'Yes, big explosion, much chaos,' Anton said, nodding to himself. 'Sad, very sad.' Anton's expression of grief didn't strike Benjamin as quite sincere, but he decided not to question it right now. 'But hope for best, yes? Now, question number two: What did Samuel tell you about Fletcher's work?'
'He said he'd been writing about nuclear war theory for years, and that he was far ahead of anyone else with his theories.'
'That I know,' Anton said. 'I mean, did he think it was good or bad?'
Benjamin thought back. 'He said it was strange, that the way Dr. Fletcher wrote, he seemed… well, that it was almost like he didn't believe the Cold War really happened.'
'Happened,' Anton said. 'I was there. Anyway okay, question number three. This TEACUP program, what did Samuel think it does?'
'Well…,' Benjamin tried to think how to put it. 'He said something about it calculating probabilities. I guess he meant probabilities of the Cold War being the sort of affair Fletcher described in his other writings. He said Fletcher was looking for flaws in the logic of the whole MAD doctrine.'
Anton laughed. 'Flaws like crazy bear in room,' he said. 'Very big, very dangerous, but nobody talks about him.'
Anton put his head down for a moment, deep in thought. He stood, stretched his back, walked over to the blackboard at the other end of his study.
'See these?' he said, tapping equations on the board.
'Yes,' Benjamin said.
'Three years,' he said. He took a piece of chalk from the blackboard, drew an enormous X across the equations. He turned and looked at Benjamin. 'All shit now.' He came back and sat down, pulled the chair closer to Benjamin, pointed to Fletcher's computer. 'Thank you very much, Dr. Jeremy Fletcher.'
He settled back into the chair, crossed his hands in his lap, and began to speak.
'Sam wrong about TEACUP program. Or half wrong. Fletcher's TEACUP really does read tea leaves. Cold War tea leaves.' He leaned forward now, put his hand on the edge of the computer. 'And is really two programs.'
'Two programs?' Benjamin asked.
'One half calculates probabilities about Cold War.'
'You see,' Benjamin began, 'that's what I don't understand. We know the Cold War happened, so how can it calculate the probability of it having happened?'
Anton thought for a moment, then asked, 'You know how they find planets Neptune and later Pluto?' Benjamin shook his head. 'Didn't see them. Too far away. But they see Uranus does not go exactly way it should go. Something making it… wobble. They calculate, figure how big such a thing should be, where it should be. They look there… voila! They discover planets. All from the math.'
Anton cleared his throat, leaned forward. 'TEACUP work like that. For years Fletcher feeding it data from Cold War. Program eats data, spits out analysis. At first what it telling Fletcher not clear. He makes program better. When he gets to TEACUP 6, it's very clear what program telling him.' He paused.
'Yes?' prodded Benjamin.
'Is wobble in Cold War.'
'Wobble?'
'Is something making it go different way than it should go.'
Benjamin leaned back on the couch. He wasn't at all sure he understood what Anton was telling him.
'I know,' said Anton. 'Is confusing. What way should a cold war go? But there are things more probable, and things less probable. People like Fletcher, people like me, we calculate such things. What TEACUP tells Fletcher is, things don't add up.'
'What 'things'?' said Benjamin.
Anton pursed his lips, blew out air. 'From what I read so far, data points at something in sixties. Something very, very strange happen. That thing, whatever was, create wobble.'
'You mean, this aberration in the course of the Cold War?'
'Sam right, you smart boy. Yes, aberration. Good word.'
Anton pulled the laptop closer, began typing. After a moment he turned the screen back so Benjamin could see it.
Displayed there was the same graph he and Wolfe had seen that night in Fletcher's room: the two sides of a rising bell curve, with a missing middle.
'We saw this,' Benjamin said. 'Samuel called it a… a Nash equilibrium?'
'Yes, exactly. He says what that means?'
'Well, something about two sides playing a game, and if each knows what the other will do, they've reached a stalemate.'
Anton nodded. 'Right again. TEACUP tells Fletcher Cold War at stalemate. In sixties.'
'Well, see, that's what I don't understand. Why is that big news? Of course it was a stalemate. That's why it was the Cold War, right?'
Anton smiled, looking a little smug. 'According to TEACUP, such, how is it, standoff shouldn't happen for at least another five, ten years. Or should collapse, you know, go boom. Or even end. Guys who built first U.S. missiles, what you call Minutemen, made them to last only ten years. They figure, by then, madness over.'
'But, aren't they still there?'
'Exactly so,' nodded Anton. 'Rusting in silos. See, in beginning, everybody know MAD is, well, crazy. And according to TEACUP, good chance there is something fake about this nice Nash equilibrium.'
'How good a chance?' asked Benjamin.
'Eighty percent,' replied Anton.
Benjamin remembered: the two incomplete graphs, and above them the blinking red number.
Eighty percent.
'That's… incredible.' He ran a hand through his hair, felt the fatigue catching up with him again. He wished Samuel were there with them, patiently explaining, coaching Benjamin's thinking in the right direction… He even felt he wouldn't mind a good, stiff shot of scotch right now.
'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I'm still very tired. And even if you're right, there's still a lot I don't understand. Why would anyone kill Jeremy over this? For that matter, why would they kill Edith? And how does all this even connect with her work?'
'I show you.' Anton leaned over to the computer, moved the cursor around and opened one of the files, then turned the screen so Benjamin could see what was displayed. Benjamin recognized it from the Gadenhower file.
'See this?' Anton pointed at the formulae. 'All about how bees use enemies to make hive act this way, that way.'
'Something Edith called 'swarm intelligence,' ' said Benjamin.
'Exactly so,' said Anton. 'Bees a kind of… model. For how people act even when not sure why they do what they do. Beehive a kind of conspiracy without little workers knowing is conspiracy. Understand?'
Then Benjamin remembered something Edith had said in her lab. 'What appears random is really a bunch of small acts, all of them overlapping, interacting, until finally what you get is-'
'Called 'emergent phenomenon.' Too complex to see right away. Looks like chaos, but really strategy. Fletcher talks to Edith, puts that into TEACUP… suddenly he calls you, has heart attack, and all hell breaks loose.' Anton sat back, making the chair squeak loudly. 'Was maybe key TEACUP needed.'
Benjamin thought for a moment. 'Edith's research is about how what looks like a conspiracy really isn't, yes?'
Anton smiled broadly. 'And if you turn it around?' He waited for Benjamin to think that over.
'Then…' Benjamin looked up. 'It would be a model for how what doesn't look like a conspiracy really is?'
'Again, smart kid,' Anton said. 'So smart kid, know plan for end of world?'
'Uh… no,' Benjamin said.
'I show you.'
Anton stood up, went to the blackboard and turned it over to the blank side.
He drew a big circle on the left side of the board and inside it he wrote one word in capital letters: SIOP.
'This is United States plan for nuclear war. SIOP. Single Integrated Operational Plan.' He drew many lines out
