Korodore rubbed his nose diffidently.

'As you know, madam, security officers never sleep.'

'Yes... I know.' She shook her head, 'It was a figure of speech, is all. There's some coffee by the fire.'

He poured her a cup, and slowly began to pick up the cards. She eyed him carefully as he moved soundlessly across the room.

'I've been looking at the equations again,' she said, 'There's no change. My son's calculation was correct. Of course, I knew. They've been checked enough times. Even Sub-Lunar looked at them. Dom will be killed today, at noon. They won't let him live.'

She waited. 'Well?' she said.

'You mean, how do I feel as the security officer in charge? You mean, what are my reactions to the knowledge that whatever precautions I may take my charge will still be murdered? I have none, madam. I will still work as though I was in ignorance. Besides,' he added, dropping the pack on the table, 'I cannot believe it. Not quite. You could say my reaction is hope.'

'It'll happen.'

'I can't pretend to understand probability math. But if the universe is so ordered, so - immutable - that the future can be told from a handful of numbers, then why need we go on living?'

Joan stood up, crossed to the wardrobe, and took out of it a waist-length white wig.

'It's obvious you do not understand p-math, then,' she said. 'We go on because to live is still better than to die. That has always been the choice of Humanity, even when we thought the future was a cauldron of possibilities.'

She combed out the wig. 'We cannot be certain how he will die,' she continued, 'You or I, perhaps, may be the ones the Institute chooses to—'

Korodore spun round. 'I have checked us all by deep-reach, RGD—'

'Oh, Korodore! I'm sorry. But you have such a touching faith in cause-and-effect! Don't you know that in an infinite Totality all universes will happen? There is a universe somewhere where at this moment you will turn into a—'