by Jeff Noon
Daisy nodded; it was all she could manage.
‘Good. I’m initiating a new project: I intend to break into the AnnoDomino game system. And I’d like you to be part of my team.’
‘But nobody’s ever—’
‘I trust you’ve noticed the similarities between my work and the game?’
‘You think somebody’s stolen your work? Mr Million, perhaps.’ Daisy was keeping her voice steady, just about.
‘Perhaps,’ Hackle said. ‘Or else we’re both coming from the same place.’
‘So you’d like to win, to get your own back? And you’re prepared to cheat. I’m not sure I can—’
‘It has nothing to do with winning. I have all I need. Nor with pride.’
‘So, what then?’
‘I want to find this Mr Million and destroy the dominoes. It is my duty.’
‘It’s just a game. I don’t understand.’
‘Come round here.’
Daisy walked around the desk, where Hackle was punching keys on his computer. Daisy’s paper vanished under a list of names. ‘These are all the half-winners so far,’ he pointed out, ‘listed with the number of times they have won.’
‘Isn’t that classified information?’ Daisy asked. ‘You can learn who has won, but not how many times.’
‘It is quite easy to break in at such a low level. Now, as you can see, the vast majority have won only once, which we would expect from the laws of chance. However, here, and here, you see? Some of them have won twice on the half-casts.’ A key press separated a few names from the hundreds that were scrolling downwards. ‘Ten of them, to be precise. This is straining the probability envelope, don’t you agree, given the short—’
‘I know one of those names,’ said Daisy.
‘You do?’
‘Yes. Edward Irwell…’
‘You know him?’
‘No. I just know the name. Don’t ask me where from. It rings a bell, you know?’
‘Try to remember, please. It could be important.’
‘It is strange that so many have won twice,’ said Daisy. ‘From a rough guess, I’d say one or two, at the very most, should be the score.’
‘Of course. Let’s call it a freak blip. But could we claim the same for this result?’ Hackle had dragged another two names from the winners’ list. ‘Janice Albright. Gerald Henson. These two players have both won three half-casts.’
‘No. That’s impossible.’
‘Is it? You saw from this week’s assignment that the dominoes don’t always follow the rules. Somehow, the play-to-win factor has been increased.’
‘Only if it’s true that the game is based on your own work.’
‘Very well. Let’s say I’m mistaken. Here’s another list for you.’ Another key-press opened a new window. ‘These are the people who have been murdered because of the game, the so-called jealousy killings. Fifteen players, all found clutching a half-winning domino. Study them, if you will.’
Daisy did so. The two names jumped out at her.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s very simple. The two people who have won three half-casts, Albright and Henson, have both been killed. What are the chances of that? Another freak blip?’ Hackle turned off the computer. This week’s assignment was merely to focus your attention on the fate of the half-winners. What do you think?’
Daisy went back to her seat. ‘OK,’ she said. The very fact they have half-won three times is what drove the killers into action. Jealousy, magnified.’
‘Maybe. In the meantime I shall be trying to locate the ten who have won twice already. If one of them wins again, and is subsequently killed, would you still be so sure?’
‘What are you saying? That the AnnoDomino is killing them?’
‘Yes, I think so. Under the cover of jealousy killings. The police are no use, of course, being in the pocket of the game.’
‘Isn’t this bad for Mr Million’s image? What does he gain?’
‘You have heard of the lucky bleeders, I presume?’
The natural-born winners? Sure. You think they really exist?’
‘How else do you explain people winning three times? If you were Mr Million, what would you do? Let them go on winning? No. Of course not. AnnoDomino would rather breed out the good luck. And that means killing the carriers. You see now, the urgency of the matter. Should I stand aside and let more innocent people die? Well, should I?’
Daisy thought about this for a moment, trying to accept it, but always running away from the outcome. It wasn’t her kind of world being described. Where were the laws of mathematics in this? She had nothing to fall back on, nothing to guide her. Numbers, for sure, but just a total of the dead. Hackle was talking about murder!
‘I’m not sure about this. Professor.’
‘Of course. I understand. It is only the beginning…’
‘But nobody knows who Mr Million is. The security is a government-level system. It’s unbreakable.’
‘There are ways. And regarding Mr Million…I already know who it is.’
‘You do?’
‘I think so.’
‘Do I get to find out?’
Hackle stared at Daisy for a few seconds, as though working her out, a tangled equation, and then spoke.
I was a terrible child, keen to do the worst of all things, never the best. Blame it on my upbringing, if you will, or else my place of birth. Or else the time of birth, 1941, conceived by the war. I make no such excuses. I was a self-made brat, only interested in myself. Fuck the world, that was my most complex statement, and believe me, I knew such words at the age of four. Primary school was a disaster zone with me around. If I couldn’t learn, why should anybody else. Not that the teachers cared, they were the bottom of the pile themselves, working in this God-awful dump of a school in Droylsden. Nobody cared about us, you see? That’s the key to what happened later. Nobody cared if we all failed and beat each other up in the process. I can honestly say that by the time I was seven and ready to go to junior school, my knowledge of the world was limited to the end of my nose. I could barely write my own name, never mind add up a series of simple numbers. The funny thing is, I wasn’t anywhere near the worst pupil in class, but more of that later.
Junior school didn’t help. The teachers there probably cared less about us than the primary teachers. I guess, having reached that age without an ounce of knowledge, we were already marked down as factory fodder, or potential beggars. I honestly can’t remember much of the first year, only the intense pleasure of escaping into the summer holidays. I was in two minds about going back, I can remember that. The whole thing seemed so pointless. Only my dad’s threat of the strap persuaded me to turn up on the first day of second year. I was put in this class called 2c, and the first thing we knew, the headmaster came in and told us we had a new teacher starting today, and that she was going to look after us. We were going to make her life hell, more like. After all, that’s why our last teacher left. Anyway, the head introduced us to this Miss Sayer, who was fairly young for a teacher. She must have been in her late twenties, I suppose. Nobody knew where she came from, or why she’d chosen this particular job. Punishment, most probably, for some earlier crime. The headmaster leaves us to it.
Miss Sayer just stared at us for a while, and then smiled at us, and some girl started giggling. She didn’t even say hello, or ask us to call out our names. Her first words were these, and I shall never forget them: ‘Who can tell me how many children there are in this classroom?’ This must have confused us a little because some of us even tried to look round to work it out. I was one of them, even though the highest number I could count to was thirteen. ‘Has anybody got an answer for me?’ Nobody had. ‘Very well, I shall tell you myself. There are twenty-eight children in this classroom. Now, has anybody ever played a game called dominoes?’ That was easier. Most of us put up our hands. ‘Good. Because I’ve brought a set of dominoes with me.’
I think we were all a bit puzzle
d by now, or else expecting an easy ride. Games were what you played in primary school, surely. Then she started to count the dominoes out loud as she lay each one, face-down, on her desk. ‘One…two…three…four…five…six…’ and so on, all the way up to twenty-eight. ‘Now isn’t that interesting? If anybody ever asks you how many children there are in your class, you can tell them there’s the same number as there are pieces in a domino set. Won’t they be impressed? They will be, because they won’t know how many pieces there are in a domino set. So you’ll have told them the right answer, without telling them the answer.’
By this time some of us were getting pretty excited. But the next thing she did was even stranger. She had all twenty-eight of the dominoes face-down on her desk, and she shuffled them all around, like this, so we couldn’t know which was which. Then she asked us to come up and choose a piece at random, any piece we liked. ‘But choose carefully,’ she said, ‘because this will be your number from now on until you leave me. OK, who wants to choose first?’
There was a slight pause and then one of the girls came forward, Susan Prentice, if I remember correctly. She chose a domino and Miss Sayer asked her to say its numbers out loud to the class. ‘It’s a five and a blank,’ said Susan. ‘Good, but we shall call the blank a zero from now on.’ ‘Five-zero,’ said Susan. And so it went on, some of the more eager kids getting up for their dominoes and calling the numbers out loud: Four-one. Six-two. Three-one. Four-three. Two-two. Miss Sayer stopped us for a moment here, to explain that the double dominoes were special, and she gave the kid who had chosen it a chocolate bar. Well, after that we were all keen to get up there and find those other doubles.
A few more kids got to choose, until Miss Sayer stopped one singing boy in his tracks. ‘Can anybody tell me’, she asked, ‘which domino this boy will choose?’ That was a question without an answer, because how could we possibly know. But somebody shouted out anyway, ‘Six-six!’ just guessing. It was Paul Malthorpe who shouted it. Remember, I told you earlier there were kids worse than me in the class, well I meant Paul Malthorpe. This was the first time I had ever heard him respond to a teacher’s question. We were friends and enemies, at the same time, in that special way that can only happen at that age. But Paul was tougher than I was, and more popular with the other kids, especially that Susan Prentice I mentioned. She was the beauty of the class. I was more of a loner, I suppose. Anyway, Miss Sayer then asked what the chances were that the next boy would choose the double-six domino. None of us had a clue what she was going on about.
‘OK, how many dominoes are there in a set?’
‘Twenty-eight, miss,’ someone shouted.
‘Good. So how many chances are there of choosing any single domino?’
There was silence for a while, and then a quiet voice from the back whispered, ‘Twenty-eight, miss.’
‘Excellent. We call this twenty-eight to one, and we write it like this.’ She wrote the ratio on the board.
‘It’s just like me dad, miss,’ said Paul, ‘with his horses. Twenty-eight to one, the rank outsider.’
There was some laughter at this, as there always was for Paul. But what really struck me was his sudden enthusiasm. And he’d called her miss, for crying out loud. That never happened! Of course, Miss Sayer was full of praise at this connection, and she played upon it, asking Paul what the chances were, therefore, of the next boy choosing the double-six? ‘Twenty-eight to one,’ Paul immediately answered, proud as anything.
‘Can anybody tell me why this is wrong?’
Nobody could, not for a while anyway, until somebody dared to answer. ‘Because there aren’t twenty-eight dominoes left?’
‘That’s right. Those with dominoes already, please hold them up. How many is that?’
‘Twelve.’ An answer.
‘Subtract twelve from twenty-eight…’
‘Fourteen.’
‘Nearly.’
‘Sixteen.’
‘That’s right. There are sixteen dominoes left to choose from. So what are the chances, Paul, of the next one being six-six?’
You could almost hear Paul’s mind working away as he struggled with the concepts, until: ‘Sixteen to one!’ he shouted.
‘Good. The odds are shortening, as your father might say.’
‘He does! He does say that!’
‘OK. Carry on choosing. Play to win.’
The poor boy we were talking about didn’t get the six-six, of course, and you could see from his face that he felt cheated. I think he was crying, believe it or not. But as more and more of us chose, every so often, Miss Sayer would ask us to call out the current chances: twelve to one, nine to one, six, five, four, three to one, until there were only two dominoes left. It was Paul and I, of course, who had waited so long to choose, still vying against each other, even in the game. Both of us knew the double-six was up for grabs, alongside some measly normal domino.
The class went quiet, that special quiet just before a fight was about to break out. This was another thing Miss Sayer managed, releasing the violence through the game. We didn’t know that at the time, of course, too hung up on competition. ‘Who wants to go first?’ she asked. I thought, let’s get this over with, so I stood up, but Paul jumped in and made his claim. He knew by now that it didn’t matter who went first, but the idea of not choosing, i.e. just picking up the last domino, I think it would have been too weak for him. He sauntered up to the desk, putting his best walk on, picked up his choice, looked at it, smiled, looked at me, just the once, then whispered the numbers to the class. It was an anti-climax, obviously, for me to do that long walk to my designated numbers. I never got to choose you see. I had the leftovers of Paul Malthorpe, but just as I was reaching for the last domino, Miss Sayer stopped my hand.
She wrote a long word on the board, and told us that we had started to learn about it. Probability. The mathematics of chance. Then she told us she was going to ask a question, and the first person to get it right could go on their break early. We were all excited by now, and I could see Paul grinning at me from his desk, that evil grin he used just before a killer punch. He was sharpening his pencil, dusting a new page down for the question, but Miss Sayer told him to close the book. ‘There will be no pen and paper used in this lesson,’ she said. ‘You must use your heads. Is everybody concentrating? Very well. Who can tell me what this last domino is? Children…play to win!’
Immediately panic set in.
I was still standing at the front of the class. From that position I could see the look of fear creep over every kid’s face. Someone on the front row stood up then, and that started a stampede. They were all up and running around in circles, banging into each other, trying their best to find a pair of numbers that none of them had. It was chaos. Paul was actually going round stealing dominoes off the weaker kids, hoping to stockpile his own little abacus, with one missing piece. ‘We’ve got to work together,’ he shouted, by way of justification. He was only helping himself to the answer. Cheating, in other words. The strange thing was, Miss Sayer didn’t seem to mind this behaviour. She was smiling at the chaos she had created.
She was smiling at me. It was as though she was inside my head, guiding me to the answer. Maybe that was only my brain hurting with this sudden onslaught of numbers, but something definitely happened that day, something I still can’t explain, even after all these years.
‘Two-zero.’ It just came to me. I whispered it first. And then louder, and then louder still. ‘I think it’s the two-zero domino, miss.’
Maybe I’d been subconsciously counting the dominoes as they were chosen. Maybe. I don’t know.
‘OK everybody!’ The teacher clapped her hands for quiet. ‘This child thinks he has the answer. Tell us, please.’
‘It’s the two-zero domino,’ I repeated.
‘Bollocks!’ That was from Paul, of course.
I lifted up the last domino and turned it over in my hand…
‘He peeked! He peeked at it, miss!’ Paul a
gain, coming forward to see for himself.
‘No. I was here. I kept my eye on him. Not everybody needs to cheat, double-six. Well done, two-zero. You may go to break now.’
I gave a whoop of delight, right in Paul’s face, and ran out of the door. There were only fifteen minutes left till official break anyway, but I didn’t care. I’d won! Domino! At last I’d won over Paul. I was the master, and I couldn’t stop laughing all the way down the corridor.
‘You know what happened then, don’t you, Daisy?’
‘You went back?’
‘Yes. I did. I stopped at the doors to the playground. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I might be missing. What was Miss Sayer teaching the other kids without me being there. What were the dominoes doing now? I’d won, but I’d lost. So I went back, and that was the start of it. The start of my career.’
‘And you think this Paul, what was it…?’
‘Malthorpe.’
‘You think he’s the Mr Million?’
‘The thing is, we all became rather good at mathematics that year. Miss Sayer was very special. She taught us to play a mean game of dominoes, and during the play we’d be fed the principles of higher maths. She didn’t treat us like imbeciles, you see. She didn’t teach us adding up and subtraction; she started off with probability and combination theory, disciplines like that, and left the basics to seep down from the top.’
‘It could have been any one of you.’
‘Possibly. I have here a printout of all twenty-eight pupils. Myself; Two-Zero. Prentice, Susan; Five-Blank. Malthorpe, Paul; Six-Six. The team will need to check on them all, but my money’s on Paul. You know the prize for winning the double-six AnnoBone?’
‘You get to become Mr Million.’
‘That’s typical of Malthorpe. He loves the dangerous bet. And consider this…’ Hackle pointed out another name on the list. ‘Horn, George; Zero-Zero. He was the runt of the class, Georgie Horn. A skinny little thing, all buck teeth and inane giggles. Slightly subnormal. Looking back, I guess we were very cruel to him, the names we called him and the things we did. Malthorpe was the worst, of course, but I stand guilty as well. So when Georgie chose the double-zero domino, it raised a terrible laugh from the whole classroom. Miss Sayer tried to tell us that the double-zero was one of the most important numbers, but we were having none of that. The strange thing is, as soon as he won that number, Malthorpe took Georgie under his wing. They became a partnership, the double-six and the double-blank. It was perfect, and another example of what was going on in that classroom. It couldn’t just be chance, considering the Joker Bone.’