Streaking

by Brian Stableford

  “I’m sorry about the mourning-dress,” she said. “I really am.”

  “I know,” he said. “You really don’t need to apologize.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The following morning, as Canny and Alice walked to the garage where the Bentley was locked up, Alice said: “You’d better drop me at King’s Cross; that way I can arrive back in Leeds in a way that won’t give anyone cause for alarm or suspicion.”

  “I’ll take you to Leeds,” Canny told her, phrasing it as a contradiction rather than a suggestion. “In the unlikely event that anyone from Cockayne sees you getting out of the car, I’m sure you can make up a plausible story about where I gave you a lift from that doesn’t involve London or nights of blazing passion.”

  “Okay,” she said, readily enough. “You can drop me at home. I need to pick up the mail, see to a few things. When I get back to Mum’s, I’ll tell her I spent the night there, with the answer-phone on because I didn’t want to talk to anyone. You know, I never needed to invent an alibi to cover up an infidelity—I never expected to be breaking that particular precedent in circumstances like this.”

  Canny didn’t bother to point out that no infidelity had been involved. He used his keycard to let them in to the garage and opened the boot of the car to stow his suitcase while Alice got into the front passenger seat.

  “A lot nicer than the mangy Citroen,” she commented, when he joined her. “I feel like I’ve been promoted from skivvy to courtesan.”

  “You’re fishing for compliments again,” he pointed out. “And it’s a very nice Citroen—Mummy wouldn’t drive anything mangy.”

  “So I am,” she admitted. “And I apologize to your Mum. Okay, so I’m an academic’s widow, not a femme fatale. You want to talk about psychological probability? I can do that, if you want. It’s going to be a long drive—starting from here at this time of day it’ll probably take us an hour to get as far as Edgware.”

  “It’s not that bad during the day since the congestion charge was introduced,” he told her. “We’ll have to stick to theoretical issues, mind. I’ve already tempted fate a little too far for one week.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, readily enough. “One night of desperation isn’t exactly a lifelong commitment—even I can see that it doesn’t entitle me to be let in on the family secrets.”

  He turned right into Marylebone Road, and had no difficulty at all getting to the corner of Albany Street, where he turned north. There was a faint sheen of spilled oil dressing the surface of the road near the Royal College of Physicians, and the faint spectra sparked by the sunlight seemed uncommonly unobtrusive. It could almost have been a faint streak, but his stomach was only distressed because he hadn’t had any breakfast.

  “If it will ease your resentment any,” he told Alice, “Mummy’s been in the family for forty years, and she knows less than you’ve deduced. She doesn’t ask and she doesn’t guess—she just fits right in. The old sort, Bentley says—approvingly, of course. He doesn’t ask either, and he keeps his guesswork strictly to himself, so far as I know.”

  “I thought all that went out with World War I,” Alice said, with a hint of a sneer. “Well, your Dad might have managed to surround himself with the last of the dodos, but you won’t. How many of the family secrets does Lissa Lo know?”

  “Theoretical issues,” Canny reminded her. “Safer ground.” He turned into Camden Road, intending to turn left and join the M1 at junction 2, but the traffic was thickening now and his progress slowed

  “Okay,” Alice said. “I’m tamed, for the moment. I’m not about to bite the hand that fed me last night, let alone the other bits of your anatomy that helped me get by. Theoretical issues. The psychology of feeling lucky. The illusion that luck is on your side, that the omens are all favorable, that you only have to speculate to accumulate. Hard to dispel even if you lose—very difficult indeed if you win. You’ve read Martin’s books, so you know the way it works. People who owe their success to a combination of hard work and good judgment often feel that they’ve just been lucky—it’s a kind of modesty. By the same token, people who fail through laziness and bad judgment often attribute that to luck, so as to dodge the responsibility. It’s very difficult, on either side of the average, to take a thoroughly realistic view. How am I doing, bearing in mind that I’m a mere historian?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good. So an objective observer, looking at a family that had done well for centuries on end—not the Kilcannons, of course, since we’re talking in purely theoretical terms—might be tempted to judge that however lucky the first in the line might have been to make his money and win his title, the advantage he passed on to his descendants was probably sufficient to keep them on the winning side as long as they didn’t do anything too outrageously stupid. They might get a lot of benefit, of course, from maxims advising them to be abstemious in their lifestyles, and to weigh up risks with scrupulous care—but the actual operative effect of those kinds of rules might have nothing to do with any magical kind of luck. All they’d be doing is taking advantage of the corollary of the calculus of probability, which says that people who get a head start are far more likely to finish ahead than people who start from behind. Way back when, of course, its members wouldn’t necessarily be able to figure that out—they’d probably be obsessed with notions of supernatural aid and judgment, completely unaware of the link between the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. You can see how that might work, can’t you?”

  Canny agreed that he could see how it might work that way, in theory.

  “Over time, of course,” Alice went on, “the rules would acquire a mystique, and hence a power, of their own. The authority of ritual and symbolism. If the material rewards continued to roll in, that magical power and authority would be strengthened, even if the real causes of continued good fortune were perfectly ordinary.”

  “That’s all in the book,” Canny observed.

  “So it is,” Alice agreed. “But times change, Canny. A man who’s read Martin Ellison has probably read more-or-less everything that’s ever been written about the psychology, sociology and economics of risk-taking and wealth creation. As a theorist—and purely as a theorist, you understand—he’d be very skeptical indeed of that whole way of thinking, wouldn’t he?”

  “Yes, he would,” Canny agreed—but said no more. He had more than one reason for letting her run with it. He was on the approach to the M1 now; the southbound morning rush was still in full flow, but the northbound carriageway was clear.

  “Right,” Alice said. “He wouldn’t hold on to the theory without additional evidence, and he’d be very careful about the subjective element in the accumulation and interpretation of that evidence. Now, if Martin were here—sitting behind us, listening in—he’d probably be able to formulate some ideas as to what kind of evidence might be involved, even if he were skeptical of its value. He was very interested in the Oedipus Effect, as you know—particularly the phenomenon of self-deluding diviners. You remember all that, of course.”

  “Sure,” Canny said. “Charlatans routinely fall for their own patter. Faith healers, astrologers, dowsers, tarot readers, spoon-benders...whether they start off with open and inquisitive minds or as dyed-in-the-wool con men, they all tend to end up believing in their own psychic powers. It’s a variant of the fruit-machine principle. The surging sense of triumph with which the brain credits itself when a hit is scored outweighs the slow drip of disappointment generated by the failures. Even when the house percentage is as high as thirty or forty per cent, people keep playing the machines in the hope of hitting the jackpot. Prophets who are successful thirty or forty per cent of the time—even if that’s less than you’d expect from random guessing—get such a buzz out of the sense of being right that they eventually become convinced of their innate power. So what?”

  “So people who feel lucky may get that feeling even when they’re not beating the odds at all, let alone when they are. They’re just
attributing too much weight to the sensations of triumph they get when they are right—but every hit they make becomes an item of evidence, a tangible proof of their power, a reason for continuing to believe in whatever they’re doing, no matter how absurd. Then again, there’s retrospective attachment of meaning—which is a corollary of the other aspect of the Oedipus Effect. Remember?”

  “Of course. Also known as the oracle effect. People who believe that an oracle has the power to warn them if something is likely to go wrong are highly likely to consult one before any risky undertaking, and quite likely to visit on a regular basis just to make sure that disaster isn’t lurking around the corner. Oracles, however, have a reputation for gnomic and ambiguous utterances, so if and when things do go wrong, it’s often possible to look back at what they said and perceive—or construct—a meaning that was imperceptible at the time but seems obvious in hindsight. So people who believe in oracles, or omens, or whatever, are continually reconstructing the past in order to reveal warnings that they should have heeded, thus clocking up another potentially-infinite series of evidential samples to shore up their conviction that the oracles and omens never lie. They can also add in the instances when things worked out right, and disasters didn’t occur, as firmer proofs that the oracles work. It’s slightly paradoxical—effectively, they’re claiming to know that the prediction was good because it didn’t come true—but it all adds to a sense of conviction that the magic works.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “More than enough to fool a credulous person, even today—but not a smart one. Not a sophisticated person who’s read all the relevant books. You wouldn’t fall for that kind of psychological trickery, would you?”

  “No,” said Canny, bluntly. “I wouldn’t.”

  “A person as clever as you would need something extra. A person as clever as you would need a different and more powerful kind of evidence. A person like you would need the Road to Damascus Effect.”

  Canny was beginning to feel that he was sitting an examination—but that was okay, because he knew all the answers. This one, admittedly, made him feel a little less comfortable, but he did know it and he had taken due note of Martin Ellison’s description of it.

  “Named after the conversion experience that gave the world Saint Paul,” he said, trying to sound laconic. “Maybe epilepsy, maybe some other altered state of consciousness—just so long as it involves nEurones firing spontaneously in the brain to produce a particular combination of effects. Firstly, exotic visual hallucinations, usually involving intense light, flashing or sustained. Secondly, an overwhelming impression of indubitability and significance. The nEurological basis of all religious experience, according to skeptics. In extreme cases, it turns a person’s life around, infusing him—it’s usually a him, but not always—with a strong sense of mission, at least until repetition of the experience fries his brains. In less extreme cases—and the spectrum probably extends all the way to the fringes of normality—people easily associate the flashes of light with moments of enlightenment, especially if they have lingering side-effects that summon up random memories or sensory impressions. In much the same way that people can easily imbue their dreams with oracular significance, people suffering that kind of hallucination can easily reconstrue them as premonitions, or even as active magical shocks, like the lightning bolts that come out of wizards’ wands in cartoons. As before, whether they’re retrospectively associated with fortunate outcomes or unfortunate ones, they acquire meanings that make them seem like items of evidence from which clear and reliable rules can be induced.”

  “Very good,” she said. “Thanks—that’s what I wanted to know.”

  “What’s what you wanted to know?”

  “That you see the flashes. Martin said you probably did, when I told him about the stories. NEurological disorders run in families, you see. Most seers don’t have offspring, but those who do tend to pass on the so-called gift—the second sight.”

  “I never said....”

  “Yes, you did, Canny,” Alice told him. “You didn’t quite realize that you were saying it, but you’re not the only one who can import meaning retrospectively and convince yourself. I can do it too—and I know exactly what you meant. What about the supermodel? Does she see flashes too?”

  Canny turned to stare at her in amazement—and realized, a moment too late, that he’d fallen into the trap.

  “There you are,” Alice said, quietly. “I’m psychic too. We haven’t even got to Luton yet—by the time we’re by-passing Coventry I’ll even have convinced myself. Do you suppose it was being married to Martin that did it, or are you so very powerful that one night of reckless fucking was enough to sow the seed in me and bring it into flower in a matter of hours? Fertile ground, you see. Is that why she wants you to serve as a stud? She thinks that your flashes and her flashes will produce the next St Paul? And you’re actually thinking about it? Jesus, Canny, have you no idea how much harm you could do to a kid by inflicting a double set of brain-buzzing genes on it? And suppose it worked! Suppose you did turn out a super seer—a St. Paul. Have you any idea what harm a kid like that might do to others, even if he turned out to have Lissa Lo’s brain and your body instead of the other way round?”

  “I thought this was a purely theoretical discussion,” Canny muttered, although the rigid set of his mouth was caused by the fact that he suddenly saw what Lo Chen had been getting at—that the danger might not lie in the failure of Lissa’s experiment, but in its success. The danger of competition spoiling their powers was one thing—the danger that their separate powers might really be combined in a single new individual was something else.

  Except, he reminded himself, that Alice was talking about illusions—about things that might be taken as evidence for unusual luck and insight, but weren’t. He had more than that to sustain his belief. He had the kind of evidence that Henri Meurdon’s perfectly objective and utterly dispassionate computer had thrown up. He knew, too, that Lissa Lo and he could see the same flashes, and feel the same after-effects—which meant that they had to be objectively real, not just randomly-generated phantoms of some nEurological disorder from which they both happened to be suffering.

  “I lied about the purely theoretical bit,” Alice reported. “But at least you haven’t broken any more of your stupid rules—although you might as well, now that most of the secret’s out. If you were to tell me the whole story, you might do yourself some good—and you needn’t worry about it going any further.”

  Canny didn’t reply immediately. He needed a little time to recover his composure. “Why do you want to know?” he asked, eventually, keeping his voice perfectly level, and even contriving a slight tone of levity.

  “You mean am I just a nosey bitch, or do I have an agenda?”

  “If you want to put it like that,” he agreed.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m not sure you’d trust my answer, either way. I’m not sure you’d even trust me to be able to give an honest answer if I wanted to.”

  “So I’m supposed to make my own guess—figuring, of course, that I’ll be lucky.”

  “If you want to put it like that,” she said.

  “Now you’re fishing for insults,” he told her. “You’re inviting me to be cynical about your motives, for last night as well as today. You shouldn’t do that, Alice. Fortunately, I’m not a cynic. I think you’re doing this because you have my best interests at heart. I think you felt sorry for me, that day you saw me at Daddy’s funeral, and were afflicted by a sudden rush of nostalgia for the old days. I think your own tragedy intensified that feeling of empathy considerably. I think you really do feel that I’m in some sort of danger, not so much from Lissa Lo as from myself—from my suddenly-increased conviction that the family rules really do matter, and that terrible things might happen if I don’t start paying obsessive attention to them. Not that you think Lissa isn’t dangerous, mind—but it’s not just jealousy. You really do think that she might mess up my head, if I let her. You wan
t to protect me from all of that.”

  “Oh, fuck off, Canny,” Alice said, exasperatedly. “I’m not your fucking Mummy. I’m only interested in your body, and it’s just a phase I’m going through—a wayward mood. I told you that.”

  “You lied,” Canny said. “All the omens say so, and they’re never wrong. Besides which, you always curse at least twice as hard when you’re bluffing. It’s what gamblers call a tell.”

  She fell silent then, for a while.

  “Funny thing, that,” she said. “Martin was the world’s foremost expert on psychological plausibility—or damn near—and yet he was a lousy card player. You could have taken him to the cleaners any day of the week, with or without your lucky streak.”

  “Understanding doesn’t always give you control,” Canny said, “any more than control always gives you understanding.”

  “Very neat,” she said. “That’s your way of putting us in boxes, is it? Me, because I had Martin, understanding without control. Lissa Lo, because she didn’t have you, control without understanding. So she’s your ideal mate, and I’m a fucked-up floozy in mourning-dress.”

  “It’s not a competition, Alice,” he said. “You don’t have that kind of agenda, remember? If you want to get me out of her clutches, it’s purely for my own good. You’re still grieving—just passing through the phases until you come into clear psychological waters again.”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “It’s all just theoretical discussion. So tell me, if you can set aside the mind-bending effects of your mild nEurological disorder—what other evidence might a person have, to convince him that he and his family were blessed with unnatural good luck? Purely hypothetically, of course.”

  “It’s all to do with patterns,” Canny told her, after a brief pause for thought. “We’re preprogrammed to look for them, even where they can’t exist—and we see them, even when we know they’re an illusion. Suppose, for instance, that I were a casino manager with a computer that logs every bet my clients make and accumulates the data over time. How many clients do I have, do you think? Hundreds of thousands overall, but maybe only a few hundred regulars—let’s say five hundred. How many of those would you expect to come out ahead on a fairly regular basis, given that they’re always betting against the house percentage? It’s nowhere near half, if you do the calculation, even though the house percentage on most games is only a few per cent—but it’s not that tiny either. You could probably identify a dozen, maybe more. And would you then just shrug your shoulders and say: well, that’s probability for you? Chance would predict that only a dozen would come out ahead on that sort of long-term basis, and here’s a dozen guys, so that’s the end of the story. No, you wouldn’t. You’d start asking yourself, because you couldn’t help yourself, why these guys, and not a dozen others? You’d start looking more closely, at the patterns innate in their betting habits, the patterns inherent in their attitudes of mind...anything that might give you a clue to the magic, even though you know full well that the magic isn’t there, because magic doesn’t exist. It’s all in the patterns, Alice—the patterns we can’t help but find, even when they’re not really there. Except, of course, for the ones that are.”