Report on Probability A (7 page)

“Scale?”

“He may be no bigger than my thumb. He may be as tall as a house.”

“Keep watching. His entire probability-sphere may evaporate at any minute, like a puff of steam.”

Part Two

S The Watchful

1

The Distinguishers stood on their hillside, solemnly staring at the curious mirage in the air, on which was a representation of a world to which they had only just discovered limited access
.

The screen depicted a man called Domoladossa, who was leaning comfortably back in a chair, doing nothing but read a report. Domoladossa was as occupied by his report as the Distinguishers were with him. The affairs of his life were forgotten while he followed the activities of an unknown man called S, who saw fit to examine the back door of a house through his telescope
.

Below the door was a stone step. This stone step had two features, one permanent, one temporary. The permanent feature stood on the right, the temporary feature stood on the left. The permanent feature was a shoe scraper of ornamental ironwork, the two ends of which curved upwards like dragons' heads; through the telescope's circle of vision, it was impossible to determine if they were intended to represent dragons' heads. At the other end of the step stood a milk bottle. It was empty, and had been washed, so that the brickwork of the house was visible through it, though dulled and distorted. As S inspected the milk bottle through the telescope, a slight wash of colour and light spread over the bottle and over the step, so that the bottle took on a gleam along its sloping shoulders. At the same time, a dead leaf whisked through the circle of vision, over the step, and was gone into the darkness that always surrounded the circle of vision.

Lowering the telescope, S blinked his eyes and looked out of the round window. Pale sunshine lay across the garden. It came through the round window at an oblique angle and touched a little of the woodwork and an even smaller strip of the brick to the lower left-hand side of the window. If S had leant forward and looked past the south corner of the house in a south-easterly direction, he would have seen the sun appearing through cloud. Instead, he returned the telescope to his right eye and directed it towards the house.

The empty milk bottle stood on the left of the stone step below the back door. It floated in the centre of the circle of vision. The centre of vision moved up to the knob of the door; it moved left over the brickwork to peer in through the open kitchen window; it moved right to peer in through the dining-room window; it moved upwards to peer in through the bathroom window; it slid left again to peer in through the two windows of the two spare rooms; it returned to the doorstep, over which a shadow now fell as a cloud moved across the sun; this cloud movement was the only movement it detected on its tour.

Gradually the circle of vision moved away from the house. It slid to the right. It picked out the back of the garage built of asbestos and concrete. There was a door in the back of the garage. Above the door, under the peak of the garage roof, was a small square window divided into four square panes; one of the four panes was missing. The telescope was not focused to pick out the details of the garage clearly.

Sliding away from the garage, still moving towards the right, the circle of vision picked out the brick wall that ran from behind the garage to mark the south-east boundary of the property. Above this wall, some distance on the other side of it, rose the steeple of a church; the telescope was not focused to reveal the steeple properly; it remained blurry; prismatic colours ran up and down it, particularly down its left side.

S removed the telescope from his eyes. He yawned and blinked. With the thumb and index finger of his left hand, he pinched the bridge of his nose. He changed the telescope into his left hand and rubbed his forehead and eyes with his right hand. He returned the telescope to his right hand and applied the eyepiece to his eye; simultaneously, he steadied the far end of the telescope with his left hand and directed the instrument towards the house.

The circle of vision came to rest on the guttering that ran along the roof. At either end of the roof, the guttering met vertical drainpipes before continuing round the angles of the house to serve the rest of the roof. The circle of vision slid down the left of these two vertical drainpipes, and slid across the two windows of the two spare bedrooms, moving slowly so as not to miss any movement within the room, but moving continuously. When it reached the next window along, the window of the bathroom, it paused. All that could be distinguished through the bathroom window was a lamp-shade with a short length of flex above it, pointing upwards to the ceiling before being obscured by the upper casement of the window; the shade was so obscured by shadow that its colour could not be made out through the telescope. There was no movement in the bathroom.

Slipping downwards, the circle of vision inspected the long windows of the dining-room; no movement could be detected behind them. The circle of vision moved to the back door, noted that the empty milk bottle still stood on the left of the step, and moved on to the window of the kitchen. The right-hand portion of this window was open to admit air to the room; through the aperture could be distinguished the top of a table; on the top of the table, but half hidden from the watcher's view by one of the uprights of the window, was an object that resembled a basket. There was no movement in the kitchen.

Bringing the telescope away from his right eye, S laid it on the flooring below the round window. He did not press its four sections together. He rubbed both hands over his eyes. He peered at the house through the square centre panel of glass of the round window.

He could just see the milk bottle standing on the step below the back door. He could not see the shape that resembled a basket inside the kitchen. He could not see any movement in any of the windows of the house. He picked up “The Boy's Own Paper” for the second week of August 19—, and took it over to the log with the numerous cuts on its upper surface. He sat down on the log and began to read the third episode of a serial entitled “The Secret of the Grey Mill,” commencing from a sentence at the bottom of the second column: Clutching Tom's arm, Frank Masters pointed towards the open door.

When S had read to the bottom of the next page, he reached a sentence which said, Thirsty though he was, he watched the brackish water drain away without regret. At this point, S stopped reading and put the magazine down on the flooring, open and face upwards. With the thumbnail of his right hand, he picked between two front teeth in his lower jaw. As he did this, he looked about him.

Along the two long sides of the room, the roof with its curling orange tiles sloped down to within about a metre and a half of the floor. For the most part, these side walls and the two end walls were papered with wallpaper of a light orange; this paper had a pattern of large bunches of flowers divided from each other by a sort of thin brown trellis. In many places, damp had entered and discoloured the paper, making it darker, and frequently leaving patterns and tide marks upon it. In other places, the paper had peeled away from the wall or had been pulled from it; in the blank places where it had been, the bricks were revealed to have been whitewashed. The whitewash had been appiled many years ago; it fell from the walls when they were touched, like pollen from overloaded flowers; and where it had fallen the bricks were revealed in their original state, except that now they were a faded orange. Their dust lay orange on the floor, and over S's few possessions.

Here and there, S had made his own attempt to decorate the room. In the rear wall, situated only half a metre above the floor, was a square window scarcely bigger than a man's hand; above this window had been pasted a large travel poster printed to advertise a Belgian airline. The name of this airline had been cut from the bottom of the poster, so that the only words remaining on it were Fly To Tahiti. Above these words was a picture of a beach of golden sand, curving unbrokenly into the distance. On the landward side of this beach, tall palms with feathery topknots grew; to seaward, lines of white breakers swept towards the shore; above the beach, a solitary sea bird punctuated an expanse of sky that filled half the area of the poster without revealing a cloud. On the beach, two lovers lay under a bright beach umbrella. The artist's viewpoint was from above (as it might be from a Belgian airliner circling for a landing); the umbrella was tilted back, so that the faces of the lovers could be seen underneath; their faces were two ovals of brown, featureless when examined closely except for small white chips to represent smiling mouths. The picture was dimmed by a covering of dust; some of the dust was a fine orange powder.

To the cross-beam just above S's head as he sat on the log was nailed another invented scene, executed in an artist mode differing greatly from that of the travel poster. This picture was framed in a simple wooden frame to the back of which a metal device was affixed; this device raised a loop of metal above the back of the frame, and it was through the loop that the picture had been nailed so that it hung against the cross-beam.

Reproduced in black and white, the picture bore a legend in the white margin below it which read: W. H. HUNT; The Hireling Shepherd (Oil, 1851). Two figures were depicted in a sunlit rural scene. The left-hand figure was the hireling shepherd whose flock of sheep had caught a death's head moth and appeared to be displaying this insect to the second figure, a girl who sat with a lamb upon her lap. The hireling shepherd leant close against her to demonstrate his capture; since the girl with the lamb on her lap appeared to have removed one of her outer garments, the nature of their past, present, and future relationships was ambiguous. The girl looked over her right shoulder with an expression that also was ambiguous. Her mouth appeared pale, with an ample lower lip that perhaps pouted slightly; her eyelids drooped as she looked askance at the man. On some occasions it seemed to S that she regarded the hireling shepherd with a sort of indolent contempt, on other occasions that her expression was one of lazy complaisance.

When S had looked at this for some while, he turned to the round window, knelt, and peered out of it. Pale sunshine lay over the garden now. He looked across the asparagus beds at the house. On the step below the back door was a small white object.

To the right of the round window, a vertical line of bricks had been omitted when the old brick building was built, forming a small niche. Without removing his gaze from the house, S stretched out his right hand and thrust it into the niche. His outstretched fingers met only the brickwork at the back of the niche.

“Where the.…”

Removing his gaze from the house, S turned to look in the niche; as he did so, he caught sight of the telescope lying extended under the round window. He picked it up and applied the eyepiece to his right eye, steadying the instrument with both hands as he directed it towards the house.

Into the circle of vision moved the end of the asbestos and concrete garage; it slipped away to the right; a shrub entered the circle briefly, and then a coal bunker, attached to the south corner of the house, and then the long windows of the dining-room, and then the green back door. The circle of vision sank and stopped. In its centre there now rested a full milk bottle, topped by a silver foil cap and standing on the left of the step below the back door.

The circle of vision remained still. In its centre rested the milk bottle; also visible was a part of the step, greyey white, a portion of the brickwork of the house, with its texture of bricks broken by the lines of cement between. In the upper right quarter of the circle was the bottom left corner of the back door, green, closed. Through the four lenses of the telescope, the colours were dull and distorted. On the step, on the extreme limit of vision to the right, lay a dead leaf; through the telescope it appeared black. Apart from these objects, everything else was swallowed in the blackness that lay beyond the circle of vision.

The milk bottle had sloping shoulders. It appeared to have been filled with milk to within about two centimetres of the silver foil cap. It stood on the step. The step was a greyish white, distance rendering it textureless. Where it faded into the blackness, a sort of chromatic effect appeared, a rim of several bright colours dividing the circle of vision from the blackness. The step was not entirely level. Because the milk bottle stood on an uneven step, it was perhaps not standing absolutely straight. The silver foil cap seemed to come to within about ten centimetres of the extreme bottom left tip of the closed door. The door was still closed.

After some while, the dead leaf moved slightly along the step towards the milk bottle. Possibly it was not so much black as a dark brown. It looked shapeless. It lay directly below the corner of the door, on a line with the vertical crack between the door and the jamb. The circle of vision moved slightly, so that this vertical crack lay at its centre. The milk bottle now stood on the left of the circle, near the darkness.

The circle began to tremble. S put down the telescope, resting it still extended on the floor under the round window. He rubbed his eyes with both hands. He stretched his arms above his head. His mouth opened, his head lolled backward, as he yawned. He bent forward, picked up the telescope again, and applied it to his eye.

Bare asparagus beds, a strip of lawn, fled past. A white bottle appeared and the view steadied. The bottle slipped to the left of the circle of vision, so that into the centre of the circle came the vertical crack between door and door jamb. Below it lay a dark dead leaf, shapeless on a grey step. After some while the leaf slid along the step and vanished into the darkness.

After a further while, the vertical crack between door and door jamb widened. The circle of vision became active, moving over a small radius to take in a human foot that protruded from the now opening door. The foot landed on the step, shod in a shoe of a brown material and finished with a high and tapering heel. From the foot rose a slender leg, soon concealed beneath a light blue skirt; an angle further up the skirt revealed where a knee was positioned beneath it. This smoothly curving angle became more noticeable as a hand came into view some distance from it. This hand was a left one, sporting on its fourth finger two rings which gleamed as the hand moved below the level of the knee, down, and curled round the neck of the milk bottle just above the sloping shoulders. The hand tightened its grip, lifted the bottle, raised it beyond the level of the bended knee, which unbent as the bottle was withdrawn from sight of the watcher. The delicately shod foot was withdrawn from the step. It disappeared behind the door. The door closed. A vertical line remained between door and door jamb, pointing down to an empty greyish white step.