The Grand Wheel

He suddenly felt the slight mental jolt, like a missed heartbeat, that meant someone was practising thought-change on a card. With surprise he saw that it was one of his own cards that was mutating. He fought back, using his own control to keep the card from transforming. What, he thought, was the object of the manoeuvre? Play had not begun; his opponents had no clue as to the cards he held.

Then he got the answer. The galactics had no idea what the card was, but they could feel his resistance; they knew now that it was a card he wanted to keep unaltered.

Once again they had stolen a small advantage with a trick that could only be used once.

Dom led, with a picture card of the outer set, the card titled the Infinite Ray; he pushed a hundred units into the stakes circle. It was a bold move, a direct challenge. The player following tried to buy the card; Dom refused to sell. Another picture card fell down in answer to the challenge and Scarne, sensing Dom’s intention, added to it a card of even higher value.

Dom had set in train a process that could not be halted. There accumulated on the table a collection that naturally formed the core of a target construction – indeed no suitable system could be assembled without it. The struggle for possession of this package was now inevitable.

As usual, Scarne had developed a rapport with Dom that was almost telepathic. He understood fully that the cards in the centre of the table were Dom’s gambit, a decoy he had arranged while he attempted to win on the side-bets. Scarne’s mind speeded up, his thoughts flashed ahead to strategy and counter-strategy … the possibilities were endless. The deck was capable of a universe of interrelationships, echoing and resonating ad infinitum.

The rapidity of his calculation took another leap, like a starship slipping into over-drive. Then he discovered, with a shock of fright, that he could no longer see Dom, or the domed room, or the cards in his hand.

A white haze surrounded him. At first the haze seemed to be composed of nothing but frosty light; gradually he became aware that actually there was an image in it – an image that, indefinitely reproduced, made up the haze and was everywhere, like certain holo images.

The image was an enigmatic pattern resembling a manic machine, made up of rods and helices, some of which sported glistening blobs and nodules. It was the picture card known as the Apparatus, a card whose meaning was not entirely clear to Scarne. Once his eyes grasped it, the pattern began to move, breaking apart and reforming in a variety of alternative configurations. As he watched, it suddenly broke open, flinging itself out like an enormous disarrayed switch-back, and constructed a bizarre, impossible landscape.

The terrain could not adequately be described in ordinary physical terms. It had no dimensions of its own, only those which emanated from the supporting framework of the Apparatus. The white haze, a frosty fog, hung over everything. Odd objects, made from smaller rods, spirals, and oozing blobs, emerged from and sank back into the interstices.

In the near distance Scarne saw the two galactic partners sitting in their straight-backed chairs, watching him intently. He knew he had to find his way out of here and back to the card table. But how? Mentally he tried to retrace the route his thoughts had taken prior to his arriving in this place, to banish the landscape, but with no result.

‘Cheyne!’

The voice was Dom’s, though he could not say whether he heard it physically or only in his mind. ‘Cheyne, can you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Listen carefully, Cheyne. The symbols in this deck are extremely powerful – even more so than those of the Tarot. The game has unlocked our minds. The galactics are using it to create alternate realities.’

‘Is all this an illusion?’

‘Yes. A resultant level that they, once again, have realized ahead of us. The cards as physical entities are redundant. We are playing mind to mind.’

‘Is this part of the game?’

‘Probably. But – perhaps not entirely. It would be foolish to be dogmatic.’

Briefly, Scarne seemed to see Dom’s face in front of him, struggling to emerge from the fog. ‘How do I get out of here?’ he asked.

‘We can’t – not directly. We have to play …’

Dom’s voice faded, then came back again. ‘They probably don’t know we’re adept at this kind of thing, too. Use the doorway technique, Cheyne. Play a card – counter their realities with ours.’

Scarne noticed that the chairs on which the galactics sat were gliding slowly nearer to him. He sensed menace. ‘I don’t know if I can – not with these cards.’

‘Then use the Tarot. The correspondence is close enough – it ought to work. If we can’t do it they’ve got us beaten; we won’t be able to withstand their mental bombardment. We’ll be changed, and they’ll win.’

There was silence, and Scarne realized that Dom was no longer in communication with him. He was on his own.