The door to the chairman’s quarters closed behind him. He was in the oddly illusory quality of Dom’s apartments, where nothing that one looked at directly was what it had seemed to be out of the comer of the eye. He kept his eyes downcast, not wanting to be distracted by the visual tricks, to glimpse corridors that became blank walls, to be attacked by colorful monsters that turned out to be still-life paintings.
Like all of Dom’s domiciles, the apartments had been constructed meticulously according to his personal tastes. Scame walked through an arrangement resembling a set of Chinese boxes: one room opened onto a smaller room which opened onto a yet smaller room, and so on until the series ended in Dom’s favorite interior: a minute room in which all space was cunningly used, and which could comfortably contain no more than two people.
In this case the tiny room was painted a brilliant yellow and was decorated in the style known as decadent-baroque. Dom smiled a welcome as Scame entered.
“Ah, Cheyne, please sit down. I want to try out a new gambit I have been thinking over. Take up your cap, will you?”
As Scame had anticipated, it was to be a training session. In the comer of the room stood an identity machine. He sat opposite Dom, avoiding his eyes
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while he fitted on the skullcap and took hold of the silver rods, completing the circuit.
Scame was by now Dom’s favorite partner; it was certain they would be paired in any team games against the galactics. As the identity machine went into operation the two of them disappeared into one of the mind-games Wheel theoreticians believed most effective as training techniques.
Together they faced a situation accessible only to abstract thought. It was a game distilled to an essence, consisting of basic symbols capable of being translated into a thousand real games. Dom was sure they would encounter something like it when they played the galactics.
Eventually they came out of it. Dom removed his skullcap and sat deep in thought They had won, but only because the random distribution of elements at the beginning of the game had favored them.
“Let’s try it once more,” the Chairman said. “I’m not sure.”
Scame emerged from the second round feeling tired. For some minutes they discussed the new gambit. Then Scame sighed.
“Did you hear the narrowbeam that was picked up from inside the Cave?” he asked.
“Yes,” Dom drawled. “All rather predictable. There was one intriguing item, though . ..”
“Doesn’t it mean anything to you?” Scame said heatedly. “What’s liable to happen if the Hadranics break through?”
Dom raised his eyebrows. “Really, I thought it would all have become clear to you by now, Cheyne. That’s the very reason why we have to get into the game with the galactics without too much delay. We may need somewhere to go.”
Scarne pondered these words, the light suddenly breaking on bis understanding. If the Legitimacy lost to the Hadranics, it would mean the end of the Wheel’s pitch-possibly the end of humanity as at present constituted. The hard-headed Wheel leaders
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did not care particularly about mankind-only about themselves, and the continuation of the Grand Wheel. Contact with the galactics offered the promise of other pitches to move into-other races to set up business among, perhaps, or whatever was available in the ambience of the supra-galactic syndicate.
The rats were looking ahead to the time when they might have to leave a sinking ship.
Once again Scarne felt the sinister coldness that surrounded Dom. The most basic of all loyalties-species identity-was absent in him. Perhaps that loyalty had gone instead to the Grand Wheel.
“You really think the Legitimacy is going to lose, don’t you?” he said.
“I wouldn’t lay any bets on their winning.” Scarne grunted. “And I thought you were being reckless, hi fact, you’re hedging your bets. Backing both horses.”
“Oh, but we could lose, and the Legitimacy could win. It’s still a gamble.”
“The Legitimacy will win,” Scame said savagely. “They have to win-they must.”
He should, as Dom had pointed out, have seen more clearly what the tactic was. But his plain disbelief that the worst could happen had constrained him. The Legitimacy had always seemed so solid and immovable.
Scame was familiar with all details of the yellow room. He glanced to where an antique ormulu clock gave the time as three minutes to ten. He knew that the clock signalled each hour with pleasant bell-like chimes.
In his mind a plan that had formed several days previously reached a point of decision. He came to his feet, ignoring Dom’s quizzical gaze, and turned to a secretaire that occupied nearly the whole of one wall of the miniature room.
Dom showed remarkable presence of mind. He sat calmly while Scame, his movements only partly screened by his back, opened a drawer and took out a
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case containing two hand-made single-shot duelling pistols. Dom had shown the pistols to him himself when giving him a guided tour of the room’s treasures. Like the onnulu clock they were antiques, three hundred years old and copied from weapons nearly a thousand years older.
Scame took a single cartridge from the ammunition box. He now had it in his power to kill Dom outright, but he had known all along that he would never bring himself to do that. The second course, however, was acceptable-and probably, to both of them.
He loaded one of the pistols, then replaced them both in their velvet-lined box, turning it over several times before returning to his chair.
Placing the box on the table, he removed the lid and spun the box several times. He could not be sure, now, which of the pistols he had loaded.
“What is this, Cheyne?” Dom asked in an equable voice.
“I want to play another game,” Scarne said tersely. “A fifty-fifty game. That’s a read game, isn’t it?- one randomatics can’t touch. An even chance for both of us.” He swallowed. “Only one of these pistols is loaded-I don’t know which. Take one. When the clock chimes the hour, we both fire.”
Dom chuckled lightly. “Ah, I understand. Yon want to stop me from reaching our appointment, but you wish to do so with honor.” He paused. “There used to be a game not dissimilar from this, called Russian roulette. I have heard of this version, also. A form of duel suitable for confined spaces, I believe.” Without hesitation he picked up one of the pistols by its curved and polished stock, cocked it and pointed it at Scarne’s heart.
Scame did likewise, his movements heavy, his muscles rigid.
They were sitting barely two feet apart. After a brief glance at the clock, Scame fixed his eyes firmly on the Chairman’s chest. The fingers stood at one minute to ten.
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He reminded himself that while he had removed the element of skill from the encounter, the luck factor remained. Still, he did not think Dom had experimented with luck recently.
Dom was smiling, his face creased in a manner that might have indicated strain, or else simply amusement-or, more likely, excitement. For his part, Scarne could feel the blood draining from his face as the seconds ticked away on the ormulu clock. But he kept the barrel of the gun levelled steadily at Dom’s heart, and a deepening silence enveloped them both.
In that silence, the clock suddenly chimed the first of ten strokes. Instantly Scame squeezed the trigger.
The hammer fell with a dull click. And after that, the silence became even deeper.
Dom had not fired.
The Chairman chuckled. Opening the chamber of his gun, he removed the cartridge. Then he took Scarne’s weapon from his nerveless fingers and replaced both pistols in their case.
Now he laughed whole-heartedly. “How interesting! It seems that you owe me your life, Cheyne! Perhaps I shall have occasion to remind you of it-a debt is a debt.”
Carelessly he tossed the pistol case onto the secretaire. “That was a stimulating experience,” he congratulated. “Now, Cheyne, I would like to try the gambit just one more time …”
Chapter Twelve
Marguerite Dom was sitting alone in his little yellow room when an urgent signal came from the bridge. He switched on the chamber’s holbooth equipment
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and within a couple of seconds was holled into the ship’s control room, his parallaxed image free to move about there.
They were nosing deeper into the Cave of Caspar, waiting for a message that would tell them exactly where the rendezvous was to be. So far, their instructions were no more precise than that.
The bridge Captain turned to him as his hoi image appeared. “The sensors have picked up a device approaching us fast, sir. We think it’s a weapon.”
Dom stepped forward, then stopped at the markers on the floor that informed him of the boundaries of his yellow room. He stepped back, fumbling in the air until his hand closed on a control stick. His image glided forward, crossing the bridge and halting by the captain’s side, from where he could view the bank of displays by which the ship was guided.