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enlightenment, what do you do? You can’t expect us to just stand around grinning at each other. So we play our Game. Our idea of a good laugh is to go one up on each other. We are, of course, always aware that each of us is all of us and scoring off another is just the same as scoring off oneself. That’s fine with us, because a game should not have a serious outcome. But it should be played hard and fair, and that’s what we do according to the rules of the moment.’
    ‘That’s all very interesting,’ Crompton said. ‘But why are you telling me all this?’
    ‘Because you happen to be in my Game, Crompton. Or you will be as soon as this aspect of the Game begins. You are going to be one of the pawns I will manipulate. Doesn’t that sound like fun?’
    ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Crompton said. ‘Count me out.’
    ‘Calm down,’ the Aaian said. ‘ I am also one of the pawns you are going to manipulate in your Game.’
    ‘Look, I’ve got a lot on my mind these days,’ Crompton said. ‘I don’t have any time for this stuff.’
    ‘Recovering your missing personality components and achieving Reintegration are vitally important to you, are they not? They constitute your Game. To succeed, you are going to need my help. Without it, you might as well stay on Earth and do crossword puzzles.’
    ‘Specifically,’ Crompton said, ‘what do I need your help for?’
    ‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ the Aaian said. ‘How can I know anything like that until the Game actually begins?’
    ‘If you can’t know that,’ Crompton said, ‘how can you know the circumstances will even arise in which I will need your help?’
    ‘Because I can know that much,’ the Aaian said. ‘After all, I am a being with superhuman powers.’
    Crompton thought about it, and the more he thought the less he liked what was happening.
    ‘This is all going too fast,’ he said. ‘It’s not the way I thought things would be.’
    ‘Of course not,’ the Aaian said. ‘Like most people you want what you want, and only when and how and for as long as you want it. I’m sorry the universe isn’t being run according to your requirements, Crompton. But there it is! You can sulk and play hard to get and try to have things your own way and probably get killed before you get to do anything interesting; or you can get with it and maybe we’ll both have some fun.’
    ‘All right!’ Crompton said. ‘I don’t seem to have much choice in the matter! What happens next?’
    ‘Next I tell you my name. It is Secuille. Remember it. We will meet again, later, for the first time, and then we can get right down to business.’
    ‘Wait a minute,’ Crompton said.
    ‘This time doesn’t count,’ Secuille said. ‘It’s completely out of temporal sequence. It’s as good as didn’t happen.’
    ‘Are you telling me that we haven’t actually met just now?’
    ‘That’s right. Interesting, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s a bore to let things go along until they actually happen, and these spaceflights are mostly dead time anyhow.’
    ‘I don’t see,’ Crompton said, ‘how we can meet later for the first time when we’ve met now for the first time.’
    ‘But I explained to you,’ Secuille said, ‘this meeting doesn’t count. I do have to pay a penalty for doing it this way, however: I won’t remember any of this when we actually do meet.’
    ‘That makes no sense at all.’
    ‘Rules never do, do they?’ Secuille said. ‘But there it is. I won’t remember you, but you will remember me, and you’ll tell me what happened, and I’ll catch on quick due to my superlative powers of adaptability, and the Game will begin.’
    ‘You may be superhuman,’ Crompton said, ‘but I think you’re also crazy.’
    ‘Well, it looks like it’s going to be interesting,’ Secuille said. ‘Now I seem to have used up all my lecture material, so I must be off.’ He smiled at Crompton and vanished.
    Crompton sat very still for a while. Then he signaled