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out. As the audience increased their applause, many of them whistling and cheering, a figure rose up from below, carried by a hydraulic lift. He was dressed, as always, in a black suit with a black shirt and a silver tie. His black hair was slicked back and his black beard neatly trimmed. Against all this, his skin was unnaturally pale. His teeth, a perfect white, seemed almost electric. Wayne Howard, the host of the show, had arrived.
    â€œGood evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he began when the applause had finally died down. “And welcome to the final episode of the most dramatic, the most exciting quiz show on TV. The five men and women who stand before you tonight have completed an epic journey, but only one of them can walk away with the biggest prize ever offered by any television program anywhere in the world. And just to remind you what it is, let’s take a look. Ten million dollars in diamonds. Bridget . . . bring them on!”
    A blond-haired woman, dressed only in a silver bikini with thigh-high boots, walked out of the wings carrying a simple leather attaché case. She stopped next to Wayne and opened it. As one, the audience rose to their feet. The diamonds seemed to catch the light and magnify it a thousand times so it was as if Bridget had opened a portal into another world. There they were. A scattering of stones, each one a different cut and a different size, glittering brilliantly on a cushion of dark velvet.
    â€œThese stones can be carried anywhere in the world,” Wayne explained. He had said the same many times before. “They can be spent anywhere. And tonight, one person is going to walk out of this studio carrying them. Will it be Mary, who hopes very soon to change her name to Melvyn? Will it be Richard, whose career as a professor could soon be history? Will it be our poet and friend of the animals, Ben? Or how about Raife? We know he’s gone straight. But is he going straight to the diamonds? And finally, there’s Danny, our youngest contestant, just starting in eleventh grade. Could he be the one? It’s time to find out on . . . Bet Your Life !”
    More music. Searchlights sweeping back and forth. Wayne Howard took his place behind the central control desk, facing the contestants. The quiz began.
    The format was actually very simple. Each round was a series of questions on a specialist subject randomly generated by a computer and fed to Wayne. Each contestant had fifteen seconds to answer, and if they didn’t know, they had three lifelines. The first of these was a “pass,” which meant that their question was passed on to the person standing next to them. One was a “second chance,” which they could play once the question had been asked. It meant that if they guessed incorrectly, they could try again. The last was called “toss of the coin,” where they would be fed two possible answers and would have to choose between them.
    Wayne reached out and pressed a button on the console. The single word SCIENCE came up on a giant screen above the stage. Danny smiled to himself. Science was one of his favorite subjects. It was a promising start.
    â€œAnd the first question is for Raife,” the quizmaster exclaimed. “What chemical with the symbol NaCl is found in the sea and in the kitchen?”
    Danny knew the answer to that one. It was sodium chloride—or common salt. Unfortunately, Raife knew it too. But that was hardly surprising. All the questions in the first round were deliberately simple. They would become harder as the evening went on. Sure enough, all five contestants answered their questions on science without any trouble.
    The next round, ENTERTAINMENT, passed without much incident, but in the one after—POLITICS—there was a moment of drama when Ben had to use his pass. He had been asked who became president of the United States in 1969, and for some reason he couldn’t think. The same question went