Nevertheless, those probabilities, as both Dr. Wilfred and the bishop saw them in their different ways, must themselves have been real entities. They existed already in that brief moment between Oliver’s standing up and beginning to speak, when the event would become simply part of the established furniture of the universe. They must have existed! Surely. What kind of a probability is it that doesn’t actually exist?
If someone with a mind as synoptic, comprehensive, and swift as God’s had attempted to catalog them they would surely have been these:
Dr. Wilfred will be forced to his feet by Annuka Vos to deliver the real Fred Toppler Lecture from the text that he has so carefully kept with him through all the vicissitudes of the trip. He will be disconcerted, however, to find that Oliver is not wearing orange skateboarding trousers, and will hesitate for a fatal fraction of a second himself, which will allow Georgie time to realize that the Dr. Norman Wilfred at the lectern is her missing boyfriend, whereupon she will be unable to resist waving to him. This tiny anomaly in the proceedings, insignificant in itself, will be like the last crystal dropped into a supersaturated solution. Around it the whole invisibly overloaded mass will change its state, because:
Stavros, spotting Georgie as she waves, will step forward to demand the thirty-two euros she owes him;
Georgie, looking round for someone to borrow the thirty-two euros from, will see the real Dr. Wilfred, and beg him to help her out;
the real Dr. Wilfred, now even more confused to find Georgie holding his hand and looking up into his eyes, will fumble for his wallet;
Spiros, seeing Dr. Wilfred finding the thirty-two euros for Stavros, will demand the thirty-two euros that Dr. Wilfred and Annuka owe him;
Annuka Vos, ready to shout down any opposition to Dr. Wilfred, will take time out first to demand that Georgie return the suitcase she has stolen;
Georgie, at the sight of Annuka, will give a cry of alarm, and warn Dr. Wilfred that this is the cleaning woman from the villa, whose extreme religious convictions make her a danger to society;
Nikki will hurry discreetly forward to deal with the disturbance;
Georgie, believing Nikki to be in Switzerland, will be unable to prevent herself crying out in astonishment, “Nikki!”;
Nikki, no less astonished, her normally greater self-control briefly failing under the accumulated strain of events, will reply “Georgie!” almost as loudly;
several members of the audience will indignantly try to hush them, and whisper for everyone to sit down;
Patrick, nevertheless, seeing Nikki with her clipboard and air of authority, will slip twenty euros down the front of her bra and ask her to find him a table, even though the place is so busy, with four Carlsbergs while they’re waiting;
Georgie, at the sight of Patrick, will give another clearly audible gasp of surprise, and say, “You!”;
Patrick, at the sight of Georgie, will gasp in his turn and say much the same;
Oliver, as he watches the developing chaos in front of him, will brush the tangle of blond hair out of his soft brown eyes and say nothing;
somewhere about now Christian and Mr. Papadopoulou will produce the two incriminating passports … the police will be called … Oliver Fox will be arrested … Dr. Norman Wilfred will have a stroke … Annuka will deliver the Fred Toppler Lecture on his behalf … Christian will reclaim his kingdom … Eric Felt will enter into a civil partnership with him and become his formal heir apparent … Mr. Skorbatov will conclude whatever secret business it is that he is engaged upon with Mr. Papadopoulou … Nikki will marry one of Patrick’s drunken yachting companions … Georgie will take the veil … prices will rise … rain will fall … a cure for baldness will be found … and so on and so on …
Thus Oliver, standing there at the lectern with his mouth already open to bring into existence the wild series of inventions which would have sent the world off on a completely different causal trajectory, will have been preempted by the great gear chain of cause and effect — as it turns out to be with hindsight, now that it is actually happening. He set it in motion at the airport the previous evening, he is forced to realize, and the overwhelming probability is that it will now operate just as Newton, Einstein, and the real Dr. Norman Wilfred would wish. Each cause, he will almost certainly find it instructive to note, trails an effect at its heels like an obedient dog, each effect gratefully acknowledges a cause as its legitimate master. There is no room for any ridiculous impromptu interventions.
Clunk-click. Click-clunk. If only the initial conditions had been fully understood, and hindsight had been foresight, the whole sequence of events could have been predicted in time to be included in Newton’s Principia or the Book of Revelation.
However …
* * *
However, in the instant before Georgie waves and finally sets this well-prepared scenario upon its unstoppable course, something else occurs that stops it even before it starts. This is a completely unconnected and irrelevant event. A triviality, a passing thought in someone’s head, a velleity that comes out of nowhere and has no imaginable significance or place in any self-respecting causal chain.
One of the guests, Sheikh Abdul hilal bin-Taimour bin-Hamud bin-Ali al-Said — someone with no grievances, suspicions, or schemes of his own — happens to notice, in the dish of petit-fours on the table in front of him, a single remaining cube of Turkish delight. He doesn’t much like Turkish delight, but (as he explains at the subsequent government inquiry into the disaster) there is something unsatisfactory about the sight of one single Turkish delight sitting on its own in the dish, something that jars slightly with the natural order of things. So he reaches out idly to take it. And within the next few seconds the world has veered off the course that had been so carefully and elaborately prepared for it.
In reaching for the Turkish delight the sheikh has leaned across a candle. There is a smell of burning, and by the time he has popped the gelatinous cube into his mouth, and crushed it between tongue and palate, his robes are engulfed in flames. The people around him scramble to their feet in alarm. Chairs turn over. A voice, identified at the inquiry as belonging to either Suki Brox or Darling Erlunder, shouts, “Fire!”
Whereupon someone does.
It’s only a short burst in the first place, out of the darkness somewhere behind the speaker, probably from one of Mr. Papadopoulou’s security advisers, and exactly what he thinks he’s firing at is difficult to guess; but it’s followed by a second burst, which is most likely Mr. Skorbatov’s people firing back, after which the firing becomes general, and for a few moments the noise of shooting and screaming obliterates all possibility of rational reaction to events, and any semblance of ordered causality.