Emma Stoney:

“We are invoking deep principles of scientific thinking,” Cornelius Taine said. “Copernicus pointed out that the Earth moves around the sun, not the other way around, and so we were displaced from the center of the universe. The Copernican principle has guided us ever since. Now we see Earth as just one star, unexceptional, among billions in the Galaxy.

“We don’t expect to find ourselves in a special place in space. Why should we expect to be in a special place in time! But that is what you have to accept, you see, if you believe humankind has a future with very distant limits. Because in that case we must be among the very first humans who ever lived.”

“Get to the point,” Malenfant said softly.

“All right. Based on arguments like this, we think a catastrophe is awaiting humankind. A universal extinction, a little way ahead.

“We call this the Carter catastrophe.”

Emma shivered, despite the warmth of the day.

Malenfant had suggested they follow up Cornelius Taine’s sudden intrusion into their lives by accepting his invitation to come to the New York head offices of Eschatology, Incorporated. Emma resisted. In her view they had far more important things to talk about than the end of the world. But Malenfant insisted.

Cornelius, it seemed, had gotten under his skin.

So here they were: the three of them sitting at a polished table big enough for twelve, with small inlaid softscreens. On the wall was a gray-glowing monitor screen.

Malenfant sucked aggressively at a beer. “Eschatology,” he snapped. “The study of the end of things. Right? So tell me about the end of the world, Cornelius. What? How?”

“That we don’t know,” Cornelius said evenly. “There are many possibilities. Impact by an asteroid or a comet, another dinosaur killer? A giant volcanic event? A global nuclear war is still possible. Or perhaps we will destroy the marginal, bio-maintained stability of the Earth’s climate. As we go on, we find more ways for the universe to destroy us — not to mention new ways in which we can destroy ourselves. This is what Escha-tology, Inc., was set up to consider. But there’s really nothing new in this kind of thinking. We’ve suspected that humanity was doomed to ultimate extinction since the middle of the nineteenth century.”

“The Heat Death,” Malenfant said.

“Yes. Even if we survive the various short-term hazards, entropy must increase to a maximum. In the end the stars must die, the universe will cool to a global uniformity a fraction above absolute zero, and there will be no usable energy, anywhere.”

“I thought there were ways out of that,” Malenfant said. “Something to do with manipulating the Big Crunch. Using the energy of a collapsing universe to live forever.”

Cornelius laughed. “There have been ingenious models of how we might escape the Death, survive a Big Crunch. But they are all based on pushing our best theories of physics, quantum mechanics and relativity, into areas where they break down — such as the singularity at the end of a collapsing universe. Anyway we already know, from cosmological data, that there is no Big Crunch ahead of us. The universe is doomed to expand forever, without limit. The Heat Death, in one form or another, seems inevitable.”

“But that would give us billions of years,” Malenfant said.

“In fact more,” Cornelius replied. “Orders of magnitude

more.”

“Well, perhaps we should settle for that,” Malenfant said

dryly.

“Perhaps. Still, the final extinction must come at last. And the fact of that extinction is appalling, no matter how far downstream it is.”

“But,” Emma said skeptically, “if you’re right about what you said in the desert, we don’t have trillions of years. Just a couple of centuries.”

Cornelius was watching Malenfant, evidently hoping for a reaction. “Extinction is extinction; if the future must have a terminus, does it matter when it comes?”

“Hell, yes,” Malenfant said. “I know I’m going to die someday. That doesn’t mean I want you to blow my brains out right now.

Cornelius smiled. “Exactly our philosophy, Malenfant. The game itself is worth the playing.”

Emma knew Cornelius felt he had won this phase of the argument. And, gradually, step by step, he was drawing Malenfant into his lunacy.

She sat impatiently, wishing she wasn’t here.

She looked around the small, oak-paneled conference room. There was a smell of polished leather and clean carpets: impeccable taste, corporate lushness, anonymity. The only real sign of unusual wealth and power, in fact, was the enviable view — from a sealed, tinted window — of Central Park. They were high enough here to be above the park’s main UV dome. She saw people strolling, children playing on the glowing green grass, the floating sparks of police drones everywhere.

Emma wasn’t sure what she had expected of Eschatology. Maybe a trailer home in Nevada, the walls coated with tabloid newspaper cuttings, the interior crammed with cameras and listening gear. Or perhaps the opposite extreme: an ultramodern facility with a giant virtual representation of the organization’s Mister Big beamed down from orbit, no doubt stroking his white cat.

But this office, here in the heart of Manhattan, was none of that. It was essentially ordinary. That made it all the more scary, of course.

Malenfant said now, “So tell me how you know we only have two hundred years.”

Cornelius smiled. “We’re going to play a game.”

Malenfant glared.

Cornelius reached under the table and produced a wooden box, sealed up. It had a single grooved outlet, with a wooden lever alongside. “In this box there are a number of balls. One of them has your name on it, Malenfant; the rest are blank. If you press the lever you will retrieve the balls one at a time, and you may inspect them. The retrieval will be truly random.

“I won’t tell you how many balls the box contains. I won’t give you the opportunity to inspect the box, save to draw out the balls with the lever. But I promise you there are either ten balls in here — or a thousand. Now. Would you hazard which is the true

number, ten or a thousand?”

“Nope. Not without evidence.”

“Very wise. Please, pull the lever.”

Malenfant drummed his fingers on the tabletop. Then he pressed the lever.

A small black marble popped into the slot. Malenfant inspected it; it was blank. Emma could see there was easily room for a thousand such balls in the box, if need be.

Malenfant scowled and pressed the lever again.

His name was on the third ball he produced.

“There are ten balls in the box,” Malenfant said immediately.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because if there were a thousand in there it’s not likely I’d reach myself so quickly.”

Cornelius nodded. “Your intuition is sound. This is an example of Bayes’ rule, which is a technique for assigning probabilities to competing hypotheses with only limited information. In fact—” He hesitated, calculating. “ — the probability that you’re right is now two-thirds, on the basis of your ball being third out.”

Emma tried to figure that for herself. But, like most probability problems, the answer was counterintuitive.

“What’s your point, Cornelius?”

“Let’s think about the future.” Cornelius tapped the softscreen embedded in the tabletop before him. The small monitor before Emma lit up, and a schematic graph drew itself elegantly on the screen. It was a simple exponential curve, she recognized, a growth rising slowly at first, steepening up to a point labeled NOW. Cornelius said, “Here is a picture of the growth of the human population over time. You can see the steep rise in recent centuries. It is a remarkable fact that ten percent of all the humans who have ever existed are alive now. More than five percent of all humans, Malenfant, were born after you were.