Barrington Bayley - The Grand Wheel

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.