Alien Accounts by John Sladek

put it that way to Beddoes, a creature who swam in a private sea of scepticism. Beddoes only said, ‘Indeed?’ but Corcoran couldn’t leave it there.
    ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘What do you say to that?’
    ‘It sounds like good news for the manufacturers of cardboard model pyramids, bad news for manufacturers of razor blades. How do you account for it?’
    Corcoran leapt at the chance. ‘Well, we know that metal edges are made of crystals. If they wear down, maybe they can be re-grown. We also know that crystals can be grown, given the proper magnetic fields –’
    ‘Cardboard being a great magnetizer?’ Beddoes said. ‘I see. Well, when I see a properly-conducted test that establishes this “truth”, I’ll. look into it. Meanwhile I might remind you of one razor which has not needed re-sharpening since the year 1350: Ockham’s Razor. That is the principle that one must not look for complex answers until one has failed to find any simple ones.’
    I was to remember that conversation again.
    Dr Harry Beddoes could easily have committed murder and escaped punishment, if only because he could not be picked out of an identity parade: He had no face. One might remember his heavy figure, his rumpled grey suit, eyes of some sort peering out through thick glasses, but nothing more. No – there’s no other word for it – no soul.
    He could be found each evening at six o’clock, blending in to one corner of the Faculty Lounge. With his back to the great window, an ocean of pale green carpet stretching away before him, and an overflowing ashtray at his elbow, he was ready to hold court.
    The Lounge was like the lounge in any airport: formica tables, chrome chairs and lines of perspective that leave no place for the eye to rest. Instead the eye would hunt and hunt, as though looking for one’s lost relative, but finally alighting only on a blemish in the corner.
    We inevitably found ourselves drinking with Beddoes and suffering his little jibes. Smith said it was good for us, having as a kind of devil’s advocate a determined sceptic like Beddoes, who was always willing to test our theories, even to destruction.
    That evening we talked of Arthur Koestler’s latest book on strange coincidences.
    Dr Smith said, ‘Mind you, I’m not entirely convinced that all these cases are meaningful. But you’ll have to admit, some are most intriguing. Take the example of the man who flings himself in front of a London Underground train. It hits him but does not run over him. Because, at the same instant, some passenger has pulled the emergency handle. The train stops just in time.’
    Beddoes’s eyes widened behind his thick glasses. ‘If only Koestler knew where to stop,’ he said.
    ‘Meaning what, exactly?’
    Beddoes sighed. ‘Meaning that the story is a
rumour
, whose only source Koestler seems to have found is a hospital doctor. The doctor wasn’t himself at the accident. If we can’t get at the facts in a story, why stop at repeating it?’
    I said, ‘I don’t follow. What else could he do?’
    ‘One might make it into an even more meaningful story. Say the passenger was a twin brother of the man who threw himself in front of the train. Or say that, the night before, the passenger had a premonition of disaster. He dreamed –’
    ‘Very amusing,’ Smith said. ‘You feel, then, that it’s a case of “Don’t confuse me with the facts”?’
    Beddoes lit a cigarette and dropped the match on the floor. ‘I suppose facts can be confusing, if we’re speaking of coincidence. After all, is anything irrelevant? The most trivial events suddenly make “sense”, do they not? One man looks into the mirror while shaving and says, “Today I’ll grow a moustache.” A thousand miles away, a second man decides to shave off his moustache,
at the same instant
. Is it all part of the master plan? A law of conservation?’
    I started to speak, but he went on:
    ‘Or suppose that I own a beagle, and Corcoran here owns an