Report on Probability A by Brian W Aldiss
4
A certain amount of light still lingered in the loft above the garage. Through the square window at the other end of the loft, light came from the brightest part of the sky, A small section of a brick wall could be seen, and a distant tree in another property beyond the garden; beyond that, a troubled band of pink light marked where the sun set behind clouds.
Within the loft, a few simple shapes were visible. On the left of where C sat was a smoothly curved bulk made jagged in the middle (as if it had struck a rock) where a tarpaulin hung over the side of it. One point towards the far end of the smoothly curved surface reflected back the dying light from the window; the reflection trailed into straight lines where individual planks along the hull caught it on their edges. On the other side of the loft, the cartons made a continuous shape, black with five sharp corners, except where the box nearest to C picked up a reflection of light from the windows of the café opposite the front of the house. Along the floor were a number of small wet patches which reflected light from the window at the back of the garage.
Stuck to the side of one of the cartons was a cheap colour reproduction of a once-popular painting. It was possible to discern in the fading light that it represented a symbolic confrontation between the two sexes in which, by inserting certain images, the artist had cast doubt upon both the advisability and the possible success of the confrontation. This ambiguity was further increased by the poor light, which fused the man and woman portrayed into a semi-recumbent whole, in which only the faces of the pair, and of a lamb upon the girl’s lap, were really distinguishable.
Setting down the red-and-white striped phone, the President said angrily, “It’s that confounded Holman Hunt picture again, with the shepherd and the heavy-eyed dame and all that stuff. G had it, S had it, now we are told C has it. What does this mean, Baynes, for God’s sake?”
The Head of CK5 said, “We have checked up on Hunt, sir. He was one of our men. Got killed in the Riga affair, eight or nine years ago. You still think this report concerns a place somewhere else on this globe, existing contemporaneously?”
“Get that painting photo-copied, send it out to all agents. We’ve got to identify the site Hunt pictured and get men there at once, search every inch of depicted territory—I don’t care where it is. The key to the whole business clearly lies there. Move, Baynes!”
The Wandering Virgin continued to report in her singsong voice, so Baynes inclined his head and left the room, walking at a certain speed and closing the door behind him. Outside, four men waited, two of them in uniform and two in grey suits. The two in grey suits turned to Baynes eagerly and asked, “Any luck, sir?”
Baynes said, “We’re in more trouble, boys. It’s Hunt’s old secret BMAC site again. Either of you remember the Riga affair?”
Rising, the Suppressor of the Archives lightly touched the Wandering Virgin on the shoulder, so that her voice ceased in the chamber. She sat with her eyes wide, unseeing.
“My apologies to the court,” the Suppressor said. “The Virgin appears to have lost the report. Precisely—indeed, even imprecisely—who the President and Baynes are will probably remain forever unknown to us. Another time dimension entirely.”
The Impaler rose and gathered his robe about him. “I believe we have all heard enough to draw our own conclusions, eh?”
Now the light in the loft was dim. C remained as he was for a long while, staring in the general direction of the cartons, on occasions muttering to himself.
“Someone really ought to do for him.”
Changing his position so that he was on his knees, C removed his right hand from his left armpit, flexed it, and picked up the home-made periscope. It was made from six cylindrical tins which gleamed in the dull light. Grasping it in his right hand, C passed the telescope through the hole in the bottom left-hand corner of the window by which he knelt and adjusted it so that it stood upright and the top mirror looked over the slope of the garage roof towards the side of the house, while the bottom mirror faced through the garage window towards him. With his left hand, he adjusted the peaked cap on his head. He looked into the miror.
By a slight movement of his right hand, a lighted bow window set in the south-east side of the house became partly visible in the arrangement of mirrors. Yellow curtains hung on either side of the window. Through the window, the rear wall of the room could be seen. The wall was papered; the pattern of the wallpaper could not be distinguished. No movement could be seen in the room. From the angle of the shadows cast by the window into the dark beyond, it could be determined that the light in the room did not come from an overhead source. Possibly it came from a light fitting on one of the walls. Nobody was to be seen in the room through the arrangement of mirrors.
C watched through the hole in the window, his gaze fixed on the bottom mirror of his periscope. The brightly lit window of the bedroom revealed nothing but wallpaper, the pattern of which could not be made out.
After some while, C brought his right hand back through the window, clutching the home-made periscope. He tucked it under his left arm, tucking his right hand under the armpit of the left arm. Getting to his stockinged feet, he bent his shoulders and made his way down the centre of the loft. At the other end, he set the periscope down on the floor under the square window that looked over the garden, removed his hand from his armpit, and took the peaked cap from his head. Crossing to the nearest of the cardboard boxes, he opened it and dropped the peaked cap inside.
Turning back to the window that faced onto the garden, C picked up the periscope. The window was divided into four sections by two bars; the section at the bottom left had no glass in it. Cradling the periscope in his hand, C pushed it through the hole. By manœuvring the periscope into a vertical position, it was possible to see over the slope of the roof to a part of the south-east side of the house that otherwise would have been invisible from the window of the garage.
As C gazed into the lower mirror of the periscope, a reflection of part of the brickwork of the house came into view. The dusk made it hardly distinguishable as brickwork. After another slight movement of his hand, a reflection of a bow window came into view. The movement of the hand steadied.
A light shone from the window. From the window at the front of the garage, the bow window had been viewed on its east side; from the window at the back of the garage, it was viewed on its west side, and from a more oblique angle. Part of a curtain could be seen in the window, and an indistinguishable blank behind it that was probably the front wall of the room. No movement could be seen through the arrangement of mirrors.
“They must still be there. Perhaps he’s doing her in.”
A movement in the room could be discerned through the arrangement of mirrors. A shadow was visible, moving across the room. It spread across the window. The window went completely dark.
Crouching by the window of the garage, C closed his eyes. After a minute, he reopened them, and again peered at the lower mirror. It took him some while before he could detect the outline of the bow window. It was picked out by the stain of light in the western sky. The illumination from inside the room remained switched off.
C drew the periscope into the loft and placed it below the window. He went over to the square cut in the floor of the loft, in which the top of a wooden ladder glimmered. He climbed down the ladder. The ladder was bolted to the rear wall of the garage, in an upright position. The man descended into the garage. A black car stood on the floor of the garage, occupying most of the space. It showed itself only as a few lines of dull highlight here and there. The smell of the garage was fusty and oily. To one side of the ladder was a door leading to the garden. It was made of light metal. It was closed.
C opened the door and looked out.
A quantity of light still remained in the garden, rendering some of its deails in silhouette. Behind the newly opened door, and running away from it in a south-westerly direction, was a high brick wall. It caught a certain tone from the sky, although the top of i
“All right for you, chum! Fat lot you care for anything but yourself. One of these days.…”
On C’s right hand, the house rose large and dark, cutting off the rest of the garden. The windows showed only a dim reflected light from the sky. The dining-room window appeared to show some illumination not entirely accounted for by the fact that it had two windows, the second one being set round the corner of the house and visible in part through the window near to C. C regarded it for some time.
He did not approach the house. He began to walk slowly, taking his steps one at a time, away from the garage and parallel with the house, keeping his gaze continuously on the window of the dining-room. In this way, he got, step by step, a fuller view of the inside of the room. Nothing inside the room was visible to him but a vague shape, part dark, part dim reflected light, that he judged marked the whereabouts of the top of the dining-room table.
Under his stockinged feet, the grass was wet. Wetness oozed through his stockings. Some light was still cast onto the lawn from the sky. Some flecks of a white material lay about C’s feet. Looking down, he identified a number of pigeon feathers.
It was now possible to see that light was shining into the dining-room. In the corner of the room furthest away from the windows, a door was set. This door was half open. Light shone through the door from a source beyond it. From where C stood on the lawn, amid the pigeon feathers, he could see through the half open door into a hallway. In the hallway, little could be seen; a plain carpet of a crimson colour, and a length of panelled wall, against which stood a chest made of dark wood. One end of the chest was hidden by the edge of the door. On the wall above the chest, a framed picture hung. There was a good deal of red in the picture, but its subject could not be distinguished. There was no movement in the hall. C’s ears could detect no sound within the house.
The sky grew duller, until all parts of it were the same sombre tone. The garden became almost completely dark. Only the ragged edge of the wall on one side and the sharp lines of the house on the other, together with the feeble glimmer of yellow light from the old brick building, stood out from the general obscurity. From the house came no sound or movement.
Walking on a course parallel to the house, C returned to the garage. The door in the back wall of the garage was ajar. He pulled it further open and went in. He shut the door behind him.
Inside the garage, the black car seemed to absorb light. C stood with his left hand holding one of the rungs of an upright ladder bolted into the rear wall of the garage. He bent his left leg in order to raise the left foot, which he clasped with his right hand. The sock and the foot within it were wet and cold. After a short while, he held onto the rung of the upright ladder wtih his right hand and bent his right leg so that he could clasp his right foot with his left hand. The foot and the sock that covered it were wet and cold.
C put both feet onto the concrete of the garage floor and stood clasping the rung of the upright ladder with both hands.
He turned away from the ladder. Using his hands to feel for obstacles, he made his way round the car. By the rear tire, his right foot trod in a puddle on the floor. Keeping the south-east wall of the garage at his back, he got to the front of the garage. Two doors stood at the front of the garage, secured by a modern lock of a tumbler type. One of the two doors, the one further from the house, was additionally secured in place by two long bolts, one at the top and one at the bottom of the door. C moved to the other door and worked the knob on the tumbler lock. He pushed the door open slightly and secured the lock with a small lever so that it could not fall back into place until the lever was released. He slid out between the doors.
Standing on the pavement, C looked up and down a road. On his left was the bulk of the house, its front glancingly illuminated by a street lamp that stood beyond it. On his right, some paces distant, was another street lamp, and beyond it others which, due to the effect of perspective, appeared to be placed more and more closely together. They could be seen to lead to a jumble of lights, some of which defined a shadowy line of pillars that marked a railway station. A car moved up the road from the direction of the railway station. It contained four men; all sat with their hands over their eyes. C waited till the car had passed.
On the other side of the road was a café, the double windows of which were illuminated. Various goods could be seen displayed in the windows of the café. In the window on the left, C could detect a table marked by a red and white squared cloth that covered it.
C crossed the road to the café, opened one of the double doors, and walked in. He turned to the left and approached the table he had seen through the window. At the table stood a wooden chair of the folding variety. C pulled the chair seat from under the table and sat down. He blinked his eyes.
Behind the counter, a man leaned. His arms lay across the counter; his hands were interlinked. C signalled to him. The man nodded, and went to a door set in the wall behind the counter. He went through the door, closing it behind him. On the door was stuck a poster advertising a circus that had visited the town some weeks previously.
Next to the closed door were shelves on which had been arranged several brands of cigarettes. Rising from the chair on which he sat, C moved over to the counter, leant over it, extended his right hand, and took a packet containing ten cigarettes from the shelf. Returning to the table, pocketing the cigarettes as he did so, he sat down on the hard wooden seat.
When he had rested his elbows on the table-top, he leaned forward and peered through the window at the front of the house.
The front of the house had been designed with rules of symmetry in mind. The window on one side of the front door was balanced by the window on the other side of the front door. C looked at the window to the right of the front door. This belonged to the sitting-room. A light burned in the sitting-room. Thick curtains had been drawn across the window; a slight gap had been left between the curtains, a gap slightly wider at the top than lower down, as if the curtains had been drawn in haste.
Behind the counter of the café, a door opened and a man entered, bearing in his left hand a cup and saucer with a spoon in the saucer. He brought these round to the front of the shop and set them down on the table at which C sat. The table was covered with a cloth patterned in red and white squares.
Taking hold of the spoon, C began to stir the liquid in the cup, looking up at the man as he did so.
“Been busy?”
“How do you mean?”
“Many people in?”
“I’ll be closing soon. There’s a strike up at the car factory.”
“Seen anything going on over the road?”
“The men won’t go back till they get better conditions.”
“Is that so? Have you seen her just lately?”
“I’ve been busy. You’re wasting your time with her.”
“So they tell me. He’ll do something he shouldn’t to her, one of these days.”
“So they tell me. Myself, I wouldn’t blame him. She’s a proper little cat.”
“Have you seen her since he came over here last?”
“How do you mean exactly? How’s the coffee? You haven’t tasted it yet.”
“Have you caught sight of her in the last few minutes?”
“I tell you you’re wasting your time with her. I saw her draw he
C lifted the cup of coffee to his lips and sipped it. G. F. Watt rested his hands on the back of the folding chair and gazed out through the café window. C found the coffee was not hot. He drained the coffee and set the cup back empty in its saucer.
“That’s nice coffee. You’re about to close, I suppose.”
“It gets dark these evenings, doesn’t it? Was that what you wanted to know?”
“You’re not kidding it was what I wanted to know.”
“How do you mean I was not kidding? I wasn’t kidding. I saw her draw the curtains, I tell you. He said she was upset.”
“She’ll get over it. Pet pigeon died. Thanks for the coffee.”
“Did you like it? He didn’t mention the pigeon. He doesn’t say much, not to speak of, like when the baby died.”
“Very nice—nice and sweet. I’d better get back. Thanks a lot.”
“I fancy a cup myself, seeing you.…”
Pushing the table forward, C rose. He winked at the man, went to the door, opened it, and walked out onto the pavement in his stockinged feet. A man passed him, rolling a rusty bicycle wheel along like a hoop. No traffic passed on the road. C crossed the road, making for a concrete and asbestos garage that stood next to the house, separated from the house by a metre and a half of brick wall. The door of the garage stood ajar. C slipped through the opening into the darkness of the garage.
Turning, he pulled the garage door shut and pressed down a small lever on the mechanism of the lock. He heard the lock click.
Domoladossa went home to his wife that evening in a preoccupied fashion. He was trying to puzzle out the events in Mr. Mary’s house—and to puzzle out, incidentally, how the events were interfered with by reason of their being observed.