“With each greater circle the power, good and knowledge on the part of God weakened, so that at the periphery of the greatest circle his good was weak, his knowledge was weak—too weak for him to observe the Form Destroyer, which was called into being by God’s acts of form creation. The origin of the Form Destroyer is unclear; it is, for instance, not possible to declare whether (one) he was a separate entity from God from the start, uncreated by God but also selfcreating, as is God, or (two) whether the Form Destroyer is an aspect of God, there being nothing—”

He ceased reading, sat sipping scotch and rubbing his forehead semi-wearily. He was forty-two years old and had read The Book many times. His life, although long, had not added up to much, at least until now. He had held a variety of jobs, doing a modicum of service to his employers, but never ever really excelling. Maybe I can begin to excel, he said to himself. On this new assignment. Maybe this is my big chance.

Forty-two. His age had astounded him for years, and each time that he had sat so astounded, trying to figure out what had become of the young, slim man in his twenties, a whole additional year slipped by and had to be recorded, a continually growing sum which he could not reconcile with his selfimage. He still saw himself, in his mind’s eye, as youthful, and when he caught sight of himself in photographs he usually collapsed. For example, he shaved now with an electric razor, unwilling to gaze at himself in his bathroom mirror. Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this, he had thought from time to time. Oh well, so it went. He sighed.

Of all his many meager jobs he had enjoyed one alone, and he still meditated about it now and then. In 2105 he had operated the background music system aboard a huge colonizing ship on its way to one of the Deneb worlds. In the tape vault he had found all of the Beethoven symphonies mixed haphazardly in with string versions of Carmen and of Delibes and he had played the Fifth, his favorite, a thousand times throughout the speaker complex that crept everywhere within the ship, reaching each cubicle and work area.