the main cabin of the Drunk, with the hostages standing mutely in the middle of the floor. Most were, at least. Joan I was being supported, and Isaac was sprawled on the floor.
Ways walked into the field of view. ‘I’ve run into a little pocket of resistance,’ he said. ‘Don’t let that worry you.’
‘What’s the fleet for?’ said Dom.
‘Company. Who knows if we may have to fight, survey, or merely land on a dead world?’
Dom laughed hysterically in the tiny cabin, and stopped only when he saw Ig cowering away on the control panel and gazing at him in wide-eyed terror.
‘You’re fools,’ he told the communicator. ‘You think I will lead you to a planet?’
The scene of the Drunk flickered out, and another face looked at him. It was thin, topped off by a mop of black hair, and had unmistakably been born on Earth.
‘I am sorry about this,’ it said. ‘My name is Franz Asman, of the Joker Institute. This is our fleet. Ways is our tool.’
‘Earthman, eh?’ said Dom. ‘That means you don’t really think the threat of reprisals is enough to stop me running away. An Earthman would let his grandmother fry if he saw any personal profit in it.’
‘Sadhim preserve us from interworld animosity,’ said Asman wearily. ‘As a matter of fact, you know, I’ve been studying you for some time. There’s a staff of two hundred at the Institute who have been studying you for some time, too. We know exactly what you will do in any given situation, and in this one you won’t run.’
‘Studying me?’ Behind Asman’s head he could see vague figures, in front of a long panel covered with intricate patterns of coloured lines.
‘This is our job. Do you know what an astrologer was?’
‘Sure,’ said Dom. ‘I was born under O’Brien the Hunter.’
‘We are the new astrologers. We evaluate—’
—by the mathemagic of probability, sifting through the population of the galaxy to find those whose probability profile matched the theoretical one for the discoverer of Jokers World. That particular profile had been in existence for some time. For no known reason questions relating to Jokers World usually became nonsense when rendered into p-math, but it was possible, just possible, to make up an equation from the outlines round the logical holes.
Then it meant sifting again. That had not been difficult. There were only three potential discoverers this year. One was a phnobic monk, the other a three-month-old girl on Third Eye. Both had been killed easily.
But Dom was a different matter. The Institute was at a loss to understand why. His father had also been a high-probability Discoverer, and there had been no difficulty there. Yet something prevented Dom from being conveniently removed. He was too lucky.
Something wanted him to discover Jokers World.
‘Yes,’ said Dom. ‘It’s the Jokers.’
‘So we think,’ said Asman. ‘Do you know why we can’t let you?’
‘I think I can follow your reasoning,’ said Dom. ‘You fear the Jokers. That’s because you don’t know them. You think that contact with even the remnants of their culture will destroy us. I expect you have some idea that men are better off without gods.’
‘You laugh at us. Oh, we can’t deny that the Joker artefacts have done something to stimulate interracial co-operation.’
Dom heard himself shout: ‘They caused it! The Creapii invented the matrix engine just so that they could find other lifeforms to help them answer the Joker riddles!’
‘That is so. But Dom, listen. Before Sadhim, before star travel even, you know that most men believed in some kind of omnipresent god? Not the Sadhimist Small Gods, answerable to natural forces, but a real Director of the Universe? But if it had turned out that He really did exist chaos would have been let loose on the planet. He would have ceased to become a matter of comforting Belief but a matter of fact – you don’t believe in the sun, either. And men would have perished of a cosmic inferiority complex. You can’t live and know of such greatness.
‘We need the idea of Jokers because they are a unifying force among the races, but we can’t afford to find their world. Supposing it is dead – is that the end of even the greatest race? If they still live, will they enslave us or ignore us? Or worse, befriend us?
‘We can only let you go now to the dark side of the sun. But you must understand that we can’t let you return.’
‘I know what the Jokers World is,’ said