Report on Probability A

by Brian W Aldiss

  Despite the noise made by the rain as it drummed on the light metal roof, C could hear the drops inside as they struck the floor.

  The rate at which the various bolts secreted water could be judged by looking at the floor. Under a slow bolt would be merely a dark patch of wetness extending along the grain of the plank. Under a faster bolt, a small puddle would collect. The small puddles had untidy edges, for when the next drop fell into them, a miniature tidal wave was created. As more puddles appeared, most of them only a couple of centimetres across, the noise of the drops striking the floor changed in character. From a dull heavy note, it now took on a livelier and more liquid sound.

  Moving on his hands and toes, with his knees only a little way off the floor, C scuttled to the other end of the garage. By going down the centre of the loft, it was simple to avoid the small puddles.

  He put his back to the front wall of the garage and sat down on the floor beside the square window. Pulling his knees up so that they were on a level with his shoulders, he rested his arms across his knees and his chin on his hands. He gazed ahead of him. He whistled a tune called Whistling Rufus.

  Along the side of the loft nearest to the house, the right side as C sat, a series of large cardboard cartons had been aligned. They contained C’s possessions. On the outside of them were the names of the goods they had once contained, baked beans, soap, and cornflakes. There were five of the cartons. They stood in positions on the floor where the drips from the bolts in the roof did not strike them. The small puddles collected behind them, where the roof ran very close to the floor of the loft, and in front of them, but did not touch the boxes.

  On the other side of the loft lay a canoe with a sharp prow. It was built of wood and rested on wooden rests that kept it steadily upright. The outside of the hull had been painted a light blue. The name of the boat, Flier, was painted on its prow in white paint. The canoe occupied almost all the space between front and back of the loft.

  Because the canoe was narrow, it had been possible to arrange that it stood in such a position that none of the drips from the bolts on the roof fell on it, except amidships, where the boat was widest. At this point, drips from two bolts fell on it. The contents of the canoe were mainly blankets and wood shavings, but a tarpaulin saved them from a wetting. The tarpaulin lay across the canoe with one end hanging over the edge, towards the floor. The drips from the two bolts overhead collected on this tarpaulin and rolled off onto the floor.

  C stopped whistling. Lifting his chin, he raised his right hand and scratched the back of his head. He replaced his hand on his knee and replaced his chin on the hand. He tapped on the floor with one stockinged foot and began to whistle again. He whistled a tune called Whistling Rufus.

  Ahead and to the right of where he sat stood five cardboard boxes. They contained C’s possessions. Small puddles collected in front of these boxes (and behind, where they were unseen by C). The puddles encroached on the dust of the floor; sometimes small pieces of fluff sailed on them. The puddles were not all of the same size. Some were bigger than others. The bigger ones were larger than the smaller ones. The smaller ones were not as large as the medium-sized ones. The larger ones gathered under the bolts that collected drips most quickly. The smaller ones gathered under the bolts that collected drips less quickly. The bolts were bolted on the roof. The puddles lay on the floor. The puddles wetted the floor. The floor was wetted by the puddles lying on it.

  C closed his eyes and stopped whistling.

  He reopened his eyes and shook his head slowly to and fro. He opened his mouth and yawned. He blinked his eyes.

  At the far end of the loft was a small square window divided into four panes. The bottom left pane had been blocked by a square of wood. Over the remaining three panes, water trickled, distorting the view. From where C sat, he could see only a distorted piece of brick wall to the left; the rest was a blur of greens, browns, and greys.

  On his right as he sat, running down the right-hand side of the loft, were five brown cardboard boxes. They were flanked by puddles. Many forces of nature, including thermal and gravitational effects, had created the dirty little puddles on the floor.

  From the roof, six rows of bolt ends protruded into the loft. Most of them gleamed.

  Getting onto his knees, C crawled down the length of the loft until he reached the last cardboard box. It bore a legend that showed it had originally contained baked beans. C stood up with bent shoulders and opened the top of the box. He reached down and rummaged into it. As he did so, he could see some squares of wood resting behind the box.

  From the box, he pulled a stiff cap with a shining peak. Holding it in his left hand, he rubbed the peak with his right sleeve. The peaked cap had been given to him when he entered Mr. Mary’s service thirteen months ago. He put it onto his head. He pushed his hair back under the cap. He smiled. He straightened his back slightly and saluted, touching the peak with the stiff fingers of his right hand.

  “Reporting for duty, sir. All ready to go. Everything in order, sir.”

  Dropping his arm, he turned to the hole in the floor that lay to the side of the loft nearest the house. Through the hole protruded the top of a ladder, bolted upright to the rear side of the garage. C reached out to the ladder and climbed down it. He stood on the floor of the garage.

  In the garage, the light was dim. Some illumination filtered down through the trap to the loft from the square window set in the back wall. Set in the north-west side of the garage was a small window hinged at the top and set high in the wall. It looked onto the side of the house. Since a space of no more than one and a half metres separated garage and house, the small window gave little light. At the front of the garage, the double doors each contained windows of a reinforced glass through which it was impossible to see, although light was conducted through it into the garage.

  Occupying most of the floor of the garage was a black car of British manufacture. Although its body was painted with enamel, which threw up long highlights here and there, it seemed to absorb rather than reflect light. The four tires of the car were flat; it rested on the rims of the wheels.

  “The report goes into too much deail!” Midlakemela said. He had been reading over Domoladossa’s shoulder.

  Domoladossa did not reply. The report conveyed to him completely the boredom of C’s vigil above the garage, the man’s obsessive and unrecognizing gaze across the objects about him. Now they—Domoladossa and Midlakemela—were subjecting those objects to a second scrutiny. They were having to determine WHAT WAS OF VALUE; until that was decided, this life was valueless. Find significance and all is found.

  Of course, Domoladossa was unaware that he was being scrutinized by the Distinguishers on their rainy hillside. They, in their turn, were being watched by the grave men in New York. They, in their turn, were being watched by two young men and a boy who stood in an empty warehouse staring at the manifestation in puzzlement.

  “What is it, Daddy?” asked the boy.

  “We’ve discovered a time machine or something,” the father said. He leaned farther forward; it was just possible to make out Domoladossa reading his report, for the New York screen showed the hillside manifestation revealing him at his desk.

  Apart from the car and the windows, the features of the garage were few. The double doors in the front were secured by a patent tumbler lock and by long black bolts top and bottom. Near one of the double doors, the door with its hinges on the side of the garage nearest to the house, was a wooden fuse box. From this fuse box, wire encased in black rubber led up to a switch at shoulder height. A further length of wire encased in black rubber led from the switch to a light fitting above the car in which hung a naked light bulb.

  The rear wall of the garage had three features. On the side nearest to the house was a door that led into the garden. It was shut now. It was a light metal door. It had a handle on the inside; on the outside were handle and key. Across the light metal panel in the top of the door had been scrawled in black pai
nt the symbol 12A. Next to the door was a ladder made of white wood. It was bolted against the concrete supports of the garage, thus remaining upright and leading up into the loft. Beyond the ladder, and occupying most of the rest of the rear wall of the garage, was a carpenter’s bench equipped with a vice and with a sawing trestle standing underneath it.

  On top of the bench, near the ladder, stood a dull red oil drum with a tap at the bottom of it. Beneath the tap on the concrete floor of the garage stood a drip tray and a metal funnel. Some paraffin lay in the drip tray. The rest of the top of the bench was littered with tools relating to the car or to carpentry, with coils of wire and flex and grimy rags lying on tops of the tools.

  In the wall facing the house, the only feature was a small window opening outwards with its hinges at the top. The wall opposite consisted of asbestos sheets interspersed with reinforced concrete pillars; it was otherwise featureless.

  Brushing along this featureless wall, C opened the driver’s door of the car and climbed in. The leather upholstery of the seating was grey. C settled himself in the driver’s seat, leant forward to grasp the handle of the door, and pulled the door shut.

  The windows of the car were all closed. Inside the car, it was less easy to hear the rain falling on the garage. An occasional but regular tap on the roof of the car signified to C that water from small puddles on the floor of the loft above the car was leaking through and down onto the car.

  “And where would you care to go on this lovely sunny day, madam? Speak up, madam. Distance no object. Would madam care to try Brighton for a paddle?”

  Grimacing, C pretended to switch on the ignition. He pulled the starter. He put a stockinged foot on the accelerator. He pressed gently on the accelerator. Pressing the clutch down, he eased the gear lever into first gear. He held the steering wheel with both hands, turning it gently. He removed his left hand and changed into second gear. He smiled and nodded into the back seat.

  “Has madam made up madam’s pretty little mind yet? Distance no object, madam. Torquay? Virginia Water? How about Henley-on-Thames or the Lake District? Should be lovely round Windermere on a lovely January day like this.”

  C eased the car into third gear, and through into fourth almost immediately. He pressed his stockinged foot down on the accelerator. He held the steering wheel loosely in both hands, with his two thumbs on the outside of the wheel pointing outwards. He held his head high and looked keenly ahead at the closed double doors a few centimetres beyond the bonnet of the car.

  “How’s this, madam? Lovely day, eh? Aren’t you glad we didn’t bring that husband of yours? Perhaps madam would care for me to spread a rug on the ground when we stop, so that madam can lie herself down on the ground. Does madam realize how attractive she is in the prone position?”

  His mouth opened wide, his eyebrows rose towards the line of his hair. Thrusting his head forward, he swung the wheel hard over to the right, at the same time letting his body slew to the right, until his right shoulder touched the driver’s door. Slowly he came back into an upright position, gasping and wiping his forehead with the back of his left hand. He changed down into second gear and then back to fourth, finally allowing a smile to play over his features as he turned again to the back seat.

  “Sorry about that, honey. I must keep my mind on my driving, madam. We nearly got that old girl, didn’t we? A couple of centimetres more round the waist and she’d have been a goner.”

  Facing forward again, C ceased the pretense at driving. Resting both elbows through the steering wheel, he cupped his chin in his upthrust hands. He brought up his right leg, doubling it until the stockinged foot rested on the upholstery and the knee against the door of the car. His eyes still stared ahead.

  He began to whistle a tune called Whistling Rufus. He changed his position, forgetting to whistle as he did so, arranging his legs across the passenger’s seat so that he could rest his back against the door of the car and his right arm over the steering wheel. With the nails of the fingers of the right hand, he tapped against the steering wheel. With the left hand, he pushed his cap from behind so that it slid forward until the stiff peak rested along his nose. The left hand remained clamped at the back of the neck.

  “Get out of this bloody set-up. You don’t stand a chance. Get a job down on the coast somewhere, down in the sun. Go abroad. Go south. Nice little chauffeur’s job on the Riviera. Drive a rich widow about. Get out of here.”

  The fingers of his left hand began to tap against his neck. He drew up his left knee. Bringing his left hand away from the back of his neck, he rested it over the top of his left knee.

  “Stuffy in here. Maybe stick it out a bit longer. At least you see her every day. Christ, what’s life for, anyway?”

  By ducking his head slightly, C could look through the small window with hinges in its upper side and see a small area on the south-east side of the house. A third of the visible area was brickwork; the rest was part of a narrow window of frosted glass. It was the upper part of a frosted glass window. By craning his neck further, he could see an overflow spout projecting from the brick wall beside the window. The window belonged to an upstairs lavatory. The view of it was obscured by the rain running down the pane of the garage window.

  Sitting up again, C let his left leg slide down flat against the seat again, twisting his body to the left so that he could rest his arms over the back of the driver’s seat. He rested his chin on top of his hands. Without interest, he gazed into the back seat. The darkness inside the car seemed particularly thick on the back seat.

  “Don’t let ’em get you down, boy. Bastards. All bastards, the lot of ’em. It’s too late now anyway. You’re swallowed like those snakes. Still, Monte Carlo, Nice—why not? Also among the missing.… Nobody’d care. Old Violet, perhaps.”

  Raising his chin, C moved his right arm over to the back of the front seat, sliding it to and fro over the grey leather upholstery. With his left hand trapped under his chin, he began to tap with his left fingers on the upholstery beneath them. He whistled tunelessly, gazing down at the lines in the upholstery that ran from the front to the rear of the back seat.

  “No point in hanging around here.”

  C opened the car door and set foot on the garage floor. By the rear wheel of the car, a puddle had collected. Rainwater seeping through the bolt holes in the roof had dripped down the ends of the bolts onto the floor of the loft above the car; eventually small puddles had formed on the floor of the loft, some of which had dripped between the boards of the floor onto the roof of the car. On either side of the roof of the car were small runnels into which the water dripping onto the top of the car had drained. The runnels followed the streamlining of the car and led down to a point just above the rear wing. The water from the top of the car had trickled over the rear wing and onto the concrete floor. It lay in a puddle against the grey skinny folds of the collapsed tire.

  C avoided the puddle as he went towards the ladder at the rear of the garage. He stood with his left hand resting on one of the rungs of the ladder, his right hand on his right hip, listening with his head cocked. He went forward and opened the light metal door that had the symbol 12A painted on its upper panel.

  3

  The rain had stopped.

  From the earth came a constant fruity noise as the rainwater soaked away into the ground. In the sky above the sunken garden were a thinning of cloud and a suggestion of sky.

  A length of grass bordered on its south-east side by a bed of standard rose bushes stretched down as far as a flight of four steps leading to a sunken garden. Just in front of the steps was a pigeon, pecking at the ground and thrusting its neck forward with every step it took.

  At the back of the bed where the standard roses grew was a brick wall. It ran down the side of the garden, beyond the sunken garden, to meet a privet hedge at the bottom. On the other side of the sunken garden was an arrangement of banked flower beds, fringing the sunken garden with a long lawn on the other side of them. Growing from t
he long lawn were trees, their bare branches dripping. At the back of the trees, and partly screened by them, was a rubbish tip. Through the trees, lying more to the right, could be seen most of an old brick building. The lower part of the front of this old brick building was taken up by two sagging timber doors. Above the timber doors, set in the brickwork, was a round window. A slight movement could possibly be detected in the round window.

  Raising his right hand, C folded it into a fist and shook it in the direction of the old brick building. He saw no more movement in the round window.

  The south corner of the house cut off the larger and more northerly part of the garden from view. Several windows lay on the south-east side of the house overlooking the garage. C surveyed these windows. Their aspect was forbidding; they reflected only grey cloud. The overcast had not cleared, and the brief afternoon was yielding to sunset.

  Next to the south corner of the house downstairs was a wide window. Through it, C could look into the dining-room. Part of a table was visible and, on the opposite wall, most of a sideboard on which stood some sort of a plant in a pot. On the wall above the sideboard could be seen a picture, the details of which were not clear. Clearly seen on the sill of the window was a china representation of a dog. The dog had large ears. It sat on its hind legs and tail and raised its forepaws in the air, begging. It faced into the room. The window was fringed on either side by green patterned curtains. Also visible through the window was the second of the dining-room’s windows, this one set in the south-west wall of the house; not all of it could be seen from where C stood, because this was a long window, facing directly out onto the garden at the rear. The light from this window was reflected on the shining top of the dining-room table so clearly that the bars of the long window could also be seen in the reflection. By looking through both windows of the dining-room, C could observe a part of the garden not otherwise visible to him. Nothing could be clearly determined, except a few fruit trees and a privet hedge and, beyond the privet hedge, another property belonging to a bachelor whose grandfather had built a lighthouse somewhere along the coast of South Africa or South America.