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my own: if you were to leave, where the hell do you think you could go?”
    I ran my tongue round the inside of my mouth, feeling healing scars and fresh tears in the soft skin of my cheeks and lips. Then, “If I had this knowledge–which I don’t–what use would you make of it?”
    “That kinda depends on what it is. If you tell me that the West will come out of this conflict triumphant, that good wins and the bad fall beneath the righteous sword, then hell, I’ll be the first guyto buy you a bottle of champagne and a slap-up feast at the brasserie of your choosing. If, on the other hand, you happen to know the dates of massacres, of wars and battles, of men murdered and crimes committed, well then, sir–I cannot tell a lie–we may have to be in conversation a little while longer.”
    “You seem very ready to believe that I do know something of the future, whereas everyone–including my wife–believes it to be a delusion.”
    He sighed and folded his newspaper away entirely, as if even the option of pretence were no longer of any interest to him. “Dr August,” he replied, leaning across the table towards me, hands folded beneath his chin, “let me ask you something, in this spirit of free and frank conversation. Have you in all your travels–your many, many travels–heard of the Cronus Club?”
    “No,” I replied honestly. “I haven’t. What is it?”
    “A myth. One of those wry footnotes academics put at the bottom of a text to liven up a particularly dull passage, a kind of ‘incidentally, some say this and isn’t that quaint’ fairy tale shoved into the small print at the back of an unread tome.”
    “And what does this small print say?”
    “It says…” he replied, letting out a huff of breath with the weary resignation of the regular storyteller. “It says that there are people, living among us, who do not die. It says that they are born, and they live, and they die and they live again, the same life, a thousand times. And these people, being as they are infinitely old and infinitely wise, get together sometimes–no one really knows where–and have… Well, it depends on which text you’re reading what they have. Some say conspiratorial meetings in white robes, others go for orgies at which the next generation of their kin are created. I don’t believe in either, because the Klan has really dented the white-robe fashion down South, and orgies are everyone’s first bet.”
    “And this is the Cronus Club?”
    “Yes, sir,” he replied brightly. “Like the Illuminati without the glamour, or the Masons without the cufflinks, a self-perpetuating society spread across the ages for the infinite and the timeless. I hadto investigate it because someone said the Russians were, and from what I can tell it’s a fantasy created by a very bored mind, but then… then someone like you comes along, Dr August, and that really throws off my paperwork.”
    “You think that because my delusions correspond to an old wives’ tale there must be something to it?”
    “God no, not at all! I think that because your delusions correspond to the truth, there must be something in it. And so,” a flash of a grin as he leaned back easily into his chair, “here we are.”
    Time is not wisdom; wisdom is not intellect. I am still capable of being overwhelmed; he overwhelmed me.
    “May I have some time to think about it?” I asked.
    “Sure thing. You sleep on it, Dr August. Let me know what you think tomorrow morning. Do you play croquet?”
    “No.”
    “There’s a beautiful lawn if you want to try.”

Chapter 11
    A moment to consider memory.
    The kalachakra, the ouroborans, those of us who loop perpetually through the same course of historical events, though our lives within may change–in short, the members of the Cronus Club–forget. Some see this forgetting as a gift, a chance to rediscover things which have already been experienced, to retain some wonder at the universe. A sense of déjà vu haunts