'Too right it doesn't!' shouted Luigi. 'And disproof don't prove any flaming thing neither.'

'I thought you were supposed to be Italian.' Kelly said to him.

'I am, but I was raised in Australia. It's rather a strange story-'

'No stranger than mine,' Kelly said. 'Black Irishman do you call me? But few know that I passed my formative years in a Hangchow whorehouse, and that I enlisted in the Canadian army to escape French persecution for my part in aiding the Gaullists in Mauretania; and that is why-'

'Zut, alors!' cried Number Four. 'One can keep silence no longer! To question my credentials is one thing; to asperse my country is another!'

'Yer indignation don't prove a thing!' Number Three cried. 'Not that I really care, since I choose no longer to be Marvin.'

'Passive resistance is a form of aggression,' Number Four responded.

'Inadmissable evidence is still a form of evidence,' Three retorted.

'I don't know what any of you are talking about,' Number Two declared.

'Ignorance will get you nowhere,' Number Four snarled. 'I refuse categorically to be Marvin.'

'You can't give up what you haven't got,' Kelly said archly.

'I can give up anything I damned well want to!' Number Four cried passionately. 'I not only give up my Marvinity; I also step down from the throne of Spain, yield up to the dictatorship of the Inner Galaxy, and renounce my salvation in Bahai.'

'Feel better now, kid?' Luigi asked sardonically.

'Yes … It was insupportable. Simplification suits my intricate nature,' Number Four said. 'Which of you is Kelly?'

'I am,' Kelly said.

'Do you realize,' Luigi asked him, 'that only you and I have names?'

'That's true,' Kelly said. 'You and I are different!'

'Here now, just a moment!' Number One said.

'Time, gentlemen, time, please!'

'Hold the fort!'

'Hold your water!'

'Hold the phone!'

'As I was saying,' Luigi said. 'We! Us! The Named Ones of the Proof Presumptive! Kelly – you can be Marvin if I can be Kraggash!'

'Done!' roared Kelly, over the protests of the lay figures.

Marvin and Kraggash grinned at each other in the momentary euphoria of identity-intoxication. Then they flung themselves at each other's throats. Manual strangulation followed apace. The three numbered ones, robbed of a birthright they had never possessed, took up conventional poses of stylized ambiguity. The two lettered ones, granted an identity they had seized anyhow, tore and bit at each other, flung forth defiant arias and cringed before devastating recitatives. Number One watched until he grew bored, then began playing with a lap dissolve.

That did it. The whole shooting works slid away like a greased pig on roller skates coming down a solid glass mountain, only slightly faster.

Day succeeded night, which succeeded in making a perfect fool of itself.

Plato wrote: 'It ain't whatcha do, it's the way thatcha do it.' Then, deciding that the world was not yet ready for this, he scrubbed it out.

Hammurabi wrote: 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' But he wasn't sure it was true, so he scratched it out.

Gautama Buddha wrote: 'Brahmins stink.' But later he revised it.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and I don't like it much either. Marvinissimo! Here he comes catfooting along, flaunting his swollen identity. All men are mortal, he tells us, but some are more mortal than others. There he is, playing in the backyard, making value judgements out of mud. Having no respect, he becomes his father. Last week we revoked his Godhead; we caught him operating a life without a licence.

(But, I have warned you often, my friends, of the Protoplasmic Peril. It creeps across the heavens, extinguishing stars. Shamelessly it survives and flows, uprooting planets and smothering the stars. With damnable insistence it deposits its abominations.)

He comes again, that seedy juggler in an off-beige skin, that monstrous optimist with the stitched smile! Killer, kill thyself! Burglar, steal thyself! Fisher, catch thyself! Famer, harvest thyself!

And now we will hear the report of the Special Investigator.

'Thank you, ahem. I have found that Marvin is the one to have when you're having more than one; that stars fell on Marvin Flynn, that one should praise the Lord and pass the Marvin Flynn. And I have also noted: Darling, as long as you're up, get me a Marvin Flynn. Marvin Flynn is actually better than the higher-priced spread. Promise her anything, but give her Marvin Flynn. You have a friend at Marvin Flynn. Let your Marvin do the walking through the Yellow Pages. Drink Marvin – it satisfies! Why not worship this week at the Marvin Flynn of your choice? For the Marvin Flynn that prays together stays together.'

… were locked in titanic combat, which, since it had happened, was inevitable. Marvin smote Kraggash upon the breastbone, then smote him again most grievously upon the nose bone. Kraggash promptly changed into Ireland, which Marvin invaded as a demi-legion of Danish berserkers, forcing Kraggash to attempt a kingside pawnstorm, which stood no chance against a low flush. Marvin reached for his opponent, missed, and devastated Atlantis. Kraggash swung backhanded and slaughtered a gnat.

Deadly the battle raged across the steaming swamps of the Miocene; a colony of termites mourned their queen as Kraggash cometed helplessly into Marvin's sun, fragmenting at last into countless militant spores. But Marvin unerringly picked the diamond from the glittering glass, and Kraggash fell back upon Gibraltar.

His bastion fell in a night when Marvin kidnapped the Barbary apes, and Kraggash speeded across southern Thrace with his body in a suitcase. He was seized at the frontier of Phthistia, a country that Marvin improvised with considerable effect upon the history of Europe.

Weakening, Kraggash became evil; becoming evil, Kraggash grew weak. In vain he invented devil-worship. The followers of Marvinity bowed down not to the idol, but rather to the symbol. Evil, Kraggash turned nasty: dirt grew beneath his fingernails, noxious tufts of hair appeared on his soul.

Helpless at last Kraggash lay, the incarnation of evil, with the body of Marvin clutched in his talon. Rites of exorcism induced his final agony. A buzz saw disguised as a prayer wheel dismembered him, a mace masquerading as a censer brained him. Kindly old Father Flynn intoned over him the last words: 'Thou gettest no bread with one meatball.' And Kraggash was put into a tomb hewn out of the living Kraggash. Appropriate graffiti were carved upon his tombstone, and flowering Kraggash was planted around his grave.

It is a quiet spot. To the left is a grove of Kraggash trees, to the right is an oil refinery. Here is an empty beer can, here is a gipsy moth. And just beyond is the spot where Marvin opened the suitcase and took out his long-lost body.

He blew the dust off it and combed its hair. He wiped its nose and straightened its tie. Then, with seemly reverence, he put it on.