'More or less,' Blondel replied. 'Thanks ever so much for dropping us off here, by the way. It'll make things much easier for Isoud and Guy.'

'Don't mention it,' Richard replied. 'They've got their own lives to lead, after all.' Richard shrugged and grinned. 'Not like us.

'Right,' said Guy. 'Thanks.'

YOU GET THE GENERAL IDEA, ANYWAY?.

Guy rubbed his eyes. 'More or less,' he said. 'Only...'

MMM?.

'That bit with the whale,' Guy said doubtfully. 'I mean, I've often wondered about that. You see, I always understood that whales couldn't swallow people, because of all this sort of mesh stuff they've got in their throats, so how come ..

IT'S A... THING.

'Thing?'

BEGINS WITH M. METRONOME, NO, METAPHOR. IT'S A METAPHOR.

'Oh,' Guy reflected for a moment. 'And that's allowed, is it?'

OH YES. PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE DEVICE, METAPHOR.

'Great,' Guy said. 'I didn't mean to imply...'

WHICH WOULD YOU RATHER LISTEN TO, ANYWAY, A NICE STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING AND A STRONG WILDLIFE ELEMENT, OR THREE HOURS OF TECHNICAL METAPHYSICAL JARGON FULL OF WORDS LIKE COUNTER-INTUITIVE AND NEO-TRANSUBSTANTIATION? SOME PEOPLE DON'T KNOW THEY'RE BORN.

'Thank you,' Guy said. If in doubt, his mother had told him, just say thank you. People will understand. 'Er...'

NOW WHAT?.

'Sorry,' Guy said, 'and really, I don't mean any disrespect or anything like that, it's just ...'

BEFORE YOU ASK, IT'S ANOTHER METAPHOR.

'What is?'

STANDS TO REASON, REALLY. EVEN IF YOU COULD HAVE A TOWER THAT HIGH, THEY MUST HAVE HAD SOME WAY OF TALKING TO EACH OTHER, OR ELSE HOW DID IT GET BUILT IN THE FIRST PLACE? JUST THINK ABOUT IT, WILL YOU? YOU'D HAVE HAD ONE LOT DIGGING OUT THE FOOTINGS ON ONE SIDE AND ANOTHER LOT-.

'No,' said Guy, 'actually it wasn't that so much as...'

OH. LOT'S WIFE, MAYBE?.

'No,' said Guy, 'not Lot's wife.'

Silence.

SO YOU ACTUALLY BELIEVE ALL THAT STUFF ABOUT -.

'Yes. What I was going to ask was ... um ...' Guy nerved himself. It wasn't nearly as hard as he'd imagined. 'You're not Him, are you?'

There was a slight rustling sound as something shuffled about in the burning bush. 'How did you guess?' it said.

It turned out to be a little white gnome with no hair and singed eyebrows, which clambered out, dusted itself off and extended a sooty hand.

'Melroth the Pole-Star,' it said. 'Pleased to meet you. Now you know,' it added, 'why angels always wear white. Asbestos.' It coughed.

'I hope you aren't offended,' Guy said.

'Not a bit,' Melroth replied, 'only too glad to get out of that thing.' The thorn bush collapsed in a cloud of white ash. 'Now then, where were we?'

'Um,' said Guy, 'you do have ... I mean, I can take it you're fully authorised to...'

Melroth stared at him for a moment and then winced slightly. 'Sorry,' he said, 'memory like a sieve. My identification.' He showed a small plastic square with a blurred photograph half obscured by a red ink stamp. That alone was enough to convince Guy that it was genuine.

'He couldn't come himself, you see,' Melroth was saying. 'I know He's supposed to, but it just doesn't work like that. I mean, He can't be everywhere, can He? Well, He can, of course, but -'

'Thanks,' Guy said. 'Now, about this time thing.'

'Yes?'

'Don't you think we should -'

'Hold on a tick,' said Melroth. He looked at his watch and made a few notes on a clipboard. It was a clipboard of burning gold and it had appeared out of nowhere, but it was palpably a clipboard. Suddenly Guy found himself understanding something very fundamental about the nature of Time.

'Right,' Melroth said, 'fire away.'

'Time,' Guy said, and he took a deep breath. 'It's a bit of a mess, isn't it?'

'Well,' said Melroth indistinctly, 'yes, it is. A bit.'

'Wouldn't it be easier if there was just the one sort of time,' Guy went on, slowly so as to let Melroth take notes, 'the sort that people could understand? You know, hours and minutes and seconds, and things happening one after the other, and then not happening ever again. None of these Archives and editing and all that. No time travel. No timestorms. Just time.' He paused, and added, 'I'm sure it'd make things much easier for your lot, as well as us.'

A very long silence. Eventually, Melroth scratched his nose. 'Interesting idea,' he said. 'But no. Wouldn't work. Administrative inertia. Unions'd never stand for it. Manifesto commitments. Cost too much to implement. Limited budget resources for new capital projects. Um.'

'Are you sure?'

'No call for it. Weight of public opinion against it at this juncture. Tried in the past and found to be impractical. Careful studies carried out by highly qualified specialist research groups have shown. Const.i.tutional reasons why not. Other unspecified reasons.

'Sure?'

'Look.' Melroth diminished visibly, and the sleeves of his robe came down even further over his knuckles. 'It's not as if you're the first one to suggest it, right? It's just -'

'It's just,' Guy said, 'somebody made a c.o.c.k-up a long time ago and n.o.body wants to admit it. Right?'

Melroth nodded.