‘So what are these special talents, and why do we have them?’ Romrey asked acidly.
Boaz stood motionless. He had no answer.
‘You can read the future, maybe?’ Romrey persisted.
Seriously, Boaz shook his head. ‘By no means.’
‘I can read the future,’ Romrey said.
Boaz watched carefully as he reached into a drawer in the bedside table. ‘I read the future with these,’ he said. ‘And I’m going to read it now.’
He had taken out a deck of cards and proceeded to lay out ten of them on the table, after a quick shuffle. ‘The issue is a simple one. Do I throw in with you, or do I not?’ Romrey’s lean face was intent as he laid down the cards. ‘A positive answer is a score that’s above average. Negative, below average.’
Briefly he reckoned up. ‘Well, that’s fairly positive. A hundred and one. It looks like we’re partners, whoever you are. And who the hell are you, anyway?’
‘I am Captain Joachim Boaz.’
‘Shipkeeper?’
‘Yes.’ Boaz was gazing at the cards with interest. As Romrey swept them up and laid them down, he stepped over to examine them, glancing at Romrey for permission.
‘They’re colonnader cards,’ Romrey told him.
Boaz thumbed through them. ‘Not colonnader,’ he stated. ‘This is a perverted set, muddied with occultism.’
There were in fact many variants on the original colannade pack (itself reconstructed from a pre-scientific pack of great antiquity), most of them produced by deviant philosophical or arcane sects. This one was typical. Artistically it was very accomplished, but the images were altered and adorned with additional symbolism which was often incorrect and also tended to obliterate much of the carefully inculcated subtlety of the original. The Priestess, for instance, a simple but enormously potent figure in the true colannade version, was here cluttered with a number of extraneous signs – in her hair, in her right hand, under her left foot. These symbols were drawn from the aberrant occultism of the sect that had construed them, and in that sense had meaning. But to a colonnader they were simply irrelevant.
‘So you base your decisions on simple chance?’ he said to Romrey. ‘Play cubes would be sufficient for that.’
‘Not on chance, no.’ Romrey shook his head. ‘That’s no ordinary deck of cards. Look closely at the material. The cards have adp in them.’
‘All such cards do – these, for instance.’ With a slow movement Boaz brought out his own deck. ‘To make the pictures move.’
‘No, no, these have much more. They are all adp.’
The cards had a micalike finish. They were, as Romrey had said, made of adp substance, much like silicon bones.
‘These are magical cards,’ Romrey said. ‘Mystic cards. They respond to events going on around them. They are never wrong. In fact, they can create events too.’
‘Yes, if you are improvident enough to let them guide all your actions,’ Boaz remarked.
He had to admit that the cards had a charm all of their own. Even the aberrant symbolism added up to a certain bizarre profundity. And he reminded himself that some of the deviant sects, as they passed down the hidden lanes and by-ways of thought, often made surprising discoveries.
Just the same, his background made him sceptical of Romrey’s claims, so much so that his lip curled.
However, his ship had presumably, during its surveillance of the city over the past few days, seen this man using the cards for divination – something which true colonnaders looked upon as pure superstition. If his ship took it seriously, then so did Boaz.
Romrey began pulling on some garments. Boaz turned to the woman. ‘And what can your man Obsoc contribute?’
‘Him?’ She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Money. He’s rich. He’s got his own big yacht orbiting up there, and it’s armed, pretty heavily. Probably it could even take on that government cruiser that’s coming.’
‘Can you arrange a meeting with him?’
‘If he thinks you can do him any good.’
Boaz nodded. Events had changed rapidly for all three of them in the past few minutes, he thought. But people were used to fast transitions, in this modern world.
Radalce Obsoc was a tall, stooped man with bulging eyes. His nose was small and hooked, exactly like an owl’s beak, and his thin-lipped mouth was equally small.
His appearance was in curious contrast with the red-haired sensuous-looking Mace Meare, as Boaz had come to know her. Their relationship, however, was not hard to fathom. She was a paid pleasure girl, on permanent contract.
The pleasure, it was undertood, was to be hers. Obsoc himself was not a sensuous man: he was a collector, his passions cerebral, who required to have among his possessions a beautiful woman who could plumb the depths of erotic delight. Silicon bones gave Mace that, and Obsoc’s enjoyment was the voyeur’s one of watching her attain the transports of that delight – with whom, or what, or by herself (Obsoc had a complete collection of sexual appurtenances) did not matter. Boaz doubted if he ever actually touched her himself.
Obsoc collected many things, but his real passion was for jewels. He practically raged at Boaz when he spoke of them. He possessed, he said, specimens of all but one of the nine thousand and thirty-four known gem classifications, including the largest natural diamond ever found, weighing over half a ton (this was a mere curiosity, since single-crystal diamonds of up to twenty tons had been synthesized). His cold store contained the complete range of low-temperature gems, including rare varieties of ice of surpassing beauty, produced only under the freak conditions of isolated sunless planets (and far exceeding his half-ton diamond in value). He had an impact technetium sapphire – one of the only two specimens ever found. No price could be put upon his collection; it was unique. He had stipulated that it was to remain intact after his death, and he doubted if any individual would be wealthy enough to buy it. It would, perhaps, become a trust to the glory of the econosphere.
‘There is but one gem, sir, that I do not possess,’ he said in almost ferocious tones to Boaz, ‘and that is a time-gem from Meirjain the Wanderer. The lack of it makes an intolerable gap in my collection, and I am determined to repair it. Furthermore, the fewer are in circulation the better pleased I shall be. Present circumstances, therefore, meet with my approval to some extent – if all goes well.’
‘You’d like it better if you could be the only one to land on Meirjain, I suppose?’ Romrey interjected.
‘You grasp my meaning quite correctly. But you need fear no treachery on my part. I have an unbending sense of probity, and will deal loyally with all members of our little party.’
They were in the main cabin of Boaz’s ship. He strongly disliked entertaining strangers, or indeed anyone, within this, his private domain (it was like inviting someone into his own body), but the proposed exercise called for it.
He sat next to Romrey at the small circular table. To his left was Mace, and opposite him was Obsoc. Romrey was expertly shuffling his cards. ‘Are you ready, Captain?’
Curtly Boaz nodded.
‘Then we must all concentrate. You especially, Captain. Concentrate on what it is we’re looking for.’
For Boaz that was easy, despite his feeling slightly ridiculous about the proceedings. He had been obliged to swallow his scepticism in order to make the experiment, which consisted of marrying the cards’ reputed function with his ship’s special data-gathering ability. Also, he had been obliged to divulge something of that ability. The other three now had some idea – though not a complete one – that it was the ship that kept Boaz alive.