Deep Secret Read Free Page A

make a mistake like that.”
    “I should hope not!” I said.
    “You won’t,” said Stan. “Because if you start, I’ll stop you.”
    “Er…” I began, wondering how to point the hard truth out.
    “I’ll be around,” he said. “I’ve arranged to be here. A Magid can work quite well disincarnate, and I plan to do that until you’ve got things settled.”
    I said, half joking and wholly disbelieving, “Don’t you trust me not to balls it up then?”
    “I trust you,” Stan said. “But you’ve only been a Magid just over two years. And it used to be customary for all new Magids to have a disincarnate adviser – I found it in the records. So I asked the Upper Room if I could stay and keep an eye on you, and they seemed to think it was reasonable. So I’ll be around. Rely on it.” He sighed, and stared into the distance somewhere beyond his flaking off-white ceiling.
    I sighed too, and thought, Be honest, Stan. You just don’t want to go away for good. And I don’t want this to happen either.
    “Mostly, though,” Stan added, “it’s that I can’t bear to leave. I’m only eighty-nine. That’s young for a Magid.”
    I had not realised he was much above sixty, and said so.
    “Oh yes,” he said. “I’ve kept my condition. Most of us do. Then one day you get told, ‘That’s it, boy. Deathday tomorrow,’ and you know it’s true. I’ve been given until sundown.”
    I looked out of the window involuntarily. It was November. The shadows were long already.
    “Call the doctor just before sunset,” Stan said, and did not say much for a while after that. I gave him some water, got myself some more coffee and waited. Some time later, he began to talk again, this time more generally and reminiscently.
    “I’ve seen this world through a lot of changes,” he remarked. “I’ve helped clear away a lot of the political garbage that built up through this century. We’ve got the decks cleared for the changes due to come in the next century now. But, you know, the thing I take most pleasure in is the way we’ve managed to coax this world Ayewards. Gradually. Surreptitiously. When I was a lad, no one even considered there might be other universes, let alone talking of going to them. But now people write books about that, and they talk about working magic and having former lives, and nobody thinks you’re a nutcase for mentioning it. And I think, I did that. Me . I slid us back down the spiral. Back to where we should be. Earth is one of the early worlds, you know – well of course you know – and we should be a long way further Ayewards than we are.”
    “I know,” I said, stressfully watching the shadow of my car spread over his bushy lawn.
    “Help it along some more,” he said.
    “It’s one of the things we’re here for,” I said.
    Later, when the room was getting dim, Stan said suddenly, “It was the homesickness that brought me back here, you know.”
    “How do you mean?” I asked him.
    “I started out my work as a Magid a long way Ayewards,” he murmured. His voice was getting weaker. “I chose it. A bit like Simon chose it. But I chose it for the centaurs. I’d always loved centaurs, always wanted to work with them. And as soon as I learnt that more than half the places Ayewards of here have centaurs, off I went. I thought I’d never come back here, you know.” Centaurs need a magical ambience to maintain them – well, you know they do – and they all died out here when we drifted off Naywards. And for three years I was blissfully happy, working with centaurs, studying them. I don’t think there’s a thing I don’t know about centaurs and their ways. Then I got homesick. Just like that. I can’t tell you what for. It was too general. It was just that the world I was on wasn’t this one. It didn’t smell right. The wind didn’t blow like it does here. Grass the wrong green. Small things, like the water tasting too pure. So back I had to come.”
    “To work as a jockey,”