The Sinful Stones by Peter Dickinson Page B

destiny. You will have noticed, for instance, that we speak frequently of the relationship of brotherhood. This is to remind us that we must, in the words of the poet, die of the absolute paternal care …”
    â€œMy father wasn’t like that at all,” said Pibble, with bright interest, tangling the web again. Brother Providence rose with another sigh and started to climb the stairs. Pibble followed, wondering whether his slight grogginess came from delayed shock at his fall or from the sense of having beaten off a sudden, violent ambush. Crippen, this was a nasty creed. Or perhaps it was only nastily explicit. Even at fifteen, shambling up the street with his torn satchel under his arm, Jamie had sensed that Mr Toger would have liked to have come a good deal further into the house than the doorstep, and comforted the smooth-skinned widow with more than tracts.
    Where had Providence come from, Pibble wondered. What had he been in Babylon? There was something teasing about his manner of speech. Donnish, he’d first decided, but now he felt that was wrong; there was a man-of-affairs undertone too, and a sort of social ease that hinted at a life among the nobs. Also, unconnected with this, a curious feeling that he knew Pibble better than Pibble knew him. It made Pibble uncomfortable.
    At the top of the stairs Providence lifted a trap-door to let in the brimming light and the hissing, gull-riddled air.
    â€œWhat a marvellous view,” said Pibble.
    â€œAll the kingdoms of the earth.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œReally in our terms, metaphorically in yours.”
    No ambush here—the smile was that of any New Theologian expounding on Meeting Point a paradox which he knows his four million viewers are too crass to resolve.
    â€œI’m not so sure of my own terms as you are of yours,” said Pibble.
    â€œTell me why you came here, Superintendent. I know that Simplicity contrived to invite you—without telling us, I may say—but it must have been inconvenient for a busy policeman, and I am sure you are not the type to make a tedious journey for the pleasure of meeting a famous name.”
    â€œIt’s difficult to explain,” said Pibble. “I was an only child and my father died when I was eleven. He mattered a lot to me, and I’ve always wanted to know more about him—in a rather obsessive way, you might say. Anyway, he worked for Sir Francis for several years before the First World War, and when Sir Francis sent for me I thought it would be my last chance of meeting anyone who knew him in that period. The letter reached me in a roundabout way, and he’d given me a final date which was to-day, so I had to come in a hurry.”
    â€œWhy should he do that?”
    â€œI think he thought the letter mightn’t reach me, and he wanted to feel that there was a date beyond which he wouldn’t expect me any longer.”
    â€œIt seems a curious way to acquire information for his book. He cannot have expected you to have much to contribute.”
    â€œI thought the book was supposed to be some sort of a secret.”
    Brother Providence laughed benignly.
    â€œMy dear man,” he said, “how can it be a secret? I should think the sections he has finished must be being translated into forty languages at this very moment. Why, it’s my only regret since I left Babylon that I shall never be able to read it.”
    â€œI meant a secret among the Community.”
    â€œStrange.”
    â€œWell, nobody talked about it, and otherwise I’d have thought they would have. It must be quite an excitement for you all.”
    â€œOur excitements are not of this world, Superintendent.”
    â€œI meant that having publishers and editors coming and going must have been a bit of a disruption.”
    â€œSimplicity conducted all his negotiations by post. The first we knew of the book was the arrival of two journalists in a launch, wishing to