The Grand Wheel

by Barrington J. Bayley

  A thought struck Scarne. Here was a man on the eve of an event that could bring in its train incalculable consequences for humanity. But Dom didn’t even see it in that light. Where he was concerned, the event was simply the most important for him personally: a supreme game, for which he had unconsciously been preparing all his life. Scarne realized he could even have been wrong about Dom’s loyalty to the Grand Wheel. Perhaps he would be prepared to sell or wager the Wheel in the same way.

  Such egotism was inspiring in its magnitude. Scarne felt insignificant alongside it.

  He could foresee that he might cease to be Dom’s favourite soon. The Wheel master had found, in Shane, a much more attractive and more talented pupil.

  *

  Next morning, Scarne was woken early by the strident ringing of his alarm bell. He found it was a full hour before his normal time of rising, and then, looking at his paging indicator, saw that he was being summoned. Dressing, he hurried to his area in the training section. There he encountered Jerry Soma.

  ‘Get ready to disembark,’ Soma told him brusquely.

  ‘We are leaving?’

  ‘The galactics sent us a message during the night. They’ve ordered the Disk of Hyke to leave. Anybody we need for the game is to get on the ground and wait. That includes you, doesn’t it?’

  ‘How do the galactics contact us?’ Scarne asked curiously.

  ‘By narrowbeam.’

  ‘But how do they know where to locate us?’

  ‘A lot of us would like to know that.’

  Scarne went to the disembarkation lifts. A lot of activity was going on. Glancing down the side of the big transport, he could see that a camp was being set up on the ground some distance away. He watched for a while as sprays were directed on to the tent frameworks, hardening to form nearly solid structures.

  The lifts were also busy taking down crated items of equipment. It looked like preparations were in hand for a long stay, and more than the gaming team was to be present. There were squads of armed men also, probably to keep the Legitimacy camp sewn up.

  At length Scarne found himself being nudged on to one of the lifting platforms and he descended to the ground. At the camp he found that a small tent had been set up for him, close to the pavilion structure that housed Marguerite Dom. Shane, however, slept in one of the partitions within the pavilion itself.

  Two hours later he watched the Disk of Hyke whisper up from the desert, creating a brief dust shower, and go soaring off to disappear into the sky.

  After that, anti-climax.

  The first day was tense with expectation. Both Dom and Shane stayed in the pavilion and did not appear. Eventually, however, as nothing further came from the Galactic Wheel, the atmosphere relaxed. Dom set up a table outside the pavilion and took his meals there, inviting members of the team to join him. Sometimes he ventured into the Legitimacy camp, discussing the alien machine with Haskand and Wishom (who, despite his membership of the Legitimacy Armed Forces, seemed glad to discuss the problem with a scientist from a somewhat different cultural background).

  With a pang of jealousy Scarne watched as Dom paid every attention to Shane, cosseting him, ordering special menus for him, showering him with calculated affection. Shane accepted his favoured status with a kind of smug pride. He was probably used to being treated as something special, Scarne thought, but with the Legitimacy it had meant extra strictness, extra rigour. Dom was offering him the lush life.

  Then, at the sunset of the fourth day, everything happened at once.

  Scarne was sitting in his tent when he was called into the pavilion. All ten members of the games team were present. Shane, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘The final message has just come through,’ Dom told them quietly. ‘A galactic vessel is on its way to pick us up.’

  A shiver ran through the assembled team. ‘How long …’

  ‘Almost immediately.’ Dom paused, for a moment looked uncertain. ‘This isn’t quite the way I wanted it. I would have preferred for us to arrive at the gaming place under our own steam, instead of having them pick us up. But that, after all, is how we often handle it when we stage a game.’

  His words caused a slight stir. ‘Yeah, when there’s a security problem,’ someone pointed out. ‘Does this suggest that the game is illegal, in galactic terms?’

  Dom’s eyes were withdrawn. ‘We have no information on that. The feasibility of the game, and the ability to pay up, is what is relevant.’

  The sun was just vanishing below the horizon when they left the pavilion and followed Dom through the camp. The desert dusk was beginning to envelope everything. Somehow, the camp looked forsaken and forlorn without the massive presence of the Disk of Hyke, and Scarne, looking at the back of Marguerite Dom ahead of him, saw for the first time a fallible, undefended individual man. The majesty of the Grand Wheel – the whole interstellar edifice of gaming houses, clubs, personal vassalage and economic control – was absent. Here was a small group of men with only their brains, their naked ability, to rely on.

  All along Scarne had supposed that Dom was too clever to have been conned by some devious, alien means. Now he was not sure that Dom himself was not a victim of his own obsessions. They seemed to be walking into something arranged in a flimsy, transparent manner, without guarantees.

  Dom turned briefly to them. ‘We walk into the sunset. We will be met.’

  Scarne’s doleful thoughts were suddenly interrupted by an outbreak of shouting and gunfire. The camp seemed to be erupting. Scarne swung round, trying to make sense of the chaos in the gloom. Two Wheel half-tracks were approaching fast out of the semi-darkness from different directions. As they entered the camp’s illumination he saw that in fact much of the gunfire came from them. The men and women aboard were all wearing Legitimacy garb, and they were all armed and shooting wildly.

  The half-tracks ploughed into the ranked tents, coming to a stop just short of the pavilion. Scarne glimpsed the burly figure of Caerman, the archaeological team leader, picking off Wheel personnel with a gamma rifle, and he threw himself to the ground, raising his head to watch the engagement with a dazed detachment.

  In the same dazed manner he saw Dom rush back into camp, face blazing. The Legitimacy team must have overpowered the guards at the archaeological camp and seized the half-tracks, he thought. They must have been biding their time, hiding weapons and waiting for an opportunity to hit back.

  The real reasons for the raid soon became clear. Running between burning tents came Shane, terror on his face. Dom sprang to meet him; the youth ran almost blindly into his arms.

  Running after him was Hakandra, his Legitimacy guardian. Seeing Shane and Dom together he slowed to a walk; but still he came on with a set expression, a ray pistol in his hand.

  ‘Hand the boy over, Dom. He’s mine, not yours!’

  In his panic the youth seemed to be struggling in Dom’s grip even while he sought to escape from Hakandra. Dom held him tight, arms clasped around his chest. ‘Leave him be, you monster!’ he cried out in an uncharacteristically powerful voice. ‘Can’t you see he hates you? It’s you he’s running away from!’

  Hakandra came to a stop a few yards from the pair. For a moment he seemed nonplussed. ‘No, he ran from the gunfire, not from me. Let him go, and he’ll come to me.’ He holstered his pistol. His face became pained, desperate. ‘Come, Shane,’ he pleaded. ‘Come back home!’

  There was no response from either of them, except that Dom tightened his grip still further. Hakandra waited no longer. ‘Give him to me!’ he howled. He fell on the pair. Scarne was amazed to see the two men tussling and fighting for possession of the boy, who began squalling and bawling like a child.

  Who would have won, and what Shane’s wishes were, could not be known, for almost immediately Caerman arrived together with another Legitimacy man, and went to Hakandra’s assistance. Dom was unable to prevent the three of them from wresting Shane from him. He ended up sprawled on the ground while Shane was taken at
a run towards one of the half-tracks.

  Suddenly Scarne saw something. ‘Marguerite!’ he shouted, using the Wheel Chairman’s personal name for the first time. ‘Over there! Look!’

  Dom’s eyes followed his pointing finger. A faintly glowing transparent dome, or bubble, had appeared out in the desert. ‘The galactic ship!’ Scarne shouted.

  Dom scrambled to his feet, glancing back and forth. Hakandra was bundling Shane into the half-track. It roared out of the camp – not back to the Legitimacy site but off into the darkness of the desert.

  The Wheel master ran up to Scarne, panting. ‘They’ve taken Shane!’ he wheezed in an agony of frustration. ‘But we can’t miss the appointment. We’ll have to get him back later. Come on, we have to walk out.’

  The second half-track started up and headed out of the camp, gunfire hissing after it, as the team came together again and trooped slowly out into the desert behind Marguerite Dom. Even with the Disk of Hyke gone, Scarne thought, the uprising wouldn’t last long, unless the Legitimacy people could summon help – and the space-tensor blanket was still in operation. Even so, if Scarne was right it had already achieved its object.

  The transport sent by the galactics looked like a glass ball fifty feet in diameter. About a quarter of its bulk had seemingly passed into the ground. On nearing it the Wheelmen paused, staring up at its shimmering surface.

  ‘What happens now?’ someone asked.

  A team member named Müller walked up to the sphere and touched it with his fingers.

  His hand passed right through.

  ‘I guess this is what happens,’ he said. Boldly he stepped through the wall of the sphere and stood looking at them from inside.

  As if searching for signs of the vanished Shane, Dom surveyed the gloom-darkened desert in all directions before he too stepped inside the fragile-looking globe. Silently the others followed, passing through the pervious wall which swallowed them all without the slightest distortion in its curvature.

  The sensation was like passing through the wall of a soap bubble – except that the bubble didn’t burst. For some moments they all stood there in an apprehensive group, gazing up at the sheen curving over their heads, at the black sky, towards the invisible horizon.

  Then, though there was no sensation of motion, it became evident that they were moving. The bubble had disengaged from the surface of the planet, taking with it that portion of the ground which it had enclosed and leaving a perfectly bowl-shaped depression where it had rested. The desert fell away. They shot into the sky, coming in view of the sun again, and in scant seconds had passed out of the atmosphere.

  Shortly afterwards, Scarne lost consciousness. When he came round again he was still on his feet, standing with the others on the dusty circle of ground the sphere had scooped out of the desert, but he had the impression that a considerable period of time had elapsed.

  ‘I passed out,’ Dom said calmly. ‘Did everyone else?’ He was answered with a chorus of nods.

  Outside, there was no nearby sun and they were passing through the abyss of interstellar space. But now something glimmered out of that darkness. They were approaching their destination.

  At first Scarne thought it was a planet, drifting through space free of any sun. As they loomed closer he saw that it was in fact a planetoid, only a few hundred miles in diameter. And though lit by no sun, it was not dark. Its surface was covered in a calm, grey light by which certain features could be seen, though it was hard to say what they were. Dark and light patches; some structures, perhaps; small towns, possibly?

  It struck Scarne that most asteroids, even largish ones, were not as regularly shaped as the one down below. He leaped to the conclusion that there was a significant artificial element in its make-up.

  Steadily, gracefully, the transparent sphere swept down towards their rendezvous.

  The half-track raced at top speed across the nearly pitch-black landscape. The headlights were switched off; Hakandra was driving by gyro compass. Behind it, the vehicle was covering up its tracks with vibrating brushes as it went.

  The only other occupant was Shane. He had said little since Hakandra had rescued him, but had resumed his former sullen compliance, sitting in the back of the open cab and feeling the wind rushing past his face.

  ‘You haven’t been using the machine much lately,’ he said once.

  ‘Only minor tests,’ Hakandra told him.

  ‘I didn’t feel very much from it. Of course, I wasn’t so close to it.’

  Hakandra made no reply. He was too busy checking his course on the instruments and worrying about possible pursuit. They had to get under cover quickly if they were to evade recapture.

  After an hour’s drive he scanned the terrain anxiously until he saw a slight hump in the ground, outlined against the faint, almost absent starlight. Approaching it, he at length stopped the half-track and clambered down from it carrying a spade. After stumbling about before a sudden rise in the ground, a bank of earth about ten feet high, he began digging away the dust. Finally he bent down and pulled at a metal ring.

  A counterweighted canopy rose up, revealing a cavern in the bank. Hakandra ran back to the half-track and drove it through the opening.

  Only when he had again closed the door to the place did he switch on a hand-torch, and by its light then switch on some interior lighting. They were in a chamber either cut into the rock or else constructed out of some kind of concrete. At the rear were further passages.

  ‘The natives built this,’ Hakandra explained as Shane climbed down. ‘It’s an archaeological dig we sealed off months ago to stop the dust getting in.’ He led the way through one of the rear openings to a smaller room cosily furnished with beds, a table and chairs. Wall cupboards contained shelves of food.

  ‘We’ll be all right here,’ Hakandra continued eagerly. ‘They’ll never find us and we needn’t come out again until it’s safe.’

  He sat Shane down and inspected him, wiping his dusty face with a damp cloth. ‘Are you all right? How did Dom treat you?’

  ‘Better than you ever did,’ Shane answered with a shrug.

  A look of pain crossed Hakandra’s face. ‘You have been in the hands of evil people,’ he said, his tone urgent. ‘Don’t you understand? The Legitimacy is fighting to ward off chaos, to make life safe and controllable for mankind. On all sides there are threats and dangers. The Grand Wheel is one of the worst of them.’ His eyes burned into Shane’s. ‘We have to stand firm. You see that, don’t you? We have to do our duty!’

  Shane looked away and sighed. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said. ‘I guess you’re right. For a while it looked as if life might be fun with the Wheel, that’s all.’

  Hakandra sat down, suddenly very, very tired. He rubbed his hand over his eyes. ‘Yes, Shane,’ he said woodenly, ‘I expect it did.’

  FOURTEEN

  The lucid globe had clearly carried them a considerable number of light years. Scarne could see, standing out against the starry galactic background, a more brilliant point of light that was obviously a fairly recent nova, and which had not been visible from their point of departure.

  He took his eyes from the sky and studied the ground as the sphere fell towards it. The view was so open that, although the sphere contained a stable inertial frame, all within it automatically put out their arms to steady themselves.

  The globe touched ground and, to Scarne’s mild surprise, continued to sink into it until the patch of desert they stood upon made a seamless fit with the somewhat lighter soil outside. What had happened to the earth the globe had presumably displaced he could not imagine.

  Müller was the first to risk leaving the space bubble. When no harm came to him, the others followed. There was no sign of vegetation on the landscape, but the air was fresh and invigorating, and the gravity, too, approximated to Earth-normal – more signs that the planetoid had been artificially modified. The horizon was considerably less than a mile away. Its clean, sharp line was interrupted in one directi
on by the outlines of buildings that jutted up from just beyond it.

  Where the asteroid’s illumination came from was a mystery. Their bodies cast no shadows. It was as if the air itself was aglow; not brightly, but with a cool, sterile light that, had there been a moon, could have been taken for moonlight.

  Dom gestured to the distant shapes. ‘That’s it, I imagine. Let’s walk.’

  They kept silence while trudging across the cinder-like soil. Soon their destination revealed itself as a complete installation that could have been a town, a fairground, or any of a dozen other hypothetical sites. Scarne guessed it was some sort of commercial gaming area. The entire planetoid, in fact, could have been an alien version of the game-ships the Grand Wheel deployed on the fringes of man-controlled space.

  They walked between modestly-sized nondescript buildings which had a steely sheen. Further off, Scarne saw a large concourse, or midway, lined with booths.

  The installation appeared to be deserted. The first indication of life was when a lighted sign began to flash on and off over the entrance to one of the larger buildings which had a domed roof.

  ‘PLEASE ENTER HERE.’

  ‘Our own language, too,’ Dom remarked wryly. He led the way through the arched openings and into a sort of foyer. A second archway led to a spacious round chamber beneath the building’s dome. There, seated on a high chair with an expansive crescent-shaped table at the level of his feet, waited one of their hosts.

  The creature was humanoid, but considerably larger than a man – when standing, he might easily have stretched eight foot tall. He wore what seemed to be a tailored suit of outlandish cut whose soft colours altered when he moved.

  Studying his too-large face, Scarne was struck by a fascinating fact. It was not a human face, the distribution and shape of the features being wrong, yet it reminded him forcibly of the face of Marguerite Dom. It was creased much as Dom’s was, and possessed the same over-ripe magnetism, the same air of decadence and ancient toughness. There, too, were the intensive eyes Scarne had first noticed on Dom – and, by an odd coincidence, they were the same shade of brown.