All Cry Chaos (40 page)

    "It's a method of doing science by beginning with data," said Chambi, "not with hypotheses and experiments that generate data. James worked with the raw numbers of Nature—with tens of millions of temperature readings, for example. Weather is a good case, because it's complex enough to produce unexpected behavior. It turns out that millions of similarly complex systems interact around us and in us at every moment. Each of these systems can become violently unstable. You've heard of the butterfly effect, how a puff of air in the Amazon can cause tornadoes in North America? No one can predict which puff, but in theory it can happen in any complex system."

    "Chaos," said Poincaré.

    "Exactly. Computational researchers write programs with certain rules like addition and subtraction and calculus. Then they set their computers loose on the data of Nature—say, the movements of glaciers or populations of salmons."

    "Fenster's hard drive," said Poincaré. "That was nothing but data. Millions of numbers."

    "Stock prices, Inspector. Quito and Bell were right. James was studying the markets, among other systems. Given the Dow Jones Averages over decades, or the data from other systems, he would calculate backwards to a simple equation that, if operated forward millions of times, could generate similar data. The computer generates candidate equations, which we test rigorously with new data. Most equations fail under stressing; but every so often we find one that begins to look like a fundamental law that took scientists centuries to discover through experimentation. None of this was possible before computers.

    "Other researchers studied data sets according to their interests— maybe cardiac rhythms or the spread of cholera. James was interested in everything he saw. He did not stick to one field or set of complex systems. That was the first difference between him and the others. I believe you saw his apartment—the photographs?"

    "I did," said Poincaré.

    "His photos were the visible evidence of the mathematics underlying each of the systems he studied. In programming his computers, he assumed that lightning bolts looked like the ridge line of mountains because they
are
alike—mathematically. This was the second difference between James and the others. He investigated similarities, whereas others looked for differences. Once his computer program was in place, he studied data of all sorts: wind flow, elk migrations, mating patterns of dung beetles, war dead. What he found was monumental—or would have been, had he published. Every data set of every system he ever studied, thousands of them, reduced to a variant of a
single
equation. He could not find a disconfirming example. He discovered a law, Inspector—and Quito and Bell wanted to keep that to themselves and exploit it."

    "How?" said Poincaré. "They would have needed to predict the markets. Is that remotely possible?"

    "It's an easy problem," said Chambi, "given James's approach. He fed his computers current market data and ran the equation repeatedly— faster than real time. The equation held."

    Poincaré was confused. "You told me he investigated systems in Nature. Stock values are not in Nature. The global financial markets are not in Nature—not like the meadow outside this chapel. Not like this." He plucked a weed growing from a crack in the window well.

    "I can explain," said Chambi. "Are you in Nature, Inspector, like the meadow? Like this weed?"

    "I am."

    "And would you agree there are thousands of complex systems operating in your body this very moment, systems that will continue to operate until you die? Insulin regulation, digestion, blood pressure? And would you agree that systems will be in place after you die to break down your flesh and bones?"

    "Yes," he said. "I know this is true."

    "Well, then. James took this understanding a step further and showed how humans, both individually and in groups, are complex systems. That's to say, you, Inspector, are as complex as a storm, and the outputs of your life, just as the outputs of a storm, can be recorded and analyzed. A storm generates measureable rainfall and wind. We humans generate language, wars, economies, art, social welfare systems. The products of our hands and minds are
in N
ature every bit as much as the rain, Inspector Poincaré. James studied the distribution of notes in Mahler's Ninth Symphony and the behavior of the Dow Jones Average and found they were indistinguishable, at a deep level, from temperature variations in a low pressure system over the eastern United States. The equation he discovered enabled him to make predictions about stocks with the same degree of certainty you'd expect from a forecaster predicting how hot it will be tomorrow. The markets behaved like every other system he studied."

    
Is it possible, Poincaré wondered. He pointed to a floorboard. "Tha
t ant," he said. "If I made a grid and mapped the ant's movements—"

    "I know what you're thinking, and the answer is
yes
. Assuming you run the data through James's program, the map of the ant's movements would look a great deal like a map of the stock market or any other complex system.
Which
system doesn't matter because order and disorder are operating in all of them. It's the tension between order and disorder that matters, the
dance
, as James called it. On a good day, the system is orderly, and we can make reasonably accurate predictions. But there's no predicting what will tip a system into chaos—or when. Quito tried to tip your life into chaos by ordering the death of your granddaughter. That was a hammerblow, not a puff.

    "When Eduardo and I first met, he told me that one day fifty years ago he decided to leave his alpaca herd—something his parents instructed him never to do—and walk to the village for candy. He turned a corner and saw his father begging so their family could eat. The puff, Inspector, was not the trauma of seeing his father beg but the harmless decision of an eight-year-old who thinks the herd is fine, the village is only a kilometer away, and he'd like something sweet. That started the chain that led to Quito's ordering your granddaughter killed a half-century later. Avalanches begin the same way, with a puff—the tiniest hint of a change, nothing consequential in its own right. But the system is tipped and madness reigns. Prediction becomes impossible. In time, the system resets and order is restored."

    "Not my system," said Poincaré. "Not yet. Not ever."

    "I am so sorry for your pain, Inspector. From inside a system in chaos, you can't know what the new order will look like or when it will come. But in time, disorder
will
yield to order. It always does. The new, ordered state will differ from the previous one. Sometimes, it may even be adaptive as in the case of evolution. A new, more resilient species can emerge from chaotic episodes."

    Poincaré heard this and something savage in him rose. "There's a man sitting in The Hague who hired assassins to destroy my family! Before that he massacred half a village. You're calling his rampages
adaptive
?"

    "I'm saying it's possible. I'm saying there was a puff in this man's life just as there was in Quito's. That excuses nothing. But any complex system, including any one of us or any group of us, can be turned to madness. There was a shirt factory fire in New York in the early 1900s, and nearly 150 people burned to death. That localized chaos could not have been worse for the victims or their families. But laws protecting workers followed. Nothing like that happened again. The system state changed between employees and employers."

    The past months had cast him into the very pit of blackness. But if Chambi was right, that pit had a false bottom. One could fall further, to indifference. "Are you saying there's no forward motion without destruction?"

    "Who knows if the motion is even forward, Inspector. The beauty James saw is a terrible beauty. His equation is neutral on the death of the workers in the factory. Neutral on the death of your granddaughter. The equation is neither moral nor immoral, I'm afraid. These are human categories, not Nature's."

    He turned away and more to himself than to Chambi said: "I don't know a soul who'd willingly choose such a world."

    She rose from the bench. "Don't you see, it's beside the point whether you would choose it or not because this
is
our world, which happens to be held together by a rule. At first, I thought the news would change everything. We wouldn't have to talk about
believing
anymore. There would be no more religion without evidence. No more debate about Jesus or Buddha, who merely saw what James did without the mathematics. This is replicable science, Inspector, and it could have marked a new direction in the human story, a fresh start because no sane person could regard James's work and still think the Universe random.

    "Do you recall my student's question in the class you attended? The inference was correct: if there are rules, there must be a rule maker. I can draw no other conclusion. Believe me, I've tried resisting it, and I have colleagues who insist that complex systems order themselves. But my colleagues have no concept . . . they have no language to explain how all systems could spontaneously create the
same
order, could arise from a
single
equation. It was James's shattering insight. It changes everything. But the world isn't nearly ready. . . ."

    When she stopped, he listened to the rain and to the wind. He looked across the valley to the mountains, where water bound up in ice for millennia leapt from the glacier with a roar. Downstream there would be farms and barge traffic, cities and people. Here the world was simpler, though hardly simple. In the line where the mountains met the sky he saw a boundary as jagged and cruelly beautiful as his own life. The world ended at that jagged line.
Ended
. Where was Chloe? He wanted her back. He wanted Claire to whisper his name.

    He said: "When Fenster dies—when he dies for real—what becomes of his work?"

    "There's a box in Zurich with instructions," said Chambi.

    "Could Quito do this himself—what Bell's trying to do: pay others to discover the equation? What are the chances of another scientist replicating Fenster's achievement?"

    Chambi laughed bitterly. "It would be like your great-grandfather at the height of his powers competing with children in a math contest. It will be centuries before someone replicates James's work—at which point, unless people are a great deal better than they are now, we really will be talking about the End Times. The Quitos and Bells will tear each other apart grasping for money and power. James's insight even allows for this, for humans destroying themselves. It would be as natural as my niece choosing to skip, not walk, down the street. James's equation is indifferent as to whether we do or do not survive as a species."

    "And this is how your Rule Maker provides, Ms. Chambi?"

    She adjusted her scarf. "James saw God. He never claimed God cared."

    Poincaré was silent for a time. Even if he lacked the knowledge to understand all she said, he had seen enough to know it was true. In two hundred years, he would not be around to stop the machinations of a future Eduardo Quito. He could stop this one, however, both for James Fenster's sake and his own. He could, at least one more time, for one more dance, be an instrument of order. "We'll end this," he said.

    "How?"

    A career distilled to a single act. He spoke without thinking, certain of what must come. "You and I will meet on the morning of August 15
^th
," he said. "In Amsterdam. You will have a life again. The equation will be safe, and James Fenster can finally live in peace with Madeleine Rainier. He deserves that. I suppose they've married by this point."

    She looked at him, bewildered.

    "What?" he said.

    "I thought you knew, Inspector. James is Madeleine's older brother."

August 15
^th
. The Lord's Day.

    The thousands who gathered in Dam Square for the 11:38 AM arrival of Christ milled about in the carnival of a lifetime. Poincaré arrived just after sunrise to a sea of tents and sleeping bags, and—no surprise—to a maximum security zone. One at a time, both those who came to be Raptured and those looking for lunchtime entertainment passed through metal detectors, then chemical residue detectors. Random body searches followed; all bags were x-rayed. When Poincaré's turn came, he identified himself as an Interpol agent. He placed a brown paper bag on a table and declared his weapon, a 9mm Beretta wrapped in its holster. Because he could provide no credentials, having returned those to Felix Robinson three weeks earlier, he expected what followed: the officer at the checkpoint confiscated the weapon and detained him.

    "Gisele De Vries," said Poincaré, as he was being cuffed to a metal bar in a van.

    "What did you say?"

    "Lieutenant De Vries will vouch for me. I've lost my credentials. I'm here on assignment. She and I worked together earlier this year at the World Trade Organization meetings. Call her."

    "The lieutenant is in charge of security for Dam Square, today," said the young man. "Wait here." Poincaré knew this, having devoted the week to preparing for his encounter with Charles Bell and Eduardo Quito. Aside from studying maps of Dam Square and surrounding buildings, he scoured the Dutch National Police database for details of the security arrangements for August 15
^th
. He assumed De Vries would be involved since she had worked the WTO meetings; he thanked his good fortune that she would be directing the show. Perhaps the buffalo nickel was changing his luck after all.

    When the officer left to find her, Poincaré figured he might as well get used to the view from inside the police van, given his plans for that morning. He sat on a metal bench within metal walls; metal fencing bolted from the outside covered a ventilation hole.
Austere
, he thought, like Peter Roy's office. If it came to that, he would contact Roy for legal advice. Minutes later, the door swung wide and De Vries, looking surprised, said: "Release this man and return his weapon. . . . Inspector Poincaré, why are you here? You should have called ahead for clearance. I apologize."