“You have the makings of a metaphysician, Hodgins,” he said witheringly, for metaphysics was one of the most despised words in his vocabulary. “The reasoning is infantile. Answering you and the Reverend Shaw on your own level, I could say that time is a convention and that all events occur simultaneously. Or if I grant its dimension I can ask, What makes you think time is a simple straight line running flatly through eternity? Why do you assume that time isnt curved? Can you conceive of its end? Can you really imagine its beginning? Of course not; then why arent both the same? The serpent with its tail in its mouth?” “You mean we not only play a prepared script but repeat the identical lines over and over and over for infinity? There’s no heaven in your cosmos, only an unimaginable, never-ending hell.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That you should spout emotional apologetics at me is part of what you call the script, Hodgins. You didnt select the words nor speak them voluntarily. They were called into existence by what I said, which in turn was mere response to what went before.” Weakly I was forced back to a more elementary attack. “You don’t act in accordance with your own conviction.” He snorted. “A thoughtless remark, excusable only because automatic. How could I act differently? Like you, I am a prisoner of stimuli.” “How pointless to risk ruin and imprisonment as a member of the Grand Army when no one can change what’s predestined.” “Pointless or not, emotions and reflections are responses just as much as actions. I can no more help engaging myself in the underground than I can help breathing, or my heart beating, or dying when the time comes. Nothing, they say, is certain but death and taxes; actually everything is certain. Everything,” he repeated firmly. I went back to sorting some pamphlets which were to be sold for wastepaper, shaking my head. His theory was unassailable; every attack was discounted by the very nature of the thesis. That it was false I didnt doubt; its impregnability made its falseness still more terrifying. There were fully as many imaginary discussions with Tyss as real ones. Yet even in these disembodied arguments I could gain no advantage. Why do you look back on the War of Southron Independence with regret for what might have been, if no might-have-been is possible? I asked him mentally, knowing his answer, I cannot help myself, was no answer at all.