It was presumably some such method as this that the galactics were now using, the difference being that others besides the practitioner were projected into the realities evoked. Scarne looked down at his hand, and after a few moments was able to see the cards he had held at the table. Some were unique to the deck created for the game, and had no correspondence in the Tarot. Others, however, could easily be cross-identified. He concentrated, and these cards underwent mutation, changing into their Tarot counterparts.
He chose one: the Ace of Wands, Root of the Powers of Fire. He raised it before his eyes, summoning up all his attention in the manner Dom had taught him, driving his full consciousness into the simple illustration of an upright baton round which were twined a pair of snakes.
Something snapped in his mind. The scene erected by the card Apparatus vanished, together with the galactic players who had invoked it.
He stood in the midst of a baking desert that stretched in all directions to a far horizon. The air scorched his throat as he breathed. Overhead was a sun that sent wave after wave of heat pounding mercilessly down, turning the sand into a blazing carpet.
He turned his head. A small salamander-like creature sat on a sun-bleached stone, regarding him with tiny glittering eyes. As he moved towards it the animal skittered away and disappeared into the sand.
If this was a product of imagination then the illusion was well-maintained. Scarne wondered how long it would take the galactic player to answer his move. After that it would be Dom’s turn.
Idly he took a few steps into the desert, feeling the energy draining from him. This was a world dominated by the element fire, arid, inexorable, very nearly lifeless. If something did not happen soon he would have to take steps to leave it.
Suddenly a slab of sand rose up from the floor of the desert on invisible hinges, creating minor cascades of shining grains. From out of the relative darkness stepped a scaly-skinned man-sized creature which stood on its hind legs and appraised Scarne with no sign of fear.
The native’s head was lizard-like, which gave it an air of tough, but wearied, desperation. But its intelligence was unmistakable. Scarne recognized its species straight away: he had seen drawings of it in the Legitimacy archaeological camp site.
He had gone back in time, to the planet where the randomness machine had been found. Either the climate was to become more temperate in the intervening period, or else he was nearer the equator. In any case, despite the inhospitable environment he was seeing the planet before intelligent life had quite become extinct.
The lizard-creature’s unclothed hide shimmered like metal, reflecting the glare of the brassy sky. It beckoned to Scarne, turning and retreating back beneath the raised slab into the cavity below. After hesitation Scarne followed. The slab swung down behind him; he was in a murky tunnel of rock and iron.
After a few yards they emerged into a chamber, only slightly larger than the tunnel itself, in which stood the very same machine Scarne had last seen in the tent of the Legitimacy scientist, Wishom. Now, however, the machine was in its original condition. Its metal casing gleamed, and the crystalline surface sparkled even more vividly than when he had first seen it.
Three lizard-creatures, including Scarne’s guide, were gathered round it. Scarne glanced, in the dimness, at the other equipment which crammed the chamber, and to which the randomness machine was attached. Thick cables led through the walls to elsewhere in the underground warren.
Why did the aliens seem so incurious about his presence? He moved closer to the big drum, gazing down into its scintillating depths. It was hard to say just where its surface began – or if it had a surface. He began to feel dizzy, and drew away.
The native who had led him hither spoke in a voice which, though hoarse and full of superfluous clicks, was nevertheless intelligible.
‘The hopes your people place in our machine will be disappointed.’
Scarne looked at him, deciding there was no point in being surprised that the creature spoke Sol Amalgam, the business language of man-inhabited space that would not be developed for millennia yet.
‘It is not a randomness control?’
‘Only in a negative sense. We had hoped to delay the nova process with it, as you do. But all it can achieve is an increase in destructiveness. It can provoke novae, but not prevent them. Come, I will show you how it works…’
He nudged Scarne forward. Scarne smelled the raw, leathery odour of the alien as they leaned together over the flashing drum. Then his senses were caught and trapped. He was falling, falling amid the brilliantly shining motes, and he knew that he had already left the desert planet, left the dominion of fire.
Events he could not see were taking place. Forces were pulling and tugging at him, this way and that. He was being sped through realms he could no more than glimpse.
The bulbous, full globe of a richly endowed planet swam past him, cities shining and sparkling on its surface like immense jewels. They were gambling cities, entirely given over to the pleasures of the game, inhabited by people who had long ago abandoned any interest in stability.
The planet fell astern of him into the darkness. He hung over a stupendous plane light years in extent, covered with the marks and signs of some gigantic pattern.
Then that, too, vanished. He heard Marguerite Dom’s voice again, sounding fuzzy as if fighting to overcome whatever it was separated them.
The outlines of the domed games-room began to impinge on his vision. ‘Where in Lady’s name have you been, Cheyne! Take a hold of yourself! Play or draw, Cheyne! Play or draw!’
Scarne reached over to the dispenser and drew a card, holding it close to his chest.
It was the Wheel. The Wheel of Fortune.
It was no coincidence that the wheel symbol was as much a feature of the galactics’ game, Constructions, as it was of the Tarot. This version showed a realistic picture – probably a photograph – of a perfectly wheel-shaped galaxy, a freak of nature that no doubt really existed somewhere. The rim of the wheel was well-formed, joined by eight only slightly curved arms to a glowing central hub. Surrounding the galaxy were wave-like symbols to indicate the formless nature of space – which in this case served the same symbolic function as water in the Tarot version.
Almost as soon as he looked at the card the room faded again; by this time his propensity for entering into a card was automatic and irresistible. The forces and scenes he had experienced after leaving the desert planet were, he realized, the result of cards played by the other players sitting at the table. But now, as when he had played the Ace of Wands, he felt that he was temporarily transcending the game altogether, leaving it because of some force innate to himself.
And yet it was not due simply to himself. It was the game that had brought him to this point, the point where he could no longer control either himself or his perceptions. The galactic wheel was rotating, sparkling, flashing, throwing off probabilities in all directions. Then it faded, forming an all-embracing background.
And at the same time Scarne’s mind cleared. He could see it now: the game, in all its details, comprising a mathematical exercise of the highest order. But it was a game in which the players were as much tools of the overall scheme as the cards were.
He seemed to be hovering above the card table, looking down on the four players, two of them genuine men and two who seemed so by virtue of visual translation, frozen in attitudes of secrecy and silence.
But the scene, microcosmic though it was, remained localized only briefly. Because the game was larger. Larger than the games-room, larger than the pre-formed asteroid. Larger than the Grand Wheel, larger than its superior counterpart, the Galactic Wheel.