Robert Silverberg - The Stochastic Man

“Because my problem involves concealing confidential information about Quinn. I know something that Quinn might want to know, and I’m not able to tell him. Mardikian’s such a gung-ho Quinn man that he’s likely to get the story out of me under a pledge of secrecy and then head straight to Quinn with it.”

“I’m a gung-ho Quinn man, too,” Lombroso said. “ You’re a gung-ho Quinn man.”

“Yes,” I said. “But you’re not so gung-ho that you’d breach a friend’s confidence for Quinn’s sake.”

“Whereas you think Haig would?”

“He might.”

“Haig would be upset if he knew you felt like that about him.”

“I know you aren’t going to report any of this to him,” I said. “I know you aren’t.”

Lombroso made no reply, merely stood there against the magnificent backdrop of his collection of medieval treasures, digging his fingers deep into his dense black beard and studying me with those piercing eyes. There was a long worrisome silence. Yet I felt I had been right in coming to him rather than to Mardikian. Of the entire Quinn team Lombroso was the most reasonable, the most reliable, a splendidly sane, well-balanced man, centered and incorruptible, wholly independent of mind. If my judgment of him were wrong, I would be finished.

I said eventually, “Is it a deal? You won’t repeat anything I tell you today?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether I agree with you that it’s best to conceal the thing you want concealed.”

“I tell you, and then you decide?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t do that, Bob.”

“That means you don’t trust me either, right?”

I considered for a moment. Intuition said go ahead, tell him everything. Caution said there was at least a chance he might override me and take the story to Quinn.

“All right,” I said “I’ll tell you the story. I hope that whatever I say remains between you and me.”

“Go ahead,” Lombroso said.

I took a deep breath. “I had lunch with Carvajal a few days ago. He told me that Quinn is going to make some wisecracks about Israel when he speaks at the Bank of Kuwait dedication early next month, and that the wisecracks are going to offend a lot of Jewish voters here, aggravating local Jewish disaffection with Quinn that I didn’t know exists, but which Carvajal says is already severe and likely to get much worse.”

Lombroso stared. “Are you out of your mind, Lew?”

“I might be. Why?”

“You really do believe that Carvajal can see the future?”

“He plays the stock market as though he can read next month’s newspapers, Bob. He tipped us about Leydecker dying and Socorro taking over. He told us about Gilmartin. He—”

“Oil gellation, too, yes: So he guesses well. I think we’ve already had this conversation at least once, Lew.”

“He doesn’t guess. I guess. He sees. ”

Lombroso contemplated me. He was trying to look patient and tolerant, but he seemed troubled. He is above all else a man of reason; and I was talking madness to him. “You think he can predict the content of an off-the-cuff speech that isn’t due to be delivered for three weeks?”

“I do.”

“How is such a thing possible?”

I thought of Carvajal’s tablecloth diagram, of the two streams of time flowing in opposite directions. I couldn’t try to sell that to Lombroso. I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know at all. I take it on faith. He’s shown me enough evidence so that I’m convinced he can do it, Bob.”

Lombroso looked unconvinced.

“This is the first I’ve heard that Quinn is in trouble with the Jewish voters,” he said. “Where’s the evidence for that? What do your polls show?”

“Nothing. Not yet.”

“Not yet? When does it start to turn up?”

“In a few months, Bob. Carvajal says the Times will run a feature this fall on the way Quinn is losing Jewish support.”

“Don’t you think I’d know it pretty quickly if Quinn were getting in trouble with the Jews, Lew? But from everything I hear, he’s the most popular mayor with them since Beame, maybe since LaGuardia.”

“You’re a millionaire. So are your friends,” I told him. “You can’t get a representative sampling of popular opinion hanging out with millionaires. You aren’t even a representative Jew, Bob. You said so yourself: you’re a Sephardic, you’re Latin, and Sephardim are an elite, a minority, an aristocratic little caste that has very little in common with Mrs. Goldstein and Mr. Rosenblum. Quinn might be losing the support of a hundred Rosenblums a day and the news wouldn’t reach your crowd of Spinozas and Cardozos until they read about it in the Times. Am I right?”

Shrugging, Lombroso said, “I’ll admit there’s some truth in that. But we’re getting off the track, aren’t we? What’s your actual problem, Lew?”

“I want to warn Quinn not to make that Kuwait speech, or else to lay off the wisecracks. Carvajal won’t let me say a word to him.”

“Won’t let you?”

“He says the speech is destined to occur as he perceived it, and he insists I simply let it take place. If I do anything to prevent Quinn from doing what the script calls for for that day, Carvajal threatens to sever relations with me.”

Lombroso, looking perturbed and mournful, walked in slow circles around his office. “I don’t know which is crazier,” he said finally. “Believing that Carvajal can see the future, or fearing that he’ll get even with you if you transmit his hunch to Quinn.”

“It’s not a hunch. It’s a true vision.”

“So you say.”

“Bob, more than anything else I want to see Paul Quinn go on to higher office in this country. I’ve got no right to hold back data from him, especially when I’ve found a unique source like Carvajal.”

“Carvajal may be just—”

“I have complete faith in him!” I said, with a passion that surprised me, for until that moment I still had had lingering uncertainties about Carvajal’s power, and now I was fully committed to its validity. “That’s why I can’t risk a break with him.”

“So tell Quinn about the Kuwait speech, then. If Quinn doesn’t deliver it, how will Carvajal know you’re responsible?”

“He’ll know.”

“We can announce that Quinn is ill. We can even check him into Bellevue for the day and give him a complete medical exam. We—”

“He’ll know.”

“We can hint to Quinn that he ought to go soft on any remarks that might be construed as anti-Israeli, then.”

“Carvajal will know I did it,” I said.

“He really has you by the throat, doesn’t he?”

“What shall I do, Bob? Carvajal’s going to be fantastically useful to us, whatever you may think at the moment. I don’t want to take the chance of spoiling things with him.”

“Then don’t. Let the Kuwaiti speech happen as scheduled, if you’re so worried about offending Carvajal. A few wisecracks aren’t going to do permanent damage, are they?”

“They won’t help any.”

“They won’t hurt that much. We’ve got two years before Quinn has to go before the voters again. He can make five pilgrimages to Tel Aviv in that time, if he has to.” Lombroso came close and put his hand on my shoulder. This near, the force of his strong, vibrant personality was overwhelming. With great warmth and intensity he said, “Are you all right these days, Lew?”

“What do you mean?”

“You worry me. All this lunacy about seeing the future. And so much dither over one lousy speech. Maybe you need some rest. I know you’ve been under a great strain lately, and—”

“Strain?”

“Sundara,” he said. “We don’t need to pretend I don’t know what’s going on.”