Scame was aware of how far he had come. He was at the end of a long process of selection that had screened both Wheel operatives and free-lancers like himself-a process that was still going on. Scame predicted that Marem would be dropped soon. The ever more vigorous tests were finding his limitations. Scame, however, was almost certain of being included in the team that would face the Galactic Wheel.
He had only one black mark against him: his supposed ‘black-out’. En route to Chasm he had been giv89
en a thorough medical check and pronounced fit, the addictive substance in bis bloodstream apparently evading detection. But Dom had warned him that any recurrence and he would be out. He wasn’t interested in anybody who was liable to flake out on him.
Scarne spent much of his time playing Kabala, and related games, with Dom. He could beat him now, about one time in three. He had been unable to prevent a kind of perverse loyalty for Dom developing in him; but along with it, as he became more sure of Dom’s utter egotism, and of his intentions for the coming game, there was a festering hatred.
He was in a state of agitation when he went with Cadence back to their suite. She watched him, her pale eyes wide, as he paced the main room, his face creased as if in pain.
“Cheyne? What is it? Is it too much for you? The games? I thought-” A foretaste of disappointment clouded her features for a moment.
“No, it’s not that,” he snapped irritably. He put his hand to bis forehead. “I can’t do it alone,” he muttered.
“You want me to call Jerry or someone?”
“No!”
His exasperation softened as he looked at her and saw her concern. He was never sure how much of her growing attachment to him was professional and how much was due to her having genuinely fallen for him -or whatever passed for that in her Wheel-enclosed life. She was a Wheel creature, of course. It wouldn’t really be fair of him to try to divide her loyalties.
But there wasn’t anyone else. And besides, as he gazed at her, taking in her worn, blameless face, Scame realized that the gamble would be worth the risk. Cadence was a born loser. She would be almost sure to do the thing that went most against her own interests.
He crossed to where she sat and knelt down beside her, taking her hand in his and looking at her im—
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ploringly. “You know more about this place than I do,” he said. “Did the mathematical cadre leave Luna too?” They must be here, he thought. They’d be needed. She nodded. “And all their material?” “What do you mean?”
“I want to take a look at some confidential material, Cadence. I want to do it secretly. And I want you to help me.”
Her frown deepened. “What for?” she said at length. Then she raised her eyebrows ingenuously. “Are you a spy?”
Desperately he squeezed her hand. “This game,” he said, “it’s got to be stopped.”
She snatched her own hand away, staring at him now in complete, displeased puzzlement. “Stopped? What are you talking about? It’s supposed to be the greatest thing that’s happened for a million years.” Ever since she had been let into the big secret, in fact, she had looked on her participation as a matter for personal pride.
“Cadence, don’t you know what’s going on?” He climbed to his feet, glowering down at her. “Don’t you know what Dom is setting up? He’s a maniac, an utterly ruthless lunatic. All he wants is some ultimate gamble to satisfy his lust as a gamesman. He plans to go for broke-with the whole of mankind in the center of the table! We’re the stake-every man, woman and child alive!”
“Has he told you this himself?” “Not in so many words.” Scarne pulled a kerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. “But that’s what it will be, all right. He’s so sure of himself-so sure he can win. He won’t care what he has to put up to stay in the game-he’s made that abundantly clear. And either you put up a stake the galactics want, or you can’t play.”
She folded her hands in her lap, staring at them. “If he says we’ll win…”
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“He’s a fool,” Scame told her curtly. “Unbalanced. He’s going in blind, without knowing anything about the galactics to speak of.”
“But it isn’t just Dom’s decision,” she said defensively. “It was the whole council’s.” “Oh yes, the council!” Scame laughed bitterly. “There’s been a purge in it recently, I hear. It’s pretty obvious the decision was by no means unanimous. Like all tyrants, Dom knows how to deal with councils.”
He walked to the other side of the room and took a cigar from a box. He lit it and sat down, resting his head dejectedly on his hand, puffing out clouds of violet smoke.
Two hours later Cadence said woodenly: “There are a lot of other excavations out back of this hotel. A lot of different sorts of stuff is kept there. I’ve seen cadre people go in and out, sometimes.” “Could we get in there?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. I’ve been in there once, with Jerry. It’s not guarded, really. Nowhere is once you get past the hotel lobby.”
I could just tell the Legit people it’s in there and let them do their stuff, he thought. But what if it’s not there? I wouldn’t have any more credibility left.
“How about you and me having a look around?” he said. “Maybe nobody would question us if we’re together.” Then, seeing the fear on her face, he said:
“Show me the way there, anyway.”
She stood up, her shoulders bowed. “All right. Let’s go.”
Scame felt a quiet but pleasureable sense of triumph. Cadence had gone through an emotional crisis and had come through as he had predicted.
He had to hand it to her. She was prepared to commit treason for the sake of conscience. There weren’t many people like that about, these days.
Or perhaps his revelations about Dom’s stake had scared her as much as they scared him. Apart from that, he had lied to her, admitting he intended to pass
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information to the Legitimacy while strenuously denying he was an agent. All he wanted, he had said, was knowledge of where the impending game was to be held. The government would then be able to prevent it from taking place, even if Dom, himself, Cadence and everyone else involved were destroyed in the process.
If only it were that simple, he thought wryly.
They met no one they knew on their walk through the hotel’s long carpeted corridors. The place seemed quiet, most people having retired early so as to be fresh in the morning.
Soon they had left behind the inhabited sections and entered a posterior region of storerooms and larders, gouged out of the bare rock. Hesitating only once or twice at intersections. Cadence led Scarne to an ordinary metal door at the end of a short tunnel.
She stopped before going on, gazing at him coolly. “I don’t really know why I’m doing this,” she said in a calmer tone than before. “I just want you to know one thing.”
“What?” he asked.
“I hope you’re telling me the truth. I belong to the Wheel. If Dom’s mad we all have to be protected from him. If not-”
She didn’t finish, but fished in her pocket for a set of keys she carried, pressing several in turn against the door’s lock plate. The door didn’t budge.
She looked back at him- “It’s locked. We can’t get in after all.”
“Here, let me try.” He produced a cigarette lighter and pressed it against the plate flicking the switch a few times. The tube glowed as it should-but at the same time the lock hummed as the circuits in the base of the lighter sorted through its combinations.
He tried the handle. The door swung open.
Cadence was staring in fascination. “Where did you get that?” she asked suspiciously.
“This?” Scame smiled, showing her the lighter.
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“Never seen one of these before? You can get them, for a price. There aren’t many electronic locks this won’t open.”
Behind the door the rock corridor continued, ending in a second door which bore no lock. Cautiously Scame opened it.
They crept into a rectangular vault. Uttered with metal-bonded crates, with arched openings on all sides. The place was dimly lit by glow-globes, but it was not dark enough to warrant the use of the lamp Scame had brought with him.
“Which way, do you think?” he asked softly. She pointed. “When I came with Jerry we went that way, to collect a games machine.” She looked around her. “I saw one of the cadre people go through that arch, over there.”