Philip Dick - World of Chance

Cartwright roamed round the luxurious office, examining file cabinets, the massive ipvic sets, the chairs, the desk, the paintings. "Where's my office?"

Shaeffer kicked open a heavy door. He and the other Corpsmen followed Cartwright past a series of check-points into a bleak chamber. "Big, but not as lush," Shaeffer said. "Verrick was a realist. When he came this was a sort of Arabian erotic house: girls, couches, drink, music, colours. Verrick sent the girls to the Martian work-camps, tore down the fixtures and gingerbread, and built this." Shaeffer rapped on the wall; it echoed dully. "Bomb-proof, shielded from radiation, has its own air-pumping system, its own temperature and humidity controls, its own food supply." He opened a cupboard.

The cupboard was a small arsenal.

"Verrick could handle every kind of gun known. Nobody can get into this room except through the regular door. Or——" He ran his hands over one of the walls. "Verrick designed this. When it was finished all the workmen were sent off to the camps. During the final hours the Corps was excluded."

"Why?"

"Verrick had equipment installed that he didn't intend to use while Quizmaster. However, we dealt with some of the workmen." He slid a section of wall aside. "This is Verrick's special passage. Ostensibly, it leads out; in reality, it leads in."

The passage opened up behind the desk; it wasn't hard to picture the wall sliding back and an assassin emerging directly behind the new Quizmaster. "Should I have it sealed up?"

"We'll sow gas capsules under the flooring, the length of the passage, and forget about it. The assassin will be dead before he reaches here."

Shaeffer shrugged.

Cartwright managed to ask: "Is there anything else I ought to know at this point?"

"You ought to hear Moore. He's a top-flight biochemist, a genius. He controls the Chemie research labs; this is the first time he's been here for years. We've been trying to scan something on his work but, frankly, the information is too technical for us."

One of the Corpsmen, a dapper man with moustache and thinning hair, spoke up: "It would be interesting to know how much of that stuff Moore formulates in technical jargon just to throw us off."

"This is Peter Wakeman," Shaeffer said.

Cartwright and Wakeman shook hands. The Corpsman's fingers were dainty, fragile, diffident fingers. It was hard to believe that this was the man who headed the Corps. who had swung it away from Verrick at the critical moment.

The guard showed equal interest in the tall old man.

"How does one become a Prestonite? Preston was an astronomer who got the observatories to watch for his planet—right? They found nothing. Preston went out after it and died in his ship. Yes, I once thumbed through Flame Disc. The man who owned it was a crackpot. I tried to analyse him; a chaotic jumble of passions."

"How do I analyse?" Cartwright asked tightly.

There was absolute silence. The guards were all at work on him; he forced his attention on the elaborate television set and ignored them.

"About the same," Wakeman said presently. "You've got everything tied up in your ship. If it goes down that's the end of you."

"It won't go down," Cartwright said.

"After you've talked to Moore," Wakeman said, "it'll be interesting to see if you still predict success."

Herb Moore rose as Cartwright and Wakeman entered the lounge.

"What do you want?" Cartwright demanded.

"Let's put it this way. You're in. Verrick is out. You hold the supreme position in the system. Right?"

Moore began pacing about, cheeks flushed with excite­ment, gesturing vividly, highly animated by the flow of words beginning to pour out of his mouth.

"Reese Verrick was Quizmaster for ten years. He was Challenged daily and he met every Challenge. Essentially, Verrick is a skilled leader. He operated this job with more knowledge and ability than all the Quizmasters before him put together."

"Except McRae," Shaeffer pointed out, as he entered the lounge.

Cartwright felt sick. He threw himself into one of the chairs and lay wearily back as it adjusted itself to his posture. The argument continued without him; the words that flowed between the Corpsmen and Verrick's bright young man were remote, dreamlike.

In many ways Herb Moore was right. He had blundered into somebody else's office, position and problems. He wondered vaguely where the ship was. Unless something had gone wrong it would soon be heading out towards Mars and the asteroid belt.

Who wanted him dead?

Moore's sharp voice brought him back. He sat up and opened his eyes.

"All right!" Moore was saying excitedly. "The word's gone out on the ipvic. The Convention will probably be held at the Westinghouse Hill; there's more hotel space there."

"Yes," Wakeman was saying tightly, "that's the usual place for the murderers to collect."

The Challenge Convention.

Cartwright got unsteadily to his feet. "I want to talk to Moore. You two clear out of here."

The men conferred silently, then moved towards the door.

"Be careful," Wakeman warned him. "You've had a lot of emotional shocks today. Your thalamic index is too high."

Cartwright closed the door and turned to face Moore. "Now we can get this settled once and for all."

Moore smiled confidently. "Anything you say, Mr. Cartwright. You're the boss."

"I'm not your boss."

"No, that's so. A few of us stayed loyal to Reese."

"You must think a lot of him."

Moore's expression showed that he did.

"Reese Verrick is a big man, Mr. Cartwright. He's done a lot of big things."

"What do you want me to do? Give him back his position?" Cartwright heard his own voice waver with emotion. "I'm here and I'm staying here. You can't intimidate me! You can't laugh me out!"

Cartwright tried to keep his hands from shaking. He was excited; he could hardly speak. And he was afraid.

"You can't operate this," Moore said quietly. "This isn't your line. What are you? I examined the records. You were born on 5 October, 2140, outside the Imperial Hill. You've lived there all your life; this is the first time you've been on this side of Earth, let alone on another planet. You had ten years of nominal schooling in the charity department of the Imperial Hill. From high school onwards you took courses, in welding, and electronic repair and that sort of thing. After you left school you designed a few circuit improvements but the Directorate rejected your patents."

"The improvements," Cartwright said with difficulty, "were used a year later."

"Then you became embittered. You tried many times to win a classification but you never had enough theoretical knowledge. When you were forty-nine you gave up. When you were fifty you joined this Preston Society."

"I had been attending meetings for six years."

"There weren't many members at the time, and finally you were elected Presidents. You put all your money and time into the crazy thing. It's become a mania." Moore beamed happily, as if solving an intricate equation. "This position—Quizmaster over billions of people, endless quantities of men and material... . And you see all this only as a means of expanding your Society."

Cartwright caught his breath.

"What are you going to do?" Moore persisted. "Print a few trillion copies of Preston's tracts? Distribute immense 3-D pictures of him? You already have one shrine—his remains in a wooden building in the Imperial slums—the remains of the saint, to be touched and prayed over. Is that what you're planning—a new religion? Are you going to organize vast armadas to search for his mystic planet? Are we all going to spend our time combing space for his Flame Disc, or whatever he called it. Remember Robin Pitt, Quizmaster number thirty-four. Nineteen years old, read ancient books, painted pictures, wrote psychiatric stream-of-consciousness material."