“The original owner thought five dollars was a good price for it, considering market conditions. I forget his name.”
“You’ve been carrying this around?”
“I’ve been carrying a whole packet of them around,” Cartwright answered. “I took a loss on that one, but I wanted to make sure you accepted it. And I wanted to be sure it was a legal, binding transaction. Not a loan but a regular sale, the kind that goes on constantly.”
“Give me awhile to adjust.” Benteley managed to get the p-card back in his pocket. “Is this really on the level?”
“Yes,” Cartwright said. “And don’t lose it.”
“Then you’ve worked out a system of prediction. The thing everyone has been looking for. That’s how you got to be Quizmaster.”
“No,” Cartwright answered. “I can’t predict the bottle twitches any better than the next person. I have no formula.”
“But you had this card! You know what’s coming upl”
“What I did,” Cartwright admitted, “was tamper with the bottle machinery. During my lifetime I’ve had access to Geneva a thousand times. I threw a bias on it. I can’t predict what it’s going to do, so I did the next best thing. I set up the numbers of the power cards I had been able to buy, in such a way that they constitute the next nine twitches. If you think a minute, I got to be Quizmaster on my own power card, not one I bought. I should have worked that out better; that gives me away, if anybody stops long enough to analyze it.”
“How long ago did you begin to work on this?” Benteley asked.
“When I was a young man. Like everybody else I wanted a fool-proof system by which I could predict the twitches. I studied all the papers on bottle construction, Heisenberg’s Principle, everything related to randomness and prediction, cause and effect. I got in as a general repairman of electronic equipment. When I was in my late thirties I worked on the bottle at Geneva, down in the basic controls. By that time I realized I couldn’t predict it. Nobody could. The Uncertainty Principle is on the level; the movement of subatomic particles on which the twitches are based is beyond human calculation.”
“Was that ethical?” Benteley asked. “That kicks over the board, doesn’t it?”
“I played the game for years,” Cartwright said. “Most people go on playing the game all their lives. Then I began to realize the rules were set up so I couldn’t win. Who wants to play that kind of game? We’re betting against the house, and the house always wins.”
“That’s true,” Benteley agreed. After a time he said, “No, there’s no point in playing a rigged game. But what’s your answer? What do you do when you discover the rules are fixed so you can’t win?”
“You do what I did: you draw up new rules and play by them. Rules by which all the players have the same odds. And the M-game doesn’t give those odds. The M-game, the whole classification system, is stacked against us. So I said to myself, what sort of rules would be better? I sat down and worked them out. From then on I played according to them, as if they were already in operation.” He added, “And I joined the Preston Society.”
“Why?”
“Because Preston saw through the rules, too. He wanted what I wanted, a game in which everybody stood a chance of winning. Not that I expect everybody to carry off the same size pot at the end of the game. I don’t intend to divide the winnings evenly. But I think everybody ought to have his chance at those winnings.”
“Then you knew you were Quizmaster even before they came to notify you.”
“I knew weeks in advance. I had set a bias on the bottle the last time I was called to repair it. Every time I worked on the mechanism I threw more and more bias on it. The last time I was able to get complete control. At this moment it doesn’t operate randomly at all. I have it stacked years ahead . . . But that won’t be necessary, now. I didn’t have anybody to take over, in those days.”
“What are you going to do now?” Benteley asked. “You can’t hold power again.”
“I told you: I’m going to retire. Rita and I never really stopped work long enough to enjoy ourselves. I’m going to spend the rest of my days sunning myself in some modern leisure resort, like this one. I’m looking forward to sleeping, contemplating, printing leaflets.”
“What kind of leaflets?”
“On the Care and Maintenance of Electronic Equipment,” Cartwright said. “My specialty.”
Rita spoke up. “You have about twenty-four hours, Ted. Then you’re Quizmaster. You’re where my uncle was, a few days ago. You’ll be waiting for them to come and notify you. That was quite a moment, when we heard them landing on the roof. And Major Shaeffer came clumping in with his briefcase.”
“Shaeffer knows,” Cartwright said. “He and I worked it out before I gave you the card.”
“Then the Corps will respect the twitch?”
“The Corps will respect you” Cartwright answered quietly. “It’s going to be a big job. Things are happening. The stars are opening up like roses. The Disc is out there . . . a half-way point. The whole system will be changing.”
“You think you can handle it?” Rita asked Benteley.
“I think so,” Benteley said thoughtfully. “I wanted to get where I could make changes; here I am.” Suddenly he laughed. “I’m probably the first person who was ever under oath to himself. I’m both protector and serf at the same time. I have the power of life and death over myself.”
“Maybe,” Cartwright said, impressed, “that might catch on. It sounds like a good kind of oath, to me. You take full responsibility for protection and for carrying out the work. You have nobody to answer to but your own—conscience. Is that the right word?”
Major Shaeffer hurried into the room. “That’s the right word, according to the history tapes. I have some information. The ipvic monitor’s in with a final report on Moore.”
It took a moment. Then Cartwright responded. “Final?”
“The ipvic people followed the synthetic body to the point it entered Preston’s ship; you knew that. The body entered the ship, spoke to Preston, and began investigating the machinery that maintains Preston. At that point the image cut off.”
“Cut off? Why?”
“According to the repair technicians, the synthetic body detonated itself. Moore, the ship, John Preston and his machinery, were blow to ash. A direct visual image has already been picked up by innerplan astronomers.”
“Did some kind of field trigger the bomb?” Benteley asked. “It was critical as hell.”
“The ipvic image showed Moore deliberately opening the synthetic’s chest and shorting the bomb-leads.” Shaeffer shrugged. “It would be interesting to find out why. I think we better send out a crew to see what can be put back together. I’m not really going to sleep easily until I know the whole story.”
“I agree,” Benteley said feelingly.
Cartwright got out his black notebook. With a look of bewilderment on his seamed, aged face, he checked off the last item and restored it to his pocket. “Well, that takes care of that. We can pick over the ash later; right now we have other things to think about.” He examined his heavy pocket watch. “The ship should be landing, soon. If nothing has gone wrong, Groves will presently be setting down on Flame Disc.”
The Disc was big. Brake-jets screamed shrilly against the rising tug of gravity. Bits of metal paint flaked down around Groves; an indicator smashed and somewhere within the hull a feed-line snapped.
“We’re about to collapse,” Konklin grated.
Groves reached up and twisted off the overhead light. The control bubble faded into darkness.
“What the hell?” Konklin began. And then he saw it
From the viewscreen a soft light radiated, a pale, cold fire that glittered in a moist sheen over the figures of Groves and Konklin and the control machinery. No stars, no black emptiness of space were visible: the immense face of the planet had silently expanded until it filled everything. Flame Disc lay directly below. The long flight was over.
“It’s eerie,” Konklin muttered.
“That’s what Preston saw.”
“What is it? Some kind of algae?”
“Not this far out. Probably radioactive minerals.”
“Where is Preston?” Konklin demanded. “I thought his ship was going to guide us all the way.”
Groves hesitated, then answered reluctantly. “My meters picked up a thermonuclear explosion about three hours ago. Distance from us, perhaps ten thousand miles. Since the explosion Preston’s ship hasn’t registered on my gravity indicators. Of course, with the Disc so close a tiny mass like that might not-”
Jereti came hurrying into the control bubble. He saw the screen and halted. “Good God. That’s it!”