The Grand Wheel

A moon-faced biochemist in a white smock came towards them, smiling. ‘Another customer?’ he greeted, looking Scarne up and down. ‘I dare say we can find something to fit.’ He chuckled.

With a disclaiming gesture Scarne’s companion explained that Scarne was to be ‘normalized’. Scarne followed every word of their conversation avidly, poking into every moment of the transaction as someone who knew he would be cheated if the opportunity arose for but one instant. When the vial arrived he grabbed at it, reading the number pasted on it. HJ30795/N. He had memorized that number; it had been on the bottle from which he had been addicted. But what was the N?

‘N for normalization,’ the biochemist said reassuringly. The smile never left his face; it was fixed there.

Somehow it was too easy, too glib. But they want the equations badly, he told himself. And I’m not out of here yet. I still have to convince them they’ve got something, and head back to the Grand Wheel. Only they can protect me now.

The dermal spray hissed into his arm. ‘How long will it take?’ he asked.

‘Only a few minutes. The releaser is a related compound that forms a bipole with each molecule of the addictive substance. The new compound so formed is more complicated. It gives the same relief as the old drug but phases out the addiction, preventing withdrawal symptoms. You’ll feel weak, perhaps slightly dizzy for a day or two, then you’ll be as good as new.’

‘Now are you satisfied, Mr Scarne?’ the SIS interrogator said indignantly, turning his pebble eyes on him. ‘If you would kindly step in here, please …’ He gestured to a side door. Through it was a small interview-room. He sat down, placing a recorder box on the table.

‘Though not as accomplished as yourself, I imagine, I also am a trained randomatician,’ he told Scarne. ‘Would you please be good enough to give us what data you have.’

Scarne took out his pen. ‘I was stringing you along, I’m afraid. I was afraid you wouldn’t give me the antidote. I photographed the information with this. In fact I wasn’t able to look at it for more than a minute or two. But it’s the genuine goods, all right.’

The tall man frowned as he took the pen. ‘I see,’ he snapped. ‘I hope this isn’t another hold-out. Wait here, please, it won’t take long to have this processed.’

Minutes after he had left, the moon-faced man came in. ‘How are you feeling?’

Scarne passed a hand over his brow. ‘Queasy.’

The other chuckled. ‘You should. I’d better give you some rectification shots or you’ll be sick soon.’

‘Rectification? What are you talking about? You just gave me an antidote.’

‘An antidote – but not yours.’

Scarne tried to stand up, but was too weak. ‘I saw the number.’

Moonface’s voice came to him from a distance. ‘Our system of classification is generic, not specific. A whole group of compounds is indicated by that number. The one you have in your bloodstream now may mop up a few addictive molecules, but in general it will only mess you up.’

‘You tricked me,’ Scarne gasped.

‘You should have trusted us. We don’t like people not to trust us.’ He leaned closer, peering. ‘Eh, you look near to flaking out. Come on, I’ll get you some shots.’

Then Scarne went.

He went, but where he went to was not immediately clear. He was in a roaring, hissing greyness which he heard and saw with his mind rather than with his senses. It was a greyness that attacked and invaded him, threatening to dissolve his being.

Dimly he understood that he was back there: in the total randomness that underpinned existence. The randomness from which number and structure, and everything else, ultimately flowed.

The randomness that potentially was everything, but actually was nothing. The sea of non-causation that was pure formlessness.

He knew he could not really be there, because it was impossible to go there. It was an hallucination, as the Wheel cadre had said, conjured up by his fevered mind, prompted by his special mathematical knowledge. As if to confirm it, the greyness shifted like fog, adopting quasi-forms, separating out into billions of motes that drifted according to no pattern, acknowledging no spatial dimensions.

He became aware of flitting, ghostlike figures coming and going on the edge of his vision. One of them walked towards him out the impossible mist; it was a thickset man who peered at Scarne as he came closer, his hard pale eyes staring from a broad and tank-like face.

‘You come through the machine too, did you?’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Dom get you too?’

‘Who are you?’ Scarne stuttered.

‘Pawarce is the name. You ought to know of me if Dom set the machine on you. Can’t say I remember you. You’re from Sol, though, aren’t you? I know by the clothes. Well, here we are.’ He looked about him in the random fog, indicating it with a massive hand. ‘Limbo. Nothing ever happens here. We’re not really here at all – we’re just ghosts, you and I.’