Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon Page B

Pavlovian brain-mechanics—assumes
     the presence of these bi-stable points. But to Mexico belongs the domain
between
zero and one—the middle Pointsman has excluded from his persuasion—the probabilities.
     A chance of 0.37 that, by the time he stops his count, a given square on his map will
     have suffered only one hit, 0.17 that it will suffer two. . . .
    “Can’t you . . .
tell,
” Pointsman offering Mexico one of his Kyprinos Orients, which he guards in secret
     fag fobs sewn inside all his lab coats, “from your map here, which places would be
     safest to go into, safest from attack?”
    “No.”
    “But surely—”
    “Every square is just as likely to get hit again. The hits aren’t clustering. Mean
     density is constant.”
    Nothing on the map to the contrary. Only a classical Poisson distribution, quietly
     neatly sifting among the squares exactly as it should . . . growing to its predicted
     shape. . . .
    “But squares that have already
had
several hits, I mean—”
    “I’m sorry. That’s the Monte Carlo Fallacy. No matter how many have fallen inside
     a particular square, the odds remain the same as they always were. Each hit is independent
     of all the others. Bombs are not dogs. No link. No memory. No conditioning.”
    Nice thing to tell a Pavlovian. Is it Mexico’s usual priggish insensitivity, or does
     he know what he’s saying? If there
is
nothing to link the rocket strikes—no reflex arc, no Law of Negative Induction . . .
     then . . . He goes in to Mexico each morning as to painful surgery. Spooked more and
     more by the choirboy look, the college pleasantries. But it’s a visit he must make.
     How can Mexico play, so at his ease, with these symbols of randomness and fright?
     Innocent as a child, perhaps unaware—perhaps—that in his play he wrecks the elegant
     rooms of history, threatens the idea of cause and effect itself. What if Mexico’s
     whole
generation
have turned out like this? Will Postwar be nothing but “events,” newly created one
     moment to the next? No links? Is it the end of history?
    “The Romans,” Roger and the Reverend Dr. Paul de la Nuit were drunk together one night,
     or the vicar was, “the ancient Roman priests laid a sieve in the road, and then waited
     to see which stalks of grass would come up through the holes.”
    Roger saw the connection immediately. “I wonder,” reaching for pocket after pocket,
     why are there never any damned—ah here, “if it would follow a Poisson . . . let’s
     see . . .”
    “Mexico.” Leaning forward, definitely hostile. “They used the stalks that grew through
     the holes to cure the sick. The sieve was a very sacred item to them. What will you
     do with the sieve you’ve laid over London? How will you use the things that grow in
     your network of death?”
    “I don’t follow you.” It’s just an equation. . . .
    Roger really wants other people to know what he’s talking about. Jessica understands
     that. When they don’t, his face often grows chalky and clouded, as behind the smudged
     glass of a railway carriage window as vaguely silvered barriers come down, spaces
     slide in to separate him that much more, thinning further his loneliness. She knew
     their very first day, he leaning across to open the Jaguar door and so sure she’d
     never get in. She saw his loneliness: in his face, between his red nail-bitten hands. . . .
    “Well, it isn’t fair.”
    “It’s eminently fair,” Roger now cynical, looking very young, she thinks. “Everyone’s
     equal. Same chances of getting hit. Equal in the eyes of the rocket.”
    To which she gives him her Fay Wray look, eyes round as can be, red mouth about to
     open in a scream, till he has to laugh. “Oh, stop.”
    “Sometimes . . .” but what does she want to say? That he must always be lovable, in
     need of her and never, as now, the hovering statistical cherub who’s never quite been
     to hell but speaks as if he’s