Luck was not probability, but it acted through probability. It was, so to speak, quantities of probability, a quantitative average throughout the universe. And, like any other fixed quantity, it could only be concentrated or increased at the cost of a diminution elsewhere.
For someone to be made lucky, someone else had to be made unlucky. Dom was using him as the ‘negative pole’ of the process of attracting luck.
So I end up as a dupe, Scame thought dismally. And Dom, charming, ambitious Dom, wins.
It was the second round: the galactic cut first. The Star Blaze, a reasonably good card, a member of the Minor Superior Set.
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Dom cut. The Neutron Ring, a lower card in the same set. Dom frowned, clearly taken aback.
And Scame suddenly began to feel physically better. He looked at his severed stump. The blood was coagulating with unusual rapidity, sealing off the stump. Soon he would be able, if he wished, to remove the alien’s tourniquet.
“We cut once more,” the galactic said to the nonplussed Dom.
He shuffled the cards in the machine. Scame noticed that his cancers had undergone spontaneous remission: the lumps had disappeared. A sense of well-being was flowing through him. He looked at Dom, and saw that he had become unnaturally pale.
Dom’s gaze flickered around the hut, resting ferally for a moment on Scame. Hastily he cut, but did not show or look at his card, motioning instead for the alien to cut for his card.
The galactic cut, and with no outward reaction displayed his card. It was The Dissolver, a card whose surface was made up of a close-grained tracery, or hatchwork in which images formed according to how it was held. And it was the highest card in the entire deck.
Dom’s face became rigid as he saw the card. He bent to look at his own, then let it drop to the table from limp fingers. It was a card called The Trivia, showing a single drooping flower. It belonged to no set, suit or grouping, and was the lowest card of the deck, being assigned no positive value.
Something bad was happening to Dom. He tried to rise from his chair but could not, as if his abdomen had congested and seized up. His flesh was almost bubbling as the rogue cells of cancer attacked his body at ferocious speed. His skin began to rot. He was falling apart before their eyes.
Rising, Scame stared down at him, feeling pity but also indignation. “You tricked me,” he accused the dying man. “Tried to sacrifice my life for your own ends.”
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From his doubled-up position Dom peered up at him. “But your life is mine, Cheyne,” he groaned. “You owe it to me. Don’t you remember? A debt is a debt. I told you I would remind you of it.”
Remembering the duel, Scarne stepped back, debating within himself whether Dom was merely trying cynically to cover up for his treachery, or whether he really did believe in such a system of morality.
The debate was cut off short. Dom gave a great groan of agony and fell from his chair. Neither Scame nor the alien went to his assistance, and while they watched his body began to disintegrate, to dissolve. In a few seconds not a trace of it remained.
“He has been drawn into pure randomness,” the galactic told Scame. “It is sometimes a consequence of the process he was using.”
“You knew about it?”
The alien rose, put away the cards, and moved the table to one side. “It quickly became evident. Were we generous, we might have warned him of the dangers of trying to force luck. If it is manipulated, then it is no longer luck in the proper sense; it becomes a physical force, involving, like all physical forces, action and reaction. The swing of the pendulum can come swiftly.”
“His good luck turned to bad, in like proportion,” Scame observed.
“That is why we never use any luck-manipulating process.” While he spoke, the alien seemed to be tidying up the hut, as if were preparing to leave. “Luck is perhaps the most powerful force that exists, and for that reason the most dangerous. It is in fact the basic force, or glue, that forms entities out of the preternatural randomness. Probability came later.”
“What happens now?” Scame asked.
“Your master lost; therefore all holdings known as the Grand Wheel become ours. All your gaming operations, and what accrues therefrom. We shall use them, naturally, for our own benefit.”
“Will people be aware of it?”
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“I can’t say.”
The galactic opened the door and went outside. Scame followed him.
His arm should be hurting more, he thought. He was scarcely aware of the ache.
Turning to him, the galactic spoke again. “You seem to have come out of all this rather well,” he said. “All the good luck which Marguerite Dom had concentrated on himself now passes to you. Luck is magic; practically anything can be achieved with it, simply by wishing.”
Scame gestured back to the hut. “Is that going to happen to me, too?”
“I would think not. You didn’t initiate the sequence; the charge will simply seep from you gradually. Goodbye, then. Use your good fortune well.”
With a loping gait the galactic left him and set off towards the horizon. Scame closed his eyes.
Simply by wishing.
Chapter Sixteen
There had been changes made at the campsite when the travel globe set him down on the desert again. The Disk of Hyke had returned, accompanied by a Legitimacy battlecruiser. Legitimacy troops patrolled both camps; all Wheel personnel were under armed guard.
As soon as he made his appearance Scame was picked up. He found himself facing Hakandra, Shane’s stem-faced guardian.
“What happened to your arm?” the official asked, glancing at the stump which now had solidified as effi—
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ciently as if it had been cauterized. Scarne still felt no more than a dull ache from it.
“I had an accident. I’ll get a new one grafted on as soon as there’s time.”
Hakandra nodded. “I’ll get someone to attend to it. Where’s Dom?”
“He’s dead. Probably.”
“Probably? What do you mean by that?”
“He’s dead,” Scame said with finality.
“I see . .. well, we’ll take a full statement from you later. We already know something of why the Wheel came to the Cave. Illicit contacts with an alien race. Were you a party to that?”
“Not really. Dom kept it to himself. It’s over now, anyway.” Scame wanted, if possible, to extricate himself from the whole question of galactic involvement. Otherwise he would never be free of the Legitimacy.
The SIS would want a report out of him, too. He would have to try to convince them that the luck equations didn’t work. Dom’s demise was probably a chilling enough lesson.
Hakandra was speaking again. “You’ve heard the latest news? We’re going to have to leave here. There have been major losses in the big battle at the far end of the Cave. The positions we’ve set up won’t hold the Hadranics back now. They’ll sweep through the Cave and into our star arm.” He looked grave and distraught. Pityingly he looked at Shane, who sat in the comer of the tent; the two were hardly ever separated. “All our work here has been for nothing.”
“What about the randomness machine?”
“We’ll take it with us. But it can’t be of any use to us now.”
“It can help you. Make another test run with it.”
The Legitimacy official looked at him closely. “What do you know about it?”
“I know something. You haven’t discovered the right settings for it, that’s all. How to control it.” He hesitated. “I met the people who built it when I was up on-where we went.”
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“You’re talking nonsense.” Scame shrugged.
Hakandra turned to Shane. “What are they doing with the machine now?”
“I don’t know.”
On a sudden decision Hakandra marched over to the laboratory tent. Within, there was the desultory air of a project that has failed but is still officially operational. Scame saw Haskand, the Wheel scientist, talking to Wishom, his Legitimacy counterpart.
“What are these settings?” Wishom asked him when Hakandra had made representations for him.
But Scarne didn’t know. In a technical sense, he understood nothing of the machine and the equipment the research team was using on it.
He walked up to the control rig, and beckoned Shane to him. “Put the power through,” he told the technicians. “I’ll make the adjustments.”
“It’s not safe!” Hakandra snapped.
Wishom waved his hand. “Why not? We’ve been working in the dark. He can’t do anything more risky than we did. If he does something silly, I’ll simply cut off the power.” He nodded to Scame. “I expect you’re a lunatic, but… what do you think, Haskand?”
“Where is the Chairman?” Haskand demanded sharply of Scame.