Barrington Bayley - The Grand Wheel

‘I don’t see what my parents have got to do with anything,’ Scarne said stiffly. He hadn’t seen them for over a decade.

‘Ask any psychiatrist. Parents are the first cards you’re dealt. It’s in the Tarot, isn’t it? The Emperor, the Empress… Anyway, you haven’t made very good use of your talent. Drifting around solsystem… no concerted plan of action. Caught between two stools: science and gambling. Several times you’ve been in trouble for bad debts.’

‘I’ve always come out clean,’ Scarne said. He felt uncomfortable, being described in précis in front of the girl.

‘But that’s all you’ve done.’ Soma made a sudden, angry gesture. ‘Hell, if you’d used your abilities you could have had everything. Money, whatever you wanted. Entry into the Wheel. The Wheel really leaves it wide open for people like you – didn’t you know that? But only if you can find your own way. All these years you’ve stayed right there below the fifty-fifty line. You never got into even one weighted game.’

Scarne didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘I’m surprised you want to use me now, if I’m such a loser.’

Soma smiled sourly, contemptuously. ‘You’re a failure. But you’re not a loser. Losers we can’t use.’

‘Don’t be too hard on him, Jerry,’ Cadence said tentatively. ‘You’ll make him lose confidence.’

‘He’d better not be that delicate. All right, Scarne, you’re working for us now. For the time being you’re assigned to the Make-Out while we check your performance. This is a special club, not the usual kind. We have special games, games you probably never heard of, new games, special clientèle – private list only, some of them high-ranking Legit officials who’ve got the bug, even. You’ll be learning to play against them.’ He paused. ‘One question I’m told to ask: can you play Kabala?’

Scarne hesitated. ‘I think I probably could. I’ve studied the game, but I’ve never had an opportunity to play it.’

‘The report on you says the same.’ Soma made a note on his pad.

‘Will I be playing Kabala?’

‘Not here. Who knows, maybe Dom will want to try you out.’

Searne’s mind thrilled at mention of the name. Marguerite Dom – chairman of the Grand Wheel! It excited him to think he might actually be that close to what he wanted.

He coughed and spoke in an innocent tone. ‘Is this all you want me for, as a player? I had hoped to be introduced to the planning side of things. After all, I am a highly qualified randomatician.’

‘Is this all we want you for?’ Soma mimicked unpleasantly. He leaned forward, his vulpine face glaring at Scarne. ‘We moved on past the three-card trick a long time ago. Here on Earth there are people whose whole lives are games of chance organized by the Wheel. There are people playing games just to win a chance to get into bigger games. It’s a study of life itself. There are people who don’t even know that they are playing. There are people who have a life-game set up for them before they are even born.’ He leaned back. ‘Don’t tell me it’s belittling to be a Wheel player.’

‘I won’t.’ Soma was a typical Wheel operative, Scarne thought. He had that odd combination that made the Grand Wheel so frightening. Intelligence, ability, even a certain amount of scientific knowledge, but along with it all the whiff of the hoodlum, the sinister influence of past Wheel history.

Maybe the members of the mathematical cadre, academic randomaticians like himself, would be of a different sort, he told himself.

He decided to ask a question of his own. ‘Last night on Io I hit a jackpot on the muggers. I’m curious to know how it was done.’

‘Are you implying the muggers are fixed?’ Soma asked sharply. ‘If so, forget it. All our fermats are inviolably random.’

‘It’s not that,’ Scarne said, skirting clear of the dangerous subject. ‘It was the vision itself… I’d like to know how it was achieved.’

‘What vision?’

‘The vision of probabilities.’

Soma looked puzzled for a moment. Then he glanced at Cadence, waving his hand at her peremptorily. ‘I’ll speak to the professor alone for a moment.’

The girl left. Soma settled himself in his chair again, tilting his face to look Scarne directly in the eye. ‘Tell me about this vision.’

Haltingly, as best he could, Scarne described what had happened to him when he took hold of the mugger handles. Soma listened attentively, asking a question now and then when Scarne’s account became vague.

When Scarne had finished he became silent for a moment. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You were supposed to get a brain charge, a few moments of pure pleasure, that’s all. This I’ve never heard of.’

‘Pure pleasure? Is that standard for a jackpot?’

‘Sometimes it’s a lot of money, sometimes it’s some type of brain charge. It may not sound like much; actually pure unadulterated happiness is something the average person never experiences normally. He remembers it all his life. This other thing, though, that’s something else again. I’ll check it out.’ Soma rose to his feet. ‘Cadence will show you to your quarters. Do you need any sleep?’

‘No, I’m all right.’

‘Rest a couple of hours, anyway. We’ll run through a session tonight.’ Soma’s hand on his shoulder was proprietorial, almost comradely, as he guided Scarne through the doorway. Cadence sat in an adjoining office. She rose to her feet, smiling nervously as Soma handed Scarne over to her; then she led him to a travel cubicle.

The cubicle was the standard means of transport in the tower cities. Zipping through a ubiquitous network of square-sectioned tunnels, up, down, sideways and in ranging curves, it could deliver one to almost any dwelling in the pile. This one did not take them far, however, staying within the precincts of the Make-Out Club.

For only a few seconds Scarne shared the cubicle with the silent presence of the girl. Then she slid open the door panel and they entered a tidy, comfortable room with a bathroom just off it. ‘Well, this is it. Hope you’ll be okay here.’ She moved around the room, turning on sidelights. ‘There’s just about everything you need.’

‘No holbooth,’ Scarne said, looking around.

She waved to an occasional table with an instrument on it. ‘There’s a vidphone, but it only serves the club, I’m afraid.’ She looked apologetic. ‘Jerry doesn’t want you calling anybody outside. Your attention has to be on the job.’

He threw his holdall on the bed and sat down beside it. ‘I couldn’t follow everything Soma was saying. What did he mean by weighted games?’

Her eyes widened. ‘You don’t know much, do you?’

‘Maybe not,’ he said irritably. ‘That’s why I’m asking.’

‘These days the Wheel is like one of those ancient secret societies,’ she told him. ‘Only bigger, grander. They don’t just make money – that’s centuries in the past. The Wheel opens up all kinds of routes for people. But you can only get it by winning, by combining chance and skill. Some people never even guess the possibilities are there. You, for instance.’

‘All right!’ Scarne was exasperated, not liking to be told what a numbskull he was. ‘But what’s a weighted game?’

‘One where the Wheel takes less than a fifty per cent chance of winning. It’s just a way of showing that you’re making progress. That the Wheel sees you as an individual, not merely as one of a statistical mass. The Wheel likes to gamble, too.’

‘But it’s not just money that’s involved?’

‘Not always. There are other things besides money. There are life experiences – the Wheel can provide those. Some people want to change their lives altogether, to become somebody else, somebody completely different. The Wheel can arrange that. There are techniques for changing people’s personalities, giving them new abilities and opening new doors for them. If you can put up the stake, play and win, you can choose what kind of person you’ll be, what kind of life you’ll live. Have you ever known someone disappear without trace? It could be that’s what happened to them.’