The Grand Wheel Read online

  ‘How will you know?’

  ‘I’ll know.’

  The tall man leaned down and switched off the spotlight. ‘You are a nuisance, Mr Scarne. You are playing games with us. Well, come along.’

  As Scarne’s eyes adjusted to the room’s normal light he saw that the second officer had a smooth, round face and a long, gawky neck. His eyes were bright and staring, like polished pebbles. But his movements as he stepped towards the door to the corridor were smooth and self-assured.

  Meekly, Scarne went with him.

  The drugs laboratory was several levels further down, confirming Scarne’s belief that he was in the Secret Intelligence Service’s main centre of Earth operations. He remembered the place when he walked into it: the long benches, the racks of vials. Everything neat and tidy. It was like walking into a recurring nightmare.

  A moon-faced biochemist in a white smock came towards them, smiling. ‘Another customer?’ he greeted, looking Scarne up and down. ‘I dare say we can find something to fit.’ He chuckled.

  With a disclaiming gesture Scarne’s companion explained that Scarne was to be ‘normalized’. Scarne followed every word of their conversation avidly, poking into every moment of the transaction as someone who knew he would be cheated if the opportunity arose for but one instant. When the vial arrived he grabbed at it, reading the number pasted on it. HJ30795/N. He had memorized that number; it had been on the bottle from which he had been addicted. But what was the N?

  ‘N for normalization,’ the biochemist said reassuringly. The smile never left his face; it was fixed there.

  Somehow it was too easy, too glib. But they want the equations badly, he told himself. And I’m not out of here yet. I still have to convince them they’ve got something, and head back to the Grand Wheel. Only they can protect me now.

  The dermal spray hissed into his arm. ‘How long will it take?’ he asked.

  ‘Only a few minutes. The releaser is a related compound that forms a bipole with each molecule of the addictive substance. The new compound so formed is more complicated. It gives the same relief as the old drug but phases out the addiction, preventing withdrawal symptoms. You’ll feel weak, perhaps slightly dizzy for a day or two, then you’ll be as good as new.’

  ‘Now are you satisfied, Mr Scarne?’ the SIS interrogator said indignantly, turning his pebble eyes on him. ‘If you would kindly step in here, please …’ He gestured to a side door. Through it was a small interview-room. He sat down, placing a recorder box on the table.

  ‘Though not as accomplished as yourself, I imagine, I also am a trained randomatician,’ he told Scarne. ‘Would you please be good enough to give us what data you have.’

  Scarne took out his pen. ‘I was stringing you along, I’m afraid. I was afraid you wouldn’t give me the antidote. I photographed the information with this. In fact I wasn’t able to look at it for more than a minute or two. But it’s the genuine goods, all right.’

  The tall man frowned as he took the pen. ‘I see,’ he snapped. ‘I hope this isn’t another hold-out. Wait here, please, it won’t take long to have this processed.’

  Minutes after he had left, the moon-faced man came in. ‘How are you feeling?’

  Scarne passed a hand over his brow. ‘Queasy.’

  The other chuckled. ‘You should. I’d better give you some rectification shots or you’ll be sick soon.’

  ‘Rectification? What are you talking about? You just gave me an antidote.’

  ‘An antidote – but not yours.’

  Scarne tried to stand up, but was too weak. ‘I saw the number.’

  Moonface’s voice came to him from a distance. ‘Our system of classification is generic, not specific. A whole group of compounds is indicated by that number. The one you have in your bloodstream now may mop up a few addictive molecules, but in general it will only mess you up.’

  ‘You tricked me,’ Scarne gasped.

  ‘You should have trusted us. We don’t like people not to trust us.’ He leaned closer, peering. ‘Eh, you look near to flaking out. Come on, I’ll get you some shots.’

  Then Scarne went.

  He went, but where he went to was not immediately clear. He was in a roaring, hissing greyness which he heard and saw with his mind rather than with his senses. It was a greyness that attacked and invaded him, threatening to dissolve his being.

  Dimly he understood that he was back there: in the total randomness that underpinned existence. The randomness from which number and structure, and everything else, ultimately flowed.

  The randomness that potentially was everything, but actually was nothing. The sea of non-causation that was pure formlessness.

  He knew he could not really be there, because it was impossible to go there. It was an hallucination, as the Wheel cadre had said, conjured up by his fevered mind, prompted by his special mathematical knowledge. As if to confirm it, the greyness shifted like fog, adopting quasi-forms, separating out into billions of motes that drifted according to no pattern, acknowledging no spatial dimensions.

  He became aware of flitting, ghostlike figures coming and going on the edge of his vision. One of them walked towards him out the impossible mist; it was a thickset man who peered at Scarne as he came closer, his hard pale eyes staring from a broad and tank-like face.

  ‘You come through the machine too, did you?’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Dom get you too?’

  ‘Who are you?’ Scarne stuttered.

  ‘Pawarce is the name. You ought to know of me if Dom set the machine on you. Can’t say I remember you. You’re from Sol, though, aren’t you? I know by the clothes. Well, here we are.’ He looked about him in the random fog, indicating it with a massive hand. ‘Limbo. Nothing ever happens here. We’re not really here at all – we’re just ghosts, you and I.’

  He turned back to Scarne. ‘Let me tell you about that Marguerite Dom. He’s a maniac – he just has to gamble! He doesn’t care what he has to put up as a stake, he’ll sacrifice anything, anyone, Sol itself. He’ll put up his own mother and go for broke …’

  The Pawarce figure began to dissolve, becoming insubstantial, transparent, holes appearing in it. In seconds it had dissipated into random fragments and joined the mist.

  The roaring and hissing grew louder, then faded as Scarne was drawn through a black, vortex-like tunnel. The round, pebble-eyed face of the Legitimacy interrogator loomed up out of nowhere, raving at him. ‘You’ve made a mess of your situation, Scarne. Trying to fool us with this – junk! Now you’re going to have to make it back into the Wheel as best you can. You’re on your own. If you can’t come up with something genuine soon ….’

  ‘They’re up there,’ Scarne groaned. ‘I swear to the gods the equations are up there on Luna …’

  The nightmarish vision collapsed into a jumble of vague impressions, of disturbed mutterings and blank periods accompanied by nothing except nausea.

  He awoke to find himself lying on a bench. Above him soared the vaulted roof of Sanfran station, and for some moments he stared at it, unable to move. Then, with an effort, he levered himself to a sitting position, his head throbbing.

  As he checked the time, he noticed that he was wearing his own clothes again. Just over an hour had passed since he had entered the washroom on platform sixteen. His body like lead, he dragged himself to the nearest holbooth, and soon, after getting the number from the directory, he was through to the Make-Out Club.

  Cadence answered, slipping into the chair across the table from him in the little holbooth room.

  Her eyes widened to see him. ‘What happened to you, Cheyne? Where have you got to? Jerry’s furious –’

  ‘I had a black-out,’ Scarne interrupted her. ‘I don’t know what happened. I just woke up on a bench here in the station.’

  ‘Oh. Are you all right?’

  He nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘The others called in to say you’d disappeared. They’re out looking for you now. We’d just about written you off, this end
.’

  ‘Well, here I am. I’ll find my own way to you, shall I?’

  She frowned. ‘How come they didn’t find you at the station? Did you go somewhere else?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Well, you’d better come right over here. Things are happening. I’ll tell Jerry – don’t be long, now.’

  ‘What things?’ he started to say, but she cut the connection. The holroom dwindled. He was back in the plastic booth, staring at the scanning plate.

  I played it all wrong at the SIS centre, he told himself as he emerged from the booth. I have other information I could have traded – about the Pendragon creature, about Dom’s galactic contacts. But it’s too late now. They’d never believe me.

  The drug, he thought suddenly. It was the drug that was responsible for these mental experiences – coupled, probably, with impetus given by the jackpot’s brain-charge. That item, too, he would file away for future reference.

  Wearily he trudged towards platform sixteen.

  ‘What are you, some sort of brain-rotted cripple?’ Soma accused harshly when Scarne reported to his office. ‘You want nurses, or something?’

  Scarne was apologetic. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  Soma seemed unwilling or unable to give him more than a few seconds of his attention. He was ferociously busy, glancing through piles of tapes and papers he had stacked on his desk, handing some to an underling who incinerated them, while others went back to file. While he was doing this he barked orders at people who came into the office.

  ‘Whatever it is, it can be sorted out later,’ he said. ‘We’re leaving. Word just came through: the Legitimacy is staging a raid on Dom’s demesne – the bastards will be sorry for pulling a stunt like that, by Lady. Not that it makes much difference, we have our plans, too. Dom and his retinue are pulling out, to Chasm. That includes you and me.’

  ‘Chasm,’ Scarne repeated thoughtfully. ‘That’s quite a way from here.’

  ‘The Legits won’t be able to get their claws on us there,’ Soma said. ‘We were to have had a venue there shortly in any case. We’ve brought our schedule forward a bit, that’s all.’

  ‘Is it just you and me that are going from here? What about the others?’ Scarne coughed softly.

  Soma looked up. He grinned wolfishly. ‘Hungry for your little girl friend, eh? Don’t worry, Cadence is on the list too – if only to keep you happy. You should be proud. You’re one of Dom’s specials.’

  Scarne suddenly became concerned for his SIS supply. ‘Have I got time to pack a case?’

  ‘Don’t be more than five minutes.’

  As he left, Cadence passed him on her way into the office, and smiled nervously to see him. He hurried to his apartment and collected what he needed. Minutes later he rejoined her, Soma and three other members of the Make-Out staff in a cubicle elevator which took them all the way to the summit of the tower city.

  Scarne stepped out of the cubicle and gazed about him. Below, the landscape was lost in a haze of distance. The city itself was largely occluded from view by the roof platform; only some of the wings and protruberances could be seen, seemingly floating in the air beneath their feet.

  Cadence appeared at his elbow. She pointed upwards. ‘Here it comes. Right on cue.’

  He followed her gaze. A small shuttlecraft was dropping out of the sky. It came expertly to a stop only a few feet above the platform and hovered there while they boarded.

  Then it shot instantly back into the void, heading out. In ten minutes Earth had shrunk to a disk seen through the passenger windows. At the same time a medium-sized ship, interstellar class and Wheel-owned, came rising from Luna to meet them – and not just them, but about a dozen other shuttlecraft that had simultaneously quit the mother planet.

  As soon as the passengers had been transferred and the shuttles had receded again, the Wheel ship took its bearings. In minutes it was on course for a destination fifty light-years away.

  Somewhere in the ship, as they departed, Marguerite Dom watched a special transceiver. On the holscreen an SIS cruiser was descending towards his now deserted manse, blowing up clouds of moondust. Dom, his face expressionless, watched as SIS commandos poured from the cruiser and disappeared into the building. Then he leaned over to switch off the set, sat back and sighed.

  NINE

  Chasm was a Wheel world; the only such world where the Legitimacy had no vestige of authority. Not that the Legitimacy minded that too much, for Chasm had but one city – also called Chasm – which was what Las Vegas had once been: a place wholly given to gambling, and associated pleasures.

  Addicts and pleasure-seekers flocked here from all over man-inhabited space. It was possible to arrive in Chasm’s colourful caverns with a penny and leave a wealthy man. Conversely, games were played here that could never have been staged elsewhere: games in which irresistible prizes were balanced against the risk of serious life impairments – disease, drug addiction, decades-long bondage.

  The Wheel ruled here: there was no law except the law of wins and losses.

  The name Chasm was a descriptive one. The city was carved into the sides of a deep natural abyss, the only shelter the planet offered from the hundred-mile-per-hour winds which swept its lifeless, rocky surface, and against which Dom’s starship battled as it descended towards the mouth of the chasm.

  Below the gaping lip, the air was remarkably calm. The starship rolled into a cavern in the first level of excavations, just under the surface. Scarne disembarked to see the ship disgorging the rest of its passengers and cargo: some dozens of top Wheel operatives, big crates of equipment (and, probably, Pendragon). He saw no sign of Dom, unless he was in the covered hover-litter that hummed towards the elevator shafts and disappeared.

  Jerry Soma joined him with Cadence in tow, picking his way through the scattered boxes and loading-trolleys.

  ‘Ever been to Chasm before?’ he asked.

  Scarne shook his head. ‘I’ve never been out of Sol.’

  ‘Come on, I’ll show you the town.’

  They emerged from the cavern on to a broad stone promenade. Chasm’s opposite wall reared massively half a mile away. Scarne looked up and saw what looked like a racing flood leaping across the top of the canyon. The broad-fronted river was wind-borne dust, flowing in complicated streams and tendrils on the surface.

  A balustrade, only waist-high, bounded the promenade. He walked to it, peered down – and caught his breath. The abyss simply went down and down, criss-crossed with bridges that merged into a cobweb-like tangle, the walls glowing with coloured lights.

  Soma laughed. ‘Quite a sight, huh?’

  Scarne drew back. ‘How deep is it?’

  ‘Five miles. But the city itself only goes down a mile and a half. After that the air gets too thick. Let’s take a dive.’

  He led the way to an elevator station. They swooped down with sickening speed – it was like being in a tower city – coming to a stop in a tiled tunnel-like area. Passing through a proscenium arch, they came out on to what was, to all intents and purposes, a crowded street. On one side, the gulf; on the other, an endless procession of gaudy entrances, animated light-signs and barkers.

  Cadence hung on Scarne’s arm as he gaped around him. The sky was no more than a crack far above. Seen from here, deep among Chasm’s numerous levels, the plummeting walls were less sheer. Not only were they carved and tunnelled into, they also supported jutting piers, daring walkways, slender bridges, all of which made up a seemingly rickety maze hanging over the abyss.

  Out into that abyss, too, floated noise and music, drifting from the levels of the city above and below. Chasm fulfilled its reputation: it was fantastic, and unique.

  Then Scarne gave a cry of horror. ‘Look!’

  Someone had fallen from one of the overhanging structures. The figure came tumbling through the air, narrowly missing an arched bridge, limbs flailing. Scarne saw the victim’s face – a man’s – as it swept past them barely yards away, eyes sta
ring and the mouth drawn into the Oh of a soundless scream. Then it was gone.

  Soma cackled. ‘Oh, you’ll soon get used to that. It happens all the time. Every few minutes, in fact.’

  Scarne stared at him blankly. ‘But why?’

  ‘Just the natural accident rate. Don’t look so shocked, Cheyne, it isn’t any greater than the rate for automobile accidents on Mars or somewhere like that. It’s just more visible, that’s all. Think about it: Chasm has a population at any average time of a third of a million people. They slip off a bridge or something occasionally; and then there’s suicides. The point is, there’s only one way for them to go, and that’s down this narrow chasm where everybody can see them.’

  ‘But why not have safety nets?’

  ‘This is Chasm,’ Soma answered, his mouth firming. ‘Come on, we have to get to our quarters. There’s a lot to sort out.’

  They walked along the street. Scarne had already noticed, in point of fact, that, as on the top level, all balustrades protecting pedestrians from the gulf were only waist-high.

  Cadence seemed to notice his questioning stares. She gave his arm a squeeze.

  ‘It’s like he says,’ she told him. ‘Just a normal accident rate. You soon get used to it.’

  Do you? he wondered. But people who came here, he reflected, had attuned themselves to the idea of risk. They were looking to win; some were looking to lose. But other people’s losses were a matter of indifference.

  They turned into the lobby of a hotel. Scarne took a last look up into the gulf. Far above, falling fast, were two small figures, one a woman’s, the other, even smaller, probably a child’s. Still holding hands, tipped upside down, they went hurtling together towards the depths.

  The Straight Flush restaurant was built on a platform that extended out over emptiness and gave an excellent overall view of the chasm city. Here, while eating or whiling away his time over drinks or beverages, the customer could gaze down into the ever-busy gambling metropolis and, protected from falling objects and bodies by a transparent sloping roof, drink in the lurid scene that was like a visionary’s painting of one of the minor departments of Hades.