The inner core of the island provided the highest-priced delights. Those who came specifically to gamble large sums, to purchase costly sexual experiences, or to indulge in the illicit sensory stimulations of forbidden drugs, generally proceeded by a direct route to that area of Jubilisle. But Noyes had come merely as a casual sightseer, as had Elena, and they moved without plan down the glowing halls and galleries and chambers.
At a gambling pavilion, close to the perimeter of the island, the rhythms of exploding atoms determined the payoffs. A barker claimed that the process was completely random and so must be utterly honest. “Everyone stands an equal chance, folks. I don’t mind telling you that some games favor the house, but not here, not here, not here! Step right up …”
“Can that be so?” Elena asked. “A truly random game of chance?”
“Maybe so,” Noyes told her. “Notice that it’s on the outside of the island. If people win steadily here, they’re encouraged to try the games within. Which are not quite so impartial.”
“But Roditis must lose money on this, even so.”
Noyes shook his head. “Not if it’s truly random. He’ll break even, and all he’ll lose is his overhead, which isn’t consequential. Call it a promotional loss. Let’s try it?”
“All right.” They stepped up. You could pay cash, and most did, but of course Elena had no cash except the souvenir nestling between her breasts, and Noyes thumbed the plate to establish a gambling balance for her. The game was intricate; he scarcely understood its workings himself, and those about him must be wholly baffled by it. In the center of the platform lay what purported to be a block of polonium, flanked by a comically ornate gamma detector; an array of tubes and pipettes emerged from it, filled with scintillating colored fluids. A turquoise fluorescence paid off at 3 to 1; carmine yielded 8 to 1; a yellow streak in the ebony fluid produced a 10 to 1 payoff. The barker chanted rhythmically; the polonium atoms disgorged their component particles; the lights lit and went out. The crowd pressed close. A bell rang and a certificate dropped from a hopper.
“You’ve won ten dollars,” Noyes said. “Glorious! I want to play again!”
“There’s much else to see,” he reminded her. They moved on. At a fortune-telling booth a spectral hooded figure predicted long life for them both, and numerous children. Then, looking Noyes over cunningly, the prophet added, “You will have many rebirths.” Noyes tapped the plate and added a dollar to the soothsayer’s credit balance.
“How did he know we were recorded?” Elena asked. “He guessed. He saw how well-dressed we were and figured we were wealthy, and if we were wealthy we must be on file with the Scheffing people. In any case, it’s flattery to wish us rebirths, even if we’re not in the class that lives again.”
“Perhaps he recognized us,” Elena suggested. “I doubt it.”
“I’d like a mask, in any case.”
“Many of the fairgoers were masked, particularly the women. Girls bare to the hips tripped along, cloaked only by striped dominoes. At Elena’s insistence Noyes took her to a masking booth and purchased a concealment for her: a dark band of pseudoliving glass that took possession of her face in a kind of caress, slipping snakelike into place from ear to ear. They laughed. She pulled him close and kissed him fleetingly on the lips. “Buy a mask yourself,” she said.
He did. Hidden now from the stares of the curious, they moved through the gallery, taking a dropshaft to the one below on a sudden whim. Noyes felt buoyant, relaxed. Within him Kravchenko was dormant for once, and Elena, warm and exciting on his arm, seemed to promise eventual ecstasies. The evening was going well after a poor start. The giddiness of Jubilisle had broken through his habitual melancholy. Yet there was always the memento mori not far below the surface; they paused in a closed arcade to embrace, and Noyes drew Elena so tightly against him that the soft mound of her left breast felt the impress of the flask of lethal carniphage that he carried always with him. When they separated, she touched the bruised place tenderly and said, “You hurt me. Something in your pocket—”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d feel it.”
“What do you have there, a gravity bomb?”
“Just a flask of carniphage,” he told her pleasantly, “In case a suicidal mood hits me.”
Of course she did not believe that, and so she showered a silvery cascade of laughter over him. A flamboyant sign declared: WELCOME TO THE HOUSE OF HALF-LIFE.
“What’s this?” she asked. “More radioactive games?”
“I have no idea. Shall we go in?” They entered. A fee of a dollar fissionable was extracted from each of them. Swiftly they discovered that the House of HalfLife, despite its name, did not traffic in neutrons and alpha particles; the half-life offered here was biological, hybrid creatures raised from fused cell nuclei. Behind an electrified barrier stunted beings shuffled around, while a pre-programed speaker recited their identities. “Here we have mouse and cat, folks, one of the most popular hybrids. And this is dog and tiger, believe it if you can! Next you see snake and frog.”
The hybrid animals bore little resemblance to any of their supposed ancestors. They tended to be neutral, unspecialized in form, evolutionary prototypes lacking in clear characteristics. Most were less than two feet in length, moving about on small uncertain legs. The dog-tiger had patches of gray fur. The snakefrog was squat and glistening, with pulsating pouches of flesh. “Man and mouse, ladies and gentlemen, man and mouse!” came the disembodied voice. “You think the Scheffing people work miracles? What of this? Infect them with the Sendai virus, blend the nuclei in a centrifuge, toss in a dash of nucleic acid, yes, yes, man and mouse!” A dozen distorted things, neither mouse nor man, moved into the arena. Their eyes were pink and beady, their hands were claws, they could not walk erect. Elena stared in rigid attention.
A shill sidled up to them, proffering a handful of explosive darts. He said silkily. “You look like expensive folk out for a night’s fun. Would you like to kill some of the hybrids? A hundred bucks fish a dart.”
“Sorry,” Noyes said. “No, thanks.”
“Try your aim. Some folk your class come back often. We’ve got a room in back, lots of hybrids to throw at. They aren’t rare, really.”
“Shall we?” Elena asked him. Noyes looked at her in amazement. Her eyes were gleaming. Kravchenko awakened and offered a warning: — Don’t refuse her anything if you’re smart. Sighing, Noyes gave in. They went to the back room. He lowered his credit balance by five hundred dollars fissionable and Elena took a cluster of darts in her delicate hand. On a platform before them, half a dozen pitiful bluish things, half squirrel, half otter, moved in ragged circles. They were slow, awkward animals with lengthy hairless tails and large flippered feet.
Elena aimed and threw. Her breasts quivered beneath the covering of green scales; her arm moved jerkily, a stiff throw from the elbow. To Noyes’ relief, she missed, and missed also on the second and third casts, the darts landing and igniting in quick incandescent puffs. But on the fourth she struck one of the hapless hybrids at the base of its twisted spine, and the odor of singed fur drifted toward them. When the smoke cleared Noyes saw the remnants of the creature. Elena looked exhilarated; a deep crimson flush appeared beneath her dark, tawny skin, making her appear disturbingly more sensual than before. She handed him the remaining dart. He thrust it back at her.
“Go on,” she cried. “Throw it! It’s fun!”