Robert Silverberg - The Stochastic Man

“I’ll unwind in a minute or two. The trip out here—”

“Of course.”

“But no one bothered me in the street. I have to confess I was expecting trouble, but—”

“I told you no harm would come.”

“Still—”

“But I told you,” he said mildly. “Didn’t you believe me? You should have believed me, Mr. Nichols. You know that.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I said, thinking, Gilmartin, gellation, Leydecker. Carvajal offered me more water. I smiled mechanically and shook my head. There was a sticky silence. After a moment I said, “This is a strange part of town for a person like you to choose.”

“Strange? Why?”

“A man of your means could live anywhere in the city.”

“I know.”

“Why here, then?”

“I’ve always lived here,” he said softly. “This is the only home I’ve ever known. These furnishings belonged to my mother, and some to her mother. I hear the echoes of familiar voices in these rooms, Mr. Nichols. I feel the living presence of the past. Is that so odd, to go on living where one has always lived?”

“But the neighborhood—”

“Has deteriorated, yes. Sixty years bring great changes. But the changes haven’t been perceptible to me in any important way. A gentle decline, year by year, then perhaps a steeper decline, but I make allowances, I make adjustments, I grow accustomed to what is new and make it part of what has always been. And everything is so familiar to me, Mr. Nichols — the names written in the wet cement when the pavement was new long ago, the great ailanthus tree in the schoolyard, the weatherbeaten gargoyles over the doorway of the building across the street. Do you understand what I’m saying? Why should I leave these things for a sleek Staten Island condo?”

“The danger, for one.”

“There’s no danger. Not for me. These people regard me as the little man who’s always been here, the symbol of stability, the one constant in a universe of entropic flow. I have a ritualistic value for them. I’m some sort of good-luck token, perhaps. At any rate no one who lives here has ever molested me. No one ever will.”

“Can you be sure of that?”

“Yes,” he said, with monolithic assurance, looking straight into my eyes, and I felt that chill again, that sense of standing on the rim of an abyss beyond my fathoming. There was another long silence. There was force flowing from him — a power altogether at odds with his drab appearance, his mild manner, his numb, burned-out expression — and that force immobilized me. I might have been sitting frozen for an hour. At length he said, “You wanted to ask me some questions, Mr. Nichols.”

I nodded. Taking a deep breath, I plunged in. “You knew Leydecker was going to die this spring, didn’t you? I mean, you didn’t just guess he’d die. You knew.”

“Yes.” That same final, uncontestable yes.

“You knew that Gilmartin would get into trouble. You knew that oil tankers would spill ungelled oil.”

“Yes. Yes.”

“You know what the stock market is going to do tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, and you’ve made millions of dollars by using that knowledge.”

“That’s also true.”

“Therefore it’s fair to say that you see future events with extraordinary clarity, with supernatural clarity, Mr. Carvajal.”

“As do you.”

“Wrong,” I said. “I don’t see future events at all. I’ve got no vision whatsoever of things to come. I’m merely very very good at guessing, at weighing probabilities and coming up with the most likely pattern, but I don’t really see, I can’t ever be certain that I’m right, just reasonably confident. Because all I’m doing is guessing. You see. You told me almost as much when we met in Bob Lombroso’s office: I guess; you see. The future is like a movie playing inside your mind. Am I right?”

“You know you are, Mr. Nichols.”

“Yes. I know I am. There can’t be any doubt of it. I’m aware of what can be accomplished by stochastic methods, and the things you do go beyond the possibilities of guesswork. Maybe I could have predicted the likelihood of a couple of oil-tanker breakups, but not that Leydecker would drop dead or that Gilmartin would be exposed as a crook. I might have guessed that some key political figure would die this spring, but never which one. I might have guessed that some state politician would get busted, but not by name. Your predictions were exact and specific. That’s not probabilistic forecasting. That’s more like sorcery, Mr. Carvajal. By definition, the future is unknowable. But you seem to know a great deal about the future.”

“About the immediate future, yes. Yes, I do, Mr. Nichols.”

“Only the immediate future?”

He laughed. “Do you think my mind penetrates all of space and time?”

“At this point I have no idea what your mind penetrates. I wish I knew. I wish I had some notion of how it works and what its limits are.”

“It works as you described it,” Carvajal replied. “When I want to, I see. A vision of things to come plays within me like a film.” His voice was utterly matter-of-fact. He sounded almost bored. “Is that the only thing you came here to find out?”

“Don’t you know? Surely you’ve seen the film of this conversation already.”

“Of course I have.”

“But you’ve forgotten some of the details?”

“I rarely forget anything,” Carvajal said, sighing.

“Then you must know what else I’m going to ask.”

“Yes,” he admitted.

“Even so, you won’t answer it unless I ask it.”

“Yes.”

“Suppose I don’t,” I said. “Suppose I just leave right now, without doing what I’m supposed to have done.”

“That won’t be possible,” said Carvajal evenly. “I remember the course this conversation must take, and you don’t leave before asking your next question. There’s only one way for things to happen. You have no choice but to say and do the things I saw you say and do.”

“Are you a god, decreeing the events of my life?”

He smiled wanly and shook his head. “Very much mortal, Mr. Nichols. Decreeing nothing. I tell you, though, the future’s immutable. What you think of as the future. We’re both actors in a script that can’t be rewritten. Come, now. Let’s play out our script. Ask me—”

“No. I’m going to break the pattern and walk out of here.”

“—about Paul Quinn’s future,” he said.

I was already at the door. But when he spoke Quinn’s name I halted, slack-jawed, stunned, and I turned. That was, of course, the question I had been going to ask, the question I had come here to ask, the question I had determined not to ask when I began to play my little game with immutable destiny. How poorly I had played! How sweetly Carvajal had maneuvered me! Because I was helpless, defeated, immobilized. You may think I was still free to walk out, but no, but no, not once he had invoked Quinn’s name, not now that he had tantalized me with the promise of desired knowledge, not now that Carvajal had demonstrated once more, crushingly, conclusively, the precision of his oracular gift.

“You say it,” I muttered. “You ask the question.”

He sighed. “If you wish.”

“I insist.”

“You mean to ask if Paul Quinn is going to become President.”

“That’s it,” I said hollowly.

“The answer is that I think he will.”

“You think? That’s the best you can tell me. You think he will?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know everything!”

“No,” Carvajal said. “Not everything. There are limits, and your question lies beyond them. The only answer I can give you is a mere guess, based on the same sort of factors anyone interested in politics would consider. Considering those factors, I think Quinn is likely to become President.”