He was used to taking for granted that he was somebody.
It was a measure of the success Horad and Genua and Orlalee had achieved that he should have gone on believing, or rather not worrying about, this aspect of his nature until now. He must, he realised, correspond in minute detail to the version of Lodovico Zaras who, aeons ago, had discovered that he was due to die of cancer and preferred to choose his own moment and his own way to leave the world.
But he was-not that person.
He-now was not some body. He was some one.
And the distinction was indescribably important.
Ghosts!
“You arrived at understanding,” they said when they returned.
“Yes, slow on the uptake though I was.”
“There will be others.” The problem was dismissed with something like a casual wave. “For those who date back furthest, it is not improbable that centuries will go by while they gradually begin to perceive the universe as it is instead of in the manner which their gross, half-evolved brains allowed them to accept. But it is not of course the brain which matters, is it?” Lodovico knew exactly what was meant. Now. And if he could do it, so could others. He said, “Have you chosen the date?”
“As nearly as we can. We have been at pains to calculate in the sort of terms you used to apply. In less than half a million years it will no longer matter what becomes of Earth. Let it freeze or burn, let it wander the interstellar gulf or fall into the heart of the sun. There will be no more men and women. We shall have recalled and re-perceived every human being who ever existed, free like you to go everywhere, experience everything, and survive to remember what happened. Thank you, Lodovico. You gave us precisely what we dreamed of. There can be no greater gift in time or space.”
“But,” he said, thinking of termination in his simple, primitive fashion, “if there are to be no more humans . . .”
“It is for the best reason,” they replied. “We created you to help us determine whether our species has engendered as much consciousness as is proper to it. The fact that you are as-you-are is the evidence we wanted. The ambition of a rational, intelligent species is not as-much-as-possible, but enough.”
“At Saturn I ran across a similar decision,” Lodovico said. “I do not yet see what you mean. But in the certainty that I eventually shall, I am glad to abide by the conclusion of mankind.”
“It is good,” they said, and went about the necessary business.
So in ripe time it was done, and mankind died as a material species. But its hordes of ghosts were billions strong, and went to compare notes with strangers who had made the like discovery, to confirm or disprove what they had found out about the universe, and often enough learned they had been wrong.
Often enough to keep them curious and intrigued for at least the current cosmic cycle. Even immortality cannot shrink the gap between the galaxies.
Sic fiat.
The Taste of the Dish
and the Savour of the Day
The Baron’s circumstances had altered since our only previous encounter a year ago. This I was prepared for. His conversation at that time had made it abundantly clear that he had, as the charmingly archaic phrase goes, “expectations.”
I was by no means sure they would materialise . . . Still, even though I half suspected him of being a confidence trickster, that hadn’t stopped me from taking a considerable liking to him. After all, being a novelist makes me a professional liar myself, in a certain sense.
So, finding myself obliged to visit my publishers in Paris, I dropped a note to what turned out to be an address the Baron had left. He answered anyway, in somewhat flowery fashion, saying how extremely pleased he would be were I to dine with him tête-à-tête at home—home now being an apartment in an expensive block only a few minutes from what Parisians still impenitently call l’Étoile. I was as much delighted as surprised; for him to have moved to such a location implied that there had indeed been substance in his former claims.
Yet from the moment of my arrival I was haunted by a sense of incongruity.
I was admitted by a man-servant who ushered me into a salon, cleanly if plainly decorated, and furnished in a style neither fashionable nor démodé, but nonetheless entirely out of keeping, consisting mainly of the sort of chairs you see at a pavement cafe, with a couple of tables to match, and a pair of cane-and- wicker armchairs. The impression was of a collection put together in the thirties by a newly-married couple down on their luck, who had hoped to replace everything by stages and found they couldn’t afford to after having children.
I was still surveying the room when the Baron himself entered, and his appearance added to my feeling of unease. He greeted me with a restrained version of his old effusiveness; he settled me solicitously in one of the armchairs—it creaked abominably!—and turned to pour me an aperitif. I took the chance of observing him in detail. And noticed . . .
For example, that although it was clean and crisply pressed and was of excellent quality, the suit he had on this evening was one I remembered from a year ago—then trespassing on, now drifting over, the verge of shabbiness. His shoes were to match: brilliantly polished, yet discernibly wrinkled. In general, indeed, so far as his appearance was concerned, whatever he could attend to for himself—as his manicure, his shave, the set of his tie-knot—was without a flaw. But his haircut, it immediately struck me, was scarcely the masterpiece of France’s finest barber.
Nor was his
