by Stephen King
Tim was shaking his head. “I don’t believe it.”
“As Luke has said, the statistics—”
“Statistics can prove anything. Nobody can see the future. If you and your associates really believe that, you’re not an organization, you’re a cult.”
“I had a auntie who could see the future,” Annie said suddenly. “She made her boys stay away one night when they wanted to go out to a juke joint, and there was a propane explosion. Twenty people got burnt up like mice in a chimbly, but her boys were safe at home.” She paused, then added, as an afterthought, “She also knew Truman was going to get elected president, and nobody believed that shit.”
“Did she know about Trump?” Kalisha asked.
“Oh, she was long dead before that big city dumbshit turned up,” Annie said, and when Kalisha held up an open palm, Annie slapped it smartly.
Smith ignored the interruption. “The world is still here, Tim. That’s not a statistic, it’s a fact. Seventy years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated by atomic bombs, the world is still here even though many nations have atomic weapons, even though primitive human emotions still hold sway over rational thought and superstition masquerading as religion still guides the course of human politics. Why is that? Because we have protected it, and now that protection is gone. That’s what Luke Ellis did, and what you participated in.”
Tim looked at Luke. “Are you buying this?”
“No,” Luke said. “And neither is he, at least not completely.”
Although Tim didn’t know it, Luke was thinking of the girl who’d asked him about the SAT math problem, the one having to do with Aaron’s hotel room rate. She’d gotten the answer wrong, and this was the same thing, only on a much grander scale; a bad answer derived from a faulty equation.
“I’m sure you’d like to believe that,” Smith said.
“Annie’s right,” Luke said. “There really are people who have precognitive flashes, and her aunt may have been one of them. Despite what this guy says, and may actually believe, they’re not even that rare. You may even have had one or two yourself, Tim, but you probably call them something else. Instinct, maybe.”
“Or hunches,” Nicky said. “On the TV programs, cops are always getting hunches.”
“TV shows are not life,” Tim said, but he was also thinking of something from the past: suddenly deciding, for no real reason, to get off an airplane and hitchhike north instead.
“Which is too bad,” Kalisha said. “I love Riverdale.”
“The word flash is used over and over in the stories about these things,” Luke said, “because that seems to be what it is, something like a lightning-strike. I believe in it, and I believe there may be people who can harness it.”
Smith raised his hands in a there-you-have-it gesture. “Exactly what I’m saying.” Only saying came out thaying. His lisp had resurfaced. Tim found this interesting.
“Only there’s something he’s not telling you,” Luke said. “Probably because he doesn’t like to tell himself. None of them do. The way our generals didn’t like to tell themselves there was no way to win the Vietnam War, even after it became apparent.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Smith said.
“You do,” Kalisha said.
“He does,” Nicky said.
“You better own up, mister,” Orphan Annie said. “These chirrun are reading your mind. Tickles, don’t it?”
Luke turned to Tim. “Once I was sure it had to be precognition driving this, and I got access to a real computer—”
“One you didn’t need tokens to use is what he means,” Kalisha put in.
Luke poked her. “Shut up a minute, will you?”
Nicky grinned. “Watch out, Sha, Lukey’s gettin mad.”
She laughed. Smith did not. His control over this conversation had been lost with the arrival of Luke and his friends, and his expression—tight mouth, drawn-together brows—said that he wasn’t used to it.
“Once I got access to a real computer,” Luke resumed, “I did a Bernoulli distribution. Do you know what that is, Mr. Smith?”
The blond man shook his head.
“He does, though,” Kalisha said. Her eyes were merry.
“Right,” Nicky agreed. “And doesn’t like it. The Whatzis distribution is not his friend.”
“The Bernoulli is an accurate way of expressing probability,” Luke said. “It’s based on the idea that there are two possible outcomes to certain empiric events, like coin flips or the winners of football games. The outcomes can be expressed as p for positive result and n for negative result. I won’t bore you with the details, but you end up with a boolean-valued outcome that clearly expresses the difference between random and non-random events.”
“Yeah, don’t bore us with the easy stuff,” Nicky said, “just cut to the chase.”
“Coin flips are random. Football scores appear random if you take a small sample, but if you take a bigger one, it becomes clear that they’re not, because other factors come into play. Then it becomes a probability situation, and if the probability of A is greater than the probability of B, then in most cases, A will happen. You know that if you’ve ever bet on a sporting event, right?”
“Sure,” Tim said. “You can find the odds and the likely point-spread in the daily paper.”
Luke nodded. “It’s pretty simple, really, and when you apply Bernoulli to precognition statistics, an interesting trend emerges. Annie, how soon was the fire after your aunt had her brainwave about keeping her sons home?”
“That very night,” Annie said.
Luke looked pleased. “Which makes it a perfect example. The Bernoulli distribution I ran shows that precognitive flashes—or visions, if you like that word better—tend to be most accurate when the predicted event is only hours away. When the time between the prediction and the event predicted becomes longer, the probability of the prediction coming true begins to decline. Once it becomes a matter of weeks, it pretty much falls off the table and p becomes n.”
He turned his attention to the blond man.
“You know this, and the people you work with know it. They’ve known it for years. For decades, in fact. They must have. Any math wonk with a computer can run a Bernoulli distribution. It might not have been clear when you started this thing in the late forties or early fifties, but by the eighties you had to know. Probably by the sixties.”
Smith shook his head. “You’re very bright, Luke, but you’re still just a child, and children indulge in magical thinking—they bend the truth until it conforms to what they wish were true. Do you think we haven’t run tests to prove the precognitive capabilities of our group?”
His lisp was growing steadily worse.
“We run new tests every time we add a new precog. They’re tasked with predicting a series of random events such as the late arrivals of certain planes . . . news events such as the death of Tom Petty . . . the Brexit vote . . . vehicles passing through certain intersections, even. This is a record of successes—recorded successes—going back almost three quarters of a century!”
Three quarterth of a thentury.
“But your tests always focus on events that are about to occur soon,” Kalisha said. “Don’t bother to deny it, it’s in your head like a neon sign. Also, it’s logical. What use is a test when you can’t grade the results for five or ten years?”
She took Nicky’s hand. Luke stepped back to them and took Kalisha’s. And now Tim could hear that humming again. It was low, but it was there.
“Representative Berkowitz was exactly where our precogs said he would be on the day he died,” Smith said, “and that prediction was made a full year before.”
“Okay,” Luke said, “but you’ve targeted people—Paul Westin, for one—based on predictions about what’s going to happen in ten, twenty, even twenty-five years. You know they’re unreliable, you know anything can happen to turn people and the events they’re part of in a different direction, some
thing as trivial as a missed phone call can do it, but you go on, just the same.”
“Let’s say you have a point,” Smith said. “But isn’t it better to be safe rather than sorry?” Thafe. Thorry. “Think of the predictions that have proved out, then think of the possible consequences of doing nothing!”
Annie was back a turn, maybe even two. “How can you be sure the predictions will come true if you kill the people they’re about? I don’t get that.”
“He doesn’t get it, either,” Luke said, “but he can’t bear to think that all the killing they’ve done has been for no good reason. None of them can.”
“We had to destroy the village in order to save it,” Tim said. “Didn’t somebody say that about Vietnam?”
“If you’re suggesting that our precogs have been stringing us along, making things up—”
“Can you be sure they haven’t?” Luke countered. “Maybe not even consciously, but . . . it’s a good life they have there, isn’t it? Cushy. Not much like the ones we had in the Institute. And maybe their predictions are genuine at the time they’re made. It still doesn’t take random factors into consideration.”
“Or God,” Kalisha said suddenly.
Smith—who had been playing God for God knew how long—raised a sardonic smile at this.
Luke said, “You understand what I’m saying, I know you do. There are too many variables.”
Smith was silent for a moment, looking out at the view. Then he said, “Yes, we have math guys, and yes, the Bernoulli distribution has come up in reports and discussions. For years now, in fact. So let’s say you’re right. Let’s say our network of Institutes didn’t save the world from nuclear destruction five hundred times. Suppose it was only fifty? Or five? Wouldn’t it still be worth it?”
Very softly, Tim said, “No.”
Smith stared at him as if he were insane. “No? You say no?”
“Sane people don’t sacrifice children on the altar of probability. That’s not science, it’s superstition. And now I think it’s time you left.”
“We’ll rebuild,” Smith said. “If there’s time, that is, with the world running downhill like a kid’s jalopy with no hand to guide it. I also came to tell you that, and to warn you. No interviews. No articles. No threads posted on Facebook or Twitter. Such stories would be laughed at by most people, anyway, but they would be taken very seriously by us. If you want to insure your survival, keep quiet.”
The hum was growing louder, and when Smith removed his American Spirits from his shirt pocket, his hand was shaking. The man who had gotten out of the nondescript Chevy had been confident and in charge. Used to giving orders and having them carried out ASAP. The one standing here now, the one with the heavy lisp and the sweat-stains creeping out from the armpits of his shirt, was not that man.
“Think you better go, son,” Annie advised him, very softly. Maybe even kindly.
The cigarette pack dropped from Smith’s hand. When he bent to pick it up, it skittered away, although there was no wind.
“Smoking’s bad for you,” Luke said. “You don’t need a precog to tell you what’ll happen if you don’t stop.”
The Malibu’s windshield wipers started up. The lights came on.
“I’d go,” Tim said. “While you still can. You’re pissed about the way things have worked out, I get that, but you have no idea how pissed these kids are. They were on ground zero.”
Smith went to his car and opened the door. Then he pointed a finger at Luke. “You believe what you want to believe,” he said. “We all do, young Mr. Ellis. You’ll discover that for yourself in time. And to your sorrow.”
He drove away, the car’s rear tires throwing up a cloud of dust that rolled toward Tim and the others . . . and then veered away, as if blown by a puff of wind none of them could feel.
Luke smiled, thinking George couldn’t have done it better.
“Might have done better to get rid of him,” Annie said matter-of-factly. “Plenty of room for a body at t’far end of the garden.”
Luke sighed and shook his head. “There are others. He’s only the point man.”
“Besides,” Kalisha said, “then we’d be like them.”
“Still,” Nicky said dreamily. He said no more, but Tim didn’t have to be a mind-reader to get the rest of his thought: It would have been nice.
2
Tim expected Wendy back from Columbia for supper, but she called and said she had to stay over. Yet another meeting about the future of Fairlee County law enforcement had been scheduled for the following morning.
“Jesus, won’t this ever be over?” Tim asked.
“I’m pretty sure this will be the last one. It’s a complicated situation, you know, and bureaucracy makes everything worse. All okay there?”
“All fine,” Tim said, and hoped it was true.
He made a big pot of spaghetti for supper; Luke threw together a Bolognese sauce; Kalisha and Nicky collaborated on a salad. Annie had disappeared, as she often did.
They ate well. There was good talk, and a fair amount of laughter. Then, as Tim was bringing a Pepperidge Farm cake back from the fridge, holding it high like a comic opera waiter, he saw that Kalisha was crying. Nick and Luke had each put an arm around her, but spoke no comforting words (at least that Tim could hear). They looked thoughtful, introspective. With her, but not perhaps completely with her; perhaps lost in their own concerns.
Tim set the cake down. “What’s wrong, K? I’m sure they know, but I don’t. So help a brother out.”
“What if he’s right? What if that man is right and Luke is wrong? What if the world ends in three years . . . or three months . . . because we’re not there to protect it?”
“I’m not wrong,” Luke said. “They’ve got mathematicians, but I’m better. It’s not bragging if it’s the truth. And what he said about me? That magical thinking thing? It’s true of them, too. They can’t bear to think they’re wrong.”
“You’re not sure!” she cried. “I can hear it in your head, Lukey, you’re still not sure!”
Luke did not deny this, just stared down at his plate.
Kalisha looked up at Tim. “What if they’re only right once? Then it will be on us!”
Tim hesitated. He didn’t want to think that what he said next might have a major influence on how this girl lived the rest of her life, there was no way he wanted that responsibility, but he was afraid he had it, anyway. The boys were listening, too. Listening and waiting. He had no psychic powers, but there was one power he did have: he was the grownup. The adult. They wanted him to tell them there was no monster under the bed.
“It’s not on you. It’s not on any of you. That man didn’t come to warn you to be quiet, he came to poison your life. Don’t let him do it, Kalisha. Don’t any of you let him do it. As a species, we’re built to do one thing above all others, and you kids did it.”
He reached out with both hands and wiped the tears from Kalisha’s cheeks.
“You survived. You used your love and your wits, and you survived. Now let’s have some cake.”
3
Friday came, and it was Nick’s turn to go.
Tim and Wendy stood with Luke, watching as Nicky and Kalisha walked down the driveway with their arms around each other. Wendy would drive him to the bus station in Brunswick, but the three up here understood that those two needed—and deserved—a little time together first. To say goodbye.
“Let’s go over it again,” Tim had said an hour earlier, after a lunch neither Nicky nor Kalisha did much with. Tim and Nicky had gone out on the back stoop while Luke and Kalisha did up the few dishes.
“No need,” Nicky said. “I got it, man. Really.”
“Just the same,” Tim said. “It’s important. Brunswick to Chicago, right?”
“Right. The bus leaves at seven-fifteen tonight.”
“Who do you talk to on the bus?”
“Nobody. Draw no attention.”
“And when you get there?”
> “I call my Uncle Fred from the Navy Pier. Because that’s where the kidnappers dropped me off. Same place they dropped George and Helen off.”
“But you don’t know that.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you know George and Helen?”
“Never heard of them.”
“And who are the people who took you?”
“Don’t know.”
“What did they want?”
“Don’t know. It’s a mystery. They didn’t molest me, they didn’t ask me questions, I didn’t hear any other kids, I don’t know jack. When the police question me, I don’t add anything.”
“That’s right.”
“Eventually the cops give up and I go on to Nevada and live happily ever after with my aunt and uncle and Bobby.” Bobby being Nick’s brother, who had been at a sleepover on the night Nick was taken.
“And when you find out your parents are dead?”
“News to me. And don’t worry, I’ll cry. It won’t be hard. And it won’t be fake. Trust me on that. Can we be done?”
“Almost. First unball your fists a little. The ones at the ends of your arms and the ones in your head. Give happily ever after a chance.”
“Not easy, man.” Nicky’s eyes gleamed with tears. “Not fucking easy.”
“I know,” Tim said, and risked a hug.
Nick allowed it passively at first, then hugged back. Hard. Tim thought it was a start, and he thought the boy would be fine no matter how many questions the police threw at him, no matter how many times they told him it didn’t make any sense.
George Iles was the one Tim worried about when it came to adding stuff; the kid was an old-school motormouth and a born embellisher. Tim thought, however—hoped—that he had finally gotten the point across to George: what you didn’t know kept you safe. What you added could trip you up.
Now Nick and Kalisha were embracing by the mailbox at the foot of the driveway, where Mr. Smith had laid blame in his lisping voice, trying to sow guilt in children who had only wanted to stay alive.