The scientist who had been studying Wishom’s data entered the tent. He stared hard at Shane, then turned to Dom.
“This is what I was about to tell you, sir. The boy there is some sort of psychic sensitive. He can sense probabilities with his mind. When the machine goes into operation, it creates some sort of field which registers with him. He’s their instrumentation.”
“He can sense probabilities?” Dom echoed.
“Yes sir.”
“You mean he’s a randomatician?”
“I think it’s a little more than that.”
“Why were you brought into the Cave?” Dom asked Shane. “To study the machine?”
Hakandra hushed the boy, but he spoke up nevertheless. “I know when a star is about to blow,” he said. “Usually, anyway. I give warning. At least,” his mouth twisted wryly, “that’s what I used to do.”
“But the nova process occurs at random here. Even randomaticians can’t predict it for a specific star.”
Shane shrugged.
“Are there others like you?” Dom asked after a pause.
“A few.”
want him, Dom thought. The Wheel had long suspected there was some such faculty in human beings. Gamblers and card players sometimes felt it-the certainty that the next card would be a particular. But it was a certainty that occurred so seldom that it
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was easily put down to delusion. If the Legitimacy really had developed it, then they had a powerful weapon to use against the Wheel.
Equally, it could form a valuable adjunct to Wheel capabilities-something as useful, perhaps, as the luck equations.
“Why were you screaming?”
Shane twisted up his face. “It hurts. It hurts so much. My talent is like a delicate flower. The machine bruises it, crushes it. It hurts.”
“A talent for poetry, too,” Dom murmured. He faced Hakandra again. “It is plain you have been mistreating this unfortunate youth. I am taking him into my care, for his own good.”
“No!” His face suddenly desperate, Hakandra clasped his arms around Shane. “He belongs to me-to the Legitimacy!”
“You do not know how to behave to a tender boy. You will do him permanent damage.” Dom beckoned forward the two guards who stood by the door. They tore Shane from Hakandra’s grasp.
“This is blatant kidnapping,” the Legitimacy official stormed. “You won’t get away with it. Chairman. This is something that simply won’t be tolerated!”
The glare from the randomness machine had died down. Dom cast one last glance at Haskand before he left.
“Investigate the machine as best you can. Give me a daily report.”
Hakandra stood with clenched fists as he led Shane away.
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Chapter Thirteen
“Now Shane,” Dom said gently. “Let’s see if you can tell me what these cards are.”
Slowly he laid cards face down on the table one after the other, glancing at Shane expectantly each time.
With a jerky movement Shane grabbed up the glass of fruit juice Dom had given him, gulped it, then pushed it away again. “I don’t know,” he said indignantly. He brightened. “Tell you what. Pass them out and I’ll tell you when you come to the Ace of Wands.”
“All right.” Silently Dom began to transfer the deck a card at a time from his left hand to a growing pile on the table. After a minute Shane raised his hand.
“There it is.”
Dom turned over the designated card. It was, indeed, the Ace of Wands.
“Ah,” he breathed.
He gazed fondly at Shane, smiling. “Young man, you could make yourself rich.”
Shane grunted. “Fat chance. I’ve been a ward of the Legitimacy since I was born.”
“But I have taken you away from all that,” Dom said, his voice seductive. “Those Legitimacy people have just used you for their own purposes, Shane. I can teach you how to make your gift work for yourself.”
They were back in the Disk of Hyke. Dom had spent the afternoon alone with Shane. Scarne had joined them for an evening meal. Now he sat to one side,
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watching while the Wheel master spun out his spiel to the youth.
Shane did not, on the face of it, seem either cooperative or impressionable. Scame did not know quite how to read him. In one way he seemed totally submissive; in another, neurotic and fractious. There was definitely something very odd about him.
His upbringing probably had a lot to do with it. His was a naturally rebellious disposition that had learned to be malleable. What was obvious was that Dom was excited by his new find, even more so than with the alien machine.
Shane stretched and yawned. “I’m tired.”
“Yes, of course,” Dom replied soothingly. He rang a bell. A valet appeared and, opening a door to a small bedroom next to the lounge, ushered Shane into it and helped him prepare for bed.
Dom himself slept in a more luxurious bedroom off the opposite side of the lounge. After Shane had retired he sat shuffling the Tarot pack for some moments, deep in thought. At length he spoke to Scame.
“At least we have an indication now why the galactics chose to play us in the Cave of Caspar.”
“Oh? Why?” Scame asked.
“Shane explained it to me. He claims the Cave is deficient in luck. Everything is bad luck here. For that reason, races, biotas and civilizations consistently collapse here-and stars keep exploding.”
“Is that possible?”
Dom nodded. “Luck is a cosmic quality. There is no reason why it should not be more concentrated in some regions than in others. I have asked my technicians to make some tests, and I have no doubt that they will find that luck has a very low index here-Lady has deserted the place, is how Shane puts it. Presumably our opponents prefer that as a background to play against.”
“Or perhaps they wish to forestall any mathematical manipulation of luck.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference-I’ve already
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up on the ground some distance away. He watched for a while as sprays were directed onto the tent frameworks, hardening to form nearly solid structures.
The lifts were also busy taking down crated items of equipment. It looked like preparations were in hand for a long stay, and more than the gaming team was to be present. There were squads of armed men also, probably to keep the Legitimacy camp sewn up.
At length Scarne found himself being nudged onto one of the lifting platforms and he descended to the ground. At the camp he found that a small tent had been set up for him, close to the pavilion structure that housed Marguerite Dom. Shane, however, slept in one of the partitions within the pavilion itself.
Two hours later he watched the Disk of Hyke whisper up from the desert, creating a brief dust shower, and go soaring off to disappear into the sky.
After that, anti-climax.
The first day was tense with expectation. Both Dom and Shane stayed in the pavilion and did not appear. Eventually, however, as nothing further came from the Galactic Wheel, the atmosphere relaxed. Dom set up a table outside the pavilion and took his meals there, inviting members of the team to join him. Sometimes he ventured into the Legitimacy camp, discussing the alien machine with Haskand and Wishom who, (despite his membership of the Legitimacy Armed Forces) seemed glad to discuss the problem with a scientist from a somewhat different cultural background).
With a pang of jealousy Scame watched as Dom paid every attention to Shane, cosseting him, ordering special menus for him, showering him with calculated affection. Shane accepted his favored status with a kind of smug pride. He was probably used to being treated as something special, Scame thought, but with the Legitimacy it had meant extra strictness, extra rigor. Dom was offering him the lush life.
Then, at the sunset of the fourth day, everything happened at once.
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Scame was sitting in his tent when he was called into the pavilion. All ten members of the games team were present. Shane, however, was nowhere to be seen.
“The final message has just come through,” Dom told them quietly. “A galactic vessel is on its way to pick us up.”
A shiver ran through the assembled team. “How long…”
“Almost immediately.” Dom paused, for a moment looked uncertain. “This isn’t quite the way I wanted it. I would have preferred for us to arrive at the gaming place under our own steam, instead of having them pick us up. But that, after all, is how we often handle it when we stage a game.”
His words caused a slight stir. “Yeah, when there’s a security problem,” someone pointed out. “Does this suggest that the game is illegal, in galactic terms?”
Dom’s eyes were withdrawn. “We have no information on that. The feasibility of the game, and the ability to pay up, is what is relevant.”
The sun was just vanishing below the horizon when they left the pavilion and followed Dom through the camp. The desert dusk was beginning to envelope everything. Somehow, the camp looked forsaken and forlorn without the massive presence of the Disk of Hyke, and Scame, looking at the back of Marguerite Dom ahead of him, saw for the first time a fallible, undefended individual man. The majesty of the Grand Wheel-the whole interstellar edifice of gaming houses, clubs, personal vassalage and economic control-was absent. Here was a small group of men with only their brains, their naked ability, to rely on.