‘Yes, sir.’
‘You mean he’s a randomatician?’
‘I think it’s a little more than that.’
‘Why were you brought into the Cave?’ Dom asked Shane. ‘To study the machine?’
Hakandra hushed the boy, but he spoke up nevertheless. ‘I know when a star is about to blow,’ he said. ‘Usually, anyway. I give warning. At least,’ his mouth twisted wryly, ‘that’s what I used to do.’
‘But the nova process occurs at random here. Even randomaticians can’t predict it for a specific star.’
Shane shrugged.
‘Are there others like you?’ Dom asked after a pause.
‘A few.’
I want him, Dom thought. The Wheel had long suspected there was some such faculty in human beings. Gamblers and card players sometimes felt it – the certainty that the next card would be a particular card. But it was a certainty that occurred so seldom that it was easily put down to delusion. If the Legitimacy really had developed it, then they had a powerful weapon to use against the Wheel.
Equally, it could form a valuable adjunct to Wheel capabilities – something as useful, perhaps, as the luck equations.
‘Why were you screaming?’
Shane twisted up his face. ‘It hurts. It hurts so much. My talent is like a delicate flower. The machine bruises it, crushes it. It hurts.’
‘A talent for poetry, too,’ Dom murmured.
He faced Hakandra again. ‘It is plain you have been mistreating this unfortunate youth. I am taking him into my care, for his own good.’
‘No!’ Hakandra clasped his arms around Shane, his face suddenly desperate. ‘He belongs to me – to the Legitimacy!’
‘You do not know how to behave to a tender boy. You will do him permanent damage.’ Dom beckoned the two guards who stood by the door. They tore Shane from Hakandra’s grasp.
‘This is blatant kidnapping,’ the Legitimacy official stormed. ‘You won’t get away with it, Chairman. This is something that simply won’t be tolerated!’
The glare from the randomness machine had died down. Dom cast one last glance at Hakandra before he left.
‘Investigate the machine as best you can. Give me a daily report.’
Hakandra stood with clenched fists as Dom led Shane away.
THIRTEEN
‘Now, Shane,’ Dom said gently. ‘Let’s see if you can tell me what these cards are.’
Slowly he laid cards face down on the table one after the other, glancing at Shane expectantly each time.
With a jerky movement Shane grabbed up the glass of fruit juice Dom had given him, gulped it, then pushed it away again. ‘I don’t know,’ he said indignantly. He brightened. ‘Tell you what. Pass them out and I’ll tell you when you come to the Ace of Wands.’
‘All right.’ Silently Dom began to transfer the deck a card at a time from his left hand to a growing pile on the table. After a minute Shane raised his hand.
‘There it is.’
Dom turned over the designated card. It was, indeed, the Ace of Wands.
‘Ah,’ he breathed.
He gazed fondly at Shane, smiling. ‘Young man, you could make yourself rich.’
Shane grunted. ‘Fat chance. I’ve been a ward of the Legitimacy since I was born.’
‘But I have taken you away from all that,’ Dom said, his voice seductive. ‘Those Legitimacy people have just used you for their own purposes, Shane. I can teach you how to make your gift work for yourself.’
They were back in the: Disk of Hyke. Dom had spent the afternoon alone with Shane; now Scarne had joined them for an evening meal. He sat to one side, watching while the Wheel master spun out his spiel to the youth.
Shane did not, on the face of it, seem either co-operative or impressionable. Scarne did not know quite how to read him. In one way he seemed totally submissive; in another, neurotic and fractious. There was definitely something very odd about him.
His Legitimacy upbringing probably had a lot to do with it. His was a naturally rebellious disposition that had had to learn to be malleable. What was obvious was that Dom was excited by his new find, even more so than with the alien machine.
Shane stretched and yawned. ‘I’m tired.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Dom replied soothingly. He rang a bell. A valet appeared and, opening a door to a small bedroom next to the lounge, ushered Shane into it and helped him prepare for bed.
Dom himself slept in a more luxurious bedroom off the opposite side of the lounge. After Shane had retired he sat shuffling the Tarot pack for some moments, deep in thought. At length he spoke to Scarne.
‘At least we have an indication now why the galactics chose to play us in the Cave of Caspar.’
‘Oh? Why?’ Scarne asked.
‘Shane explained it to me. He claims the Cave is deficient in luck. Everything is bad luck here. For that reason, races, biotas and civilizations consistently collapse here – and stars keep exploding.’
‘Is that possible?’
Dom nodded. ‘Luck is a cosmic quality. There is no reason why it should not be more concentrated in some regions than in others. I have asked my technicians to make some tests, and I have no doubt that they will find that luck has a very low index here – Lady has deserted the place, is how Shane puts it. Presumably our opponents prefer that as a background to play against.’
‘Or perhaps they wish to forestall any mathematical manipulation of luck.’
‘It wouldn’t make any difference – I’ve already checked on that. Our equations are as workable here as anywhere else.’
Scarne dwelt on that. He couldn’t avoid a feeling that Dom was making a mistake – that the galactics couldn’t be as ignorant of luck as the Wheel master supposed. ‘What makes you so sure the luck equations are a unique discovery?’ he challenged. ‘What about this machine the Legitimacy has found – isn’t that, perhaps, a luck machine?’
‘No.’ Dom left off shuffling and threw the pack into a disposal slot which flared briefly as it incinerated the cards. ‘Luck refers only to conscious or living entities. Where material objects are concerned, whether a star or an atom, then it’s simple probability. Stars are exploding because that makes it an unlucky place for life forms that are trying to evolve here, do you see? The Cave is littered with failed biospheres. But the machine deals only with probabilities.’ He turned his head to look at Scarne with a mocking smile. ‘You still find it a difficult concept to swallow, don’t you – the relationship between chance and luck? Don’t worry. It baffled some of Sol’s finest minds for centuries.’
‘Then how did you find the answer?’
‘The first clue,’ Dom said slowly, ‘came from a man called Velikosk. You’ve probably never heard of him. It was a long time ago. But this whole conversation is redundant, really, because we don’t plan to use the luck equations yet – not unless we have to. Tell me, what do you think of Shane?’
‘A strange boy.’
‘When we move out into the galactic circuit, I’m taking him with me. I sense he has remarkable possibilities… a truly unique individual…’ A dreamy, depraved look came into Dom’s eyes.
‘The Legitimacy aren’t going to like your taking him. He’s a hot property where they’re concerned. They’ll want him back.’
‘They’ll be lucky to get anything back out of the debacle that’s about to hit the Cave. They’re going to lose everything here, is my prediction’
‘While you will gain everything?’
‘Let us not prejudice the issue.’
A thought struck Scarne. Here was a man on the eve of an event that could bring in its train incalculable consequences for humanity. But Dom didn’t even see it in that light. Where he was concerned, the event was simply the most important for him personally: a supreme game, for which he had unconsciously been preparing all his life. Scarne realized he could even have been wrong about Dom’s loyalty to the Grand Wheel. Perhaps he would be prepared to sell or wager the Wheel in the same way.