Free The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories by Jack Vance Page A

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.

Sanatoris Short-cut
     
    Gambling, in the ultimate study, stems from the passive, the submissive, the irresponsible in human nature; the gambler is one of an inferior lickspittle breed who turns himself belly-upward to the capricious deeds of Luck. Examine now the man of strength and action: he is never led by destiny. He drives on a decided course, manipulates the variables, and instead of submitting to the ordained shape of his life, creates a pattern to his own design.
    —
Magnus Ridolph
.
     
     
    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