“So what?” I was beginning to get fed up. “The Dark Ones have intervened, the Light Ones have intervened . . . who should know better than you? And what came of it? How many wars have been unleashed by experiments to create the ideal society? Communism, fascism, democracy, autocracy, glasnost, globalization, nationalism, multiculturalism—how much of all this is human, and how much is ours? We prod people in one direction, then in the other. We observe how things have turned out. Then we cross out the result and start all over again. Ah, it doesn’t work . . . well, let’s try it in a different country, in a different culture, with different social attitudes . . . What, communism was hopeless? I don’t think so. But we got tired of that toy. What, democracy is false through and through? Hardly. But we’ve given up playing with that, too. But you know, it’s all the same to people what they die of—the building of communism or the introduction of democracy or the struggle for rights and freedoms. And I reckon the best thing we could do for human beings is leave them in peace! Let them live their own lives, think up their own rules, learn from their own mistakes!”

“Do you think I shouldn’t have intervened in the fate of Russia?” Arina asked.

“Yes! No! I don’t know . . .” I said, and shrugged. “But what if after all those upheavals the outcome had been better? If there hadn’t been any World War Two, for instance?”

“I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing,” said Arina. “And I couldn’t ask anyone for advice. Not Gesar, not Zabulon—they would both have tried to turn the situation to their own advantage. But you’re different, I can talk things over with you. You’re normal. You’re still human.”

“I’m not so sure anymore . . .” I said, glancing at the black-skinned security guard walking along the edge of the children’s playground. He looked attentively at the roundabouts and the swings, then his glance slid over us without seeing and he walked away.

“We are all human, Anton. Some more so, some less so. Yes, there are situations that aren’t clear, when you don’t know if you ought to intervene. But there others that are absolutely clear, unequivocal!”

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

“Anton, Prophets only appear rarely. Eight instances in the whole of the twentieth century. And it’s even rarer for their first prophecy to be documented before it becomes known to people and comes into force. If you know the boy’s prophecy . . .”

“No, I don’t know it. I swear.”

“But can you find out what it is?” Arina asked specifically.

“Yes, probably. What’s more, it’s possible that I can find out what Erasmus’s first prophecy was. Although, after all these years, it has probably been realized already.”