billion

wall of the gloomy chamber. "We'd best declare our lines at once if we're to book the twenty hour stat run."
24

The private game room to which Lord Tace conducted Bailey and the Apollo members contrasted sharply with the blighted cold-water flat from which Gus Aroon had rolled his book three months before; but the mathematics of the game were unchanged. Bailey glanced over the record charts, began setting up his lines. After the dazzling action of the Reprise cage, the programming seemed a dry and academic affair; but the expressions of the aristocrats clustered about the stat screen showed that their view of the matter was far different.
"Well, sirs," Tace rumbled, watching them as the first figures began to flicker across the read-out panels, "the gamble stirs your blood, eh? The statistical fluctuations of the society that seethes like poisoned yeast below us provide a hardier sport than glowing baubles!"
"Those numbers," Dovo said. "Difficult to realize that each one represents the birth and death of a man—"
"Or of his fortunes," Tace barked. "Production and consumption, taxes and theft, executions, suicides, the rise and fall of human destinies. One thousand billion people, each the center of his Universe. And we sit here, like oc