Larger than the chilling stakes that, ostensibly, were its raison d’être.
Scarne was still beyond the doorway of the card known as the Wheel. Through the ever-expanding field of his vision there floated billions of blazing suns, billions of planets, circling and wheeling in the dark. He saw primeval planets, newly condensed out of gas and dust, building up their long geological ages, spewing forth turbulent atmospheres of volcanic fire, sulphur, methane and lightning.
The game was not abstract. In some manner that even Scarne, as a trained randomatician, could not fathom, it was bringing forth wholly practical consequences though at an immense remove from here. Out of its strategies, its moves and countermoves, life was being evolved on a distant planet.
It became clear to Scarne that this was nearly always how life originated. Without it, the universe would be very nearly biologically sterile – the randomness of nature gave the necessary chemical combinations a prohibitively low probability. In almost every case it was a mathematical game, played between groups of opposing intelligences, that supplied the missing key – providing not only the initial impetus but also influencing the type of life that eventually would develop.
Surprising though this was, the revelation quickly paled into insignificance for Scarne. Because the Wheel card contained even more knowledge. Vaster and vaster became the vista. He saw that there were games and players as far surpassing the Galactic Wheel as it in turn surpassed the Grand Wheel. The game he was engaged on could create an entire biota; yet there were other, bigger games. There were games that could trigger the formation of whole clusters of galaxies. On a fundamental level, there were games that constructed matter and universes out of the gulf of pure randomness.
There was no end to it. On level after level were found the hierarchies of power, merging in an indefinable series into the sea of non-causation. Dom was right – the gods were real. They were the conscious forces that gamed and gambled in the deeper randomatic levels. Scarne could only wonder if he was really meant to see all this: if it was a legitimate part of the game. By projecting into the card he had effectively played the card; but he could not avoid the feeling that something had gone wrong and his perceptions had been carried too far.
Then he felt himself falling. There was roaring all around him.
He was there again.
He had dropped out of structured existence and back into the sea of chaos. It roared all around him, generating numbers and again dissolving them.
But he remained there only moments, because the strain was by this time too great, and his consciousness failed altogether.
When Scarne passed out, the big alien who had set up the game reappeared. He stepped round the table to look down at Scarne, who had first slumped on to the table then slid to the floor, scattering his cards as he went.
‘Your friend has been interfered with,’ he said to Dom. ‘I detect foreign agencies in his blood.’
Dom rose from the table and walked round to frown down at Scarne. ‘His enemies injected him with an addictive drug,’ he said by way of possible explanation. ‘But I got my biochemists to cure him.’
‘They did not entirely succeed, it seems. The rigours of the game have caused a recurrence of its effects. However, I think they will prove to be temporary.’
‘In view of his condition, it was unwise of him to play so powerful a card,’ one of the galactic players observed, glancing at the Wheel, now lying face up on the table.
Scarne heard these latter words as he regained consciousness. Assisted by Dom, he got unsteadily to his feet.
His first impressions were the same as those he had experienced after receiving the mugger jackpot on Io. Everything seemed unnaturally vast. The domed room was as big as a solar system. The untranslated alien’s face, bent to regard him from its superior height, seemed impossibly foreign and gigantic.
But this time the illusion wore off fairly quickly. Scarne stumbled to his chair and sat down, resting his head on his hand.
‘Sorry about that,’ he muttered.
‘This game, at any rate, would appear to be null and void,’ the alien remarked. ‘The cards have been revealed.’ He turned to Dom. ‘Since your friend would not be advised to continue, perhaps you would care to select another partner. You have the option of calling quits now, of course – though half your holdings would remain in our hands.’
‘No – we play to the limit,’ Dom shot back, a degree of passion in his voice. ‘But a different game.’
He looked down at the disarrayed table, then turned back to the bulking alien. ‘I want to stake the whole of my remaining holdings on one more game – double or quits. If I win, we can continue. If not…’ He shrugged.
The alien paused, reflecting. ‘And the game?’
‘One without any skill in it.’ Dom seemed agitated. He swallowed. ‘Let’s do some real gambling. With stakes as high as they’ll go. Any random fifty-fifty game will do it. The toss of a coin—’
Scarne twisted round in his chair and regarded Dom with horror.
No, he was about to shout, let’s carry on playing. At least we might have a chance! But then he saw that Dom, by his own lights at any rate, was once again right. A fifty-fifty game was their best chance of coming out of this intact. They were being out-played by the galactics.
The two alien players were poker-faced as the untranslated galactic considered.
‘Are you agreed?’ Dom demanded.
‘It would be unlike us to refuse a challenge,’ the galactic murmured. ‘Even though, on present showing, it removes our current advantage.’
‘Any limit on the bank?’ Dom queried.
‘None.’
‘Okay.’ Dom relaxed, his shoulders slumping. He was, Scarne realized, tired. ‘I want to break off first and return to my camp, to freshen up, to – to freshen my luck. If that’s all right by you.’
‘Ah, luck,’ the alien said, as if amused. ‘It is astonishing how many gamblers pay homage to the god of luck.’
‘In our mythology, she’s a lady,’ Dom told him. ‘A goddess, not a god.’
‘That is because your species has maternal fixations. We see the gods as more disinterested. Will you return alone?’
‘I’d like to bring one other with me. For company.’
‘You are our guest,’ the alien said courteously. He turned his head, surveying the scene as if checking for final details. ‘Then I will bid you goodbye for the present. Before leaving, why not visit our Avenue of Chance? There are many small games there that might entertain you.’ He held out his arm, elegantly indicating the exit.
The Grand Wheel team made a subdued group as they left the domed building and emerged on to the dusty street. Walking with Dom, Scarne paused. To one side, the interstellar travel globe could be seen just over the close horizon. The concourse which he had noticed earlier, and which presumably was the avenue referred to by the galactic, lay a few yards away.
Dom gazed towards it. ‘What do you think, Scarne?’
‘It might be interesting,’ Scarne said, his voice still none too steady.
‘No harm in taking a look,’ Dom agreed.
As they walked towards the entrance to the avenue, Scarne found that his mind was still preoccupied with the Wheel card. He wondered if the glimpses he had received reflected real facts. Or whether they were only the work of the imagination, invoked by the rare combination of an addictive drug, his randomatic training, and the too-evocative symbols of the cards. He had been handling a Tarot pack, he recalled, minutes before he played the mugger on Io.