Probably he would never know the truth of it.
‘Games theory,’ he said aloud.
Dom shot him a mystified look. ‘What, Cheyne?’
‘It’s a problem biochemists have never solved. How life manages to emerge from inanimate matter. The odds are all against it, in chemical terms, yet it happens. The biochemists – they should study games theory.’
‘Is that what you learned while you were out cold on us?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you had held that last card and not played it, Cheyne, we might have come out well ahead on that round, despite the fact that you were already losing control. Still, it wasn’t really your fault.’
‘No.’
The Avenue of Chance was, at first sight, a tawdry affair. Built of a material resembling canvas, the booths had a make-shift appearance. The party ventured diffidently into the midway, then stopped as a peculiar animal, or creature, pushed through the front flap of the first booth and stepped out to accost them.
When squatting on its hind legs, the creature was about four foot high and looked somewhat like a cross between a monkey and a hairless dog, with a long tapering snout and narrow eyes that glittered.
‘Good day, gentlemen,’ it began in a soft, gruff voice. ‘Try your luck at my game of chance. The prize is of incalculable value.’
Scarne tried to peer past the folds that hid the interior of the booth, but he failed to see anything in the dimness within. Dom gestured around him. ‘Was all this set up just for us?’ he asked.
‘By no means, sir. We tour three galaxies with our little show, visiting all manner of out-of-the-way places. Step within, any of you, and dare the odds!’
‘What is the prize?’ Scarne asked curiously.
The animal licked its chops with a pink, pointed tongue. ‘In this galaxy it is a principle of life that all creatures have but brief life-spans. It is an escape from this law that I offer. Take a spin on my machine, and you may win immortality!’
‘And if we lose?’
‘Then your life-force becomes ours, to use as we wish.’
Müller spoke up. ‘What are the odds?’
‘A thousand to one against,’ the creature said smoothly. ‘Generous figures, in the circumstances. You have but a few decades to lose. But you may win years measured in millions!’
‘Come on,’ Dom ordered abruptly. ‘Let’s get back to the sphere.’
‘Wait a minute!’ Müller looked distraught; he was thinking hard. ‘I’ll take those odds,’ he said. He rounded on Dom, cutting off his angry remonstrances. ‘We’ve as good as lost, Chairman! This is the only way we’ll get anything. I reckon there isn’t much left to lose.’
A fateful look came over him as he lumbered towards the booth. The alien rose, held aside the fold of cloth to allow him to enter, then followed. Before the cloth fell, Scarne glimpsed a low table with some sort of apparatus on it.
Less than a minute later, the creature reappeared and once more sat on its hind legs. ‘Who else will dare to enter the presence of the gods and snatch life everlasting?’
It was, Scarne realized, the standard barker patter to be used on small planet yokels.
‘Where’s Müller?’ Dom demanded, blinking.
‘Your friend did not win and so lost his small stake. Come now, don’t hesitate! The great prize is still available!’
Dom shook his head in wonderment. ‘And after all I’ve taught him! Still, we don’t really need him any more.’
‘Maybe he was right,’ another teamster said, evidently much depressed. ‘Let’s see what else they’ve got here.’
‘No!’ Dom barked. ‘No more of this – we’re going back to the camp. Don’t you realize we are in the Cave of Caspar – the luck index is low here.’ He jerked his thumb. ‘Not that they rely on luck – they’ve fixed the odds in their favour.’
‘I hope you manage to find some, sir,’ someone else ventured.
Dom smiled, but said nothing as he led them back to the transparent sphere.
FIFTEEN
Some order had been put back into the Wheel camp by the time they returned. The burned-out tents had been bulldozed out into the desert and those still serviceable regrouped. Control had been re-established, too, over the camp’s twin – the Legitimacy site a couple of miles away.
Dom learned immediately, however, that Hakandra and Shane had both vanished, and could not be found.
He put the matter out of his mind for the moment and made his way directly to one special tent whose interior was completely screened from the outside by a long vestibule.
He was met by Haskand. ‘Well, are you ready?’ Dom asked the scientist sharply. ‘Can it be done?’
‘We’re as ready as we are likely to be.’
‘Then let’s waste no more time.’
There were others besides Haskand in the tent: a few members of the mathematical cadre, and some very special technicians. The reason for their presence lay in the three consoles that occupied the centre of the tent: machinery that Dom believed was unique in the galaxy, if not in the universe.
The luck equations had not been obtained easily. They had been derived, after centuries of effort, from the work of the wayward genius Georgius Velikosk. Unfortunately Velikosk had committed little of his knowledge to record (he had, in fact, killed himself when the Grand Wheel tried to wrest his knowledge from him) and even now Wheel technicians did not understand how the single practical device he had built, the Velikosk roulette machine, functioned. Nevertheless his original machine formed the basis of the apparatus that now faced Dom – none other had been devised capable of handling the luck equations.
Dom sat in the straight-backed chair and let the techs tape leads to the palms of his hands. He was now part of the circuit.
He nodded, giving the signal to go ahead, and relaxed. He was aware that the procedure was not entirely safe. There was even a small risk that the Velikosk part of the equipment would inadvertently perform the only other use the Wheel had ever found for it, and dissipate his being, drawing him down into the region of pure randomness.
In silence the apparatus went into operation. A ghostly nimbus, the same that had raced round the table from man to man at the last Wheel council meeting on Luna, surrounded Dom. It seemed to everyone that an awesome, numinous power entered the tent; even the most hardened scientists among them were able to interpret it only one way: it was the presence of Lady.
The nimbus faded as the apparatus switched itself off. The leads were detached from Dom’s hands. He rose. He had been aware of no special sensation but he, too, had felt that presence. He was satisfied that the goddess had entered into him.
Haskand spoke deferentially. ‘You understand, sir, that no charge of this strength has ever been administered before? It cannot be compared with any of our practice shots.’
Dom looked at him in supercilious, amused fashion, the way a favourite of the gods might look at a mere mortal. ‘All is clear,’ he murmured.
Scarne had never been told what lay within the specially guarded tent, but after visiting his own quarters he had been watching curiously for Dom to come out. The Wheel leader walked straight towards him.
‘I want you to accompany me back up to the asteroid, Cheyne,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to be in on the final act. But first let’s take a little trip.’
Someone emerged from the tent where was kept the narrowbeam equipment that had been commandeered from the Legit archaeologists. He hurried up to Dom. ‘We’ve been getting news in the past hour, sir. The Hadranics are massing at the far end of the Cave. It looks like their big push.’