Stanislaw Lem - The Chain of Chance

“I see. In much the same way as in Naples, right?”

“Yes, especially since we’re also trained in the art of self-analysis. If instruments are always subject to error, then the final indicator has to be man.”

“Monotonous routine, you say. In what ways were you excited in Naples? When and where?”

“When I was afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“At least twice. And each time it gave me something of a thrill.”

The words did not come easily, for I was dealing in intangibles. He never took his eyes off me.

“Did you enjoy being afraid?”

“I can’t give you a yes or no answer. It’s best when a person’s abilities coincide with his ambitions. My ambitions have always tended toward the impossible. There’s an infinite variety of risks, but I personally have never been attracted by such ordinary risks as, say, Russian roulette. That sort of test strikes me as jejune. On the other hand, I’ve always had a great attraction for the unknown, the unpredictable, the undefinable.”

“Is that why you decided to become an astronaut?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that’s the reason. People think of us as clever chimpanzees guided by a remote-control computer. The highest order, the symbol of our civilization, whose opposite pole you see before you.” I pointed to the paper featuring a front-page photo of the escalator. “I don’t believe that’s necessarily true. And even if it were true, we’d have been all alone on Mars, completely on our own. I knew all along my physical disability would hang over me like the sword of Damocles. For six weeks out of the year, during the blooming season, I’m totally worthless. Still, I was counting on the fact that since no vegetation grew on Mars, which everybody, including my superiors, took for granted.,. but anyhow it was the hay fever that got me demoted to the backup crew, where I knew I didn’t stand a chance.”

“Of flying to Mars?”

“That’s right.”

“And did you go on being a backup member?”

“No.”

“Aut Caesar aut nihil.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

He unclasped his hands and sank deeper into his armchair. Sitting there with eyelids half open, he seemed to be digesting my words. Then a twitch of the eyebrows and a flicker of a smile.

“Let’s return to earth. Did all the victims have allergies?”

“Just about, though in one case it was never substantiated. The allergies varied, dust allergy being the most common, followed by asthma…”

“And when was it you were afraid? A moment ago you mentioned…”

“I remember two different occasions. The first time was in the hotel restaurant, when another Adams was paged to the phone. I knew it was a popular name, I knew they were paging someone else; still, for a moment I had the feeling it wasn’t just a coincidence.”

“You had the feeling they were paging a dead man, is that it?”

“Not at all. I thought it was the start of something. That it was a code word being used so none of the other customers would be the wiser,”

“Did it ever occur to you it might have been someone from your own team?”

“Out of the question. Under no circumstances were they to get in touch with me. Only in the event of a catastrophe, say, a declaration of war, was Randy, our leader, supposed to approach me directly. But only under such conditions.”

“Excuse me for being so inquisitive, but this strikes me as important. So Adams was paged. But what if the caller really had you in mind; wouldn’t that mean he saw through your disguise and was telling you as much?”

“That’s exactly why I was so scared. I was even tempted to go to the phone.”

“What for?”

“To make contact with the other side. Better that than nothing at all.”

“I see. But you didn’t go, did you?”

“No. The real Adams beat me to it.”

“And the second time?”

“That was during my one night in Rome, at the hotel. I was staying in the room where Adams had died in his sleep. Oh yes, there’s something else I should explain. You see, various simulation roles were considered. I didn’t have to pose as Adams, there were alternate roles, but I sat in on the meetings and tipped the scale in favor of Adams—”

I broke off, seeing Barth’s eyes momentarily light up.

“Let me guess. It wasn’t the temporary insanity, it wasn’t the seaside, and it wasn’t the highway. It was just the thought of that safe and secluded hotel room—the solitude, the comfort, and death. Am I right?”

“Possibly, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I guess they thought I was hoping to find the secret disclosures he was supposed to have stashed away somewhere, but that wasn’t it at all. The truth was, I found the man somehow likable.”

Even though he’d stung me a moment ago with his “Aut Caesar aut nihil ,” I found myself being a lot more talkative than usual, so dependent was I on this man’s help. Exactly when this whole affair had become an obsession with me I couldn’t say. At first I’d treated the impersonation as just another routine exercise, as a necessary part of the game. I don’t know at what point it had pulled me in so completely that at the same time it pushed me away. I was looking forward to the danger, counting on it; I knew it wasn’t my imagination; but just when I seemed to be on the verge of it, it turned out to be an illusion. I was barred from it. I’d done everything Adams had done—everything except share the same fate, and that’s why I had nothing to show for it. Maybe Barth’s remark had offended me so much because it touched on the truth. One of Fitzpatrick’s medical colleagues on the Mars project, Kerr, a Freudian, would have said I was trying to force a showdown, that I preferred death to defeat; in other words, he’d have explained my choice of Adams, the mission itself, in terms of a Freudian death wish. You can bet that’s what he would have said. But who cares. Asking for this Frenchman’s help was tantamount to violating the mountain climber’s code: I was giving him the lead so he could pull me up on the rope. But better that than total disaster: I had no intention of winding up a loser.

“Let’s talk about methodology.” Barth’s voice roused me from my thoughts. “First of all, the class of victims, the mode of differentiation. In this regard you proceeded far too arbitrarily.”

“What makes you think so?”

“The fact that the incidents didn’t form categories of their own but were arbitrarily categorized as relevant or irrelevant. Your criteria were death and insanity, or at least insanity, even when the latter failed to result in death. Compare the behavior of Swift and Adams. Swift, you might say, went publicly insane, whereas if it hadn’t been for Adams’s letter to his wife, you never would have found out about his hallucinations. And there’s no telling how many other cases there were like that.”

“Excuse me,” I said, “but that’s inevitable. What you’ve just accused us of is the classic dilemma of every investigation into the unknown. Before its limits can be defined the agent of causality must be identified, but before the agent of causality can be identified one must first of all define the subject under investigation.”

He looked at me with undisguised approval.

“Well, well, I see you’re well versed in the language, too. But it surely wasn’t the detectives who taught it to you, now was it?”

I said nothing in reply. He sat rubbing his chin.

“Yes, that is indeed the classic dilemma of induction. But let’s turn to some of the discarded facts, to the false clues. Were there any promising leads that in the end proved useless?”

Now it was my turn to look at him with approval.