Robert Silverberg - The Stochastic Man

As the master of ceremonies — Lombroso, managing brilliantly to be elegant and coarse at the same time — went into the core of his routine, alternating derisive pokes at the most distinguished members of the party present in the room with obligatory threnodies to the traditional martyrs Roosevelt, Kennedy, Kennedy, King, Roswell, and Gottfried, Sundara leaned toward me and whispered. “Have you been watching Friedman?”

“He has a bad case of horn, I’d say.”

“I thought geniuses were supposed to be more subtle.”

“Perhaps he thinks the least subtle approach is the most subtle approach,” I suggested.

“Well, I think he’s being adolescent.”

“Too bad for him, then.”

“Oh, no,” Sundara said. “I find him attractive. Weird but not repellent, you know? Almost fascinating.”

“Then the direct approach is working for him. See? He is a genius.”

Sundara laughed. “Yarber’s after you. Is she a genius, too?”

“I think it’s really you she wants, love. It’s called the indirect approach.”

“What do you want to do?”

I shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

“I’m for it. How do you feel about Yarber?”

“Much energy there, is my guess.”

“Mine too. Four-group tonight, then?”

“Why not,” I said, just as Lombroso sent the audience into deafening merriment with an elaborately polyethnic-perverse climax to his introduction to Paul Quinn.

We gave the mayor a standing ovation, neatly choreographed by Haig Mardikian from the dais. Resuming my seat, I sent Catalina Yarber a body-language telegram that brought dots of color to her pale cheeks. She grinned. Small sharp even teeth, set close together. Message received. Done and done. Sundara and I would have an adventure with these two tonight, then. We were more monogamous than most couples, hence our two-group basic license: not for us the brawling multiheaded households, the squabbles over private property, the communal broods of kiddies. But monogamy is one thing and chastity is another, and if the former still exists, however metamorphosed by the evolutions of the era, the latter is one with the dodo and the trilobite. I welcomed the prospect of a passage at arms with the vigorous little Ms. Yarber. Yet I found myself envying Friedman, as I always envied Sundara’s partner of the night: for he would have the unique Sundara, who was to me still the most desirable woman in the world, and I must settle for someone I desired but desired less than she. A measure of love, I suppose, is what that was, love within the context of exofidelity. Lucky Friedman! One can come to a woman like Sundara for the first time only once.

Quinn spoke. He is no comic, and he made only a few perfunctory jokes, to which his listeners tactfully overreacted; then it was down to serious business, the future of New York City, the future of the United States, the future of humanity in the coming century. The year 2000, he told us, holds immense symbolic value: it is literally the coming of the millennium. As the digit shifts, let us wipe clean the slate and begin afresh, remembering but not re-enacting the errors of the past. We have, he said, been through the ordeal by fire in the twentieth century, enduring vast dislocations and transformations and injuries; we have several times come close to the destruction of all life on earth; we have confronted ourselves with the likelihood of universal famine and universal poverty; we have plunged ourselves foolishly and avoidably into decades of political instability; we have been the victims of our own greed, fear, hatred, and ignorance; but now, with the energy of the solar reaction itself in our control, with population growth stable, with a workable balance reached between economic expansion and protection of the environment, the time has come to build the ultimate society, a world in which reason prevails and right is triumphant, a world in which the full flowing of human potential can be realized.

And so on, a splendid vision of the era ahead. Noble rhetoric, especially from a mayor of New York, traditionally more concerned with the problems of the school system and the agitation of the civil-service unions than with the destiny of mankind. It would have been easy to dismiss the speech as mere pretty bombast; but no, impossible, it held significance beyond its theme, for what we were hearing was the first trumpet call of a would-be world leader. There he stood, looking half a meter taller than he was, face flushed, eyes bright, arms folded in that characteristic pose of force in repose, hitting us with those clarion phrases:

“—as the digit shifts, let us wipe clean the slate—”

“—we have been through the ordeal by fire—”

“—the time has come to build the ultimate society—”

The Ultimate Society. I heard the click and the whirr, and the sound was not so much the shifting of the digit as the extrusion of a new political slogan, and I didn’t need great stochastic gifts to guess that we would all hear much, much more about the Ultimate Society before Paul Quinn was done with us.

Damn, but he was compelling! I was eager to be off and into the night’s exploits, and still I sat motionless, rapt, and so did this whole audience of boozy pols and stoned celebrities, and even the waiters halted their eternal clashing of trays as Quinn’s magnificent voice rolled through the hall. Since that first night at Sarkisian’s I had watched him grow steadily stronger, more solid, as though his rise to prominence had confirmed in him his own self-appraisal and burned away whatever shred of diffidence was in him. Now, glittering in the spotlights, he seemed a vehicle for cosmic energies; there played through him and out from him an irresistible power that shook me profoundly. A new Roosevelt? A new Kennedy? I trembled. A new Charlemagne, a new Mohammed, maybe a new Genghis Khan.

He finished with a flourish and we were up and screaming, no need of Mardikian’s choreography now, and the media folk were running to claim their cassettes and the hard-eyed clubhouse boys were slapping palms and talking about the White House and women were weeping and Quinn, sweating, arms outspread, accepted our homage with quiet satisfaction, and I sensed the first rumblings of the juggernaut through these United States.

It was an hour more before Sundara and Friedman and Catalina and I got out of the hotel. To the pod, quickly home. Odd self-conscious silences; all four of us eager to get to it, but the social conventions temporarily prevail, and we pretend to coolness; and, besides, Quinn has overwhelmed us. We are so full of him, his resonant phrases, his vital presence, that we are all four of us made ciphers, numb, selfless, stunned. No one can initiate the first move. We chatter. Brandy, bone; a tour of the apartment; Sundara and I show off our paintings, our sculptures, our primitive artifacts, our view of the Brooklyn skyline; we become less ill at ease with one another, but still there is no sexual tension; that mood of erotic anticipation that had been building so excitingly three hours earlier has been wholly dissipated by the impact of Quinn’s speech. Was Hitler an orgasmic experience? Was Caesar? We sprawl on the thick white carpet. More brandy. More bone. Quinn, Quinn, Quinn: instead of sexing we talk politics. Friedman, finally, most unspontaneously, slides his hand along Sundara’s ankle and up over her calf. It is a signal. We will force the intensity. “He has to run next year,” says Catalina Yarber, ostentatiously maneuvering herself so that the slit in her skirt flops open, displaying flat belly, golden curls. “Leydecker’s got the nomination wrapped up,” Friedman opines, growing bolder, caressing Sundara’s breasts. I touch the dimmer switch, kicking in the altered-light rheostat, and the room takes on a shining psychedelic texture. About, about, in reel and rout, the witchfires dance. Yarber offers a fresh tube of bone. “From Sikkim,” she declares. “The best stuff going.” To Friedman she says, “I know Leydecker’s ahead, but Quinn can push him aside if he tries. We can’t wait four more years for him.” I draw deep on the tube and the Sikkimese dope sets up a breeder reaction in my brain. “Next year is too soon,” I tell them. “Quinn looked incredible tonight, but we don’t have enough time to hit the whole country with him between here and a year from November. Mortonson’s a cinch for reelection anyway. Let Leydecker use himself up next year and we move Quinn into position in ‘04.” I would have gone on to outline the whole feigned-vice-presidential-bid strategy but Sundara and Friedman had vanished into the shadows, and Catalina was no longer interested in politics.