The Chain of Chance (13 page)

“Either a wicked man or a wicked fate, is that it? But even the expression
corriger la fortune
has become proverbial. Why didn’t you hook up a two-way transmission?”

“Too much of a bother. I couldn’t go around loaded down with a lot of electronic equipment. Besides, there was another catch, one that came up in connection with the Swift case—Swift was the one rescued by the friend who had registered at the same hotel. Swift made his hallucinations sound so convincing he almost had his friend believing them.”

“I see what you mean.
Folíe à deux.
In other words, you didn’t want to risk having your shadow fall for any of your hallucinations, is that it?”

“Exactly.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong. Of the eleven victims, two escaped alive, and then there’s another who is still missing. The missing man’s name is Brigg. Am I right?”

“Correct. Brigg would have been the twelfth. He hasn’t been definitely classified yet.”

“Due to insufficient evidence, I suppose. Now we come to their chronological order. In this respect your summary is misleading. It presents the individual eases in the order of their discovery, which is something completely incidental, rather than in the order of their occurrence. What was the time span involved? Two years?”

“Yes. Titz, Coburn, and Osborn passed away two years ago. Brigg disappeared around the same time. The rest date from last year.”

“Any this year?”

“If there have been any, we wouldn’t know about them till the fall. Especially since the original investigation has been discontinued.”

“Assuming your facts are correct, then it would seem to be an expanding series. Three in the first set, eight in the second. Well, well… I see you weren’t acting as a decoy only in Italy.”

“Meaning?”

“That you’ve been trying to bait me, too. And I have to admit it’s tempting! Your version makes everything seem crystal dear. The pattern is all too obvious. But the fact that it has everybody stumped leads me to believe there’s more to it than meets the eye. Although the more one hears of the case histories, the more one begins to suspect some form of unmotivated insanity. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes. On that point there’s general agreement. Otherwise they wouldn’t have called off the investigation.”

“So why should there be any doubt that a crime has been committed?”

“How should I put it … it’s like looking at a photo—I’m thinking now of a halftone. The naked eye can make out the general outline but not the details. A magnifying glass will make some things stand out more clearly, but the image will remain blurred. If we take it to the microscope we find the picture gets lost, that it disintegrates into tiny dots. Each dot is something distinct; they no longer combine to a meaningful picture.”

“Are you suggesting that once you’ve accepted the hypothesis of a random series of poisonings, the more detailed the examination the flimsier the hypothesis?”

“Precisely.”

“And the same thing applies if you assume the existence of a culprit?”

“The same thing applies. The conclusion is almost always the same: not one of the victims was poisoned by someone else, and not one of them had the means to do it himself. But the fact still remains…”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“So then why do you always insist on its being either a crime or a coincidence?”

“What alternative is there?”

“Maybe there is one.” He picked up a copy of
France-Soir
from his desk. “Have you read today’s papers?”

He showed me the headlines in bold print:
BOMB EXPLODES IN THE LABYRINTH—MASSACRE ON THE STEPS—TEEN-AGED GIRL RESCUED BY UNIDENTIFIED MAN
.

“Yes,” I replied. “I’m familiar with what happened,”

“There you have it. The classic example of a modem crime. Premeditated and at the same time accidental. Anyone standing in the vicinity automatically became a victim.”

“But that’s not quite the same thing!”

“Granted, it’s not. The victims in Naples were predestined for death because of certain personality traits, but not those at the airport. Fair enough. But what about the case of that man Adams who wrote his wife about the possibility of a random crime, and who compared it to covering a road with nails. Obviously it was a crude analogy. But it’s just as obvious that whoever’s behind these deaths is anxious to create the impression he doesn’t exist.”

I withheld comment. Barth gave me a quick glance, stood up, paced around the room, then sat down again and asked:

“What’s your own personal opinion?”

“I can only tell you what struck me most. Suppose the cause of death was poisoning; wouldn’t you expect the symptoms to be the same in every case?”

“Well, weren’t they? I was of the impression they all followed a pattern. First the phase of excitement and aggression, then the hallucinating phase, most often associated with a persecution mania, and finally the withdrawal phase—withdrawal either from Naples or from life itself. Either they tried to escape by car, plane, or on foot, or they resorted to a piece of glass, a razor blade, a cord, a bullet in the mouth, a bottle of iodine…”

I had the suspicion he was trying to impress me with the power of his memory.

“I’ll admit they were similar. But when you start looking into the backgrounds…”

“Go on.”

“Well, as a rule, the manner of death has nothing to do with the personality of the deceased. Whether a person dies of pneumonia, cancer, or in a car accident is not something determined by his personality. Of course there are exceptions, as in the case of a test pilot’s occupational death, but as a rule there’s no correlation between the way a person dies and the way he lives.”

“In short, death is unrelated to personality type. Go on.”

“But here it is related.”

“Ah, now you’re feeding me demonology! Just what are you implying?”

“Exactly what I said. A champion swimmer dies in a drowning accident. A mountain climber falls to his death. A car fiend gets killed in a head-on collision.”

“Hold on! Which one was the car fiend—Titz?”

“Yes. He owned three cars, two of them sports cars. To continue: a coward is killed while running away…”

“Who was that?”

“Osborn. The one who abandoned his car and was taken for a member of the road gang.”

“You didn’t mention anything about his being a coward.”

“I’m sorry. The version I gave you left out many details. Osborn was in the insurance business, was heavily insured himself, and was known as a man who avoided taking any risks. The first time he felt threatened he sat down and wrote a letter to the police, then lost his nerve and took off. Adams, the eccentric, died as he lived—in an unconventional manner. The heroic reporter stuck it out till the end and then shot himself…”

“Wasn’t he trying to escape, too?”

“I don’t think so. He had orders to fly to London. He suffered a momentary breakdown, tried to slash his wrists, then patched himself up and flew off on his new assignment. When he saw he wasn’t up to it, he shot himself. He must have been a very proud man. I have no idea how Swift would have died. As a young man he was known for being wishy-washy, a typical prodigal son, a dreamer, always in need of someone stronger than himself. A wife, a friend. It was the same way in Naples.”

Barth sat there with wrinkled brow, tapping his chin, and stared absently into space.

“Well, that’s easy enough to explain. A case of regression, of reversion to an earlier time period… I’m not a specialist in this area, but I believe that some hallucinogens… What was the consensus of the toxicologists? Of the psychiatrists?”

“Certain symptomatic analogies with LSD, except that LSD does not have such individualized effects. Pharmacology has no record of such a drug. The deeper I delved into their individual backgrounds, the more I saw that not one of them had acted contrary to his nature—quite the opposite, that each had revealed it in grotesquely exaggerated form. A man who’s careful with money becomes a penny pincher. A pedant—I’m referring now to the rare-book dealer—spends the whole day cutting up a trunkful of papers into little strips. Examples abound. If I could leave you the files, you’d see for yourself.”

“By all means. So this factor X would have to be something on the order of a ‘personality drug.’ Right… But such an approach won’t bring us any closer to a solution. Psychological analysis can tell us how the factor behaves, but not how it infiltrates the victim.”

He was leaning forward in his chair, his head lowered and his eyes fixed on his hands, which were cupped around his knees. Suddenly he looked me straight in the eye.

“I’d like to ask you a personal question. May I?”

I nodded.

“What was it like during the simulation? Were you confident the whole time?”

“No. It was altogether an awkward situation, not at all as I had imagined it would be. Not because I was using a dead man’s things—I got used to that in a very short time. Because of my profession, I was considered tailor-made for the mission.”

“Is that so?” His eyebrows shot up.

“The public imagines it to be fascinating, but except for a few brief moments of excitement it’s all routine—boring and monotonous routine.”

“I see. In much the same way as in Naples, right?”

“Yes, especially since we’re also trained in the art of self-analysis. If instruments are always subject to error, then the final indicator has to be man.”

“Monotonous routine, you say. In what ways were you excited in Naples? When and where?”

“When I was afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“At least twice. And each time it gave me something of a thrill.”

The words did not come easily, for I was dealing in intangibles. He never took his eyes off me.

“Did you enjoy being afraid?”

“I can’t give you a yes or no answer. It’s best when a person’s abilities coincide with his ambitions. My ambitions have always tended toward the impossible. There’s an infinite variety of risks, but I personally have never been attracted by such ordinary risks as, say, Russian roulette. That sort of test strikes me as jejune. On the other hand, I’ve always had a great attraction for the unknown, the unpredictable, the undefinable.”

“Is that why you decided to become an astronaut?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that’s the reason. People think of us as clever chimpanzees guided by a remote-control computer. The highest order, the symbol of our civilization, whose opposite pole you see before you.” I pointed to the paper featuring a front-page photo of the escalator. “I don’t believe that’s necessarily true. And even if it were true, we’d have been all alone on Mars, completely on our own. I knew all along my physical disability would hang over me like the sword of Damocles. For six weeks out of the year, during the blooming season, I’m totally worthless. Still, I was counting on the fact that since no vegetation grew on Mars, which everybody, including my superiors, took for granted.,. but anyhow it was the hay fever that got me demoted to the backup crew, where I knew I didn’t stand a chance.”

“Of flying to Mars?”

“That’s right.”

“And did you go on being a backup member?”

“No.”

“Aut Caesar aut nihil.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

He unclasped his hands and sank deeper into his armchair. Sitting there with eyelids half open, he seemed to be digesting my words. Then a twitch of the eyebrows and a flicker of a smile.

“Let’s return to earth. Did all the victims have allergies?”

“Just about, though in one case it was never substantiated. The allergies varied, dust allergy being the most common, followed by asthma…”

“And when was it you were afraid? A moment ago you mentioned…”

“I remember two different occasions. The first time was in the hotel restaurant, when another Adams was paged to the phone. I knew it was a popular name, I knew they were paging someone else; still, for a moment I had the feeling it wasn’t just a coincidence.”

“You had the feeling they were paging a dead man, is that it?”

“Not at all. I thought it was the start of something. That it was a code word being used so none of the other customers would be the wiser,”

“Did it ever occur to you it might have been someone from your own team?”

“Out of the question. Under no circumstances were they to get in touch with me. Only in the event of a catastrophe, say, a declaration of war, was Randy, our leader, supposed to approach me directly. But only under such conditions.”

“Excuse me for being so inquisitive, but this strikes me as important. So Adams was paged. But what if the caller really had you in mind; wouldn’t that mean he saw through your disguise and was telling you as much?”

“That’s exactly why I was so scared. I was even tempted to go to the phone.”

“What for?”

“To make contact with the other side. Better that than nothing at all.”

“I see. But you didn’t go, did you?”

“No. The real Adams beat me to it.”

“And the second time?”

“That was during my one night in Rome, at the hotel. I was staying in the room where Adams had died in his sleep. Oh yes, there’s something else I should explain. You see, various simulation roles were considered. I didn’t have to pose as Adams, there were alternate roles, but I sat in on the meetings and tipped the scale in favor of Adams—”

I broke off, seeing Barth’s eyes momentarily light up.

“Let me guess. It wasn’t the temporary insanity, it wasn’t the seaside, and it wasn’t the highway. It was just the thought of that safe and secluded hotel room—the solitude, the comfort, and death. Am I right?”

“Possibly, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I guess they thought I was hoping to find the secret disclosures he was supposed to have stashed away somewhere, but that wasn’t it at all. The truth was, I found the man somehow likable.”

Even though he’d stung me a moment ago with his
“Aut Caesar aut nihil
,” I found myself being a lot more talkative than usual, so dependent was I on this man’s help. Exactly when this whole affair had become an obsession with me I couldn’t say. At first I’d treated the impersonation as just another routine exercise, as a necessary part of the game. I don’t know at what point it had pulled me in so completely that at the same time it pushed me away. I was looking forward to the danger, counting on it; I knew it wasn’t my imagination; but just when I seemed to be on the verge of it, it turned out to be an illusion. I was barred from it. I’d done everything Adams had done—everything except share the same fate, and that’s why I had nothing to show for it. Maybe Barth’s remark had offended me so much because it touched on the truth. One of Fitzpatrick’s medical colleagues on the Mars project, Kerr, a Freudian, would have said I was trying to force a showdown, that I preferred death to defeat; in other words, he’d have explained my choice of Adams, the mission itself, in terms of a Freudian death wish. You can bet that’s what he would have said. But who cares. Asking for this Frenchman’s help was tantamount to violating the mountain climber’s code: I was giving him the lead so he could pull me up on the rope. But better that than total disaster: I had no intention of winding up a loser.