Stanislaw Lem - The Chain of Chance

Stark neon lights beyond the hills announced the approach of Rome. I still had some driving ahead of me, because my instructions were to circle the city first. The growing darkness obscured the faces of the people in the other cars, and the things piled high on the roofs took on weird and mysterious shapes. Everything was assuming a grave and impersonal aspect, full of hidden implications, as if matters of an extremely urgent nature were waiting at the road’s end. Every backup astronaut has to be a little bit of a bastard, because something in him is always waiting for the regulars to slip up, and if not, then he’s a stupid ass. I had to make another stop. The coffee in combination with the Plimasine, Schweppes, and ice water did the trick. I left the side of the road on foot and was struck by the surroundings. Not only the traffic but time along with it seemed to fade. Standing with my back to the highway, and despite the exhaust fumes, I could make out the scent of flowers in the gently fluttering breeze. What would I have done now if I were thirty? No sense brooding over such questions; better to button your fly and get behind the wheel again. The ignition key slipped between my fingers, and I fumbled around in the dark for it between the pedals, not wanting to switch on the interior light. As I drove along, I felt neither drowsy nor alert, neither edgy nor relaxed, but somehow strange, vulnerable, even a little astonished. The light from the lampposts streamed through the front windshield, turning my hands on the steering wheel white, then gradually retreated to the back of the car. Billboards came and went like phantoms, the concrete road joints drummed softly underneath. Now to the right, to pick up the city bypass that would bring me out onto the same northern route Adams had used to enter the city. He no longer meant anything to me now. He was just one case out of eleven. It was just a fluke that I’d inherited his things. Randy had insisted on it, and he was right: if you’re going to do a job, then do it properly. The fact that I was using a dead man’s shirts and luggage didn’t faze me in the slightest, and if it was a little hard going at first, then it was only because these things belonged to a stranger, not because their owner was dead. While driving down a lonely and deserted stretch, I kept feeling that something was missing. The windows were rolled down, and the breeze brought the smell of flowers in bloom. Luckily the grasses had already retired for the night. Not once did I have the sniffles. They could talk all they liked about psychology; in the end it was the hay fever that had been the deciding factor. Of that I was sure, even though they’d tried to make me believe otherwise. What they’d said made sense, I suppose, because since when does grass grow on Mars? Besides, being allergic to dust is not a defect. Even so, somewhere in my files, in the space reserved for comments, they must have written the word “allergic”—in other words, defective. Because of that diagnosis I became a backup astronaut—a pencil sharpened with the best possible instruments so that in the end it couldn’t be used to make a single dot. A backup Christopher Columbus, as it were.

I was being blinded now by a steady stream of oncoming traffic; I tried closing one eye and then the other. Had I taken the wrong route? I couldn’t find a single exit. A mood of apathy came over me: I had no choice but to keep driving through the night. A towering billboard sign lit at an angle read ROMA TIBERINA. So I was headed in the right direction, after all. The closer I got to the downtown area, the more congested were the lights and traffic. Luckily all the hotels on my itinerary were located close to one another. At each of them I was greeted by the same gesture of outstretched hands—“The season! No vacancy!”—forcing me to get behind the wheel again. At the last hotel there was a vacancy, but I asked for a quiet room in one of the side wings. The porter gave me an inquisitive look; I shook my head with regret and walked back to the car.

The empty sidewalk in front of the Hilton was flooded with light. As I climbed out of the car I couldn’t see the Chrysler anywhere, and it occurred to me that they might have had an accident, which would have explained why I hadn’t seen them on the road. I routinely slammed the car door shut, and as I did I caught a glimpse of the Chrysler’s front end in a fleeting reflection in the window. It was parked just outside the lot in the shadows, between the chains and a NO PARKING sign. On my way back into the hotel I could make out the car’s dark interior, which looked to be deserted, though one of its windows was rolled down. When I came to within five paces of the car, the head of a cigarette lit up the interior. I felt an impulse to wave but resisted, giving my hand only a slight jerk before sticking it back into my pocket and entering the lobby.

This was just a minor incident, magnified by the fact that one chapter was over and another was beginning. The cold night air lent everything a marvelous clarity—the car trunks in the parking lot, the sound of my footsteps, the sidewalk markings—which made my inability to wave even more frustrating. Till now I’d stuck to my timetable as faithfully as a school kid, not giving a single thought to the guy who’d driven the same route before me, stopped off at the same places, taken the same number of coffee breaks, and made the same rounds of the hotels so that he could wind up here, at the Hilton, which he would never leave again alive. At that moment my assumed role struck me as something of a mockery, a willful defiance of fate.

A young punk, swaggering with self-importance, or perhaps only disguising his drowsiness, followed me out to the car, where he grabbed hold of the dusty suitcases with gloved hands while I smiled absently at his shiny buttons. The lobby was deserted. Another bruiser loaded my luggage into the elevator, which traveled upstairs to the sounds of piped music. I was still feeling the rhythm of the road, which, like a haunting tune, I couldn’t shake off. The bellboy stopped, opened a set of double doors, switched on the wall light and overhead lamp, and turned on the living-room and bedroom lights; as soon as he was finished arranging my bags, I was alone again. Though Naples and Rome were no farther than a handshake away from each other, I felt tired, but it was a tiredness of a different kind, more tense, and that came as the next surprise. It was as if I’d polished off a can of beer in spoonfuls—a kind of stupefying sobriety. I made a tour of the rooms. The bed reached all the way to the floor, so there was no point in playing hide-and-seek. I opened all the closet doors, knowing ahead of time I wouldn’t surprise any assassins because that would have been too easy, but I did my duty anyway. I lifted the sheets, the double mattress, and then the headrest, though I didn’t seriously believe I’d never get up out of this bed again. Oh, yeah? Man is an undemocratic institution. His brain center, those voices from the right and the left, are nothing but a sham legislature, because there are also the catacombs, which bully him. The gospel according to Freud. I checked the air conditioner, then tested the blinds by raising and lowering them a few times. The room ceilings were plain and cheerful, unlike those at the Three Witches Inn, where the element of danger was so grimly conspicuous and where the bed canopy looked as if any moment it might collapse and smother you. Here there was no canopy, none of that syrupy, romantic atmosphere. Here everything—armchairs, desk, carpets—was neatly arranged in the usual display of comfort. Had I turned off the headlights?

The windows faced the other way, so I couldn’t see the car. I was pretty sure I’d switched them off, and if not, well… let Hertz worry about it. I closed the curtains and started getting undressed, not caring where my shirt and pants landed. When I was completely stripped, I carefully detached the sensors. After taking a shower I’d have to stick them on again. I opened the larger suitcase, the one with the Band-Aid box lying on top, but I couldn’t find the scissors, Standing in the middle of the room, I could feel a slight pressure in my head and the soft carpet pile beneath my feet. Then I remembered—I’d slipped them into my briefcase. Impatiently I yanked at the clasp, and out fell the scissors, along with a relic of the past—a photo of Sinus Aurorae, mounted in a Plexiglass frame and looking as yellow as the Sahara: landing site number I, the one I never made it to. On the carpet, next to my bare feet, it looked embarrassing, silly, full of nasty innuendo. I picked it up and studied it in the white light of the overhead lamp: ten degrees north latitude by fifty-two degrees east longitude, the patch of Bosporus Gemmatus at the top and the tropical formation below. The places I was to have reconnoitered on foot. I stood there with the photo in my hand, but instead of putting it back into my suitcase, I laid it down on the night-stand, next to the telephone, and went into the bathroom.