“If your sympathies do not run in that direction, then I know better than to change your mind, at least where Free Will versus Predestination is concerned,” says Wait Still. “But I know that when you were a boy you had the privilege of sitting at the knee of men such as John Wilkins, Gregory Bolstrood, Drake Waterhouse, and many others of Independent sympathies-men who preached freedom of conscience. Who advocated Gathered, as opposed to Established, churches. The flourishing of small congregations. Abolition of central dogma.”

Daniel, still not quite believing it: “Yes…”

Wait Still, brightly: “So what’s to stop me from preaching Free Will to my flock?”

Daniel laughs. “And, as you are not merely glib, but young, handsome, and personable, converting many to the same creed-including, I take it, my own wife?”

Faith blushes, then stands up and turns around to hide it. In the candle-light, a bit of silver glints in her hair: a hair-pin shaped like a caduceus. She has gotten up on the pretext of going to check on little Godfrey, even though Mrs. Goose has him well in hand.

In a small town like Boston, you’d think it would be impossible to have a conversation about anything without being eavesdropped on. Indeed, the whole place was set up to make it so-they deliver the mail, not to your house, but to the nearest tavern, and if you don’t come round and pick it up after a few days the publican will open it up and read it aloud to whomever is in attendance. So Daniel had assumed that Mrs. Goose would be listening in on the whole conversation. But instead she is completely absorbed in her work, as if telling yarns to a boy were more important than this great Decision that Daniel is wrestling with, here at damn near the end of his long life.

“It’s quite all right, my dear,” Daniel says to the back of Faith’s bodice. “Having been raised by a man who believed in Predestination, I’d much rather that my boy was raised by a Free Will woman.” But Faith leaves the room.

Wait Still says, “So… you believe God has predestined you to sail for England tonight?”

“No-I’m not a Calvinist. Now, you’re baffled, Reverend, because you spent too much time at Harvard reading old books about the likes of Calvin and Archbishop Laud, and are still caught up in the disputes of Arminians versus Puritans.”

“What should I have been reading, Doctor?” said Wait Still, making a bit too much of a show of flexibility.

“Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, Newton, Leibniz.”

“The syllabus of your Institute of Technologickal Arts?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t know that you touched on matters of theology.”

“That was a bit of a jab-no, no, quite all right! I rather liked it. I’m pleased by the display of backbone. I can see clearly enough that you’ll end up raising my son.” Daniel means this in a completely non-sexual way-he had in mind that Wait Still would act in some avuncular role-but from the blush on Wait Still’s face he can see that the role of stepfather is more likely.

This, then, would be a good time to change the subject to abstract technical matters: “It all comes from first principles. Everything can be measured. Everything acts according to physical laws. Our minds included. My mind, that’s doing the deciding, is already set in its course, like a ball rolling down a trough.”

“Uncle! Surely you are not denying the existence of souls-of a Supreme Soul.”

Daniel says nothing to this.

“Neither Newton nor Leibniz would agree with you,” Wait Still continues.

“They’re afraid to agree with me, because they are important men, and they would be destroyed if they came out and said it. But no one will bother to destroy me.”

“Can we not influence your mental machine by arguments?” asks Faith, who has returned to stand in the doorway.

Daniel wants to say that Wait Still’s best arguments would be about as influential as boogers flicked against the planking of a Ship of the Line in full sail, but sees no reason to be acrimonious-the whole point of the exercise is to be remembered well by those who’ll stay in the New World, on the theory that as the sun rises on the eastern fringe of America, small things cast long shadows westwards. “The future is as set as the past,” he says, “and the future is that I’ll climb on board the Minerva within the hour. You can argue that I should stay in Boston to raise my son. Of course, I should like nothing better. I should, God willing, have the satisfaction of watching him grow up for as many years as I have left. Godfrey would have a flesh-and-blood father with many conspicuous weaknesses and failings. He’d hold me in awe for a short while, as all boys do their fathers. It would not last. But if I sail away on Minerva, then in place of a flesh-and-blood Dad-a fixed, known quantity-he’ll have a phant’sy of one, infinitely ductile in his mind. I can go away and imagine generations of Waterhouses yet unborn, and Godfrey can imagine a hero-father better than I can really be.”

Wait Still Waterhouse, an intelligent and decent man, can see so many holes in this argument that he is paralyzed by choices. Faith, a better mother than wife, who has a better son than a husband, encompasses a vast sweep of compromises with a pert nod of the head. Daniel gathers up his son from Mrs. Goose’s lap-Enoch calls in a hired coach-they go to the waterfront.

So I saw in my dream that the man began to run. Now he had not run far from his own door, but his wife and children perceiving it began to cry after him to return: but the man put his fingers in his ears, and ran on crying, “Life, life, eternal life.” So he looked not behind him, but fled towards the middle of the plain.

-JOHNBUNYAN,The Pilgrim’s Progress

MINERVAHAS ALREADY WEIGHEDanchor, using the high tide to widen the distance between her keel and certain obstructions near the Harbor’s entrance. Daniel is to be rowed out to join her in a pilot’s boat. Godfrey, who is half asleep, kisses his old Dad dutifully and watches his departure like a dream-that’s good, as he can tailor the memory later to suit his changing demands-like a suit of clothes modified every six months to fit a growing frame. Wait Still stands by Faith’s side, and Daniel can’t help thinking they make a lovely couple. Enoch, that home-wrecker, remains on the end of the wharf, guiltily apart, his silver hair glowing like white fire in the full moon-light.

A dozen slaves pull mightily at the oars, forcing Daniel to sit down, lest the boat shoot out from under his feet and leave him floundering in the Harbor. Actually he does not sit as much as sprawl and get lucky. From shore it probably looks like a pratfall, but he knows that this ungainly moment will be edited from The Story that will one day live in the memories of the American Waterhouses. The Story is in excellent hands. Mrs. Goose has come along to watch and memorize, and she has a creepy knack for that kind of thing, and Enoch is staying, too, partly to look after the physical residue of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technologickal Arts, but also partly to look after The Story and see that it’s shaped and told to Daniel’s advantage.

Daniel weeps.

The sounds of his sniffling and heaving drown out nearly everything else, but he becomes aware of some low, strange music: the slaves have begun to sing. A rowing-song? No, that would have a lumbering, yo-ho-ho sort of rhythm, and this is much more complicated, with beats in the wrong places. It must be an Africk tune, because they have meddled with some of the notes, made them flatter than they should be. And yet it’s weirdly Irish at the same time. There is no shortage of Irish slaves in the West Indies, where these men first fell under the whip, so that might explain it. It is (musicological speculations aside) an entirely sad song, and Daniel knows why: by climbing aboard this boat and breaking down in sobs, he has reminded each one of these Africans of the day when he was taken, in chains, off the coast of Guinea, and loaded aboard a tall ship.