He smiled wanly and shook his head. “Very much mortal, Mr. Nichols. Decreeing nothing. I tell you, though, the future’s immutable. What you think of as the future. We’re both actors in a script that can’t be rewritten. Come, now. Let’s play out our script. Ask me—”

“No. I’m going to break the pattern and walk out of here.”

“—about Paul Quinn’s future,” he said.

I was already at the door. But when he spoke Quinn’s name I halted, slack-jawed, stunned, and I turned. That was, of course, the question I had been going to ask, the question I had come here to ask, the question I had determined not to ask when I began to play my little game with immutable destiny. How poorly I had played! How sweetly Carvajal had maneuvered me! Because I was helpless, defeated, immobilized. You may think I was still free to walk out, but no, but no, not once he had invoked Quinn’s name, not now that he had tantalized me with the promise of desired knowledge, not now that Carvajal had demonstrated once more, crushingly, conclusively, the precision of his oracular gift.

“You say it,” I muttered. “You ask the question.”

He sighed. “If you wish.”

“I insist.”

“You mean to ask if Paul Quinn is going to become President.”

“That’s it,” I said hollowly.

“The answer is that I think he will.”

“You think? That’s the best you can tell me. You think he will?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know everything!”

“No,” Carvajal said. “Not everything. There are limits, and your question lies beyond them. The only answer I can give you is a mere guess, based on the same sort of factors anyone interested in politics would consider. Considering those factors, I think Quinn is likely to become President.”

“But you don’t know for sure. You can’t see him becoming President.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s beyond your range? Not in the immediate future?”

“Beyond my range, yes.”

“Therefore you’re telling me that Quinn won’t be elected in 2000, but you think he’s a good bet for 2004, although you aren’t capable of seeing as far as 2004.”

“Did you ever believe Quinn would be elected in 2000?” Carvajal asked.

“Never. Mortonson’s unbeatable. That is, unless Mortonson happens to drop dead the way Leydecker did, in which case it’s anybody’s election, and Quinn—” I paused. “What do you see in store for Mortonson? Is he going to live as long as the election of 2000?”

“I don’t know,” said Carvajal quietly.

“You don’t know that either? The election’s seventeen months away. Your range of clairvoyance is less than seventeen months, is that it?”

“At present, yes.”

“Has it ever been greater than that?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Much greater. I’ve seen thirty or forty years ahead, at times. But not now.”

I felt Carvajal was playing with me again. Exasperated, I said, “Is there any chance your long-range vision will return? And give you, say, a vision of the 2004 election? Or even of the election of 2000?”

“Not really?”

Sweat was pouring down my body. “Help me. It’s extremely important for me to know whether Quinn’s going to make it into the White House.”

“Why?”

“Why, because I—” I stopped, astonished to realize I had no real answer beyond mere curiosity. I was committed to working for Quinn’s election; presumably that commitment wasn’t conditional on knowing I was working for a winner. Yet in the moments when I thought Carvajal was able to tell me. I had been desperate to know. Clumsily I said, “Because I’m, well, very much involved in his career, and I’d feel better knowing the direction it’s likely to take, especially if I knew all our effort on his behalf wasn’t going to go to waste. I — ah—” I halted, feeling inane.

Carvajal said, “I’ve given you the best answer I can. My guess is that your man will become President.”

“Next year or in 2004?”

“Unless something happens to Mortonson, it looks to me as though Quinn has no chance until 2004.”

“But you don’t know whether something’s going to happen to Mortonson?” I persisted.

“I’ve told you: I don’t have any way of knowing that. Please believe that I can’t see as far as the next election. And, as you yourself pointed out a few minutes ago, probabilistic techniques are worthless in predicting the date of death of any one person. Probabilities are all I’m going on in this. My guess isn’t even as good as yours. In stochastic matters, Mr. Nichols, you’re the expert, not I.”

“What you’re saying is that your support of Quinn isn’t based on absolute knowledge, only a hunch.”

“What support of Quinn?”

His question, so innocent in tone, took me aback. “You thought he’d make a good mayor. You want him to become President,” I said.

“I did? I do?”

“You gave huge sums to his campaign treasury when he was running for mayor. What is that if it isn’t support? In March you showed up at the office of one of his chief strategists and offered to do everything you could to help Quinn attain higher office. That isn’t support?”

“It’s of no concern to me at all whether Paul Quinn ever wins another election,” Carvajal said.

“Really?”

“His career means nothing to me. It never has.”

“Then why are you willing to contribute so heavily to his election kitty? Why are you willing to offer handy tips about the future to his campaign managers? Why are you willing—”

"Willing?"

“Willing, yes. Did I use the wrong word?”

“Will has nothing to do with it, Mr. Nichols.”

“The more I talk with you, the less I understand.”

“Will implies choice, freedom, volition. There are no such concepts in my life. I give to Quinn because I know I must, not because I prefer him to other politicians. I came to Lombroso’s office in March because I saw myself, months ago, going there, and knew that I had to go that day, no matter what I’d rather be doing. I live in this crumbling neighborhood because I’ve never been granted a view of myself living anywhere else, and so I know this is where I belong. I tell you what I’ve been telling you today because this conversation is already as familiar to me as a movie I’ve seen fifty times, and so I know I must tell you things I’ve never told to another human being. I never ask why. My life is without surprises, Mr. Nichols, and it is without decisions, and it is without volition. I do what I know I must do, and I know I must do it because I’ve seen myself doing it.”

His placid words terrified me more than any of the real or imagined horrors of the dark staircase outside. Never before had I looked into a universe from which free will, chance, the unexpected, the random, had all been banished. I saw Carvajal as a man dragged helpless but uncomplaining through the present by his inflexible vision of the immutable future. It frightened me, but after a moment the dizzying terror was gone, never to return; for after the first appalling perception of Carvajal as tragic victim came another, more exalting, of Carvajal as one whose gift was the ultimate refinement of my own, one who has moved beyond the vagaries of chance into a realm of utter predictability. I was drawn irresistibly to him by that insight. I felt our souls interpenetrate and knew I would never be free of him again. It was as though that cold force emanating from him, that chilly radiance born of his strangeness that had made him so repellent to me, had now reversed its sign and pulled me toward him.

I said, “You always act out the scenes you see? ”

“Always.”

“You never try to change the script?”

“Never.”

“Because you’re afraid of what might happen if you do?”

He shook his head. “How could I possibly be afraid of anything? What we fear is the unknown, isn’t it? No: I obediently read the lines of the script because I know there’s no alternative. What looks to you like the future is to me more like the past, something already experienced, something it would be futile to attempt to alter. I give money to Quinn, you see, because I have already done so and have perceived that giving. How could I see myself having given, if I fail in fact to give when the moment of my vision intersects the moment of my ‘present’?”