Destiny's Forge

by Larry Niven

  Tskombe nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that too. Luck has operating parameters.”

  “Explain please.”

  “I can kill myself slipping in the shower…” Curvy interrupted with an interrogative whistle. Her translator belatedly said “What?” She was unfamiliar with showers, of course, but Tskombe had already started elaborating. “A small fall is potentially fatal, although that’s an unlikely outcome. A fall of five meters will probably injure you, I mean a human, unless you are trained to handle it. A fall of thirty meters usually kills, but not invariably. Some lucky individuals have survived falls of ten thousand meters through lucky landings, in deep snow usually. But no one has ever survived a fall from orbit. Reentry is too extreme a regime for luck to play a role.”

  Curvy whistled, rising and falling “I count myself lucky that I do not belong to a species subject to falls.”

  Tskombe laughed. I recognize that whistle…Curvy was making a joke. “We have a long way to fall from where we are now.”

  Another whistle, this one on a falling note. “Your point is taken, Colonel Tskombe.”

  “So is yours. So the question is, how far in advance can luck operate?”

  “As far as is necessary, it would seem.”

  “No, it can’t be like that. Imagine you had luck, not just because someone has to be on the lucky end of the bell curve and that turns out to be you, but because you had a psi talent that could locally influence events. Did some prehistoric mammal return to the oceans because millions of years in the future you, Curvy, would be born, and being born into an aquatic species would protect you from falls? Impossible, because part of what allowed you to be born in the first place was the evolution of dolphins, including the speculative evolution of genes for a psi talent that makes you lucky. You could not have been born anything but a dolphin; if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be you. To say otherwise would be to imply that every event in your species history—in all of evolution, in all of the universe—had been scripted simply to bring about your existence.”

  Curvy clicked. “Such megalomania is a common human conceit.”

  “Perhaps, but only a conceit in that defying the tremendous odds against your birth doesn’t make you special. If you consider the infinitesimal chance of that one particular sperm out of billions combining with one particular egg out of tens of thousands to form you, the odds against your parents even meeting, against their birth, against your grandparents being born and meeting to produce them, it’s easy to convince yourself that you are special. If a trillion trillion universes ran a trillion trillion times we would not expect to see you born even once. What more evidence of your total uniqueness do you require?”

  “You commit the gambler’s fallacy. A coin flip may come up heads ten thousand times in a row. The odds that it will come up tails next time remain fifty percent. Of the incomprehensibly huge space of possible evolutionary tracks, some tiny fraction must be followed. We happen to be on the track that has developed, which is no more or less likely than any other track which may have been followed from any given start point, but because we happen to be on this one we are here to discuss our good fortune in existing in the first place, whereas the uncountable legions of potential individuals who remained unborn are perforce unable to discuss their own circumstances. We cannot discuss probabilities post-facto, because events have already transformed them into certainties.”

  “Yes, but in a very real sense you inherit your parents’ luck. Your father didn’t drown while fishing at the age of twelve. Your mother wandered between a mother bear and her cubs at eighteen, but the bear didn’t attack. All of this luck is required to even get you born.”

  Again the rising and falling whistle. “While it is possible that my father could have drowned while fishing, I am certain my mother never came between a bear and her cubs.”

  “You know what I mean, and it goes further. Some anonymous person you will never know fixed a hidden fault in a tube car which therefore didn’t crash and kill them both on their honeymoon.” Tskombe held up a hand. “Yes, I know they never rode a tube car or had a honeymoon either. The point is, there is an immense, maybe infinite, universe of non-events which are as pivotal as the actual events which do occur.”

  “Granted.”

  “So luck has operating parameters. You can be lucky and catch a shuttle by seconds, or lucky and miss a shuttle that’s going to crash, or lucky and catch the shuttle and survive the crash. So we can imagine some mechanism that tips the scales one way or another, which implies some form of feedback from future to past, some kind of macro scale collapse of the quantum wave function. But there is a limit. Some things, like attempting reentry in a space suit, luck simply cannot influence. If luck is going to operate on something like that it has to prevent you from being in that situation in the first place, but it cannot have an infinite time-horizon either. It can’t reach back before you were born to ensure that you are born. Neither can it see indefinitely into the future to sculpt events now to suit you then.”

  Curvy whistled. “Luck is by definition post-facto. To take your example, you don’t know if it’s lucky to catch the shuttle at the last minute until you land safely at your destination.”

  “Not even then. Disaster might hit after you land.”

  “Point taken. Also, the universe of might-have-beens contingent upon your missing the shuttle can, and probably does, include some that are extraordinary and tremendously beneficial. You can never know if any given actual outcome is in fact the most beneficial outcome, although you can speculate.”

  “So how can you even recognize luck then?”

  “In this sense, luck is ultimately unknowable. We can only apply crude statistical measurements. It is unlikely that a person experiences the most fortuitous possible outcome in every circumstance. We can only measure the relative frequency of such outcomes in comparison with another person to arrive at some sense of how lucky they are in fact.”

  Tskombe nodded. “So there is a limit to both the magnitude of luck’s influence on events and the distance in time forward and backward with which luck can exert that influence.”

  “If there is such a mechanism it must always operate forward in time, although we can only recognize its operation backward in time.”

  “So what are we saying about Trina? Her life history doesn’t seem particularly lucky. At the same time, lots of psi talents develop around adolescence. Perhaps it’s just kicking in now.”

  “That remains speculation. All we can say about Trina is what we have directly observed. She wins at speed chess and defies statistical probability at guessing cards. This may not even be construed as luck.”

  “What else can it be construed as?”

  “Luck is only definable in relationship to positive and negative event outcomes. There is no significant outcome, in terms of her life or well-being, associated with either beating me at speed chess or correctly guessing cards.”

  “She also survived an attack by a UNF cruiser. By all rights we should all be dead, or prisoners at best.”

  “Yes, but there is only a single point on that graph. We cannot compute any post-facto probabilities from it. And you and I also survived that attack”

  “So what next?”

  “With your permission I would like to keep her with me. The graph will grow data points.”

  Tskombe thought about that. He had thought to deliver Trina to Wunderland’s Bureau of Displaced Persons. He had acted on instinct, but now that she was on Tiamat he was going to have to leave her. She was a smart kid, and perhaps also a very lucky one, but the Serpent Swarm was as rough an environment as NYC’s gray zones. Curvy had the ability to command resources and could get around on Tiamat. Trina was smart, but her unregistered status had kept her from education after her parents died. Curvy could get that set up, he was sure. It was a good solution.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s a good idea.”

  His UNF ident was still valid on Tiamat. He set up a
n account with the Swarm Central Bank and transferred his electronic cash balance from his beltcomp, breathing a sigh of relief that all his financial eggs were no longer in a basket he had to carry himself. The next step was to board a tube-car heading for Tigertown, the high-gee section of the asteroid where most of its kzinti population lived. He needed transport to Kzinhome. Curvy couldn’t supply that because the UNF wouldn’t supply that, and a UNF ship wouldn’t be welcome anyway. He needed a kzinti ship, and he had to find it himself.

  He drew no comment at the Tigertown tube station, though he drew looks. There were a few other humans in the crowd, but no other aliens. There were Jotoki and Kdatlyno on Tiamat, former kzinti slaves, but they didn’t choose to associate with their former masters. For the humans who now held the whip hand around Alpha Centauri the dynamic was different. There were seventy five thousand kzinti in Tigertown, more or less, most of the kzinti population on the rock. It was a rough area, less finished than the rest of the station, no slidewalks, bare rock walls with fixtures bolted to them. The air was full of the gingery scent of kzinti, and the corridors bustled with activity. Persleds and cargo floats jostling past auctioneers and rabbit vendors with cages of frightened bunnies, stock long ago imported from Earth by humans. Buyers and sellers haggled over the prices in loud snarls. Strakh might have been the medium of exchange on Kzinhome, but on Tiamat the kzinti charged in hard kroner. He followed the main corridors, not quite sure what he was looking for.

  What he found was a bar, or whatever it was that kzinti congregated in to eat raw meat and drink alcohol. He went in, saw glassy-surfaced tables and chairs lasered from Tiamat’s substance, decorated wall hangings that he hoped weren’t made of human skin, swords and weapons displayed on the walls. A few dozen kzinti sat in tight-knit groups, talking in muted snarls or wolfing down large platters of unidentified raw meat. One table held two men and a woman who looked him over coldly, then went back to their business. A large area at the back was roped off and full of sand, and screams and snarls rose over the sound dampers as a pair of kzinti dueled in front of an appreciative crowd. As he drew closer, Tskombe saw that the combatants had bright blue pads fitted that shielded their claws. The crowd was juiced up, fangs exposed and tails whipping back and forth with the action. There would be more duels before the night was over, not all of them in the ring with claws blunted. Past the dueling floor, food and drink service was over-the-counter, more laser-cut stone polished mirror-bright. The proprietor was a big kzin, shaggy-coated and muscular, assisted by a pair of still-spotted adolescents.

  The proprietor looked up, saw him and leapt easily over the counter. He met Tskombe halfway across the floor and spoke. “This is not a place for humans.” He spoke English with a Swarm Belter accent, thick enough that it took Tskombe a moment to figure out what he’d said.

  “I seek a pilot…” Tskombe snarled the words in the Hero’s Tongue.

  “Seek elsewhere.” The big kzin’s ears had fanned up in surprise when Tskombe spoke his native language, but that wasn’t enough to change his mind. He put a softly padded paw on Tskombe’s shoulder. Four faint needlepricks warned of the not-quite retracted claws.

  Tskombe nodded at the humans, now studiously ignoring him. “They aren’t elsewhere.”

  “Different. Old customers. You will leave now for your own safety.” The grip on Tskombe’s shoulder tightened and the kzin pushed, gently but firmly, toward the door. There was no point in arguing, or fighting. He left quietly.

  Back in the corridor he drew more looks, most of them carefully neutral. Now what? He didn’t imagine he would get a warmer welcome elsewhere in Tigertown, but trying to reach a kzinti pilot by working his way through the human underworld would be both more difficult, in that there would be more middlemen to try to work through, and more dangerous, in that the one hand of the UN might find out what the other hand was up to and arrest him. No, he needed to make contact as directly as possible with a kzin, the only problem being that no kzin was likely to talk to him about anything remotely illegal just in case he was setting them up. Come to think of it, no human would either. He was used to his UNF rank and position opening doors for him, but that was because he wasn’t used to moving in the underworld.

  Time to get used to a new world. Humans could be accepted in Tigertown, the group he’d seen inside clearly were. So now what?

  So now wait, get a feel for the area. He found a smoother spot in the rough-hewn rock wall and settled down to watch the crowd go by. Tigertown lacked the extensive vid surveillance of the rest of the asteroid, so no security team would swoop down to get him moving again. It was just a matter of time. He watched the traffic in and out of the bar. The noise swelling out into the corridor grew over time, the general background noise occasionally overridden by some loudly declaimed poetry in the Hero’s Tongue. A couple of times screams and snarls told him the dueling floor was in use. Once a small group of kzinti carried out a limp and bloodied body and vanished with it down the corridor. Tskombe couldn’t tell if it was alive or dead. The ARM left the kzinti to police Tigertown themselves, and it seemed they didn’t do much of it.

  Time dragged and eventually he got up and moved on. He tried to start conversations with various vendors, but none were interested in more than the formalities required to sell their wares. He walked further, learning the lay of the land. The crowds never seemed to thin out. Officially Tiamat ran on Wunderland’s twenty-eight-hour day, but a large percentage of the population worked shifts, either for the various military organizations there or the asteroid’s nonstop high-technology industries. In turn they drove a demand for continuously available services. Combined with the constant artificial lighting, that made night and day largely abstract concepts. He was going through a corridor past a series of small manufacturers and custom tronshops when a challenge duel broke out in front of him. A ring of spectators formed around the combatants. Tskombe couldn’t see past the wall of carnivores. Discretion is the better part of valor. Traffic in the corridor was blocked, so he went to one side, put his back against the wall, and waited. Five minutes later the fight was over and traffic resumed as quickly as it had stopped. The victor in the fight was nowhere to be seen. The loser was lying in the middle of the corridor, being ignored by everyone, stepped on by those whose path he happened to be in.

  Move on or get involved? Decision time. The smart thing would be to move on, no need to wade into a situation he had no understanding of. He started to walk, then thought again. He needed to start somewhere. The injured kzin would at least have to talk to him, and he might be able to provide a lead. And I can’t just leave him there. He went over to the kzin, helped him to his feet. One leg dragged badly and his arm seemed to be broken. Tskombe took him to a side tunnel, found a quiet spot sitting on a box behind some stacked cargo flats swaddled in quickwrap. The kzin was groggy and gasping for breath, bleeding from a torn ear and with one eye swollen shut.

  He shook his head, his one good eye focusing on Tskombe for the first time.

  His nostrils flared and his good ear twitched. “The Fanged God has forsaken me in my shame. Now I am helped by an herbivore.” He tried to stand and collapsed again. “I think my leg is broken.”

  “And your arm.” Tskombe ran his hands over the bone, wincing in sympathy as he felt the bone grate. The kzin’s lips twitched over his fangs, but he remained silent. “What’s your name?”

  “I have no name. I am nothing.”

  “Why is that?”

  The kzin looked anguished. “Must I explain my disgrace?”

  “No, just making conversation. We need to get you some medical attention.”

  The nameless kzin waved a dismissive paw. “I have no kroner. You are best to leave me, human.”

  “I have kroner.”

  “I can’t walk.”

  “So I’ll carry you.”

  The kzin just looked at him, eyes wide in disbelief. He was at least twice Tskombe’s mass. His good ear rippled once and his tail twitched.
Tskombe smiled. At least he still had his sense of humor.

  The cargo flats belonged to a tronshop, and there was a floater parked there too. Leaving goods and equipment habitually unattended in a human community would be an invitation to have them stolen. In Tigertown the corridors were lined with all kinds of valuables. The twin drives of honor and shame were enough to keep them safe from kzinti, the claws of their owners served to protect them from thieving kz’zeerkti. Few humans were brave enough to risk stealing from a kzin.

  Tskombe looked around carefully as he loaded the kzin onto the floater. Nobody seemed to be objecting. He had passed a place with an autodoc a few cross-corridors back, and he pushed his new charge in that direction.

  The establishment had a sign that simply read “Healer,” in Kzinscript, Dutch, German, English, Interspeak and a sixth language that he didn’t recognize. Healer looked dubiously at both Tskombe and the kzin, but the transaction cleared when Tskombe thumbed for it, and Healer unceremoniously loaded the kzin into his autodoc.

  “Do you know him?” Healer closed the lid and began scanning the readouts.

  “No. There was a fight, and he lost. Everyone else was ignoring him.”

  “They ignored his shame; it is the most merciful thing. He is honorless, and now czrav, an outcast.”

  “He needed help.”

  “His honor is not raised by accepting charity from an herbivore.” Healer punched some buttons. There was a muted snarl from inside the autodoc that fell to a sigh. Healer had started the anesthetic.

  Tskombe showed his teeth. “I’m an omnivore.”

  “Your honor is not raised by helping a czrav either, omnivore.”

  “I’m not worried about that.”

  “Hrrr.” Healer turned a paw over. “Few kz’zeerkti are, I have found.” He punched some more buttons, and servos began whining as microsurgical arms started their work. Tskombe strained to see what was happening on the screen, saw enough to know that he didn’t want to look further.