The Non-Statistical Man

There had been messages telling of routine

exploration, describing the cold, dead surface of the satellite.

But within hours, almost, there

came news of a horrible disaster ....

TOMORROW'S WORLD

through the minds of

TODAY'S BEST WRITERS

CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

LESTER DEL REY JAMES BLISH

DAMON KNIGHT POUL ANDERSON

ALGIS BUDRYS ROBERT SILVERBERG

MILTON LESSER RAYMOND F. JONES

M. C. PEASE FRANK BELKNAP LONG MANLY BANISTER

and

BELMONT SCIENCE FICTION

NOVELETS OF SCIENCE FICTION

SIX AND THE SILENT SCREAM

THE HOUNDS OF TINDALOS

WORLDS WITHOUT END

RARE SCIENCE FICTION

THE DARK BEASTS

WAY OUT THINGS

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BELMONT BOOKS • NEW YORK CITY

THE NON-STATISTICAL MAN

A BELMONT BOOK-May 1964

Second printing May 1968

published by arrangement with

Raymond F. Jones and Scott

Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.

Published by Belmont Productions, Inc.

1116 First Ave., New York, N. Y. 10021

©
1964 by Raymond F. Jones

Acknowledgments!

"The Non-Statistlcal Man," © 1956, Columbia Publications, Inc.

"The Moon Is Death," © 1953, Columbia Publications, Inc.

"Intermission Time," © 1953, Columbia Publications, lnc.

"The Gardener," © 1957, Columbia Publications, Inc.

Covers Printed in U.S.A. Body Text Printed in Canada.

Charles Bascomb
was a man who loved figures—the genuine, Arabic kind, that is. Not that he didn’t adequately appreciate the, other kind, too. Mrs. Bascomb was quite good in that department, but Charles had come to take her somewhat for. granted after fourteen years of married life—plus three young Bascombs who had taught him what a great obligation can be implied by so small a number.

Bascomb considered himself a realist, and pointed to his passion for figures to prove it. If an opinion were given —whether on the price of hamburger in Denver, or the difference between the climate of his home town of Land-bridge, and that of Los Angeles, California—he demanded figures and odds.

Yet, in his world of endlessly marching columns of black numerals, there was escape, too. It was clean and cold and precise here. The scatterbrained effusions and emotionalism of Sarah Bascomb were lacking. Charles Bascomb loved his wife, but she
was
scatterbrained. And the utterly irrational demands of the small Bascombs could not penetrate.

All irrationality was swept aside, and here, and here alone, could be had a clear view of the real world. It would have been difficult for Bascomb to say, if the question had been put to him, which was the real world and which was fairyland. Mrs. Bascomb and the kids were real enough— in their place—but they couldn’t possibly fit in the realm of precise figures, which was the
real
world.

Fortunately, no one ever asked Mr. Bascomb about this, and it was never pushed into his awareness beyond an occasional fuzzy, gnawing feeling that there should be more congruity between these two areas than there was.

It was generally quite deliciously satisfying to him to know that he could tell, for example—with almost perfect accuracy—how many of the citizens he passed on the street on the way to the station each night, and how many of these would not be alive by the end of the year. He could tell almost precisely how many would be alive in another five years, provided he had their present ages, of course. He could tell how many would die of diabetes, and heart trouble, and cancer.

There was a satisfaction in knowing these things. There was a satisfaction in his work of assembling such information and producing the proper deductions. (He was Chief Statistical Analyst of the New England Mutual Cooperative Insurance Company.) There was a sense of power in it.

But Bascomb believed he was a humble man. The power was in the figures, in the statistical methods which constituted the temple wherein he but served as priest.

At the age of thirty-seven he believed he would serve his god of figures for the remainder of his life. And, certainly, on that morning of April tenth, when one of the Junior Statisticians came to his office, he considered himself safe and secure in the groove he would run in until he himself became a statistic in the Company’s books.

Bascomb looked up and smiled pleasantly as Hadley approached his desk—there was no reason for being otherwise.

“Good morning, Hadley,” he said. “You look as if the week-end treated you well. Mrs. Hadley get over her cold all right?”

“She’s fine, Mr. Bascomb.” Hadley was a youngster, still in his first year of marriage. He shared Bascomb’s passion for figures—Arabic—and hoped to rise high in the firm.

Hadley spread out some long sheets of paper and bent over the desk. “We ran across something interesting last week that I thought I’d like to show you. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“What is it?” said Bascomb.

“District reports of claims in Division 3 show some curious anomalies. In the town of Topworth, we had eighteen claims registered on all types of policies and—”

“That is not an unusual number for a town of that size.”

“No—but here’s the catch. Those policies had been taken out less than six weeks ago, with only two exceptions. Now, here in Burraston we have nine claims—all on policies less than six weeks old, with no exceptions. And in Victorburg—”

“Let me see that!”

Bascomb drew the sheets toward him and adjusted the heavy, shellframed glasses that seemed to grip the sides of his head rather than rest on his ears.

“In Victorburg—twenty seven claims on policies only four weeks old.” He ripped the glasses away from., his face and looked up. “How large is Victorburg, Hadley?” “Only thirty-two thousand, Mr. Bascomb.” He waited, knowing he’d said enough for the moment.

Bascomb bit the tip' of. the earpiece on his glasses and looked down again. He rustled the wide sheets of paper. “This is one of the strangest things I have seen since I’ve been in the insurance business,” he said. “We know that in statistics we sometimes encounter long runs of an anomolous nature, but three cities like this—”

“There are seven altogether,” said Hadley. “I went back and checked over some of our more recent records in the same district. The other four are less pronounced—six to eight each—but they are there.”

“Very strange, to say the least,” said Mr. Bascomb mildly now. “I think I’d like very much to follow up the details and see if any explanation can be found—beyond merely assigning it as an unusual run.”

“I have all the claim papers on my desk.”

“Get me the initial applications also. Was there any consistency shown in the salesmen who wrote the policies?”

“No. About a dozen different salesmen are involved. The only pertinent factor I’ve found is that in these last three towns we have new agencies, which have put on a big campaign backed by our national advertising. But that doesn’t explain, of course, why they should have written policies on which claims were to be made so quickly.”

“No, of course not; get me all the papers available.” Bascomb spent the rest of the morning computing the normal claims expectancy for each of the towns involved. He figured the probabilities of encountering such runs as had come up; he examined in detail the applications of all the policyholders.

On the death claims there was the usual medical certification showing the applicants to be in acceptable health at time of policy writing. Two had died of polio; one in a car accident; four of coronary trouble—that should have been caught! There were two cancer cases—they should have been found, too. Some of the trouble was evidently
in the medical department; he’d see that some overhauling was done there.

But blaming the examiners would not dispose of the whole problem, by any means; the accident and liability claims could not be dismissed so easily. There was only one factor of any significance which he was able to discover. Better than ninety percent of the applications had come in through voluntary response to the company’s advertising. They hadn’t been sold by the usual foot-in-the-door salesman Bascomb so thoroughly disapproved of.

That
would be worth noting to the sales department!

But, on the other hand, had their advertising suddenly become so much better? He called the advertising manager and asked for copies of whatever displays had been available in the seven towns during the period the policies were sold.

He was interrupted then by some current items that killed the better part of the afternoon. When he finally got around to the advertisements, it was almost time to quit. It would be too rough if he missed the five-seventeen— there would be time enough to get back to this problem tomorrow.

Yet, that would not do, either; there was something too persistently nagging about this, too many “queer” aspects to let the matter alone even overnight. He broke a long standing rule between him and Sarah Bascomb, and stuffed the entire mass of papers into his briefcase to take home.

Sarah Bascomb was well aware that she didn’t live in the same world with her husband, and that made it rather nice, she thought. It would have been exceedingly boring if they both Talked of nothing but expectancy tables and statistical probabilities, or the PTA and young Chuck’s music lessons.

As it was, she thought they got along fine. She listened with honest attentiveness to Charles’ discussions of the ratio of cancer to coronary deaths, and the increase of both over pneumonia and other infectious diseases during the past thirty years. It was so boring as to be absolutely incredible; but she was thankful that there were men like Charles in the world to take care of these particular things—which had to be taken care of, but which no ordinary person would think of concerning himself with.

She was proud of Charles’ ability to deal with such
obscure and unpleasant material, and she listened to it because she was in love with him. It didn’t occur to her that it was in any way disloyal to feel it was all very stuffy.

In turn, Charles took an active interest in household affairs—and left all the answers up to her, which was the way she liked it. It would have been intolerable if he’d been one of those men who insist on planning the dinner menu, or picking kids’ dentist, or seeing Mr. Salers down the street when Chuck and the Salers kid had an after-school knock-down, drag-out argument.

Sarah was quite willing and able to take care of these items alone. At thirty-five she was a competent, contented, still good-looking suburban housewife without a cloud on the domestic horizon.

But on this particular April tenth she had been a trifle uneasy all day. There was the feeling that momentous things were about to happen to disturb the complacency of Charles’ life and hers. She often had such feelings and Charles told her they were ridiculous; but over the years, Sarah had sort of kept track of them. She’d discovered that these feelings always meant something, one way or another—especially when they were this strong.

So she was not surprised to see the brief case in Charles’ hand as she watched
him
from the kitchen window, coming through the breezeway to the house.