Report on Probability A. Brian Aldiss
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fragments of one hedge, would have been lost to a newcomer looking into the mirror.
The hypothetical newcomer would also have seen a more distant hedge that divided the garden from the property of an elderly bachelor known to have an ancestor who had built a lighthouse in the southern hemisphere; part of an asparagus bed lying between the back of the house and an old brick outhouse; the old brick outhouse itself, on the roof of which strutted a homing pigeon; a round window set in the front of the brick building; and sundry other particulars that were regularly glimpsed by G when he directed his gaze to the mirror. Most of the time he sat looking directly out of the window, staring at the blank wall of the house some distance away or, for preference, staring down comfortably at the floor.
On the floor lay two old fibre mats, the stripes of which had faded from their original oranges and greens under the long application of human feet. Because it was not raining, G took up one of these mats and carried it outside. As he began to shake it, he saw Mr Mary’s wife come round the edge of the house. She was walking from the back door to the side gate, which meant that she had to traverse the length of path between G and the house, coming at her nearest point to within twenty metres of him; she saw him, and he knew she saw.
He continued to flap the mat before him, so that its faded orange and green stripes rose and fell before his vision, alternately revealing and concealing her; between each brief concealment she was a fraction further along the path.
When she was at perihelion, and already only a few metres from the brown side gate, G let his arms drop and faced her through the cloud of dust that hung in the air between them.
‘When the fishing is poor, they say the price of fish rises.’
‘Fish are plentiful now.’
‘Are the fish eager to be caught?’
‘My fishmonger has satisfied customers all the year.’
‘Even in a time of plenty, are not some fish more satisfying than others?’
‘All fish contain vitamins, so says my fishmonger.’
Although she slowed her pace as she spoke, Mr Mary’s wife never entirely stopped walking towards the brown side gate; nor did she entirely turn her face towards G. She had now reached the brown side gate, and turned her attention to the bolt. Shedding a small flake of rust, it yielded, and she swung the gate open. She walked through it and closed it from the outside. The gate was set in a wall nearly two metres high; on the top of the wall were embedded a few shreds of bottle glass.
Domoladossa looked up from the long report.
‘Mr Mary’s wife,’ he said. ‘We think she may be the key to the whole matter. I shall be interested to see what the report makes of her.’
‘The main object of the report is directed towards a different objective,’ Midlakemela said. ‘Let us call this continuum we are studying – the one containing Mr Mary and his wife – Probability A. We know it is closely related to our continuum, which I like to think of as Certainty X. Nevertheless, even superficially, Probability A reveals certain basic values that differ widely from our own. It is our first duty to examine those values.’
Domoladossa sighed. He both admired and detested the slow, careful mind of the younger man.
‘Quite so. Probability A’s time-flow rate seems to differ from our own, for instance. Instrumentation is being devised so that we can have absolute scales by which to measure such discrepancies.’ He looked askance at Midlakemela. ‘Has it occurred to you that our congruence with Probability A may be temporary? In a week it may have vanished again.’
‘And then?’
‘We may be left all alone in the uni-probable space-time universe familiar to our fathers. Or the faulting may occur again, and we may find ourselves congruent with Probability Z, where few factors indeed coincide with our own. We just don’t know.’
‘So perhaps we should continue to peruse the report.’ Midlakemela was the sort who always got promotion.
There was neither frost nor wind that afternoon. The trees in the garden did not stir. Behind the wooden bungalow was a long brick wall marking the north-west boundary of the garden; beech trees were planted beside it from the bottom of the garden to a point not far from the wooden hut, where an elder tree incongruously stood, its lax branches touching the back of the wooden bungalow; these trees did not stir. On the side of the house facing the wooden bungalow, only one window looked out, a high bow window, set near the east or street corner of the house; a curtain stirred at this window.
G looked quickly up and caught the movement of the curtain. He could not see anybody at the window. The curtain was of a cream material. It did not move again. G covered his mouth momentarily with his hand and then rubbed it. He turned away and took the striped mat back into the wooden bungalow. He deposited the mat back on the floor of the bungalow. Then he emerged into the open once again, carrying the second mat. He commenced to shake this as thoroughly as he had shaken the first one. A cloud of dust rose in the air before him. As he worked, he kept his eye on the bow window set high in the blank wall of the house.
A black and white cat picked its way daintily through the stems of a privet bush that bounded the lawn to his left hand. It held its tail erect. It walked past a sundial that was supported by an almost naked boy cast in iron, rubbing against the boy’s legs as it went, heading towards G. G ceased to shake the rug. He called to the cat in an affectionate tone. The cat made a noise in reply.
G retreated into the wooden bungalow, carrying a striped mat which he laid on the floor in a convenient position, next to a second and similar mat. Straightening his back, he moved over to a cupboard of unpainted wood, opened one of its doors, and extracted from its shelves a small white jug of the kind generally used for keeping milk in. G went to the door and showed this jug to the cat. The cat climbed up the step of the wooden bungalow and rubbed himself against the door.
‘You’re early for your rations today. The jug’s empty till I get some more, but you’d better come in.’
The cat entered the wooden bungalow, crossed the floor, and jumped up onto the couch. G closed the door, pressing his shoulder to it to do so. He returned the white jug to the cupboard, leaving one of the cupboard doors open. Then he went over to the couch and picked up the cat round its chest, so that its paws hung down, black and white in varying proportions.
‘You’re a naughty pussy cat. What’s she been doing today? Where do you think she’s going, eh?’
He carried the cat over to the wheelback chair and sat down facing the window that had a mirror attached to it. He arranged the cat on his lap; the cat settled itself. It purred. It had a