The Grand Wheel

‘Are you implying the muggers are fixed?’ Soma asked sharply. ‘If so, forget it. All our fermats are inviolably random.’

‘It’s not that,’ Scarne said, skirting clear of the dangerous subject. ‘It was the vision itself … I’d like to know how it was achieved.’

‘What vision?’

‘The vision of probabilities.’

Soma looked puzzled for a moment. Then he glanced at Cadence, waving his hand at her peremptorily. ‘I’ll speak to the professor alone for a moment.’

The girl left. Soma settled himself in his chair again, tilting his face to look Scarne directly in the eye. ‘Tell me about this vision.’

Haltingly, as best he could, Scarne described what had happened to him when he took hold of the mugger handles. Soma listened attentively, asking a question now and then when Scarne’s account became vague.

When Scarne had finished he became silent for a moment. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You were supposed to get a brain charge, a few moments of pure pleasure, that’s all. This I’ve never heard of.’

‘Pure pleasure? Is that standard for a jackpot?’

‘Sometimes it’s a lot of money, sometimes it’s some type of brain charge. It may not sound like much; actually pure unadulterated happiness is something the average person never experiences normally. He remembers it all his life. This other thing, though, that’s something else again. I’ll check it out.’ Soma rose to his feet. ‘Cadence will show you to your quarters. Do you need any sleep?’

‘No, I’m all right.’

‘Rest a couple of hours, anyway. We’ll run through a session tonight.’ Soma’s hand on his shoulder was proprietorial, almost comradely, as he guided Scarne through the doorway. Cadence sat in an adjoining office. She rose to her feet, smiling nervously as Soma handed Scarne over to her; then she led him to a travel cubicle.

The cubicle was the standard means of transport in the tower cities. Zipping through a ubiquitous network of square-sectioned tunnels, up, down, sideways and in ranging curves, it could deliver one to almost any dwelling in the pile. This one did not take them far, however, staying within the precincts of the Make-Out Club.

For only a few seconds Scarne shared the cubicle with the silent presence of the girl. Then she slid open the door panel and they entered a tidy, comfortable room with a bathroom just off it. ‘Well, this is it. Hope you’ll be okay here.’ She moved around the room, turning on sidelights. ‘There’s just about everything you need.’

‘No holbooth,’ Scarne said, looking around.

She waved to an occasional table with an instrument on it. ‘There’s a vidphone, but it only serves the club, I’m afraid.’ She looked apologetic. ‘Jerry doesn’t want you calling anybody outside. Your attention has to be on the job.’

He threw his holdall on the bed and sat down beside it. ‘I couldn’t follow everything Soma was saying. What did he mean by weighted games?’

Her eyes widened. ‘You don’t know much, do you?’

‘Maybe not,’ he said irritably. ‘That’s why I’m asking.’

‘These days the Wheel is like one of those ancient secret societies,’ she told him. ‘Only bigger, grander. They don’t just make money – that’s centuries in the past. The Wheel opens up all kinds of routes for people. But you can only get it by winning, by combining chance and skill. Some people never even guess the possibilities are there. You, for instance.’

‘All right!’ Scarne was exasperated, not liking to be told what a numbskull he was. ‘But what’s a weighted game?’

‘One where the Wheel takes less than a fifty per cent chance of winning. It’s just a way of showing that you’re making progress. That the Wheel sees you as an individual, not merely as one of a statistical mass. The Wheel likes to gamble, too.’

‘But it’s not just money that’s involved?’

‘Not always. There are other things besides money. There are life experiences – the Wheel can provide those. Some people want to change their lives altogether, to become somebody else, somebody completely different. The Wheel can arrange that. There are techniques for changing people’s personalities, giving them new abilities and opening new doors for them. If you can put up the stake, play and win, you can choose what kind of person you’ll be, what kind of life you’ll live. Have you ever known someone disappear without trace? It could be that’s what happened to them.’

‘What would the stake be in such a case?’ Scarne asked tartly.

She shrugged. ‘Or there’s power. It’s possible to win power inside the Wheel, a high-ranking position.’

‘You can win influence in the Wheel hierarchy? In a game of chance?’ Scarne was amazed.

‘It’s like an esoteric society,’ she repeated. ‘On the higher circuits there are grades and degrees; you gain them by winning games of greater and greater difficulty. That’s how rank is decided. Hell, you could have got a long way if you really can play Kabala. Not now, though. I think they want you for something special.’

‘Do you have to be in the Wheel hierarchy already to play these games? Or can you come in direct from outside?’