«Not when what the parent truly wants is to see her Child do great things. But come,» she coaxed, «what really has my little Sage in such a fuddle?»

«A question, posed to Me by a human: What Good Am I?»

Coral lace fluttered against black silk as Madame planted her hands on the exaggerated platforms of her hips. «Jehovah, Dear, how many times have I warned You not to take it seriously when people use words like ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ Most humans, even those who’ve studied, apply no consistency or rigor to their use of those terms, so unless it was a sensayer—was it a sensayer?»

«Human, athlete, leader, officer, foe who wills My death.»

«You see? I doubt such a person even has a clear notion of whether Good exists as a universal or only in the speaker’s mind. It’s just the hollow specter of the word, Dearest, a shadow, no reality behind it. If You waste Yourself getting distracted by shadows, You may as well crawl into Plato’s cave. Stand tall, now.»

She lifted a new tricorne from a box, trimmed like the coat in gold and gray and purple. Her Son accepted it, explored it with His sight and touch, and tried it on, a complete gentleman for an instant. Then He removed and hung it on a waiting peg beside the black original. Oh, Ἄναξ Jehovah never wears His hats; they exist only so he may remove them out of courtesy, while He stands under the starry roof of Another’s House.

«But now I ask Myself: Am I Good?» He continued. Careful Jehovah always makes it clear, though pause and rhythm, when He means time’s finite ‘am’—I am in Spain, I am twenty-one, I am breathing—and when He means it absolutely in His universe before and beyond time—I Am. «If, as Plato and Aquinas hold, Good Is One with My Peer, then, Being Not-My-Peer, I Am Evil. But if, as Ockham and Mycroft hold, there is no absolute Good, and good is instead a human construct, a kindly and anthropomorphic perfection which resembles, not My Peer, but what His creations think they wish He were, then in such a sense I may be good, for I am kind, and want all thinking beings to be happy. But can I be called good if I merely desire their happiness, but do not attempt to achieve it? Achieving it would require Me to endeavor to twist My Peer’s Plan toward kind and human things, toward compromise, away from war, yet He has laid out war before Me, and such rich questions to be tested by it, meat for Our Conversation. I am invited here by Him, not them, and am a poor Guest if I shun My Host’s table to aid the garden ants.»