‘No doubt. Anyway, I don’t much care for doing what you want. Your record doesn’t impress me.’
‘I dare say it doesn’t, in your sense of impress. But all sorts of chaps have noticed that I can be very hard on those who don’t behave as I feel they should. That ought to weigh with you.’
‘It doesn’t much, when I think of how hard you can be on people who couldn’t possibly have done anything to offend you.’
‘I know, children and such. But do stop talking like a sort of anti-parson, old man. It’s nothing to do with offending or punishing or any of that father-figure stuff; it’s purely and simply the run of the play. No malice in the world. Well, I think you’ll take notice of what I’ve said when you turn it over in your mind afterwards.’
I could hear my watch ticking in the silence, and thought interestedly to myself that it was the only one on the planet still going. ‘The run of the play can’t be going all that well for you if you have to keep taking these trips of yours.’
‘The play is all right, thank you. In fact, I’ve been able to cut the trips down a good deal in the last hundred or two hundred years. It’s still patchy, mind you. Nothing for nearly three months, and now today, besides you, in fact at this very moment, if I can use the expression, I’m dropping in on a woman in California who’s got the wrong idea about something. Just —how shall I put it?—saving myself a bit of sweat. Oh, and don’t waste your time trying to get in touch with her, because she won’t remember anything about it.’
‘Shall I remember?’
‘I don’t see why not. I’ve been assuming so, but it’s really up to you. We can leave it until just before I go, can’t we? See how you feel.’
‘Thanks. Would you like another of those?’
‘Well, yes, I think perhaps just one more, don’t you? Marvellous.’
I said from the drinks cupboard, ‘But you must be able to save yourself sweat without having to turn up in the flesh like this. Distance and time and so on are no object with you, after all.’
‘Distance agreed. Time’s another matter. Oh, there’s a lot in what you say. The truth is, I enjoy my trips for their own sake. Self-indulgent of me, which is why I try to limit their number. But they are fun.’
‘What sort of fun?’
He sighed again and clicked his tongue. ‘It’s difficult without denaturing the whole thing. Still. You’re a chess-player, Maurice, or you were in your undergraduate days. You remember, I mean you must remember wishing you could be down on the board among the pieces, just for two or three moves, to get the feel of it, without at the same time stopping running the game. That’s about as near as I can get.’
‘The whole thing’s a game, is it?’ I had returned with the drinks.
‘In the sense that it’s not a particularly, uh … edifying or significant business, it is, yes. In other ways it’s not unlike an art, an art and a work of art rolled into one. I know you think that’s rather frivolous. It isn’t really. It’s entirely a matter of how it’s all grown up,’ said the young man, lowering his voice and staring into his whisky. ‘Between ourselves, Maurice, I think I took some fairly disputable decisions right at the start, not having foreknowledge. Honestly, this foreknowledge business is too absurd. As if I could carry on at all if I had that! Well, then I was stuck with those decisions and their results in practice. And I couldn’t go back on them; one thing nobody’s ever credited me with is the power of undoing what I’ve done, of abolishing historical fact and so on. I often wish I could— well, occasionally I do. It’s not that I want to be cruel, not that so much as finding that’s what I seem to be turning out to be. Not an easy situation, you know. I just realized that I was there, or here, or wherever you please, and on my own, and with these powers. I must say I wonder how you’d have managed.’ He sounded 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.’