Stanislaw Lem - The Chain of Chance

Mrs. Barbour turned the matter over to Elgin, Elgin, and Thorn, a respectable agency headed by Samuel Ohlin-Gaar, a lawyer and former friend of my father’s. This was around the time when the end of my career as an astronaut was already inevitable. After Ohlin-Gaar’s people had reviewed all the files, checked every possible lead, and gone to considerable expense to consult the most eminent authorities in criminology and forensic medicine, and still failed to make any progress, Ohlin-Gaar, acting on the advice of one of his oldest associates—a man by the name of Randolph Loers, better known to his friends as Randy—decided, more out of desperation than hope, to mount a simulation mission, that is, to send to Naples an unmarried American matching the type of victim in every possible way. At that time I was a frequent guest at old man Ohlin’s place, and one day he began filling me in on the case in a casual sort of way, insisting it was not a violation of professional secrecy to do so since by now the only alternative to carrying out a simulation mission was to wash one’s hands of the whole affair.

At first I didn’t take the thought of my eligibility too seriously, but then it turned out the job was mine for the asking. It so happened that I was fifty and—except for an occasional touch of rheumatism and of course my hay fever—in top physical condition. Since it looked so tempting from across the ocean, I volunteered for the mission. Three weeks ago, using the alias of George L. Simpson, a broker from Boston, I landed by plane in Naples, where I checked in at the Vesuvio, bought a pass to the Vittorini spa, got a suntan, and played lots of volleyball. To make it look as authentic as possible, I used some of Adams’s personal things, which Mrs. Barbour had been saving. During the time I was in Naples, a six-man team kept me under constant surveillance—two men to a shift, plus two technicians to monitor my blood, heart, and lungs. I wore electronic sensors wherever I went, except on the beach, where a pair of well-hidden binoculars was deployed. As soon as I arrived I put nineteen thousand dollars in the hotel safe: five days later I picked up the money, and kept it in my room from then on. I wasn’t shy about making friends; I visited the same museums as Adams, went to the opera as he had, followed his footsteps around the bay, and drove to Rome in the exact same Hornet. To increase the range of the sensors, the car was equipped with an amplifier. A specialist in forensic medicine, Dr. Sidney Fox, was waiting for me in Rome. His job was to examine all the medical data recorded on the tapes, which he did, and that’s how the mission ended—a complete flop.

What I had given Barth was an abbreviated version of the case, the one we always used when it became necessary to enlist the services of an outsider. We called it “the panoramic variant.”

The windows of the study faced the north, and the shade thrown by the giant elms made the room even darker. I disconnected the projector, Barth switched on the desk lamp, and the room was immediately transformed. He said nothing, with only his eyebrows registering mild astonishment, and suddenly I realized the utter futility of my having intruded on a complete stranger. I was afraid he was going to ask how I thought he could be of help—assuming he didn’t simply dismiss the whole thing out of hand. Instead he got up, paced up and down the room, then came to a stop behind a handsome antique chair, placed his hands on its carved back rest, and said:

“You know what you should have done? Sent a whole group of simulators down there. No fewer than five.”

“You think so?” I asked with some bewilderment.

“Of course. If we conceive of your mission in terms of a scientific experiment, then you failed to fulfill either the preliminary or the accessory conditions. Either you were deficient or your environment was. In case you were the cause, then you should have selected men having the same characteristic variability ratio as that exhibited by the victims.”

“Aptly put!” The words slipped out of my mouth.

He smiled.

“You’re not accustomed to our language, I see. That’s because you associate with people who have a policeman’s mentality. That mentality is all right for prosecuting criminals but not for proving whether in fact a criminal exists. I suspect if your life had been in danger you wouldn’t have noticed it. Up to a point, of course. Later you’d have been aware of the accompanying circumstances but not of the causality itself.”

“Aren’t they one and the same?”

“They can but need not be.”

“But I was ready for that. I was supposed to record anything that looked the least bit suspicious.”

“And what did you record?”

I smiled in embarrassment.

“Nothing. Oh, once or twice I was tempted to, but then I realized it was a case of too much introspection.”

“Have you ever used hallucinogens?”

“In the States, before joining the mission. LSD, psilocibin, mescaline—all under medical supervision.”

“I see… part of your training. And would you mind telling me what you hoped to achieve by taking on the part? You personally.”

“Hoped to achieve? I was fairly optimistic. I thought we could at least prove whether it was a crime or just a matter of coincidence.”

“You were optimistic, weren’t you. Naples is a trap, there’s no doubt about that. But one that operates like a lottery, not like a machine. The symptoms tend to fluctuate, to behave erratically. They can subside or disappear altogether, right?”

“Absolutely correct.”

“All right, suppose now we take a firing zone as a model. You can be killed either by someone deliberately aiming at you or by the sheer density of fire. But either way someone on the other end is anxious to see a lot of people dead.”

“Oh, I see what you’re driving at. The element of chance doesn’t rule out the possibility of a crime, is that it?”

“Precisely. You mean to say that was never considered?” “Not really. Someone once raised the possibility, but the reply was that if that were the case it would mean having to revise the whole method of investigation…”

“Either a wicked man or a wicked fate, is that it? But even the expression corriger la fortune has become proverbial. Why didn’t you hook up a two-way transmission?”

“Too much of a bother. I couldn’t go around loaded down with a lot of electronic equipment. Besides, there was another catch, one that came up in connection with the Swift case—Swift was the one rescued by the friend who had registered at the same hotel. Swift made his hallucinations sound so convincing he almost had his friend believing them.”

“I see what you mean. Folíe à deux. In other words, you didn’t want to risk having your shadow fall for any of your hallucinations, is that it?”

“Exactly.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong. Of the eleven victims, two escaped alive, and then there’s another who is still missing. The missing man’s name is Brigg. Am I right?”

“Correct. Brigg would have been the twelfth. He hasn’t been definitely classified yet.”

“Due to insufficient evidence, I suppose. Now we come to their chronological order. In this respect your summary is misleading. It presents the individual eases in the order of their discovery, which is something completely incidental, rather than in the order of their occurrence. What was the time span involved? Two years?”

“Yes. Titz, Coburn, and Osborn passed away two years ago. Brigg disappeared around the same time. The rest date from last year.”

“Any this year?”

“If there have been any, we wouldn’t know about them till the fall. Especially since the original investigation has been discontinued.”