He was an extreme example of what had once been known as a callidetic. For some years the Legitimacy had been nurturing people like him as part of its eternal struggle against the Grand Wheel. All cold-sensers were now, however, employed in the Cave: in some manner they were able to predict when a star was about to blow, even though normal scientific observation would detect no difference in its activity. They could give just enough warning for a getaway. Cold-sensers were not completely reliable and the protection they gave was not absolutely dependable; moreover they were hopelessly neurotic – over-stimulation of the thyroid gland was part of the treatment that heightened their talents – but it gave Hakandra a warm feeling to have one on his team.
After a while he left the com room and worked on some reports. Then he went up into the observation-room where he ate a sparse meal, afterwards sitting and watching the desert landscape through the glassite dome. The sun went down, its rim flickering and bubbling on the horizon in a way that made Hakandra nervous every night, even though it was only a trick of the atmosphere. Then the dark purple sky took over, filled with the misty swathe of the Milky Way and the great patches of darkness.
A sound came from behind him. Shane entered the room, picking his way through the semi-darkness to lean against the glassite and peer into the sky.
‘There was a nova over on the other side,’ Hakandra told him after a long silence.
Shane nodded calmly. ‘I’m not surprised. I had a… premonition. I thought there might be one going off somewhere…’
Hakandra glanced at the youth. All his former neurosis seemed to have vanished. Hakandra had seen this transformation before: when Shane lost the almost psychopathic aspects of his personality and became collected, almost angelically graceful. But now he seemed, at the same time, depressed and fatalistic.
‘The Cave is a terrible place,’ the boy murmured. ‘It’s cursed.’
Hakandra snorted. ‘Don’t be superstitious.’
‘I tell you it’s cursed. Lady has cursed it. How would you know? You have no sense for such things, but I can tell… It’s an accursed hole that the goddess has deserted. The very stars explode. Everything decays.’
Hakandra was disturbed to hear Shane talk in this religious way, smacking as it did of the mystique adopted by the Grand Wheel. ‘There is no goddess,’ he said curtly. ‘Put that nonsense out of your head.’
As the sky darkened there was a faint glow in the south. It came from some ruins Hakandra had visited. They were made of a light-retentive stone and glowed at night like phosphorescent bones. The race that had built them had died ages ago, when the planet dried up.
It was the same story all over the Cave, which was littered with the ruins of dead civilizations, as though the force that generated life was insufficient to enable that life to survive the hazards of existence. There was not one example, as far as was known, of a living intelligence still surviving in the Cave.
It almost persuaded Hakandra to believe in Shane’s pessimistic mysticism. But he shook off the mood. It was unfitting, in an officer of the Legitimacy.
FOUR
Overhead, the sun beat down brilliantly on the extended wings of the shuttle. Below, visible through the vehicle’s windows once they were within the atmosphere, were spread out chessboard squares of cloud, land and sea: the pattern of Earth’s controlled weather areas.
As they descended the chessboard effect was reinforced by the illusion of pieces standing on some of the squares. The pieces were in fact vertical tower cities, complete with coronas and lumpy protruberances, creating the impression of kings and queens, knights and castles.
The shuttle planed down to the big dispersal centre. Here there was no automatic immigration count, as there would have been on, say, Mars, a Legitimacy-dominated world. They walked straight off the shuttle and on to the force network platforms. Soon Scarne’s escorts had procured a vehicle and they were hurtling through the air towards their destination, propelled by the invisible inertial guidelines.
The landscape was mostly forest and empty plain, dotted here and there with vacation lodges. The population was all in the teeming colourful cities.
It said much for the dichotomic nature of human civilization that Earth, the capital planet, was a Wheel world – one where the Grand Wheel’s influence was strong, unchecked by the Legitimacy’s repressive efforts. On Earth the game was the thing; it was the site of the original corruption, the birthplace of the Wheel. Here people spent their lives testing fortune, moving from one ingenious game of chance to another.
A vast pile loomed up and became a blur as the inertial vehicle slammed towards it at ten thousand miles per hour, slowing to a mere sixty in the few seconds before entering the tower city. Briefly they sped through lighted tunnels, changing direction every now and then.
When the inertial beam brought the vehicle to a stop they were in what seemed to be a largish office, or study. An untidy desk was littered with papers, tapes and box files. Around it were chairs, a couch, a service cabinet. One or two paintings, mediocre to moderately good, hung on the walls.
Hervold folded down the front of the small vehicle. They clambered out, looking around them.
‘Where’s Soma?’ Caiman asked, disgruntled.
‘He ain’t here.’ Hervold crossed to the desk, glanced at a notepad there. ‘Well, we delivered, anyway.’
He spoke to Scarne. ‘He’ll be along shortly. Make yourself comfortable.’
He nodded to Caiman. The two of them climbed back into the inertial cab. It withdrew into the tunnel; a facing panel came down, leaving the wall smooth and unbroken. In a few hours they would probably be back on Io.
Suddenly alone, Scarne put down his holdall. He went to the desk. Nothing there gave him any clue.
A door opened behind him. Scarne turned to see a pale-eyed woman, aged about thirty-five, standing in sudden surprise in the doorway.
She recovered herself quickly. ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘The man from Io?’ She searched her mind. ‘Professor Scarne.’
‘Yes. Cheyne Scarne.’ He offered his hand. She shook it limply. She was still attractive, Scarne thought, but with the faded, slightly worn look of a woman who has lived perhaps a little too fast. Her face had something appealing, almost touching about it.
‘Welcome to the Make-Out Club,’ she said. ‘I’m Cadence Mellors. We’d better get to know one another, I guess. How long have you been synched?’
‘Synched?’
A frown crossed her face. ‘How long have you been entitled to wear one of these?’ She held up her wrist to show him the dangling gridded wheel, similar to Hervold’s.
He caught her meaning. There was probably a lot of jargon inside the Wheel organization. ‘Only since yesterday, as a matter of fact.’
‘Oh.’ The new realization clouded her features, as if it disappointed her.
‘Who’s this man Soma?’ Scarne asked.
‘Jerry Soma? He’ll be your boss. This is his office. He runs the Make-Out.’ She crossed to the service unit and came back with two glasses, handing one to Scarne. ‘Have some refreshment.’
She clinked her glass against his before they drank. ‘Good health,’ she said. While Scarne merely sipped the malt whisky, she knocked hers straight back. ‘I’d never get through the afternoon without a pick-me-up,’ she explained cheerfully.