slightly cross. ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like to be faced with a set of choices that are irrevocable and also unique.’
‘Well, you’re supposed to be brighter than I am, though one would hardly think so, judging by results. But I had no idea you hadn’t always been … wherever you are. And whatever that means.’
‘It means everywhere, if we’re going to go into it, as you know perfectly well, though not everywhere equally all the time, of course. As for my always having been around, I have. But there have been developments. You could put a date to the point at which I found out I was around, so to speak. Quite a while ago, that was. It was at the same stage, in fact it was the same thing, as my discovery of what I was and what I could do.’
‘All that part of it, the doing, must be pretty satisfying.’
‘Oh yes, very, in a way. But it does go on rather. An awful lot of it’s not much more than duty, these days.. And I keep thinking of things it’s too late to do. And things I oughtn’t to do, but which have a certain appeal. Sweeping changes. Can you imagine the temptation of altering all the physical laws, or working with something that isn’t matter, or simply introducing new rules? Even minor things like cosmic collisions, or plonking a living dinosaur —just one—down in Piccadilly Circus? Not easy to resist.’
‘What about making life a little less hard on people?’
‘No prospect of that, I’m afraid. Much too tricky from the security point of view. I daren’t take the chance of coming that far out into the open. Some of your chaps have found out quite enough already. Your friend Milton, for instance.’ The young man nodded over at my bookshelves. ‘He caught on to the idea of the work of art and the game and the rules and so forth. Just as well it never quite dawned on him who Satan was, or rather who he was a piece of.. I’d have had to step in there, if it had.’
I looked at him, noticing again how pale he was..
‘Well….’ He turned his mouth down. ‘A little heart attack, perhaps. Paralytic stroke. That kind of thing.’
‘You must have plenty of less crude methods than that up your sleeve.’
‘Well … There’s such a lot that’s ruled out if you’ve got free will, you see. It makes life difficult for everybody, I know, but you can’t do without it. And it isn’t as if there weren’t still a very great deal that isn’t ruled out in the least. I must be off; I’ve been self-indulgent enough. But let me give you one piece of advice. Use the Church where appropriate. Oh, I don’t mean go and listen to that posturing idiot Sonnenschein making me out to be a sort of suburban Mao Tse-tung. But remember that he’s a priest of the Church, and as such he has certain techniques at his disposal. You’ll see what I mean when the time comes. Just, remember you’re getting this from someone who, whatever you think his shortcomings may be, does indisputably know more than you do. Now, in return for putting up with me, and for the whisky, you can ask me one question. Want a moment to consider?’
‘No. Is there an after-life?’
He frowned and cleared his throat. ‘I suppose there’s nothing else you could call it, really. It’s nothing like here or anything you’ve ever imagined and I can’t describe it to you. But you’ll never be free of me, while this lot lasts.’
‘Isn’t it going to last for ever?’
‘That’s a further question, but never mind. The answer is that I don’t know. I’ll have to see. I mean that. Do you know, it’s about the only absolutely fascinating, first-class, full-sized problem I’ve never started to go into? Anyway, you’ll find out. Do you want to remember what we’ve been saying, and everything?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right.’ The young man, moving like a young man, got to his feet. ‘Thank you, Maurice, I really have enjoyed it. Well meet again.
‘I’m sure we will.’
‘When I’m in my … executive capacity. Yes. You’ll come to see the point of that part of me in the end, you know. Everybody does. Some more than others, of course.’
‘Which sort am I?’
‘Oh, the sort that’s more inclined to appreciate me, obviously. You think about it, and you’ll find I’m right. Ah.’ He felt in a waistcoat pocket of the conservatively tailored suit, and brought out a small bright object, which he handed to me. ‘A little keepsake.’
It was a slender and very beautiful silver crucifix of (I would have guessed) late Italian Renaissance workmanship, but as new as if it had been fashioned an hour before.
He nodded in confirmation. ‘Nice, isn’t it? Though I say so myself. I wish I could find a way of making it genuinely difficult for somebody in my position to run up stuff like that.’
‘Is it you? I mean the …‘
‘Oh yes. A piece of me.’
‘That was coming out into the open, wasn’t it?’
‘Mm. I must have been bored, I suppose. I thought, why not? Then I thought I was heading straight for disaster. I needn’t have worried, need I? He hasn’t made much difference to anything, as you see.’
‘But you were telling me just now that the Church was important.’
‘Well, in a way. It can’t help being. After all, it was me He was a piece of. Goodbye, Maurice.’
The crucifix jerked and spun in my hand, twisted itself away before I could close my fist on it, fell non- perpendicularly to the floor and twirled off towards a corner. As I scrambled in pursuit I heard his genial, sincerely amused laugh, and then, just after the flash of silver had disappeared into a crack between wainscot and floor, a deep ascending grumble which presently resolved and separated itself into the sounds of tractor and TV set rising towards normal pitch. I was at the front window long before they had reached it, in time to see the unique sight of reality moving from slow motion to ordinary motion, dust particles and wisps of smoke accelerating, a man engaged in coming to life, his arm circling at an increasing rate as he returned the handkerchief to his pocket. Then everything was as it should have been.
I left the window, but with nowhere in particular to go. My heart beat twice in a fraction of a second, stopped while I plunged forward and grasped the back of a dining-chair, then gave such a slam inside me that I bent in the middle and at the knees and nearly pulled the chair over. The pain in my back came while I was in the act of moving my hand to the spot, and began steadily expanding and contracting in a new way. I felt sweat spring out on the palms of my hands and my chest and face, and my breathing quickened. All the fear I had escaped during the young man’s visit was upon me now, or its symptoms were. I found the whisky-bottle, drank a little, prevented myself from drinking more and washed down three pills with water. I realized there were two things that had to be done at once.
At the doorway I could not control a momentary hesitation, but then was out and hurrying down the passage. I found Amy, with Victor diagonally across her lap, looking at a cricket scoreboard on the screen.
‘Darling, what time is it?’
She said without moving, Twenty past four.’
‘Please look at your watch. No, show it to me.’
The small clock-face she wore at her wrist said four twenty-two. I looked at my own watch: four forty-six. A huge reason for fear departed, and left me feeling much as before. I started clumsily shifting the hands of my watch.
Still looking at the screen, Amy said conversationally, ‘So I tell lies about the time now.’
‘But you didn’t tell a lie. It was—’
‘You thought I had. You wouldn’t believe me when I told you. You had to see for yourself.’
‘Well, you hadn’t looked at your watch.’
‘Just before you came in I had.’
‘Sorry, darling, but I didn’t know that, and I wanted to make sure.’
‘Okay, Dad..’
‘Sorry.’
‘I don’t suppose you want to watch Pirate Planet with me, do you?’ she asked in the same tone as before. ‘It comes on at five five.’
‘I’ll see. I’ve got a lot to do, but I’ll try.’
‘Okay.’
Next, I went to the office and collected the still-active torch of the two Diana and I had used in the early hours of that day, fetched from the utilities room the same hammer and chisel as before, plus a jemmy, and returned to the dining-room. It took me only a few minutes to get a fair-sized section of the carpet up, but the
