The Grand Wheel

EIGHT

Looking around the crowded force network platform, Cheyne Scarne decided the time had come to make a break for it. He turned to one of his two escorts.

‘I have to go to the men’s room,’ he said.

‘Okay, we’ll wait here.’ The escorts seemed relaxed. Scarne was not on probation any more.

The washroom was at the end of the platform, near the main concourse. Once inside the door Scarne went to the visionless phone on the wall and tapped out the number Magdan had given him.

A woman’s voice answered. ‘Yes?’

Pretending to stroke his cheek, Scarne cupped his hand round his mouth to muffle his words. ‘This is Professor Scarne,’ he murmured. ‘I’m at Sanfran force station. I have what you want. Will you pick me up?’

Scarne heard a click, a buzz, then a hum. Another voice, which from its intonation he knew to be a computer voice, spoke. ‘Give me your exact location.’

‘I’m in the washroom on platform sixteen.’

‘Do you have company?’

Scarne paused before answering. A citizen brushed by him and went out of the door. ‘Two Wheel heavies. They’re waiting for me further up the platform.’

‘Lock yourself in cubicle number nine and wait there until you are contacted.’

The phone fell silent. Scarne went and did as he was told. Inside the cubicle he sat down on the pedestal, feeling at once excited and weary.

After five minutes there came a sharp rap on the door. As he opened it a slim, conservatively dressed young man squeezed in quickly, closing the door behind him.

The two of them so crowded the small space that Scarne was obliged to sit again, the Legitimacy man towering close above him. The agent opened the attache case he carried and spoke in a low voice.

‘Remove your outer clothes.’

Scarne obeyed, clumsily. The agent was impatient. ‘Faster,’ he murmured, ‘our friends will be wondering about you.’ From the case he took fresh garments: a brown striped suit and a small flat hat, an item Scarne would normally never have worn.

When Scarne had changed, transferring his belongings to the new suit, the agent stuffed his old garments into the case.

‘Now for the face,’ he said softly.

Scarne was obliged to sit once more while the other man pulled something soft and squishy-feeling over his face and pressing it into his neck. The stuff seemed to melt into his skin with a faint burning sensation.

Opening his eyes, Scarne found he was being studied intently. The agent tilted his face. ‘That’s good enough. Better than it need be, in fact. Okay, we leave now. Enter the main concourse by the other door, so the Wheel mugs don’t see you – get it? I’ll be right behind you.’

Scarne nodded. He eased himself out of the closet. In the washroom he paused to examine himself in a mirror. His face was gone. In place of it was a different face altogether, with a different shape and a different texture. It was totally convincing. The hair was different, too. It was as if he had been given a new head.

Coming out into the main concourse he came briefly in view of platform sixteen again and could not resist taking a glance. His Wheel escorts, thinking he had taken more than long enough, were heading for the toilets.

‘Keep going,’ said a gruff voice behind him. ‘Make for the travel cubicles, fast but easy. Those goons are about to discover you’ve given them the slip and they’re liable to do something drastic.’

Scarne hurried on until they both entered a travel cubicle. The agent tapped out a destination, then turned to him with a knowing smile as the tiny room zipped on its way.

‘That wasn’t too hard, was it? You can take that face off now. Here, let me help you.’

He placed his hands on Scarne’s neck and tugged. There was a faint ripping sound as the mask came away. Scarne touched his cheeks with his fingers. They were warm.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

‘Don’t worry, it’s all being taken care of.’

There was a holset in the corner of the cubicle. Scarne pointed to it. ‘I want you to put me in touch with Magdan.’

‘Who’s Magdan?’

‘My controller – until recently. That’s the only name I have for him: Magdan.’ He spoke with flinty patience. ‘Get him for me.’

Moving at speed through Sanfran’s conveyor system, the cubicle jerked and swayed. The agent stared at him. ‘Are you crazy or something? You ought to know there’s no way I could do that.’

Scarne avoided his rescuer’s gaze. He’s probably right, he thought. The time to make his play, he decided, would be when he got to debriefing.

Neither spoke further, and shortly the cubicle slowed. The agent tapped out another code on the address register, taking them through a secret routing gate, at which they speeded up again before sliding smoothly to a stop.

As he left the cubicle and emerged into a long corridor Scarne immediately felt that he had been here before. This was where he had previously been briefed and addicted. The walls were the same shade of green. He was ushered down a passage and into a side room he also thought he remembered. The furniture, the layout, everything.

A big, cadaverous-looking man sat behind the desk. He directed a bright, dazzling light on to Scarne’s face.

‘Sit down,’ he ordered.

Scarne groped his way to the seat. ‘Would you mind turning the light off?’ he complained. ‘It stops me thinking properly.’

The glare diminished a little in intensity, enabling him to make out the debriefing officer’s enormous head. ‘Been up on Luna, have you?’ The man’s voice was almost caressing. ‘Got something for us?’

‘I was at Marguerite Dom’s demesne. I met the Wheel’s top mathematicians there.’

‘And they gave you the equations? Just like that?’ The caress became menacing, scornful.

Scarne licked his lips. ‘It wasn’t so hard, really. I saw some secret papers. I more or less have the run of the place – they think I have talent, they trust me.’ He raised his voice. ‘But I didn’t make a record of them. It’s all in my head. Before I tell what I know I want your part of the arrangement fulfilled. I want the antidote.’

A short, explosive half-snarl, half-laugh came from the other side of the light. ‘What are you trying on, Scarne? I’ll get a randomatician in here and you can talk to him. Later – well, we’ll see.’

‘No. I won’t talk. I want the antidote.’

‘You fool, don’t you know we can get anything we want out of you?’

‘Easier to give me the antidote.’ He leaned forward. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, I’ve been in this building before. You have a laboratory here somewhere. Take me there and give me the antidote. Then I’ll talk.’ A whine came into his voice. ‘I haven’t had a dose for three days. I didn’t take my supply with me to Luna.’

A door opened at the back of the room. A tall, slender figure stood there, hazy in Scarne’s dazzled vision, then moved to just behind the debriefing officer. ‘These equations are so easy to memorize? That sounds improbable.’

‘No, they’re not. I’ll probably have lost most of it in a few hours, if I don’t write it down. I don’t have all of it at that – just enough to make the case clear.’

The newcomer sighed, turning to the seated man. ‘How tiresome he is. All right, have his releaser brought up here, and we need waste no more time.’

Scarne shook his head vigorously, aware that he was winning. ‘Not good enough. You could give me anything – just water.’ His words came out in an eager rush. ‘I want to go down, myself, to the laboratory – the same one where I was given that foul stuff. I want to see the antidote in its bottle, I want to see it put in the hypo. Then I’ll know it’s the right one.’

‘How will you know?’

‘I’ll know.’

The tall man leaned down and switched off the spotlight. ‘You are a nuisance, Mr Scarne. You are playing games with us. Well, come along.’

As Scarne’s eyes adjusted to the room’s normal light he saw that the second officer had a smooth, round face and a long, gawky neck. His eyes were bright and staring, like polished pebbles. But his movements as he stepped towards the door to the corridor were smooth and self-assured.

Meekly, Scarne went with him.

The drugs laboratory was several levels further down, confirming Scarne’s belief that he was in the Secret Intelligence Service’s main centre of Earth operations. He remembered the place when he walked into it: the long benches, the racks of vials. Everything neat and tidy. It was like walking into a recurring nightmare.

A moon-faced biochemist in a white smock came towards them, smiling. ‘Another customer?’ he greeted, looking Scarne up and down. ‘I dare say we can find something to fit.’ He chuckled.

With a disclaiming gesture Scarne’s companion explained that Scarne was to be ‘normalized’. Scarne followed every word of their conversation avidly, poking into every moment of the transaction as someone who knew he would be cheated if the opportunity arose for but one instant. When the vial arrived he grabbed at it, reading the number pasted on it. HJ30795/N. He had memorized that number; it had been on the bottle from which he had been addicted. But what was the N?

‘N for normalization,’ the biochemist said reassuringly. The smile never left his face; it was fixed there.

Somehow it was too easy, too glib. But they want the equations badly, he told himself. And I’m not out of here yet. I still have to convince them they’ve got something, and head back to the Grand Wheel. Only they can protect me now.

The dermal spray hissed into his arm. ‘How long will it take?’ he asked.

‘Only a few minutes. The releaser is a related compound that forms a bipole with each molecule of the addictive substance. The new compound so formed is more complicated. It gives the same relief as the old drug but phases out the addiction, preventing withdrawal symptoms. You’ll feel weak, perhaps slightly dizzy for a day or two, then you’ll be as good as new.’

‘Now are you satisfied, Mr Scarne?’ the SIS interrogator said indignantly, turning his pebble eyes on him. ‘If you would kindly step in here, please…’ He gestured to a side door. Through it was a small interview-room. He sat down, placing a recorder box on the table.

‘Though not as accomplished as yourself, I imagine, I also am a trained randomatician,’ he told Scarne. ‘Would you please be good enough to give us what data you have.’

Scarne took out his pen. ‘I was stringing you along, I’m afraid. I was afraid you wouldn’t give me the antidote. I photographed the information with this. In fact I wasn’t able to look at it for more than a minute or two. But it’s the genuine goods, all right.’

The tall man frowned as he took the pen. ‘I see,’ he snapped. ‘I hope this isn’t another hold-out. Wait here, please, it won’t take long to have this processed.’

Minutes after he had left, the moon-faced man came in. ‘How are you feeling?’

Scarne passed a hand over his brow. ‘Queasy.’

The other chuckled. ‘You should. I’d better give you some rectification shots or you’ll be sick soon.’

‘Rectification? What are you talking about? You just gave me an antidote.’

‘An antidote – but not yours.’

Scarne tried to stand up, but was too weak. ‘I saw the number.’

Moonface’s voice came to him from a distance. ‘Our system of classification is generic, not specific. A whole group of compounds is indicated by that number. The one you have in your bloodstream now may mop up a few addictive molecules, but in general it will only mess you up.’

‘You tricked me,’ Scarne gasped.

‘You should have trusted us. We don’t like people not to trust us.’ He leaned closer, peering. ‘Eh, you look near to flaking out. Come on, I’ll get you some shots.’

Then Scarne went.

He went, but where he went to was not immediately clear. He was in a roaring, hissing greyness which he heard and saw with his mind rather than with his senses. It was a greyness that attacked and invaded him, threatening to dissolve his being.

Dimly he understood that he was back there: in the total randomness that underpinned existence. The randomness from which number and structure, and everything else, ultimately flowed.

The randomness that potentially was everything, but actually was nothing. The sea of non-causation that was pure formlessness.

He knew he could not really be there, because it was impossible to go there. It was an hallucination, as the Wheel cadre had said, conjured up by his fevered mind, prompted by his special mathematical knowledge. As if to confirm it, the greyness shifted like fog, adopting quasi-forms, separating out into billions of motes that drifted according to no pattern, acknowledging no spatial dimensions.

He became aware of flitting, ghostlike figures coming and going on the edge of his vision. One of them walked towards him out the impossible mist; it was a thickset man who peered at Scarne as he came closer, his hard pale eyes staring from a broad and tank-like face.

‘You come through the machine too, did you?’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Dom get you too?’

‘Who are you?’ Scarne stuttered.

‘Pawarce is the name. You ought to know of me if Dom set the machine on you. Can’t say I remember you. You’re from Sol, though, aren’t you? I know by the clothes. Well, here we are.’ He looked about him in the random fog, indicating it with a massive hand. ‘Limbo. Nothing ever happens here. We’re not really here at all – we’re just ghosts, you and I.’

He turned back to Scarne. ‘Let me tell you about that Marguerite Dom. He’s a maniac – he just has to gamble! He doesn’t care what he has to put up as a stake, he’ll sacrifice anything, anyone, Sol itself. He’ll put up his own mother and go for broke…’

The Pawarce figure began to dissolve, becoming insubstantial, transparent, holes appearing in it. In seconds it had dissipated into random fragments and joined the mist.

The roaring and hissing grew louder, then faded as Scarne was drawn through a black, vortex-like tunnel. The round, pebble-eyed face of the Legitimacy interrogator loomed up out of nowhere, raving at him. ‘You’ve made a mess of your situation, Scarne. Trying to fool us with this – junk! Now you’re going to have to make it back into the Wheel as best you can. You’re on your own. If you can’t come up with something genuine soon….’

‘They’re up there,’ Scarne groaned. ‘I swear to the gods the equations are up there on Luna…’

The nightmarish vision collapsed into a jumble of vague impressions, of disturbed mutterings and blank periods accompanied by nothing except nausea.

He awoke to find himself lying on a bench. Above him soared the vaulted roof of Sanfran station, and for some moments he stared at it, unable to move. Then, with an effort, he levered himself to a sitting position, his head throbbing.

As he checked the time, he noticed that he was wearing his own clothes again. Just over an hour had passed since he had entered the washroom on platform sixteen. His body like lead, he dragged himself to the nearest holbooth, and soon, after getting the number from the directory, he was through to the Make-Out Club.

Cadence answered, slipping into the chair across the table from him in the little holbooth room.

Her eyes widened to see him. ‘What happened to you, Cheyne? Where have you got to? Jerry’s furious—’

‘I had a black-out,’ Scarne interrupted her. ‘I don’t know what happened. I just woke up on a bench here in the station.’

‘Oh. Are you all right?’

He nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘The others called in to say you’d disappeared. They’re out looking for you now. We’d just about written you off, this end.’

‘Well, here I am. I’ll find my own way to you, shall I?’

She frowned. ‘How come they didn’t find you at the station? Did you go somewhere else?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Well, you’d better come right over here. Things are happening. I’ll tell Jerry – don’t be long, now.’

‘What things?’ he started to say, but she cut the connection. The holroom dwindled. He was back in the plastic booth, staring at the scanning plate.

I played it all wrong at the SIS centre, he told himself as he emerged from the booth. I have other information I could have traded – about the Pendragon creature, about Dom’s galactic contacts. But it’s too late now. They’d never believe me.

The drug, he thought suddenly. It was the drug that was responsible for these mental experiences – coupled, probably, with impetus given by the jackpot’s brain-charge. That item, too, he would file away for future reference.

Wearily he trudged towards platform sixteen.

‘What are you, some sort of brain-rotted cripple?’ Soma accused harshly when Scarne reported to his office. ‘You want nurses, or something?’

Scarne was apologetic. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Soma seemed unwilling or unable to give him more than a few seconds of his attention. He was ferociously busy, glancing through piles of tapes and papers he had stacked on his desk, handing some to an underling who incinerated them, while others went back to file. While he was doing this he barked orders at people who came into the office.

‘Whatever it is, it can be sorted out later,’ he said. ‘We’re leaving. Word just came through: the Legitimacy is staging a raid on Dom’s demesne – the bastards will be sorry for pulling a stunt like that, by Lady. Not that it makes much difference, we have our plans, too. Dom and his retinue are pulling out, to Chasm. That includes you and me.’

‘Chasm,’ Scarne repeated thoughtfully. ‘That’s quite a way from here.’

‘The Legits won’t be able to get their claws on us there,’ Soma said. ‘We were to have had a venue there shortly in any case. We’ve brought our schedule forward a bit, that’s all.’

‘Is it just you and me that are going from here? What about the others?’ Scarne coughed softly.

Soma looked up. He grinned wolfishly. ‘Hungry for your little girl friend, eh? Don’t worry, Cadence is on the list too – if only to keep you happy. You should be proud. You’re one of Dom’s specials.’

Scarne suddenly became concerned for his SIS supply. ‘Have I got time to pack a case?’

‘Don’t be more than five minutes.’

As he left, Cadence passed him on her way into the office, and smiled nervously to see him. He hurried to his apartment and collected what he needed. Minutes later he rejoined her, Soma and three other members of the Make-Out staff in a cubicle elevator which took them all the way to the summit of the tower city.

Scarne stepped out of the cubicle and gazed about him. Below, the landscape was lost in a haze of distance. The city itself was largely occluded from view by the roof platform; only some of the wings and protruberances could be seen, seemingly floating in the air beneath their feet.

Cadence appeared at his elbow. She pointed upwards. ‘Here it comes. Right on cue.’

He followed her gaze. A small shuttlecraft was dropping out of the sky. It came expertly to a stop only a few feet above the platform and hovered there while they boarded.

Then it shot instantly back into the void, heading out. In ten minutes Earth had shrunk to a disk seen through the passenger windows. At the same time a medium-sized ship, interstellar class and Wheel-owned, came rising from Luna to meet them – and not just them, but about a dozen other shuttlecraft that had simultaneously quit the mother planet.

As soon as the passengers had been transferred and the shuttles had receded again, the Wheel ship took its bearings. In minutes it was on course for a destination fifty light-years away.

Somewhere in the ship, as they departed, Marguerite Dom watched a special transceiver. On the holscreen an SIS cruiser was descending towards his now deserted manse, blowing up clouds of moondust. Dom, his face expressionless, watched as SIS commandos poured from the cruiser and disappeared into the building. Then he leaned over to switch off the set, sat back and sighed.