Solar Lottery (5 page)

“Less things get broken,” Benteley answered obliquely.

“I’ll hire a taxi and load up over the weekend. I don’t think he’ll want me before Monday.”

“I don’t know,” Al said doubtfully. “You better get your stuff over here as soon as possible. Sometimes Verrick wants a person right now, and when he wants you right now—”

“The hell with Verrick,” Benteley said. “I’m taking my time.”

Their dazed, shocked faces danced around him as he moved away from the table. His stomach was full of warm well-cooked food, but his mind was thin and empty, a sharp acid rind over—what? He didn’t know.

“That’s no way to talk,” Al said.

“That’s the way I feel.”

“You know,” Al said, “I don’t think you’re being realistic.”

“Maybe not.” Benteley found his coat. “Thanks for the meal, Laura. It was terrific.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’m not,” Benteley answered. “You have a fine little place here. All the comforts and conveniences. I hope you’ll both be very happy. I hope your cooking keeps on convincing you, in spite of me.”

“It will,” Laura said.

The announcer was saying: “… more than ten thousand already, from all parts of Earth. Judge Waring’s announcement that the first assassin will be chosen at this session …”

“Tonight!” Al exclaimed. He whistled appreciatively. “Verrick doesn’t waste any time.” He shook his head, impressed. “That man really moves, Ted. You have to hand it to him.”

Benteley crouched down and snapped the tv set off. The rapid procession of sounds and images faded out of existence and he rose to his feet. “You mind?” he said.

“What happened?” Laura faltered. “It went off.”

“I turned it off. I’m tired of hearing that goddamn racket. I’m tired of the Convention and everything about it.”

There was an uneasy, unnatural silence.

After a moment Al grinned uncertainly. “How about a shot of booze before you go? It’ll relax you.”

“I’m relaxed,” Benteley said. He crossed over to the transparent wall and stood with his back to Laura and Al, gazing gloomily out at the night and the endless winking procession of lights that moved around Farben Hill. In his mind a similar phantasmagoria of shapes and images swirled; he could turn off the tv and opaque the wall, but he couldn’t halt the rapid activity in his mind.

“Well,” Laura said finally, to no one in particular, “I guess we don’t get to watch the Challenge Convention.”

“You’ll see review tapes the rest of your life,” Al said genially.

“I want to see it now!”

“It’ll be awhile, anyhow,” Al said, automatically seeking to smooth things out. “They’re still testing their equipment.”

Laura made a short breathing sound and whirled the dinner table back into the kitchen. Roaring water leaped in the sink; dishes banged and scraped furiously.

“She’s mad,” Al observed.

“It’s my fault,” Benteley said, without conviction.

“She’ll get over it. You probably remember. Say, if you want to tell me what’s wrong I’m all ears.”

What am I supposed to say? Benteley thought futilely. “I went to Batavia expecting to get in on something big,” he said. “Something beyond people grabbing for power, struggling to get to the top of the heap over each other’s dead bodies. Instead I find myself back here—with that shrill thing yelling at the top of its lungs.” He gestured at the tv. “Those ads are like bright shiny sewer-bugs.”

Al Davis solemnly extended a chubby finger. “Reese Verrick will be back in the number One spot inside a week. His money picks the assassin. The assassin is under fealty to him. When he kills this Cartwright person the spot returns to Verrick. You’re just too damn impatient, that’s all. Wait a week, man. It’ll be back the way it was—maybe better.”

Laura appeared at the doorway. Her rage was gone; now her face was flooded with peevish anxiety. “Al, couldn’t we please get the Convention? I can hear the neighbors’ set and they’re choosing the assassin
right now!
”

“I’ll turn it on,” Benteley said wearily. “I’m going, anyhow.” He squatted down and snapped on the power. The tv set warmed rapidly; as he made his way out onto the front porch, its tinny scream rose in a frenzy behind him. The metallic cheers of thousands rolled out after him, into the chill night darkness.

“The assassin!” the tv set shrieked, as he plunged down the dark path, hands deep in his pockets. “They’re handing up his name right now—I’ll have it for you in a second.” The cheering rose to an orgiastic crescendo; like the rolling waves of the sea, it momentarily blotted the announcer out. “Pellig,” the announcer’s voice filtered through, rising above the tumult. “By popular acclamation—by the wishes of a planet! The assassin is—Keith Pellig!”

The burnished wisp of cold gray slid silently in front of Ted Benteley. Its doors rolled back and a slim shape stepped out into the chill night darkness.

“Who is it?” Benteley demanded. The wind lashed through the moist foliage growing against the Davis house. The sky was frigid; far off sounds of activity echoed hollowly, the Farben Hill factories booming dully in the darkness.

“Where in God’s name have you been?” a girl’s clipped, anxious contralto came to him. “Verrick sent for you an hour ago.”

“I was right here,” Benteley answered.

Eleanor Stevens emerged quickly from the shadows. “You should have stayed in touch when the ship landed. He’s angry.” She glanced nervously around. “Where’s Davis? Inside?”

“Of course.” Anger rose inside Benteley. “What’s this all about?”

“Don’t get excited.” The girl’s voice was as taut as the
frozen stars shining overhead. “Go back inside and get Davis and his wife. I’ll wait for you in the car.”

Al Davis gaped at him in amazement as Benteley pushed open the front door and entered the warm yellow-bright living room. “He wants us,” Benteley said. “Tell Laura; he wants her along, too.”

Laura was sitting on the edge of the bed unstrapping her sandals. She quickly smoothed her slacks down over her ankles as Al entered the bedroom. “Come on, honey,” Al said to his wife.

“Is something wrong?” Laura leaped quickly up. “What is it?”

The three of them moved out into the chill night darkness, in greatcoats and heavy workboots. Eleanor started up the motor of the car and it purred forward restlessly. “In you go,” Al murmured, as he helped Laura find a seat in the inky gloom. “How about a light?”

“You don’t need a light to sit down,” Eleanor answered. She rolled the doors shut; the car glided out onto the road and instantly gained speed. Dark houses and trees flashed past. Abruptly, with a sickening
whoosh
, the car lifted up above the pavement. It skimmed briefly, then arched high over a row of tension lines. A few minutes later it was gaining altitude over the vast sprawling mass of buildings and streets that made up the parasitic clusters around the Farben Hill.

“What’s this all about?” Benteley demanded. The car shuddered, as magnetic grapple-beams caught it and lowered it toward the winking buildings below. “We have a right to know something.”

“We’re going to have a little party,” Eleanor said, with a smile that barely moved her thin crimson lips. She allowed the car to settle into a concave lock and come finally to rest against a magnetic disc. With a quick snap she cut the power and threw open the doors. “Get out. We’re here.”

Their heels clattered in the deserted corridor, as Eleanor
led them rapidly from one level to the next. A few silent uniformed guards stood at regular intervals, their pudding faces sleepy and impassive, bulging rifles gripped loosely.

Eleanor waved open a double-sealed door and nodded them briskly inside. A billow of fragrant air lapped around them as they pushed uncertainly past her, inside the chamber.

Reese Verrick stood with his back to them. He was fumbling angrily with something, massive arms moving in a slow grind of rage. “How the hell do you work this damn thing?” he bellowed irritably. The protesting shrill of torn metal grated briefly. “Christ, I think I broke it.”

“Here,” Herb Moore said, emerging from a deep low chair in the corner. “You have no manual dexterity.”

“You bet,” Verrick growled. He turned, a huge hunched-over bear, his shaggy brows protruding bone-hard, thick and belligerent. His blazing eyes bored at the three newcomers as they stood uneasily together. Eleanor Stevens unzipped her greatcoat and tossed it over the back of a luxurious couch.

“Here they are,” she said to Verrick. “They were all together, enjoying themselves.” She stalked over, long-legged in her velvet slacks and leather sandals and stood before the fire warming her breasts and shoulders. In the flickering firelight her naked flesh glowed a deep luminous red.

Verrick turned without ceremony to Benteley. “Always be where I can find you.” He bit his words out contemptuously.

“I don’t have any more teeps around to thought-wave people in. I have to find them the hard way.” He jerked his thumb at Eleanor. “She came along, but minus ability.”

Eleanor smiled bleakly and said nothing.

Verrick spun around and shouted at Moore, “Is that damn thing fixed or not?”

“It’s almost ready.”

Verrick grunted sourly. “This is a sort of celebration,” he
said to Benteley, “although I don’t know what we’ve got to celebrate.”

Moore strolled over, confident and full of talk, a sleek little model of an interplan rocket in his hands. “We’ve got plenty to celebrate. This is the first time a Quizmaster chose an assassin. Pellig isn’t somebody chosen by a bunch of senile old fogies; Verrick has had him on tap and this whole thing worked out since—”

“You talk too much,” Verrick cut in. “You’re too damn full of easy words. Half of them don’t mean a thing.”

Moore laughed gaily. “That’s what the Corps found out.”

Benteley moved uncomfortably away. Verrick was slightly drunk; he was as menacing and ominous as a bear let out of its cage. But behind his clumsy movements was a slick-edged mind that missed nothing.

The chamber was high-ceilinged, done in ancient wood panels, probably from some ancient monastery. The whole structure was much like a church, domed and ribbed, its upper limits dissolving in amber gloom, thick beams charred and hard-smoked from countless fires roaring in the stone fireplace below. Everything was massive and heavy. There were rich deep colors; the stones themselves were rubbed black with ingrained ash, the upright supports as thick as tree-logs. Benteley touched a dully-gleaming panel. The wood was corroded, but strangely smooth, as if a layer of cloudy light had settled over it and worked its way into the material.

“This wood,” Verrick said, noticing Benteley, “is from a medieval bawdy house.”

Laura was examining stone-weighted tapestries that hung dead and heavy over the lead-sealed windows. On a mantel over the huge fireplace were battered, dented cups. Benteley gingerly took one down. It was a ponderous lump in his hands, an ancient thick-rimmed cup, heavy and simple and oblique, medieval Saxon.

“You’ll meet Pellig in a few minutes,” Verrick said to them. “Eleanor and Moore have already met him.”

Moore laughed again, his offensive sharp bark, like a thin-toothed dog. “I’ve met him, all right,” he said.

“He’s cute,” Eleanor said tonelessly.

“Pellig is circulating around,” Verrick continued. “Talk to him, stay with him. I want everybody to see him. I only plan to send out one assassin.” He waved his hand impatiently. “There’s no point in sending out an endless stream.”

Eleanor glanced at him sharply.

“Let’s lay it on the line and get it over with.” Verrick strode to the closed double-doors at the end of the room and waved them open. Sound, rolling volumes of light and the flickering movement of many people billowed out. “Get in there,” Verrick ordered. “I’ll locate Pellig.”

    “A drink, sir or madam?”

Eleanor Stevens accepted a glass from the tray passed by a blank-faced MacMillan robot. “What about you?” she said to Benteley. She nodded the robot back and took a second glass. “Try it. It’s smooth stuff. It’s some kind of berry that grows on the sunward side of Callisto, in the cracks of a certain kind of shale, one month out of the year. Verrick has a special work-camp to collect it.”

Benteley took the glass. “Thanks.”

“And cheer up.”

“What’s this all about?” Benteley indicated the packed cavern of murmuring, laughing people. They were all well dressed, in a variety of color combinations; every top-level class was represented. “I expect to hear music and see them start dancing.”

“There was dinner and dancing earlier. Good grief, it’s almost two a.m. A lot has happened, today. The twitch, the Challenge Convention, all the excitement.” Eleanor moved off, eyes intent on something. “Here they come.”

A sudden rustle of nervous silence swept over the nearby people. Benteley turned and so did everyone else. They were all watching nervously, avidly, as Reese Verrick approached. With him was another man. The latter was a slender man in an ordinary gray-green suit, his arms loose at his sides, his face blank and expressionless. A taut ripple of sound swirled after him; there were hushed exclamations and a burst of appreciative tribute.

“That’s him,” Eleanor grated between her white teeth, eyes flashing. She grabbed fiercely at Benteley’s arm. “That’s Pellig.
Look at him.
”

Pellig said nothing. His hair was straw-yellow, moist and limply combed. His features were uncertain, almost non-descript. He was a colorless, silent person almost lost from sight as the rolling giant beside him propelled him among the alertly-watching couples. After a moment the two of them were swallowed up by satin slacks and floor length gowns, and the buzz of animated conversation around Benteley resumed.

“They’ll be over here later,” Eleanor said. She shivered. “He gives me the creeps. Well?” She smiled up quickly at Benteley, still holding on tight to his arm. “What do you think of him?”

“I didn’t get any impression.” Off in the distance Verrick was surrounded by a group of people. Herb Moore’s enthusiastic voice lifted above the uniform blur of sound: he was expounding again. Annoyed, Benteley pulled a few steps away.

“Where are you going?” Eleanor asked.

“Home.” The word slipped out involuntarily.

“Where do you mean?” Eleanor smiled wryly. “I can’t teep you any more, darling. I gave all that up.” She lifted her flaming crimson hair to show the two dead circles above her ears, lead-gray spots that marred the smooth whiteness of her skin.

“I can’t understand you,” Benteley said. “An ability you were born with, a unique gift.”

“You sound like Wakeman. If I had stayed with the Corps I would have had to use my ability against Reese. So what else could I do but leave?” There was tight agony in her eyes. “You know, it’s really gone. It’s like being blinded. I screamed and cried a long time afterward. I couldn’t face it. I broke down completely.”

“How are you now?”

She gestured shakily. “I’ll live. Anyhow, I can’t get it back. So forget it, darling. Drink your drink and relax.” She clinked glasses with him. “It’s called
methane gale.
I suppose Callisto has a methane atmosphere.”

“Have you ever been to one of the colony planets?” Benteley asked. He sipped at the amber liquid; it was strong stuff. “Have you ever seen one of the work-camps, or one of the squatters’ colonies after a police patrol has finished with it?”

“No,” Eleanor said simply. “I’ve never been off Earth. I was born in San Francisco nineteen years ago. All telepaths come from there, remember? During the Final War the big research installations at Livermore were hit by a Soviet missile. Those who survived were badly bathed. We’re all descendants of one family, Earl and Verna Phillips. The whole Corps is related. I was trained for it all the time I was growing up: my destiny.”

    A vague blur of music had started up at one end of the chamber. A music robot, creating random combinations of sound, harmonic colors and shades that flitted agilely, too subtle to pin down. Some couples started dancing listlessly. A group of men had gathered together and were arguing in loud, angry tones. Snatches of words carried to Benteley.

“Out of the lab in June, they say.”

“Would you make a cat wear trousers? It’s inhuman.”

“Plow into something at that velocity? Personally, I’ll stick to plain old sub-C.”

Near the double doors a few people were seeking out their wraps and wandering away, dull-faced, vacant-eyed, mouths slack with fatigue and boredom.

“It gets like this,” Eleanor said. “The women wander off to the powder room. The men start arguing some point.”

“What does Verrick do?”

“You’re hearing it now.”

Verrick’s deep tones rolled out over everybody else’s; he was dominating the argument. People nearby gradually stopped talking and began filtering over to listen. A tight knot of men formed, grim-faced and serious, as Verrick and Moore waved louder and hotter.

“Our problems are of our own making,” Verrick asserted. “They’re not real, like problems of supply and labor surplus.”

“How do you figure?” Moore demanded.

“This whole system is artificial. This M-game was invented by a couple of mathematicians during the early phase of the Second World War.”

“You mean discovered. They saw that social situations are analogues of strategy games, like poker. A system that works in a poker game will work in a social situation, like business or war.”

“What’s the difference between a game of chance and a strategy game?” Laura Davis asked, from where she and Al stood.

Annoyed, Moore answered, “Everything. In a game of chance no conscious deception is involved; in a poker game every player has a deliberate strategy of bluff, false leads, putting out misleading verbal reports and visual horse-play to confuse the other players as to his real position and intentions. He has a pattern of misrepresentation by which he traps them into acting foolishly.”

“You mean like saying he has a good hand when he hasn’t?”

Moore ignored her and turned back to Verrick. “You want to deny society operates like a strategy game? Minimax was a brilliant hypothesis. It gave us a rational scientific method to crack any strategy and transform the strategy game into a chance game, where the regular statistical methods of the exact sciences function.”

“All the same,” Verrick rumbled, “this damn bottle throws a man out for no reason and elevates an ass, a crackpot, picked at random, without regard to his ability or class.”

“Sure,” Moore exclaimed, wildly excited. “Our whole system is built on Minimax. The bottle forces everybody to play a Minimax game or be squashed; we’re forced to give up deception and adopt a rational procedure.”

“There’s nothing rational in this random twitching,” Verrick answered angrily. “How can random machinery be rational?”

“The random factor is a function of an overall rational pattern. In the face of random twitches, no one can have a strategy. It forces everybody to adopt a randomized method: best analysis of the statistical possibilities of certain events plus the pessimistic assumption that any plans will be found out in advance. Assuming you’re found out in advance frees you of the danger of being discovered. If you act randomly your opponent can find out nothing about you because even
you
don’t know what you’re going to do.”