e that sacrifice bid on the last
hand?" Father and son had been partners.

"You're not concerned about losing the rubber, are you?" It had been the
only rubber Jimmy lost.

"No. It's only a game," said Jimmy. "I'm just trying to understand."

His father gave an amused groan. "It has to do with the laws of
probability and the theory of games," he said.

The boy shook his head. "Bridge," he said thoughtfully, "consists of
creating a logical process of play out of a random distribution of
values, doesn't it?"

"Yes, if you admit that your definition is a gross oversimplification. It
would hardly be a game if everything could be calculated beforehand."

"But what's missing?"

"In any game there is the element of a calculated risk."

Jimmy Holden was silent for a half-mile thinking that one over. "How," he
asked slowly, "can a risk be calculated?"

His father laughed. "In fine, it can't. Too much depends upon the
personality of the individual."

"Seems to me," said Jimmy, "that there's not much point in making a bid
against a distribution of values known to be superior. You couldn't hope
to make it; Mother and Uncle Paul had the cards."

His father laughed again. "After a few more courses in higher
mathematics, James, you'll begin to realize that some of the highest
mathematics is aimed at predicting the unpredictable, or trying to lower
the entropy of random behavior--"

Jimmy Holden's mother chuckled. "Now explain entropy," she said. "James,
what your father has been failing to explain is really not subject to
simple analysis. Who knows why any man will hazard his hard-earned money
on the orientation of a pair of dice? No amount of education nor academic
study will explain what drives a man. Deep inside, I suppose it is the
same force that drives everybody. One man with four spades will take a
chance to see if he can make five, and another man with directorships in
three corporations will strive to make it four."

Jimmy's father chuckled. "Some families with one infant will try to make
it two--"

"Not on your life!"

"--And some others are satisfied with what they've got," finished Jimmy
Holden's father. "James, some men will avoid seeing what has to be done;
some men will see it and do it and do no more; and a few men will see
what has to be done, do it, and then look to the next inevitable problem
created by their own act--"

A blinding flash of light cut a swath across the road, dazzling them.
Aroun