The Chain of Chance

by Stanisław Lem

  We sat down again. I felt enormously relieved.

  “I’ll work on the case,” he continued, “though I don’t believe we’ll have much luck… May I ask exactly how you envision my role?”

  “This is a case lending itself to a multifactorial analysis,” I began cautiously, selecting my words with care. “I’m not familiar with your program but I am familiar with a number of GPSS-type programs, and I assume your computer is somewhat analogous. The problem is not so much a criminal as an intellectual one. Obviously the computer won’t be able to identify the culprit, but it might be able to eliminate the culprit as an unknown factor. Solving the case would mean positing a theory to account for the fatalities, a law governing these deaths…”

  Dr, Barth looked at me almost with sympathy. Or perhaps is was only the way the light fell from above, gently modulating his features every time he made the slightest movement.

  “When I said we I had in mind a team of men, not electrons. I’ve assembled a brilliant interdisciplinary team, including some of the best minds of France, and I’m sure they’d jump at the chance… But as for the computer… True, we’ve managed to program one, and so far the test results have been satisfactory, but with such a case—never…” He shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “Very simple. The computer won’t work without hard data.” He spread out his arms. “And what are we supposed to use as hard data in this case? Let’s suppose a new narcotics ring is operating in Naples, that a hotel is being used as a drop, and they are delivering the stuff by substituting it for the salt in certain salt shakers. Now isn’t it possible for the salt shakers to get switched around occasionally on the dining-room tables? In that case wouldn’t only those who like salt on their food run the risk of getting drugged? And how, may I ask, is a computer supposed to process this if the processing data include nothing about the salt shakers, the drugs, or the culinary habits of the victims?”

  I looked at him with admiration. How adept he was at manipulating such ideas. The dinner bell rang, louder and louder till it reached a shrill intensity, then suddenly stopped, and a woman’s voice could be heard scolding a child.

  “It’s time for us to go downstairs… We always eat on schedule.”

  The dining room was lit by a long row of pink candles on the table. On the way down Barth whispered that his grandmother would be joining them for dinner, adding that for a ninety-year-old woman she was still extremely fit, if a little on the eccentric side. I took this as a warning of sorts, but before I had a chance to reply I found myself being introduced to the other members of the family. Besides the three children whom I’d already met, and Mrs. Barth, who was already seated across the table in a hand-carved chair identical to the one in the library, I saw an elderly lady dressed in a gown of royal purple. An old-fashioned lorgnette trimmed with diamonds glittered on her chest, and her small black eyes transfixed me like a couple of shiny pebbles. She held out her hand, but so high and with such enthusiasm that I kissed it, something I otherwise never do; and in a surprisingly deep and masculine voice, one that sounded as false as a voice in a poorly dubbed film, she said:

  “So you’re an astronaut, are you? I’ve never sat at the same table with an astronaut before.”

  Even the doctor was taken by surprise. Mrs. Barth was quick to remark that the children had announced my arrival. The old lady told me to sit down next to her and to speak in a loud voice, as she was hard of hearing. Next to her table setting was a kidney-shaped hearing aid, but at no time during the meal did she use it.

  “You can keep me entertained,” she said. “I doubt whether I shall have a similar occasion so soon again. Please, be so kind as to tell me how the earth really looks from up there? I don’t trust the photographs.”

  “And rightly so,” I said, passing her the salad bowl, secretly charmed by her blunt and unceremonious manner. “No photo can ever match it, especially not when the orbital path is close and the earth gradually takes the place of the sky. It doesn’t block the sky, it becomes the sky. That’s the impression one gets.”

  “Is it really as beautiful as they say?” Her voice expressed doubt.

  “It was to me, anyhow. What impressed me most was the emptiness of it, the desolation. Not a sign of any cities, highways, or seaports—nothing but oceans, continents, and clouds. By the way, the oceans and continents look much the same as we were taught at school. But the clouds… I found the clouds to be the most uncanny thing of all, maybe because they didn’t look like clouds.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “That depends on the altitude. From very far away they look like the old and wrinkly hide of a rhinoceros, all cracked and bluish-gray. But the closer you get, the more they look like different shades of sheep’s wool after it’s been combed out.”

  “Were you ever on the moon?”

  “I’m sorry to say I never was.”

  I was preparing myself for more questions of a cosmological nature when she abruptly changed the subject.

  “You speak French so fluently, but with a strange accent and a slightly different vocabulary. You’re not from Canada, are you?”

  “My family was Canadian; I was born in the States.”

  “Just as I thought: Then your mother is French?”

  “Was French.”

  I could see that both husband and wife were trying to dampen the old lady’s curiosity by means of glances from across the table, but she simply ignored them.

  “And did your mother speak French with you?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Your first name is John, So she must have called you Jean.”

  “She did.”

  “Then I shall call you that. Please take away the asparagus, Jean—I’m not supposed to eat it. The secret of growing old, Jean, is having lots of experience you can no longer use. They’re right”—she said, indicating the rest of the family—“not to pay me any attention. You’re still too young to know, but there’s quite a difference between being seventy and being ninety. A fundamental difference,” she added for emphasis. She stopped talking and began eating her meal, and came to life again only when the table was being cleared in preparation for the next course.

  “How many times did you travel to outer space?”

  “Twice. But I didn’t travel very far from earth. If you compare it to an apple, then only as far as the peel is thick.”

  “Aren’t you being modest?”

  “Not really.”

  The conversation had taken a somewhat strange turn, but I can’t say I found it awkward, especially since the old lady had a special charm about her. And so I was not the least bit irritated when she went on with her interrogation.

  “Are you in favor of letting women travel in outer space?”

  “I really haven’t given it much thought,” I answered honestly. “If that’s their ambition, then why not?”

  “You’re the ones who started that whole crazy movement, aren’t you? That women’s liberation business. It’s so childish, so tasteless, though it certainly is convenient.”

  “Do you think so? Why convenient?”

  “It’s always convenient to know who’s to blame for everything. Everything’s the fault of men, say the ladies. They’re the only ones who can straighten out the world. They want to take your place. As preposterous as it may sound, they do have a definite goal in mind, which is more than can be said of you men.”

  After a dessert of rhubarb sprinkled with sugar, the kids sneaked out of the dining room and I got ready to leave. But when the doctor heard I was staying at Orly, he insisted I move in with him. I had no desire to take advantage of him, but I was sorely tempted. To put it bluntly, I wanted to pester the hell out of him.

  Mrs. Barth seconded her husband’s invitation and showed me their still-empty guest book, saying it would bring good luck if an astronaut were the first to sign it. After a round or two of polite exchanges, I finally gave in. It was decided that I would move in with
them the following day. Dr. Barth accompanied me to my car and after I was behind the wheel confided that his grandmother had taken a distinct liking to me, adding that this was no small honor. He was still standing in the gateway as I drove off and plunged into a Parisian night.

  To avoid the traffic I swung around the center of the city and headed for the boulevards along the Seine, where the midnight traffic was sure to be lighter. I was tired but contented. My conversation with Barth had left me feeling extremely hopeful. I took it easy on the road, not trusting myself after drinking all that white wine. Ahead of me a small 2 CV was nervously hugging the curb. The road was deserted. Warehouses loomed high above the railings that ran along the opposite bank of the Seine, but I hardly noticed them: my mind was wandering. Suddenly a pair of car lights blazed in the rear-view mirror like a couple of suns. I was right in the middle of passing the 2 CV and was a little too far over to the left, so I decided to make way for the night racer and drop back into the slow lane, but it was too late. His headlights flooded the inside of my car, and a second later a flattened-out shape came shooting through the gap. By the time I recovered from the air blast, he was gone. Something was missing from the right front fender. All that was left of the mirror was the stem. Cut off. A little farther down the road it occurred to me that if it hadn’t been for the wine I would have blocked its path and might now be lying underneath the wreckage of my own car. Now that would have given Randy food for thought. How beautifully my death would have fit the Naples pattern. How sure Randy would have been it was connected with the simulation mission. But it seems I wasn’t fated to be the twelfth victim: I made it back to the hotel safely.

  * * *

  On the fourth day of my visit, on a Sunday, in order to put his team’s involvement in the case on a more personal basis, and also perhaps to show off his new house, Barth held a little get-together at his place to which more than twenty people were invited. Since I hadn’t been prepared for any formal affairs, I decided to drive to Paris on Saturday to pick up something more appropriate for the occasion, but Barth talked me out of it. So, dressed as I was in a pair of faded jeans and a scraggly sweater—all my better clothes had been ruined by the Italian police—I stood at the entrance along with the Barths. The walls on the ground floor had been opened up, converting the downstairs area into a spacious drawing room. It was a rather strange situation: surrounded by a crowd of bearded neophytes and periwigged bluestockings, I felt a little like a crasher and a little like a host, inasmuch as I was Barth’s houseguest and was even sharing the honors of the house. Being neatly trimmed and shaven, I must have made the impression of an overaged Boy Scout.

  Curiously absent from the party was that atmosphere of courtly formality, or even worse that revolutionary clowning so characteristic of intellectuals: ever since the latest events in China, the Maoists had gone into hiding. I made an effort to socialize with all the guests because I knew they had come expressly to meet an allergic astronaut, a roaming detective ad interim. Nonchalantly the conversation turned to the tribulations of the world. Not nonchalantly, really, but in a mood of surrender now that Europe’s eternal mission had come to an end, a fact that these graduates of Nanterre and l’École Supérieure seemed to grasp better than their compatriots. Europe had survived, but only in an economic sense. Prosperity had been restored, but not the feeling of self-confidence. It was not the cancer patient’s fear of malignancy, but the awareness that the spirit of history had moved on, and that if it ever returned it would not be here. France had lost its power and influence, and now that it had been moved from the stage into the audience it was at liberty to show concern for the sufferings of the world. McLuhan’s prophecies were coming true, but in an inverse sort of way, as prophecies have a habit of doing. His “global village” was already here, but split into two halves. The poorer half was suffering, while the wealthier half was importing that suffering via television and commiserating from a distance. That it couldn’t go on like this was everywhere taken for granted, but it went on just the same. No one asked for my opinion on the State Department’s new “wait and see” policy within the economic buffer zone, nor did I venture to offer any.

  The conversation then switched from the trials of the world to its follies. Among other things, I learned that a famous French film director was planning to make a film about the “massacre on the steps.” The part of the mysterious hero was to be played by Jean-Paul Belmondo; the little girl would be played not by a child actress—since bedding down with a kid would have been considered in bad taste—but by a famous British movie star. Being just recently married, this same actress had invited a number of prominent personalities to her public wedding night—such pastimes were now the vogue—in order to take up a collection around the nuptial bed for the benefit of the airport casualties in Rome. Ever since reading about those Belgian nuns who indulged in charitable prostitution in order to redeem the hypocrisy of the Church, I’m no longer appalled by such things. And of course there was a lot of talk about politics. The latest news item was that members of an Argentine movement of national patriots had been exposed as government stooges. Various people expressed the fear that something like that couldn’t be ruled out even in a country like France. Fascism had survived, along with the most ruthless dictatorships—at least in Europe—whereas the only way to deal effectively with extremist terror was to exterminate the activists. Although a democracy refused to condone “preventive murders,” it nonetheless looked the other way when it came to progovernment assassinations carried out under discreet supervision and with limited liability. This was not to be confused with the old-fashioned type of political execution or repression instituted by the State, but was, rather, a form of constructive terror per procurationem. I once heard of a philosophy that advocated the total legalization of violence, which even de Sade regarded as the epitome of true freedom. It would have constitutionally sanctioned every sort of activity—revolutionary as well as reactionary; and since the supporters of the status quo far outnumbered the subversives, the established order was sure to emerge intact in a violent confrontation of both extremes, should it ever come to something like a civil war.

  Around eleven Barth began showing the more curious guests around the house, leaving only a handful of people downstairs. I decided to join three of the guests who were sitting around an open patio door. Two were mathematicians belonging to rival camps: Saussure, a relative of Lagrange, was specializing in analysis, that is, in pure mathematics; the other was in applied mathematics, being a programmer and statistician by profession. Even their outward appearance offered an amusing contrast. Saussure looked as if he might have stepped out of a daguerreotype—lean, dark-haired, with chiseled features, bushy sideburns, a gold pince-nez dangling on a ribbon—and wore a Japanese transistorized calculator around his neck like a medal, which was obviously meant as a joke. The statistician, a burly, curly-headed blond, was a double for the slouchy Boche featured in French postcards from the time of the First World War, and was in fact of German origin. His name was Mayer, and not Mailleux, as I thought at first after hearing it pronounced that way. The mathematicians were in no hurry to make conversation, unlike the third man, a pharmacologist named Dr, Lapidus. Sporting a full-length beard, he looked as if he’d just returned from an uninhabited island. He asked me whether the investigation had turned up any abortive cases, that is, cases where the outward signs of insanity had simply come and gone. I answered that all the files were on microfilm, and that unless one wanted to classify the Swift case as abortive, there were none falling into that category.

  “That’s amazing!” he exclaimed.

  “Why amazing?”

  “The symptoms varied in their intensity, but the moment any of the victims was hospitalized, like that man who jumped out the window, they immediately subsided. If one assumes the psychosis was chemically induced, that would mean the dose taken had a strange kind of cumulative effect. Didn’t anyone notice this?”

  “I don’t
really see your point.”

  “There’s no psychotropic compound known to have such a delayed effect that, say, if it were taken on Monday it could begin producing the first symptoms on Tuesday, cause hallucinations on Wednesday, and reach a maximum intensity on Saturday. Of course it might be possible to build up a supply by using a hypodermic injection that it would take several weeks to absorb; but such a procedure would leave traces in the body, and I found nothing in the autopsy reports to indicate this.”

  “You didn’t find anything because nothing like that was ever reported.”

  “That’s what I find amazing!”

  “But they might have taken the stuff more than once, which would explain the cumulative effect…”

  He shook his head with disapproval.

  “How? Between the change in routine and the appearance of the first symptoms there was always a time lapse of six to eight days on the average, nine in one case. And no chemical agent is capable of having such a delayed or cumulative effect. Let’s assume they started taking this chemical substance the first or second day after their arrival; then the initial symptoms would have had to occur within the next forty-eight hours. In the case of patients with kidney or liver diseases that’s debatable, but then there weren’t any such patients.”

  “So what’s your opinion?”

  “The case histories would indicate they were drugged on a steady, gradual, and continual basis.”

  “So you believe it was a case of premeditated poisoning?”

  He broke out in a smile, revealing his gold teeth.

  “No. Who knows, maybe the goblins are to blame, or maybe some flies were on their way back from raiding a pharmaceutical lab and happened to land on the victims’ toast after tramping around in the latest derivatives of lysergic acid. But I do know that the process of accretion took place gradually.”