Magdan showed none of the expected delight. “About time. I was beginning to write you off. How much did this mechanic take off you?”
“Everything. About two hundred thousand.” At that, Magdan became angry. “Hell, that was government money,” he exploded. “I have to account for everything you throw down the drain.”
“It was fun,” Scame admitted. “I can’t honestly see that I owe you anything. Besides, I thought I just explained: the Wheel wouldn’t have made contact until I was destitute. They have a high regard for tradition.” He paused. “By the way, did you know the Wheel does still run mugger jackpots?”
“So what’s new?” Magdan grunted, sulking into his thoughts for a moment.
“I hit one last night. After the game.” Magdan showed interest. “Well! That wasn’t exactly coincidence, was it?”
“I don’t know …” Scame said doubtfully. “The Wheel doesn’t fix its muggers. I’m sure of that.”
“Oh, certainly. Like your Tarot cards weren’t stripped.”
“That was different,” Scame told him. “The house didn’t do the sharping. A player from outside did it-a hired freelance or a Wheel employee from another level, somebody the house doesn’t know anything about. There was something unusual about this jackpot, too.” He ruminated, trying to find words to describe his experience. “I had a vision. A vision of randomness-pure randomness, below every level maths can reach.” He stopped. There was little point
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in trying to convey abstract ideas to this beefy secret serviceman.
“What are you trying to suggest?” Magdan asked slowly.
“Maybe the Wheel are using their new equations. The luck equations.”
“And they steered you a jackpot by sheer luck?” “Yes. Then they wouldn’t have to fix it.” “It’s quite a thought,” Magdan conceded. He became thoughtful. “When this is all over we’ll have you debriefed over that jackpot. They can be psychologically damaging-that’s one reason why they’re outlawed.” He frowned, sinking his chin into his chest, thinking hard. “I’m still inclined to think the mugger was rigged, though. I don’t have your belief in the Wheel’s fastidiousness. When did you say they’re calling?” “At ten.”
“Meantime I’m closing this connection down. We don’t want it traced. When you have something for us, call one of the numbers you’ve already memorized.” “The antidote,” Scarne said. “Huh?” Magdan looked up at him, sharply. “If you’re leaving me without a personal controller, I want the antidote. I’m as good as inside. I’ve done enough to deserve it.”
Magdan pulled an ugly face, expressing derision. “Forget it. You’ll get the antidote when you deliver the luck equations, and not a minute before.”
He rose from his seat. Scame began to get desperate. “Don’t leave me without a link-man,” he pleaded. “The Wheel could take me literally anywhere. What if I need to renew my supply?” “Call one of the numbers.”
“I might not be able to call a number! Or perhaps your agent won’t be able to reach me.” Scame’s tone became wheedling. “Give me the antidote. You needn’t worry about my reneging. I’m on your side.”
Magdan cast his eyes upwards. “Oh, sure. Look, you know the score, Scame, or at least you ought to
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by now. You’re not our only hook in the water, you know. Come through with the goods and you’ll be all right. After all, people like you never do anything without an incentive, do they?”
As Magdan turned to go Scame surged to his feet in a sudden fury. “You goddamned bastard,” he choked. He threw himself at Magdan. Their two forms tussled, the scanners integrating their hologram images and causing them to respond to one another like physical objects. The holbooth system was nothing if not pure communication.
Abruptly Magdan vanished, quickly followed by the holbooth room itself. Scarne found himself back in the darkened clothes closet, threatening empty air.
Nothing happened when he tried the activating switch again. Magdan had dissolved the secret holbooth connection, as he had said he would. Scame stepped from the closet shaking with reaction. One day he’d get even with Magdan, he promised himself savagely, but futilely. In fact, he was aware that he would not have the courage physically to attack the controller in the flesh.
When it came to method, he thought as he padded to the bathroom, there was little to choose between the Legitimacy and the Grand Wheel. Magdan had chosen a hell of a way to ensure his loyalty. The drug his men had forcibly addicted him to was a specific drug, one synthesized exclusively for use on him. The antidote was equally specific. Neither it, nor the drug itself, could be obtained from anyone but bis masters, the Legitimacy’s secret intelligence service.
In the bathroom mirror he examined his face carefully. Its lines were continuing to deepen, his incipient middle age being accelerated by the ravages of the drug.
Wearily he washed, dressed, and then breakfasted on coffee and synthetic fluffed eggs. There was time to wait before his appointment with the Wheel callers. He tried to relax, attempting to soothe himself by playing with a favorite curio: a pair of cubical white dice,
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the faces bearing black dots from one to six. They were centuries old, quite valuable as an antique. Loaded with tiny movable internal weights, with a little expertise-it was all in the wrist action-they could be made to come up with any number to order. Or, again by means of the right shake, they could be converted into even-weighted dice safe for inspection.
He shook the dice in his hand and threw a seven. He threw four more sevens, then switched to eleven.
In a games-conscious civilization the weighted dice were but one item in a long colorful history of cheating devices. Cheating at cards, for instance, was a science all of its own; it had a tradition of ingenuity that made it almost honorable in some eyes. Locaters, shiners, marked cards of inexhaustible variety, strippers both concave and convex, change-cards whose surfaces mutated and could assume the value of any card in the deck-the mechanics of it was endless, not to speak of sleight of hand, which in some practitioners had reached almost superhuman levels.
The ultimate in cheating devices was probably the hold-out robot, given its name from the ancient (but still used) hold-out machine, a device strapped to the arm which delivered either a set of cards or a cold deck into the hand. The hold-out robot was a proxie player, a nearly undetectable man-like robot who entered play but remained in touch with its owner who looked through its eyes and partly controlled it. More than a mere waldo, the hold-out proxie had its own brain and such a sublime sense of touch that it never needed to use trick shuffles or any other gimmick. It could take a deck in its fingers and count the cards down by touch alone, cutting to obtain any card it wanted. It could keep track of every individual card through shuffles and deals and so always knew what everybody was holding.
Hold-out robots had gone out of fashion recently, though. It was becoming easier to detect them. The
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last one Scame had heard about had been smashed to pieces, right there in the card room.
At ten the annunciator toned. Scame, who had become increasingly more nervous during the past half hour, checked the door monitor. Two men stood outside, both snappily dressed. One was big, with an air of restrained violence: the heavy. The other was smaller, more like a functionary.
He let them in. The heavy looked around the apartment in a cool, professional manner. “Is this place bonded?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Right. We don’t have to worry about it.”
The other spoke, ildly but firmly. “We’re here to take you to see some people. Professor Scame. Don’t expect to be back in a hurry. Unless you have any substantial objections, I suggest we leave now.”
Scame coughed, found his voice. “Where are we going?”
“Earth. The planliner leaves in half an hour.”
“Could you tell me exactly what I’m wanted for?” Scame asked, stumbling over the words. The Wheel man made no direct answer, but merely stared at him. Do you not understand your good fortune? his eyes seemed to say. You’re being taken into the employment of the Grand Wheel. You’ll be a Wheel man, like me, a member of the most powerful brotherhood in the human world.
Scame picked up the-hold-all he had already pre-prepared. “I’m ready,” he said.
A car was waiting in the street below. Scame sat in the back, sandwiched between his two escorts, while they rode through the town.
“What are your names?” he asked boldly.
The smaller man gestured to his companion, then to himself. “Caiman. Hervold.”
“We’re going to Earth, you say. At least you can tell me where on Earth.”
“Just Earth.” Hervold smiled wryly. “We just do our job, that’s all.”
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“Of course.” Scame peered out of the car window, watching the buildings speeding past.