A surge of unbelieving hope rose in Scarne. He blinked, and almost didn’t notice the sternness with which Dom then spoke, turning to Cadence.
“All right, you can get her out of here now.”
She was hustled from the room, a picture of demoralization. “Don’t take it out on her,” Scame said weakly. “I led her into it-she wasn’t willing.”
He stopped as Dom turned back to face him and loomed over bis supine form, arrested by the hardness in the man’s eyes. “What will happen to me now?” he asked.
“Happen?” Dom’s eyes widened. “Why, you have been bad, Cheyne. You will have to be punished.” He raised a hand. A second door opened and before Scame could say anything further he was borne helplessly away down a long rock corridor.
Scarne was an object, a rag doll, a mass of raw feeling forced to spend long hours in delirium and fear. The physicians who examined him beneath the glare of powerful lights never deigned to speak to him. They drew blood samples in heated phials. At intervals they came to him to subject him to medications which made him feverish, sick and deathly cold by turns.
He knew that they were experimenting on him to find the right compound, and despite his position this knowledge gave him hope. Gradually, a feeling of calm began to pervade his body. Days later, though still feeling weak and ill, he walked again into the presence of Marguerite Dom.
In a small but exquisitely appointed room, filled with valuable objets d’art, the Wheel master lounged smoking in an armchair. It might have been some
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tiny living room where an impecunious cognoscente of minor treasures had arranged his lifetime’s collection-though in fact it had probably been set up in a few hours.
Scame entered, receiving from Dom a glance at once feral and tender.
“Sit down, Cheyne. How are you feeling, hmmm?”
Moving into the glowing lamplight, Scame hesitated before taking the only other chair available, intimidated by the other’s powerful presence in this cunning miniature of a room. The two of them fitted into the meticulously ordered space with an unnatural intimacy.
“The prognosis is favorable, I’m glad to say,” Dom congratulated, speaking softly. “How does it feel to be cured?”
“I ought to be half insane by now, without my shot,” Scame said. “It seems unbelievable, but your boys have apparently pulled it off.”
Dom nodded, murmuring. “And do you feel you can rely on me now?”
Bowing his head, Scame muttered a reply. “So it seems.”
“You should always tell me your problems, whatever they may be,” Dom went on. “Now you are free of your slavery, free of the Legitimacy, and we can take stock of your position anew. The question is, can I rely on you? I am not a vengeful man, but just the same you have committed a serious transgression.”
Scame did not answer. Dom drew on his cigarillo. ‘Tm aware you were never an enthusiastic Legitimacy agent-indeed you failed to apprise your contact of the true nature of our project, though for your information, that knowledge would never have gone beyond Chasm. Nevertheless, I appreciate your reticence in that regard.”
“I have no allegiances,” Scame said. “Not to the Legitimacy, to the Wheel, to anything.”
Dom chuckled. “But to Earth?” he responded. “To civilization-to mankind?”
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Scarne stared at him.
“All I need concern myself with,” Dom continued, “is that you will play until your guts hang out-and play to win. That I am fairly confident you will do.”
“So you’re pardoning me?”
Dom said nothing, puffing at his cigarette holder, looking enigmatic and self-contained.
“And what about Cadence Mellors?” Scame asked.
“Silly young woman. This project gave her the only chance she’ll ever get of getting into something big. Now she’s finished. I’m taking your little girl friend away, Cheyne, as a small punishment for your treachery towards me.”
“What have you done to her?” ‘ “Packed her off to a work-camp club on one of the minor worlds. It’s a pretty rough place, I’m afraid. She’ll spend the rest of her days there as a club tart. Until she’s too old. I dare say they’ll end up using her as a cleaner.”
Dom sneered slightly, suddenly derisive and supercilious. Scame clenched his fists. His feelings were confused. He felt a sudden surge of rage at Dom for his treatment of Cadence. At the same tune he was filled with relief-and amazement-that Dom was letting him off so lightly.
Then it struck him. Dom’s total lack of normal feeling. He felt no vindictiveness towards Scame, no resentment at the role he had played. Everything was a game to Dom, viewed with a slightly amused detachment. There were no loyalties, no recriminations.
“None of it was the girl’s fault,” he said painfully. “I led her into it-you should be more lenient to her.”
Dom snorted. “This sort of thing is your whole weakness, Cheyne. Think straight for once. Here you are worrying about a club girl when the fate of worlds is at stake-when you stand on the brink of something almost too big to imagine. And not only that, but at the moment when you finally found what you were looking for.” His eyes glistened. “Yes, Cheyne. A
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mathematical treatment of luck! We have it! Together with a practical technique to put it to use!”
“Then the mugger jackpot-”
“One of our practice shots.”
Scame sighed, pondering.
“I can make someone so lucky he hits a mugger jackpot first time,” Dom went on. “Or conversely, so unlucky his arm drops off.”
“You make it sound like magic.”
“Manipulated luck is magic, more or less.”
“Do you propose using it when we meet the Galactic Wheel? Is that what makes you so confident?”
Dom paused. “Not at first,” he said. “The technique is still under development. Later we’ll probably use it. The important thing is that the galactics, as far as we know, don’t have this technique. We may have something completely original.”
“Should they discover what you’re doing, they might well accuse you of cheating.”
Dom laughed. “Of course it’s not cheating! I never heard of a player yet who claimed it was cheating to be lucky. There are all kinds of charms, tokens and prayers aimed at attracting luck, and no one objects to them. This is the same thing, but applied through scientific method.”
Perplexed, Scame frowned.
“Of course, you disapprove of what we’re doing, don’t you?” Dom said gently.
“I think you’re taking an insane risk.”
“Good! I like your attitude-it means you’ll do your utmost to win!” Dom leaned across, peering closely at Scame. “Yes, I have your measure. You’ll play, and play as never before.”
Scame looked down at his clenched fists. He felt trapped in this tiny, golden room. Dom was right-he had him where he wanted him, giving his talents to the Wheel in spite of himself. He would play to win, because only in that way could he rescue humanity from the Wheel leader’s mad gamble.
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Chapter Ten
Shane was whimpering, his head down on a table already wet with his tears. Hakandra watched sadly, aware that the boy’s faith in his ability had been badly eroded.
“You shouldn’t blame yourself,” he said inadequately. “You’re in a new situation.”
Shane shook his head. Hakandra put a hand on his heaving shoulder, patting it gently.
He gazed through the window of the tent they shared, looking up into the sky. He could see a star, shining in the fading evening with a steady, cool light. In thirty years, as viewed from here, it would flare up and take on the vivid aspect of a nova.
In fact, the event had already occurred. Thirty years might seem a fair stretch of time in local terms, but when translated into stellar distances it was nothing. A star had gone nova, only thirty light-years away, and Shane hadn’t known anything about it: that was the plain, irreducible fact. Hadn’t predicted it, hadn’t even felt it when the explosion came, though he did claim to have received a sudden, dramatic convulsion some hours later-probably that was hysterical in origin, Hakandra thought, since by then the news had already arrived over the narrowbeam.
Self-induced or not, Shane was reacting to his experience-and even more so to his failure-with a typical lack of resilience. Hakandra continued to watch while the youth’s high-pitched sobs subsided into sleepy sniffles under the action of the sedative he had been given. Soon he fell into a drowse.
Wishom entered the tent. He glanced at Shane. 103
“Is he all right?”
“For the moment. Help me get him to his couch.”
Shane’s body was unresisting as they eased it to the bunk bed at one end of the tent. The youth mumbled his way into a deeper sleep.
The scientist straightened and sighed. “Well, there doesn’t seem much doubt of it,” he said, his clipped voice holding a repressed excitement. “It was the machine.”