alien who had set up the game reappeared. He stepped round the table to look down at Scarne, who had first slumped on to the table then slid to the floor, scattering his cards as he went.

‘Your friend has been interfered with,’ he said to Dom. ‘I detect foreign agencies in his blood.’

Dom rose from the table and walked round to frown down at Scarne. ‘His enemies injected him with an addictive drug,’ he said by way of possible explanation. ‘But I got my biochemists to cure him.’

‘They did not entirely succeed, it seems. The rigours of the game have caused a recurrence of its effects. However, I think they will prove to be temporary.’

‘In view of his condition, it was unwise of him to play so powerful a card,’ one of the galactic players observed, glancing at the Wheel, now lying face up on the table.

Scarne heard these latter words as he regained consciousness. Assisted by Dom, he got unsteadily to his feet.

His first impressions were the same as those he had experienced after receiving the mugger jackpot on Io. Everything seemed unnaturally vast. The domed room was as big as a solar system. The untranslated alien’s face, bent to regard him from its superior height, seemed impossibly foreign and gigantic.

But this time the illusion wore off fairly quickly. Scarne stumbled to his chair and sat down, resting his head on his hand.

‘Sorry about that,’ he muttered.

‘This game, at any rate, would appear to be null and void,’ the alien remarked. ‘The cards have been revealed.’ He turned to Dom. ‘Since your friend would not be advised to continue, perhaps you would care to select another partner. You have the option of calling quits now, of course – though half your holdings would remain in our hands.’

‘No – we play to the limit,’ Dom shot back, a degree of passion in his voice. ‘But a different game.’

He looked down at the disarrayed table, then turned back to the bulking alien. ‘I want to stake the whole of my remaining holdings on one more game – double or quits. If I win, we can continue. If not…’ He shrugged.

The alien paused, reflecting. ‘And the game?’

‘One without any skill in it.’ Dom seemed agitated. He swallowed. ‘Let’s do some real gambling. With stakes as high as they’ll go. Any random fifty-fifty game will do it. The toss of a coin—’

Scarne twisted round in his chair and regarded Dom with horror.

No, he was about to shout, let’s carry on playing. At least we might have a chance! But then he saw that Dom, by his own lights at any rate, was once again right. A fifty-fifty game was their best chance of coming out of this intact. They were being out-played by the galactics.

The two alien players were poker-faced as the untranslated galactic considered.

‘Are you agreed?’ Dom demanded.

‘It would be unlike us to refuse a challenge,’ the galactic murmured. ‘Even though, on present showing, it removes our current advantage.’

‘Any limit on the bank?’ Dom queried.

‘None.’

‘Okay.’ Dom relaxed, his shoulders slumping. He was, Scarne realized, tired. ‘I want to break off first and return to my camp, to freshen up, to – to freshen my luck. If that’s all right by you.’

‘Ah, luck,’ the alien said, as if amused. ‘It is astonishing how many gamblers pay homage to the god of luck.’

‘In our mythology, she’s a lady,’ Dom told him. ‘A goddess, not a god.’

‘That is because your species has maternal fixations. We see the gods as more disinterested. Will you return alone?’

‘I’d like to bring one other with me. For company.’

‘You are our guest,’ the alien said courteously. He turned his head, surveying the scene as if checking for final details. ‘Then I will bid you goodbye for the present. Before leaving, why not visit our Avenue of Chance? There are many small games there that might entertain you.’ He held out his arm, elegantly indicating the exit.

The Grand Wheel team made a subdued group as they left the domed building and emerged on to the dusty street. Walking with Dom, Scarne paused. To one side, the interstellar travel globe could be seen just over the close horizon. The concourse which he had noticed earlier, and which presumably was the avenue referred to by the galactic, lay a few yards away.

Dom gazed towards it. ‘What do you think, Scarne?’

‘It might be interesting,’ Scarne said, his voice still none too steady.

‘No harm in taking a look,’ Dom agreed.

As they walked towards the entrance to the avenue, Scarne found that his mind was still preoccupied with the Wheel card. He wondered if the glimpses he had received reflected real facts. Or whether they were only the work of the imagination, invoked by the rare combination of an addictive drug, his randomatic training, and the too-evocative symbols of the cards. He had been handling a Tarot pack, he recalled, minutes before he played the mugger on Io.

Probably he would never know the truth of it.

‘Games theory,’ he said aloud.

Dom shot him a mystified look. ‘What, Cheyne?’

‘It’s a problem biochemists have never solved. How life manages to emerge from inanimate matter. The odds are all against it, in chemical terms, yet it happens. The biochemists – they should study games theory.’

‘Is that what you learned while you were out cold on us?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you had held that last card and not played it, Cheyne, we might have come out well ahead on that round, despite the fact that you were already losing control. Still, it wasn’t really your fault.’

‘No.’

The Avenue of Chance was, at first sight, a tawdry affair. Built of a material resembling canvas, the booths had a make-shift appearance. The party ventured diffidently into the midway, then stopped as a peculiar animal, or creature, pushed through the front flap of the first booth and stepped out to accost them.

When squatting on its hind legs, the creature was about four foot high and looked somewhat like a cross between a monkey and a hairless dog, with a long tapering snout and narrow eyes that glittered.

‘Good day, gentlemen,’ it began in a soft, gruff voice. ‘Try your luck at my game of chance. The prize is of incalculable value.’

Scarne tried to peer past the folds that hid the interior of the booth, but he failed to see anything in the dimness within. Dom gestured around him. ‘Was all this set up just for us?’ he asked.

‘By no means, sir. We tour three galaxies with our little show, visiting all manner of out-of-the-way places. Step within, any of you, and dare the odds!’

‘What is the prize?’ Scarne asked curiously.

The animal licked its chops with a pink, pointed tongue. ‘In this galaxy it is a principle of life that all creatures have but brief life-spans. It is an escape from this law that I offer. Take a spin on my machine, and you may win immortality!’

‘And if we lose?’

‘Then your life-force becomes ours, to use as we wish.’

Müller spoke up. ‘What are the odds?’

‘A thousand to one against,’ the creature said smoothly. ‘Generous figures, in the circumstances. You have but a few decades to lose. But you may win years measured in millions!’

‘Come on,’ Dom ordered abruptly. ‘Let’s get back to the sphere.’

‘Wait a minute!’ Müller looked distraught; he was thinking hard. ‘I’ll take those odds,’ he said. He rounded on Dom, cutting off his angry remonstrances. ‘We’ve as good as lost, Chairman! This is the only way we’ll get anything. I reckon there isn’t much left to lose.’

A fateful look came over him as he lumbered towards the booth. The alien rose, held aside the fold of cloth to allow him to enter, then followed. Before the cloth fell, Scarne glimpsed a low table with some sort of apparatus on it.

Less than a minute later, the creature reappeared and once more sat on its hind legs. ‘Who else will dare to enter the presence of the gods and snatch life everlasting?’

It was, Scarne realized, the standard barker patter to be used on small planet yokels.

‘Where’s Müller?’ Dom demanded, blinking.

‘Your friend did not win and so lost his small stake. Come now, don’t hesitate! The great prize is still available!’

Dom shook his head in wonderment. ‘And after all I’ve taught him! Still, we don’t really need him any more.’

‘Maybe he was right,’ another teamster said, evidently much depressed. ‘Let’s see what else they’ve got here.’

‘No!’ Dom barked. ‘No more of this – we’re going back to the camp. Don’t you realize we are in the Cave of Caspar – the luck index is low here.’ He jerked his thumb. ‘Not that they rely on luck – they’ve fixed the odds in their favour.’

‘I hope you manage to find some, sir,’ someone else ventured.

Dom smiled, but said nothing as he led them back to the transparent sphere.