‘Maybe there’s a fault in the machine.’
‘More likely your imagination’s overworked.’ Soma shrugged. ‘I’ll have it checked over. Meantime we’ll call it a day. You look overwrought.’
He glanced back as he strode from the room. ‘See he gets some rest, Cadence.’
Scarne rose shakily from his chair and followed Cadence to a cubicle which took them back to his apartment. She looked at him sympathetically as she switched on lights for him.
‘You do look bushed at that.’
‘It’s been a harder day than I realized,’ Scarne admitted. ‘I didn’t sleep much last night, either.’
‘You’d better hit the sack. And don’t worry; you did all right.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You did marvellously, in fact.’ She smiled, glancing up and down at him, and left.
Exhausted, he undressed and dropped into bed, falling instantly asleep.
He was awakened hours later by the sound of someone moving near him. The coverlet was lifted. A girl’s naked body slipped in beside him.
‘How are you feeling now?’ Cadence’s voice said softly.
‘Better,’ he said sleepily. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘My room’s right next to yours. Didn’t I tell you? I’m supposed to keep you happy. All part of the service.’
‘I thought you were Soma’s girl.’
‘Jerry? No.’ She chuckled, a trifle bitterly. ‘He has other girls, not like me at all.’
Her hand stroked his chest. ‘Look,’ Scarne said, half-turning to her, ‘you don’t have to. If you don’t want.’
‘Suppose I do want?’ she said impishly, her hand straying lower. ‘Never let it be said my heart’s not in my job.’
He reached out and ran his hand over her body. She was not bad, quite cute; a little bit flabby, not too much.
They pressed themselves into one another’s arms.
During the next few days Scarne continued his training at the Make-Out Club. Soma kept him off the numbers machine; but he practised on the other identity machines, gradually improving his performance.
He was not always sure if he was engaged in pure practice runs or in actual games with outside players. Sometimes, though, Soma used him on club business, holding the bank in in-the-flesh games or entering as an additional player. Scarne slowly learned how the Grand Wheel operated from the inside.
None of the club’s real business, however, seemed to warrant the process Soma was putting him through. It was as if Scarne was being tested against some other more advanced standard.
Soma’s own remarks came seldom, but as far as they went he seemed satisfied with Scarne’s progress. ‘You’re more of a technician than a pure gambler,’ he said to him once.
‘Is that bad?’ Scarne asked.
‘Not at all. It means maybe we can use you. There are two kinds of players, the technician and the instinctive player, the guy that takes all the risks, who has flair. Take a partnership game, like bridge. A technician won’t give away anything, but he won’t bring in much, either. He’s the main defence. But he has to be complemented by an offensive player, a real gambler who takes the initiative. They need each other.’
‘Why does that mean, you can use me? Use me for what?’ He makes it sound as if they’re trying to get into something, he thought. But the Wheel already is everything.
The nearest Soma came to giving an answer was two days later, when he called Scarne to his office. ‘I put in a report about what you told me happened on the jackpot,’ Scarne said. ‘Also about the incident on the numbers machine. You’re to go to Luna. There are people there want to talk to you.’
‘The mathematical cadre?’
‘I guess so.’ Soma paused, then looked at Scarne with burning black eyes. ‘All I know is I’m to send you to the demesne of Marguerite Dom. You’re going right to the top.’
SIX
Luna was an old, quaint, well-worn environment favoured by the wealthy and successful. Everything there seemed to be hundreds of years old. The sun-burnished towns and cities were luxuriously ancient, built in a rococo style fashionable half a millennium ago, and the planet’s dry, dead surface was criss-crossed with an antiquated tracked transport system.
As before, Scarne travelled with a two-man escort. The conservationist-minded local government had steadfastly refused to install a modern atmosphere plant, and the shuttle descended through vacuum until entering the landing bay at Tycho, the oldest and largest of Luna’s cities.
Tycho was not their destination, however; they left the shuttle and walked through concourses until coming to the track station adjoining the landing bay. Scarne found time to revel in the magnificence of the station’s baroque, cavernous interior, which glowed in the unique lunar light that fell through the high vaulted roof. Visiting Luna always made him feel good.
His escort guided him through the bustling main area to a private carriage waiting in a small siding, tucked away under the lower edge of the cascading roof. Within, the carriage was plush and luxurious, upholstered with purple velvet. Immediately they had seated themselves the vehicle surged into motion. It rattled through the unlighted tunnel carved through the wall of Tycho crater, and when they emerged it was like a revelation, for suddenly they were in the midst of the arid landscape and Luna’s hard merciless sunlight.
For about half an hour the track vehicle sped through the Lunar terrain. Then it climbed a range of hills, began a descent to the plain below, and the private manse of Marguerite Dom, chairman of the Grand Wheel, came in sight. Scarne studied it as they approached. He saw a style of architecture that was pure indulgence: a wandering maze of gables, domes and belvederes. Incongruous, he thought, that an airless medium should harbour so unfunctional a building.
The track carriage slowed, coasted into the shadow of an overhanging pantile roof, and shuffled through an airlock. It halted in what appeared to be a reception foyer. The doors clicked back; they stepped out.
The two Wheel men seemed nervous and tense. This is probably their Mecca, Scarne thought.
An automatic glass door opened; a tall negro entered the foyer. His teeth flashed in a polite smile.
‘Mr Scarne?’
‘Here he is,’ said one of the Wheel men. ‘Delivered as per schedule.’
The negro spoke to them, pointed to a door at the further end. ‘Go through there and take some refreshment. You will be informed.’ He turned to Scarne. ‘This way, if you please.’
Scarne followed him through the glass door. They paused while the floor sank beneath their feet. When it steadied they were standing on a circular mosaic which resembled the centre of a three-dimensional spider’s web. Passages, trellised arbours, crooked stairways both ascending and descending, radiated from it in all directions. It was an architectural fancy, a folly.
The negro turned to him again. ‘We are ready to see you now. But perhaps the journey has fatigued you. Would you prefer to rest, to refresh yourself?’
Scarne steeled his nerve. ‘No. Now will be fine.’
They walked down a corridor into the deepening silence of the rambling house. Finally the negro opened a timber door and entered a wood-panelled room, glancing at Scarne to follow.
Five men, of all races and ages – one of them was scarcely more than a boy – sat around a horseshoe-shaped table. A sixth place was empty, while yet another chair, evidently intended for Scarne, stood in the gap of the horseshoe.
Here he was, facing the Grand Wheel’s mathematical cadre at last – and he felt like an amateur. These people were all special, he realized; some of them prodigies, probably, gathered from all over man-inhabited space. Wordlessly he lowered himself into the solitary chair, aware that the interrogators were subjecting him to a chilling scrutiny. The tall negro, lank and self-controlled, walked around the table and took up the vacant sixth place. Somehow it took Scarne by surprise to learn that he, too, was a cadre member.