"Barley, Barrington J - Grand Wheel, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barley Barrington J)

Scarne's mind thrilled at mention of the name. Marguerite Dom-chairman of the Grand Wheel! It excited him to think he might actually be that close to what he wanted.
He coughed and spoke in an innocent tone. "Is this all you want me for, as a player? I had hoped to be introduced to the planning side of things. After all, I am a highly qualified randomatician."
"Is this all we want you for?" Soma mimicked unpleasantly. He leaned forward, his vulpine face glaring at Scame. "We moved on past the three card trick a long time ago. Here on Earth there are people whose whole lives are games of chance organized by the Wheel. There are people playing games just to win a chance to get into bigger games. It's a study of life itself. There are people who don't even know that they are playing. There are people who have a life-game set up for them before they are even born." He leaned back. "Don't tell me it's belittling to be a Wheel player."
"I won't." Soma was a typical Wheel operative, Scame thought. He had that odd combination that made the Grand Wheel so frightening. Intelligence, ability, even a certain amount of scientific knowledge, but along with it all the whiff of the hoodlum, the sinister influence of past Wheel history.
Maybe the members of the mathematical cadre, academic randomaticians like himself, would be of a different sort, he told himself.
He decided to ask a question of his own. "Last night on lo I hit a jackpot on the muggers. I'm curious to know how it was done."
"Are you implying the muggers are fixed?" Soma asked sharply. "If so, forget it. All our formats are inviolably random."
"It's not that," Scame said, skirting clear of the dangerous subject. "It was the vision itself ... I'd like to know how it was achieved."
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"What vision?"
"The vision of probabilities."
Soma looked puzzled for a moment. Then he glanced at Cadence, waving his hand at her peremp-torily. "I'll speak to the professor alone for a moment."
The girl left. Soma settled himself in his chair again, tilting his face to look Scarne directly in the eye. "Tell me about this vision."
Haltingly, as best he could, Scame described what had happened to him when he took hold of the mugger handles. Soma listened attentively, asking a question now and then when Scarne's account became vague.
When Scame had finished he became silent for a moment. "Well, I don't know," he said. "You were supposed to get a brain charge, a few moments of pure pleasure, that's all. This I've never heard of."
"Pure pleasure? Is that standard for a jackpot?"
"Sometimes it's a lot of money, sometimes it's some type of brain charge. It may not sound like much;
actually pure unadulterated happiness is something the average person never experiences normally. He remembers it all his life. This other thing, though, that's something else again. I'll check it out." Soma rose to his feet. "Cadence will show you to your quarters. Do you need any sleep?"
"No, I'm all right."
"Rest a couple of hours, anyway. We'll run through a session tonight." Soma's hand on his shoulder was proprietorial, almost comradely, as he guided Scame through the doorway. Cadence sat in an adjoining office. She rose to her feet, smiling nervously as Soma handed Scarne over to her; then she led him to a travel cubicle.
The cubicle was the standard means of transport in the tower cities. Zipping through a ubiquitous network of square-sectioned tunnels, up, down, sideways and in ranging curves, it could deliver one to almost any dwelling in the pile. This one did not take them far,
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however, staying within the precincts of the Make-Out Club.
For only a few seconds Scame shared the cubicle with the silent presence of the girl. Then she slid open the door panel and they entered a tidy, comfortable room with a bathroom just off it. "Well, this is it. Hope you'll be okay here." She moved around the room, turning on sidelights. "There's just about everything you need."
"No holbooth," Scame said, looking around. She waved to an occasional table with an instrument on it. "There's a vidphone, but it only serves the club, I'm afraid." She looked apologetic. "Jerry doesn't want you calling anybody outside. Your attention has to be on the job."
He threw his hold-all on the bed and sat down beside it. "I couldn't follow everything Soma was saying. What did he mean by weighted games?" Her eyes widened. "You don't know much, do you?" "Maybe not," he said irritably. "That's why I'm asking."
"These days the Wheel is like one of those ancient secret societies," she told him. "Only bigger, grander. They don't just make money-that's centuries in the past. The Wheel opens up all kinds of routes to people. But you can only get it by winning, by combining chance and skill. Some people never even guess the possibilities are there. You, for instance."
"All right!" Scame was exasperated, not liking to be told what a numbskull he was. "But what's a weighted game?"
"One where the Wheel takes less than a fifty per cent chance of winning. It's just a way of showing that you're making progress. That the Wheel sees you as an individual, not merely as one of a statistical mass. The Wheel likes to gamble, too." "But it's not just money that's involved?" "Not always. There are other things besides money. There are life experiences-the Wheel can provide those. Some people want to change their lives alto-
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gether, to become somebody else, somebody completely different. The Wheel can arrange that. There are techniques for changing people's personalities, giving them new abilities and opening new doors for them. If you can put up the stake, play and win, you can choose what kind of person you'll be, what kind of life you'll live. Have you ever known someone to disappear without trace? It could be that's what happened to them."
"What would the stake be in such a case?" Scame asked tartly.
She shrugged. "Or there's power. It's possible to win power inside the Wheel, a high-ranking position."
"You can win influence in the Wheel hierarchy? In a game of chance?" Scame was amazed.
"It's like an esoteric society," she repeated. "On the higher circuits there are grades and degrees; you gain them by winning games of greater and greater difficulty. That's how rank is decided. Hell, you could have got a long way if you really can play Kabala. Not now, though. I think they want you for something special."
"Do you have to be in the Wheel hierarchy already to play these games? Or can you come in direct from outside?"
She smiled. "Theoretically it's possible for an outsider to become a member of the inner council just by playing one game. I can't imagine that happening. But people do try to gamble their way into the lower circuits. We gain control of quite a few Legit officials that way. You have to be able to put up the stake, you see. You must already have power on the outside. If you lose, you owe that power to the Wheel. But if people win they invariably come over to us-so we can't really lose, whatever happens."
"And the Grand Wheel grows bigger, and bigger, and bigger," Scame said. He deliberated somberly. "Suppose the Wheel had a chance to gamble everything it has gained. Do you reckon they'd do it?"
"I don't know. How could it happen?"
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"I don't know," he admitted. The idea had just come to him, out of the blue. But the question was not meaningless. Centuries ago a gambling organization would not, itself, have been composed of gamblers; it would have preyed on them. Today, he intuited, the case was different. They had made a religion of the thrills of hazard and chance.
"You've been in the Wheel a long time, haven't you?" he said suddenly, looking up at her. "All your life."
"Since I was seventeen." She took a cigarro from a box on the dresser, and sat on the bed with Scame while she lit it, blowing out a streamer of aromatic smoke. "I was living with a man who was an operative. He brought me in as a club girl. Afterwards I just hung around."
"Do you think you did the right thing?" He looked at her curiously.
"Sure." She glanced at him. лLife can be hard. Outside, I don't think I'd have what it takes to weather the knocks. I wouldn't understand what I understand now. The Wheel teaches you that everything happens by chance. It's all random, good or bad. So nothing is really your own fault-you couldn't have done anything about it. Realizing that makes life easier."
"You make it sound as if it hasn't been all that easy," he said cautiously.
"I like to think of the story of two people meeting on a bridge. Suppose there are two people whose lives would be transformed if they were to meet one another. One day they both cross the same bridge in opposite directions. It's possible that they will both cross at the same moment, and that something will happen to bring them together. Then people say they were 'destined for one another'. But that's all rubbish. They could miss one another by hours, by minutes or seconds, or they could simply pass by without really noticing one another. Out of millions of potentially miraculous meetings, one or two are bound to come
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