Streaking (23 page)

Canny was too dumbfounded to hide his reaction. He knew, even though he didn't say a word, that he'd given himself away.

“Oh, shut your mouth, Canny,” Alice said, bitterly. “How did I guess? I'm Martin Ellison's wife—widow. He talked to me. The psychology of gambling, the psychology of superstition, the legendry of luck. He didn't just write those notes down when I told him about all the things they say in the village about the lucky Kilcannons—he explained why it was interesting, and what the logic of it all must be. You confirmed it when you mentioned rules. So I know, you see, why you wouldn't fuck Ellen even when she wanted you to—and I'm going to tell myself that you won't fuck me for exactly the same stupid, superstitious, selfish reason, because it's a hell of a lot better than having to think that you just don't want to. If that's okay with you, of course.”

Canny looked a her long and hard, and she met his stare. They each had a slice of pizza left, but he knew that the slices in question were fated to go to waste. Both their glasses were empty, but he didn't volunteer to refill them, even though there were certain kinds of conversations that were a lot easier to have while drunk.

“I never said no,” he pointed out, eventually. “You jumped to that conclusion. Anxiety, you see—it's a corollary of the Oedipus Effect. You expect to fail in your enterprise, so you assume failure far in advance, and the assumption becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're right about the rules—we have a thousand of them, and nine hundred and ninety of them are probably bullshit, only we've never been able to work out exactly which nine hundred and ninety, or whether there are any exceptions to the ten that work. One that seems sounder than the rest, for all sorts of reasons, is that the luck won't endure if other people know you've got it—but I just broke that one for you, and I'll break another if you need me to...or even if you just want me to. Not because I promised, but because you're worth breaking a few rules for.”

“As many as you're breaking for Lissa Lo?” Her eyes were angry and accusing but her stare was slightly misted by excess moisture, which gave it a strangely poignant character.

“Jesus, Alice—you won. What more do you want?”

“You're right,” she said, after a moment's hesitation. “Always been that way—littlest sister of three, always had to fight three times as hard and be three times as clever, and never knew when to stop. And you're right about other things too, which we won't go into. The others must never know, you realize—especially not Ellen.”

“I realize,” he said. “This is just between us.”

“And completely self-contained,” she added. “No strings, on either side.”

“Neither of us can guarantee that,” Canny said. “Some things, you can't anticipate or calculate—you just have to gamble. It is a gamble, Alice—you do know that? For both of us.”

“Everything's a gamble, Canny,” she said. “Those of us who don't have family rules just have to rely on the vagaries of chance. But you have to live, Canny—and sometimes, you have to give in to what you're feeling, no matter how it might look to your Mum or your sister or your family liaison officer. Martin would understand. He might not like it, but he'd understand. It's him I really need, really want...but you're the only one who could stand in for him, Canny—the
only
one.”

“I know,” he said, glad to have recovered his composure and the remnants of his conversational style. “I can't say that I've always been lucky
like that
, but I've always been lucky. I hope that you come out ahead, in the end. I really do.”

Alice was busy unbuttoning her blouse.

“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.