The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (7 page)

Rogge knitted his brow. “What law am I flouting?”

“The statute created over thirty years ago for the protection and encouragement of friendly autochthones.”

Rogge said nothing.

“You will either cooperate completely, or I will request your removal.”

Rogge looked away. “Perhaps you are right,” he muttered.

A faint sound came to their ears. Turning, they looked to the gap in the floor. It was fast disappearing. Even as they watched, the splinters, strangely pliant, turned themselves down, knitted to a smooth gleaming surface. Where the gap had been now shone a small gleaming object.

Magnus Ridolph strode forward, lifted it, displayed it wordlessly to Rogge. It was a complex crystal—blood-colored fire—perfectly formed except on one side, where it had been torn away from its matrix.

“A ruby, I believe,” said Magnus Ridolph. He looked at the staring superintendent, then coolly returned to his inspection of the jewel.

Magnus Ridolph often found himself in want for money, for his expenditures were large and he had no regular income. With neither natural diligence nor any liking for routine, he was forced to cope with each ebb of his credit balance as it occurred, a fact which suited him perfectly. In his brain an exact logical mechanism worked side by side with a projective faculty ranging the infinities of time and space, and this natural endowment he used not only to translate fact from and into mathematics, but also to maintain his financial solvency.

In the course of the years he had devised a number of money-making techniques. The first of these was profoundly simple. Surveying the world about him, he would presently observe a lack or an imperfection. A moment’s thought would suggest an improvement, and in repairing the universe, Magnus Ridolph usually repaired his credit balance.

At other times he accepted private commissions, occasionally acting as an unofficial agent of the T.C.I., where his white hair, his trimmed white beard, his calm impersonal gaze and mild aspect were valuable assets.

He often visited one of the gambling resorts scattered here and there among the worlds of the Commonwealth, mingling unobtrusively with the crowds who came rich and left poor. His purpose was by no means to test his luck; his visits indeed were as unemotional as the calls of the tax-collector. Still it cannot be denied he found a certain saturnine satisfaction mulcting the latter-day gangsters in a fashion to which they could take no possible exception.

Fan, the Pleasure-Planet, was a world slightly outside the established edge of the Commonwealth, but not so far that the Terrestrial Corps of Intelligence lacked authority; and it was to Fan that Magnus Ridolph came after a program of research in connection with telepathy had exhausted his funds. Mylitta, chief city and space-port, occupied the tip of a fertile peninsula in the warm region of the planet, and here was the Hall of Doubtful Destiny, operated by Acco May, together with the lesser casinos, bordellos, taverns, restaurants, theaters, arcades, and hotels.

The third day after his arrival Magnus Ridolph strolled into the Hall of Doubtful Destiny carrying a small case. Through tremendous glass doors he entered the lobby, a large quiet room with walls decorated
wau kema
style, in the typical brown and blue leaf-patterns of the aboriginal tribes. Directly ahead, through a colonnade of green jasper pillars he glimpsed the hundred-foot track where midget ponies raced. To right and left were the various other games of skill, chance and direction.

Magnus Ridolph ignored the race-track, turned into the hall where card-games were in progress—poker, planetta, black-jack, botch, rhumbo. He watched a poker game a moment, but passed on. Winning money at poker was a long-range affair, requiring patience and careful attention to statistics.

Chuck-a-luck he passed with a sardonic glance, and also the craps tables, and entered a wing where a dozen roulette wheels clicked and glittered. Red and black, mused Magnus Ridolph, red and black on green felt, traditional effects of gambling since the eighteenth century.

He turned his eyes around the room, enjoying the thousand various hues and tones. He looked up to the ceiling, ground-glass glowing in the patterns projected by a monster kaleidoscope, wonderfully intricate, ever-changing—plasma-yellow, blues, bottle-greens, ardent red; blazing orange rosettes, shimmering waves of violet-blue, dart-pointed stars, bursting and fading, merging into expanding circles, bars and bands.

In contrast, the carpet was a dull dark gray, without shadow, and across walked richly clad men and women in gorgeous tunics, jackets of pigeon-blood, the blue-green of moderate ocean depth, black. Along the far wall ran three tiers of balconies, and here small parties ate, drank, watched the play below.

Magnus Ridolph surveyed the vast hall from end to end, speculated on the profits yielded by the multifarious tables. They must be enormous, he mused, looking down the ranks of flushed, nervous faces, alternately elated and dejected. And all funneled into the pocket of Acco May. Acco May was a man feared everywhere in the Commonwealth, a man linked in the public imagination to a thousand crimes. And yet, whatever form Acco May’s raids took, he was never within reach when the accounting came, and no positive proof existed to incriminate him.

Magnus Ridolph brought himself back to the matter at hand. He carefully inspected one of the roulette wheels, timed the spin of the wheel, estimated the mass and radial throw of the ball, undertook a few mental calculations, turned away. The margin of error was such that he might as well gamble outright.

He retraced his steps past the race-track, catching as he passed the flash of tiny dark-brown forms, and entered the other wing. He passed more roulette tables, a device of meshing whirling disks, and paused beside a large globe full of liquid and swimming balls of various colors—a game known in the hall as Lorango.

As he watched, the balls slowed, floated jostling up to the top of the globe, where they formed a pyramid, one ball at the apex, three immediately below, then seven, and finally a layer of thirteen, all glowing like jewels in a shaft of light from beneath.

The device was operated by a young man with seal-smooth blond hair and narrow brown eyes, dressed in the green and white uniform of the hall. The balls having settled into their places, he called the winning colors.

“Silver wins; vermilion, sapphire and flame, under; gold, royal, topaz, zebra, opal, emerald and jet, third.”

Magnus Ridolph stepped closer. A ball selected correctly for top place, he noted, paid 24 to one; in the second layer, eight to one; in the third layer, three to one. Even money, he thought, except for the odds in the third layer, which slightly favored the house. Then he noticed a small sign:

“Make your bets,” called the blond operator. He pressed a button, the globe spun. “No more bets.” The globe stopped short, the balls spun on, finally sought their places. The operator called the results.

“Indigo wins; jet, fawn, ruby, under; harlequin, diorite, aqua, ivory, amethyst, teal and olivine, third.”

Chips changed hands.

“Make your bets,” called the operator. Magnus Ridolph unobtrusively pulled a stop-watch from his pocket.

“No more bets.” The globe spun, reached its maximum speed, halted. The balls whirled on. Magnus Ridolph looked at the stopwatch. 10.23 seconds. The balls settled into place. He checked his watch again. 32.01 seconds.

“White at top,” called the operator. “House takes all bets.”

Magnus Ridolph timed the globe several times more, noted the results in a small black book.

Next he turned his attention to the globe. From his case he took a camera, and filmed the entire sequence three times.

He replaced the camera, considering what other information he needed. The liquid evidently was water. From the photographs he could calculate the speed of rise of the balls and consequently their specific gravity. The photographs would likewise disclose the dimensions of the balls and the globe, and the equation of curvature of the globe.

Several quantities yet remained unknown—the coefficient of skin friction of the balls and the globe in water, their mutual elasticity, the rate of revolution of the globe, the equation of its acceleration. He must also correct for the centrifugal force of the planet’s rotation, the variations caused by the motion of the sun across the sky, the change in temperature of the water due to agitation. He must also investigate the possibility of any strong or unusual electrical, gravitational or magnetic fields. He opened his case, glanced at the dials of an instrument within, moved around the globe, watching the action of the needles. He snapped the case shut, approached the attendant.

“What is the composition of the balls?” he asked.

The operator looked down at the old man under arched eyebrows. “Vitrine, sir.”

“And the globe?”

“Also vitrine, sir.” The operator looked away. “Place your bets, please.”

It was unlikely, reflected Magnus Ridolph, that the operator would know the precise rate of revolution of the globe. He looked for power leads, then turned away, realizing that he had no means to determine the efficiency of the motor. Direct measurement would be necessary.

He strolled from the hall, entered a drug store.

“A gram of fluorescin, please,” he told the clerk. “Also fifty meters of Pan-Ang film, two millimeters.”

He returned to the hall with his purchases, touched a pinch of the powder to the globe, and with his camera he filmed three more cycles. Then he checked once more the period that the globe was in rotation. No change—10.23 seconds till the globe stopped, and 32.01 seconds until the balls settled into their places.

Magnus Ridolph left the Hall of Doubtful Destiny, wandered down tree-shaded Mokalemaaka Way to his hotel.

The next day his calculations, facilitated by a small integrating machine and differential analyzer, were complete, with a margin of error that was sufficiently narrow to please him.

He returned to the Hall of Doubtful Destiny, and now bought ten hundred-munit chips at the cashier’s wicket. He turned to the left, toward the twenty-four Lorango balls dancing and bouncing, swirling and wheeling apparently at haphazard, but actually in courses ruled by laws as exact as those determining their surface area.

Those laws Magnus Ridolph had reduced to concrete terms, computing the probability of the ball in each of the twenty-four positions winning on the succeeding play.

The percentage total of the four highest probabilities was 62. In other words, Magnus Ridolph, inspecting the pyramid and playing the balls he found in the four positions of highest probability had a 62 percent chance of winning 24 to one or, in the long run, of multiplying his money 12 to one at every play.

Before he bet he checked once more the period of the cycle; then, satisfied, he put a chip apiece on the colors ivory, teal, diamond and indigo to win. The globe whirled, the balls surged, plunged through the limpid flux.

“Ivory wins,” called the blond operator. “Indigo, vermilion, jet, under; silver, lime, fawn, diorite, topaz, zebra and opal third.”

Magnus Ridolph took possession of his winnings and the chip he had bet on ivory—a net gain of 2,100 munits. Glancing at the globe, he bet three chips apiece on ruby, white, amethyst, and olivine to win.

The globe whirled.

“White wins—all bets to the house, except those on white.”

With 94 chips stacked in front of him, Magnus Ridolph bet ten chips each on jet, aqua, diorite, emerald and gold, adding the fifth most favored position which slightly increased the odds in his favor and would confuse any attempted analysis of his play.

He lost, and immediately bet ten chips on fawn, jet, royal and ruby.

“Jet wins,” called the operator.

Magnus Ridolph calmly stacked his chips, 254 in all. Ignoring the onlookers gathering at his shoulder, the old man bet fifty chips each on sapphire, lime, topaz and vermilion. The globe whirled. The operator watched the results, silently grimaced, glanced at Magnus Ridolph.

“Sapphire wins.”

The house paid off with thousand-munit chips. Magnus Ridolph signaled for the cashier’s cart, changed his winnings for ten-thousand-munit tokens. His stack now included 13 tokens and four hundred-munit chips. For a change of pace he played his four hundred-munit chips on balls of low probability and lost. Then he bet a ten-thousand-munit token on each of the colors emerald, olivine, fawn and silver. The operator hesitated, set the globe in motion.

He smiled faintly. “Ruby wins.”

Magnus Ridolph played ten-thousand-munit tokens on vermilion, opal, harlequin and gold.

The globe whirled, the balls wheeled, jeweled motes through the lambent fluid.

“Opal wins!”

The crowd behind sighed.

There were now an even 300,000 munits in front of Magnus Ridolph, and the operator was watching him through eyes slitted like a cat’s.

Magnus Ridolph bet five tokens apiece on lime, diorite, flame and silver.

The operator shook his head. “I’m afraid I’ll have to limit your bet, sir.”

Magnus Ridolph eyed him coolly. “I understood that there were no limits to the play in the hall.”

The blond operator licked his lips. “Well, sir, that’s true in most cases, but—”

“Please call the manager.”

The operator turned away from Magnus Ridolph’s stare. “He’s not available at the moment, sir. In fact he’s not on the planet, he’s been away on a business trip.”

“Who is in charge then?”

The operator, glancing over Magnus Ridolph’s head, caught sight of a man striding purposefully toward a door in the wall.