Chapter Fifty-Eight
From birth to death, life is a game of chance.
—Old Sirikan Saying
Even Doge Lorenzo del Velli, the richest and most powerful Human in the galaxy, liked to keep a little extra spending money around. He was not certain exactly why he felt the need to carry liras around with him in the pockets of his royal robe, but he did anyway. Perhaps just to reassure himself that the assets were available if he ever needed them, an eventuality that would require catastrophic changes in his life. He would have to lose his magnificent palazzo, all of his corporate holdings, and find himself tossed out in the street. All utterly impossible, but he felt helpless to avoid the feelings, the chronic fear.
This theory carried through the rest of his life. In secret places all over the galaxy, he had stashed his treasures, culled from the legitimate and illegitimate profits of his business and governmental enterprises. This went far beyond liras, although he had plenty of those in various places. Of critical importance, he didn’t want to depend on the solvency of the merchant prince economy. To protect against that, he owned, among other things, some of the largest and most valuable gemstones in all of creation. This included the famous Veldic Saphostone, which disappeared from the Intergalactic Museum one day and found its way—through a circuitous path—to him.
The men who had taken it for him had been put to death. Now no one knew his little secret.
Each morning, as he was doing now, Lorenzo strolled through his ornamental Galeng gardens, passed a guard station, and entered a scaled-down version of his Palazzo Magnifico that had the same number of rooms and the same configuration, but with much smaller dimensions. He rather liked his “Palazzito” for its coziness, but it was not a suitable place for contemplation, or a place to be alone. It was, instead, where he practiced what he most enjoyed doing.
Gambling at the most sophisticated gaming tables in the galaxy.
The first to arrive in his private casino, the Doge went from machine to machine in the Blue Chamber, activating the programs, seeing how well he could do at the mechanical games of chance. His favorite, where he stood the longest this morning, was a simulated suicide machine, called Spheres. He didn’t have to put money or chips in it, because he owned the establishment. After a scanner identified him, he could play it to his heart’s content.
By voice command, he selected the means of “death” that he preferred, and instantly the ominous hologram of a Mutati with a huge handgun appeared on one side of him, with the weapon pointed at his head.
Next, he specified the amount of his wager, which in reality wasn’t anything at all. But he provided a number anyway, and the screen in front of him filled with hundreds of tiny spheres, each with a different color and number on them. He had only two minutes. With a foot pedal, he directed the motion of the balls, trying to balance them on a narrow bar.
In only a minute, he had seven spheres lined up, and his score appeared on the screen: 17,252. It had to be higher than the last time he played the game, or the holo shapeshifter would fire, and a holo of blood would be all over his head and clothing.
The last time he played, his score was 17,251, and he liked to play it close, only increasing by one point at a time. This was the most risky way to play, dancing on the edge of the proverbial sword, but it energized him.
Game after game, he increased by one point, without fail. He became aware of a crowd of men and women streaming into the chamber around him, the royal court. They cheered him on and chanted his name. He liked that, playing the hero. One day, he might even use the threat of a real Mutati with a weapon, instead of a hologram.
Presently, Francella came in and sat by him. She wore a low-cut black lace dress, with a long red fall of hair cascading over her shoulders.
Only she and Lorenzo knew that he could not lose here, not in his own casino. If he didn’t measure up at any game that involved skill or if a game of chance did not go his way, the machine compensated, and he won anyway. It did not work that way for the other players, and they lost a lot of money on a regular basis. But as members of the Doge’s royal court, they had no choice. If they wanted to remain in his favor, they needed to participate in what Lorenzo called “friendly exchanges.”
Actually, this meant transferring their funds to the casino, and ultimately into one of the Doge’s secret stashes. It was an additional source of income for him, one of many.
And he needed all he could get, he thought, as he looked into Francella’s dark brown eyes. She was an expensive mistress.