The Grand Wheel

by Barrington J. Bayley

  Dom was faced with a kindred soul.

  ‘Please be seated,’ the Galactic Wheelman said, indicating the human-sized chairs arranged around the table. His voice was resonant, rich with all kinds of strange overtones.

  They complied, Dom taking the centre chair. Once seated, Scarne could see that the crescent of the table continued into a full circle, a fact which had not been evident when they entered the chamber. Or was it only an illusion? They seemed to be separated from the other half of the table by a semitransparent curtain. Behind it were vague seated shapes – their opposite numbers in the galactic team. It was impossible to say whether the curtain was a real physical barrier, or only a screen for some kind of projection.

  When they were settled, the seated giant spoke again. ‘It is our custom, in a new session with a new client, to preface the game with a short contest in the form of a general knowledge quiz. Agreed?’

  Dom looked uncertainly at Scarne before answering. ‘What is the purpose of this custom?’

  ‘To sound each other out.’

  Dom hesitated. ‘Agreed, provided no bets are made on the outcome.’

  ‘The winner deals first in the subsequent game, or throws first, depending on the nature of the game, which is yet to be decided. A study of randomatics reveals that an advantage lies with the dealing team.’

  ‘Very well, we’ll agree to that.’

  ‘Then we will begin.’

  There was a stir behind the curtain. A gruff but well enunciated voice spoke. ‘Three billion light years due galactic west lies a galaxy containing a star designated as catalogue number 6847398472 by the astronomers of a neighbouring galaxy. On the northern continent of the fourth planet of that star, three mountains lie in a straight line, each one hundred thousand feet in height. What is the name given to the most northern of these mountains by the natives of that continent?’

  A long pause followed the question.

  ‘We cannot answer that,’ Dom snapped, then. ‘It constitutes information impossible to know.’

  We know,’ the voice rejoindered. ‘The name of the mountain is Kzzozz.’

  ‘It is now your turn to put a question,’ the giant in the centre of the table said.

  Dom thought, and smiled. ‘On the island of Britain, planet Earth, is an inland territory known on old maps as Shropshire county, where there lies a small hill surmounted by a stone monument, close to the ancient town of Telford. What is the name of that hill in the local language?’

  ‘The name of the hill,’ answered a second, sharper voice from behind the curtain, ‘is Lilleshall Hill, formerly Lulla’s Hill, after a Saxon chief.’

  The gruffer voice resumed. ‘What was the event that initiated the war between a water planet and a sulphur planet in the Andromeda galaxy one million years ago?’

  ‘But there is no way we can know these details!’ Dom protested. ‘We are being subjected to trickery!’

  ‘There is no trickery,’ interjected the alien in the centre. ‘You satisfied yourself on that score before coming here.’

  ‘Then our opponents have mental faculties we don’t. It was agreed that neither side would pre-empt the other in that way.’

  Very briefly, the giant paused. ‘Only in a technical sense are we in default. One of our players is a psychic who is able to elicit distant, though useless, facts. Since in the game we are to play this ability offers no substantial advantage, his presence is admissible.’

  ‘It remains unfair as far as this contest goes,’ Dom persisted firmly. ‘We withdraw from the quiz.’

  The giant shrugged. ‘Very well. Since we have answered one question, and you have failed to answer any, we have first deal. We will pass on to the main business.’ Scarne could not avoid the impression that he was amused. Perhaps they had been playing a joke on Dom.

  The alien shifted his bulk, drawing himself more erect. ‘Games are of many varieties, containing greater or lesser skill, greater or lesser an element of chance. There are board games, and there are games consisting of arrays of independent abstract symbols. These games create their own dimensions, so to speak. What are your preferences?’

  ‘The latter,’ Dom said.

  While the alien spoke Scarne had been receiving rapid mental impressions; his mind was bombarded with vivid images of boards, counters, decks of cards, and so on. Some kind of telepathic machine was at work. The Galactic Wheel man was not relying on words alone to make sure his meaning got across.

  ‘One of the simplest of these,’ the alien continued, ‘though one of the hardest to play, employs only two symbols and offers equal probability on either of them appearing after a randomizing process, the players calling bets on each result. This can be done, for instance, by flipping a coin. The process is repeated many thousands of times while the players pit their randomatic skills against each other in predicting the throws.’

  ‘We’ve played it,’ Dom said confidently, ‘but we don’t intend to play it here.’ He pulled out a deck, ripped off the wrapping and spread it on the table before the alien. ‘We play cards. My game is Kabala.’

  The alien’s face bent to view the painted cards. ‘Yes, we have studied it,’ he remarked. ‘We have a comparable game, and I suggest it is a game of this type that we now play.’

  He pointed to a console that stood on one side of the domed chamber, against the wall. ‘It was agreed during negotiations that the game could not be one in which one but not the other of the parties was versed, which effectively rules out both your Kabala and our game, which we call Constructions. Instead, the designing machine will put together a special game for the occasion, of the same type as both Kabala and Constructions, and will teach it to us by means of mental induction. The experience we have gained in the past with our respective games will thus find a natural application here.’

  He clapped his hands, and looked expectantly at the console. For about a minute nothing happened, then a cool, bright light issued from it and seemed to dart, first to Scarne’s eyes, and then into his brain.

  He was dazzled by the light: it was like having a spotlight trained on one. He fancied he could feel it, like something icy, alive and intelligent.

  And there formed in his mind complete knowledge of the new game. It was a game using a hundred-and-fifty-card deck, as difficult and abstruse as Kabala, if not more so, and bearing many resemblances to it.

  Scarne felt as if he had been playing it all his life. He wondered how Dom had satisfied himself that the galactics would not cheat. It was obvious they had an impressive armoury of tricks.

  ‘You are ready to play?’ the seated alien asked.

  The solmen all nodded.

  ‘A playing team may consist of up to four players, which may reduce as the game proceeds,’ their host continued. ‘We will therefore begin with four a side. You may, between rounds, stand any member down and use substitutes. There is a room nearby where the others can rest, or else they may kibitz.’

  ‘Understood,’ Dom said. ‘I’ve already got my four picked out.’

  The alien moved his hand and suddenly there appeared on the table before Dom an avalanche of little oblong objects in various colours. They appeared to be made of some rubbery material. ‘We have agreed beforehand on the stock represented by these tokens,’ the alien said. ‘The pile before you consists of one million units in various denominations.’

  Dom nodded.

  Scarne stared in fascination while Dom sorted out his starting team, thinking over what that pile meant. He failed to understand how Dom’s mind could encompass so gigantic and final a fact. But there it was.

  When the discarded members had retreated, Dom, with Scarne sitting at his right, looked questioningly at the alien. The creature spoke again, in a cordial tone.

  ‘We will play for twenty hours, or until your stake is exhausted. The bank cannot be broken – it is inexhaustible. There is only one further point for me to mention. To be able to read an opponent’s facial and bodily expression is held by some pl
ayers to be part of the game. Since in this case the players are of differing biological species and are strangers to one another it would not normally be possible. We have overcome this difficulty by arranging for visual translation. Your opponents will appear to you to be human beings and vice versa.

  ‘Let us begin.’

  All at once the big alien disappeared, together with the chair on which he had been sitting. Immediately following, the table underwent a transformation. It dwindled, drawing in on itself. The obscuring curtain disappeared. The four men found themselves sitting at a smaller circular table, just large enough to comfortably seat eight people.

  Facing them were the alien team, aged perhaps between twenty and sixty. Scarne looked at each of their faces in turn. He could find nothing unusual in them. They were not exactly average human beings – they were average-looking professional card players. They were the sort of people he had been staring at over green baize tables all his life.

  The scene was delusively familiar. Even the setting was unremarkable, for the architecture of the domed room was nondescript. It could have been anywhere. It was hard to imagine that so much hung on what would transpire between these eight players in the next few hours.

  On the table was a deck of cards that the designing machine had in the intervening minutes newly manufactured. One of the aliens picked it up and inserted it into a shuffling machine. When the shuffled deck was ejected he began dealing it round the table, placing the residue in a shoe dispenser of the type used by the Grand Wheel.

  Scarne picked up the ten cards dealt him. They were no ordinary cards. Some carried complicated picture symbolism, like the major arcana of the Tarot. Some of the number cards sported coloured decals which responded to thought. By concentrating, he could change their values.

  These shifting cards, an elaboration of the principle of the wild joker, were a feature of the game. Even one’s opponents could, in certain circumstances, change the cards in one’s hand.

  Dom was straining at the leash, the excitement already building up in him.

  The game began.

  Depth after depth.

  It was already apparent that Dom had early on anticipated what kind of game they would be called on to play. Mutating cards, changing rules, were features of one of the games Scarne had been taught at the Make-Out Club, under the identity machine.

  But here were no machine aids; everything was done by strength of mind. The rules of the game were hierarchical; it constructed itself as it went along in a dizzying spiral of strategy, which made each round a consequence of what had gone before.

  The objective of the game was to create a symbolic structure out of the cards according to certain definite laws. There was a range of such structures, each comprising a sufficient number of cards to preclude any other similar system from being assembled from the same deck. To win, a team had finally to hold all the requisite cards and no others, neither one too few nor one too many – and the team leader had to announce the fact without ever having seen what his partners held.

  The calling of bets, again the business of the team leader, was a close combination of bluff and intention. At the beginning of a round it was rarely possible to envisage the target system with any accuracy; only later did the outlines of a possible structure take shape. Betting began modestly, leaping prodigiously as events progressed, controlled as much by random influences as by the will of the players. Cards were bought unseen for enormous sums; subtle and pernicious double, treble and quadruple bluffs were perpetrated.

  Total concentration was necessary; only someone with complete control over his mental faculties could hope to play a game with so many layers of complexity. As the hours passed Scarne became oblivious of his surroundings; the symbols of the deck enveloped him, seeming to constitute the only reality, a new universe in which he and the other players were trapped and destined to live out their lives.

  It was rumoured that Kabala could heighten one’s consciousness. With this game, the promise was kept. Scarne broke new mental ground, his brain working with a speed he had never experienced before. It was like being reborn.

  Then, after seven hours, Dom called a break. Scarne brought himself down to earth with difficulty; it was like coming out of a trance.

  He was covered with perspiration. So, he noticed, was Dom.

  Dom rose, bowing stiffly to the other side of the table.

  ‘If it’s all the same to you, I would like to play two a side from now on.’

  The alien players glanced at one another. As they got the feel of the cards, both sides had by common consent already reduced their teams to three. The leader, depicted by visual translation as young and suave, nodded.

  ‘That suits us perfectly.’

  The solmen took themselves to a buffet on their side of the dome; the aliens retreated to a corresponding facility in their half. Dom’s redundant players, some of whom had been trying to follow the game, gathered round. Dom, however, took a single shot of whisky and spoke only to his co-players.

  ‘Cheyne,’ he said tensely, ‘you and I are going in together. We’re in trouble.’

  Scarne could not help but agree. Although they had won more rounds than the aliens – had constructed more metaphysical systems – the wagering was so complicated that the aliens were actually far ahead of them. Dom’s stock was already one-half depleted.

  ‘Two points,’ Dom told Scarne. ‘First, we have to concentrate less on systems-building as a target and more on winning side-bets. They can be more important than the ultimate outcome – that’s something they’ve tumbled to sooner than we have. They’ve latched on to the second point well ahead of us, too. The symbols involved in this deck are very potent – much more so than those of the Tarot. It’s possible by means of this game to alter your opponent’s mentality and hence to gain control over it – the team that happens to loses everything. I think they’ve already started building their strategy on that. And some of us have been falling for it. Even you, Cheyne.’

  Scarne reflected, thinking over the mental changes he had been experiencing. He nodded soberly.

  ‘I think you may be right.’

  ‘We’ve got to win everything back, and then some. Are you ready? Let’s go.’

  Scarne downed his whisky and finished his bread roll, then they rejoined the aliens at the table. Each pair of partners now faced one another, and he looked briefly into Dom’s eyes before beginning. It was impossible to tell what the Wheel chief was feeling. Desperation? Fascination? Or only pleasure in the game, still?

  It was Scarne’s turn to deal. He sent the cards round the table, ten to a hand, then picked up his own and studied them, the number cards, the stable picture cards, the inner and outer sets.

  He suddenly felt the slight mental jolt, like a missed heartbeat, that meant someone was practising thought-change on a card. With surprise he saw that it was one of his own cards that was mutating. He fought back, using his own control to keep the card from transforming. What, he thought, was the object of the manoeuvre? Play had not begun; his opponents had no clue as to the cards he held.

  Then he got the answer. The galactics had no idea what the card was, but they could feel his resistance; they knew now that it was a card he wanted to keep unaltered.

  Once again they had stolen a small advantage with a trick that could only be used once.

  Dom led, with a picture card of the outer set, the card titled the Infinite Ray; he pushed a hundred units into the stakes circle. It was a bold move, a direct challenge. The player following tried to buy the card; Dom refused to sell. Another picture card fell down in answer to the challenge and Scarne, sensing Dom’s intention, added to it a card of even higher value.

  Dom had set in train a process that could not be halted. There accumulated on the table a collection that naturally formed the core of a target construction – indeed no suitable system could be assembled without it. The struggle for possession of this package was now inevitable.

  As us
ual, Scarne had developed a rapport with Dom that was almost telepathic. He understood fully that the cards in the centre of the table were Dom’s gambit, a decoy he had arranged while he attempted to win on the side-bets. Scarne’s mind speeded up, his thoughts flashed ahead to strategy and counter-strategy … the possibilities were endless. The deck was capable of a universe of interrelationships, echoing and resonating ad infinitum.

  The rapidity of his calculation took another leap, like a starship slipping into over-drive. Then he discovered, with a shock of fright, that he could no longer see Dom, or the domed room, or the cards in his hand.

  A white haze surrounded him. At first the haze seemed to be composed of nothing but frosty light; gradually he became aware that actually there was an image in it – an image that, indefinitely reproduced, made up the haze and was everywhere, like certain holo images.

  The image was an enigmatic pattern resembling a manic machine, made up of rods and helices, some of which sported glistening blobs and nodules. It was the picture card known as the Apparatus, a card whose meaning was not entirely clear to Scarne. Once his eyes grasped it, the pattern began to move, breaking apart and reforming in a variety of alternative configurations. As he watched, it suddenly broke open, flinging itself out like an enormous disarrayed switch-back, and constructed a bizarre, impossible landscape.

  The terrain could not adequately be described in ordinary physical terms. It had no dimensions of its own, only those which emanated from the supporting framework of the Apparatus. The white haze, a frosty fog, hung over everything. Odd objects, made from smaller rods, spirals, and oozing blobs, emerged from and sank back into the interstices.

  In the near distance Scarne saw the two galactic partners sitting in their straight-backed chairs, watching him intently. He knew he had to find his way out of here and back to the card table. But how? Mentally he tried to retrace the route his thoughts had taken prior to his arriving in this place, to banish the landscape, but with no result.

  ‘Cheyne!’