The Stochastic Man

21

And so I engineered the fulfilling of the prophecy, though it had been in my power to thwart it. Or had it been? I had declined to put Carvajal’s ice-etched unbending determinism to the test. I had accomplished what they used to call a cop-out when I was a boy. Quinn would speak at the dedication. Quinn would make his dumb jokes about Israel. Mrs. Goldstein would mutter; Mr. Rosenblum would curse. The mayor would acquire needless enemies; the Times would have a juicy story; we would set about the process of repairing the political damage; Carvajal would once more be vindicated. It would have been so easy to interfere, you say. Why not test the system? Call Carvajal’s bluff. Verify his assertion that the future, once glimpsed, is graven as if on tablets of stone. Well, I hadn’t done it. I had had my chance, and I had been afraid to take it, as though in some secret way I knew the stars in their courses would come crashing into confusion if I meddled with the course of events. So I had surrendered to the alleged inevitability of it all with hardly a struggle. But had I really given in so easily? Had I ever been truly free to act? Was my surrender not also, perhaps, part of the unchangeable eternal script?