Eleanor slid from the desk and hurried out of the room. She returned in a moment with the customary symbol-representation of the Quizmaster. "Come over here, Benteley. I'll accept your oath." She placed the small plastic flesh-coloured bust of Reese Verrick in the centre of the desk and turned briskly to Benteley. As Benteley moved towards the desk she reached up and touched the cloth bag hanging from a string round his neck, the charm Lori had put there. "What kind of charm is that?" she asked.

Benteley showed her the bit of magnetized steel and white powder.

"Virgin's milk," he explained curtly.

"That's all you carry?" Eleanor indicated the array of charms dangling on her chest. "I don't understand how people manage with only one charm." Her green eyes danced. "Maybe you don't! Maybe that's why you have bad luck."

"I have a high positive scale," Benteley replied. "And I have two other charms. Somebody gave me this."

She leaned close and examined it intently. "It's the kind of charm a woman would buy. Expensive, but flashy."

"Is it true," Benteley asked her, "that Verrick doesn't carry any charms?"

"That's right," Wakeman spoke up. "He doesn't need them. When the bottle twitched him to One he was already class six-three. Talk about luck! He's risen all the way to the top exactly as you see on the children's edutapes. Luck leaks out of his pores."

"I've seen people touch him hoping to get some of it," Eleanor said. "I don't blame them. I've touched him myself, many times."

"What good has it done you?" Wakeman asked quietly; he indicated the girl's discoloured temples.

"I wasn't born at the same time and place as Reese," Eleanor answered shortly.

"I don't hold with astro-cosmology," Wakeman said. "Luck comes in streaks." Speaking slowly and intently to Benteley, he continued: "Verrick may have it now, but that doesn't mean he'll always have it." He gestured vaguely towards the floor above, "They like to see some kind of balance." He added hastily: "I'm not a Christian or anything like that, you understand. I know it's all chance. Everybody gets his chance. And the high and the mighty always fall."