A God Called Neville

A God Called Neville

Introduction

My cockles have rarely been so warmed as they were this December when what I suppose we must call the Rifkind Affair, or the Pantalaimon Complex broke out. The indignation, passion, ingenuity and enthusiasm with which Srafdom flew to my support was - to say the very least - most encouraging. Thank you, everybody.

Now - I wrote the story which forms the main part of this piece back in June or July of this year as part of the background material I was putting together for The Clockmaker's Girl. It was a story which surprised me rather, but that was all right because I rather like surprises.

For a long time I didn't know where to place A God Called Neville, but I have no doubt about that now. I humbly offer it to the HDM community as a Christmas present because it is, in a curious sort of way, a Christmas story.

It begins in Lyra's world...

The Ceremony of Passage

Alfie and I decided to sit at the back of the hall. We felt that was right, seeing as how we were members neither of the Joyce family nor of the Guild of Temporalists.

We had been invited to attend a Ceremony of Passage, where the Guild celebrates the life of a Master of particular note who has died or, as the words of the Litany put it, "Passed beyond the Demesne of Time." Such events are held only rarely, Mistress Joyce had told me in her letter of invitation, for a Full Quorum of the Guild has to vote unanimously in favour of one. It seemed that Master Joyce had been held in very great honour by his peers.

So we sat on a long wooden bench at the back, next to Carrie Mason and the other servants and employees of James, Cholmondley and Joyce, and followed the Ceremony on our order-papers. It was about Time, and Life, and Life extended through and beyond Time, and it was stately and measured and solemn and grand and neither Alfie nor I could bear the beauty of it for very long without crying. After a while, Carrie slipped her hand into mine and squeezed it tightly, especially when the Grandmaster of the Guild stood up and intoned the Dates And Hours of Master Joyce's Years.

Afterwards we crossed the road and stood by ourselves for a while in Jekyll Park. It was late December and the trees were naked skeletons, robbed of their summer clothes by the gales of Autumn. They gave us little shelter from the wind, but neither did they block out the meagre light of the winter sun, and for that we were grateful.

Time to go soon, said Alfie. Yes, time to go, and one day - a nice warm day in June, perhaps - we'd come back and visit Peter's memorial. For he had no known grave, of course. We'd see Arthur again then, I hoped. I wished he could have been here today.

But first we had a duty to perform, so we recrossed to the hall and sought out Master Joyce's widow. She was standing in the entrance talking to Grandmaster Dewarth, with her two sons Daniel and Michael standing next to her. I waited until the Grandmaster had bowed and taken his leave of the family, and then I approached Mistress Joyce. I curtseyed to her and she held out her hand to me. 'Miss Moon,' she said. 'I'm so glad you could come today.' Her Montgomery spoke briefly to Alfie.

'I have to go soon, I'm afraid,' I said. 'The trains are so difficult, you know, and it gets dark so early. Thank you so much for inviting me. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Master Joyce... he was... oh, you know...' I was getting flustered. 'He was a remarkable man.'

That wasn't what I meant. It sounded like a newssheet obituary, not a tribute to my best friend. I looked into Jane Joyce's eyes. Please, I thought. Accept my love for him.

We stood motionless for half a minute or so. Then Mistress Joyce offered me her hand again and I held it briefly. 'Thank you for being with us,' she said. 'I know Peter would have wanted it. Daniel will find you a taxicab. Are you travelling from Paddington?'

'Yes.'

Lieutenant Daniel Joyce - bluff and good-looking in his officer's uniform - went out into the road to hail a cab.

'I'm sure he'll be back soon,' said Mistress Joyce. 'He's good with taxis. Oh, and there's one other thing. I want you to have this.' She slipped a small package into my hand. I thanked her. 'Open it when you're on the train, not now. Look, here's Danny. Off you go.'

'Goodbye, Mistress Joyce.'

'Goodbye.'

Daniel Joyce helped me into the taxi. He had, I noticed, his father's smile - and his serious manner too. 'Goodbye, Miss Moon,' he said, and tapped the driver's window. 'Paddington,' he told the cabbie and waved to us as we drove off. I waved back to him and his owl-daemon, Penelope.

What a nice young man, said Alfie.

Shush, you!

Once we were settled in a first-class non-smoking compartment on a Goring-bound train I undid the package Mistress Joyce had given me. As the brown paper in which she had wrapped it fell away I gasped with a shock of recognition. It was Peter's story-book, which I had first read in our attic above the Estaminet König in Geneva. It had been one of his most precious possessions, for it had come from another world; infinitely distant from ours, but nevertheless no farther away than - he had said - last Thursday. It was The Book of the Wonders of Urth and Sky.

There'd been one story in it which Alfie and I had particularly liked and which I'd thought we would never read or hear again, unless I wrote it down for us. So I curled up in the corner of the compartment with my feet underneath me, found the right page and began to read...

A God Called Neville

There was once a discontented god. The wise reader may ask why the god was discontented or, more probably, how he was discontented, or even how discontented he was. Readers who are very wise - or who have read the kind of book which affords the reader a semblance of wisdom - will smile and ask if the god was suffering from "divine discontent". Be that as it may, the god was not happy.

This god - his true name was not to be spoken by those who were merely human - had been suffering from a form of spiritual malaise for quite a long time. The concept of Time, rather like the idea of Name, can be a slippery matter when it comes to the consideration of the lives of the gods. As, indeed, is the association of Life - with its inevitable linkage with Death - with the occupation of god. As a rule, the gods have no regard for Death - it is something that only happens to other people.

In fact, any discussion of the affairs of the gods quickly comes to resemble the navigation of a dense jungle or a minefield. The slightest deviation from the path of true religious orthodoxy when speaking to - or of - the gods may lead to an unexpected and mortal explosion of divine wrath; or the imposition of a judicial sentence of eternal confusion and repeated retracing of the same fruitless track in the Forest of Theomancy. You never know who may be listening.

Therefore, in order to relieve the reader - however advanced he may be in the acquisition of wisdom - of the angst from which he may suffer when considering the comings and goings of the gods, we will say here and now that this god's name was Neville and that he had been feeling mildly, but increasingly, hacked off for the past six months or so.

To answer the wise reader's second question; Neville was suffering from a stress-related disorder. His life (for so he has permitted me to describe it, as if it were a linear, Point-A-to-Point-B, birth-to-death sort of thing) was lacking in zip, zest and pizzazz. Partly this was because he was only a junior god. There is a hierarchy in the Celestial City, just as there is on Earth. This should be clear to even the most unwise reader. Do not our human, mortal institutions derive their structure and meaning from the divine order which they reflect; as a sheet of hammered bronze presents a dulled, dimmed and distorted image of even the most beautiful of women? Truly is it said, "On Earth, as it is in Heaven."

Neville's position in the theocratic hierarchy was a lowly one. Not for him the Great Council of the gods, where cosmic matters are weighed in judgement and the future courses of the creations which comprise the Multiverse are determined. Nor was his a managerial position; charged with executing the Will of the Council and with all the resources - both material and metaphysical - of the Kingdom of Heaven at his command.

No - Neville was an Agent. He lived in one of the many accommodation blocks which ring the Outer Walls of the Celestial City; in a tenth-floor inside apartment with two small rooms - a sitting-room and a bedroom. There was no need for a kitchen in his flat, for Ambrosia - the sustenance of the gods - was regularly delivered by an angel pushing an insulated handcart. Nor was there any requirement for a bathroom as the gods do not get dirty and Ambrosia is a zero-residue food. It was said by some that many of the middle-ranking gods equipped their residences with kitchens and bathrooms so that they could keep the "common touch" or, to put it another way, increase their understanding of the human condition. Others said that they clearly did not have enough to do with their time. Whatever that may mean.

The divan in Neville's bedroom was cloud-soft and covered with silken sheets, but this story does not go there. His sitting-room was furnished with an Eames chair complete with footstool, a nice teak coffee table, a small library of crime fiction and a large plasma screen on which he could view, among other riches, perfect restorations of the VistaVision films of Alfred Hitchcock and the best of the MGM colour musicals. Neville's favourites were Rear Window and On the Town. He was a New York City boy at heart.

There is perhaps one other thing I should mention, and that was that - like many of the gods - Neville enjoyed the company of animals. He did not keep pets, for hutches, cages and kennels are anathema in Heaven. But his window was always open, and next to it stood a perch on a stand and if a passing blackbird, robin, starling or dove happened to pass by and alight on it he would welcome the creature and, if it liked, engage it in conversation.

Some Earthly theologians like to insist that if - as they claim - animals have no souls, they can have no immortal part to occupy the Holy City and its environs and are therefore not to be found there. This is patent nonsense. Even if it were true that:

The jocund cow,
Does not reflect on the why or how

it would nevertheless be grossly unfair on the denizens of the Blessed Place if they were to be forced to spend all the days of Eternity uncompanioned by the creatures they had loved in their mortal lives or be forbidden from talking to them. The skies of Heaven were full of wings, and animals great and small - the lion as well as the lamb - ran and grazed in its parks and wild places.

To the unwise reader who dares to ask whether Neville had a girlfriend and if she ever stayed the night in his apartment I would suggest - while standing at a safe distance for fear of thunderbolts - that the gods are not carnal; which is not the same as saying that they are not interested in carnality. And that is all I am going to say on the matter.

Now; to return to Neville's unhappiness. His humble position as a foot-soldier in the Legion of the Blessed was not the direct source of his dissatisfaction, for he was not an ambitious god. He did not aspire to the Councils of the Wise. He knew his limitations and was content to work within them. But indirectly, it was. Let us see how that came to be.

Neville's day began - as they all began - with a sweet chime from a set of porcelain bells fitted to the wall by his bedside. He arose refreshed from his bed of finest cumulo-cirrus - trying his best not to disturb the nymph who still slumbered there - dressed himself in glowing raiment from the armoire, drank a quick grail-goblet of Ambrosia and left the apartment; pausing only to leave a goodbye kiss on the forehead of his latest conquest. At the very moment he reached the tenth-floor lobby the elevator's doors opened for him and he was whisked to the ground floor in an instant, just in time to catch the streetcar which stopped outside the front door of his block. The tram carried him quickly and comfortably from the outskirts of Olympus along the wide boulevards which, lined with bookshops, pleasure gardens and cafés, are one of the principle tourist attractions of the Holy Metropolis, to the employees' entrance of the Ministry of Mortality. Along the way he caught up with the latest news or chatted to the other passengers.

The streetcar pulled up and Neville stepped down from it and entered the Ministry by the wide rotating doors which led from the street into the central atrium. From there he strolled across a wide marble concourse to one of the crystal elevators which serviced the building and let it carry him to his floor. It was but a short walk to his desk, which was positioned at the end of the twenty-third row of the forty-second rank of the thirty-seventh tier. Neville had earned his privileged position at the end of the row in recognition of a particularly difficult, but ultimately successful, Intercession he had accomplished a month or two previously. The other junior gods were still coming up to him by the Ambrosia cooler and saying, 'I expect you'll be leaving us soon, Neville. Going Upstairs, I shouldn't wonder.' Whenever this happened Neville smiled and nodded before returning to his desk.

A large light-up board was suspended from the ceiling at one end of the office. At the time Neville signed in that day it read:

1,426,789,125 CALLS WAITING
AVERAGE RESPONSE TIME 37 SECONDS

It was a quiet morning.

Neville's desk was made of the finest figured walnut. It was fitted with a video screen, a headset and a numerical display with two buttons mounted on the top, labelled NEXT and REFER. Some kind acolyte had placed a vase of white lilies from the Elysian Fields next to the screen. Neville put it carefully on the floor next to the pedestal, for fear of accidents. He donned his headset and turned the screen on. According to the numerical display there were twenty-six calls waiting for him. He drew a deep breath and pressed the button which was marked NEXT. The screen lit up, showing the face of a middle-aged woman in a green toga. She looked worried. So did most of Neville's callers.

'Speak, my daughter, for your prayer is heard,' said Neville into the headset's microphone.

The woman, who had been casting fragranced dust onto the family altar, bowed her head. 'Oh god of our household, grant that my baking may go well today, for Livia Fortesque, the Senator's wife, is coming to tea and she will sneer at me if my Victoria sponge is not well risen.'

This was a nice easy start to the day. 'My daughter, your prayer is answered. Do not open the oven door until the time is ready, even just to see how your cake is doing, and verily it will be a masterpiece of the baker's art.' He pressed NEXT. The woman disappeared and a schoolboy's face appeared on the screen.

'Speak, my son, for your prayer is heard,' said Neville.

'Please sir, I've not done my homework, sir, and it's due in this morning.'

'Who is your teacher, my son?' said Neville.

'Sir, it's Mister Hardwicke, sir. He'll thrash me, sir.'

So he would. Mister Hardwicke was also on Neville's register and the god knew of his harshness, driven as it was by his unacknowledged self-doubt. Neville's finger hovered over the REFER button. There was a possible conflict of interest here. But no. Household gods were expected to deal with as many of humanity's problems as they could by themselves and not refer them up the line to their superiors unless it was strictly necessary.

'My son, your prayer is answered. Do as much of your work as you can on the way to school. Sit neither at the front nor the back of the class. Do not call attention to yourself and it is possible that Mister Hardwicke will not ask you for your homework.'

Neville pressed NEXT. According to the display there were now forty-two human souls requiring his attention. It looked as if was going to be a busy day after all.

All that morning Neville listened to the prayers of his supplicants. There were children with lost cats. There was an account executive worried about meeting his monthly sales target. There was a widow who, two years after her husband's death, still laid his place at table every morning. There was a child whose parents' marriage was breaking up and who thought it was all his fault. A mother in an African village who needed to find the strength to make the ten-mile return journey to the nearest clean well. Another whose son and daughter were dying of AIDS. A faithless couple in a motel bedroom. A man lying on a Bristol pavement, clutching at his stuttering heart. A nursing sister drawing the curtains around a cancer ward bed. A priest who was losing his faith. A tired housewife with her head inside the oven door. A boy whose uncle was visiting that afternoon, and who dreaded what he would be asked to do for him. A workless man, riding his bicycle through the streets of a deserted mining village. A baby - her prayers vague and unformed but shot through with pain - lying in a freezing doorway, abandoned.

There were billions of human souls on Earth. There were many hundreds of thousands of household gods in the Ministry of Mortality busily engaged in answering their prayers. A continual torrent of worry and fear flowed from Earth to Heaven and a corresponding stream of reassurance, and the occasional Intercession, travelled in the opposite direction. For a junior god like Neville it was the whole scale of the operation that was the most appalling thing - the overwhelming tide of suffering that washed his way, the pitiful banks of consolation he piled up against it. It all seemed so pointless, so inadequate; and so did he. It hadn't always been like this. He could still remember, somewhere in the backwash of Time, when he had first come to the Ministry. Then every day had been new and challenging and every mortal problem an opportunity for redemption. In those days it had seemed to him that he was making a real difference to the well-being of Humanity. He had felt that he was, in his own small way, helping to steer the souls in his care along the sure and certain path to Heaven.

But now... There was nothing special about this day. It could have been any routine day in Eternity. Neville pressed the NEXT button and a red-faced man appeared on the screen.

'Speak, my son, for your prayer is heard,' said Neville.

'That bastard, he's just cut me up. Fix him!' said the red-faced man.

'I'm sorry,' said Neville, 'but I don't know what you mean.'

'I mean,' said the red-faced man, speaking very slowly and one-word-at-a-time as if to an imbecile, 'that a fool in a Ford Capri has just cut into the lane in front of me. I want you to sort out the presumptuous idiot.'

'Has he harmed you?'

'No, of course he hasn't harmed me. But I had to jam on my brakes. There could have been an accident. Now damn well sort him!'

'How would you like me to sort him?'

'Oh, kill him or something. You're a god, aren't you?'

'But if I kill him now his car will stop or veer into the path of the traffic coming towards you. Either you will have your journey interrupted or some innocent person will be hurt.'

'Kill his wife then. Or his kids. I don't care. Just make the creep suffer.'

'I am very sorry, but I can't do that. It's not in our joint service level agreement. You have to be at least a monarch or a Mafia don before you can have people killed for you.'

'All right, bloody Holy Joe,' said the red-faced man. 'I suppose you think you're so effing moral. You bleeding hearts get right up my nose. Forget it - I'll deal with him myself.' And the screen went blank.

Neville sat back in his chair. He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. The digits on the display counted up; 51, 52, 53, 54 souls urgently needing his help. He shook his head mournfully, got up and walked slowly to the end of the office (whose walls were covered with copies of the greatest masterpieces of human art) and stood by the window. The Glory of the Highest shone out from the Holy Citadel beyond, illuminating the streets and squares of Olympus with a living amber radiance. Such delight up here in Heaven. Such ugliness down below on Earth. The utmost beauty was here for him to enjoy, each and every day. It was his, forever. He felt a little sick.

The god Neville could stand it no longer. He opened the window and leapt into the golden air beyond. The ground rushed up towards him, bearing oblivion in its arms.

The reader may ask how this could possibly be; that a god would try to kill himself. That is a good question and one which Neville had not considered before he jumped from the ten thousand, six hundred and fifty-fifth floor of the Ministry of Mortality. Nor had he thought about what might come next, which is odd for someone who had positive proof of the existence of the afterlife.

It seemed to Neville that the discontent that had been festering within him was like a boil; nasty, unsightly, uncomfortable, but nothing to be worried about. The red-faced man's obscene demand was no more than the squeeze which had burst it. But if that was all it was, why did Neville not go and have a quiet word with his supervisor or take a couple of days' compassionate leave? It was this; that he knew that when he eventually returned to his desk it would be the same thing all over again - the flood-tide of human woe overwhelming the pathetic ramparts of belief - and that sooner or later he would crack again, and that all this would go on forever.

For what is Forever but another word for Despair?

Neville had not fallen more than half-way to the ground when the duty angel who had been patrolling the skies above shot past him in a power dive, opened his wings with a swoosh and a crack, and caught his plummeting body in their snow-white span. The angel spun in the air, wrapped his arms around Neville and carried him back up towards the tower-tops of downtown Olympus. The god gasped in shock. It looked as if his life was not going to end today after all. He felt breathless and not a little dizzy. It was too soon for him to feel relieved at his escape from destruction.

At first Neville thought that the angel would take him back to the window he had jumped from; then he thought he was being taken to the Divisional Manager's office for a good talking to. But the angel continued to climb, beating his wings against the supportive aether. Higher and higher they went, and as they ascended they changed direction so that they were flying away from the Ministry of Mortality and towards the Citadel itself. What could be going on? Was his offence so serious that it could not be dealt with by his immediate superior; an experienced sea-goddess with an excellent track record in the field of personnel management? Surely he was not being sent right to the Top?

The angel's wings dipped and rose in a steady rhythm. The fortifications of the Holiest Place came ever closer, bulking up in Neville's sight, and then slipping beneath him as they passed over the walls. He caught a quick glimpse of the battlements of Heaven, with their rows of spearmen, archers and grenadiers, and then they were descending again. They touched lightly on the ground and the angel released Neville. They were standing in a high-windowed courtyard of polychrome granite. 'Over there,' the angel said, pointing to a gothic archway to the left. 'Go though.'

'Thank you,' said Neville, but the angel had gone and was already no more than a spark of living fire in the cerulean arch of the sky above. He shrugged. Angels were flighty creatures, weren't they?

Although he had all Eternity at his disposal, Neville realised that the Person that he had been brought to see might not be very pleased to be kept waiting, so he walked quickly across the courtyard and under the archway. A long passage stretched ahead of him into the distance. There were oaken doors set into the walls at regular intervals. Was he meant to pass through one of them? If not, where should he go? He hesitated.

'Go all the way to the end,' cooed a soft voice at his right shoulder. Neville turned his head sharply and nearly dislodged the creature which had settled there. It was a dove - perhaps one of those which Neville had welcomed to his apartment.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I didn't know you were there. I wasn't trying to push you off. All the way? It looks like miles.' That was true. The corridor blurred into the distance. 'It's going to take a long time.'

'You had better start now, then,' the dove said.

Neville squared his shoulders and began to walk. The dove's presence was reassuring, for if she had not been there he would have felt very alone and - despite his godhood - very afraid.

'Am I in a great deal of trouble?' he asked the dove after a few minutes.

'That is not for me to say,' she replied.

'Why are you here? Are you my guide?'

'Yes, I am.'

'I am glad you are here to guide me, even though the corridor is so straight that I hardly need to be shown the way. Tell me, please...'

'Yes?' said the dove.

'I am a little lonesome, here in the Fortress of the Mightiest. I feel very small and not a little frightened. Will you stay with me when I meet whomsoever I have come here to meet? Will you be my friend?'

'Yes,' said the dove. 'That is why I am here.'

They walked together, and the dove rested the side of her head against Neville's cheek and opened her left wing and wrapped it around his shoulders. And so he was comforted.

They walked together down the corridor and came at last to a great gate, made of lapis lazuli and bound with gold and silver. An iron knocker hung down from it, crafted in the form of a unicorn's head. Neville took hold of the unicorn's horn, lifted it on its hinges and let it fall again. The gate boomed and shook with the impact and the sound reverberated up and down the passageway. Neville and the dove stood and waited for a response. Nothing happened for a very long time.

Then a small door which had been let into the great gate, but was made so cunningly that the seams were quite invisible, opened and a finger beckoned Neville and the dove to come in; which they did, ducking their heads slightly. They emerged on the other side. A void opened up before them - a void so vast that it was both unseeable and unknowable, so black that it was only after his eyes had adjusted to the darkness that Neville saw that it was sprinkled with planets, stars, nebulae and galaxies. He turned. The little door swung to and closed behind him. Neville gulped. Was this the Other Place? Had he been condemned to Hell for his crime? Was that not the fate of human suicides - would it not be his fate also?

'Courage,' said the dove, and kissed him gently on the cheek. Neville raised his hand and let it rest upon her velvet-soft head.

'Come along now,' said a voice. It belonged to the person who had opened the door. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an electric torch, which he clicked on. 'Hmm, now, where is it?' he said, directing the torch's beam around the ebony dome of the chamber. 'Aha!,' he said. 'Here it is!' And he took a bronze key from a clip on his belt and inserted it into the image of a glorious violet-ringed planet. A door opened in space.

Neville and the dove followed the gatekeeper through the door and into a small office. It had faded green walls and was furnished with a desk, three dirty grey metal filing cabinets, a flip-chart with an electronic wiring diagram drawn on it in red marker, a white telephone, a somewhat elderly personal computer and two plastic chairs. The doorkeeper invited the god to take a seat. Neville sat down and the dove left his shoulder and perched on the desk next to him.

'Thank you,' said Neville to the gatekeeper. 'Will someone be along to see me shortly?' But he had gone.

Neville looked around the office. It was a scruffy room, well-used and much in need of redecoration. He took some solace from that. Clearly he was not to meet someone of any great importance. Whoever used this office could not be a very senior person and would surely not have the authority to hand down a severe punishment to him. But then... he remembered that the most dreadful torments in the world of men were often inflicted by the most junior officials. It had not been Adolf Hitler who had operated the gas-ovens of Belsen, but the privates and corporals of the Waffen SS. The tortures of the Spanish Inquisition had not been administered by the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church, but by working priests in their service. Perhaps the poor condition of the room reflected his own lowly status, and not that of his judges. This shabby place was probably quite good enough for him.

Neville picked up the telephone's handset and put it to his ear. There was no dialling tone, not even after he rattled the cradle rest. He replaced the receiver. Would it be worth trying to log on to the computer? No, probably not.

'Dove?' he said. 'Is this it? Is this my punishment?' A terrible thought had struck Neville. Perhaps he was being punished already. He would have to stay here in this office forever, kept waiting for all Eternity. But no, that could not be it...

'No,' said the dove. 'Not while I am here.'

'Not while you are here to be my friend. And to love me. To love me...Oh, wait a minute. Yes, I see...' Why had he not realised before?

'You know it now, then,' said the winged being whose name was Love.

At last he did. He knelt and did obeisance to the Dove and begged forgiveness of Her. His tears fell freely upon the scratched and marked linoleum which covered the office floor.

'That was a terrible thing you did,' said the Dove presently. 'To throw away the gift I gave you.'

'My life, you mean. Yes, it was an awful thing to do. I am truly sorry. You know that.'

'Yes. I have always known it, but you had to say it yourself. I am glad that you did so.'

'It was my heart that told me. It knew the truth before I did.'

'That is often the way.'

'What shall I do now?' A cup of tea had appeared on the desk and Neville, feeling more composed now, took a sip. It was made from the finest high-altitude Darjeeling and was utterly refreshing. 'I don't think I could go back to the Ministry. Not yet, anyway. Do I presume too much, Lord?' He looked anxiously at the Dove.

'No, Neville. You should not go back. You see, I think that your talents were quite possibly not being used to their full advantage there.'

'Perhaps, Lord, I could take a less demanding job? There must be any number of administrative tasks that need doing. Building maintenance? Gardening, maybe?'

'Due humility is one thing, my son. Dodging your responsibilities is quite another. Is that not where we came in? With you trying to duck out of doing the work I gave you?'

'Yes, Lord. I'm sorry, Lord.' Neville bowed his head. The Dove continued:

'There is a bargain - a compact - between men and us. It is this - to reward prayer with reconciliation, worship with transcendence, trust with certainty. Men and gods - we need each other equally. Neither of us could exist if it were not for the other. Do you see?'

'Yes, Lord, I do.'

'Now; this bargain is sealed with Duty. When Time began, men and gods took a Duty upon themselves, to serve each other in the best way they could. It is in this that you erred, Neville. You failed in your Duty to the souls in your care. You left them with no access to us, alone in their world. That is a grievous sin for a god to commit.

'But I forgive it, as I forgive all sins, because I know why it was that you failed. It lay in this, my son, that you felt the sorrows of men so deeply, and took them so much to heart that you could see no end to them. Is that not right?'

'Yes, Lord.' The Dove was very beautiful. Neville could hardly bear to look at Her, but neither could he take his eyes off Her.

'You feel in a special way, Neville and in a way that's not so very unlike the way I do. You understand belief, not as an intellectual does but in your heart. You know of its weakness, and in that understanding lies your strength.

'Neville, I have a job for you. A very special job. You know that there are many worlds in the Multiverse. Some of them are fine places in which to live, many are only tolerably good. Some are poor, and a few are very bad indeed. They resemble the Other Place. They are abominable worlds, my son. They are all the worse because they have been made abominable by the very people that they were given to. I did not want these worlds to turn out the way they did, but there it is.

'But that is not the worst thing about these worlds. The people who live in them suffer, true, but so do people in many of the world of the Multiverse, even those we call blessed. No, the worst thing is that they are alone. They can no longer speak to us, nor we to them. The link between men and gods has been broken. We can no longer reach them or help them, and they have lost touch with us and turned against themselves. They are sealed in. Their world has closed in on them and become their prison.'

The god shuddered at the Dove's words. He could picture such a world all too easily. How dreadful it would be to find himself in such an awful place... He felt even more the magnitude of his offence. He too had left his people alone.

'There's a particular world out there - a world of terrible suffering and loss. It is a world that has lost its way. They need someone to help them, Neville, the souls who live in that world. Someone to Save them. Could that be you? Would you do this thing for Me? Will you be these people's Saviour?'

'Lord, do you mean...?'

'Yes. If you can find it within yourself, I want you to let go of your godhood for a while and enter this world. I want you to become one of them. I want you to try to restore the relationship between the men of that world and us.'

'But...'

'It is very likely that they will not want to listen to you. They will probably hurt you. They may even try to murder you. But Neville, there is no other of My children that I would rather send in your place. No one whose heart does not feel the pain of mortality more keenly. None that I love more. Will you go and live with the men of this world and be one of them for a short span of Time? Will you let them torture and kill you, for My sake? Will you suffer and die for them?'

Neville managed a lop-sided smile. 'Is that all You want of me?'

'There will be no end to what I want of you, and that is something of which you should be very glad. But that is all I want from you for now. Will you do it for Me? Please?'

Work continued as ever in the Ministry of Mortality, following its endless daily pattern. Every morning the household gods on the day shift arrived by car, tram, bicycle or on foot, sat down at their desks and took their calls, and handed over to the evening shift when their day's labours were done. At the end of the office the Calls Waiting board counted its digits up and counted them down again as the tide of the sorrows of men ebbed and flowed in its eternal rhythm. The toil of the Ministry's staff was constant and unremitting.

Busy, busy, busy... The desks were all busy, except for one. One special desk - positioned at the end of the twenty-third row of the forty-second rank of the thirty-seventh tier - remained empty and unused, fenced off by a rope of soft, braided silk. It was a kind of shrine.

For the other gods had found that they missed Neville much more than they had thought they would so they kept his desk free against his return, and whenever they passed it they stopped and bowed their heads and were quiet for a moment. Neville's headset lay unworn on the desk's walnut top and his screen was dark and cold. Next to it somebody had placed a small wooden cross, and twined about that cross there grew a single red rose.