“I know objectivity is impossible,” Malcolm said impatiently. “I’m not concerned about that.”
“Then what are you concerned about?”
“I’m concerned about the Gambler’s Ruin,” Malcolm said, staring at the monitor.
Gambler’s Ruin was a notorious and much-debated statistical phenomenon that had major consequences both for evolution, and for everyday life. “Let’s say you’re a gambler,” he said. “And you’re playing a coin-toss game. Every time the coin comes up heads, you win a dollar. Every time it comes up tails, you lose a dollar.”
“Okay.”
“What happens over time?”
Harding shrugged. “The chances of getting either heads or tails is even. So maybe you win, maybe you lose. But in the end, you’ll Come out at zero.”
“Unfortunately, you don’t,” Malcolm said. “If you gamble long enough, you’ll always lose – the gambler is always ruined. That’s why casinos stay in business. But the question is, what happens over time? What happens in the period before the gambler is finally ruined?”
“Okay,” she said. “What happens?”
“If you chart the gambler’s fortunes over time, what you find is the gambler wins for a period, or loses for a period. In other words, everything in the world goes in streaks. It’s a real phenomenon, and you see it everywhere: in weather, in river flooding, in baseball, in heart rhythms, in stock markets. Once things go bad, they tend to stay bad. Like the old folk saying that bad things come in threes. Complexity theory tells us the folk wisdom is right. Bad things cluster. Things go to hell together. That’s the real world.”
“So what are you saying? That things are going to hell now?”
“They could be, thanks to Dodgson,” Malcolm said, frowning at the monitor. “What happened to those bastards, anyway?”
King
There was a buzzing, like the sound of a distant bee. Howard King was dimly aware of it, as he came slowly back to consciousness. He opened his eyes, and saw the windshield of a car, and the branches of trees beyond.
The buzzing was louder.
King didn’t know where he was. He couldn’t remember how he got here, what had happened. He felt pain in his shoulders, and at his hips. His forehead throbbed. He tried to remember but the pain distracted him, prevented him from thinking clearly. The last thing he remembered was the tyrannosaur in front of him on the road. That was the last thing. Then Dodgson had looked back and –
King turned his head, and cried out as sudden, sharp pain ran up his neck to his skull. The pain made him gasp, took his breath away. He closed his eyes, wincing. Then he slowly opened them again.
Dodgson was not in the car. The driver’s door hung wide open, a dappled shadow across the door panel. The keys were still in the ignition.
Dodgson was gone.
There was a streak of blood across the top of the steering wheel. The black box was on the floor by the gearshift. The open driver’s door creaked a little, moved a little.
In the distance, King heard the buzzing again, like a giant bee. It was a mechanical sound, he now realized. Something mechanical.
It made him think of the boat. How long would the boat wait at the river? What time was it, anyway? He looked at his watch. The crystal was smashed, the hands fixed at 1:54.
He heard the buzzing again. It was coming closer.
With an effort, King pushed himself away from the seat, toward the dashboard. Streaks of electric pain shot up his spine, but quickly subsided. He took a deep breath.
I’m all right, he thought. At least, I’m still here.
King looked at the open driver’s door, in the sunlight. The sun was still high. It must still be sometime in the afternoon. When was the boat leaving? Four o’clock? Five o’clock? He couldn’t remember any more. But he was certain that those Spanish fishermen wouldn’t hang around once it started to get dark. They’d leave the island.
And Howard King wanted to be on the boat when they did. It was the only thing he wanted in the world. Wincing, he raised himself up, and painfully slid over to the driver’s seat. He settled himself in, took a deep breath, and then leaned over, and looked out the open door.