- Most pernicious
- Be careful what you wish for...
- New Page
- New Page
- Homeric hymn to Pan
- New Page
- Home
- What the hell. I have nothing to lose
- My Adventures
- My Story
-
Essentials
- The earth is not flat
- The abolition of mind
- Things that only need saying once-one e tel
- Manners makyth man
- Coal in the bath and the victim culture
- The withdrawal of love and forcing oneself on others
- So some guys had the really freaky idea that we should love one another
- Jesus!
- 'Judge not that ye be not judged'
- Goo
- The way we were: Anglican England
- 'Avatars of living grace'
- Ditching the theology of love
- Reality >
- PANTHER: the argument
- Moi
- The new Marxism
- Dill's World (blog)
- New Page
- The collapse of education
- The Anile Heir
- For Katie: Harry Secombe: 'The Lord is my Shepherd'
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
-
'And now Amanda is seriously ill.'
- Otting
- THAT AM I >
- Medicine: the joke
- It's like this, Doc >
- Medicine: the continuing joke
- 'By Tummel and Loch Rannoch'
- The laughing-stock of the civilized world
- And be damned to you
- In the garden with Mummy
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Blair: the icing on the cake
- Expecto patronam
- Scarlet battalions
- My family: any colour so long as it's red
- Back to the freaking juniper-tree (1)
- Back to the freaking juniper-tree (2)
- Our grandfather who art in heaven (though I doubt it), Howard be thy name
- So you have a problem with my family, fucker?
- 'Jew-Communists'
- Margaret, my great-grandmother, an Irish tart
- The FUQs
- Dear Wannabe Nemesis
- Shall we try again, Bobbles my sweet?
- Evil
- Dixi (that's Latin, you know, Father)
- The cultural use of the lamp-post
- A home from home
- All times are now (1)
- All times are now (2)
- For Katie: All times are now (3)
- For Katie: All times are now (4)
- For Katie; All times are now (5)
- For Katie: All times are now (6)
- Non serviam
- This colour doesn't run
- The balance
- Civilization - the balance
-
Gallery
- And be damned to you
- Catholic Encyclopaedia 1912: Obedience
- Voltaire and Jesus
- Tertullian, Women in Canon Law (1912) and Mulieris Dignitatem (1988)
- Padding through the Vatican archives
- The Vatican State
- Extra ecclesiam nulla salus: go to hell, go directly to hell, do not pass 'Go'
- A short history lesson
- A phrase-book for monkey-nuts
- Summary: the abode of the loon
-
Translations from Voltaire (mine): Concerning the Church of England
>
- Bukharin and Preobrazhensky: Communism and Religion
- Translations from Voltaire (mine): Freedom of Thought
- Translations from Voltaire (mine): Transubstantiation
- Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason
- Lenin: Socialism and Religion
- Marx: 'So much for the social principles of Christianity'
- The Horcruxes and the illusion of power
- 'And death shall have no dominion'
- Led Zep: Kashmir
- Buddhist meditation music: Zen Garden
- Karula
- Summary: the love way or the power way
- Flashtest
- The worst university in the country
- Just finishing off, Dolores
- Miss Smila's feeling for snow
- Death of an expert witness
- Interesting, those trips to Moscow
- 'His single hand portrayed it'
- Of course no-one pays any attention to poets
- The desire of the moth for the flame
- The Hospital
- The ghost in the machine was riled
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner
- I am the very model of a modern faith apologist: reprise
- I am of course reminded of a little list (of a little list)
- In the garden with Mummy when the Nine turned up
- Grow the fuck up, comrades
- Thin red line
- 'The Party', 'The Regiment'
- Once upon a time there was a big red giant
- Britain's not very secret weapon
- The headlines
- The waning of the age of aquarium
- Letter to MI5: Playing The Patriot Game
- Those in peril on the sea
- The Patriot Game (song)
- Country matters: 'Elf and Safety
- The Matter of Britain
- Marianne
- Riders on the storm with soundtrack
- The rat-catchers
- 'And gentleman in England, now a-bed, shall think themselves accurs'd...'
- The evidence no-one asks for
- England
- My father when young 2
- A few of my books
- The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism
- Barry's book-plate (evil grin)
- Barry: 'demob' if only from the MOI and redeployment at JWT
- Barry: publishing contracts with Curtis Brown
- Barry's funeral service
- Family album
- Barbara's 100th birthday
- And Nigel's funeral: read by Saul on the whale-backed Downs
- Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Class mum lives in a field with Dinge: the intellectual Left
- Within you, without you
- Because the world is round, it turns me on
- More Lattic and other incredibly cool stuff
- Hass and Venga
- The Lover of Jalaluddin Rumi and some things you never wanted to know about translation
- Love IS the law
- Shahriar's sites for sore eyes
- Islamic art and civilization
- Abu Nuwas
- Fisking Warsi
- Harry's Place v. Scumbag College
- Henrietta wondered if HP was too soft on Sparte-Smythe
- Koorosh Modarresi of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran
- Rumy Hasan of the Birmingham Socialist Alliance
- Sharia socialists
- ComSymp, ShariaSymp: plus ca change....
- Illustrations of the Rubaiyat
- Hell, objectively speaking: St Catherine of Genoa
- Joe Stote
- Katy Kianush
- 'Brothers, if you hear...'
- L'Internationale
- A Lioness's Quest
- The Battle of Evermore
- Rosa Luxemburg
- Love in a time of cholera
- TEKEL: Religious, guys? Doesn't that mean shit?
- Please do not feed the god. He really doesn't appreciate it.
- Instead of God eating people, people eat God. Seems a good swap
- Herstory
- Ultramontanism
- Multiverse defined by the sexual equipment of the human male
- Civis romana sum?
- Sunday School, 1913: 'THE GATES WILL BE OPEN TO ALL MANKIND'
- Huxley
- Consciousness 101
- Jesus Christ the apple-tree
- WE DO NOT KNOW
- Trial before Pilate
- 'For the sake of the nation, this Jesus must die!'
- Much how I feel about doctors and other forms of intellectual pollution in the University, really
- Jesus, a human being
- By all means get us wrong, Father
- 'They turned to Rome to sentence Nazareth'
- Buddhism: frightful threat to the Church, you know
- Dharma the Cat and the Barefoot Doctor
- Non-duality
- Exo, eso, balance, Balrogs et le Parti Communiste Francais 1939-1945
- ComSymp, ShariaSymp: Fit the Second
- Printing and the Reformation
- Glossary
- Early chess: more, er, gentlemen (and ladies)
- The Crusades: it's good to look at dates
- Richard and Saladin: perspectives
- Richard and Saladin: perspectives
- Nathan the Wise
- Portly and the Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- Otters return to Thames (maybe)
- The Ottery, TW9
- Spring: rain and shine
- Problems with numeracy: cardinals, generals and rock 'n' roll
- Franny and Zooey
- The tail does not wag the dog
- Try again? I think not: finale
- How many deaths does it take till they know that too many British Muslim women have died
- Who killed Banaz
- Sexism, racism, Islamophobia, Marxophobia and a rather interesting school
- Aaargh! The Terrible Tonge-Monster!
- Just hammering the stake a little further in
- A second English Civil War: women against women
- The vorpal sword goes snicker-snack
- You were saying...
- Of course I've slain the bloody Jabberwock
- Chapter One - Stalinism is just so yesterday
- The rightful heir, the usurper and the usurper's bloody wife
- Wiping excrement off the sole of one's boo
- Fascism victorious, gloating and spurious - for the moment, certainly
- Six counties (sob, the horror of it) lie under John Bull's tyranny
- Calling Lord Haw-Haw
- Cool Britannia
- 'Hell is just as properly proper as Greenwich or as Bath or Joppa'
- 'Any old iron, any old iron, any, any old iron...'
- The Front Line
- Taking it from the top...
- Happy birthday to m
- Extract from The Anile Heir including Lattic
- My body my self
- Culluket, Kastanessen and of course Coulter
- The Girl Who Talked to Otters
- Notes, some of which are Caroline's
- Our revels now are ended
- Pallas Athene
- More notes
- Pan pipes - conclusions - allegory
- Shit, man, they won't even state their problem in the Agora
- Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad
- Poetry in motion
- Ain't no use in looking down!/Ain't no discharge on the ground!
- Queen - We will rock you!
- Queen - Killer Queen
- The wrong shaped body, inferior product
- What a friend they have in evil, all their sins and griefs to bear
- In sum
- 'Building a remedy for Kruschev and Kennedy'
- Classic Islamoballs (and of course pure Stalinism)
- Deja vu
- Really, there are more important things to think about....
- Sleeping Pan by InertiaK
- Hymn to Pan by Faun
- Pan pipes
- Dirty old men
- For Katie: 'And death shall have no dominion'
- The Stone Table cracked
- 10 intellectual frauds of the orthodox religious and their slaves
- A Miracle of Exmoor: a Christmas masque
- WE DO NOT KNOW
- Intelligent women
- 'Tales of brave Ulysses'
- Coursera
- Free
- Milburn
- A fifth column
- Ain't there nuffink wrong with my back, apes?
- Gunfight at OK Corral
- Gunfight at OK Corral: the movie
- Harmonica and Frank
- Captain's Log: Star-Date Whatever
- Women, the US election, the President of the United States and other cool stuf
- The fury of a woman who has been raped
- "Are all American officers so ill-mannered?"
- The grand-daughter of not-quite-the-founder of the Labour Party
- Meanwhile...the lamp-post
- 'Sarat's little joke': the Economic Liaison Officer to the Anile Throne
- Where have all the SovSymps gone, long time passing...
- Roots and reductionism
- 'At anchor here I ride...'
- 'Against all things ending'
- New Page
- Verstehen Sie?
- Memoirs of London medicine
- 28th August 2010
- Irreducible evil
- Irreducible evil
- Just for you: Anthea Turner - and the python
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them
- Just call me Serafina Pekkala, or possibly Lady Godiva
- A few reminders
- More? You want more?
- Grand finale
- It even has a pretty cover
- Bambi
- C'est nous qu'on ose mediter/De rendre a l'antique esclavage!
- A reminder of who is Marianne
- Voici Noel!
- Vicar of Bray
- Spanish Ladies
- Meanwhile back in Scilly....Song of the Western Men
- Twenty years behind enemy lines
- Family tree
- Pavarotti: Little Drummer Boy
- Walking in the air
- 'So you think you can love me and spit in my eye/So you think you can love me and leave me to die'
- Aw, come on, Doc, you're such an academic
- Je suis allee voir dans sa tete
- 16 chants de Noel
- 16 chants de Noel
- Talking of sheep...
- The distancing of Jesus from the churches
- So this is how it is to be
- And....And Stafford....And
- A limp prick and no balls
- Excuse me while I dress my hair with vine leaves
- Excuse me while I dress my hair with vine leaves
- Other notes
- Other notes
- Blair
- No?
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?' Pt One
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?' Pt Two
- If you're going to Acton Vale, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
- The truth about medicine
- Getting nowhere fast
- Bird in the bloody wilderness
- As I have so tiresomely repetitively said
- Untitled
- That which sustains
- Therefore, Vice-Chancellor
- The lies they tell and the drivel they spout
- Rising above the evil reptilian kitten-eaters
- We too do not do cowering
- What the papers say
- The closed (sealed/wounded/stunted/practically non-existent) mind
- Dust and sparkles: child of Dust and Light and Lenin
- Just screaming
- More ridiculous womanish screaming
- Look, children, do look, it's a Five-Year Plan
- Fictionally speaking...The House that Keir built
- The heavy mob moves in: "We're Ancient Greeks. We do reason. And of course democracy."
- What did New Labour achieve?
- Apollo speaks
- Physician, heal thyself - or not
- Wholly unnecessary footnote
- Ah, the dirty underbelly of medicine
- Artemis' arrows
- Dear Apollo, I think the mind-itch needs to be stronger
- A few hymns
- Rhinoceros!
- Begging them to sue me for 15 years
- 'Now that I lie here/My body all holes/I think of the traitors/Who bargained and sold'
- Of course, if anyone has a spare atom bomb
- Whatever it takes
- Shit on the sole of my boot
- Shit on the sole of my boot
- You will see me dead rather than support me
- Vultures waiting for the flesh that dies
- Would you like to see the state of my mattress?
- 'When you've shouted "Rule, Britannia!"...
- 'I vow to thee, my country...' Aw, come on, you know it makes your skin crawl
- The Fixers
- The prince, the cardinal, the duke, the politician and the professor
- The Enforcers
- Me charm. You just strange
- So what exactly am I saying here?
- Pussy Riot: Yet another day in the destruction of Ivana Denisovich
- Untitled
- Pussy Riot (2): no pasaran
- Just smile for the camera, fuckers
- PANTHER: the animations, though not yet the videos
- Theme music
- So-o-o
- Just a stupid woman screaming
- Just a reminder of the Miracle of Exmoor
- Mess with the best. Die like the rest
- The essential paradigm
- No-one wants me to survive. No-one wants me to succeed
- "Are you still laughing, Sarat?"
- You have heard of the University, Doctor?
- PANTHER: The Manual, out now on Scribd
- Going back to work tomorrow
- The gift of speech
- Point counterpoint
- To cut a long story short, therefore
- To cut a long story even shorter
- A few things you need to note
- Death rather than dishonour
- In brief, therefore
- Start of first draft - what do you think of it so far?
- Let me tell you a story, Jackanory, Jackanory...
- Phase II
- Thus we see the great esteem in which London medicine holds the University
- Washed down the drain
- Raped, butchered, destroyed means what?
- "I invoke Artemis"
- I invoke Artemis (II)
- The closing-down sale. Everything must go
- Murder by remote control
- Insufferable
- Befehl ist Befehl
- Order of play
- The Broadmoor annexe
- I say, don't they shoot collaborators?
- You pay them
- Dear British Public
- Graphically speaking.....
- I have taken a lead
- Endsum
- The good news and the bad news
- The education suitable to the masses prescribed by the C19th industrialist, therefore
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?/Medicine: the joke
- I shit on you daily
- It is fact
- A new continuum...Watch this space not
- Lady Sybil's swamp-dragons (footnote to the above)
- The Age of Aquarius
- But of course your usual Christmas present, little sick-bags
- 'Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before'
- There's just one huge and enormous difference, isn't there
- Shall we just highlight that bit?
- Untitled
- Untitled
- Off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz
- Untitled
- 'Don despicable, don of death' Could I leave it out?
- Finish with a summary of the facts
- Roll bloody up for the greatest show on earth
- Just thought to start to make a couple of videos
- Killer Queen
- It is concluded
- A short note
- I need help
- Get out of my university, animals
- Bluestockings
- Oh, when is this going to end?
- Go for it, fuckers, go for it
- Fnords, Jesus and the gerund
- Corsin and coradium
- TAH: Chapter One
- The cancer that is medicine
- The Petri dish
- Hanging them is good. Exposing them is better
- Lattic....
- Female = non-person
- That which sustains reprise
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Non, c'est pas ca
- Quod erat demonstrandum
- To move on, therefore
- So there you have it
- The script
- Ars longa vita brevis
- PANTHER: the movie
- Animal Farm: the midden
- The word is psychopath
- If you prefer, a septic tank
- And the rest
- Twin cores
- Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit
- Here the matter rests at present
- So just what is this bloody nonsense?
- My knowledge of Photoshop has increased by leaps and bounds
- Question One
- Words and pictures
- Etched in acid
- Dear fucking world
- More
- Caniba and Hokabi
- I think - class (Lancashire A, puh-lease, rhymes with gas)
- What is the point of what you are saying? What is it intended to achieve?
- PANTHER was created in 2008
- Happy Samhain
- Profound concern
- The Road to the Isles
- And of course Andy Stewart
- 'Banks on every finger'
- Don't tread on me
- A Miracle of Exmoor: a Christmas masque
- Untitled
- Pretty much a classic, wouldn't you say
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them (2)
- There is no reasoning with them
- A little give and take
- Extraordinary irresistible find
- Music
- So there it is, part solution, mostly not
- Reprise: 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?'/Medicine: the joke
- Mireille
- Espèce de pute!
- Etched in stone
- Hate Fal the most?
- Or Shav?
- Or is it Dill?
- Or is it Dill?
- Reminder: Ars longa vita brevis
- Reminder: PANTHER: the movie
- 'If you cannot make up rhymes/There are always the columns of The Times'
- Jarring blast: letter to my father 19th February 2012
- Vermin made simple
- You were saying
- And so, dear MI5, dear Labour Party, dear University...
- I who might as well be fucking dead
- Death rather than dishonour
- Strands
- Dolls on music-boxes wound up by a key
- Beyond death
- You can fit a lot into a five-minute video
- Je suis Charlie
- Marble Arch? The Brandenburg Gate? The Colosseum?
- Sort of cross between Athena and Artemis, really
- OK, lemme be rational
- Meanwhile...
- Meanwhile...
- As if: cui bono?
- Dark satanic mills
- Work in progress
- Welcome to sewer NHS
- Over my dead body
- Beam them up to the Great Prick in the Sky
- So there it is, part solution, mostly not
- That which sustains finale
- Messing about on the River: Lattic, Sarat and Shavli too
- Christ, it's a mad monkey
- Lots of nuffink
- Led Zep: Kashmir (2)
- The pillars of the West/By all means get us wrong, Father
- Evil reptilian kitten-eater
- Cockroach Protection League
- Happy Easter
- The very models of a medical practitioner
- The Act of Desecration
- No is the answer. What is the question? Loony alert, therefore
- The Grand Plan
- Go for it
- Waste of oxygen
- Prologue
- Intermezzo
- Just the time for a brief reminder
- Mess with the best - die like the rest
- Wailings of sick Trots not
- Heavy metal
- 'Allow me to introduce myself...'
- Freddie and Peter
- How to depict one of the most powerful men in the world
- Moog
- Anyone for tennis?
- Hair
- Hairier?
- Hairiest?
- Untitled
- Python and Allen
- Prepared for any eventuality
- Bad moon rising with soundtrack
- Riders on the storm with soundtrack
- 'Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before' encore une fois
- Not one foul animal among them will uphold freedom and democracy
- Flower power
- Meanwhile there's really only one song for Ardeshna (and Blair)
- Thin red line - the third of the set
- PANTHER: the movie - nealy there
- Do you like my channel art?
- Couple more soundbites to choke on
- Home movie
- Damaged goods
- How is Virginia these days?
- The Hunger Games
- Now on YouTube
- Second vid
- The Mutts
- The Mutt Pit
- The video I shall make
- Kindly therefore display all the wit, creaivity, intellect, education and intelligence you don't have
- The last picture show
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- The Last Picture Show 2: female eunuchs
- In tg
- New Page
- New Page
- New Page
- In
- In the heat of the night
- In the heat of the night
- Not a complicated image
- Vermin
- 'It is a slave's lot thou describest, to refrain from uttering what one thinks'
- Won't that be fun, Fitter?
- New Page
- Nous sommes tous P:aris
- Meanwhile back at the ranch
- You may remember the Squelch?
- DIXI
- I laugh at you daily
- The end
- Fuck your lies, your cowardice, your hypocrisy, vermin
- Got it all sewn up
- I am Dill
- PANTHER: the movie - a reminder
- And of course the manual
- They deploy
- New Page
- Traitors and would be murderers
- And the other video
- Yes, there are, aren't there.
- Zopiclone
- Hell
- No answer is a very clear answer
- For Katie: All times are now (1)
- For Katie: The Lord of the Dance
- For Katie and m: The heart will go on
- If it's the last thing I ever do, whcih I suppose it might well be
- My fine body twisted, all battered and lame
- Reflections
- For Katie: The trumpet shall sound
- For Katie: Hallelujah Chorus
- For Katie
- The service
- Reading from 'Burnt Norton'
- Going Back
- or in other words
- I need help
- Time past and time future
- Tomorrow
- How many other lives have you destroyed?
- Arundel
- After such knowledge, what forgiveness
- Let it be said - it will be said
- Information governance
- So----
- Sitting in their tin cans far above the world...
- Another shit-filled weekend
- The Cull
- Society has the right to require of avery public agent an account of his administration
- The laughing stock
- 'Sing while you raise your bow...'
- Simple questions
- For fuck's sake they're all vermin
- Functionally illiterate
- Of no significance to me whatever
- The best story
- Mess with the best. Die like the rest
- The visible difference
- Drop the dead donkey: UCH imploding
- It remains the case
- Oh, and it remains the case
- What matters
- Salvat regina!
- Nancy Wake
- Nancy Wake 2
- 2016: your annual treat - A Miracle of Exmoor
- Dunscreaming (shortly, anyhow)
- Any normal person
- Malice
- Keep your loving brother happy
- Surprised by joy
- University Challenge
- Meanwhile back at the lamp-post
- Except to speak of the absolute horror
- And in particular
- Because I screamed I needed help
- QED
- Sredni Vashtar
- The wild and wacky world of the Waffen SS
- Think I'm a bloody servant, do you
- Irrationality
- Literate, literary, educated, intellectual England
- Refinements
- Doesn't the University see the joke?
- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- On the whole, I think....
- Ain't taking it from a woman
- A great and mighty wonder I'm still standing
- The zenith of human possibility
- ' pilot of the storm who leaves no trace'
- 'Sing while you raise your bow. Shoot straighter than before'
- In the face of the evidence
- Watch this space
- Brennt Paris?
- 'I vow to thee, my country...' Aw, come on, you know it makes your skin crawl
- Within you, without you - especially without you
- Ain't I got no respet
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them
- The Matter of Kadun: physics and metaphysics
- Cartoons
- Over-arching significance not
- They just wouldn't list
- 'And now that I lie here/My body all holes'
- Photoshoot
- I saved about half the books
- I just don't understand
- Fnords
- Pigs in clover
- See you in hell, fuckers
- Attempted murder
- Bog-rats
- Person or persons unknown but very guessable
- All you need is love
- One more time
- More
- Depict them in bondage
- In sum, Mr Benn's questions
- 'Arnold Lane/Had a strange/Hobby...'
- '...Doors bang/Chain-gang...'
- Etx
- Shoot straighter than before
- My moon and my wand
- My college, my university
- Inevitable and not
- painfully slow on the uptake
- This too you may stuff up your arse
- And of course this
- Pout
- TTFN
- Wiping excrement off the sole of my boot
- A West End comedy, perhaps
- Fascism
- I really don't think so, no
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
- For Barry: Danny Boy
- Epitaph: it's your funeral
- Yea, though I work in the Land of the Valley of the Shadow of Death
- Do learn to read, Doctor
- The crooked road the English drunkard made
- By Oak and Ash and Thorn
- Can't un read plain words of English
- I get the gist, I surely do
- The world of perversion
- The Ottery has moved to the banks of the Arun
- Snapping my claws at the foeman''s chants
- Yes, the crash of the waves on the foreshore
- The even longer march of Everywoman
- You tried so desperately hard to destroy me
- Evil reptilian kitten-eaters
- The five most evil men in England
- Love does not drown in corruption)
- Like something out of Hieronymus Bosch
- Harry Secombe: The Old Rugged Cross
- The Drivellers
- Insolence is so very vexing, is it not
- Protected by the faith of my fore-fathers
- Lost causes
- Solid Soviet steel
- 1
- Murderous vermin who jeer at disability
- Clarity
- De profundis clamavi
- Reprise: Nancy Wake 2
- Generals gather in their masses...
- Cry foul and bloody murder
- Tumour
- New Page
- Ludicrous
- I think I said get me out of there
- This is not life
- All bets off, fuckers
- New Page
- Dearest darling Katie and Barry
- You think you impress me?
- Manners, ladies and gentlemen, puh-lease
- I suppose the exact charge would be
- No-o-o I don't thik you should forget about Lattic
- Boys having a bit of a larf
- I thnk, you know, dear Artemis...
- Sttill drooling, are you
- 'Thou shallt not suffer a witch to live.;
- My YouTube channel
- Education is what is left
- New Page
- To su
- To sum up
- The endless road traversed (nearly)
- It's a mandala, stupid
- Happy New Year
- Keep your loving brother happy
- Not with a bang but a whimper
- I, however, have outstanding questions
- Feline groovy
- Suitable cases for treatment
- I have spoken
- Nothing taxing to the sane
- I have of course the utmost...
- Doctors and nurses cannot cope with quantum physics
- Addended: Etched in acid and have been for years
- The psychology of medicine
- No outcry
- A very simple question
- To which task I shall now..
- RIP the Labour Party
- First things first
- I a woman
- The Howard lion
- Lest we forget: I don't
- New Page
- Pat me on the head and tell mee not to be a silly little girl
- I a woman of over 60
- A hanging matter
- The gross falsification of history
- 'The writers by their presence...'
- One more time just for the hell of it
- Lastly...
- The answer is no
- So that was the Universiity that was
- Hey you, get off of my cloud...
- Off. off, off of my cloud...
- A right waste of make-up
- So what?
- Footnotes to the above
- So where - ?
- What is the name of - and can't they - ?
- The glorious first of June
- Why has the door not been smashed down/?
- Your professors, Vice-Chancellor
- Anti-dialogue
- Shall we finish with a quick...
- They don't want the Jabberwock slain
- ABOVE THE LAW?
- So - I think -
- "Sentence first = verdict afterwards."
- DA and TM
- Post mortem
- Everywhere I go people are collecting bloody food
- how many people are on PAYE?
- I am naturallly reminded...
- Where was I?
- Where was I (2)?
- Welcome to the NHS
- Let's play doctors and nurses
- 'Senior members of the University'
- These are {{DOCTORS}}} and {{{NURSES}}}
- The girl who talked to otters
- How you hate intelligence
- And you always get away with it, don't you
- And you always get away with it, don't you
- The Hundred Flowers Movement
- New Page
- In one line
- Belloc, Apollo and May
- While readiing The Four Men
- Golgotha, place of a skull
- Troll toes
- So go for it
- PUT-DOWN
- New Page
- The required result
- Sex and mind
- Their mommas told them...
- Greece or Rome
- The new normal
- Isn't this interesting?
- New Page
- Ruthless vicious evil old men
- The charge is atteempted murder
- The C-List
- Q&A
- Ludicrous propositions
- Chained to the oars
- Footnotes
- 1095 and all that
- The Anglican garden
- Or of course a Kabbalist
- I have some time ago...
- Cult, Death-Eaters
- Not forgetting Nathan the Wise
- Cultural exchange
- And of course not forgetting...
- In short, in my young day...
- Contemplating this Matter of Kadun
- Nearly there
- I detect, therefore
- 'That government by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.'
- Tingle
- Follow-up
- Cave-meen
- Not ancient history
- I have indeed graphically
- 'By their deeds'
- So maybe you'll also like this bit
- Just to be exact
- Which?
- Oh, all right, just for you
- Left something out, didn't I
- Didn't quite finish that off
- Ciletij
- Ritawa
- Shav and Zik
- The party
- Spetzi
- senoki
- Punching the pixels
- Reality
- More tails from the riverbank
- The Sarat and Maya Show
- Perverts
- If we may now...
- In short
- progress
- A national joke
- The Spetzi Effect
- Quanta
- Who owns me if I do not own myself? Reprise
- Who owns me if I do not own myself? Reprise
- Boys having a bit of a larf
- You really have....
- And they all just sit there
- So exactly what - ?
- Hostile fascist foreign powers
- Personal, very
- Rubber dolly
- Essentially
- Fana
- LLLLOLLLL
- Unnatural, innit
- It's over, monkeys, over
- You might learn something but probably not
- So now Blair will tell us all
- Spetzi and Qine
- RL
- Qine and Spetzi
- Fucktards united
- Capital
- Well, didn't I just hand myself the short straw
- Do they actually understand?
- Quotable quotes
- 3D printing
- Ah, but can you print fluffy cushions?
- Taking an intelligent interest
- Vaudos 1
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- New Page
- Anniversary Waltz
- Automation: ostrich land
- The Kirit and Micaela Show
- New Page
- Cookery time
- What are they like!
- Until we meet on camera...
- And just because I know you love Homeric hymns
- New Page
- Dear Artemis, Athena, Apollo and Pan
- Baz and Paw on the loose in Van-Senok
- Back to the fermions
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- A crude, vulgar, ugly, insolent, mad and evil little man
- RIP English Christianity
- And the outstanding question is...
- Foxes, fruit, fermions and fuck you where you breathe
- Varna's Wall
- Particularly working on
- From the Shrine to the Viledeen
- Spring
- Fisking Welby
- New Page
- And how is the great penis in the sky tonight?
- After-thoughts: don't forget Isis and her pal Sobek
- The cat I don't yet have
- The Greater and Lesser Lunacies
- To whom it may concern....
- New Page
- Frank
- Cock-suckers
- Should you not be a movie buff...
- Marked as property
- Questions, questions....
- You will publicly answer those questions
- And this was Margaret
- Reprise: Our grandfather who art in heaven (though I doubt it), Howard be thy name
- To remind you...
- England the poem
- Back to the Viledeen
- Come on, I just want you to...
- So this is the story
- New Page
- Theme from The Water Margin
- Turn off the bloody Horst Wessel Lied
- Is it -10 yet?
- Chesterton - and Belloc
- New Page
- So what have I proved?
- Mock you incessantly
- No problem, no problem at all
- They have only one interest
- Misa and ban-Razit
- Rowley and Saunders
- HARD WIRING
- Bad science
- Dereliction of duty here, comrades
- Taking it from the top..
- New Page
- Dot the i. Cross the t
- More Fal
- Maya's assassination
- So-o-o
- Well, hi there, Sar-fenan
- And the third reason
- Ysabel Belinda Felicity Jehan Howard
- 'And now that I lie here...'
- Ain't they really
- And so
- 'Of course she has to do this on her own.'
- Who the fuck are Bonnie and Clyde
- How the cards fall
- And don't forget Dill
- And Shav and Dill
- Squishy, Archchancellor: not a healthy diet
- Back to you, Sar-Fenan
- This is not a physics textbook
- e=mc2
- A NON-EVENT
- woo hoo
- Her story
- Oi, you, Sar-fenan!
- Bloody kitten-eaters
- HHGG 1
- HHGG 4
- HHGG 2
- Reprise: It reallly is...
- Dave Allen
- Some psycho schizoid freak
- So absolutely insolently irreducibly evil
- This site
- Under the block
- Do you not understand?
- Gee, it's so wonderful to know
- Parameters
- I might go so far as to say
- I might''ve finished losing my temper
- Archaeopteryx flew like a pheasant
- I am not a child. Children are under 16
- New Page
- Blair, Corbyn, WCPI
- Smile for the camera
- 'Labour'
- Nothing you won't surrender
- HTF do I hitch a lift to Betelgeuse?
- "We are the Daleks."
- Back as ever to the Viledeen
- Scream quietly or the neighbours will hear
- The products rejected out of hand
- ComSymp ShariaSymp Fit the Third
- How to defend England
- If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you...
- National Museum Wales
- Why is this continuing?
- My mission I seem to have been landed with
- Dixi
- Go it alone, suffer alone, what's new
- Deep breaths
- New Page
- Gratis
- Justt to complete the set
- About that grave
- Damn!
- About that clock
- Oh pilot of the storm that leaves no trace
- Last but by no means least
- After which
- Or in short
- Notification...
- I think perhaps tomorrow...
- C17th England
- Je suis comme je suis
- Whatever you do, take pride...
- Selfies
- There remains of course my mind
- If you failed to get the gist
- Alice's Left Hip Esquire
- Limp pricks and no balls
- New Page
- Never ask them to strip
- You, off my planet
- If they absolutely won't...
- Achilles' heel
- Oh just do begone
- No-one on Planet Normal
- Welcome to Labour's England
- Democracy...
- New Page
- Bringing back the dark
- The best story
- Is there one single point?
- To come up to date
- Evil
- The destruction of the intellectual basis of the free world
- The mad relations in the rafters
- Let this be my contentment
- Results
- None of which of course
- A purely indigenous evil
- Here the matter rests at present
- New Page
- New Page
- A toss-up
- Blair
- New Page
- Reality 105
- The wearing of the green
- Recently come to light
- Growly snarly wolf
- New Page
- Five years later...
- Bobbles
- OK, assume.
- A flight of fancy
- So long as we understand each other
- Footnote
- Fisking Warsi reprise
- Why was nothing done?
- Job well done, filth
- Being a galactic mail from me to Zaphod
- Beyond evil
- In the 61st minute of the final hour
- Doo-be, doo-be, do
- English Christianity until....
- New Page
- 'I AM KING AND GOD AND LAW#
- So I get this
- Bad mood
- Another book for you, Blair
- One should always write things down - in some form or another
- All cleared up in five minutes
- Of course I have worn such a hat
- Thus, bloody thus
- No pasaran
- I continued...
- You prefer Misa and Ban-razit
- The 3D printer in the town centre
- Labour's apotheosis
- Selling women by the pound
- Why, my own mother and father wouldn't recognize me
- And the punchline is
- Do just go and fuck yourselves
- Fruit Loop
- Only one interest
- The price of a woman's body
- Eris
- Just can't hear you
- VR
- Not as exciting as Hokabi
- 'Unfortunate'
- Oh look what they're saying about me
- Should one really not...
- I am intelligent.
- From the archives: fisking Warsi
- Do MPs entirely grasp what they're there for?
- Our servants not our masters
- New Page
- Or you could say the reverse
- The problem is that there is no problem
- Irrelevant
- From the archives: who killed Banaz
- From the archives: ooh, we are so sensitive
- From the archives: wondrous multiculturalism
- From the archives: Banaz' sister spoke out
- Neither right nor honourable nor gentlemen
- The carrion chorus
- And so
- New Page
- Can hear you from here, animal
- Forgot it at Christmas
- 'Blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain'
- So golly gosh
- And I laugh (2)
- What else can we talk about
- Thus
- Spare ribs
- Mene mene tekel upharsin
- And of course...
- Matthew 7: 3
- Blair
- This exchange
- Because it's a horrible way to die
- Peter
- Those convictions
- A purely pernicious twist
- The open mind
- They took away the post-its
- First part of Fal 2
- Sarat at the Shrine 1
- Sarat at the Shrine 2
- To continue...
- Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 1
- 2. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 2
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- Of course
- Ridiculous and viie
- From the archives: obedience (1912)
- I should imagine...
- From the archives: And who kept this bubbling?
- From the archives: Voltaire on the CofE
- From the archives: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus
- From the archives: The Vatican archives 1
- From the archives: the Vatian archives 2
- From the archives: The Vatican archives 3
- 2000 years making most of it up
- Proud Archbishop of York conducts his own daughter's wedding ceremony
- New Page
- Nothing may be said. Nothing may be done.
- It seemed a good idea at th e time
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa reprise
- Aren't they gorgeous?
- A precedent has been set
- Something else for the animals to gloat over
- Let's play doctors and nurses
- Women beware women
- How best may we accommodate you, o master
- The Agora
- New Page
- Violence power coercion desecration
- BOURGEOIS MORALITY
- New Page
- Once more from the top
- So what do I think?
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- To conclude: to whom it may concern
- Sarat and Hass
- THis is what I look like, Vice-Chancellor
- Sonderkommando
- The balance of probability
- Can I keep this up for ever?
- How you hate intelligence 2
- Et freaking cetera
- Honestly, darling, that mantilla
- The prince, the duke, the cardinal, the politician and the professor
- The Fixers
- The Enforcers
- By the balls of Apollo!
- Cernunnos
- Burunda
- Solidarity
- About that new sofa I printed...
- A position it is entirely easy to understand
- Yes. Yes, you are ridiculous
- Yes. Yes, everything I have said about you is an understatement
- Meanwhile back at the ottery
- The flawed concept of Islamophobia
- Oh rats!
- The revolving door
- Ah yes, my future
- Explicit liber
- So now....
- Deep breaths
- Thanks awfully for the suggestion, old boy
- A list, therefore
- Previous reflections
- Ah, culture
- Ah, here you have the nub
- New Page
- Tropes
- Letter to my dead parents
- New Page
- These they left me
- Don't forget Lattic
- Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
- Song of the Western Men
- The new national anthem
- Wanna see the Deeds
- New Page
- Another very fine song
- Shamima Begum
- The perfect citizens of a fascist state
- Grease
- Love, Serafina Pekkala
- To whom it may concern
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Also to whom it may concern
- So what happened then?
- New Page
- New Page
- Who has no authority in England
- I shall now potter off
- La trahison des clercs
- 'Those who cannot remember the past...'
- A little intellectual exercise...
- The view of the Labour leadership
- Take it from the top, Karl
- Is Abbott a feminist? We shall see
- Ooh, we are so sensitive
- Death before dishonour
- Listen very carefully. I shall say this only once
- Of course certain lines here
- Hide the Secret. Hide the Weakness
- The very model of a modern faith apologist
- Models of modern health practitioners
- Meanderings
- Negation
- Bloody certifiable
- Convert, comrades, convert!
- Found the articles
- Dangerous animals
- I name you the Duke of Plaza-Toro
- New Page
- New Page
- Christchurch 1
- New Page
- New Page
- To May, whom it concerns
- Shouts and whispers
- Hic jacet
- Hyde Park, London, England
- Condition of the Working-Class in England 1845
- Thus ComSymp ShariaSymp
- Ooh, you guessed
- You are so obvious
- In detail
- Hard wiring
- If mind does not exist., democracy is unnecessary
- Th Age of Reason, 1794
- Fisking Cantuar
- Danger: profoundly esoteric image
- The seer and that which he sees are one.
- Meanwhile hats off to the Guardian
- Letter to MI5 in case you missed it.
- Fucking Pollyanna
- The Greta Garbo Home for Wayward Boys and Girls
- Perhaps in five year old English
- Non serviam
- The 7 principles of public life. Pix too
- Tor and Tonge
- Barking moonbats
- Herr Hitler, I presume
- A rich joke, Blair
- Eire in the 1950s?
- Cold shower
- By definition 'God' has to know what a lepton is
- Ah, the Yorkshire Ripper
- Parallel government
- New Page
- You will not look at them
- The magic migraine
- From about a year ago
- La nausee
- Yes, it's Operation Mindfuck
- Book review
- Happy bloody Easter
- A little quiet attempted murder
- Fal 2
- The curse of the killer zombies
- So the next logical step would be...
- Don't my silly little arts degree mean nuffink?
- Oh dear I have upset someone(s)
- New Page
- A few questions
- There are no great ones
- Gets so horribly in the way
- Violence against women, it's what you pay your taxes for
- 'Bring me the head of Alfreddo Garcia'
- Just don't forget Lattic
- The House of the Rising Sun
- The initiation of force
- Yes, that's right, I said Bentley
- Turning now to this Matter of Kadun I
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and the Matter of Kadun 2
- Do admire your handiwork
- Marche funebre
- Misogyny
- On this 75th anniversary...
- The Enchanted Forest
- If you should confront these filth
- Encore une fois
- Impertinent evil filth
- A successful outcome
- Therefore...
- Which end is up
- I shall create it
- PANTHER: The Manual, out now on Scribd
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Indeed there are many interesting people to talk to in my mind
- Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof
- To dig a little deeper
- Of food-banks and reprographics
- No dark
- Just remembered another spectacular waste of money
- More about Tories
- And more...
- This and that and some of the other
- Or in short
- Don't forget The House That Keir Built
- Memo to the Senate of the University of London
- Turning now to this Matter of Kadun I
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- The fur does settle...
- Models of medical practitioners
- HARD WIRING 2
- Strange things happen in the quantum universe
- Strange things happen in the quantum world
- "Are you still laughing, Sarat?"
- Falsity
- Je ne regrette rien
- Of course you could always check the facts
- 'Do you recall what was the deal/The day the music died.'
- The family handbook
- Goose-stepping morons
- Riidiculous
- Welcome to the diverse and plural real world
- Does it not sound sweet?
- This half-wit waving her degree...
- O tempora! O mores! O mayhem!
- Sexism is a crime
- ''I can't be treated like this.'
- And here the matter rests at present
- J'ai vecu
- Extreme unction
- The free movement of peoples
- The rules
- The witch must burn in hell, he trumpeted,
- You can always ask Google
- Monsters
- Just think, then you can add murder to your CVs
- New Page
- No dark
- In sum
- Give them everything they ask for
- Good for a laugh
- The end. Full stop.
- Just grow a pair
- Bad moon rose
- To whom it may concern
- And?
- And don't forget Lattic
- The Hall of Mirrors
- Because of course
- How to murder a woman
- Bwahaha
- They gave them time
- My big brown eyes
- A n all-party statement from the House of Commons
- Fat pig
- Always remember...
- Always remember...
- The whole lot of them
- Clear and present danger
- Note to Jackson, Hughes and Ardeshna
- So...
- Oy, you
- They did not like the New Marxism at all
- Irritable Owl Syndrome
- The drivel show
- Oh, you know, Woodstock
- Aqiuarius
- One more time and once again...
- Anglican England
- Since I feel bloody annoying
- At cock crow
- Civilized behaviour
- New Page
- 'Thirty pieces of silver'
- 'I look for truth and find that I get damned'
- Found the quote
- Carrion
- Books
- Singer to my clan in that dim red dawn of man
- Five Prime Ministers
- The victory of the Tuatha de Danaan
- A briefer response
- Bonfire Night
- Conjecture
- Or as I said more lucidly...
- They really didn't like my poems at all
- Denis Diderot
- The Age of Reason
- Some years later...
- We the people
- Side-dishes
- So do tell
- Facts
- Reality
- Because I know you hate it even more
- So perhaps
- Termites
- So you go right on..
- I even told them about the SOE
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Oh and this
- I think Hafiz would have liked Bunyan's hymn
- Fisking Warsi
- Welcome to Brighton, a plural and diverse community
- An 'All Party Parliamentary Group'
- Oh, when will this end?
- QEbloodyD
- To return to civilization.
- Fal continued
- Fal and Tet
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Maya's assassination
- They stripped
- For monkey-nuts: dixi
- Fisking Malik: Preamble
- Melodrama
- Fisking Malik: Part One
- The end is Nye
- Aberfan
- New York Mining Disaster 1941
- Resonances
- Don't talk to me about the law
- And so...
- And the other thing...
- you so love lies, don't you
- Writing things down
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner
- PAINLESS BUT PERMANENT
- Love from Serafina Pekkala
- A difference of opinion
- Just a theory
- What the hell do you think I am, you ridiculous little pieces of shit
- This will do for the time being
- This colour doesn't run
- The desired result
- No balls, 'Frank', just no balls
- Just call me Harmonica
- Hokabi
- In his tin can, far above the world
- Bloody psychopaths, in short
- Berchtesgaden, 1935
- You are so obvious, Blair
- So what happens next?
- So what is the matter with you
- End of the road
- Happy New Year
- Meaningless
- Kinky boys
- A sick joke
- So:
- Bottom-feeders
- New Page
- So why are you here?
- There, isn't that just so cute
- The Lizard of Oz
- And stuff this...
- And they have never heard of...
- Of course I'm a fucking witch
- Just getting out my tunic of skins
- Erudite, that's me
- In short...
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- So, as ever
- It is a slave's lot thou describest
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Medicine: the joke
- Are you five-year-olds?
- The Directorate
- Murderers and traitors
- Books....
- Books, filth, books
- Since I have no intention...
- Oh, how they stripped.
- Indeed, it is like this, Doc
- Thus...
- And the fuss is about what?
- This and that
- And don't forget Lattic
- Lemme set the scene
- Diversity
- This matter of Kadun: (inner and eso) 1
- The matter of Kadun (inner and eso) 2
- They are the Daleks. They are Masters of the Universe
- I however do not remotely think that
- 'See how I die. Just watch me die.'
- A simple case of attempted murder
- The final act
- Our story
- So why did they not support PANTHER?
- Love drowned in Corruption
- All times are now (1)
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- 'The Father took from him the Keys and the Sword'
- 'That government by the people....'
- Ir's a fucking doddle
- The smoking gun
- Read all abaht it
- Woo-hoo, it's a full moon.
- Carrion
- 'All you need is love'
- Just not macho
- So what precisely - ?
- so when England's answer to Indiana Jones...
- And you filth at UCH
- 'When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald...'
- More history (after a bit)
- Exodus 32 (well, loosely)
- A 99% confidence rating
- Something of the kind..
- Come to my funeral, Blair?
- Do anything for them, anything to feed them
- Forgot to repeat the Bobbles letters
- England in the C21st and the C12th
- In the event of.
- My head held firmly under water
- The most basic standards
- Miscellany
- The primate pecking order
- Cancer Ward
- Locke, Hume, Kant, Mill, is there anyone they didn't ban
- Farce
- The Tories' own quest for ideological purity
- 'opium of the people'
- Blair's New Model England
- In English not Latin or Arabic
- Because no-one stops them
- The thin end of the wedge
- Intellectually sickening
- And don't forget Lattic
- Sickboy
- From the Shrine to the Viledeen
- The company of civilized people
- The care of the penis
- So you're happy now
- Unlikely
- I hope...
- So very much more interesting
- Astronomy for Kids of all ages
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- In sum....
- Shit
- And I laugh
- Feeesh
- And be damned to you.
- Avatars of perfection
- New Page
- Marked for extermination from the start
- i'm helpless and desperate and alone so just fuck you
- So just go and
- Wouldn't it be lovely to be in hospital
- Alice's adventure in hospital
- The NHS does not live by bread alone
- Just say cheese
- Clear and present danger to women
- There are those who despise being able to spell....
- I remain, yours sincerely
- Do you think I don't know what you are
- Thus troll toes
- Achilles
- Complete barbarians
- Bloody rings of power
- Lady Sybil's exploding dragons
- Mesdames, messieurs, faites vos jeux
- A societal archetype....
- Sascha doing his renowned impression of a baby zebra
- Pog ma thoin!
- The continuum
- Good to see the young people out in the fresh air enjoying themselves
- Look once again at spite-ridden lower-middle-class women
- So the hell with you
- Mr Morgan, Mr Paxman
- Ah, you're going to sue me?
- Or perhaps
- So which particular set of ludicrous and obscene lies?
- The opium of the people
- Throw them my body, throw them my life. Can't do enough for them
- The hell with all of you
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Fal and Tet
- All any of them want, my destruction, the destruction of democracy, destruction of the University
- Maya's assassination
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- Vultures
- They had one chance
- Monsters
- So the fuss is about what?
- Unrectifiable harm done with malice aforethought
- There was, you will recall, a bad moon rising
- Cool stuff
- Just what is your fucking problem?
- So now Emglishwomen are destroyed at the command of sadists
- Aggravating factors: adding insult to injury
- Selfies
- Evidence
- Bonnie and Clyde
- Chinese whispers
- Beyond evil
- Evidence
- They jumped from 40,000 feet without a parachute
- Kindle and things
- Bloody Operation Mindfuck
- What to do when they push Chinese writing under the door
- The word you seek is brainwashed
- The bloody cosmic laughter.
- I thought you might like to see...
- Women's bodies break easily
- They were told and they were told and they were told
- Not on the whole given to Schadenfreude
- Do they actually have IQs or do they flatline?
- Wouldn;'t it be funny if Bobbles were Francis
- All times are now, yet again
- Shame
- What you need to do...
- So all of it a right bloody waste of make-up
- 'There is nothing you can't buy'
- And of course I told them what would happen
- The sub-species woman
- Le quatorze juillet
- Oh and this bit, comrades
- 'Tell all the boys I'm back in the city...'
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- And, and, and
- Verse 5 of the Red Flag and don't forget Lattic
- New Page
- But of course
- Fill in a few gaps
- Merit
- Homo sapiens sapiens stands erect
- Bunch of boobs
- The required result
- Lower than vermin, much lower
- And another one
- The Wizard of Oz
- And the only outstanding question
- Cooking the books
- so come on....
- Hell and tarnation
- You did go to school, Blair?
- New Page
- New Page
- Sick-boys
- Pscyho-sexual cripples
- Understanding
- Oh and because I know you're thick...
- Another scalp for the sick-boys
- So, pig-bitch
- Pig-bitch 2
- Pig-bitch 3
- Functionally illiterate
- How you hate human
- The ghost in the machine was riled
- Dear MI5 person
- Or perhaps Linch and Goldstone prefer...
- Yes
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Fal and Tet
- You, Blair
- This site will self-destruct...
- Left out repeating the juicy bit
- Hi to the University of Witwatersrand or wherever
- You are really very funny
- You are really very funny
- How very funny
- As if
- If...
- Can it be more obvious>
- Conclusion
- The initiation of force
- A busted flush
- Shall we have that again?
- The sum of the ravings
- This meanwhile
- But of course
- Point-blank rejection of the governing system of the country
- What part of fuck off does the Vatican not understand?
- Please save the crackling
- Happy Hallowe'en
- This bit's fun too
- Time it was
- Oh you know, like this
- Screw you....
- As if
- NHS bureaucracy strikes again
- More asses
- Show's over
- My body, my self
- New Page
- Hate intelligence, hate better
- The Library at Alexandria (and things)
- HARD WIRING A
- Hard wiring B
- Hard wiring C
- And of course they ain't fucking illitrit
- Index Librorum Prohibitorum and things
- New Page
- Jesus, look at them!
- So take a walk on the wild side
- But your Achilles' heel remains
- Addressing an empty crisp packet
- Empty crisp packets
- So here's to you, criminal vermin
- Only 4000 variants
- So they sat there jerking themselves off
- And on no account forget Lattic
- So, Mr Benn's questions
- The contents of the septic tank
- Lizard men
- Playing with my dolls
- Ah, yes, the funny farm
- Hic jacet 2
- New Page
- This was Anglican England
- I really understand
- First part of Fal 2021
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet 2021
- Trash
- The horoor
- The Reformation
- Uncle Joe and the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Dixi@ I have spokwn
- And govenment is for what?
- And here is picture of Jesus with his beloved pet ferret
- Your Christmas favourite
- Peter
- And this is what happened
- Les Eleutheromanes
- I repeat, just for the hell of it.
- So I'll just go on thinking my own thoughts
- All times are now (1)
- All times are now (3)
- 'Be careful with that axe, Eugene'
- La Ballade des Pendus
- We do not know
- Banal
- The wrong kind of snow
- Oy, monkey-nuts
- Lizard-men
- And of course they all know too
- Fiver in the Death Warren
- And lo it came to pass
- One way to deal with sexual fuxk-ups
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun 2021
- Frauds
- Complications
- Yes, but I know who I am
- Today satirized as
- Dill, the bit in the middle
- Question
- Ah, but
- What can be wrong with that?
- So what have I done
- And this is the state of my body
- Absolutely insolent, absolutely evil, absolutely degenerate
- Dangerous wild beasts
- Cowardly, contemptible cock=suckers
- Farce
- Thus, m'lud, it is clearly demonstrated
- An offence against law, fact, reason, sanity
- So we go through it all again
- The empty swimming-pool
- So I have questions
- One more bloody time
- It remains the best way
- Get real
- Two to the power of 75000 to one against and falling
- Along with Oolon Colluphid
- Head honcho
- So why - ?
- Civilized behaviour
- 'Be careful with that axe,Eugene' (2)
- Deep Thought
- England in the C21st
- So what's next?
- I do understand
- Right bloody waste of make-up
- An aggressive cancer
- A question of degree (not the academic kind)
- McDonnell's little friends in Iran
- Ah, yes, McDonnell
- Everything was perfectly normal
- Blog
- So when did you hear - ?
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- Time for a wash and brush-up (2)
- So calming
- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- Google Images search
- Am enthusiastic amateur classicist
- It only remains therefore
- Aum mani padme hum
- New Page
- WHen everything fails
- Jackson
- Thus
- Tsk, tsk, tsk
- If I may translate...
- Perhaps you prefer - ?
- Roast aurochs
- Totally synbolic, totally not
- Just doesn't matter, does it
- Base details
- History, should there be any
- Libro de los juegos
- Yuck! Kitten-eaters!
- Sea-changes: writing the 60s out of history
- So do just tell
- The end of the world is nigh
- New Page
- The party of law and order
- Thank you, Prime Minister, that will be all
- Fit for human habitation
- Aw, Dimitri!
- Yes? And?
- Ah, bon, les putes
- Indicting Tories
- Poor Mr Sunak
- Falsity
- RL
- Untitled
- The D-word
- Nye, wouldst that thou wert living at this hour!
- Sp gp fpr ot
- Fortunately there are more elevated things to do than contemplate infected shit
- The parable of the respirator
- Arbeit macht frei
- Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
- It's the grapes that come from Chile
- Untitled
- The actual social principles of Christianity
- The social principles of Christianity as observed by Marx
- Bananas and eggs with your polio
- The hallmarks of the age
- Gilead
- Spinal tap
- Purr
- An atypical population
- New Page
- Leche-culs
- The Woman with the Book and the Woman with the Bow
- RTFM
- The ceding of democratic control
- I shit on you daily
- The ceding of democratic control pt 2
- Fortunately there are civilized people to talk to
- This is how to deal with pervert monkeys
- Pink stars and burquas
- Ditching the theology of love: reprise
- A happy communist life
- Or you prefer Nigel?
- Our papa
- My turf, bubba
- Guarding the pigs
- Just a little obvious
- New Page
- BDSM
- The deeds, Naylor, the deeds
- So Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- And the hunt continues
- Jesus!
- Question for those with daughters
- So what has happened to Jesus?
- New Page
- All on prime-time television
- Lest we forget: I don't
- You know, like at Hokabi and Caniba and so on
- Until they learn
- Vaudos 1: so it's a walking fence
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- New Page
- Don't forget they ain't fucking illitrit
- There when it gets shitty
- Luke 23:46
- Of course he argued with himself about it.
- Democracy: a system devised to cage and contain power
- If there are any future historians
- What to, the Higgs boson?
- Maya's assassination
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun 2021
- 1. Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Astronomy for Kids of all ages
- 1. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 1
- 2. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 2
- 2. Shav, Petrush and the Matter of Kadun 2
- Who are pensioners?
- Party political broadcast...
- Look at all the little lungfish
- Unfit to govern
- Protozoa capering in the primeval soup
- Have you managed to be human?
- Life in a fact-free world
- And of course our dear friends the anti-vaxxers
- The wrong kind of Muggle
- Just put this on Twitter too
- Precisely how - ?
- Aroint thee, Muse!
- Death by government
- Cruel and unusual punishment
- It is, I think, the creation of Vernon and Marge
- Gee, isn't it just the market?
- There would not therefore seem to be an real difference
- The goose that laid the golden eggs
- The gifts that kept on giving
- Only 37.9 million tourists a year
- The Big Squeeze
- All the same gig
- Lolling insolent evil
- So now I walk with a rollator
- So, I deem
- Terror-tactics against a medically vulnerable woman
- New Page
- There is no dark
- Me
- The issues facing my grand-parents
- Don't forget the house that Keir built
- The desire of the moth for the flame
- The way through the woods
- Bit late for me and my steed...
- Art is individualism
- Magdalene laundries
- I told you not to put all the stars out
- Indeed the animals have a big problem with my family
- In the garden with Mummy
- ComSymp
- Chanctonbury Ring
- Doubtless too busy
- Light reading
- Reality 102: reprise
- Reality 103: reprise
- Reality 103a: reprise
- Reality 104: reprise
- Religious census of 1851
- Mortal sin
- If Twitter is anything to go by...
- The 1945 Labour landslide
- So just look at them all, Vice-Chancellor
- And of course an offence to UCL
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- The new Marxism
- Coal in the bath and the victim culture (2)
- Nice bit of bedtime reading
- Christ, you are so boring!
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- And of course this
- Just don't forget Lattic
- Thus Bobbles
- Fal and Tet
- Mr Benn's questions.
- Mr Benn's questions. A good clear message. The IRA
- Just so - so - so
- None of this of course is subject to discussion
- Therefore, ain't I got no respect
- Nor do I tug my forelock
- Book of Common Prayer
- 'I know that my Redeemer liveth'
- Meanwhile an offal-fest on Twitter'
- Spine
- This is what they expected me to push
- What? Oh, the picture Jesus mentioned
- Our servants not our masters (2)
- His Majesty's the model of a modern major-general
- The withdrawal of love and forcing oneself on others (2)
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa reprise
- Journey to the edge of the universe
- Oh they do get so antsy
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner: reprise
- I am the very model of a modern faith apologist: reprise
- Quid agas
- Balrogs
- C10th architects
- Truss and Braverman
- Imbeciles
- As for the rest of it...
- So:
- Totally ordinary Brits
- The corruption of history
- 'Imagination has seized power!'
- So, you, Blair
- Without fear or favour
- So a special round of applause for
- The Anglican garden: reprise
- It is remarkably tedious
- All times are now (1) reprise
- All times are now (2) reprise
- All times are now (3): reprise
- All times are now (4): reprise
- All times are now (5): reprise
- All times are now (6)
- Maya's assassination: reprise
- Lizard-men: reprise
- Doth it not say in the Book of Pious Crap
- That government by the corrupt and inane for the corrupt and inane shall not perish from this earth
- And answer Mr Benn's questions
- Thus the dirty shit-filled hierarchical fascist brains
- PANTHER...
- 'And now Amanda is seriously ill.'
- You might also enjoy Sredni Vashtar
- Girls. You were saying? About girls?
- 'And gentlemen in England, now a-bed, shall think themselves accurs'd...'
- This happened in RL
- Ooh
- HMQ
- How to lose operations other than war
- There, isn't that just so cute:reprise
- Ah, the sub-species woman
- How do you dare?
- Oh look what they're saying about me: reprise
- 'Blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain': reprise
- A lemur speaks!
- Welcome to London, Mr President
- HMQ (2)
- Gee, guys, what might have happened
- Neither benefiting from nor obsesssed by
- In sum, then
- The succession that matters
- In sum, therefore
- It has therefore been established
- And be damned to you: reprise
- Who did impose on a subject of Her Britannic Majesty
- How the cards fell
- Prefer high crimes and misdeameanours
- Time for something else
- Couldn't finish without your favourite song
- The Abbey
- The end of the world is nigh: reprise
- Men don't get it
- 'In order to rightly judge these efforts known as the "woman movement"'
- I'm sure Mr Kwarteng believes in equality
- Get real fast
- Roast aurochs: reprise
- It didn't work last time, peeps
- Doctors
- Ants
- Bellatrix
- Vaudos 1: so it's a walking fence
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- It's like this, Nurses
- Letter to MI5: reprise
- And you do not make me into a porter
- I do so understand
- How you hate intelligence
- How you hate intelligence; reprise
- So how many people has Medicine destroyed?
- Don't you like my DNA?
- So you're going to sue me?
- I understand
- Hmm, so I guess...
- Yes I understand
- This is how it should be? Reallyy?
- Special mentions
- The wayside
- My country. Took seizin
- To whom it may concern
- Do tell
- A blank wall
- Democracy is so yesterday
- Nothing is too low
- https://www.coursera.org/learn/our-earth?
- No interest to me, old boy. No interest whatever
- Burn the witch at the stake! How much money we shall make!
- One quick question
- And something for Bobbles
- If...
- 'MI5's mission is to keep the country safe.'
- Reality reprise
- Reality reprise 2
- Your life in their hands, Episode 923452
- New Page
- New Page
- Never trust, never assume sanity will prevail
- New Page
- So in short
- The University in its death throes
- Narrow focus
- The absolute insolence, therefore
- In shorter
- Same old
- Same old (2)
- So there it is
- So they just couldn't possibly
- Ringleaders
- Encore une fois the manual
- Butchers and would-be murderers
- Nor of course response to my vid
- Or the second one
- The closed (sealed/wounded/stunted/practically non-existent) mind (20
- Please don't forget The House That Keir Built
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- So who knows
- As if I were capable of caring
- Above the law
- Depict them therefore in bondage
- Money talking
- Pure BDSM
- Please don't forget Lattic
- Meeee
- 'There is no dark'
- Hellenismos, tau-neutrinos, hanging
- Vita brevis ars longa
- True targets
- I a woman
- Boring
- Therefore, Vice-Chancellor
- Thus I refer you to...
- Break the stupid cunt's back
- So there it is
- irreducible evil
- Oversight
- Mock, yes, crawl, no
- All the things you haven't changed
- Cute family picture
- You can check it out on the DTIC site
- Eagles are rare in WC1
- High crimes and midemeanour
Just one final thing, I think. Doctors and nurses are not able to cope with quantum physics.
Doctors and nurses are of course, you will have digested, dull, leaden, dead things, walking corpses unable to tolerate anything wild, free, alive, outside their control, living in a fixed mental world determined either by the total ignorance of the slum, since the totality of anything that passes for their education is to have learned their trades, or the ravings of their religious teachers. Emotionally and intellectually void, as previously described, they require total control of their environment. Without this, like little hot-house plants in my lovely Kew, only able to flourish in a tiny temperature-range, they cannot survive. Reality has to be kept at bay and where possible destroyed.
If they were not, they would have enjoyed me, rather than tried to destroy me. Intellectual curiosity is wholly absent from these joke-graduates. They know what the world is like and have neither the desire nor the ability to question their delusions.
Thus they may jabber that though they themselves, being scientists (bwahaha) do not haw-haw themselves believe literally in Adam and Eve it’s a perfectly standard belief held by those who have not had a scientific education. It is not a perfectly standard belief and very few people hold it, its being fairly mad. If you want to believe in Adam and Eve, you go for it, but you do not demand others treat your view with awe and wonder and respect.
For the malign, this is of course an excellent instrument for destroying the free world. The beliefs of raving nutters are religion and religion is sacred. There can be right to deride or mock the sacred beliefs of others. With this priests and politicians fall over themselves to concur, but then most priests and politicians want to destroy the free world too, such indeed that sick animals enjoy the full protection of the law and to be rational, educated, civilized is to be a criminal. There is no other explain, other than money of course, for their prostration before the ravings of Islam.
For myself I am profoundly ‘phobic’ about any religion or other belief-system that is phobic about me. If the belief-system does not do intelligent, educated, rational, physically active women, if it does not do fact, reason, argument and walking 10 miles in the Highlands, if it believes you keep your fucking marf shut about evident drivel, then I am opposed to it
Among the myriad of facts they totally reject are of course the results of the many polls demonstrating the markedly non-religious views of the nation as a whole, outside the loony bin.
That to be a normal educated Englishwoman is no longer ‘acceptable’ in certain reaches of England, UCH being paramount among them, is certain, for which we need look no further afield than the Irish, incapable of digesting this is not a Catholic country and has not been one since 1688, that Catholicism is a minority religion, that priests have no political authority whatever.
The sole aim of the malignancies is through corrupt law to make the entire country a hot-house in which only a limited range of facts and opinions are permitted, I of course being a repository of a delicious range of the ‘forbidden’ from Voltaire to Paine to Jefferson to Marx to Aquarius to Black Sabbath, Led Zep and The Stones to feminism to classical culture and Greek goddesses to relativity.
In other words I am mostly normal: a country therefore in which only the religious nutter is truly happy, just like the Irish or Pakistani village back home. It ain’t gonna happen, but hey if they can knock off one particularly highly educated and intellectually confident Englishwoman, the not unMarxist grand-daughter of Labour public-servants on both sides, therefore particularly dangerous, it’s a small victory. Thus the insistence on my isolation. I am supposedly the freak, with views that are solely mine own, in a nest of actual freaks wholly divorced from the realities of the country around them. In the world of the freak, I am mad because I believe I may have views of my own and express them.
Thus we arrive at quantum physics, my games with space-time abhorrent since they do not concur with the cosmos as described in the various holy books and of course impinge on that most ‘holy of holies’, which are on no account to be challenged, views of what is life and what is death. My views don’t actually concur with anything. I am writing a novel. They are games. They do, however, concur considerably more with Einstein and current thinking than with the Bible or the Koran. From my book both god and goddess are absent and will not be making a late surprise appearance. It is entirely possible to have a heart-rending State funeral without God. I have written on. Love is all you need. If you want to believe God is Love, that’s cool, though I don’t. But that Love requires kneeling, prayer, supplication?
Again we arrive at the delectable spectacle of joke-graduates solemnly concurring that a passing knowledge of quantum physics is pernicious and should be kept under wraps.
Poetic justice, I think, if physicists were foremost in demanding the nutters of medicine, the uneducated and ineducable of medicine, the sick animals of medicine who will suppress anything to protect lunacy, were kicked out of all universities worthy of the name.
I don’t think they like the death and funeral of Maya at all.
Somewhere people were screaming and shouting but Sarat stood still as stone.
So cold. Hurts
Together they passed through the pain.
CLICK CLICK CLICK
I we grieve at parting.
NO and yes. You cannot follow.
Varulin was by his side.
“That’s it, lad. You hold on to her….” His voice trailed off. Oh fuck, no! “Get a fucking car here!”
The light was very strong now.
Leave? How can I leave you?
“You just hold her, sir,” said Varulin gently. “That’s it. No-one can hurt her now.”
I will follow.
NO and yes.
Baz zoomed up.
They cannot part us.
We travel now.
Everyone is screaming but Sarat stands still as stone. Baz understood.
NO.
Sarat tried to throw Baz out of his their mind.
Baz forced them apart.
CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK
“Fuck off!” said Baz. “Just fuck bloody off!”
“It’s like bloody rape!” shouted Varulin.
“Is she - ?”
“Dead,” said Baz. “Got it?”
Sarat came to with Maya’s lifeless body in his arms in sudden silence.
He looked at Baz almost in puzzlement.
“She’s not here any more.”
CLICK CLICK CLICK
They stood waiting for transport to bulldoze its way through the wreckage.
CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK. CLICK
We interrupt this broadcast.
MAYA DEAD
MAYA ASSASSINATED
MAYA MURDERED
SHE DIED IN HIS ARMS
Contingency Plan (M) not Contingency Plan (S). Essa and Cho would stay out of Kadun. He’ll need help. What else are sisters for?
Essa tried to get Sarat on his mobile. No reply.
“It has happened,” said Baya. Toss a coin. Pray. The music will stop. Which one will it be?
I have four children, she thought, I still have four children. Why do I not cry for shame?
Essa got Baz. Baz handed over the mobile.
“Sarat.”
“Oh dad.”
“Love,” said Essa, “love, love, love, love.”
“Love,” said Sarat.
“Oh my darling,” said Baya. “Love, love, love.”
Mel rode down the hill and into the Saa’nda Senta.
“It has happened,” he said.
Mel, we’re so sorry. Mel, all our love.
Mitch would have grown wings, but Karula said no. We offer our love, we offer ourselves but we do not go to Azt, Mitch, because we are not family. Mitch rang and Sarat said please come.
Scenes of devastation in Azt! Ten dead, including Her Imperial Majesty, Maya-ban-essa. Forty, fifty, sixty wounded.
Sarat stood up.
“You do not have to go back!” shouted Paw.
“What do you suggest? I sit here and scream?”
CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.
“I’m sorry, sir, you can’t go through there.”
“I am Maya’s father.”
“Sir! I am so sorry, so sorry. Sarat’s gone back to the – scene.”
Pietri closed his eyes.
“Where is Maya?”
Pietri sat talking quietly to his daughter.
Three beautiful young women ran up and threw themselves on Sarat. Oh Sarat, my poor darling! Love, love, love, love, love! He hugged them heedless of bemused spectators.
“My sisters,” said Sarat.
“Sarat, this is a terrible day for you, for all of us – “
“It was a pretty bad day for Maya.”
“Sure, sure, I did not mean – “
“Just shut it,” said Sarat. “Just for once, shut it.”
“Vultures,” said Zik.
“Try feeding on us,” said Shavli.
“I don’t think we’ll ever forgive you today,” said Ven, “How could you!”
“What d’ you think Pietri and Caluna felt like?” asked Zik.
“Maya’s mum and dad,” supplemented Ven.
Many people who have often thought that Sarat, his family and friends let the press off too easily too often have gained enormous satisfaction from this simple expression of family outrage…
We interrupt this broadcast.
His Imperial Majesty will speak from the scene of the blast. .
Sarat-ban-essa-eban-Narulis, Master of Kadun.
I think you’d better come, sir. Sarat’s going to speak.
Bal looked on in horror.
He is still….
Covered in her blood.
There is a time to mourn, a time to scream, a time to weep. All these things I owe my darling Maya. Most of all I owe the refusal of defeat. They have changed nothing. They have won nothing. Death does not sit on the Anile throne! To the offal responsible for today’s devastation, to the vermin in the City who back them, to the snivelling animals who cower before them, I say, you can create nothing, but only destroy. Today you leave a trail of wrecked and broken lives. That you call a victory. Thus you show the world your impotence. You cannot win. You will never win. This I pledge to Kadun. This I pledge to Maya.
Mitch caught at the airport by the meedjah raised his hand in salute.
“We do not do cowering.”
“You yourself have suffered terrible loss. How is Sarat feeling?”
It’s like robots, thought Karula. They are not bad people. They have no self-awareness.
Sarat arrived back and stared at the flowers carpeting the people-space,
“I thank you,” he said shakily. “On Maya’s behalf, on my own. Thank you.”
“Pietri,” said Faun. He pointed to the bedroom.
Pietri looked up.
“Everyone needs to go home.”
Sarat blinked back tears.
“They’ve brought you flowers, my love. A whole field of flowers.”
Pietri stood.
“We’ll leave you to sleep now.”
“I am so sorry,” said Sarat. “I am so sorry. I was with her. I was going with her. Baz forced us apart.” Pietri opened his arms. “She was hurting and I wanted to stop her hurting but we were already through the pain. I just wanted to stop her hurting. We didn’t see how we could part.”
“Oh my dear boy,” said Pietri.
“Somewhere – somewhere else people were shouting and screaming. It didn’t have anything to do with us. I hurt Baz,” said Sarat with horror. “Oh I don’t mean. He was trying to separate us.”
Pietri went to the door and asked for strong coffee.
“The funeral,” he said finally.
“The funeral,” said Sarat.
They talked for a long time. After a while, Faun was summoned.
No, Sarat, said Faun, knowing it was useless.
I pledge victory, I pledge courage to skulk in a covered car?
Sarat rang Marula and Saryulin . Of course, they said.
You can’t be buried twice, thought Faun. Perhaps all of it is impossible, a nightmare from which we wake when we are all dead.
Faun rang Cho.
“Or of course he simply doesn’t care.”
“I am aware of that interpretation,” said Cho.
“I’ve said my bit,” said Faun.
Pietri mailed Mel and told him the unphotographed trauma of Maya’s final moments.
Mel thought of him and Cantilip and hundreds of meaningless words on the subject of death.
I think, he mailed back, not of course know, but think, it wasn’t exactly – when she finally ‘crossed over’ he’d have been left behind. Was he going with her or keeping her here?
If they were communicating, he thought, she wasn’t ‘dead’, whatever that is. There must be a state beyond biological – leave it, Mel, leave it. Or you become obsessed by death. But Papa, he won’t leave us alone.
Baz looked up.
“Oh Baz.”
“Love, love, love,” said Baz.
“Love, love, love.”
“What does a man expect when he tries to come between a guy and his girl?”
“Was I keeping her here?”
“Sarat…In that situation – not that I know anything about ‘that situation’ – what I think is – for a moment I couldn’t tell which was you and which was Maya. I don’t think you can look at it like that. You both wanted to go in both directions.”
“Yes,” said Sarat. “And no. She – there’s a point,” She wanted to go, thought Baz. It’s not how to put it. You go back. What do I know? “When – will fades,” Sarat was saying.
“You just are,” said Baz, “in a field of flowers.”
The terror and the loss. I’ll come back with Pietri, be in Zur in the morning. Love, love, love, love, love.
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, typed back Mel.
Small, tubby and balding glared at the screen.
“We have VILE, we have PANTHER, we have the Hadin-Wadud. What does this mean?”
“Don’t follow you, sir.”
“Try harder. How many more damn’ deaths?”
“Protection. A line of steel.”
“You have entered a Cult-free Zone. And the very considerable resources of our three great nations were used to ensure it stayed that way. Meaning Kadun was a contaminant.”
“The border’s open now, sir.”
“Well done, that man. Meaning we have a vested interest in decontamination.”
“You cannot say Vasucula sat on the fence!”
“I surely can. I surely do. We tighten up any on the money-men?”
“We are a capitalist economy. There are no lengths to which we shall not go to foster global investment, maximum prosperity for all and the brutal murder of a beautiful young woman.”
“That’s what I just said. Get the bastards.”
“The Anile Emperor does not plead,” said the Ciletij Finance Minister.
“In his state,” said Varchulan darling, “he doesn’t have to.”
Sarat spoke to Mitch and Karula. Of course, said Mitch. Karula hid her disarray. Only in the safety of their bedroom did she say to her beloved: Mitch, I know this is trivial in the great scheme of things, but if I am not to make a total fool of myself and of Var-segan on what is probably the most solemn occasion of my entire life – you know I never got the hang of horses.
“Now we’re going to the House of Silence,” said Baz, “and we would really appreciate it if you didn’t come.”
“You here to make arrangements for the funeral, Sarat?”
“I despair,” said Mitch. “I am not talking to human beings. If I may quote Baz – “ Long pause. Mitch gave his sweetest smile. “Remove yourselves from Sarat’s path.”
“That’s it,” said Baz, oozing charm. “Go away.”
“The sensitivity of oysters,” said Mitch.
“Is that a compliment, Mitch?”
“Real fine rugs,” said Mitch.
Sarat made his way relatively unimpeded to the House of Silence.
“Bloody walking-streets,” muttered Varulin.
“If I bring the car round, we can get away after,” said Baz.
Sarat stood in front of the flame. Where you are, there am I. Where I go, you are with me. We shall win, my sweet lady, my love. They do not part us.
He lit a candle, then took out a pen and wrote on a card.
My darling Maya, I love you. Sarat xxxxxxxx.
“OK, let’s head for the hill.”
As they turned, they heard someone say, “Fetch a fortune at auction.”
Sarat span round.
“Who said that?”
If you remember, Mel once remarked that Sarat can emit the aura that causing him the slightest discontent will result in instant demise.
“I think you may have upset him,” drawled Mitch.
“You will not remove the card,” said Sarat.
Order? thought Varulin, that’s no order, that’s an irresistible physical force.
“Is that clear?” asked Sarat.
Sure, Sarat, sure. Just a joke, Sarat. Honest, Sarat, it was a joke. Mel’d break our necks!
“No, he wouldn’t,” said Sarat. “I’d have got there first.”
“There sure is some fine carving here,” said Mitch.
They made it to the car and zoomed off up to the hill.
“Shit, man,” said the idiot.
“He’s bound to be a little tense.”
“Is that what you call it! I just found out what it’s like to be on the wrong side of the Anile Emperor!”
“We’ll talk to the H-W,” said Mitch.
Sarat made his way to the Room
“I have brought this devastation.”
“My darling,” said Saski, “no.”
They hugged..
At length Sarat sat.
What are the expressions, thought Venga. You look like hell. You look like death warmed up.
“This is what we’re going to do,” said Sarat.
The state occasion, thought Mel, the pound of screaming flesh. Give them that.
“I can do that,” said Sarat. “I can do that with my heart torn in two. I cannot afterwards make polite conversation. I cannot leave Kadun to indulge my grief. It’s desertion.”
Hass got up and put his arm around Sarat.
“I think the guy needs to talk.”
“I have a right to claim a greater grief?” asked Sarat. “After all, I killed her.”
“Balls,” said Venga briskly.
“It is natural, darling,” said Saski, “that should be an emotion you experience, but really it is the most awful nonsense.”
Sarat shrugged: no Anile throne, no funeral.
“We have our own demons,” said Mel. “We were told to run for cover and we ran.” Tar looked up sharply. “If I do not say that in front of Sarat, I do not say it.”
Seani looked at the candle and the message.
“He wouldn’t have done that if it’s Zur.”
“How can they bury her in Zur! Bets are on Carlin.”
“Sorg all over again.”
“Won’t get near.”
“Poor bastards.”
“Plural?”
“Plural. We watched them grow up!”
“If I just close my eyes, they’re in the Saa’nda Senta.”
“Beneath these cold heartless exteriors, we all feel that.”
“How do we convince the Aniles!”
It is well known Pietri has his differences with Sarat. He must surely hold Sarat responsible for his daughter’s terrible death.
Zuri, used enough to all shades of broadcaster shooting mouth off in the Saa’nda Senta, turned on this one.
Shut it, arsehole!
Surely that is merely a truth too terrible to bear. Does not Zur hold Sarat responsible for the death of its princess?
Ask him. Come on, say, hi Pietri, everyone knows you blame Sarat.
Yeah, man! You go to the hill and fucking ask him!
Do we sound as if we blame Sarat?
Maya was a person. And a fucking brave one.
Bloody Ciletij still trying it on!
The Representative of Harn at Azt presents his condolences to His Imperial Majesty.
On behalf of the whole of Harn – Sarat’s face stopped him. Sarat….I have to say these things.
Come back to me when I’ve got Searc.
You have proof?
Not yet. Would you give a message to Bal?
Of course.
Tell him we’re turning the screws.
Oh dear. Must I?
Aztians talking about the funeral, live on Channel One
“I’m sure it’ll all be perfect. Can’t tell us, can they!”
Most people had quietly figured that the rate of attrition hadn’t been greater only because Sarat never ever issued a schedule.
“Thing we have to think about is what Maya would have wanted.”
“Everyone look after him, that’s what she’d’ve wanted.”
“Right!”
“Hope it’s not in Zur.”
“You gotta think of her mum and dad.”
“Maybe she’d have wanted to go home.”
“Support Sarat. Whatever he wants, it’s all right by us.”
“Right!”
No nay-sayers? they asked in the studio. Nobody asking to be lynched, no.
No, honey, said Mitch with the reserves of patience that made him such a good father. Not like that.
Varulin looking out of the window couldn’t quite keep his face straight.
My lord of Var-segan is instructing my lady of Var-segan in the finer points of horsemanship.
Ride? They’re going to ride?
The Cabinet of the Republic of Harn choked.
After, counselled Bal, I shall talk to the young man after the funeral.
Shouldn’t the message be passed around?
An excellent notion, said Bal.
“The whole of the people-space,” said Shav. “It has to become a meadow.”
“So much for designing for posterity.”
“Eternity,” said Shav. “Different.”
“Sis,” said Sarat.
“Bro?”
“Shav – “
She put a finger to his lips.
“My choice.”
“Or it is a fairground game,” continued Sarat remorseless. “Knock down the five dollies, another five take their place, until none is left.”
“There are a lot of us, aren’t there,” said Shav.
“Don’t joke.”
“Then laugh,” said Shavli. “People are saying – they’re edging round it, Sarat. They love each other, don’t they. That’s all that matters.”
“Kadun is shy,” said Sarat. “We saw it when we cleaned out the House of Silence. There was a sort of hum of love, but no-one actually said anything. Now I must say it.”
“Darling, there is a time for all things. You said it! How many times since arriving in Azt have you used the word ‘Cult’ in public?”
“Do you think I haven’t thought of that?”
“There were people dying of hunger. You set out to change everything. You have changed everything.”
“Oh yes,” said Sarat.
Bal pondered as he undressed.
Does this man like me? If I were Sarat, I should hate me, but I do not – perhaps that is did not – think Sarat exactly hates anyone. A question of the kind of guys they are. The other matter! Now I do not bow to the like or dislike of any man, be he prince or porter, but if I ask myself in all honesty if I do not value the good opinion of Sarat or Mel over that of Searc I have to answer myself that I should be a screaming lunatic if I did not. Kids to feed, road-repairpersons to pay. I really did not think they would fight dirty. What in hell am I going to do?
Why did I not think they would fight dirty?
“There’s this crazy rumour going round, he’s going to ride behind her coffin.”
“Oh Sarat. It’s too far.”
“Not from the House at Carlin.”
A trio of Zuri sat talking.
We could call it Maya’s song.
I think we ought to ask.
OK, there’ll be some won’t like it.
If Pietri don’t like it, we ditch it, all right. Absolute last thing we want to do is upset Alzani-Meta.
Get our necks broken.
The story was all over Zur.
They climbed the hill.
We don’t want to intrude. It’s about remembering Maya.
Pietri was found and faced three young men whose basic state appeared to be excruciating embarrassment.
Support Sarat. We think it’s what Maya would have wanted.
We’ve written a song.
Well, not written exactly.
Look, if you don’t like it, it’s in the bin.
I thank you…May I see it?
We’ve got it typed out.
Finally the words were prised out of them.
Pietri stared at the page, not sure whether to laugh or cry.
I see, he said. Maya would love it. I thank you. I do think you should mention it to Mel.
Thank you! Thank you!
“Supposing you’re a soprano,” said Shavli. Sarat looked a bit surprised but did his best. “You hit all the top notes. That’s fine. That’s cool. Your voice dominates the stage. But what you need to do is go higher, beyond the range of the human voice.”
“Now, Sarat, if you will just tell our viewers, and remember, there must be a hundred million tuned in worldwide, exactly what you think about death. Shall I tell them about the throne too?”
“Now you come to mention it…” said Shav.
Kadun did not go pear-shaped, said Mel. The Harni pretended not to understand. Bal said he had to protect his own in case Kadun went bottoms up.
We cannot consider Kadun stable until there is a democratically elected government in place.
Kadun cannot be stable until the Cult is annihilated. The Cult cannot be annihilated until the City stops feeding it.
It’s natural you should be feeling a little over-wrought at this time, Mel.
Sohenoil, retorted Mel, is feeling very over-wrought indeed. I am trying to help you guys. I am trying to explain the bottom is about to fall out of your world. Find a lifeboat!
You just want us to invest in AMI! No-one can do anything, Mel.
Mel gave up.
Watch this space.
Her Imperial Majesty will be buried the day after tomorrow in the presence of her family and friends. This will be followed by services simultaneously in Azt, Zur and Maona-pri to which the chief mourners will return. His Imperial Majesty will speak the requiem.
Most breath-taking statement I’ve seen in my life, even from Sarat. Where, Sarat, pretty please?
Ask The Girls. Soft touch, easily swayed.
I need to know what time, said Bal. OK, that’s 8 in the morning with us. People’ll be up all night watching the funeral. Guess we just got a new public holiday.
There will be services also in Gula-Toon, Wintawa and the City.
A smear campaign began in the City. The Sisterhood announced a candlelit vigil the night of the funeral. The idea quickly spread across the water. Maya’s death became a feminist issue.
Shavli addressed the cameras. .
“OK, people, you’re going to spend the night out and that is just incredibly sweet of you. I think it’s beautiful, in fact. If it’s actually going to be beautiful, we think you need a bit of help. Loos, hot drinks, shelters for people who get chilled or get sick, first aid in case of accidents. After all, this is the whole city we’re talking about.”
If it wasn’t before, it is now.
“Fortunately the family caterers are more than willing to provide anything you might need free of charge. After all, she was their Maya.”
It took Kadun a moment to realize she meant AMI.
“Above all, of course, I want to thank you for your flowers, for your cards, for your messages, for your outpouring of love which has lightened the load of these past few terrible days, for Sarat, for me, for all of us. We know that Maya did not die in vain because Azt loves her, Kadun loves her.
“I thank you.”
She blew Kadun a kiss.
Kadun blushed furiously and looked in the mirror to check it had combed its hair.
Getting in some practice in case she has to do the job. Even vultures shut out some thoughts as unbearable and unprintable, at any rate 48 hours before the funeral. Everybody who thought thought it. It is a measure of how far we have travelled that Anile Empress in her own right…Voices trailed off.
“We recorded Just Some Girls Talking over Lunch,” said Jaizi. “I really think you’d better see this.”
Yes, of course they killed her because she was Her Imperial Majesty, but why would that have mattered if she’d been some cipher?
It was the guys everyone focused on, right. I mean, this is Kadun!
We knew Karula had a track-record as a radical and Cantilip, well, Cantilip is Cantilip. Mess with earthpower and you die! The debt women in Kadun owe to Van-senok is just about immeasurable. They never surrendered. But we didn’t know anything about Maya. Obviously we didn’t think Sarat’d be paired with some dumb-bun, but she didn’t seem political.
For that matter, we didn’t think Alzani-Meta produced dumb-buns, but they did seem rather political! Maya-ban-essa, rest her soul, embodied just about everything every woman wants to be. [Laughter] OK, OK, including Sarat’s partner, or is that in bad taste! She was just totally her own person. She made her own decisions and she darned well died for them. I mean, excuse me, Maya, would you like to be Anile Empress. Thank you, no, Sarat, I have a nice safe life here in Zur.. She risked everything, gave up everything.
She was so damn’ brave – do you remember the blast at the consecration.?
[Pause]
Well, they all are.
There is no question in my mind – of course they killed her to hurt Sarat but basically they killed her because of what she was, a tough, free lady, symbol of our aspirations, focus of our hopes. Sarat must know that. I mean, I don’t think anyone actually - you kind of assumed he’d get support from Cho. No, no! Oh dear, I mean I’m sure Cho loves him to pieces. Sarat’s answer is Shavli, Zika and Ven and let me tell you we are rooting for those ladies! Women will not be put down by the bastards, not ever again, and that is Maya’s legacy.
Mitch tried to read Sarat’s expression and failed.
“It’s a funeral,” said Zik, “not another round in the sex war.”
“You’re not coming from where they’re coming from,” said Karula.
“That’s rather obvious,” said Zika.
“It’s a candlelit vigil,” said Shavli. “It’s not going to turn into a riot.”
“There is absolutely no-one in Azt who harbours or ever has harboured a single negative thought about Sarat or Maya.”
“That’s a different ball-park,” said Shav.
“How?” demanded Zika.
Sarat spoke at last.
“Let’s just say it’s a volatile situation.”
There were things Sarat thought about the Cult striking duringthe funeral shared with no-one but Cho and Faun. Contingency Plan (F) was to be carried out to the letter, whether he remained alive or not. I can tell you now that they didn’t strike during the funeral and even that no-one expected that they would. We didn’t rule out loose cannons.
“It is not in us,” said Zika drily, “to ask them to remember to be quiet and respectful in the presence of the Great Master.”
Mitch flexed his eyebrows.
“Here I go again,” decided Shavli
Shavli shook back her hair and settled into the settee to die for.
I’m not going to take up much of your time, but what I do have to say matters. Hearken, therefore.
Maya in the short time she was here came to mean a very great deal to a very many people, especially women. When we lose someone we love dearly, tempers run short. When that loss is as politically charged as is Maya’s death, there is the possibility tempers may be lost. On the day of the funeral, two things will be paramount to me, and I want them to be paramount throughout Kadun. One is Sarat’s well-being and the other is what Maya would have wanted. We are all of course acutely aware that many political questions remain to be fully resolved. They will be fully resolved. That is Sarat’s pledge and the pledge of all of us, his family. We are told that the whole of Kadun will be out on the streets to show its love – your love – for Maya. That is as it should be, a day of love, a day of remembrance, a day of peace. That is what Maya would have wanted. That is what Sarat wants. Politics can wait until the day after. Thank you again. Thank you for all your flowers. Thank you for all your love.
She blew Kadun another kiss.
That, folks, is the Anile heir.
Almost worth doing in Sarat – he clapped his hand over his mouth. I didn’t think.
Serious offence, that, son.
We’re vultures. We’re supposed to make tasteless jokes.
Eek, typed Mel. What brought that on?
Sarat mailed him the transcript
! I love it.
I shall love it in two days’ time.
Her Imperial Majesty will be buried at the shrine attached to the Summer Palace. Hey, but that’s private property! Can’t no-one visit – During opening-hours, said Zulagan with bitter fury. If you can’t reach her grave you can’t dig her up again, can you.
It’s like a pall has fallen on the whole of Azt as the sun sets and the vigil begins. There must be the whole city out on the streets. I do not think anything like this has been seen ever. Here and there in the crowds are braziers to warm them and stalls dispensing hot drinks, but mostly there is just the flicker of candles on worn faces, the distant mournful hoot of ships on the river, and the sound of people crying.
Duvi, Saryulin and Marula arrived at the Jumesit, sat with Sarat, Mitch, Karula and B and P watching the camera pan over Azt’s candles.
This is Azt, thought Duvi, and so this is impossible.
“We should get a little sleep,” said Saryulin at last, really meaning Sarat should.
Baz went with them to find their rooms.
Mitch suddenly remembered something, muttered excuse me, and sprinted after them.
He caught up with them, was suddenly at a loss for words.
“This place is a little weird,” he said lamely. Baz grinned unhelpfully. He remembered. “You have ghosts in Carlin.” Saryulin raised his eyebrows sky-high. “They say the walls of time are very thin here. Just don’t be surprised at anything.”
Marula shook with laughter.
“If we meet Narulis, I trust we shall know how to behave.”
“Sarat does,” said Baz.
“We could talk or read,” said Duvi after a moment. “Darling, I am agog.”
“The stories concerning the Jumesit,” said Marula, “are extraordinary.”
“Sarat – and indeed Maya – did, do not find it a little disturbing?”
“Sarat,” said Baz, then stopped, not wanting to enter into a dissertation. “Sarat is not – is no longer a fresh-faced youth wholly concerned with the exoteric.”
They digested that in silence and retired.
The singing began just before dawn, clearly a lament. Duvi stirred, thnking it first light, but the glow was coming from a far corner of the room. She touched Saryulin’s shoulder. He grunted, then sat up, he too thinking it was dawn. The girl wore a cloak of forest green. I know you, said Duvi, despite herself. The girl smiled. I am Brig. I mourn my lord. My lady, said Saryulin. You are welcome always at Carlin. She smiled again and faded. I am really rather shaken, observed Duvi after a moment.
Now dawn is breaking over Azt, and this most terrible of days begins. People who have fallen asleep in the arms of their loved ones are stirring, sleeping-bags are unzipped. The unsung heroes of this day will surely prove to be the charity workers making sure everyone gets something hot inside him. Or of course her. With such crowds calculation of numbers is practically impossible but most people think every female who can walk unaided is out here and some who can’t. An old lady in a wheelchair has been reported in the Colonnade!
Marula was almost entirely silent at breakfast, throughout their preparations. Cantilip got out of her what had happened later.
Finally we move to the Palace from where Her Imperial Majesty will begin her final journey. From behind the Palace appears – no, no, it’s not a car, it’s a carriage, a silver gun-carriage pulled by six silver horses – we have learned of course that the imperial family does not do black as the colour of mourning. Now the coffin has been placed on the carriagee and the Imperial Guard line up for the final salute. The carriage is preparing to draw away. From both sides of the Palace come the procession, all in silver, all on silver horses. His Imperial Majesty leads a riderless horse! This is grace, that is style. Would we expect any less? He is wearing a sword! Is that traditional? Behind him come Pietri and Caluna Talal – everyone is wearing a sword, the ladies and the gentlemen alike! I guess that’s one way of confronting the security issue! Vij and Sarshi Talal, Mel and Cantilip Talal, Hasiyata and Venga Talal. Behind them are my lord and lady of Var-segan and my lord and lady of Carlin. My lady of van-senok follows them. Behind Marula Za-fenan, oh my heaven, it’s PANTHER and the Hadin-Wadud, but not, I swear, as you have previously seen our gallant defenders. Did you know PANTHER had a dress uniform? Baz and Paw, of course, they must have known Maya as long as Sarat did! Little Jaizi. As we know, Jaizi was born in Tjulsit… .
Plotters Central, thought the less romantic.
A day of peace, sir? Challin collapsed. This is all-out war! Let me re-interpret Her Imperial Highness’ touching words. The only politics will be displayed by us.
Anyone start anything, thought Karci, and we cut your head off. I do like that thought.
Now the cortege is passing through the gates of the Palace into the streets of Azt. The crowds are absolutely silent except – something is happening in that crowd. People are starting to hold up placards: We love you. As the coffin passes, as Sarat passes, people are bowing, curtseying, saluting.
This crowd is not silent! It is like a susurration. As the procession passes, most especially of course as Sarat passes, they murmur. My lords, my ladies. Imperial Majesty. What is going on here is like a pact, an oath of allegiance, a vow. It’s like an electric current. It’s like Narulis riding by! Is that the point? Sure, tomorrow it’ll be Sarat, that’s crap. Mel, you’re talking garbage…
Now they’ve nearly reached the Summer Palace and joining them are six cars. Who do we think are in those six cars? Obviously Sarat’s mother and father….The cortege is passing through the gates of the Summer Palace and the gates swing shut behind…
A journo crept along the wall.
Interrupt this, said a squaddy cheerfully, and you die.
See that, added his corporal enthusiastically, that’s a safety-catch. Now, supposing I put it off.
All righty, all righty!
Why don’t you blokes get it?
Some reactions now from the crowd…
Nobody’d have minded, lad! I just shook me head. Nobody’d have minded if he’d drove.
Int never seen anything so flaming brave in me life.
In yer face, you – well, never mind.
Now the gates have opened to allow the cars to leave and slammed tight shut again. It looks like they’re heading straight for the airport…There is some precision timing going on here….No, no, some are clearly going into Azt…
Indeed Sarat who had felt an almost palpable relief when even his nearest and dearest and closest had gone and he didn’t have to speak to anyone and who was now kneeling by the grave reciting something (Mitch couldn’t catch the words) showed no particular sign of wishing to leave.
Mitch looked quickly at his watch.
All the time in the world.
Time passed.
Once more the Gates are opening and Sarat rides out. Following him – but this is a different set of riders. Mitch and Karula var-segan, Falita Em- I mean Falita San-yaega-baht, but I do not recognize – I am told the other lady and gentleman are Sorg’s mother and father and here too are PANTHER and the H-W. I am being handed an official statement. This is for everyone who has suffered grievous loss at the hands of the Cult. This is our answer. Oh my. I guess PANTHER is finding this a very long war. What PANTHER has suffered, the corruption of the throne, the flight back to Fidub…They’re going to ride all the way to the House of Silence, right?
Right.
Now they’re arriving at the House of Silence and you could hear a feather drop, never mind a pin. Really, you could not think so many people could be so still. Sarat is – they are all dismounting and removing their swords. They’re going in now…
Sarat walked through the House of Silence and took the stand. Mel took the stand in Zur, Cho in Maona-pri. Sarat will speak for us all.
Star turn. Culmination.
Dear people, I thank you. I shall not say in my worst dreams I never imagined but of course the reality. Some have called us heedless, foolhardy. We pay then for our folly? We do not skulk, cringe before Death the Great Master – “ The contempt in his voice was palpable. “And so some will say is this devastation we experience, is this ceremonial we conduct, not in obedience, obeisance to Death.” Oh Sarat, breathed Mitch. “We are human. To be human is to love. We grieve because we love, but love must conquer our grief, our fear. We feel the pain and pass through it into love. We are here today in love to love, to affirm the triumph of love. Love endures. We are here because we love Maya, not because we loved her, an ephemeral state, soon forgotten. This flame symbolizes that love. It is no feeble thing, readily extinguished. It is Light. It is power. It is all power. Death has no power over us. And so there is not an ending but a change, as every atom in the flame changes from moment to moment. Once more things are different but also they are the same. There is no faltering in our resolution, no dent in our love.
“‘They came, the skull-faces, but we laughed.’ This Narulis wrote in his Journal – “ When a very large number of people gasp, it makes a noise, however quietly they try to do it. Sarat continued. This I say to you today. They cannot destroy laughter. Today we feel far from it, I perhaps most of all, but all sorrow must pass.
I am here because I love Maya. My lady is my grace and my truth. My lady is my resolution and my culmination. To my lady I say, they cannot destroy our love.
I thank you all for being here. I thank you all, on Maya’s behalf, on my own, for your love.
He bowed and walked slowly out. A single flute played the Requiem.
It wasn’t quiet any more. Too many people crying.
After a moment, Saryulin, Duvi, Mitch, Karula and Marula followed him out. They got into the waiting cars. It was over.
As Sarat drives away through a silent Azt, we move to Zur, where Alzani-Meta leaves the House of Silence.
The first crashing chords hit the screens.
Sarat frowned.
All of us of course know Dabida’s unofficial anthem. They’ve changed the words! They’re calling it the ‘It’s what Maya would have wanted song’!
The words flashed on the screen. .
Does Sarat fail? Does Sarat quail? No, he does not, our brave Sarat! Come hadin, come.
A roar went up from the crowd in Azt as they took up the words.
Sarat seemed in shock.
“I don’t think I’m going to escape,” he said after a moment. .
“If we go down Sertal we can get to the Colonnade.”
“Mel hasn’t,” said Sarat.
“I thank you,” Mel was saying.
“Sir.”
“We just think we have never seen anything so fucking brave in our lives.”
Pietri smiled.
“I am relieved we can rely upon Zuri to be formal and sober on all occasions.”
“Sir. It’s the you looked death in the face and told him to go – to get stuffed day.”
Sarat has turned off. Yes, he’s heading for the Colonnade. Such an outpouring of affection, of, use the word , love must be a very real support to him – he’s stopped outside the Imperial, he’s getting out. The crowd has stopped in mid-chorus. They’re starting to sing the imperial anthem. I really don’t know about this, must it not to Sarat be a tragic reminder of that first jubilant night in Azt, but this is no heavy metal rendition but almost stately and every soldier present – let’s face it now our hearts are no longer in our mouths there are very many soldiers present and the security arrangements of this day – every soldier is rigidly at attention. But what is good, what is great, what too is a measure of how far Kadun has travelled, is every soldier of every army and Sarat is I think thanking them. Now he has turned to the crowd. He’s saluting them and I guess he’ll stay at the salute until they’ve finished singing…OK, they’ve finished. What now?
Sarat said once again: I thank you all for being here. I thank you all, on Maya’s behalf, on my own, for your love. He got back into the car.
Now I guess he’s really going home. If we cut now to Maona-pri…
On this most terrible of days the ‘It’s what Maya would have wanted song’ lifts up hearts the world over, and I would hope it is not presumptuous, Cho, to think yours is among them.
I thank Dabida, I thank Kadun.. At the start of such a day it is hard to think it may end on so firm an affirmation of love and hope. For that of course I thank Sarat who found the words to articulate that affirmation.”
“That was some – address.”
“I am so proud of him,” said Cho. “I am so proud of him it hurts.”
“People are saying – he just said everything.”
“Everything that matters,” said Cho.
“Every damn’ paper in Harn.”
Bal groaned.
“Every damn’ paper in the world.”
There is only one headline, Seani had said. Most of the world’s press agreed.
WE DO NOT DO COWERING. The Azt Star made it into a graphic, a red circle with the word ‘cowering’ in the middle and a red line through it.
They arrived at the Palace and vanished off the world’s radar.
“Now I collapse,” said Sarat. “My lords, my ladies, I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you.”
“Imperial Majesty! Think nothing of it.”
Pots of coffee were brought.
Sarat smiled.
“I think tea for my lady of Carlin.”
“Darling,” said Duvi, “so long as it’s hot and wet.”
At length Saryulin said: “You wish to talk? You wish to be alone?”
“At this moment,” said Sarat, “I may be beyond knowing.”
“I’ll stay,” said Mitch.
The rest wandered off to try to sleep.
“I have an idea,” muttered Mitch. He disappeared into the kitchen, emerged to raid the drinks cabinet and disappeared again to surface with two glasses of something pale green..
“Get this down you.”
Sarat examined the glass.
“Poison?”
“An old family recipe. We call it the reviver.”
Sarat downed the lot, then threw the glass across the room.
“Yeah,” said Mitch.
“I think maybe I just want to sit,” said Sarat. “Let the screaming pass through me.”
“Just yell if you need me,” said Mitch.
Some hours later Mitch surfaced.
“Food is good. You need to eat, Sarat.”
“I’ve been thinking,” said Sarat. “I really don’t know how to be without her. Have to start from scratch.”
They were 15, thought Mitch, damn and blast everything to hell, they were 15! It’s almost like he has had no life without her.
“I really don’t think it matters any more,” said Cho.
“Agreed,” said Faun. “There’s just one thing you need to know before you come.”
“Sarat?”
“Sarat, I hope, is managing to get some sleep. The crowds are still on the streets, Cho. Not so many, Sure, some people have gone home. They say they should see the day out, it’s not right to go home until midnight, a new day. We tried to look that one up. Can’t find anything. I think they’re making it up as they go along. “
“What could be nicer.”
“They got it so wrong.”
“A day behind bullet-proof glass.”
“A day behind bullet-proof glass could not have ended quite like this.”
“I really don’t want,” said Cho, “to – “ He smiled. “Intrude. I think this is strictly doting grandfather.”
Cho slunk into the back of the Imperial. .
They showed him into Sarat’s office. Shav looked up, looking tired.
“Just running the joint. Talk about a wing and a prayer! His Imperial Majesty is not receiving tonight. Everyone has just about grasped that but the world does not stop turning. . I rang Mitch. He says Sarat’s doing just fine working his way through it. The strain of today. I don’t think I could have done that.”
“I don’t think he could have done it without Mitch. Where’re Zik and Ven?”
“Selflessly I toil while my sisters sleep! No way. Zika was last seen in a really rather heavy-duty discussion about metaphysics. Really Sarat, if you will say these things,” she added innocently. “Ven said she was off to the canteen and hasn’t been seen since.”
“Tell her she’ll get fat.”
He slunk away again and headed for the Palace.
“I told him he had to eat. He said he didn’t know how to be without her.”
“Where is he?”
“Sitting.”
“Sitting where?”
“If you want to be literal,” said Mitch, “he’s sitting on the step leading from the sitting-room to the bedroom. I don’t think it matters where he’s sitting.” He sighed. “He’s – talking to people. Sometimes. This place!”
“My lord of Var-segan,” said Cho with mock severity, “your rationalism is inappropriate.”
Mitch sighed again.
“Duvi had a little chat to Brig.”
Cho laughed out loud and made his way to the sitting-room,
“Sarat? Narulis? How does one put the lights on?”
Sarat picked up the remote and became visible.
“My dear boy.”
“The show went on, my most intimate feelings on display to what, a hundred million worldwide. I have never in my life felt so alone.”
“That is not the word?” suggested Cho.
“That is not the word,” agreed Sarat gravely. “Naked. Flayed. I did it my way.”
“Where is the kitchen?” asked Cho.
Sarat got up slowly.
“Shall I feel better with a good strong cup of coffee inside me?”
“I shall,” said Cho.
“There is an exquisitely concealed sink in the corner. Like in The Room.” He fiddled with the remote again and sat on the settee while Cho put the kettle on. “The weight of being Anile Emperor.”
“Sarat…” If you put on a show that tears people’s hearts open, that flays the world. . “This also – devastates?”
“Where is the next beginning?”
“This you – contemplate?” Cho found the biscuit tin. “Eat!”
“I sit here in the dark,” said Sarat, “Not because I am devastated, although I am devastated, but because I do not yet know the start of the next continuum.”
“You know,” said Cho.
“Now I am Kadun,” said Sarat. “There can be no errors of judgement because the poor boy is bereft.”
“You do not do badly thus far. Coffee.”
“My lady,” continued Sarat, “was my privacy. Does that make sense? A part of me shielded from the world.”
The airwaves continued babbling into the night.
You could say it was a statement of – of emotional unity between Kadun and Dabida, and if that seems strange because it also seemed it was never any other way.
It is almost unbearably poignant because Sarat and Maya symbolized that unity but only by her death did it become fully real.
I wouldn’t disagree with that, but I’d say it’s also – also a change in perception of Sarat. Who today thought Sarat some Fidubi guy! He is Kadun, man!
It’s like all the mental barriers, the labels, just dissolved.
I think that’s the opposite of what I just said!
Maybe.
Of course no-one has doubted a deep-seated set of convictions underpinned the entire enterprise.
He’s killed Jaizal!
Dabida will not tolerate an emperor in Azt! It was another world!
I thnk it’ll take us a little time to truly get the hang of what has happened here today.
If we turn to one of the most famous choruses in the world, ‘Come hadin come, come not alone’, and just contemplate the symbolism of Kadun singing that to the rest of the continent, which is nearly as bad as Dabida singing it to the rest of the continent, don’t you think it astonishing that those words remained unchanged?
No-one ever censored Zuri.
You mean Zur is singing that demanding some action around here?
Wouldn’t you be?
I think it’s only – only when you really understand they don’t give that – he snapped his fingers – about dying – haven’t we asked, why weren’t these kids too scared to get out of bed in the morning?
Challin abruptly turned the radio off and continued his internal dialogue with Sarat. We are human, meaning we are animal. Our drive is to survive. We don’t like it at the time. What else are we, sir? I operate on a need to know basis. If I am to die for you, I need to know.
Sarat expressed a desire to sleep and stretched out on the settee. Cho covered him with a blanket and slipped away.
“The flowers keep coming,” said Mitch. “As people go home, they drop them off!”
Cho said: “Asyrion in a field with flowers.” Then: “He will be different.”
“He is different,” said Mitch.
Sarat woke just before dawn.
“I love you,” he said sleepy but cognisant. He got up and walked over to the window. The flowers were waist-high. He almost refound his sense of humour. How can I cope! He heard Maya giggle.
Time for the real world. Nothing realler, honey. We’re dead and we don’t even know it. Or you were, my love. and you knew it. You couldn’t convince us we were dead because we weren’t. What is being screamed at us is everything is whole. Oh how does it work? Not now, he told himself, but he went outside and waded into the flowers to read the cards.
CLICK CLICK CLICK
“Vultures,” said Jaizi affectionately.
Sarat looked up.
“Watch it,” he said. “She has a sword.”
There was a tremor of shock.
“You got a sword, Sarat?”
“I have a sword,” said Sarat.
He went inside and dressed, then made a few phone calls.
“We understood,” observed Challin, “nothing.”
“Zilch,” said Karci, “the Big O.”
“You look shaken.”
“Isn’t everyone?”
Challin smiled.
“Them flowers, said Varulin. “A word in your shell-like.” He grinned at As. “Sir. Think this is a ‘sir’ sort of conversation, you having been through it and all.” Asdinan knew Varulin had lost a daughter from meningitis. “Being also better educated, socially elevated and spiritually more advanced, as you are.”
“Me?” said As.. “Come on, I’m an infant!’
“Well, maybe I’m an embryo,” said Varulin. “Maybe I can’t take it from the folks who hear the wheels of the universe.”
“You want to talk about death?” hazarded As.
“Yes and no,” said Varulin. “I want – you could say I want to report to the CinC only I don’t think at this minute. There’s lots of things I want to say and I’m buggered if I know where to start. It’s like – advice for a start. Folk don’t want to be cool any more. They want to sort of pledge their swords. Then there’s the flowers. It’s love or hate now, and if it’s love blokes want to show it only we don’t know how. It’s like formality isn’t empty after all. People are talking about death,” he ended in a rush. “First time in my life, like it was – that’s not what I mean. Like it was natural, even when it ain’t. You know folks say you go to a field of flowers. Do you believe in an after-life?”
“I don’t know,” said Asdinan. “I don’t know what I believe. What I have heard, what I have learned. Even the – folks who hear the wheels, They – can’t make out all the words. If – if you ask me if I think Maya is in a field with flowers in some other – dimension, no, no, I don’t, I think I don’t. I think it’s a beautiful idea and she may be – in some form of beautfiul state. How d’you give yourself if not through obedience?”
“That’s it,” said Varulin. Sorg’s answer hung between them. “I think,” said Varulin, “we’re all ready to do that.”
“It will not come to that,” said Asdinan with some force.
But Varulin said: “Perhaps it should.”
As nodded.
“Was that the first mistake, not to force an open war?”
“I really don’t know,” said Varulin.
“Were they too nice?”
“Don’t reckon they’re going to be quite so nice now..”
“But that is not the answer.”
“Now it is. We all know what they said. Fresh start. Can’t prosecute everyone who’s compromised. There’s not many compromised now. No-one’s going to bleed if he hangs them.”
It’s not how they do things in Fidub, thought Asdinan. They don’t have the fucking Cult in Fidub.
“Kadun’s been going a long time,” continued Varulin. “Lots of stories.”
“Sure,” said As.
“When she died. I was there.”
“Yes,” said As.
“I been thinking about that a lot. I think he was with her, if you know what I mean. I can’t explain. I don’t know nothing. That man was not in this world.”
“I know they – join minds,” said As.
“So if one’s going – other’s going too.”
“Unless they’re forced apart,” said As with a sort of dawning horror.
“Baz,” said Varulin. “I have never ever seen him lose it like that.”
“I think perhaps,” said As, “the exact stresses of that particular moment may be something we’ll never know or should know.”
Varulin grinned suddenly.
“But we should be very very nice to him.”
“Very very nice,” said As.
And so finally we’re back to me, me who was in a meeting with bloody bankers when some slimy lackey entered and whispered the news. The lead rat stood and announced he regretted Maya-ban-essa had been assassinated. Perhaps the meeting should be adjourned? I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. I didn’t even ask casually if Sarat was OK.
Laters, I said, and ran.
They were already erecting screens in the Plaza to show the footage from Azt. I looked at Sarat with Maya in his arms and threw up.
Lot of people feel like that, love.
So there am I standing by a little heap of my own puke. Now was not the time for good citizenship I started to walk away but I didn’t really know where I was going. Among the wounded is Colonel Cioulis – NO! I tried to get Cioulis on his mobile. Off. He’s in hospital, I told myself firmly. I hailed a cab and tried to get Sarat on his mobile. Off. I tried Mel. Off. This is crazy I muttered. They must be taking calls from each other! I remembered I had the direct line to the Room cunningly disguised in my diary and hoped I could remember what it was cunningly disguised as. Found it! A man answered. I didn’t recognize his voice. I just heard, I said. Is Mel there, please? May I ask who wants him. I’m Kai, Sarat’s Economic Liaison Person in the City, which is where I am, half-mad with horror. I tried to get Sarat. Is he all right? My dear, a moment. Mel came on the line. Oh Mel. Mel, I am so sorry. Is Cioulis OK? He hadn’t known. He told me to get to the Rep Centre. Which one? My one! I redirected my cabby. There was already a line of people outside to sign a book of condolences. My stomach lurched again. I fell inside. All was muted.
Twenty minutes later Cioulis rang me, very apologetic, scratches. He hadn’t wanted to call me and break the news knowing where I was. We had a darling I understand I love you conversation but that didn’t stop Maya being dead.
His Imperial Majesty, Sarat-ban-essa, Master of Kadun, will speak from the scene of the blast.
At the airport I mailed one line to Bal: Now will you do something!
To my surprise I got an almost instant answer: Or it will be done for me?
Bal…I am but a humble cog who knows – I stopped typing suddenly and nosedived into what I knew, which came out as something like, everything about the Cult and less than everything about banking but why I’m here, why I’m part of the madness,d ‘you see, is it’s not about banking, you have to see that, Bal. You won’t damned see it. You have to take your head out of the sand, Bal, I screamed at him, mentally. OK, I was stressed. I put my fingers back on the keyboard. I do not make the fiscal policy of the Anile Empire! Not that that matters, because this is not a question of the fiscal policy of the Anile Empire. So why did I bring it up in the first place. Don’t ask me what Sohenoil will do. Don’t ask me what AMI will do. I don’t know. But he hadn’t asked me. I deleted the whole lot and typed: My guess is…yes. With knobs on.
I am in shock.
Kyse walked up to me. He looked as dreadful as I did. We hugged. He’d been giving a lecture. Something in the back of my mind buzzed, at least that was normal, what they do is wreck normal, what I’d been doing was abnormal, what the hell was I doing ‘liaising’ with those fucks - ?
“Once upon a time,” I said, “there was a little Harni radical who found herself in a seminar with Mel Talal.” I shook myself. “Don’t know why I said that. Thrown, Kyse, I feel – “
“As in kidded ourselves we were winning?”
“Oh Kyse.” I managed a grin. “This is not the time for musing on determinism. I ‘should have been’ giving a lecture, d’you see. But I couldn’t have been. Even if I’d never met Mel I could no more have kept out of the Matter of Kadun. I’m babbling.”
“You are very, very distressed.”
“I am very, very distressed. Because I ought to have been doing something that would make a difference.”
He frowned.
“1. That wouldn’t have prevented 2. Sarat asked you to do it.”
“Sarat thought I could – I might get a sniff of their back-up position. There has to be one. I’m being distressed again. From Bal, I mean, yeah, Searc’s really going to let the rat out of the bag to me. He thinks Bal knows the – the contingency plan.
He considered.
“Sheer arrogance?”
“What? Maybe.”
“When you’ve been going as long as the Cult. We are not talking about Maya.”
“I’m sorry!” It came out squeaky.”
He looked surprised.
“I didn’t mean….”
“Maybe I did! What – I don’t think either of us is quite sane, right now.”
“That’s only half of it.”
“I am so glad it was you I walked into. Bleeding from associated causes.”
Then our flight was called and any remaining shreds of sanity vanished. They were searching under your toenails, they were searching inside your mouths. OK, they weren’t searching under my toenails because I produced my PANTHER ID and switched on to auto-pilot. I vouched for Kyse who suddenly became Mel’s oldest friend but what the hell were they looking for? Auto-pilot told me that as PANTHER I should be supposed to know and so not to ask. Since it was clearly my duty to return with all speed to Azt, we settled ourselves on a half-empty plane and got some bad but strong coffee inside us.
“This Great Enterprise of Ours,” said Kyse softly, “has been hurt somewhere we can’t even begin to articulate, holed below the water-line. Will you say it or shall I?”
“We don’t need to,” I said. His expression said oh for fuck’s sake, Kai. “At least it wasn’t Sarat.”
“Feminist hackles.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I? Terrible to be left widowed in charge of a country that isn’t even yours!”
“Are we all mad?”
“Yes. Is the simple answer. About those bankers of yours.”
“The simple answer is a load of high-explosive. Give me a mo, I’m trying to find my brain.” A shred of that vital organ waved frantically at me. “Bunch of radical kids. Not a hope, therefore. BUT. But 1. One is the Anle heir But 2. One has friends where the ult can never reach. But 3 Sohenoil. But 4. AMI. Quesch, therefore. What is it we have to do that they think we won’t do? Is it something besides high explosive? I might even suspect that at this point the world would forgive Sarat assassination but that is not what we’re about, man.
Shav turned from avid contemplation of a mollusc, not because she was a closet biologist but because she liked time on her own, and getting it could be hard; she was in Essa’s beach-hut and Dad working away at the other end was so peaceful it was like being alone, except maybe a bit better.
“I was remembering,”: she said, “when Turny died. I remember bits – the apple! We were babies. I don’t really – Sarat was very upset.”
Essa looked up.
“She was put down. He didn’t like that.”
“Killed.”
“I thought you were old enough to try to understand. You and Sarat. Zik wouldn’t be left out.”
“I think I understood about wearing out. I got lost after that. That didn’t matter. You gave us a sense – your sense - of – completeness, that death is part of life, not something – intrusive, alien. It was reasonable and right.”
“You think of a death neither reasonable nor right.”
“I think she was pregnant,” said Shavli.
“Shavli…” Essa put down his pad and walked over to her, feeling as though in slow motion.
“People say he froze,” Shav was continuing. “Seconds. No-one – holds it against him. He didn’t, did he. He went straight in. I think what he found stunned him.”
Essa put his arms round her shoulders.
“If he doesn’t want to tell anyone,” said Shavli, “or yet, anyway.”
“I do not see how the death of my beloved Turny - ?”
“I just thought,:” said Shav, “after that he really got the zoo bug, there were so many small furry deaths. I can hear everyone shouting it’s not the same! Of course it’s not the same.”
“We already had the hamster and the rats!”
“I can’t get rid of the feeling there was something strange. Of course there was something strange!”
“How do you know unless you try?” said Essa. “I said the vet could do no more.”
“That is so Sarat.”
Essa smiled.
“Start as you mean to go on. Move over…” He sat beside her. “The problem is she was dead. Therefore he connected with her mind at the moment of death or with another about to die.”
“What I know,” said Shav, “is how Sarat would react to anything small, furry and terrified.”
Essa laughed.
“You think he would see no difference.”
“I don’t think he’d see any difference at all.”
“I too think. He found himself where the living do not go. That is enough. The physician in the emergency room performing resuscitation does not relish interruption but Baz is not the fool who interrupts.”
“If he didn’t know, she couldn’t have been – viable. Ghastly word.”
“Shavli, you do not know. She?”
“She’s not here any more.”
“Let us stand back a little. The two people perhaps in all the world we think do not – what is the word, perhaps panic.”
Shav gave a small frown of concentration.
“Flip. Baz flipped. Sarat does not freeze. Baz does not flip! And remember, there must be a hundred million watching worldwide. They don’t even flip or freeze in private!”
“We are all human.”
Sarat lay by Shavli’s pool. His intent seemed even madder than it had in the Jumesit. That, he said to himself firmly, is why we have other people to run things past. Shav and Petrush emerged from the house in swimming-gear. The table was laden with fruit, iced juice and pretty pastel sorbets. Vaccinating sheep didn’t seem such a bad choice.
Petrush took a running dive and surfaced spluttering.
“You’ll need a cool head,” said Sarat.
“Cool is my name.”
He heaved himself out of the pool and helped himself to a bowl of sliced peach.
“What drags you away from the delights of Azt?”
“You fly,” said Sarat.
“We do.”
“Of course you only have the entire Kadun Air Fleet at your disposal”
“This would be so secret even I don’t know I’m doing it.”
“Ah-uh!”
“The reason I’m not entirely mad is that the empire used to have a northern coast. Now it doesn’t.”
“Ah-uh doubled in spades?”
“I could be difficult. I could go to court. I could waste ten years of my life on lawyers trying to prove the old maps are forgeries. I could stir up a hornet’s nest that’d reach the stratosphere. I don’t want to do that. I just want to know a couple of things.”
“You don’t want us to bomb anywhere, then.”
“I’ve read up a bit on stealth. Stealth and spy-planes. I think you can do it without being spotted. If you are spotted – that’s one of the things we’re going to talk about.”
“You’re talking about the no-fly zone?”
“Jaaba Sen,” said Shav. “Are we not all one people, the continent at last at peace?”
Petrush made to play a violin.
“There’s a spy-plane called a 580.”
“There sure is.”
“It’s the nature-lover in him,:” said Baz. “The last untouched wilderness. More violins.”
“Sarat, surely you are not cynical and disbelieving.”
“There are more angles than – something with an infinity of angles? Marula’s zest for a tree-hugging emperor might have led one to suppose that she would want me to ask for her trees back. There are more conspiracy theories about that place. Bar the total loon element – site of an ancient civilization – the consensus is not only that there are no humans there but that there never were any humans there. That’s why it’s protected as a world heritage site. Even the loons think the ancient civilization was on the coast.”
“Why does that make them loons?”
“They were aliens. Maybe the loons are aliens too. It’s not the principle of aliens. I just think there should be more of them, more centrally located. They set up house on about the most inhospitable bit of the planet then vanished?”
“Maybe the climate suited them then changed?”
Petrush was grinning evilly.
“Quite apart from that’s what you were kind of told at C-R.”
“Quite apart from that. I started with – I start with the Denzines are going to wreck the perception of any human instrument. I want to know what’s there not what that bastard Fugitry wants to show me. And I do want the crowns, number two, two in number, I mean, which is interesting in itself because the one thing every spotty teen knows about Narulis is Brig, Nautshka and Vrim. The crowns were made for a pair.”
“He does not speak with awe of Denzine Master Fugitry.”
“This is my territory?”
“There’s an air corridor,” said Petrush. “I think we might have some fun here. Make the switch in mid-ocean? Suppose we set up a dummy flight from the City to G-T. Somewhere in the water, it lands on a carrier and gets replaced by our bird. Our bird zooms respectably between the fences then vanishes off the radar. All hell breaks loose because they think it’s crashed. I’m working on it!”
“I knew you’d understand,” said Sarat.
“I’m an understanding kind of guy.”
“What usually happens if you’re found in a prohibited area? Shoot on sight?”
“That may depend. Most no-fly zones are known sensitive areas, military installations, government buildings. This one – it may be hard to justify shoot on sight when the crime is disturbing sleeping moose and the weather is shit. There are no fences along the side of this road. Folks can get lost. Shoot down some Ciletij tycoon in his private jet!”
“Some strange magnetic force played havoc with the instrumentation! Of course we do have to contend with the proposition that there is some strange magnetic force, which may be why it’s a no-fly zone.”
“I need a map,” said Shavli. “What occurs to me is there’s a research station on the ice. Supplies have to come in. People have to go out. They go round?”
“Surely only if they’re going to Vasucula.”
“It’s an international zone. Some of them must be going to Vasucula.”
“I should imagine,” continued Petrush, :”they put up sheep-dogs to guide the stray lamb back to the true path. Depending on what kind of lamb it is of course.”
“Bearing in mind,” said Baz, “it may be some tree-hugging Fidubi, closely associated with NoZone.”
“Ciletij is not your friend.”
“Parts of Ciletij are my friend. I might even think all Ciletij was my friend if I hadn’t had the affrontery to succeed. A powerful and prosperous Kadun, it is argued, only needs someone less nice than me in charge. It’s a kind of – it’s ingrained in some quarters. Why would Kadun want Ciletij. It’s cold, it’s windy, and it has a northern coast which even it can’t want.”
“Less nice and more acclimatized?”
“Kadun has minerals too.”
“Nonetheless and heretofore, here you are, taking a real intelligent interest in that which you swore I recall – “
“You see my problem! For 600 years they showed no sign whatever of wanting the empire back. Kadun had to modernize. All-Kadun was geopolitical convenience, as Karula put it
Fanfare of trumpets, Mitch and I, as rationalist as we are revolutionary, in equal parts loose cannons and saviours – that vital continuity with the past, you know.”
“That would be the past in which no-one on the whole continent wanted the empire back.”
“That past. The one in which being modern go-ahead young men we are thought safe: we shall have no interest in the past..”
“And still less in the more sequin-studded aspects of the other matter.”
“None whatever in those. I demand dancing bears.”
“That Ciletij does not relish a united Kadun is not ground-breaking. There had therefore to be something worse in the offing, which we know, and in particular, which we also know, that worse was centred on the other matter. OK, let us call it The Secret, capital T, capital S. The Cult could not be allowed to discover The Secret. With which it could do or perhaps has done still greater evil? That would tend to suggest the chair and admirable though she is I do not know that one can say one can do anything with her.”
“What you really want,” said Baz, “is him to tell you all the mad crap he’s found on the Grid.”
“We do?”
“The best part is some of it’s real,” said Sarat. “If we go inside I can project onto the wide screen."
“It’s the zig-zags,” said Baz. “Do your head in.”:
They sat round the TV screen looking at a jagged red line.
“The ancient enmity,” said Sarat dreamily, “ between Ciletij and Kadun might lead one to suppose the border – a broiling pit of magma might suffice. That is the border. It follows the course of the River Gradun, faithfully follows that course, every curve and loop. It stays ten nani south of the river at all points. Those who’ve been on the ground – guys who were in the resistance – say there is no physical border, not even a piece of rusted barbed wire.” “‘Welcome to Ciletij. Please do not disturb the wolverines. They have just as much right to peace and quiet as you do.’ The trees, the trees!”
“Nor is there any no-man’s land or no-fly zone. What do you notice about this border? Suppose I took off from VS to fly directly to Azt?”
“I cannot quite believe,” said Shavli, “Ciletij are happy for KAF to wander in and out of their air-space.
“When was this border delineated? Oh, of course!”
Sarat grinned happily.
“It was not negotiated with the entity Kadun because no such entity existed. North of Azt it follows the general rules laid down for borders, sentries, guys who want to look at your papers. At Var-sega’ it’s a couple of rows of electric fence and two crossing-points.”
“Marula is in this up to her neck? Conclusion: VS handed over a whole chunk of itself in return for what?”
“We may assume then at the semi-hysteria surrounding Kadun territorial ambition is a complex feint. One may appreciate – though then again one may not – they wanted C-R in Ciletij but it would seem to me the creative cartographer – when the name of a country and of its people is the same, a certain ambiguity is achieved. Rape of Ciletij, the nation, which did not in fact exist. We could posit the – price of the Rape was Van-senok, but that in itself seems a little odd. Unless of course, etc, etc. Superficially odd.”
“How about this for a story?” said Shav. “We’re testing a new ground-penetrating radar. We want to see if it works through trees. Not too much untouched primeval forest on Fidub. Contacts in KAF – pause for violins, hands across the sea – offered Van-senok. Unfortunately, some strange magnetic force played havoc with the instruments and we became hopelessly lost. What happens if we play that in real time?”
“How about that’s Act Two?” said Petrush. “We could get good pics, go back for a second look and then get caught?”
“You don’t seem to think FAF will have a problem with this,” said Sarat.
“PANTHER operation. PANTHER wants a look at Ciletij, we do what PANTHER tells us.”
“He said with wide-eyed innocence. I haven’t talked to Cho and don’t intend to. The fewer people who know I’m not going to invade Ciletij the better.”
“If Ciletij poses a threat to the security of the continent…”
“This space-rock of yours,” said Shav. “Ours! I’m wondering – suppose it’s incorporated into terrestrial weapons?”
“There’d be explosion, death, injury in the area of impact. A normal bomb. But just maybe the – fall-out! Play havoc with the perception of those within an unknown radius?”
“Isn’t that an interesting thought?” said Sarat.
“Baseline is people on the ground are not harmless charcoal-burners. They see us, they call. If they see us. They’re cautious guys. They call even if they’re not sure what they’ve seen. Missiles rising out of the lake. That is one short call.”
“I have an overwhelming desire to see,” said Shav. “I quell it.”
“Exactly,” said Sarat. “Land or air I do not see this as a Sarat-friendly zone.”
“If we came in from VS, it’s minutes. On the other hand, they will not expect anyone coming in from the north. OK, lemme set the scene. A Fleet ice-breaker with spy-birds on board is there. And what are they doing? They are surveying the ice. Probably there already. If they aren’t, we are.”
“Inspirational,” muttered Sarat.
“Range?” asked Shav.
“I thank you. These birds go for ever.”
“I hadn’t realized that,” said Sarat
“I think not the 580. They make a bee-line south-east. How much artificial intelligence is required? What is the role of and who are the human controllers?”
Baz looked up from a book not as gripping as the surrounding narrative.
“We are. Cats hate the cold.”
“Tick that one off,” said Petrush. “The rest is detail. As to where we land, having done the deed, my choice is a Fidubi carrier in mid-ocean. Whatever happens, whatever is said, this is nothing to do with Kadun.”
Sarat grinned.
“Just figure out how I give you a medal.”
“We can talk about that when we’ve got the goods. All we need now is not to smash into a tree.”
“All of it is apparently untouched wilderness, from the ice right down to VS. Terrapin shows just that.” Terrapin was a Fidubi satellite. Terra pin, geddit. Some people have a strange sense of humour. The other one was called Turtle. “It has quite a reputation. Sightings of almost every monster the human mind has conceived – I noted with regret none had five heads – giant reptiles, lush vegetation, the ancient civilization. A particularly popular theory is genetic mutants. The bears are the size of houses, the wolves the size of rooms. Some tone this down to merely larger than normal, consequent upon genetic isolation. I hear the next question hurtling to your lips. Terrapin shows blurred at C-R. Extremely poor quality images.“ He pursed his lips. “Heavy cloud cover, you know.”
“It’s live, real-time?”
“Shielded?” said Shav at the same time. “Artificial clouds? I know! It’s all the chemtrails from the air traffic.”
“It only passes over twice a day.”
“Every day,” said Petrush. “You assume of course.”
“I assume of course. Eagle-I – who the hell names these things? All the Ciletij commercial satellites only release data under licence. “
“All the geophysical data, GPR, that has to be interpreted. We have to learn to interpret this stuff?”
“The hands-on approach. Do you trust anyone, present company excepted?”
“That is an interesting question. Yes. ‘Our specialists’, no.”
“A select few who handle potentially highly sensitive data.”
“Let me tell you about Jaaba Sen. You might think it a tourist attraction. There will be signs not just of humanity but of tourism at the very least at the periphery. If people do not put more than a toe inside, still they may gaze in awe and wonder. There is a fairly substantial town called Cood and it has no such signs. Closer to the trees are other smaller towns, equally pristine. That there are actual wolves and bears is not in dispute. It may be they are the best deterrent. Ciletij mythology abounds with the terrors of the forest. Certainly there may be terrors in that forest for those who penetrate too deeply, even if they are only shape-shifters pretending to be terrors of the forest. It may also be that if one penetrates too deeply, one is politely halted and turned back. Military installation. Or of course not turned back, merely turned into snow-drift.
“That figures in the more complex conspiracy theories. The military are breeding mutants. Some escaped.”
“There remain zoologists, ecologists – and archaeologists. Two hundred years ago an explorer called Stoobard Solden ventured too far and returned broken and babbling. That of which he babbled was perhaps more interesting. He said the dead walked the forest, his every move was watched. He saw the shades among the trees, but no shadow was cast on the ground. Scientific psychology decided this was a variant of snow blindness, visual hallucination caused by an excess of light. Unscientific psychology talked about it a great deal but showed no particular inclination for field work, at least until high summer. They returned - thoughtful, convinced indeed they had been watched and what watched them were the spirits of trees. I fear they were not tree-huggers. It had not occurred to them there could be harm in cutting down a young tree and building a friendly fire. It would seem the trees thought differently. It would seem the trees moved in the night and blocked their path. The only opening was back whence they came and they took it. That of course stinks of Van-senok.
“The Academy of Geobiology took to the skies and mapped the region, thus providing photographs of some of the most spectacular scenery you never saw. An intrepid band of white-water freaks tried penetration by kayak and vanished, presumed drowned. More latterly the Institute of Zoology gained a permit – from whom is surprisingly or not as you prefer obscure – to conduct some form of census, head-count, of Ciletij’ indigenous wildlife and to map survival in so extreme an environment.. Nothing untoward was seen or they agreed not to let on. The moose thrives, you know. The extent to which the territory they covered was controlled may be implicit in the survey method or may just be one of the few ways to conduct such a survey in such terrain. They selected squares of each kind of habitat and tagged their inhabitants. The scientists had no problem with ‘spooky as hell’ and I quote but attributed it to the constant howling of wolves and cracking of trees under the weight of snow. They even admitted to a feeling of being watched but of course it was nonsense and indeed directing cameras at what wasn’t there confirmed its absence. They concluded that thinking a wolf-pack has you ear-marked as lunch wears you down. One of them said that when he stopped to adjust his pack and the rest of the expedition were just that bit further away than normal he felt as vulnerable a new-born moose separated from the herd! Never being able to be off your guard. It must have been like that for early humans. That was very much the overall conclusion, that it’s ‘like being at the beginning of the world, not just somewhere humans don’t go but where we’ve never been’. Let us say it is not a hospitable environment.
“Following that there was a flurry of interest in our wonderful wildlife but few people sincerely want to get eaten and visitors to Saaba Valley, the national park north of GT where you may see wolves under carefully controlled conditions, substantially increased. From the other side, numbers of large dangerous and potentially dangerous carnivores, includes lynx and wolverine, caused concern that in a bad winter they might venture down to human habitation and gobble small children, but it appears to be the perfect self-regulating eco-system. Perhaps interestingly, fell creatures that emerge from the trees and eat babies are not among the myths.
“Where there are no people, there is no archaeology. There are people in Ciletij. It does not cause hearts to race to think there were previously people in Ciletij. They know there were previously people in Ciletij. The question is the furthest northern extent of human habitation: there is no reason to think this prehistoric community would be any different from those disinterred in more accessible places. We know the world is slowly warming. The myth of the remains of an ancient civilization is dismissed totally. Of what would it have been built, blocks of ice? Thus the aliens…The overwhelming emphasis is actually on guilt-tripping Ciletij. Behold the original extent of the forest and dwell in shame on how much of it was felled to create the Ciletij we know and love today. Before you bite me, I know I might have said something of the kind! That was from the simplicity of my tree-loving heart, not a part of what perceive as a sustained campaign to make sure no-one gets close.”
“Suppose I went to this - what was it called? Cood. OK, there’s no tourism industry. So I’m a trail-blazer – Zeshanzesh, are there not - folks who never saw a reason to leave the Leolisle find the entire continent open before them!. I’m there with my back-pack and I want to go hiking. I’m not some extremes freak and I’m not stupid, I know if I get lost my chances of survival are not high. A little gentle exploring. First, I buy a map, right?”
“Fat lot of good it does you! We’re not completely backward,” said Baz. “We sent a cat to Nyon-Va, ten nani from the trees. It showed exactly what you’d expect. A lot of contour lines, some on top of each other, a lot of inverted green Vs, meaning trees, and a lot of water. No roads, no trails, no trains. By the way, there’s nowhere to stay. Against the odds, the natives are friendly and put you in their spare room when you politely conceal your disarray at having dropped off the edge of the world.”
“What was his story?” asked Shav.
“Her story. Fidubi geographer now working in Kadun, which she is. Had a few days off and wanted to see the real north. Touring. Which she was. It’s the southernmost of the – I was going to say settlements. I guess that’s what they are. I guess the ancestors of the good folks of Nyon-va go back to the beginning of people in Ciletij. They’re wired. They have bright lights and music and a weekly dance and all the news but they’re not expecting callers.” He sighed. “There’s just one slightly jarring note. There’s a family runs an international mail order biz in fur, fur hats, fur boots, fur jackets, fur gloves, fur gilets, hand-stitched.. Of course no-one goes into the forest. Of course it’s the perfect untouched self-regulating eco-system. I’d guess Nyon-va has been going into the forest since there were people. It’s cottage industry at base. It’s not going to decimate the fur-bearing populations.”
“No, Petrush,” said Shav.
“The sooner you resolve this matter of Kadun, the sooner I have freedom of movement back!”
“I shouldn’t bet on it,” said Sarat.
“VS,” said Shav. “Where does Mel fit in?”
“As I read it, everyone is to some extent caught up in someone else’s plot. What I think is that Mel knows everything Cantilip knows. What Cantilip knows is what Marula has chosen to tell her. I think it fair to assume Cantilip’s initiation into her heritage was abruptly curtailed by her choice of partner. Cantilip and Mel are running their own investigation. I read that as Cantilip taking an independent look at her heritage. I can relate to that.” He paused. “I said Marula hasn’t asked for her trees back: I have not been asked to pull any levers. It may be Mel has. It would be a great deal less painful on all sides for Mel to negotiate with the Denzines or Ciletij.”
“For a start he doesn’t want a bit of his country back. The past,” continued Shav, :”may be as embarrassing as the present if the present is built on a lie.”
“That’s the one. I don’t think this is about any of us in the here and now.”
“But can that be the case?” persisted Shav. “Do people not fight for their history? That is not – very recent history?”
“Owww!” said Sarat. “I don’t think I’m going to find VS worked for the Cult or assassinated Kaminua. Some comparable crime. What I do recognize is the extent to which I have been compromised. The charade at CR. It’s peculiar.”
“It was that, all right,” said Petrush.
“You’re sure it was a charade?” asked Shav.
“No! First I thought, why on earth draw my attention to the place at all. Then I thought once I’d sat on her I’d know she was odd, so it was kind of double bluff. Once I had ‘experienced the mystery of Casin-ruhn’ I should be drawn into the conspiracy to leave everything alone. Mel has no control over the Denzines. Cantilip has no control over her mother. Neither of course has any control over Ciletij – “
“Cantilip,” said Shav, “is independent of her mother in a way that could never have been foreseen.”
“That too. Cantilip is in a position to do things she could not have done until Marula was dead.”
“Looks to me,” said Petrush, “there are two ways of looking at this at base. One is that persons unknown know the full story and are keeping it from you. That is an unfriendly act, the next question being why. The other is that no-one knows the full story although he or she may think she/he does. Either way, you are being kept in the dark and fed shit.”
“It annoys me,” said Sarat. “I am Anile emperor, you know.”
Petrush grinned.
“A third – perspective is that everything worked to constrain you once you reached that august position. You are tied down, Sarat. The price of empire has been that you would not even think of interfering in the affairs of the rest of the continent.. How gross would that be! Why would you? Or how badly do they want you to keep your hands to yourself? I am not making insinuations against your fellow-plotters. I understand you are bonded in blood. But our illustrious elders? Airoch, Tar, Marula, Saryulin.”
Your best friend won’t tell you, thought Baz.
“Or again there is a double-bluff?” suggested Shav. “You have rewritten the continent’s history. It cannot occur to you it needs rewriting again.”
“Cho?” asked Sarat.
Shit, thought Baz.
Shav didn’t answer directly.
“They did not predicate – isn’t that a good word? Exactly who you are. The staying Sarat clause. I think if you fail to stay Sarat you think you have failed. True?”
“Very,”:said Sarat.
“Both of you,” said Petrush, “you and Shavli, for the first what 16 years of your lives you were Fidubi kids. Surely well-heeled ones, surely well-connected ones, but you grew up – “ He grinned suddenly. “ – And remember I am not some writer for Glitz fabricating your early life and struggles, I was there. With the – perspectives of ornerry folks. Most of it’s down to the Straits! A vital separation from Zur.”
“Most of it’s down to Mum and Dad,” said Sarat.
“His Imperial Majesty’s mother is a Fidubi housewife,” said Shavli. She giggled. “Like me.”
“You use the last of the lavatory paper,” said Petrush, “you go down to Zerq’s and get more!”
“You remember that!”
“I remember. That was one sick rabbit. Sure Baya had cubs to help, but they did not undertake to run the joint. That is the difference.”
Shavli grasped the nettle
“Cho – loves you to pieces. They have sweated blood. We all have. Cho would do anything for you. Bomb Ciletij! Possibly. That doesn’t make him incapable of – as you said, being part of other things. Cho could not do anything that would hurt you. Sarat, does it occur to you they don’t want you to know because it would hurt you.”
“No.” said Sarat, then, “What can hurt me more than I have hurt myself? That is – responsibility for being alive,” said Sarat. “We live with the consequences of our choices. Suppose all of it’s crap. Suppose Susheela didn’t flee to Fidub with her son! Would it matter?”
Shav considered.
“To you? To the working-people of Kadun? That’s why you are not safe!”
“Others,” observed Petrush, “may be more deeply - invested in history. To an extent – “ He sighed. “You have augmented. History – you stop any Fidubi in the street. When we were kids, it would not have been – relevant – not sure that’s the word, but you get my meaning, that Fidub was responsible for the empire. There was a nice – a safe? – gap between us and the past. We were now.”
“For the record, that’s not what I think. Or that the empire was always the shit-hole Ciletij said it was. There is absolutely no justification for that. What I do think revolves around Zani. I think that story is a deal more complicated than the official version. But it wouldn’t – diminish him. I don’t think I’m going to find he didn’t lead an army to the Great Gates and found Dabida.”
“Could Mel have an interest in that story!”
“History tells us Jaizal sent a mighty army to crush him and he emerged victorious. I’ve heard less plausible stories but not many. I do not doubt Zani’s courage, oratory, weaponry or numbers and I still think they would have been massacred if there hadn’t been something else, some display of power to convince irtubi he could defeat Jaizal. The field effect is apparently confined to north of the GD, to which I say oh yeah? Second, I – we, this one comes from Mel. We think Zani sat on the chair and that’s why he didn’t proclaim himself Anile emperor, simple, humble guy that he was. There are other questions keeping historians busy, whether eso or exo. PANTHER was unable to stop the rot and then suddenly proved capable of both defeating Jaizal and cleaning out Kadun. Zani marched across Carlin and Carlin failed to notice.
I think all of them, VS, Carlin, PANTHER, wanted the collapse of the empire. I think Zani was in league with them up to his neck and the deal was he’d defeat Jaizal so long as he did not become emperor and they could have their independence back. I think – some show of power and/or who are the Imperial Army! Senoki, Segani, Carlini.”
“Certain resonances,” said Shavli.
“The world was confounded when the Army of All-Kadun joined me. But of course it didn’t:” “I think there are two things. I do not on what I have heard see any likelihood of any government – or throne – falling. To the extent that this is bound up in the eso, it cannot make the six o’clock news and – dislocate the continent’s image of itself, that of the man or woman in the street. But I would say the relationship of the academic discipline of history to the other matter is necessarily at times somewhat jagged and to that extent the man or woman in the street may be living a lie.”
“That’s why Mel loves Kyse,” said Sarat.
“Kyse?”
“His rationalist if not revolutionary historian friend. He says the word is lying.”
“I should like to meet Kyse. I conclude this mystery of ours is eso. That may seem obvious given the centrality of a silver chair. I thought it worth wondering if riot and revolution might ensue!”
“The spill-over?” suggested Shav. “We started by talking about Ciletij missiles!”
“We try to keep them separate,” agreed Petrush.
“If we filter that lot,” asked Sarat, “do we come to something with which I could go public? The cause merely of terminal embarrassment, caught lying?”
“It’s a possibility. It says a lot for Mel.”
“Oh yes,” said Sarat, “it says a lot for Mel.”
“Apart from having sat on the chair and chatted to Kaminua, you are squeaky-clean.”
“And Maya,” said Sarat.
Baz looked up sharply..
“I was going to say I cannot believe anyone who knows would sink so low as to use that.”
“Who knows?” asked Petrush.
“Us,” said Baz, “you, family, Pietri and Caluna. Hass and Venga. Mel and Cantilip.”
“Marula.” said Shav.
“There would have seemed no harm?”
“Sheds a whole new light,” said Baz. “Mel may be trying to make up for being a bloody fool!”
“Eh, our Mel? Never!” said Paw sauntering in.
“Missed all the fun.”
“Tell me later. Cool off…”
He headed for the pool
“OK,” said Petrush. “We know how the Quadrant worked. Division of labour. Fidub handled space. Shall we list what we do know for a change? We know that the military use of nuclear power is banned world-wide. We know that all physical manifestations of military power are essentially a side-show for the masses because the only serious wars ever fought were fought with mind. We know that guys with dangerous minds are not immune to being shot which makes it a good idea to have handy something to shoot them with. We know that Ciletij historically has a horror of mind-power and prefers tanks and – again historically – has relied on the south for the fancy stuff, in particular Fidub. We know that PK can stop advancing tank but it takes as many guys as there are advancing tanks and on the whole it is simpler either to blow up the tank or for those guys to work together on the terrain. We know that the Ciletij sense of vulnerability is increased a thousand-fold by your little venture. We know that there are other forms of modernization besides main drainage and all the guys who worked with Ciletij in Kadun know that thinking Ciletij know that too – “
“Concur,” said Sarat.
“We know that elements in both Ciletij and Kadun forced into a shotgun marriage do not wholly warm to sharing their little secrets with each other – “
“Concur,” sighed Sarat.
“We know that the Cult is active, particularly – curiously perhaps – in Ciletij, calling for continent-wide disarmament because why retain the military when clearly there is and never will be anyone to fight. I am thinking hard about your space-rock. I do not much like my thoughts. Suppose it were incorporated in a normal common-or-garden bomb. Its power has survived travel through aeons of space and we may – predicate it would therefore survive the heat of explosion. That explosion may be expected to cause the normal level of damage of a blast but I am wondering about – fall-out. Might the fall-out not cause havoc with the perception of those in the surrounding area? I am of course wondering also how that might mesh with the CR charade.”
“Mmm! Radiation as some kind of cutesy clue. The idiot boy has been told…That occurs to me too. This stuff is powerful and it has a half-life? We know it’s powerful. It may be a faint feeble remnant of its former self? It’s terribly tempting to think of the Rape as this power on the loose among people who had absolutely no way of handling it, but there wouldn’t seem to be any way the dates fit.”
“We’re good boys and girls and everyone knows we’re good boys and girls, but your heirs and successors getting hold of a power - ?”
“Maybe that’s what happened before?” said Shav.
“I am not prepared,” said Sarat, “to be put off by a theory. Possibly a conclusion I am duly supposed to reach. Nor am I an idiot. I shan’t leave matches around for the kids to play with.”
“Sarat and Hass played with alphabet-bricks on the floor of the Room,” said Shav in a good imitation of Mel. “No-one is going to think him a second Jaizal.”
“They don’t want you to have that power now,” said Petrush. “It’s too dangerous. The mere fact that it exists becomes a threat.”
“It comes back to who knows what. They couldn’t say the chair was lost because VS knew damned well it wasn’t.”
“The stories around the chair are all good,” said Sarat.
“Maybe that’s the point of the nuclear metaphor. The power itself is neutral.”
“Jaizal must have the throne! Why, if she’s one of the good guys? I had her assayed. Young Scientist of the Year. Fidubi ores! She is indeed made of impure silver and the more detectable impurities are those of lodes formerly found in extremely small quantities on the Utmost Isle and now exhausted, as evidenced by artefacts in the Museum of Early History. I actually read the assay report – don’t start me on wavelengths and photons – but of course ‘trace elements’ rang no bells at the time. Or after for that matter. Did you know the average friendly homely meteorite is mostly iron? But if this space-rock contains something unknown, literally alien, it reacts - ? What is she, guys, what is her – potency, if that’s not a sexist word?”
Baz looked at Shav and Petrush and answered for them.
“Earthpower.”
“Does it not crumble mountains and shatter continents?”
“It might just,” said Petrush (Cool is my name), “be beginning to come together.”
“This is a pure flight of fancy,” said Sarat, “but suppose, just suppose, on some immeasurably distant planet, something sentient looks to us like rocks. Rocks can be hurled through space, we know that. Suppose some humdinger of a cosmic cataclysm - ?”
“Who noticed the sentience?” asked Shav.
“Who do you think!” sighed Baz.
“Cantilip? That rather puts her in the clear.”
Sarat said mildly, “You have to remember we have been through a remarkably wide range of experiences together.”
“I’m going to assume you have tried simple questions. What is your name? Where do you come from? What do your parents do?”
“It doesn’t work like that. Maybe you should sit. The nearest I can come is our – pre-occupations taken outside time until time itself dissolves.”
“She is your pre-occupation!”
“How can I put this?” said Sarat. “I haven’t sat on her since Maya died.”
“Sorry.”
“It shook us all more than we let on. What is being screamed at us is everything is whole. There is no difference between life and death. These are not things I want to hear right now.”
“Oh Sarat.”
“But she responded to you?”
“She responded to love.”
“Time to eat, I think,” said Petrush. “I fear that having been insufficiently forewarned, the range of seeds we have to offer is limited or indeed non-existent.”
“Lad were brought up proper,” said Shav, “Eats what he’s given.”
“News travels fast,” growled Sarat.
“If you want to really freak Kadun,” said Baz. “Anyone who noticed the diet before put it down to the hot weather.”
Sarat grinned.
“Meaning Mitch.”
“You have to understand,” said Baz, “food underpins the entire empire.”
“I think you need to go into that a bit more…”
“It’s our memoirs, at once riveting, unclassified and seminal. Tell you later.”
Later, with Sarat catching up on the news of old friends as Petrush told it, which wasn’t necessarily how the old friends saw it, Shav curled up with B and P.
“His way,” said Paw. :”Like everything else.”
“That’s how it seems to me.”
“It’s been too long, man!” Petrush was saying. “Friends, family, never mind the other crap.”
“Busy, busy, busy!”
“A week makes a difference?”
Sarat grinned.
“A week here, a week there, where will it end?”
“So when did you last have a vacation?”
“A real one? The honest answer is I didn’t.”
“Shav, she likes chilling out on her own. Me, if I have nothing to do I want to do it with her!”
How am I? thought Sarat. Am I really as OK as I seem? But nicely done and with distinct possibilities. It might be too much to think a member of his family actually understood.
“That’s the one. I’m not absolutely sure I can explain. Thinking of Maya is a state of mind, a state of being, not an – activity, except it’s not thinking of, it’s loving. The loving does not stop. It has its down side. The – emanation from - “ He gestured in what he hoped was the direction of the Sohenisle. “I need a month off to think of Maya, to talk about Maya. And what? I spend a month thinking and talking and the problem’s solved, she’s not dead any more?” I do not think Cho is handling this well, thought Petrush. Guilt? “There is a gap in any – flopping at the end of the day, lying by the pool. A space. I can’t play racquetball on my own. Sure, I could find someone. I don’t want to play racquetball with ‘someone’, I want to play it with Maya. We made up our own rules and – I don’t actually want to play racquetball at all, don’t care if I never play again. What I want is the – Sarat-Maya experience we found faffing about on the court.”
“If you are not finding it necessary to visit Fidub because Cho-Sarat relations have taken a downward turn, independent of all the crap we went through earlier, that is itself crap.”
“I know,” said Sarat.
“Good! I think we can offer you a week of constructive idleness. You have friends. They regard the lunatic with amused but deep affection.”
Sarat grinned.
“I know! Some of them were at the Imperial.”
“Of course, the hub of the known world. It is about this time of day that old friends and brothers decide to go out for a drink but that is perhaps a little complex. Nor do I think we should be seen going to the base to initiate our mission, interesting though that might be. What shall we do?”
Sarat stretched out his legs.
“Nothing sounds good. Seaweed. :Do you remember the ten minutes we thought we’d made botanical history?”
Petrush blinked then broke into a huge grin.
“It’s a whole new species, man!”
“Raw veggies,” said Shav.
Paw chortled.
“You know this diet. It’s the Sarat diet. It bears no relationship to any trend, fad or meticulously researched biochemistry – you find me a raw food freak who starts the day with a jug of strong coffee, cream and sugar. He’s perfectly happy to entertain sometimes. He’s perfectly happy to eat normal food if someone puts it in front of him. On the whole, he doesn’t.”
“Home from home.”
Baya had been fairly ruthless. Neither she nor anyone else was going to move a muscle to accommodate The Diet. If he wanted to purchase, prepare and subsequently peck his way through a tray of seeds when everyone else was having steak, that was fine. Later, Ven went vegan. The white house in the dunes is, well, in the dunes; they ate a lot of fish.
“On the whole, coffee is about the only hot thing that passes his lips. We see it in context. Cho doesn’t. What it was like. All of them, when they arrived in Azt, they didn’t have meals, except in the canteen if they were lucky. Grazed on the nearest shrub. If it was crap, they ate that. Very definite views on. When things began to settle, there was the pressure for – suitable. Who could forget crates! The editor of Mode cornered Maya and told her damn it. people want diamonds, not as though you haven’t got it. There was an element of having taken the candy away from the kids, glam enough when they were networking in the City. You have to understand – I’m sure you do. It was one thing to read reports, even hear first hand from CLIK. They insisted on seeing for themselves and they did. The total immersion poverty experience. I hadn’t seen conditions like that. I don’t suppose you have. They were outraged and they said so and what they said they meant. We all know Mitch’s granite slab. They saw it. The schools are crap, the hospitals are crap, the building you live in is crap, the bed you sleep in is crap, the blanket that covers you is crap, the clothes you wear are crap! There is no way out. It really puts you in the right frame of mind to organize the social event of the century! They did take the point about having it.but there was no way they were going to waste time on it. Then Bal announced he wanted to inspect the joint. Urban legend that Sarat grunted he’d have to eat in the canteen like everyone else. As all good readers of Glitz know, they used the museum, formerly the Summer Palace. Unfortunately by then it opened late to enable working people to visit. Fortunately it had the necessary chandeliers and wide aisles. You think the plot was precision planning?”
“That was the seed of the people space?” asked Shav.
“It was. There was no point in inviting them to dinner because they wouldn’t go. Part of that was the no-diary no-schedule stuff, but a lot of it actually wasn’t, rejection of a – socialite element. We are not repeat not here to be seen with all the ‘best people’. Anyway, Mitch said, we are the best people. Soul-brothers….They settled to having their dining-table as the social centre of Azt and that meant anyone could be invited, builders, bankers, barmaids and they served the sort of food anyone could be happy with and by the way stamped the imperial seal right through the heart of Azt.”
“After Maya it changed. Sarat still invited anyone he damn well pleased to dinner but it was much more one to one or two or three, much cosier and more private. Then he changed his diet. You cannot invite citizens of Azt to dine and offer them seeds. Apart from anything else if they’re poor it’s gross. But by then we did indeed have the people space and the Jumesit as the social centre of Azt was established.
“So what’s the point of all this if I can’t even eat what I want! That’s what we think’s going on. Basic decisions about how he is prepared to live his life, about what he has done to his life, and he’s not sharing. Another sixty years of this!”
“But he likes it.”
“Oh, he enjoys it all right. Not sure that’s the same thing. Don’t ask me to explain that! I think there’s a lot of – not sure I can explain this one, either. The cliché, the joke about love, so long as I’m with you we can live on rotten apples on a rubbish tip and I won’t notice. I think there was a lot of that in their relationship. He’s noticed his life and is assessing it.”
“Sarat is taking excellent care of Sarat,” said Paw. “If there were evidence of self-neglect, we should be concerned. There isn’t and we aren’t.”
“The word,” said Shav, “is the student life he never had.”
“He doesn’t go to bed, either. I take it you’ve heard.”
“I’ve heard. Maybe not from the horses’ mouth.”
“Neeeigh! You know there’s that one ginormous super-gigantic sofa. When he’s finished for the day he turns out the light and sleeps on it, worries about washing in the morning.”
“It’s very comfortable,” said Shav trying to keep a straight face. “I hope he cleans his teeth. I can see – a kind of a watershed, getting rid of your double bed. Apart from the obvious that it’s too empty.”
“Only 50 other rooms to choose from. If he were a student, I don’t think anyone’d turn a hair. Being a bereaved emperor makes them make it into 50 different kinds of grief syndrome. There’s a – ditching of inessentials because they don’t seem to matter and even don’t matter.”
“What would concern me is exactly that. As though he feels chased by time.”
“Facing the possibility of his own death? How can he not?”
“Yes,” said Shav. “But you’re happy.”
“We’re happy,” said Baz.
“Most young people have a period when they were single. I think Cho’s so worried because he’s never been on his own.”
“Cho should have more sense,” said Baz rather shortly.
Paw nodded.
“We all know where the buck stops,” said Shav. “If it goes pear-shaped, it won’t be Mel or Cho in the firing-line.”
“It’s more character-forming to live in a bedsit?”
Shav laughed.
“I’ll remember that! But Cho, do you really think living in a bedsit - ? What about Hass and Venga? Do they eat seeds?”
“We remember,” said Baz after a moment, “all of you when you were tots, babes. You had a pink velvet headband with silver sparkles. You loved it and wept buckets when it finally fell apart.” I did, thought Shav, but what - ?. “His first date with Maya, the first time they went out on their own, without the gang, he took her to a beach-party, all flutes and candles. You’d have thought it was frantically respectable if you didn’t notice the horizontal shapes in the dunes. They didn’t, not for some time I think, obviously we didn’t know exactly when.”
“Maya staying the night wasn’t a clue,” sighed Paw. He grinned. “Until her bed wasn’t slept in.”
“I do know about Sarat and Hass,” said Shav, thinking this was where Baz was going.
“Nobody knows about Sarat and Hass.”
“They’re not - ?”
“Oh no, no, no. I was there, Shav.”
Where? Oh.
“Oh Baz.”
“The way I feel about is it’s not just the most awful thing that’s ever happened to me, it’s the most awful thing that could ever happen to me. Now imagine how Sarat feels. He said it was like an axe-wound in his head. You have a cut, the edges come together, it slowly heals, but if you’re not a bit careful round it the edges spring apart and it bleeds like it did when it was new. Maybe for a shorter time. I’ve really thought about that one! It’s the best analogy I can think of. How are you feeling! I never thought about it till it was me doing the feeling, thought it was just the sort of dumb-arse question journos ask, like Karula said, how do you expect me to feel? It’s much more than that, or rather Sarat’s total antipathy to his nearest and dearest – I feel the same. There you are, you’re dealing with it. If that sounds crude, getting the edges of that wound together is major microsurgery but you’re hacking it. Then your dear grey-haired old grandfather asks how you’re feeling. That’s bad enough, but he wants you to talk about it. Pull the edges of the wound apart, really get in there and make it bleed. Sarat talks to Hass. When he wants to. I do too. Doesn’t matter if it’s 3 in the morning. Hass knew what he had to do and he did it. Just be there whenever Sarat needs him. He doesn’t get excited, he doesn’t gush.” He paused. “He doesn’t try to analyse. He – knows what it feels like. When I say he’s there I don’t exactly mean Azt. He pours love on it.”
“It sounds awful,” said Paw, without saying what sounds awful. “We all Cho would move heaven and earth for him.”
“I don’t know,” said Shav. “It’s not the same, is it. I can’t see Sarat appreciating Cho and Amida moving in, however selfless they were about it.”
“We didn’t see how it would work,” said Paw.
Baz said: “When I say he’s there I don’t mean literally, every minute! They seem to do exactly what they like. They wandered in, without much of a by your leave to the host. That’s what I mean about Sarat and Hass. Sarat understood, in his heart if not his brain. They chose a few rooms, they decorated them to taste, they got on with being Hass and Venga. Last seen at the Round-the-Islands Race.”
“That’s what I mean about rubbish tip,” said Paw “There’s an awful lot of that in Hass and Venga. They don’t care where they are.”
“After all…” muttered Baz. “Fluid. It’s the fluidity in Hass. He doesn’t go with the flow. He is the flow! Anyone else, there’d be sharp edges.”
“I’ve always had a lot of time for Hass,” said Shavli. “I didn’t know quite how much. Cho’s not an idiot. I guess he’d do anything to help but can’t unless Sarat talks to him.”
“Come on, you know it’s more than that. This bloody notion of his Sarat and Maya are still – connected somewhere.”
“Is it so bloody?” asked Shav. “I don’t mean it how Cho means it.”
“Maybe…I mean it how Cho means it. It’s 30-carat crap and Cho knows it. Hass would know instantly. I think I would too.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” said Shav. “He thinks Hass is too – ethereal.”
“Hass is about the most level-headed guy you could ever hope to have by your side in a crisis! The head of PANTHER does not go lame-brained just because he dotes on his grandson. Which I told him.”
“Never a dull moment,” said Paw.
“I’m ethereal,” said Shavli. “I think – I’m sure you do see but like the gang were shocked by total immersion poverty, we at Base Camp Fidub were a bit shattered by the ramifications of going to Kadun to fix the drains. I mean really Sarat, I know you want everyone in on the act, but the entire universe?”
Baz chortled.
“Dear Mum, we have had such adventures, today all of us sat on the Anile throne…”
“Sorg,” said Shavli. “This is to do with Falita and Sorg?”
“Could be,” said Paw.
“Maybe he’s not putting it very well,” went on Shav, “Cho, I mean. That does not seem likely. Not saying exactly what he means. Obviously Sarat isn’t experiencing a ghost. Maybe he thinks because of the – connection a – a door is open, the ghost can be inside Sarat’s head?”
“OK,” said Baz, “I don’t believe that and as I said Hass would know. So what you’re – your train of thought is neither of them – Sarat and Hass – want to shut the door and Cho is adamant – and if were true he’d be right – the door has to be shut. The axe-wound was me, Shavli. I think you need to understand that.” He looked at them both. Paw put his arm round him. “Calm, centred, honest…Bloody wound up, but not because of me, because of bloody Cho. I was there. I forced them apart. I am sure. Maya went – wherever, whatever. The first thing Sarat said was the second most awful, she’s not here any more. It was very, very final.”
“You’ve said that to Cho.”
“I have said that to Cho. Sarat says – he has not said to Cho – yet – feels like a damn research animal.”
“That’s awful.”
“The trouble is,” said Paw, “in the nicest possible way, that’s what we all are, the subjects of our own experiment.”
“There’s only one way of studying what happens when we die,” growled Baz. “Maybe two – take a finely judged overdose and be very close to the hospital.”
“I suppose we’re all thinking,” said Shav. “Cho’s getting on, etc. Whether it’s of more immediate interest.”
“We’ve thought,” said Paw.
“It hasn’t changed what I think,” said Baz. “If you ask me if we continue in any – recognizable form, I’d say no. But. That’s what you mean, I guess.”
“There is a question of volition.”
“Oh, there is. Again, if you ask me – she wanted to go. Whatever ‘she’ and ‘wanted’ mean in that context.”
“It must have been unbearable. But he – “
“How can you describe an instant which is past everything? I work on it. Yes, he tried to kick me out. He did not want to follow. Maybe I shouldn’t have….He – wanted to keep that instant – stay suspended out of life, out of death, out of time. He did not want to keep her here. He just didn’t want it to end. Does that make sense? It was down to him to end it. Or her. Or the – natural order of things.”
The most private part of a very private relationship and Baz wrecked it, thought Shavli. That I do not say. What Sarat and Baz have said to each other, that I do not ask.
“Shall we lighten up? Next thing, Sarat and Petrush come in and find us with tears pouring down our cheeks. They’ll have to ask how we’re feeling.”
“That would be appalling,” said Paw.
Baz looked at her thoughtfully a minute.
“We seem to have taken a nosedive from dietetics,” she said. “I’m thinking. A man has a solid relationship with someone who really understands him but then someone else comes along and the relationship is just as solid, just as meaningful, but the second person seems much more glam – “ They looked puzzled. “Then there’s a dislocation in the second relationship and the guy really needs to talk to – his first love, but he’s terribly embarrassed, maybe even a bit ashamed, but the first person wouldn’t mind, wouldn’t notice…”
“You’re talking about your dad, aren’t you.”
“He knows that! Sarat, I mean. Shavli – he does not want to talk! Except to Hass.”
“I was just thinking,” said Shav.
“Did they talk?” asked Petrush.
“Boy, did they talk! Did he talk?”
“Oh yes. Succinctly. Man, I take a month off to ‘talk about Maya’, the problem’s solved, right, she’s not dead any more. After that we talked plants. Cho is not handling this well.”
“You noticed! I got all of it.” Pause. “After Maya died, I talked to Dad.a bit. We decided – if there was something Sarat didn’t want to say, that was cool.”
“You would not seem to have shared with Cho.”
“I think Cho – I don’t know.”
“You have a clue what the something is?”
“Oh yes,” said Shav. “D’you remember when Turny was put down?”
Petrush tried to recall.
“I was away with Ma and Dad. That’s right! What I got was the upside, I guess. Sarat, you are becoming a biology bore! It was after that he was really hooked. Your Dad talked you through it. Wasn’t there something about an apple?”
“Even Zik remembers the apple. Dad thought Sarat and I were old enough to try to understand. Zik wouldn’t be left out. What we got was a sense of wholeness. He said you couldn’t have all the people who’d ever been born in Fidub still alive and all the dogs and all the mice and all the flies, and all the birds, and, and because there wouldn’t be any room for plants and if there weren’t any plants there wouldn’t be anything. I was totally lost on the detail, but I remember the feeling of how it all fitted and I do remember the apple! He took an apple and held it against Sarat’s arm. He said that everything you need to keep alive, air, juice, that apple, it has to be processed inside you. You can’t just hold it against your skin and it becomes part of you! We could see that had to be quite complicated and fascinating and brilliant and it’s why you have blood, to take the tiny bits of processed food and air all over your body to feed it and the heart is what sends the blood right through your body. But because it’s all so complicated over the years things start to go wrong, little things, and your body’s really good at putting them right, but eventually more things go wrong than right and when something major goes wrong, like with the heart, your body isn’t getting any food, any air, so it just stops, and that’s all it is. So of course Sarat protested. Dad reminded me. He explained that every bit of Turny was basically worn out, not working properly, beyond mending and it was kinder to put her to sleep. Sarat said how can you be sure unless you try.”
Petrush smiled gently.
“That’s my man!”
“Isn’t it just.”
“Your thinking is – “ I’m trying to put this in standard form. “They’re doing CPR in the emergency room and some moron – sorry, Baz – interrupts.”
Shav was taken aback.
“No, basically.”
“I would agree. If that had been the case, Baz not being a moron would not have interrupted! The point is surely that so far as we understand that word she was dead.”
“That’s exactly what Dad said. I said – she was,” said Shavli, slightly emphasizing the ‘she’.
“Who - ? Shavli!”
“I don’t even know if it’s possible. Nothing Baz said today went against it. He said it was like a suspension of time. Sarat didn’t want to keep her or follow her or any of the words of volition. He just wanted to keep that moment. He knew he couldn’t keep their baby alive. He wanted to be there when she died.”
“She?”
“She’s not there any more.”
“Before I burst into tears you have not one scrap of proof!”
“She died in his arms! People say froze, shock, or just love. He didn’t freeze. He plunged in. I think what he found stunned him. Dad follows that bit, but he thinks it’s something to do with what happens when you die, Sarat found himself somewhere – because, you see, she was dead.”
“So far as we understand that word.”
“It was all seconds.”
“There does not seem to be any question of Maya trying to heal herself.”
“There’s just something that doesn’t mesh. What I feel like – a bit - is a detective picking apart a suspect’s story. If he wants to tell us.”
“So Cho thinks the worst because it does not compute! Thank you, Cho. That will be all…I am remembering – when they really confused us. Yes, we could heal people. Yes, we could heal animals. Our aged pets should still be – if necessary put down. But not of course our aged humans. I am curious. How did your Dad hack that one?”
“Bluntly. He said no, we did not swan around healing. We could not and did not heal without preferably the participation but certainly the wish of the being being healed. When it was trivial, whether a cut paw or a cut finger, it really wasn’t an issue. Non-human animals have a sense of their lives which is different to that of humans. A human can want to go on living despite total physical disability. A non-human animal has a sense of having reached its end. To over-ride that is an evil, a violation. Yes, you can have your old dog bouncing around like a six-month old puppy, but it’s not actually your dog, it’s a creature of your will, because you do not want to lose it. That, hopefully when we are older, we shall have to confront in ourselves at any death. Shock is natural, a sense of loss is natural. Do we cry because we needed the dead person or do we cry because the dead person enjoyed being alive?”
“Why does that not surprise me? One appreciates these things of course, perhaps less bluntly. The core of PANTHER is is it not there be no over-riding of will, human or non-human. If we consider our Denzines friends are not capable of talking straight, that Fidub could not heal is that which does not wish to be healed?”
“Eeek,” said Shav. “At which point the story become ludicrous.”
“I want to think about that one, hard. What’s the rest of the goss? What was that about food?”
“Hilarious. He’s gone back to the Sarat diet, bearing in mind one cannot decently offer the starving poor raw grain.”
“I thought they weren’t starving any more!”
“A history of diet from rotten burgers to raw grain!” She filled him in.
“So people are finding his conduct a little odd?”
“I think Baz fingered that one clearly enough. If he were a student, no-one would notice. Since he’s Anile emperor, it has to be some kind of grief syndrome. He does talk. He talks to Hass.
Only to Hass. And Baz. That was made entirely clear. It’s part of my circumstantial evidence! Have you ever talked to a gay guy about fatherhood?”
“Now you come to mention it…So Cho thinks what you think and thinks Hass can’t truly understand. You think!”
“I think.”
“Was there an autopsy?”
“No-one told me about it.”
“Pretty little PANTHER minds could surely have established. If and only if, I should doubt Sarat is the only one to know. I can well see that if Cho sees himself as surrounded by a conspiracy of silence, that would make him just a little on edge. I would add that the progress made in Kadun is not such that Faun – for example – could stand up in court and delineate the nature of Maya’s injuries and the state of her body, shall we say, because he looked. One thing I grokked. Because of that accident of geography, Fidub is largely free from memories of Maya. Oh, not home. Specifically I guess his relationship with me.”
“Isn’t that interesting,” said Shavli.
“I told him straight down the line, if he is – not finding it necessary to visit because of this hiccup with Cho, that is crap.”
“Good one. “
“I may just have got him to spend a week with us chilling out. These are delicate negotiations but I think it a firm possibility!”
“That would be brilliant. Something else I remembered. When we were little. Often, often we went to stay with Cho. But Cho hardly ever came to stay with us. It suddenly struck me, Cho probably doesn’t really have much of an idea of what home was like. I like to think if I could just sort out Sarat and Dad, everything else might fall into place a bit better. Butt out, Shav!”
“He has a problem with your dad?” Frank disbelief.
“I think he thinks he does. When he was 17, he ran away with Cho.” She shared her analogy. “They are so alike. People see the superficial, mover and shaker, wheeler and dealer. Ah, how he takes after his grandpapa! It’s crap.”
“I have always known that. Believe me, I do not have Cho down as one excited about algae. I do not think you can call the moving and shaking superficial.”
“He’s Anile emperor,” said Shav, then stopped.
“Do continue,” said Petrush.
“B and P think all of it is making some fundamental decisions about how he’s prepared to live the rest of his life, ‘what he has done to his life’ and I quote. That’s all quite ordinary and exo.” She sighed. “I wonder if Cho fully even understands that. Sarat was set for ordinary life.”
“Honey, he was never going to spend his life in a lab! He would have had a future in NoZone marketing the environment. He chose to market something nearly as big. To which I would add, he wanted to rock and rock now. If scientists rock the world at all, it is in their later years, when all that meticulous research has paid off!”
Shav giggled.
“Maybe that’s because they don’t have the resources of half a continent at their disposal.”
“Oh we are so thorough! Where are you going?”
“All that was pure Dad, the exposition. We all know the identity crisis, but that’s not the two people. The brash Fidubi brat is Cho and the Anile emperor is also Cho. Sure, Sarat and Mitch did the marketing but they also did the research. Mitch spent years in the PANTHER records. It works because of that ground-work, because the foundations are solid.”
Petrush laughed.
“While I take that point, I would add that we spent the afternoon undermining everything the continent ever thought about itself.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“Wherever we’re coming from, it doesn’t affect where we are now. Do you see- a sequence of events can be described, each following from the one before, but that doesn’t mean the end-point can only follow from the start. Suppose we proved Narulis never existed! Oh, there’d be repercussions…But there’s no way – some guy is getting his chronic asthma properly treated only because Narulis existed and if Narulis hadn’t existed he wouldn’t be.”
“I am not entirely sure about that.”
“Couldn’t be. No alternative sequence of events is conceivable.”
“No-one else was or is capable of the idea – I do not know that Narulis wrote about the treatment of asthma. That may be to say someone embedded certain ideas in the history of Kadun. Surely Mitch’s point that they were indigenous is very much the issue here, indeed that they came from Narulis the foreigner very much why they were resisted.”
“It’s a lousy analogy?”
“It may be better to say suppose Zani never existed! Someone undoubtedly founded the kingdom of Dabida with certain core values, for there it is for all to see…What I thought – there are facts – “ He grinned. “The sort of fact at which Mitch excels. Facts which are not scientific facts, but may be given the status of scientific facts, although they are not the facts of science. The existence of Dabida as we know and love her is surely one. But I was thinking of the minutiae. Science told them- if you call statistics science - what percentage of the population had no piped hot water or no main drainage. Mitch took us through a day in the life, what exactly that meant. Only when you have defined the problem can you define the solution. It is that I see as independent of any forebears. We seem to have digressed. I say seem. Would it be incredibly unjust to say you too think Sarat should talk to an elder male relative, just a different one?”
“No. What would be incredibly unjust is to think that I shall prod, encourage or otherwise interfere!”
“That is a fine sentiment and the simple human conviction of knowing best is of course apparently where Cho is coming from. Sarat in this scenario would be secretly longing to share, Cho is not an idiot therefore Cho’s apparent conviction that the person Sarat should be sharing with is he must be regarded as having some rational basis.
Shav gurgled.
“Baz told him the head of PANTHER does not go lame-brained because he dotes.”
“Children, children! I am shocked! My problem here is my genius for seeing both sides with equal clarity. Poor Sarat! Not only two people, but four, possibly eight, sixteen…We all of us may have our loving families playing that kind of game, but he has the entire world. It is impossible not to side totally with his desire to tell the entire world to butt out. But Cho is not an idiot emotionally or any other way. I do not think even I can draw a parallel between this and our new mission – but I can try. If that territory is demonstrably Kadun and remembering transparency is his middle name – he could go the long way round, right, the international court. If I assess my man correctly, he does not give a damn where the border is as a matter of principle. He would merely prefer what is on the other side of it not to be a secret weapon aimed at Azt! I can relate to that. There would be a hell of a lot of – fall-out! – for perhaps very little. If we take it as given Cho has something serious on his mind, why the hell does he not come out with it? Perhaps he chooses not to because the fall-out would be too great, though I cannot imagine what that could be.”
“I have a plan,:” said Shavli.
“What happened to the fine sentiment?”
“Observe, my sweet, observe. If he comes and stays with us, we can have a family reunion. It must be ten years since we’ve all sat round the same table. Unless Sarat really objects – “
“I do not think Cho will press him with Zika by his side!”
“Which would be of interest in itself, we can have a look at them together and see what we think then.”
“It is generally accepted,” said Dill, “that the walls of time fade and reform, that our guests are real. That they are going about their business in their own time and not indeed visiting.”
“Yes.”
“I understand, although I have yet to experience them, there are other manifestations of this in support of this theory, scenes that could not be taking place in the here and now.”
“Yes. The Bronzes. The Bronzes are a frieze which does – emphasis on does – not exist. There anyway!”
“We may and do – constantly – ask precisely why this temporal phenomenon should be so. We may indeed ask if it is so. I do not think we question that it could be so. Is the phenomenon of Kaminua and Asyrion of a different order? It is the proposition that one may choose to continue one’s terrestrial existence in – what shall we say? A time bubble, a space out of time where time does not exist. Again we may say this could so but clearly a more complex and so more questionable process would be involved, though we may adduce the fact that each of us is – “ She broke into a grin. “ – a part of the bloody Whole extant outside time. Nonetheless our physical, our corporeal beings are rooted in time and to – clothe our essence in a physicality rendered proof against time is to say, is it not, that the physical form must be generated, created by the essence. Or at any rate controlled, and this too is not outside the boundaries of what is known to us, or how could we heal? What else after all is shape-shifting? We may indeed posit that we choose mortality.” Sarat realized why she was in lecture mode. “That Kaminua and Asyrion reached a place where they were capable of making that choice is indeed not wholly outside the bounds of possibility. However, we have been told stories – fed a lot of hooey, as you prefer, that – deliberately? – counter that possibility. She died of that which Fidub could not heal and he grew old and grief-stricken.”
“I love you,” said Sarat.
She smiled benignly.
“But it is not only to say that, not only to say that the physical form must be generated by the essence. It is to make profoundly – “ Again she grinned. “ – profoundly rather than mildly dubious statements about the nature of life and death and time. And will. What precisely is it to say? It is to say that the essence after they died was capable of choosing to generate a permanent non-changing physicality and health. Or is it? Is it perhaps to say that at some moment, say at the middle age they appear to chosen for eternity, they decided to exchange normal life for that eternity. I know little of the Denzines. I may be about to learn a whole lot more. Principally I refer you to the load of hooey. If Kaminua had knowledge that they would one day be together for ever, why was he grief-stricken. I would ask also how Asyrion at middle age could have made that choice when history – for what history is worth – records that she died young, whether or not of ‘that Fidub could not heal’. A further possibility is of course that they were not Kaminua and Asyrion but Denzine shape-shifters.”
“Baz tried,” said Sarat. “Baz and Hass. The conclusion was that if they were not real then the falsity was impenetrable.”
“They’d have to be real good,” said Dill. “Lastly, and lastly is perhaps most interesting of all, because it applies to the Jumesit, the reality of the phenomena of which is least in doubt, it seems to me the walls of time do not fade when our ancestors were doing anything interesting. No window is opened onto Narulis’ councils of state. We do not see Susheela fleeing with her son. I accept of course that had they resolved the matter of Kadun we should not be having this conversation but one would have thought they had either perception or experience to impart. I do not know what to make of that.”
“It may be,” said Sarat. “No. Yes! Possibly. Can we possibly be shaping that trip? This is my experience and others may counter it. We’ve become so used to the – phenomenon we don’t instantly report Susheela brushing her hair! I have noted that Narulis does not drop in when I’m working. Oh of course! It’s only when we switch off our conscious minds that we can see – “
“Oh of course! It’s there all the time. All times are now.”
“That is a little dizzying,”: said Sarat.
“A little. The other thing is that it would seem that of all the emperors only Narulis and Jaizal actually lived in the place.”
“I can’t think why. Fortuitous.”
“Fortuitous also that you and Narulis should be taking a break at the same time. Nor do we apparently perceive the day to day work of the palace, the staff, the cooks, the soldiers, the servants.”
“Tell you in a minute,” said Sarat. “If we go back to the original – proposition – that their existence is their own time is tenable, then - they are trying to break through to our time. Is that conceivable? To the time when something happens which might not have happened yet which happens to be our time? We know party-tricks take a considerable amount of energy and that particular trick – maybe they never get down to the nitty-gritty because they can’t make the final leap.”
“I like it. I am not sure I believe a word of it, but I like it! And depart because it hasn’t happened yet?”
“They were literate!” said Sarat with some irritation. “If I were just capable of passing through time to convey something to my successors, should I not write it down beforehand and hand it over?”
Dill pealed with laughter.
“Suppose two – phenomena are indeed the case. A frieze is not I trust making a frenzied effort to communicate with the future. People are.”
“The Bronzes are a bit more than a mere frieze. The Bronzes are a frieze which is alive. It’s a battle scene, warriors in chariots, chargers, and sometimes they laugh at us. If you wanted to communicate with another time, wouldn’t you make your push where the walls of time were known to be thin? There’s something else. In purely human terms. They may not know exactly what they’re doing any more than we do.”
“Or of course,” said Dill, “they might not want to be here at all but end up here because the walls of time etc.”
Sarat burst out laughing.
“At which point they exchange a few commonplaces to be polite and retire to their own time thinking, oh shit, failed again!”
Dill had wrinkled her brow.
“These Bronzes then parallel Kaminua and Asyrion? They are a moment frozen in time – presumably the battle never ends – and they do not accord with our physics? Have you assayed them?”
Sarat was still grinning.
“Risk a spear in the ribs…The Star tried to seduce me. I don’t think I told you that.”
“In novels concerning time-travel,” said Dill after a moment, “a big thing is generally made of not changing the past.”
“My point exactly!” said Sarat enthusiastically. He made wide eyes. “Suppose you got pregnant!”
“We must talk about that. She – accepted your argument?”
“She accept my polite decline!”
“I must confess I have never wholly been at one with that point about not changing the past. It always strikes me as somewhat deterministic – except of course in this case when it is crucial to my well-being! That is because if the past is co-existent, the past is also now and indeed do we not repeat that like some kind of mantra.
“As fixed points go,” said Sarat, “it’s a dodo.”
“That – I think – is my point. If we say they wish to communicate with a particular future, then equally that future – any particular future – our now – must be co-existent with their past. We can therefore drive ourselves mad thinking that possible futures also are co-existent: they arrive here but it is the wrong future! What is it you would like them to tell you?:”
“The chair. Where. When. How. You realize we have no proof she was ever here!”
“About that,” said Dill, “I have theories. The first emperor and the last (but one)! You know of course there are stories, Jaizal must have the throne!” Sarat nodded. “You know that when you arrived here there was a replica and not a modern one. And of course you know that Van-senok is implicated in a fashion we have yet to determine.”
But it is long over, thought Sarat. What - ?
“When each of us sat – hang on. I’m thinking about five things at once. The uppermost is probably Mel knows. I don’t mean – he’s an anthropologist. He must have studied earthpower academically. Venga’s trip included Behna laughing and saying, but it is long over! The subject of which was apparently I in wolverine mode on the chair. Damn! There’s something there.” He closed his eyes. “Space-rock. Is rock. Cantilip. Kai. What’s in a word? Earthpower in Harn has nothing to do with earthpower in Kadun. The – creed of earthpower in VS derives from that damn’ meteorite.”
“That you do not know formed the lake!”
“That’s the one. And Cantilip knows that. Or guesses. They came from Sug. There hasn’t been time. People haven’t been around for long enough. Nor do or did I believe Fidub could not heal. Have you seen me glowing lately? OK, let’s count the ifs. If and only if there was indeed a meteorite and if the throne was made of rock from it, then its fall pre-dated Narulis. If it was something we might identify as radioactive, bearing in mind its physics might be different, then, nonetheless, that – those – emissions – oh. What you just said. Something Cho wondered. Narulis was given a kitten and found it grew into a sabre-tooth the size of a house so he regretfully gave it away to a good home.”
“But look at her now, placid as a new-born kitten! Fidub was her home. Or if you prefer somewhere a few million light-years away.”
“Lending incredibly tenuous support to the meteorite at the bottom of the lake! Why C-R is a perfectly rational question to which no-one appears to have an answer. If you really wanted to hide her, you could go much deeper into the trees, not build her a little house. I’m trying to remember what I said in that casual way one says things apparently of purely academic interest! That we’d assumed peace reigned and Fidub made Narulis a present. Maybe chaos reigned and they made him a weapon.”
“The Singing Isles,” said Dill. “I am thinking something that blows my head off.”
They looked at each other.
“The culture of Fidub is earthpower?”
“Now,” said Sarat brightly, “if we just explain how a chair made of incarnate earthpower constitutes a weapon against the Cult we’ve cracked it.”
“But she must do,” said Dill. “She is independent of time.”
“How,” repeated Sarat. Dill was shaking with laughter. “What’s so funny?”
“I am thinking of Mitch and the Fidubi scam.”
“The Great Divide,” said Hass, “is for many reasons such an obvious name.”
“One never thinks it may be symbolic of a greater truth!”
“Did they have plumbing then?” asked Dill..
“Fidub had plumbing.”
“Ah, yes, Fidub,” said Sarat dreamily. “Theory – Notion – Notion 127 suggests the cataclysm threw Fidub up from the ocean-bed.”
“Meaning the centre of the crater may be somewhere in the middle of the ocean.”
“Which.”
“Which makes it a little hard,” said Dill, “for irtubi to have been scurrying around collecting pieces of space rock.”
“Shards,” said Hass and Sarat at virtually the same time.
“Bits broke off?” said Dill.
“Why shouldn’t they?” asked Sarat.
“If you’d come light-years through space-time, wouldn’t you be feeling fragile?”
“Earthpower. Rock-power! The power of this earth?”
“The problem with that being Harn.”
Dill giggled.
“This empire rocks! Suppose there is confusion, conflation, isn’t that a good word, of the two?”
“Suppose it was more like a shower,” said Sarat.
“I like it,” said Dill after a minute. “Not that I’m sure it fits or anything!”
“Done for dumping,” muttered Sarat.
Sarat’s desire to test a hypothesis by putting the chair in the field of flowers was restrained by not wanting anyone to see him do it.
“There will be a prize,” suggested Dill, “for the most convoluted but plausible story anyone can come up with to seal off the field.”
“Why not sort of tell the truth?” suggested Venga. “A radioactive meteorite! A very, very old one,” he added hastily. “Mass panic! One cannot be too careful.”
“He has led a sheltered life,” said Hass.
“Space rocks,” said Dill, “are like big bucks, man.”
“You mean there’s money in this?” asked Sarat. “I don’t see a connection.”
“When did you last monitor the meteorite market!”
“I really don’t see a connection! This is about concealment.”
“Unless it’s about possession,” said Hass. “If the Cult can use this whatever – and if it knows there are bits of it around – “
“It’s had 600 years to dig up Azt!”
“You remember the throne guards a deeper mystery.”
“How could we forget.”
“Suppose the five-headed monster is on our side! I mean, suppose it guards whatever. You know,” he added brightly, “like the werewolves.”
“What happens to the bad guys?” asked Hass.
“Frightened to death,” said Sarat. He paused. “What I think is we’re going to go on with this until we prove ourselves wrong. If we prove ourselves wrong, we’ll have a lot more information to go on. Does that make sense?”
“We might,” said Dill, “even have some facts!”
“Optimism is a wonderful thing.”
“Why,” asked Sarat, “are the supposed tombs of Kaminua and Asyrion in an underground cavern in Ciletij?”
“Been there, done that,” said Venga. “I didn’t mean – I meant, it wasn’t Ciletij when they – “
“Didn’t die,” finished Hass.
“What,” asked Sarat, “does Cantilip know about the crowns?”
Venga sighed.
“Meaning what do I know? Very little. What Van-senok knows…”
“Kai,” recalled Sarat, “is – satisfied whatever Cantilip and Mel are doing is to do with Zani.”
“Somewhat surprising, therefore,” said Hass.
“Indeed.”
“There is of course no absolute binding reason why Zani should not have – could not have – “
“If you were Cantilip – or indeed if you were Mel – might you not describe having discovered Zani roamed around Van-senok as a piece of different puzzle?”
“In your own time,” said Dill.
Sarat turned to her.
“I am truly sorry. “ He made it sound as though he was confessing to murder. Then he laughed. “You didn’t grow up in Zur. Give us a minute on egg-shells.”
“Come, hadin, come, come not alone, come hadin, come?” asked Dill
“There are of course two versions,” sighed Hass. “School-books and the other.”
“So is there a third?” asked Dill.
“Fourth, fifth, tenth? Zani became King of Dabida in the year the empire fell apart.”
Hass laughed suddenly
“But the shattering of the empire was not a single instant in time like dropping a cup from an upstairs window. In other words what chiefly reigned was chaos.”
“But always Fidub,” objected Venga.
“Ah, the great chroniclers,” said Sarat.
“Suppose,” said Venga, “we start from the proposition that the only cats who know what went down are those who were there. We might then wonder what they told the folks back in Maona-pri. If ‘there’ was Van-senok, of course.
“We know – we think we know – we might know – Zani didn’t want the Anile throne. Literally. Which suggests he sat on it. Where was it?:
“Or perhaps he didn’t want the crown?” suggested Venga half-jokingly.
“When someone reaches the top of the heap – unless he’s Anile Emperor, of course. In Dabida, in Fidub, to become Prime Minister – or King – one is informed of certain things. There are therefore persons who know these things already.”
“When these things are,” said Sarat.
“Exactly,” said Hass. “When these things are contingency plans in the event of invasion or natural disaster. When they are other kinds of information, it may be that the passage of time has mangled them in transmission, even if the original version were correct.”
“Volunteer requested,” murmured Sarat grinning. “I wondered how many days’ hard riding from the Great Gates to Van-senok and that at least we can determine.”
“My understanding,” said Dill, “is that as history measures these things, two weeks out of Zani’s life would not have appeared significant.”
“Before?” asked Hass. “This was before? We know – think we know – Jaizal was defeated and Zani withdrew to the south. Peculiar, certainly, and also very public. Zani therefore – agreed to defeating Jaizal and already knew he had no interest in the Anile throne. Jaizal’s grip on the empire was – I was going to say tenuous but I think in Var-sega’ in Van-senok non-existent. There was no empire, only a shell, an entity in people’s minds.”
“An agreement,” said Dill slowly, “an agreement with Var-sega’ with Van-senok that no attempt would be made to maintain the illusion.”
“The first plotter,” said Hass. “No wonder we’re so good at it.”
“Then of course there’s Carlin,” said Venga.
“Most certainly there is Carlin,” said Sarat, “Carlin which so admirably failed to notice being crossed by an army of invasion.”
“Where have I heard that before?” murmured Venga.
“Oh no, no, no, no,” said Sarat. “The deal was that he’d save them the trouble. Of having to fight for their independence.”
“Certainly,” said Hass, “as far as the Houses were concerned, the empire had outlived its purpose.”
“I shall dwell on that,” said Sarat. “When I’m having a bad day, it will lift my spirits.”
“Where have I heard that before?” murmured Venga. “Save them the trouble of having to actually do something.”
Doctors and nurses are of course, you will have digested, dull, leaden, dead things, walking corpses unable to tolerate anything wild, free, alive, outside their control, living in a fixed mental world determined either by the total ignorance of the slum, since the totality of anything that passes for their education is to have learned their trades, or the ravings of their religious teachers. Emotionally and intellectually void, as previously described, they require total control of their environment. Without this, like little hot-house plants in my lovely Kew, only able to flourish in a tiny temperature-range, they cannot survive. Reality has to be kept at bay and where possible destroyed.
If they were not, they would have enjoyed me, rather than tried to destroy me. Intellectual curiosity is wholly absent from these joke-graduates. They know what the world is like and have neither the desire nor the ability to question their delusions.
Thus they may jabber that though they themselves, being scientists (bwahaha) do not haw-haw themselves believe literally in Adam and Eve it’s a perfectly standard belief held by those who have not had a scientific education. It is not a perfectly standard belief and very few people hold it, its being fairly mad. If you want to believe in Adam and Eve, you go for it, but you do not demand others treat your view with awe and wonder and respect.
For the malign, this is of course an excellent instrument for destroying the free world. The beliefs of raving nutters are religion and religion is sacred. There can be right to deride or mock the sacred beliefs of others. With this priests and politicians fall over themselves to concur, but then most priests and politicians want to destroy the free world too, such indeed that sick animals enjoy the full protection of the law and to be rational, educated, civilized is to be a criminal. There is no other explain, other than money of course, for their prostration before the ravings of Islam.
For myself I am profoundly ‘phobic’ about any religion or other belief-system that is phobic about me. If the belief-system does not do intelligent, educated, rational, physically active women, if it does not do fact, reason, argument and walking 10 miles in the Highlands, if it believes you keep your fucking marf shut about evident drivel, then I am opposed to it
Among the myriad of facts they totally reject are of course the results of the many polls demonstrating the markedly non-religious views of the nation as a whole, outside the loony bin.
That to be a normal educated Englishwoman is no longer ‘acceptable’ in certain reaches of England, UCH being paramount among them, is certain, for which we need look no further afield than the Irish, incapable of digesting this is not a Catholic country and has not been one since 1688, that Catholicism is a minority religion, that priests have no political authority whatever.
The sole aim of the malignancies is through corrupt law to make the entire country a hot-house in which only a limited range of facts and opinions are permitted, I of course being a repository of a delicious range of the ‘forbidden’ from Voltaire to Paine to Jefferson to Marx to Aquarius to Black Sabbath, Led Zep and The Stones to feminism to classical culture and Greek goddesses to relativity.
In other words I am mostly normal: a country therefore in which only the religious nutter is truly happy, just like the Irish or Pakistani village back home. It ain’t gonna happen, but hey if they can knock off one particularly highly educated and intellectually confident Englishwoman, the not unMarxist grand-daughter of Labour public-servants on both sides, therefore particularly dangerous, it’s a small victory. Thus the insistence on my isolation. I am supposedly the freak, with views that are solely mine own, in a nest of actual freaks wholly divorced from the realities of the country around them. In the world of the freak, I am mad because I believe I may have views of my own and express them.
Thus we arrive at quantum physics, my games with space-time abhorrent since they do not concur with the cosmos as described in the various holy books and of course impinge on that most ‘holy of holies’, which are on no account to be challenged, views of what is life and what is death. My views don’t actually concur with anything. I am writing a novel. They are games. They do, however, concur considerably more with Einstein and current thinking than with the Bible or the Koran. From my book both god and goddess are absent and will not be making a late surprise appearance. It is entirely possible to have a heart-rending State funeral without God. I have written on. Love is all you need. If you want to believe God is Love, that’s cool, though I don’t. But that Love requires kneeling, prayer, supplication?
Again we arrive at the delectable spectacle of joke-graduates solemnly concurring that a passing knowledge of quantum physics is pernicious and should be kept under wraps.
Poetic justice, I think, if physicists were foremost in demanding the nutters of medicine, the uneducated and ineducable of medicine, the sick animals of medicine who will suppress anything to protect lunacy, were kicked out of all universities worthy of the name.
I don’t think they like the death and funeral of Maya at all.
Somewhere people were screaming and shouting but Sarat stood still as stone.
So cold. Hurts
Together they passed through the pain.
CLICK CLICK CLICK
I we grieve at parting.
NO and yes. You cannot follow.
Varulin was by his side.
“That’s it, lad. You hold on to her….” His voice trailed off. Oh fuck, no! “Get a fucking car here!”
The light was very strong now.
Leave? How can I leave you?
“You just hold her, sir,” said Varulin gently. “That’s it. No-one can hurt her now.”
I will follow.
NO and yes.
Baz zoomed up.
They cannot part us.
We travel now.
Everyone is screaming but Sarat stands still as stone. Baz understood.
NO.
Sarat tried to throw Baz out of his their mind.
Baz forced them apart.
CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK
“Fuck off!” said Baz. “Just fuck bloody off!”
“It’s like bloody rape!” shouted Varulin.
“Is she - ?”
“Dead,” said Baz. “Got it?”
Sarat came to with Maya’s lifeless body in his arms in sudden silence.
He looked at Baz almost in puzzlement.
“She’s not here any more.”
CLICK CLICK CLICK
They stood waiting for transport to bulldoze its way through the wreckage.
CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK. CLICK
We interrupt this broadcast.
MAYA DEAD
MAYA ASSASSINATED
MAYA MURDERED
SHE DIED IN HIS ARMS
Contingency Plan (M) not Contingency Plan (S). Essa and Cho would stay out of Kadun. He’ll need help. What else are sisters for?
Essa tried to get Sarat on his mobile. No reply.
“It has happened,” said Baya. Toss a coin. Pray. The music will stop. Which one will it be?
I have four children, she thought, I still have four children. Why do I not cry for shame?
Essa got Baz. Baz handed over the mobile.
“Sarat.”
“Oh dad.”
“Love,” said Essa, “love, love, love, love.”
“Love,” said Sarat.
“Oh my darling,” said Baya. “Love, love, love.”
Mel rode down the hill and into the Saa’nda Senta.
“It has happened,” he said.
Mel, we’re so sorry. Mel, all our love.
Mitch would have grown wings, but Karula said no. We offer our love, we offer ourselves but we do not go to Azt, Mitch, because we are not family. Mitch rang and Sarat said please come.
Scenes of devastation in Azt! Ten dead, including Her Imperial Majesty, Maya-ban-essa. Forty, fifty, sixty wounded.
Sarat stood up.
“You do not have to go back!” shouted Paw.
“What do you suggest? I sit here and scream?”
CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.
“I’m sorry, sir, you can’t go through there.”
“I am Maya’s father.”
“Sir! I am so sorry, so sorry. Sarat’s gone back to the – scene.”
Pietri closed his eyes.
“Where is Maya?”
Pietri sat talking quietly to his daughter.
Three beautiful young women ran up and threw themselves on Sarat. Oh Sarat, my poor darling! Love, love, love, love, love! He hugged them heedless of bemused spectators.
“My sisters,” said Sarat.
“Sarat, this is a terrible day for you, for all of us – “
“It was a pretty bad day for Maya.”
“Sure, sure, I did not mean – “
“Just shut it,” said Sarat. “Just for once, shut it.”
“Vultures,” said Zik.
“Try feeding on us,” said Shavli.
“I don’t think we’ll ever forgive you today,” said Ven, “How could you!”
“What d’ you think Pietri and Caluna felt like?” asked Zik.
“Maya’s mum and dad,” supplemented Ven.
Many people who have often thought that Sarat, his family and friends let the press off too easily too often have gained enormous satisfaction from this simple expression of family outrage…
We interrupt this broadcast.
His Imperial Majesty will speak from the scene of the blast. .
Sarat-ban-essa-eban-Narulis, Master of Kadun.
I think you’d better come, sir. Sarat’s going to speak.
Bal looked on in horror.
He is still….
Covered in her blood.
There is a time to mourn, a time to scream, a time to weep. All these things I owe my darling Maya. Most of all I owe the refusal of defeat. They have changed nothing. They have won nothing. Death does not sit on the Anile throne! To the offal responsible for today’s devastation, to the vermin in the City who back them, to the snivelling animals who cower before them, I say, you can create nothing, but only destroy. Today you leave a trail of wrecked and broken lives. That you call a victory. Thus you show the world your impotence. You cannot win. You will never win. This I pledge to Kadun. This I pledge to Maya.
Mitch caught at the airport by the meedjah raised his hand in salute.
“We do not do cowering.”
“You yourself have suffered terrible loss. How is Sarat feeling?”
It’s like robots, thought Karula. They are not bad people. They have no self-awareness.
Sarat arrived back and stared at the flowers carpeting the people-space,
“I thank you,” he said shakily. “On Maya’s behalf, on my own. Thank you.”
“Pietri,” said Faun. He pointed to the bedroom.
Pietri looked up.
“Everyone needs to go home.”
Sarat blinked back tears.
“They’ve brought you flowers, my love. A whole field of flowers.”
Pietri stood.
“We’ll leave you to sleep now.”
“I am so sorry,” said Sarat. “I am so sorry. I was with her. I was going with her. Baz forced us apart.” Pietri opened his arms. “She was hurting and I wanted to stop her hurting but we were already through the pain. I just wanted to stop her hurting. We didn’t see how we could part.”
“Oh my dear boy,” said Pietri.
“Somewhere – somewhere else people were shouting and screaming. It didn’t have anything to do with us. I hurt Baz,” said Sarat with horror. “Oh I don’t mean. He was trying to separate us.”
Pietri went to the door and asked for strong coffee.
“The funeral,” he said finally.
“The funeral,” said Sarat.
They talked for a long time. After a while, Faun was summoned.
No, Sarat, said Faun, knowing it was useless.
I pledge victory, I pledge courage to skulk in a covered car?
Sarat rang Marula and Saryulin . Of course, they said.
You can’t be buried twice, thought Faun. Perhaps all of it is impossible, a nightmare from which we wake when we are all dead.
Faun rang Cho.
“Or of course he simply doesn’t care.”
“I am aware of that interpretation,” said Cho.
“I’ve said my bit,” said Faun.
Pietri mailed Mel and told him the unphotographed trauma of Maya’s final moments.
Mel thought of him and Cantilip and hundreds of meaningless words on the subject of death.
I think, he mailed back, not of course know, but think, it wasn’t exactly – when she finally ‘crossed over’ he’d have been left behind. Was he going with her or keeping her here?
If they were communicating, he thought, she wasn’t ‘dead’, whatever that is. There must be a state beyond biological – leave it, Mel, leave it. Or you become obsessed by death. But Papa, he won’t leave us alone.
Baz looked up.
“Oh Baz.”
“Love, love, love,” said Baz.
“Love, love, love.”
“What does a man expect when he tries to come between a guy and his girl?”
“Was I keeping her here?”
“Sarat…In that situation – not that I know anything about ‘that situation’ – what I think is – for a moment I couldn’t tell which was you and which was Maya. I don’t think you can look at it like that. You both wanted to go in both directions.”
“Yes,” said Sarat. “And no. She – there’s a point,” She wanted to go, thought Baz. It’s not how to put it. You go back. What do I know? “When – will fades,” Sarat was saying.
“You just are,” said Baz, “in a field of flowers.”
The terror and the loss. I’ll come back with Pietri, be in Zur in the morning. Love, love, love, love, love.
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, typed back Mel.
Small, tubby and balding glared at the screen.
“We have VILE, we have PANTHER, we have the Hadin-Wadud. What does this mean?”
“Don’t follow you, sir.”
“Try harder. How many more damn’ deaths?”
“Protection. A line of steel.”
“You have entered a Cult-free Zone. And the very considerable resources of our three great nations were used to ensure it stayed that way. Meaning Kadun was a contaminant.”
“The border’s open now, sir.”
“Well done, that man. Meaning we have a vested interest in decontamination.”
“You cannot say Vasucula sat on the fence!”
“I surely can. I surely do. We tighten up any on the money-men?”
“We are a capitalist economy. There are no lengths to which we shall not go to foster global investment, maximum prosperity for all and the brutal murder of a beautiful young woman.”
“That’s what I just said. Get the bastards.”
“The Anile Emperor does not plead,” said the Ciletij Finance Minister.
“In his state,” said Varchulan darling, “he doesn’t have to.”
Sarat spoke to Mitch and Karula. Of course, said Mitch. Karula hid her disarray. Only in the safety of their bedroom did she say to her beloved: Mitch, I know this is trivial in the great scheme of things, but if I am not to make a total fool of myself and of Var-segan on what is probably the most solemn occasion of my entire life – you know I never got the hang of horses.
“Now we’re going to the House of Silence,” said Baz, “and we would really appreciate it if you didn’t come.”
“You here to make arrangements for the funeral, Sarat?”
“I despair,” said Mitch. “I am not talking to human beings. If I may quote Baz – “ Long pause. Mitch gave his sweetest smile. “Remove yourselves from Sarat’s path.”
“That’s it,” said Baz, oozing charm. “Go away.”
“The sensitivity of oysters,” said Mitch.
“Is that a compliment, Mitch?”
“Real fine rugs,” said Mitch.
Sarat made his way relatively unimpeded to the House of Silence.
“Bloody walking-streets,” muttered Varulin.
“If I bring the car round, we can get away after,” said Baz.
Sarat stood in front of the flame. Where you are, there am I. Where I go, you are with me. We shall win, my sweet lady, my love. They do not part us.
He lit a candle, then took out a pen and wrote on a card.
My darling Maya, I love you. Sarat xxxxxxxx.
“OK, let’s head for the hill.”
As they turned, they heard someone say, “Fetch a fortune at auction.”
Sarat span round.
“Who said that?”
If you remember, Mel once remarked that Sarat can emit the aura that causing him the slightest discontent will result in instant demise.
“I think you may have upset him,” drawled Mitch.
“You will not remove the card,” said Sarat.
Order? thought Varulin, that’s no order, that’s an irresistible physical force.
“Is that clear?” asked Sarat.
Sure, Sarat, sure. Just a joke, Sarat. Honest, Sarat, it was a joke. Mel’d break our necks!
“No, he wouldn’t,” said Sarat. “I’d have got there first.”
“There sure is some fine carving here,” said Mitch.
They made it to the car and zoomed off up to the hill.
“Shit, man,” said the idiot.
“He’s bound to be a little tense.”
“Is that what you call it! I just found out what it’s like to be on the wrong side of the Anile Emperor!”
“We’ll talk to the H-W,” said Mitch.
Sarat made his way to the Room
“I have brought this devastation.”
“My darling,” said Saski, “no.”
They hugged..
At length Sarat sat.
What are the expressions, thought Venga. You look like hell. You look like death warmed up.
“This is what we’re going to do,” said Sarat.
The state occasion, thought Mel, the pound of screaming flesh. Give them that.
“I can do that,” said Sarat. “I can do that with my heart torn in two. I cannot afterwards make polite conversation. I cannot leave Kadun to indulge my grief. It’s desertion.”
Hass got up and put his arm around Sarat.
“I think the guy needs to talk.”
“I have a right to claim a greater grief?” asked Sarat. “After all, I killed her.”
“Balls,” said Venga briskly.
“It is natural, darling,” said Saski, “that should be an emotion you experience, but really it is the most awful nonsense.”
Sarat shrugged: no Anile throne, no funeral.
“We have our own demons,” said Mel. “We were told to run for cover and we ran.” Tar looked up sharply. “If I do not say that in front of Sarat, I do not say it.”
Seani looked at the candle and the message.
“He wouldn’t have done that if it’s Zur.”
“How can they bury her in Zur! Bets are on Carlin.”
“Sorg all over again.”
“Won’t get near.”
“Poor bastards.”
“Plural?”
“Plural. We watched them grow up!”
“If I just close my eyes, they’re in the Saa’nda Senta.”
“Beneath these cold heartless exteriors, we all feel that.”
“How do we convince the Aniles!”
It is well known Pietri has his differences with Sarat. He must surely hold Sarat responsible for his daughter’s terrible death.
Zuri, used enough to all shades of broadcaster shooting mouth off in the Saa’nda Senta, turned on this one.
Shut it, arsehole!
Surely that is merely a truth too terrible to bear. Does not Zur hold Sarat responsible for the death of its princess?
Ask him. Come on, say, hi Pietri, everyone knows you blame Sarat.
Yeah, man! You go to the hill and fucking ask him!
Do we sound as if we blame Sarat?
Maya was a person. And a fucking brave one.
Bloody Ciletij still trying it on!
The Representative of Harn at Azt presents his condolences to His Imperial Majesty.
On behalf of the whole of Harn – Sarat’s face stopped him. Sarat….I have to say these things.
Come back to me when I’ve got Searc.
You have proof?
Not yet. Would you give a message to Bal?
Of course.
Tell him we’re turning the screws.
Oh dear. Must I?
Aztians talking about the funeral, live on Channel One
“I’m sure it’ll all be perfect. Can’t tell us, can they!”
Most people had quietly figured that the rate of attrition hadn’t been greater only because Sarat never ever issued a schedule.
“Thing we have to think about is what Maya would have wanted.”
“Everyone look after him, that’s what she’d’ve wanted.”
“Right!”
“Hope it’s not in Zur.”
“You gotta think of her mum and dad.”
“Maybe she’d have wanted to go home.”
“Support Sarat. Whatever he wants, it’s all right by us.”
“Right!”
No nay-sayers? they asked in the studio. Nobody asking to be lynched, no.
No, honey, said Mitch with the reserves of patience that made him such a good father. Not like that.
Varulin looking out of the window couldn’t quite keep his face straight.
My lord of Var-segan is instructing my lady of Var-segan in the finer points of horsemanship.
Ride? They’re going to ride?
The Cabinet of the Republic of Harn choked.
After, counselled Bal, I shall talk to the young man after the funeral.
Shouldn’t the message be passed around?
An excellent notion, said Bal.
“The whole of the people-space,” said Shav. “It has to become a meadow.”
“So much for designing for posterity.”
“Eternity,” said Shav. “Different.”
“Sis,” said Sarat.
“Bro?”
“Shav – “
She put a finger to his lips.
“My choice.”
“Or it is a fairground game,” continued Sarat remorseless. “Knock down the five dollies, another five take their place, until none is left.”
“There are a lot of us, aren’t there,” said Shav.
“Don’t joke.”
“Then laugh,” said Shavli. “People are saying – they’re edging round it, Sarat. They love each other, don’t they. That’s all that matters.”
“Kadun is shy,” said Sarat. “We saw it when we cleaned out the House of Silence. There was a sort of hum of love, but no-one actually said anything. Now I must say it.”
“Darling, there is a time for all things. You said it! How many times since arriving in Azt have you used the word ‘Cult’ in public?”
“Do you think I haven’t thought of that?”
“There were people dying of hunger. You set out to change everything. You have changed everything.”
“Oh yes,” said Sarat.
Bal pondered as he undressed.
Does this man like me? If I were Sarat, I should hate me, but I do not – perhaps that is did not – think Sarat exactly hates anyone. A question of the kind of guys they are. The other matter! Now I do not bow to the like or dislike of any man, be he prince or porter, but if I ask myself in all honesty if I do not value the good opinion of Sarat or Mel over that of Searc I have to answer myself that I should be a screaming lunatic if I did not. Kids to feed, road-repairpersons to pay. I really did not think they would fight dirty. What in hell am I going to do?
Why did I not think they would fight dirty?
“There’s this crazy rumour going round, he’s going to ride behind her coffin.”
“Oh Sarat. It’s too far.”
“Not from the House at Carlin.”
A trio of Zuri sat talking.
We could call it Maya’s song.
I think we ought to ask.
OK, there’ll be some won’t like it.
If Pietri don’t like it, we ditch it, all right. Absolute last thing we want to do is upset Alzani-Meta.
Get our necks broken.
The story was all over Zur.
They climbed the hill.
We don’t want to intrude. It’s about remembering Maya.
Pietri was found and faced three young men whose basic state appeared to be excruciating embarrassment.
Support Sarat. We think it’s what Maya would have wanted.
We’ve written a song.
Well, not written exactly.
Look, if you don’t like it, it’s in the bin.
I thank you…May I see it?
We’ve got it typed out.
Finally the words were prised out of them.
Pietri stared at the page, not sure whether to laugh or cry.
I see, he said. Maya would love it. I thank you. I do think you should mention it to Mel.
Thank you! Thank you!
“Supposing you’re a soprano,” said Shavli. Sarat looked a bit surprised but did his best. “You hit all the top notes. That’s fine. That’s cool. Your voice dominates the stage. But what you need to do is go higher, beyond the range of the human voice.”
“Now, Sarat, if you will just tell our viewers, and remember, there must be a hundred million tuned in worldwide, exactly what you think about death. Shall I tell them about the throne too?”
“Now you come to mention it…” said Shav.
Kadun did not go pear-shaped, said Mel. The Harni pretended not to understand. Bal said he had to protect his own in case Kadun went bottoms up.
We cannot consider Kadun stable until there is a democratically elected government in place.
Kadun cannot be stable until the Cult is annihilated. The Cult cannot be annihilated until the City stops feeding it.
It’s natural you should be feeling a little over-wrought at this time, Mel.
Sohenoil, retorted Mel, is feeling very over-wrought indeed. I am trying to help you guys. I am trying to explain the bottom is about to fall out of your world. Find a lifeboat!
You just want us to invest in AMI! No-one can do anything, Mel.
Mel gave up.
Watch this space.
Her Imperial Majesty will be buried the day after tomorrow in the presence of her family and friends. This will be followed by services simultaneously in Azt, Zur and Maona-pri to which the chief mourners will return. His Imperial Majesty will speak the requiem.
Most breath-taking statement I’ve seen in my life, even from Sarat. Where, Sarat, pretty please?
Ask The Girls. Soft touch, easily swayed.
I need to know what time, said Bal. OK, that’s 8 in the morning with us. People’ll be up all night watching the funeral. Guess we just got a new public holiday.
There will be services also in Gula-Toon, Wintawa and the City.
A smear campaign began in the City. The Sisterhood announced a candlelit vigil the night of the funeral. The idea quickly spread across the water. Maya’s death became a feminist issue.
Shavli addressed the cameras. .
“OK, people, you’re going to spend the night out and that is just incredibly sweet of you. I think it’s beautiful, in fact. If it’s actually going to be beautiful, we think you need a bit of help. Loos, hot drinks, shelters for people who get chilled or get sick, first aid in case of accidents. After all, this is the whole city we’re talking about.”
If it wasn’t before, it is now.
“Fortunately the family caterers are more than willing to provide anything you might need free of charge. After all, she was their Maya.”
It took Kadun a moment to realize she meant AMI.
“Above all, of course, I want to thank you for your flowers, for your cards, for your messages, for your outpouring of love which has lightened the load of these past few terrible days, for Sarat, for me, for all of us. We know that Maya did not die in vain because Azt loves her, Kadun loves her.
“I thank you.”
She blew Kadun a kiss.
Kadun blushed furiously and looked in the mirror to check it had combed its hair.
Getting in some practice in case she has to do the job. Even vultures shut out some thoughts as unbearable and unprintable, at any rate 48 hours before the funeral. Everybody who thought thought it. It is a measure of how far we have travelled that Anile Empress in her own right…Voices trailed off.
“We recorded Just Some Girls Talking over Lunch,” said Jaizi. “I really think you’d better see this.”
Yes, of course they killed her because she was Her Imperial Majesty, but why would that have mattered if she’d been some cipher?
It was the guys everyone focused on, right. I mean, this is Kadun!
We knew Karula had a track-record as a radical and Cantilip, well, Cantilip is Cantilip. Mess with earthpower and you die! The debt women in Kadun owe to Van-senok is just about immeasurable. They never surrendered. But we didn’t know anything about Maya. Obviously we didn’t think Sarat’d be paired with some dumb-bun, but she didn’t seem political.
For that matter, we didn’t think Alzani-Meta produced dumb-buns, but they did seem rather political! Maya-ban-essa, rest her soul, embodied just about everything every woman wants to be. [Laughter] OK, OK, including Sarat’s partner, or is that in bad taste! She was just totally her own person. She made her own decisions and she darned well died for them. I mean, excuse me, Maya, would you like to be Anile Empress. Thank you, no, Sarat, I have a nice safe life here in Zur.. She risked everything, gave up everything.
She was so damn’ brave – do you remember the blast at the consecration.?
[Pause]
Well, they all are.
There is no question in my mind – of course they killed her to hurt Sarat but basically they killed her because of what she was, a tough, free lady, symbol of our aspirations, focus of our hopes. Sarat must know that. I mean, I don’t think anyone actually - you kind of assumed he’d get support from Cho. No, no! Oh dear, I mean I’m sure Cho loves him to pieces. Sarat’s answer is Shavli, Zika and Ven and let me tell you we are rooting for those ladies! Women will not be put down by the bastards, not ever again, and that is Maya’s legacy.
Mitch tried to read Sarat’s expression and failed.
“It’s a funeral,” said Zik, “not another round in the sex war.”
“You’re not coming from where they’re coming from,” said Karula.
“That’s rather obvious,” said Zika.
“It’s a candlelit vigil,” said Shavli. “It’s not going to turn into a riot.”
“There is absolutely no-one in Azt who harbours or ever has harboured a single negative thought about Sarat or Maya.”
“That’s a different ball-park,” said Shav.
“How?” demanded Zika.
Sarat spoke at last.
“Let’s just say it’s a volatile situation.”
There were things Sarat thought about the Cult striking duringthe funeral shared with no-one but Cho and Faun. Contingency Plan (F) was to be carried out to the letter, whether he remained alive or not. I can tell you now that they didn’t strike during the funeral and even that no-one expected that they would. We didn’t rule out loose cannons.
“It is not in us,” said Zika drily, “to ask them to remember to be quiet and respectful in the presence of the Great Master.”
Mitch flexed his eyebrows.
“Here I go again,” decided Shavli
Shavli shook back her hair and settled into the settee to die for.
I’m not going to take up much of your time, but what I do have to say matters. Hearken, therefore.
Maya in the short time she was here came to mean a very great deal to a very many people, especially women. When we lose someone we love dearly, tempers run short. When that loss is as politically charged as is Maya’s death, there is the possibility tempers may be lost. On the day of the funeral, two things will be paramount to me, and I want them to be paramount throughout Kadun. One is Sarat’s well-being and the other is what Maya would have wanted. We are all of course acutely aware that many political questions remain to be fully resolved. They will be fully resolved. That is Sarat’s pledge and the pledge of all of us, his family. We are told that the whole of Kadun will be out on the streets to show its love – your love – for Maya. That is as it should be, a day of love, a day of remembrance, a day of peace. That is what Maya would have wanted. That is what Sarat wants. Politics can wait until the day after. Thank you again. Thank you for all your flowers. Thank you for all your love.
She blew Kadun another kiss.
That, folks, is the Anile heir.
Almost worth doing in Sarat – he clapped his hand over his mouth. I didn’t think.
Serious offence, that, son.
We’re vultures. We’re supposed to make tasteless jokes.
Eek, typed Mel. What brought that on?
Sarat mailed him the transcript
! I love it.
I shall love it in two days’ time.
Her Imperial Majesty will be buried at the shrine attached to the Summer Palace. Hey, but that’s private property! Can’t no-one visit – During opening-hours, said Zulagan with bitter fury. If you can’t reach her grave you can’t dig her up again, can you.
It’s like a pall has fallen on the whole of Azt as the sun sets and the vigil begins. There must be the whole city out on the streets. I do not think anything like this has been seen ever. Here and there in the crowds are braziers to warm them and stalls dispensing hot drinks, but mostly there is just the flicker of candles on worn faces, the distant mournful hoot of ships on the river, and the sound of people crying.
Duvi, Saryulin and Marula arrived at the Jumesit, sat with Sarat, Mitch, Karula and B and P watching the camera pan over Azt’s candles.
This is Azt, thought Duvi, and so this is impossible.
“We should get a little sleep,” said Saryulin at last, really meaning Sarat should.
Baz went with them to find their rooms.
Mitch suddenly remembered something, muttered excuse me, and sprinted after them.
He caught up with them, was suddenly at a loss for words.
“This place is a little weird,” he said lamely. Baz grinned unhelpfully. He remembered. “You have ghosts in Carlin.” Saryulin raised his eyebrows sky-high. “They say the walls of time are very thin here. Just don’t be surprised at anything.”
Marula shook with laughter.
“If we meet Narulis, I trust we shall know how to behave.”
“Sarat does,” said Baz.
“We could talk or read,” said Duvi after a moment. “Darling, I am agog.”
“The stories concerning the Jumesit,” said Marula, “are extraordinary.”
“Sarat – and indeed Maya – did, do not find it a little disturbing?”
“Sarat,” said Baz, then stopped, not wanting to enter into a dissertation. “Sarat is not – is no longer a fresh-faced youth wholly concerned with the exoteric.”
They digested that in silence and retired.
The singing began just before dawn, clearly a lament. Duvi stirred, thnking it first light, but the glow was coming from a far corner of the room. She touched Saryulin’s shoulder. He grunted, then sat up, he too thinking it was dawn. The girl wore a cloak of forest green. I know you, said Duvi, despite herself. The girl smiled. I am Brig. I mourn my lord. My lady, said Saryulin. You are welcome always at Carlin. She smiled again and faded. I am really rather shaken, observed Duvi after a moment.
Now dawn is breaking over Azt, and this most terrible of days begins. People who have fallen asleep in the arms of their loved ones are stirring, sleeping-bags are unzipped. The unsung heroes of this day will surely prove to be the charity workers making sure everyone gets something hot inside him. Or of course her. With such crowds calculation of numbers is practically impossible but most people think every female who can walk unaided is out here and some who can’t. An old lady in a wheelchair has been reported in the Colonnade!
Marula was almost entirely silent at breakfast, throughout their preparations. Cantilip got out of her what had happened later.
Finally we move to the Palace from where Her Imperial Majesty will begin her final journey. From behind the Palace appears – no, no, it’s not a car, it’s a carriage, a silver gun-carriage pulled by six silver horses – we have learned of course that the imperial family does not do black as the colour of mourning. Now the coffin has been placed on the carriagee and the Imperial Guard line up for the final salute. The carriage is preparing to draw away. From both sides of the Palace come the procession, all in silver, all on silver horses. His Imperial Majesty leads a riderless horse! This is grace, that is style. Would we expect any less? He is wearing a sword! Is that traditional? Behind him come Pietri and Caluna Talal – everyone is wearing a sword, the ladies and the gentlemen alike! I guess that’s one way of confronting the security issue! Vij and Sarshi Talal, Mel and Cantilip Talal, Hasiyata and Venga Talal. Behind them are my lord and lady of Var-segan and my lord and lady of Carlin. My lady of van-senok follows them. Behind Marula Za-fenan, oh my heaven, it’s PANTHER and the Hadin-Wadud, but not, I swear, as you have previously seen our gallant defenders. Did you know PANTHER had a dress uniform? Baz and Paw, of course, they must have known Maya as long as Sarat did! Little Jaizi. As we know, Jaizi was born in Tjulsit… .
Plotters Central, thought the less romantic.
A day of peace, sir? Challin collapsed. This is all-out war! Let me re-interpret Her Imperial Highness’ touching words. The only politics will be displayed by us.
Anyone start anything, thought Karci, and we cut your head off. I do like that thought.
Now the cortege is passing through the gates of the Palace into the streets of Azt. The crowds are absolutely silent except – something is happening in that crowd. People are starting to hold up placards: We love you. As the coffin passes, as Sarat passes, people are bowing, curtseying, saluting.
This crowd is not silent! It is like a susurration. As the procession passes, most especially of course as Sarat passes, they murmur. My lords, my ladies. Imperial Majesty. What is going on here is like a pact, an oath of allegiance, a vow. It’s like an electric current. It’s like Narulis riding by! Is that the point? Sure, tomorrow it’ll be Sarat, that’s crap. Mel, you’re talking garbage…
Now they’ve nearly reached the Summer Palace and joining them are six cars. Who do we think are in those six cars? Obviously Sarat’s mother and father….The cortege is passing through the gates of the Summer Palace and the gates swing shut behind…
A journo crept along the wall.
Interrupt this, said a squaddy cheerfully, and you die.
See that, added his corporal enthusiastically, that’s a safety-catch. Now, supposing I put it off.
All righty, all righty!
Why don’t you blokes get it?
Some reactions now from the crowd…
Nobody’d have minded, lad! I just shook me head. Nobody’d have minded if he’d drove.
Int never seen anything so flaming brave in me life.
In yer face, you – well, never mind.
Now the gates have opened to allow the cars to leave and slammed tight shut again. It looks like they’re heading straight for the airport…There is some precision timing going on here….No, no, some are clearly going into Azt…
Indeed Sarat who had felt an almost palpable relief when even his nearest and dearest and closest had gone and he didn’t have to speak to anyone and who was now kneeling by the grave reciting something (Mitch couldn’t catch the words) showed no particular sign of wishing to leave.
Mitch looked quickly at his watch.
All the time in the world.
Time passed.
Once more the Gates are opening and Sarat rides out. Following him – but this is a different set of riders. Mitch and Karula var-segan, Falita Em- I mean Falita San-yaega-baht, but I do not recognize – I am told the other lady and gentleman are Sorg’s mother and father and here too are PANTHER and the H-W. I am being handed an official statement. This is for everyone who has suffered grievous loss at the hands of the Cult. This is our answer. Oh my. I guess PANTHER is finding this a very long war. What PANTHER has suffered, the corruption of the throne, the flight back to Fidub…They’re going to ride all the way to the House of Silence, right?
Right.
Now they’re arriving at the House of Silence and you could hear a feather drop, never mind a pin. Really, you could not think so many people could be so still. Sarat is – they are all dismounting and removing their swords. They’re going in now…
Sarat walked through the House of Silence and took the stand. Mel took the stand in Zur, Cho in Maona-pri. Sarat will speak for us all.
Star turn. Culmination.
Dear people, I thank you. I shall not say in my worst dreams I never imagined but of course the reality. Some have called us heedless, foolhardy. We pay then for our folly? We do not skulk, cringe before Death the Great Master – “ The contempt in his voice was palpable. “And so some will say is this devastation we experience, is this ceremonial we conduct, not in obedience, obeisance to Death.” Oh Sarat, breathed Mitch. “We are human. To be human is to love. We grieve because we love, but love must conquer our grief, our fear. We feel the pain and pass through it into love. We are here today in love to love, to affirm the triumph of love. Love endures. We are here because we love Maya, not because we loved her, an ephemeral state, soon forgotten. This flame symbolizes that love. It is no feeble thing, readily extinguished. It is Light. It is power. It is all power. Death has no power over us. And so there is not an ending but a change, as every atom in the flame changes from moment to moment. Once more things are different but also they are the same. There is no faltering in our resolution, no dent in our love.
“‘They came, the skull-faces, but we laughed.’ This Narulis wrote in his Journal – “ When a very large number of people gasp, it makes a noise, however quietly they try to do it. Sarat continued. This I say to you today. They cannot destroy laughter. Today we feel far from it, I perhaps most of all, but all sorrow must pass.
I am here because I love Maya. My lady is my grace and my truth. My lady is my resolution and my culmination. To my lady I say, they cannot destroy our love.
I thank you all for being here. I thank you all, on Maya’s behalf, on my own, for your love.
He bowed and walked slowly out. A single flute played the Requiem.
It wasn’t quiet any more. Too many people crying.
After a moment, Saryulin, Duvi, Mitch, Karula and Marula followed him out. They got into the waiting cars. It was over.
As Sarat drives away through a silent Azt, we move to Zur, where Alzani-Meta leaves the House of Silence.
The first crashing chords hit the screens.
Sarat frowned.
All of us of course know Dabida’s unofficial anthem. They’ve changed the words! They’re calling it the ‘It’s what Maya would have wanted song’!
The words flashed on the screen. .
Does Sarat fail? Does Sarat quail? No, he does not, our brave Sarat! Come hadin, come.
A roar went up from the crowd in Azt as they took up the words.
Sarat seemed in shock.
“I don’t think I’m going to escape,” he said after a moment. .
“If we go down Sertal we can get to the Colonnade.”
“Mel hasn’t,” said Sarat.
“I thank you,” Mel was saying.
“Sir.”
“We just think we have never seen anything so fucking brave in our lives.”
Pietri smiled.
“I am relieved we can rely upon Zuri to be formal and sober on all occasions.”
“Sir. It’s the you looked death in the face and told him to go – to get stuffed day.”
Sarat has turned off. Yes, he’s heading for the Colonnade. Such an outpouring of affection, of, use the word , love must be a very real support to him – he’s stopped outside the Imperial, he’s getting out. The crowd has stopped in mid-chorus. They’re starting to sing the imperial anthem. I really don’t know about this, must it not to Sarat be a tragic reminder of that first jubilant night in Azt, but this is no heavy metal rendition but almost stately and every soldier present – let’s face it now our hearts are no longer in our mouths there are very many soldiers present and the security arrangements of this day – every soldier is rigidly at attention. But what is good, what is great, what too is a measure of how far Kadun has travelled, is every soldier of every army and Sarat is I think thanking them. Now he has turned to the crowd. He’s saluting them and I guess he’ll stay at the salute until they’ve finished singing…OK, they’ve finished. What now?
Sarat said once again: I thank you all for being here. I thank you all, on Maya’s behalf, on my own, for your love. He got back into the car.
Now I guess he’s really going home. If we cut now to Maona-pri…
On this most terrible of days the ‘It’s what Maya would have wanted song’ lifts up hearts the world over, and I would hope it is not presumptuous, Cho, to think yours is among them.
I thank Dabida, I thank Kadun.. At the start of such a day it is hard to think it may end on so firm an affirmation of love and hope. For that of course I thank Sarat who found the words to articulate that affirmation.”
“That was some – address.”
“I am so proud of him,” said Cho. “I am so proud of him it hurts.”
“People are saying – he just said everything.”
“Everything that matters,” said Cho.
“Every damn’ paper in Harn.”
Bal groaned.
“Every damn’ paper in the world.”
There is only one headline, Seani had said. Most of the world’s press agreed.
WE DO NOT DO COWERING. The Azt Star made it into a graphic, a red circle with the word ‘cowering’ in the middle and a red line through it.
They arrived at the Palace and vanished off the world’s radar.
“Now I collapse,” said Sarat. “My lords, my ladies, I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you.”
“Imperial Majesty! Think nothing of it.”
Pots of coffee were brought.
Sarat smiled.
“I think tea for my lady of Carlin.”
“Darling,” said Duvi, “so long as it’s hot and wet.”
At length Saryulin said: “You wish to talk? You wish to be alone?”
“At this moment,” said Sarat, “I may be beyond knowing.”
“I’ll stay,” said Mitch.
The rest wandered off to try to sleep.
“I have an idea,” muttered Mitch. He disappeared into the kitchen, emerged to raid the drinks cabinet and disappeared again to surface with two glasses of something pale green..
“Get this down you.”
Sarat examined the glass.
“Poison?”
“An old family recipe. We call it the reviver.”
Sarat downed the lot, then threw the glass across the room.
“Yeah,” said Mitch.
“I think maybe I just want to sit,” said Sarat. “Let the screaming pass through me.”
“Just yell if you need me,” said Mitch.
Some hours later Mitch surfaced.
“Food is good. You need to eat, Sarat.”
“I’ve been thinking,” said Sarat. “I really don’t know how to be without her. Have to start from scratch.”
They were 15, thought Mitch, damn and blast everything to hell, they were 15! It’s almost like he has had no life without her.
“I really don’t think it matters any more,” said Cho.
“Agreed,” said Faun. “There’s just one thing you need to know before you come.”
“Sarat?”
“Sarat, I hope, is managing to get some sleep. The crowds are still on the streets, Cho. Not so many, Sure, some people have gone home. They say they should see the day out, it’s not right to go home until midnight, a new day. We tried to look that one up. Can’t find anything. I think they’re making it up as they go along. “
“What could be nicer.”
“They got it so wrong.”
“A day behind bullet-proof glass.”
“A day behind bullet-proof glass could not have ended quite like this.”
“I really don’t want,” said Cho, “to – “ He smiled. “Intrude. I think this is strictly doting grandfather.”
Cho slunk into the back of the Imperial. .
They showed him into Sarat’s office. Shav looked up, looking tired.
“Just running the joint. Talk about a wing and a prayer! His Imperial Majesty is not receiving tonight. Everyone has just about grasped that but the world does not stop turning. . I rang Mitch. He says Sarat’s doing just fine working his way through it. The strain of today. I don’t think I could have done that.”
“I don’t think he could have done it without Mitch. Where’re Zik and Ven?”
“Selflessly I toil while my sisters sleep! No way. Zika was last seen in a really rather heavy-duty discussion about metaphysics. Really Sarat, if you will say these things,” she added innocently. “Ven said she was off to the canteen and hasn’t been seen since.”
“Tell her she’ll get fat.”
He slunk away again and headed for the Palace.
“I told him he had to eat. He said he didn’t know how to be without her.”
“Where is he?”
“Sitting.”
“Sitting where?”
“If you want to be literal,” said Mitch, “he’s sitting on the step leading from the sitting-room to the bedroom. I don’t think it matters where he’s sitting.” He sighed. “He’s – talking to people. Sometimes. This place!”
“My lord of Var-segan,” said Cho with mock severity, “your rationalism is inappropriate.”
Mitch sighed again.
“Duvi had a little chat to Brig.”
Cho laughed out loud and made his way to the sitting-room,
“Sarat? Narulis? How does one put the lights on?”
Sarat picked up the remote and became visible.
“My dear boy.”
“The show went on, my most intimate feelings on display to what, a hundred million worldwide. I have never in my life felt so alone.”
“That is not the word?” suggested Cho.
“That is not the word,” agreed Sarat gravely. “Naked. Flayed. I did it my way.”
“Where is the kitchen?” asked Cho.
Sarat got up slowly.
“Shall I feel better with a good strong cup of coffee inside me?”
“I shall,” said Cho.
“There is an exquisitely concealed sink in the corner. Like in The Room.” He fiddled with the remote again and sat on the settee while Cho put the kettle on. “The weight of being Anile Emperor.”
“Sarat…” If you put on a show that tears people’s hearts open, that flays the world. . “This also – devastates?”
“Where is the next beginning?”
“This you – contemplate?” Cho found the biscuit tin. “Eat!”
“I sit here in the dark,” said Sarat, “Not because I am devastated, although I am devastated, but because I do not yet know the start of the next continuum.”
“You know,” said Cho.
“Now I am Kadun,” said Sarat. “There can be no errors of judgement because the poor boy is bereft.”
“You do not do badly thus far. Coffee.”
“My lady,” continued Sarat, “was my privacy. Does that make sense? A part of me shielded from the world.”
The airwaves continued babbling into the night.
You could say it was a statement of – of emotional unity between Kadun and Dabida, and if that seems strange because it also seemed it was never any other way.
It is almost unbearably poignant because Sarat and Maya symbolized that unity but only by her death did it become fully real.
I wouldn’t disagree with that, but I’d say it’s also – also a change in perception of Sarat. Who today thought Sarat some Fidubi guy! He is Kadun, man!
It’s like all the mental barriers, the labels, just dissolved.
I think that’s the opposite of what I just said!
Maybe.
Of course no-one has doubted a deep-seated set of convictions underpinned the entire enterprise.
He’s killed Jaizal!
Dabida will not tolerate an emperor in Azt! It was another world!
I thnk it’ll take us a little time to truly get the hang of what has happened here today.
If we turn to one of the most famous choruses in the world, ‘Come hadin come, come not alone’, and just contemplate the symbolism of Kadun singing that to the rest of the continent, which is nearly as bad as Dabida singing it to the rest of the continent, don’t you think it astonishing that those words remained unchanged?
No-one ever censored Zuri.
You mean Zur is singing that demanding some action around here?
Wouldn’t you be?
I think it’s only – only when you really understand they don’t give that – he snapped his fingers – about dying – haven’t we asked, why weren’t these kids too scared to get out of bed in the morning?
Challin abruptly turned the radio off and continued his internal dialogue with Sarat. We are human, meaning we are animal. Our drive is to survive. We don’t like it at the time. What else are we, sir? I operate on a need to know basis. If I am to die for you, I need to know.
Sarat expressed a desire to sleep and stretched out on the settee. Cho covered him with a blanket and slipped away.
“The flowers keep coming,” said Mitch. “As people go home, they drop them off!”
Cho said: “Asyrion in a field with flowers.” Then: “He will be different.”
“He is different,” said Mitch.
Sarat woke just before dawn.
“I love you,” he said sleepy but cognisant. He got up and walked over to the window. The flowers were waist-high. He almost refound his sense of humour. How can I cope! He heard Maya giggle.
Time for the real world. Nothing realler, honey. We’re dead and we don’t even know it. Or you were, my love. and you knew it. You couldn’t convince us we were dead because we weren’t. What is being screamed at us is everything is whole. Oh how does it work? Not now, he told himself, but he went outside and waded into the flowers to read the cards.
CLICK CLICK CLICK
“Vultures,” said Jaizi affectionately.
Sarat looked up.
“Watch it,” he said. “She has a sword.”
There was a tremor of shock.
“You got a sword, Sarat?”
“I have a sword,” said Sarat.
He went inside and dressed, then made a few phone calls.
“We understood,” observed Challin, “nothing.”
“Zilch,” said Karci, “the Big O.”
“You look shaken.”
“Isn’t everyone?”
Challin smiled.
“Them flowers, said Varulin. “A word in your shell-like.” He grinned at As. “Sir. Think this is a ‘sir’ sort of conversation, you having been through it and all.” Asdinan knew Varulin had lost a daughter from meningitis. “Being also better educated, socially elevated and spiritually more advanced, as you are.”
“Me?” said As.. “Come on, I’m an infant!’
“Well, maybe I’m an embryo,” said Varulin. “Maybe I can’t take it from the folks who hear the wheels of the universe.”
“You want to talk about death?” hazarded As.
“Yes and no,” said Varulin. “I want – you could say I want to report to the CinC only I don’t think at this minute. There’s lots of things I want to say and I’m buggered if I know where to start. It’s like – advice for a start. Folk don’t want to be cool any more. They want to sort of pledge their swords. Then there’s the flowers. It’s love or hate now, and if it’s love blokes want to show it only we don’t know how. It’s like formality isn’t empty after all. People are talking about death,” he ended in a rush. “First time in my life, like it was – that’s not what I mean. Like it was natural, even when it ain’t. You know folks say you go to a field of flowers. Do you believe in an after-life?”
“I don’t know,” said Asdinan. “I don’t know what I believe. What I have heard, what I have learned. Even the – folks who hear the wheels, They – can’t make out all the words. If – if you ask me if I think Maya is in a field with flowers in some other – dimension, no, no, I don’t, I think I don’t. I think it’s a beautiful idea and she may be – in some form of beautfiul state. How d’you give yourself if not through obedience?”
“That’s it,” said Varulin. Sorg’s answer hung between them. “I think,” said Varulin, “we’re all ready to do that.”
“It will not come to that,” said Asdinan with some force.
But Varulin said: “Perhaps it should.”
As nodded.
“Was that the first mistake, not to force an open war?”
“I really don’t know,” said Varulin.
“Were they too nice?”
“Don’t reckon they’re going to be quite so nice now..”
“But that is not the answer.”
“Now it is. We all know what they said. Fresh start. Can’t prosecute everyone who’s compromised. There’s not many compromised now. No-one’s going to bleed if he hangs them.”
It’s not how they do things in Fidub, thought Asdinan. They don’t have the fucking Cult in Fidub.
“Kadun’s been going a long time,” continued Varulin. “Lots of stories.”
“Sure,” said As.
“When she died. I was there.”
“Yes,” said As.
“I been thinking about that a lot. I think he was with her, if you know what I mean. I can’t explain. I don’t know nothing. That man was not in this world.”
“I know they – join minds,” said As.
“So if one’s going – other’s going too.”
“Unless they’re forced apart,” said As with a sort of dawning horror.
“Baz,” said Varulin. “I have never ever seen him lose it like that.”
“I think perhaps,” said As, “the exact stresses of that particular moment may be something we’ll never know or should know.”
Varulin grinned suddenly.
“But we should be very very nice to him.”
“Very very nice,” said As.
And so finally we’re back to me, me who was in a meeting with bloody bankers when some slimy lackey entered and whispered the news. The lead rat stood and announced he regretted Maya-ban-essa had been assassinated. Perhaps the meeting should be adjourned? I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. I didn’t even ask casually if Sarat was OK.
Laters, I said, and ran.
They were already erecting screens in the Plaza to show the footage from Azt. I looked at Sarat with Maya in his arms and threw up.
Lot of people feel like that, love.
So there am I standing by a little heap of my own puke. Now was not the time for good citizenship I started to walk away but I didn’t really know where I was going. Among the wounded is Colonel Cioulis – NO! I tried to get Cioulis on his mobile. Off. He’s in hospital, I told myself firmly. I hailed a cab and tried to get Sarat on his mobile. Off. I tried Mel. Off. This is crazy I muttered. They must be taking calls from each other! I remembered I had the direct line to the Room cunningly disguised in my diary and hoped I could remember what it was cunningly disguised as. Found it! A man answered. I didn’t recognize his voice. I just heard, I said. Is Mel there, please? May I ask who wants him. I’m Kai, Sarat’s Economic Liaison Person in the City, which is where I am, half-mad with horror. I tried to get Sarat. Is he all right? My dear, a moment. Mel came on the line. Oh Mel. Mel, I am so sorry. Is Cioulis OK? He hadn’t known. He told me to get to the Rep Centre. Which one? My one! I redirected my cabby. There was already a line of people outside to sign a book of condolences. My stomach lurched again. I fell inside. All was muted.
Twenty minutes later Cioulis rang me, very apologetic, scratches. He hadn’t wanted to call me and break the news knowing where I was. We had a darling I understand I love you conversation but that didn’t stop Maya being dead.
His Imperial Majesty, Sarat-ban-essa, Master of Kadun, will speak from the scene of the blast.
At the airport I mailed one line to Bal: Now will you do something!
To my surprise I got an almost instant answer: Or it will be done for me?
Bal…I am but a humble cog who knows – I stopped typing suddenly and nosedived into what I knew, which came out as something like, everything about the Cult and less than everything about banking but why I’m here, why I’m part of the madness,d ‘you see, is it’s not about banking, you have to see that, Bal. You won’t damned see it. You have to take your head out of the sand, Bal, I screamed at him, mentally. OK, I was stressed. I put my fingers back on the keyboard. I do not make the fiscal policy of the Anile Empire! Not that that matters, because this is not a question of the fiscal policy of the Anile Empire. So why did I bring it up in the first place. Don’t ask me what Sohenoil will do. Don’t ask me what AMI will do. I don’t know. But he hadn’t asked me. I deleted the whole lot and typed: My guess is…yes. With knobs on.
I am in shock.
Kyse walked up to me. He looked as dreadful as I did. We hugged. He’d been giving a lecture. Something in the back of my mind buzzed, at least that was normal, what they do is wreck normal, what I’d been doing was abnormal, what the hell was I doing ‘liaising’ with those fucks - ?
“Once upon a time,” I said, “there was a little Harni radical who found herself in a seminar with Mel Talal.” I shook myself. “Don’t know why I said that. Thrown, Kyse, I feel – “
“As in kidded ourselves we were winning?”
“Oh Kyse.” I managed a grin. “This is not the time for musing on determinism. I ‘should have been’ giving a lecture, d’you see. But I couldn’t have been. Even if I’d never met Mel I could no more have kept out of the Matter of Kadun. I’m babbling.”
“You are very, very distressed.”
“I am very, very distressed. Because I ought to have been doing something that would make a difference.”
He frowned.
“1. That wouldn’t have prevented 2. Sarat asked you to do it.”
“Sarat thought I could – I might get a sniff of their back-up position. There has to be one. I’m being distressed again. From Bal, I mean, yeah, Searc’s really going to let the rat out of the bag to me. He thinks Bal knows the – the contingency plan.
He considered.
“Sheer arrogance?”
“What? Maybe.”
“When you’ve been going as long as the Cult. We are not talking about Maya.”
“I’m sorry!” It came out squeaky.”
He looked surprised.
“I didn’t mean….”
“Maybe I did! What – I don’t think either of us is quite sane, right now.”
“That’s only half of it.”
“I am so glad it was you I walked into. Bleeding from associated causes.”
Then our flight was called and any remaining shreds of sanity vanished. They were searching under your toenails, they were searching inside your mouths. OK, they weren’t searching under my toenails because I produced my PANTHER ID and switched on to auto-pilot. I vouched for Kyse who suddenly became Mel’s oldest friend but what the hell were they looking for? Auto-pilot told me that as PANTHER I should be supposed to know and so not to ask. Since it was clearly my duty to return with all speed to Azt, we settled ourselves on a half-empty plane and got some bad but strong coffee inside us.
“This Great Enterprise of Ours,” said Kyse softly, “has been hurt somewhere we can’t even begin to articulate, holed below the water-line. Will you say it or shall I?”
“We don’t need to,” I said. His expression said oh for fuck’s sake, Kai. “At least it wasn’t Sarat.”
“Feminist hackles.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I? Terrible to be left widowed in charge of a country that isn’t even yours!”
“Are we all mad?”
“Yes. Is the simple answer. About those bankers of yours.”
“The simple answer is a load of high-explosive. Give me a mo, I’m trying to find my brain.” A shred of that vital organ waved frantically at me. “Bunch of radical kids. Not a hope, therefore. BUT. But 1. One is the Anle heir But 2. One has friends where the ult can never reach. But 3 Sohenoil. But 4. AMI. Quesch, therefore. What is it we have to do that they think we won’t do? Is it something besides high explosive? I might even suspect that at this point the world would forgive Sarat assassination but that is not what we’re about, man.
Shav turned from avid contemplation of a mollusc, not because she was a closet biologist but because she liked time on her own, and getting it could be hard; she was in Essa’s beach-hut and Dad working away at the other end was so peaceful it was like being alone, except maybe a bit better.
“I was remembering,”: she said, “when Turny died. I remember bits – the apple! We were babies. I don’t really – Sarat was very upset.”
Essa looked up.
“She was put down. He didn’t like that.”
“Killed.”
“I thought you were old enough to try to understand. You and Sarat. Zik wouldn’t be left out.”
“I think I understood about wearing out. I got lost after that. That didn’t matter. You gave us a sense – your sense - of – completeness, that death is part of life, not something – intrusive, alien. It was reasonable and right.”
“You think of a death neither reasonable nor right.”
“I think she was pregnant,” said Shavli.
“Shavli…” Essa put down his pad and walked over to her, feeling as though in slow motion.
“People say he froze,” Shav was continuing. “Seconds. No-one – holds it against him. He didn’t, did he. He went straight in. I think what he found stunned him.”
Essa put his arms round her shoulders.
“If he doesn’t want to tell anyone,” said Shavli, “or yet, anyway.”
“I do not see how the death of my beloved Turny - ?”
“I just thought,:” said Shav, “after that he really got the zoo bug, there were so many small furry deaths. I can hear everyone shouting it’s not the same! Of course it’s not the same.”
“We already had the hamster and the rats!”
“I can’t get rid of the feeling there was something strange. Of course there was something strange!”
“How do you know unless you try?” said Essa. “I said the vet could do no more.”
“That is so Sarat.”
Essa smiled.
“Start as you mean to go on. Move over…” He sat beside her. “The problem is she was dead. Therefore he connected with her mind at the moment of death or with another about to die.”
“What I know,” said Shav, “is how Sarat would react to anything small, furry and terrified.”
Essa laughed.
“You think he would see no difference.”
“I don’t think he’d see any difference at all.”
“I too think. He found himself where the living do not go. That is enough. The physician in the emergency room performing resuscitation does not relish interruption but Baz is not the fool who interrupts.”
“If he didn’t know, she couldn’t have been – viable. Ghastly word.”
“Shavli, you do not know. She?”
“She’s not here any more.”
“Let us stand back a little. The two people perhaps in all the world we think do not – what is the word, perhaps panic.”
Shav gave a small frown of concentration.
“Flip. Baz flipped. Sarat does not freeze. Baz does not flip! And remember, there must be a hundred million watching worldwide. They don’t even flip or freeze in private!”
“We are all human.”
Sarat lay by Shavli’s pool. His intent seemed even madder than it had in the Jumesit. That, he said to himself firmly, is why we have other people to run things past. Shav and Petrush emerged from the house in swimming-gear. The table was laden with fruit, iced juice and pretty pastel sorbets. Vaccinating sheep didn’t seem such a bad choice.
Petrush took a running dive and surfaced spluttering.
“You’ll need a cool head,” said Sarat.
“Cool is my name.”
He heaved himself out of the pool and helped himself to a bowl of sliced peach.
“What drags you away from the delights of Azt?”
“You fly,” said Sarat.
“We do.”
“Of course you only have the entire Kadun Air Fleet at your disposal”
“This would be so secret even I don’t know I’m doing it.”
“Ah-uh!”
“The reason I’m not entirely mad is that the empire used to have a northern coast. Now it doesn’t.”
“Ah-uh doubled in spades?”
“I could be difficult. I could go to court. I could waste ten years of my life on lawyers trying to prove the old maps are forgeries. I could stir up a hornet’s nest that’d reach the stratosphere. I don’t want to do that. I just want to know a couple of things.”
“You don’t want us to bomb anywhere, then.”
“I’ve read up a bit on stealth. Stealth and spy-planes. I think you can do it without being spotted. If you are spotted – that’s one of the things we’re going to talk about.”
“You’re talking about the no-fly zone?”
“Jaaba Sen,” said Shav. “Are we not all one people, the continent at last at peace?”
Petrush made to play a violin.
“There’s a spy-plane called a 580.”
“There sure is.”
“It’s the nature-lover in him,:” said Baz. “The last untouched wilderness. More violins.”
“Sarat, surely you are not cynical and disbelieving.”
“There are more angles than – something with an infinity of angles? Marula’s zest for a tree-hugging emperor might have led one to suppose that she would want me to ask for her trees back. There are more conspiracy theories about that place. Bar the total loon element – site of an ancient civilization – the consensus is not only that there are no humans there but that there never were any humans there. That’s why it’s protected as a world heritage site. Even the loons think the ancient civilization was on the coast.”
“Why does that make them loons?”
“They were aliens. Maybe the loons are aliens too. It’s not the principle of aliens. I just think there should be more of them, more centrally located. They set up house on about the most inhospitable bit of the planet then vanished?”
“Maybe the climate suited them then changed?”
Petrush was grinning evilly.
“Quite apart from that’s what you were kind of told at C-R.”
“Quite apart from that. I started with – I start with the Denzines are going to wreck the perception of any human instrument. I want to know what’s there not what that bastard Fugitry wants to show me. And I do want the crowns, number two, two in number, I mean, which is interesting in itself because the one thing every spotty teen knows about Narulis is Brig, Nautshka and Vrim. The crowns were made for a pair.”
“He does not speak with awe of Denzine Master Fugitry.”
“This is my territory?”
“There’s an air corridor,” said Petrush. “I think we might have some fun here. Make the switch in mid-ocean? Suppose we set up a dummy flight from the City to G-T. Somewhere in the water, it lands on a carrier and gets replaced by our bird. Our bird zooms respectably between the fences then vanishes off the radar. All hell breaks loose because they think it’s crashed. I’m working on it!”
“I knew you’d understand,” said Sarat.
“I’m an understanding kind of guy.”
“What usually happens if you’re found in a prohibited area? Shoot on sight?”
“That may depend. Most no-fly zones are known sensitive areas, military installations, government buildings. This one – it may be hard to justify shoot on sight when the crime is disturbing sleeping moose and the weather is shit. There are no fences along the side of this road. Folks can get lost. Shoot down some Ciletij tycoon in his private jet!”
“Some strange magnetic force played havoc with the instrumentation! Of course we do have to contend with the proposition that there is some strange magnetic force, which may be why it’s a no-fly zone.”
“I need a map,” said Shavli. “What occurs to me is there’s a research station on the ice. Supplies have to come in. People have to go out. They go round?”
“Surely only if they’re going to Vasucula.”
“It’s an international zone. Some of them must be going to Vasucula.”
“I should imagine,” continued Petrush, :”they put up sheep-dogs to guide the stray lamb back to the true path. Depending on what kind of lamb it is of course.”
“Bearing in mind,” said Baz, “it may be some tree-hugging Fidubi, closely associated with NoZone.”
“Ciletij is not your friend.”
“Parts of Ciletij are my friend. I might even think all Ciletij was my friend if I hadn’t had the affrontery to succeed. A powerful and prosperous Kadun, it is argued, only needs someone less nice than me in charge. It’s a kind of – it’s ingrained in some quarters. Why would Kadun want Ciletij. It’s cold, it’s windy, and it has a northern coast which even it can’t want.”
“Less nice and more acclimatized?”
“Kadun has minerals too.”
“Nonetheless and heretofore, here you are, taking a real intelligent interest in that which you swore I recall – “
“You see my problem! For 600 years they showed no sign whatever of wanting the empire back. Kadun had to modernize. All-Kadun was geopolitical convenience, as Karula put it
Fanfare of trumpets, Mitch and I, as rationalist as we are revolutionary, in equal parts loose cannons and saviours – that vital continuity with the past, you know.”
“That would be the past in which no-one on the whole continent wanted the empire back.”
“That past. The one in which being modern go-ahead young men we are thought safe: we shall have no interest in the past..”
“And still less in the more sequin-studded aspects of the other matter.”
“None whatever in those. I demand dancing bears.”
“That Ciletij does not relish a united Kadun is not ground-breaking. There had therefore to be something worse in the offing, which we know, and in particular, which we also know, that worse was centred on the other matter. OK, let us call it The Secret, capital T, capital S. The Cult could not be allowed to discover The Secret. With which it could do or perhaps has done still greater evil? That would tend to suggest the chair and admirable though she is I do not know that one can say one can do anything with her.”
“What you really want,” said Baz, “is him to tell you all the mad crap he’s found on the Grid.”
“We do?”
“The best part is some of it’s real,” said Sarat. “If we go inside I can project onto the wide screen."
“It’s the zig-zags,” said Baz. “Do your head in.”:
They sat round the TV screen looking at a jagged red line.
“The ancient enmity,” said Sarat dreamily, “ between Ciletij and Kadun might lead one to suppose the border – a broiling pit of magma might suffice. That is the border. It follows the course of the River Gradun, faithfully follows that course, every curve and loop. It stays ten nani south of the river at all points. Those who’ve been on the ground – guys who were in the resistance – say there is no physical border, not even a piece of rusted barbed wire.” “‘Welcome to Ciletij. Please do not disturb the wolverines. They have just as much right to peace and quiet as you do.’ The trees, the trees!”
“Nor is there any no-man’s land or no-fly zone. What do you notice about this border? Suppose I took off from VS to fly directly to Azt?”
“I cannot quite believe,” said Shavli, “Ciletij are happy for KAF to wander in and out of their air-space.
“When was this border delineated? Oh, of course!”
Sarat grinned happily.
“It was not negotiated with the entity Kadun because no such entity existed. North of Azt it follows the general rules laid down for borders, sentries, guys who want to look at your papers. At Var-sega’ it’s a couple of rows of electric fence and two crossing-points.”
“Marula is in this up to her neck? Conclusion: VS handed over a whole chunk of itself in return for what?”
“We may assume then at the semi-hysteria surrounding Kadun territorial ambition is a complex feint. One may appreciate – though then again one may not – they wanted C-R in Ciletij but it would seem to me the creative cartographer – when the name of a country and of its people is the same, a certain ambiguity is achieved. Rape of Ciletij, the nation, which did not in fact exist. We could posit the – price of the Rape was Van-senok, but that in itself seems a little odd. Unless of course, etc, etc. Superficially odd.”
“How about this for a story?” said Shav. “We’re testing a new ground-penetrating radar. We want to see if it works through trees. Not too much untouched primeval forest on Fidub. Contacts in KAF – pause for violins, hands across the sea – offered Van-senok. Unfortunately, some strange magnetic force played havoc with the instruments and we became hopelessly lost. What happens if we play that in real time?”
“How about that’s Act Two?” said Petrush. “We could get good pics, go back for a second look and then get caught?”
“You don’t seem to think FAF will have a problem with this,” said Sarat.
“PANTHER operation. PANTHER wants a look at Ciletij, we do what PANTHER tells us.”
“He said with wide-eyed innocence. I haven’t talked to Cho and don’t intend to. The fewer people who know I’m not going to invade Ciletij the better.”
“If Ciletij poses a threat to the security of the continent…”
“This space-rock of yours,” said Shav. “Ours! I’m wondering – suppose it’s incorporated into terrestrial weapons?”
“There’d be explosion, death, injury in the area of impact. A normal bomb. But just maybe the – fall-out! Play havoc with the perception of those within an unknown radius?”
“Isn’t that an interesting thought?” said Sarat.
“Baseline is people on the ground are not harmless charcoal-burners. They see us, they call. If they see us. They’re cautious guys. They call even if they’re not sure what they’ve seen. Missiles rising out of the lake. That is one short call.”
“I have an overwhelming desire to see,” said Shav. “I quell it.”
“Exactly,” said Sarat. “Land or air I do not see this as a Sarat-friendly zone.”
“If we came in from VS, it’s minutes. On the other hand, they will not expect anyone coming in from the north. OK, lemme set the scene. A Fleet ice-breaker with spy-birds on board is there. And what are they doing? They are surveying the ice. Probably there already. If they aren’t, we are.”
“Inspirational,” muttered Sarat.
“Range?” asked Shav.
“I thank you. These birds go for ever.”
“I hadn’t realized that,” said Sarat
“I think not the 580. They make a bee-line south-east. How much artificial intelligence is required? What is the role of and who are the human controllers?”
Baz looked up from a book not as gripping as the surrounding narrative.
“We are. Cats hate the cold.”
“Tick that one off,” said Petrush. “The rest is detail. As to where we land, having done the deed, my choice is a Fidubi carrier in mid-ocean. Whatever happens, whatever is said, this is nothing to do with Kadun.”
Sarat grinned.
“Just figure out how I give you a medal.”
“We can talk about that when we’ve got the goods. All we need now is not to smash into a tree.”
“All of it is apparently untouched wilderness, from the ice right down to VS. Terrapin shows just that.” Terrapin was a Fidubi satellite. Terra pin, geddit. Some people have a strange sense of humour. The other one was called Turtle. “It has quite a reputation. Sightings of almost every monster the human mind has conceived – I noted with regret none had five heads – giant reptiles, lush vegetation, the ancient civilization. A particularly popular theory is genetic mutants. The bears are the size of houses, the wolves the size of rooms. Some tone this down to merely larger than normal, consequent upon genetic isolation. I hear the next question hurtling to your lips. Terrapin shows blurred at C-R. Extremely poor quality images.“ He pursed his lips. “Heavy cloud cover, you know.”
“It’s live, real-time?”
“Shielded?” said Shav at the same time. “Artificial clouds? I know! It’s all the chemtrails from the air traffic.”
“It only passes over twice a day.”
“Every day,” said Petrush. “You assume of course.”
“I assume of course. Eagle-I – who the hell names these things? All the Ciletij commercial satellites only release data under licence. “
“All the geophysical data, GPR, that has to be interpreted. We have to learn to interpret this stuff?”
“The hands-on approach. Do you trust anyone, present company excepted?”
“That is an interesting question. Yes. ‘Our specialists’, no.”
“A select few who handle potentially highly sensitive data.”
“Let me tell you about Jaaba Sen. You might think it a tourist attraction. There will be signs not just of humanity but of tourism at the very least at the periphery. If people do not put more than a toe inside, still they may gaze in awe and wonder. There is a fairly substantial town called Cood and it has no such signs. Closer to the trees are other smaller towns, equally pristine. That there are actual wolves and bears is not in dispute. It may be they are the best deterrent. Ciletij mythology abounds with the terrors of the forest. Certainly there may be terrors in that forest for those who penetrate too deeply, even if they are only shape-shifters pretending to be terrors of the forest. It may also be that if one penetrates too deeply, one is politely halted and turned back. Military installation. Or of course not turned back, merely turned into snow-drift.
“That figures in the more complex conspiracy theories. The military are breeding mutants. Some escaped.”
“There remain zoologists, ecologists – and archaeologists. Two hundred years ago an explorer called Stoobard Solden ventured too far and returned broken and babbling. That of which he babbled was perhaps more interesting. He said the dead walked the forest, his every move was watched. He saw the shades among the trees, but no shadow was cast on the ground. Scientific psychology decided this was a variant of snow blindness, visual hallucination caused by an excess of light. Unscientific psychology talked about it a great deal but showed no particular inclination for field work, at least until high summer. They returned - thoughtful, convinced indeed they had been watched and what watched them were the spirits of trees. I fear they were not tree-huggers. It had not occurred to them there could be harm in cutting down a young tree and building a friendly fire. It would seem the trees thought differently. It would seem the trees moved in the night and blocked their path. The only opening was back whence they came and they took it. That of course stinks of Van-senok.
“The Academy of Geobiology took to the skies and mapped the region, thus providing photographs of some of the most spectacular scenery you never saw. An intrepid band of white-water freaks tried penetration by kayak and vanished, presumed drowned. More latterly the Institute of Zoology gained a permit – from whom is surprisingly or not as you prefer obscure – to conduct some form of census, head-count, of Ciletij’ indigenous wildlife and to map survival in so extreme an environment.. Nothing untoward was seen or they agreed not to let on. The moose thrives, you know. The extent to which the territory they covered was controlled may be implicit in the survey method or may just be one of the few ways to conduct such a survey in such terrain. They selected squares of each kind of habitat and tagged their inhabitants. The scientists had no problem with ‘spooky as hell’ and I quote but attributed it to the constant howling of wolves and cracking of trees under the weight of snow. They even admitted to a feeling of being watched but of course it was nonsense and indeed directing cameras at what wasn’t there confirmed its absence. They concluded that thinking a wolf-pack has you ear-marked as lunch wears you down. One of them said that when he stopped to adjust his pack and the rest of the expedition were just that bit further away than normal he felt as vulnerable a new-born moose separated from the herd! Never being able to be off your guard. It must have been like that for early humans. That was very much the overall conclusion, that it’s ‘like being at the beginning of the world, not just somewhere humans don’t go but where we’ve never been’. Let us say it is not a hospitable environment.
“Following that there was a flurry of interest in our wonderful wildlife but few people sincerely want to get eaten and visitors to Saaba Valley, the national park north of GT where you may see wolves under carefully controlled conditions, substantially increased. From the other side, numbers of large dangerous and potentially dangerous carnivores, includes lynx and wolverine, caused concern that in a bad winter they might venture down to human habitation and gobble small children, but it appears to be the perfect self-regulating eco-system. Perhaps interestingly, fell creatures that emerge from the trees and eat babies are not among the myths.
“Where there are no people, there is no archaeology. There are people in Ciletij. It does not cause hearts to race to think there were previously people in Ciletij. They know there were previously people in Ciletij. The question is the furthest northern extent of human habitation: there is no reason to think this prehistoric community would be any different from those disinterred in more accessible places. We know the world is slowly warming. The myth of the remains of an ancient civilization is dismissed totally. Of what would it have been built, blocks of ice? Thus the aliens…The overwhelming emphasis is actually on guilt-tripping Ciletij. Behold the original extent of the forest and dwell in shame on how much of it was felled to create the Ciletij we know and love today. Before you bite me, I know I might have said something of the kind! That was from the simplicity of my tree-loving heart, not a part of what perceive as a sustained campaign to make sure no-one gets close.”
“Suppose I went to this - what was it called? Cood. OK, there’s no tourism industry. So I’m a trail-blazer – Zeshanzesh, are there not - folks who never saw a reason to leave the Leolisle find the entire continent open before them!. I’m there with my back-pack and I want to go hiking. I’m not some extremes freak and I’m not stupid, I know if I get lost my chances of survival are not high. A little gentle exploring. First, I buy a map, right?”
“Fat lot of good it does you! We’re not completely backward,” said Baz. “We sent a cat to Nyon-Va, ten nani from the trees. It showed exactly what you’d expect. A lot of contour lines, some on top of each other, a lot of inverted green Vs, meaning trees, and a lot of water. No roads, no trails, no trains. By the way, there’s nowhere to stay. Against the odds, the natives are friendly and put you in their spare room when you politely conceal your disarray at having dropped off the edge of the world.”
“What was his story?” asked Shav.
“Her story. Fidubi geographer now working in Kadun, which she is. Had a few days off and wanted to see the real north. Touring. Which she was. It’s the southernmost of the – I was going to say settlements. I guess that’s what they are. I guess the ancestors of the good folks of Nyon-va go back to the beginning of people in Ciletij. They’re wired. They have bright lights and music and a weekly dance and all the news but they’re not expecting callers.” He sighed. “There’s just one slightly jarring note. There’s a family runs an international mail order biz in fur, fur hats, fur boots, fur jackets, fur gloves, fur gilets, hand-stitched.. Of course no-one goes into the forest. Of course it’s the perfect untouched self-regulating eco-system. I’d guess Nyon-va has been going into the forest since there were people. It’s cottage industry at base. It’s not going to decimate the fur-bearing populations.”
“No, Petrush,” said Shav.
“The sooner you resolve this matter of Kadun, the sooner I have freedom of movement back!”
“I shouldn’t bet on it,” said Sarat.
“VS,” said Shav. “Where does Mel fit in?”
“As I read it, everyone is to some extent caught up in someone else’s plot. What I think is that Mel knows everything Cantilip knows. What Cantilip knows is what Marula has chosen to tell her. I think it fair to assume Cantilip’s initiation into her heritage was abruptly curtailed by her choice of partner. Cantilip and Mel are running their own investigation. I read that as Cantilip taking an independent look at her heritage. I can relate to that.” He paused. “I said Marula hasn’t asked for her trees back: I have not been asked to pull any levers. It may be Mel has. It would be a great deal less painful on all sides for Mel to negotiate with the Denzines or Ciletij.”
“For a start he doesn’t want a bit of his country back. The past,” continued Shav, :”may be as embarrassing as the present if the present is built on a lie.”
“That’s the one. I don’t think this is about any of us in the here and now.”
“But can that be the case?” persisted Shav. “Do people not fight for their history? That is not – very recent history?”
“Owww!” said Sarat. “I don’t think I’m going to find VS worked for the Cult or assassinated Kaminua. Some comparable crime. What I do recognize is the extent to which I have been compromised. The charade at CR. It’s peculiar.”
“It was that, all right,” said Petrush.
“You’re sure it was a charade?” asked Shav.
“No! First I thought, why on earth draw my attention to the place at all. Then I thought once I’d sat on her I’d know she was odd, so it was kind of double bluff. Once I had ‘experienced the mystery of Casin-ruhn’ I should be drawn into the conspiracy to leave everything alone. Mel has no control over the Denzines. Cantilip has no control over her mother. Neither of course has any control over Ciletij – “
“Cantilip,” said Shav, “is independent of her mother in a way that could never have been foreseen.”
“That too. Cantilip is in a position to do things she could not have done until Marula was dead.”
“Looks to me,” said Petrush, “there are two ways of looking at this at base. One is that persons unknown know the full story and are keeping it from you. That is an unfriendly act, the next question being why. The other is that no-one knows the full story although he or she may think she/he does. Either way, you are being kept in the dark and fed shit.”
“It annoys me,” said Sarat. “I am Anile emperor, you know.”
Petrush grinned.
“A third – perspective is that everything worked to constrain you once you reached that august position. You are tied down, Sarat. The price of empire has been that you would not even think of interfering in the affairs of the rest of the continent.. How gross would that be! Why would you? Or how badly do they want you to keep your hands to yourself? I am not making insinuations against your fellow-plotters. I understand you are bonded in blood. But our illustrious elders? Airoch, Tar, Marula, Saryulin.”
Your best friend won’t tell you, thought Baz.
“Or again there is a double-bluff?” suggested Shav. “You have rewritten the continent’s history. It cannot occur to you it needs rewriting again.”
“Cho?” asked Sarat.
Shit, thought Baz.
Shav didn’t answer directly.
“They did not predicate – isn’t that a good word? Exactly who you are. The staying Sarat clause. I think if you fail to stay Sarat you think you have failed. True?”
“Very,”:said Sarat.
“Both of you,” said Petrush, “you and Shavli, for the first what 16 years of your lives you were Fidubi kids. Surely well-heeled ones, surely well-connected ones, but you grew up – “ He grinned suddenly. “ – And remember I am not some writer for Glitz fabricating your early life and struggles, I was there. With the – perspectives of ornerry folks. Most of it’s down to the Straits! A vital separation from Zur.”
“Most of it’s down to Mum and Dad,” said Sarat.
“His Imperial Majesty’s mother is a Fidubi housewife,” said Shavli. She giggled. “Like me.”
“You use the last of the lavatory paper,” said Petrush, “you go down to Zerq’s and get more!”
“You remember that!”
“I remember. That was one sick rabbit. Sure Baya had cubs to help, but they did not undertake to run the joint. That is the difference.”
Shavli grasped the nettle
“Cho – loves you to pieces. They have sweated blood. We all have. Cho would do anything for you. Bomb Ciletij! Possibly. That doesn’t make him incapable of – as you said, being part of other things. Cho could not do anything that would hurt you. Sarat, does it occur to you they don’t want you to know because it would hurt you.”
“No.” said Sarat, then, “What can hurt me more than I have hurt myself? That is – responsibility for being alive,” said Sarat. “We live with the consequences of our choices. Suppose all of it’s crap. Suppose Susheela didn’t flee to Fidub with her son! Would it matter?”
Shav considered.
“To you? To the working-people of Kadun? That’s why you are not safe!”
“Others,” observed Petrush, “may be more deeply - invested in history. To an extent – “ He sighed. “You have augmented. History – you stop any Fidubi in the street. When we were kids, it would not have been – relevant – not sure that’s the word, but you get my meaning, that Fidub was responsible for the empire. There was a nice – a safe? – gap between us and the past. We were now.”
“For the record, that’s not what I think. Or that the empire was always the shit-hole Ciletij said it was. There is absolutely no justification for that. What I do think revolves around Zani. I think that story is a deal more complicated than the official version. But it wouldn’t – diminish him. I don’t think I’m going to find he didn’t lead an army to the Great Gates and found Dabida.”
“Could Mel have an interest in that story!”
“History tells us Jaizal sent a mighty army to crush him and he emerged victorious. I’ve heard less plausible stories but not many. I do not doubt Zani’s courage, oratory, weaponry or numbers and I still think they would have been massacred if there hadn’t been something else, some display of power to convince irtubi he could defeat Jaizal. The field effect is apparently confined to north of the GD, to which I say oh yeah? Second, I – we, this one comes from Mel. We think Zani sat on the chair and that’s why he didn’t proclaim himself Anile emperor, simple, humble guy that he was. There are other questions keeping historians busy, whether eso or exo. PANTHER was unable to stop the rot and then suddenly proved capable of both defeating Jaizal and cleaning out Kadun. Zani marched across Carlin and Carlin failed to notice.
I think all of them, VS, Carlin, PANTHER, wanted the collapse of the empire. I think Zani was in league with them up to his neck and the deal was he’d defeat Jaizal so long as he did not become emperor and they could have their independence back. I think – some show of power and/or who are the Imperial Army! Senoki, Segani, Carlini.”
“Certain resonances,” said Shavli.
“The world was confounded when the Army of All-Kadun joined me. But of course it didn’t:” “I think there are two things. I do not on what I have heard see any likelihood of any government – or throne – falling. To the extent that this is bound up in the eso, it cannot make the six o’clock news and – dislocate the continent’s image of itself, that of the man or woman in the street. But I would say the relationship of the academic discipline of history to the other matter is necessarily at times somewhat jagged and to that extent the man or woman in the street may be living a lie.”
“That’s why Mel loves Kyse,” said Sarat.
“Kyse?”
“His rationalist if not revolutionary historian friend. He says the word is lying.”
“I should like to meet Kyse. I conclude this mystery of ours is eso. That may seem obvious given the centrality of a silver chair. I thought it worth wondering if riot and revolution might ensue!”
“The spill-over?” suggested Shav. “We started by talking about Ciletij missiles!”
“We try to keep them separate,” agreed Petrush.
“If we filter that lot,” asked Sarat, “do we come to something with which I could go public? The cause merely of terminal embarrassment, caught lying?”
“It’s a possibility. It says a lot for Mel.”
“Oh yes,” said Sarat, “it says a lot for Mel.”
“Apart from having sat on the chair and chatted to Kaminua, you are squeaky-clean.”
“And Maya,” said Sarat.
Baz looked up sharply..
“I was going to say I cannot believe anyone who knows would sink so low as to use that.”
“Who knows?” asked Petrush.
“Us,” said Baz, “you, family, Pietri and Caluna. Hass and Venga. Mel and Cantilip.”
“Marula.” said Shav.
“There would have seemed no harm?”
“Sheds a whole new light,” said Baz. “Mel may be trying to make up for being a bloody fool!”
“Eh, our Mel? Never!” said Paw sauntering in.
“Missed all the fun.”
“Tell me later. Cool off…”
He headed for the pool
“OK,” said Petrush. “We know how the Quadrant worked. Division of labour. Fidub handled space. Shall we list what we do know for a change? We know that the military use of nuclear power is banned world-wide. We know that all physical manifestations of military power are essentially a side-show for the masses because the only serious wars ever fought were fought with mind. We know that guys with dangerous minds are not immune to being shot which makes it a good idea to have handy something to shoot them with. We know that Ciletij historically has a horror of mind-power and prefers tanks and – again historically – has relied on the south for the fancy stuff, in particular Fidub. We know that PK can stop advancing tank but it takes as many guys as there are advancing tanks and on the whole it is simpler either to blow up the tank or for those guys to work together on the terrain. We know that the Ciletij sense of vulnerability is increased a thousand-fold by your little venture. We know that there are other forms of modernization besides main drainage and all the guys who worked with Ciletij in Kadun know that thinking Ciletij know that too – “
“Concur,” said Sarat.
“We know that elements in both Ciletij and Kadun forced into a shotgun marriage do not wholly warm to sharing their little secrets with each other – “
“Concur,” sighed Sarat.
“We know that the Cult is active, particularly – curiously perhaps – in Ciletij, calling for continent-wide disarmament because why retain the military when clearly there is and never will be anyone to fight. I am thinking hard about your space-rock. I do not much like my thoughts. Suppose it were incorporated in a normal common-or-garden bomb. Its power has survived travel through aeons of space and we may – predicate it would therefore survive the heat of explosion. That explosion may be expected to cause the normal level of damage of a blast but I am wondering about – fall-out. Might the fall-out not cause havoc with the perception of those in the surrounding area? I am of course wondering also how that might mesh with the CR charade.”
“Mmm! Radiation as some kind of cutesy clue. The idiot boy has been told…That occurs to me too. This stuff is powerful and it has a half-life? We know it’s powerful. It may be a faint feeble remnant of its former self? It’s terribly tempting to think of the Rape as this power on the loose among people who had absolutely no way of handling it, but there wouldn’t seem to be any way the dates fit.”
“We’re good boys and girls and everyone knows we’re good boys and girls, but your heirs and successors getting hold of a power - ?”
“Maybe that’s what happened before?” said Shav.
“I am not prepared,” said Sarat, “to be put off by a theory. Possibly a conclusion I am duly supposed to reach. Nor am I an idiot. I shan’t leave matches around for the kids to play with.”
“Sarat and Hass played with alphabet-bricks on the floor of the Room,” said Shav in a good imitation of Mel. “No-one is going to think him a second Jaizal.”
“They don’t want you to have that power now,” said Petrush. “It’s too dangerous. The mere fact that it exists becomes a threat.”
“It comes back to who knows what. They couldn’t say the chair was lost because VS knew damned well it wasn’t.”
“The stories around the chair are all good,” said Sarat.
“Maybe that’s the point of the nuclear metaphor. The power itself is neutral.”
“Jaizal must have the throne! Why, if she’s one of the good guys? I had her assayed. Young Scientist of the Year. Fidubi ores! She is indeed made of impure silver and the more detectable impurities are those of lodes formerly found in extremely small quantities on the Utmost Isle and now exhausted, as evidenced by artefacts in the Museum of Early History. I actually read the assay report – don’t start me on wavelengths and photons – but of course ‘trace elements’ rang no bells at the time. Or after for that matter. Did you know the average friendly homely meteorite is mostly iron? But if this space-rock contains something unknown, literally alien, it reacts - ? What is she, guys, what is her – potency, if that’s not a sexist word?”
Baz looked at Shav and Petrush and answered for them.
“Earthpower.”
“Does it not crumble mountains and shatter continents?”
“It might just,” said Petrush (Cool is my name), “be beginning to come together.”
“This is a pure flight of fancy,” said Sarat, “but suppose, just suppose, on some immeasurably distant planet, something sentient looks to us like rocks. Rocks can be hurled through space, we know that. Suppose some humdinger of a cosmic cataclysm - ?”
“Who noticed the sentience?” asked Shav.
“Who do you think!” sighed Baz.
“Cantilip? That rather puts her in the clear.”
Sarat said mildly, “You have to remember we have been through a remarkably wide range of experiences together.”
“I’m going to assume you have tried simple questions. What is your name? Where do you come from? What do your parents do?”
“It doesn’t work like that. Maybe you should sit. The nearest I can come is our – pre-occupations taken outside time until time itself dissolves.”
“She is your pre-occupation!”
“How can I put this?” said Sarat. “I haven’t sat on her since Maya died.”
“Sorry.”
“It shook us all more than we let on. What is being screamed at us is everything is whole. There is no difference between life and death. These are not things I want to hear right now.”
“Oh Sarat.”
“But she responded to you?”
“She responded to love.”
“Time to eat, I think,” said Petrush. “I fear that having been insufficiently forewarned, the range of seeds we have to offer is limited or indeed non-existent.”
“Lad were brought up proper,” said Shav, “Eats what he’s given.”
“News travels fast,” growled Sarat.
“If you want to really freak Kadun,” said Baz. “Anyone who noticed the diet before put it down to the hot weather.”
Sarat grinned.
“Meaning Mitch.”
“You have to understand,” said Baz, “food underpins the entire empire.”
“I think you need to go into that a bit more…”
“It’s our memoirs, at once riveting, unclassified and seminal. Tell you later.”
Later, with Sarat catching up on the news of old friends as Petrush told it, which wasn’t necessarily how the old friends saw it, Shav curled up with B and P.
“His way,” said Paw. :”Like everything else.”
“That’s how it seems to me.”
“It’s been too long, man!” Petrush was saying. “Friends, family, never mind the other crap.”
“Busy, busy, busy!”
“A week makes a difference?”
Sarat grinned.
“A week here, a week there, where will it end?”
“So when did you last have a vacation?”
“A real one? The honest answer is I didn’t.”
“Shav, she likes chilling out on her own. Me, if I have nothing to do I want to do it with her!”
How am I? thought Sarat. Am I really as OK as I seem? But nicely done and with distinct possibilities. It might be too much to think a member of his family actually understood.
“That’s the one. I’m not absolutely sure I can explain. Thinking of Maya is a state of mind, a state of being, not an – activity, except it’s not thinking of, it’s loving. The loving does not stop. It has its down side. The – emanation from - “ He gestured in what he hoped was the direction of the Sohenisle. “I need a month off to think of Maya, to talk about Maya. And what? I spend a month thinking and talking and the problem’s solved, she’s not dead any more?” I do not think Cho is handling this well, thought Petrush. Guilt? “There is a gap in any – flopping at the end of the day, lying by the pool. A space. I can’t play racquetball on my own. Sure, I could find someone. I don’t want to play racquetball with ‘someone’, I want to play it with Maya. We made up our own rules and – I don’t actually want to play racquetball at all, don’t care if I never play again. What I want is the – Sarat-Maya experience we found faffing about on the court.”
“If you are not finding it necessary to visit Fidub because Cho-Sarat relations have taken a downward turn, independent of all the crap we went through earlier, that is itself crap.”
“I know,” said Sarat.
“Good! I think we can offer you a week of constructive idleness. You have friends. They regard the lunatic with amused but deep affection.”
Sarat grinned.
“I know! Some of them were at the Imperial.”
“Of course, the hub of the known world. It is about this time of day that old friends and brothers decide to go out for a drink but that is perhaps a little complex. Nor do I think we should be seen going to the base to initiate our mission, interesting though that might be. What shall we do?”
Sarat stretched out his legs.
“Nothing sounds good. Seaweed. :Do you remember the ten minutes we thought we’d made botanical history?”
Petrush blinked then broke into a huge grin.
“It’s a whole new species, man!”
“Raw veggies,” said Shav.
Paw chortled.
“You know this diet. It’s the Sarat diet. It bears no relationship to any trend, fad or meticulously researched biochemistry – you find me a raw food freak who starts the day with a jug of strong coffee, cream and sugar. He’s perfectly happy to entertain sometimes. He’s perfectly happy to eat normal food if someone puts it in front of him. On the whole, he doesn’t.”
“Home from home.”
Baya had been fairly ruthless. Neither she nor anyone else was going to move a muscle to accommodate The Diet. If he wanted to purchase, prepare and subsequently peck his way through a tray of seeds when everyone else was having steak, that was fine. Later, Ven went vegan. The white house in the dunes is, well, in the dunes; they ate a lot of fish.
“On the whole, coffee is about the only hot thing that passes his lips. We see it in context. Cho doesn’t. What it was like. All of them, when they arrived in Azt, they didn’t have meals, except in the canteen if they were lucky. Grazed on the nearest shrub. If it was crap, they ate that. Very definite views on. When things began to settle, there was the pressure for – suitable. Who could forget crates! The editor of Mode cornered Maya and told her damn it. people want diamonds, not as though you haven’t got it. There was an element of having taken the candy away from the kids, glam enough when they were networking in the City. You have to understand – I’m sure you do. It was one thing to read reports, even hear first hand from CLIK. They insisted on seeing for themselves and they did. The total immersion poverty experience. I hadn’t seen conditions like that. I don’t suppose you have. They were outraged and they said so and what they said they meant. We all know Mitch’s granite slab. They saw it. The schools are crap, the hospitals are crap, the building you live in is crap, the bed you sleep in is crap, the blanket that covers you is crap, the clothes you wear are crap! There is no way out. It really puts you in the right frame of mind to organize the social event of the century! They did take the point about having it.but there was no way they were going to waste time on it. Then Bal announced he wanted to inspect the joint. Urban legend that Sarat grunted he’d have to eat in the canteen like everyone else. As all good readers of Glitz know, they used the museum, formerly the Summer Palace. Unfortunately by then it opened late to enable working people to visit. Fortunately it had the necessary chandeliers and wide aisles. You think the plot was precision planning?”
“That was the seed of the people space?” asked Shav.
“It was. There was no point in inviting them to dinner because they wouldn’t go. Part of that was the no-diary no-schedule stuff, but a lot of it actually wasn’t, rejection of a – socialite element. We are not repeat not here to be seen with all the ‘best people’. Anyway, Mitch said, we are the best people. Soul-brothers….They settled to having their dining-table as the social centre of Azt and that meant anyone could be invited, builders, bankers, barmaids and they served the sort of food anyone could be happy with and by the way stamped the imperial seal right through the heart of Azt.”
“After Maya it changed. Sarat still invited anyone he damn well pleased to dinner but it was much more one to one or two or three, much cosier and more private. Then he changed his diet. You cannot invite citizens of Azt to dine and offer them seeds. Apart from anything else if they’re poor it’s gross. But by then we did indeed have the people space and the Jumesit as the social centre of Azt was established.
“So what’s the point of all this if I can’t even eat what I want! That’s what we think’s going on. Basic decisions about how he is prepared to live his life, about what he has done to his life, and he’s not sharing. Another sixty years of this!”
“But he likes it.”
“Oh, he enjoys it all right. Not sure that’s the same thing. Don’t ask me to explain that! I think there’s a lot of – not sure I can explain this one, either. The cliché, the joke about love, so long as I’m with you we can live on rotten apples on a rubbish tip and I won’t notice. I think there was a lot of that in their relationship. He’s noticed his life and is assessing it.”
“Sarat is taking excellent care of Sarat,” said Paw. “If there were evidence of self-neglect, we should be concerned. There isn’t and we aren’t.”
“The word,” said Shav, “is the student life he never had.”
“He doesn’t go to bed, either. I take it you’ve heard.”
“I’ve heard. Maybe not from the horses’ mouth.”
“Neeeigh! You know there’s that one ginormous super-gigantic sofa. When he’s finished for the day he turns out the light and sleeps on it, worries about washing in the morning.”
“It’s very comfortable,” said Shav trying to keep a straight face. “I hope he cleans his teeth. I can see – a kind of a watershed, getting rid of your double bed. Apart from the obvious that it’s too empty.”
“Only 50 other rooms to choose from. If he were a student, I don’t think anyone’d turn a hair. Being a bereaved emperor makes them make it into 50 different kinds of grief syndrome. There’s a – ditching of inessentials because they don’t seem to matter and even don’t matter.”
“What would concern me is exactly that. As though he feels chased by time.”
“Facing the possibility of his own death? How can he not?”
“Yes,” said Shav. “But you’re happy.”
“We’re happy,” said Baz.
“Most young people have a period when they were single. I think Cho’s so worried because he’s never been on his own.”
“Cho should have more sense,” said Baz rather shortly.
Paw nodded.
“We all know where the buck stops,” said Shav. “If it goes pear-shaped, it won’t be Mel or Cho in the firing-line.”
“It’s more character-forming to live in a bedsit?”
Shav laughed.
“I’ll remember that! But Cho, do you really think living in a bedsit - ? What about Hass and Venga? Do they eat seeds?”
“We remember,” said Baz after a moment, “all of you when you were tots, babes. You had a pink velvet headband with silver sparkles. You loved it and wept buckets when it finally fell apart.” I did, thought Shav, but what - ?. “His first date with Maya, the first time they went out on their own, without the gang, he took her to a beach-party, all flutes and candles. You’d have thought it was frantically respectable if you didn’t notice the horizontal shapes in the dunes. They didn’t, not for some time I think, obviously we didn’t know exactly when.”
“Maya staying the night wasn’t a clue,” sighed Paw. He grinned. “Until her bed wasn’t slept in.”
“I do know about Sarat and Hass,” said Shav, thinking this was where Baz was going.
“Nobody knows about Sarat and Hass.”
“They’re not - ?”
“Oh no, no, no. I was there, Shav.”
Where? Oh.
“Oh Baz.”
“The way I feel about is it’s not just the most awful thing that’s ever happened to me, it’s the most awful thing that could ever happen to me. Now imagine how Sarat feels. He said it was like an axe-wound in his head. You have a cut, the edges come together, it slowly heals, but if you’re not a bit careful round it the edges spring apart and it bleeds like it did when it was new. Maybe for a shorter time. I’ve really thought about that one! It’s the best analogy I can think of. How are you feeling! I never thought about it till it was me doing the feeling, thought it was just the sort of dumb-arse question journos ask, like Karula said, how do you expect me to feel? It’s much more than that, or rather Sarat’s total antipathy to his nearest and dearest – I feel the same. There you are, you’re dealing with it. If that sounds crude, getting the edges of that wound together is major microsurgery but you’re hacking it. Then your dear grey-haired old grandfather asks how you’re feeling. That’s bad enough, but he wants you to talk about it. Pull the edges of the wound apart, really get in there and make it bleed. Sarat talks to Hass. When he wants to. I do too. Doesn’t matter if it’s 3 in the morning. Hass knew what he had to do and he did it. Just be there whenever Sarat needs him. He doesn’t get excited, he doesn’t gush.” He paused. “He doesn’t try to analyse. He – knows what it feels like. When I say he’s there I don’t exactly mean Azt. He pours love on it.”
“It sounds awful,” said Paw, without saying what sounds awful. “We all Cho would move heaven and earth for him.”
“I don’t know,” said Shav. “It’s not the same, is it. I can’t see Sarat appreciating Cho and Amida moving in, however selfless they were about it.”
“We didn’t see how it would work,” said Paw.
Baz said: “When I say he’s there I don’t mean literally, every minute! They seem to do exactly what they like. They wandered in, without much of a by your leave to the host. That’s what I mean about Sarat and Hass. Sarat understood, in his heart if not his brain. They chose a few rooms, they decorated them to taste, they got on with being Hass and Venga. Last seen at the Round-the-Islands Race.”
“That’s what I mean about rubbish tip,” said Paw “There’s an awful lot of that in Hass and Venga. They don’t care where they are.”
“After all…” muttered Baz. “Fluid. It’s the fluidity in Hass. He doesn’t go with the flow. He is the flow! Anyone else, there’d be sharp edges.”
“I’ve always had a lot of time for Hass,” said Shavli. “I didn’t know quite how much. Cho’s not an idiot. I guess he’d do anything to help but can’t unless Sarat talks to him.”
“Come on, you know it’s more than that. This bloody notion of his Sarat and Maya are still – connected somewhere.”
“Is it so bloody?” asked Shav. “I don’t mean it how Cho means it.”
“Maybe…I mean it how Cho means it. It’s 30-carat crap and Cho knows it. Hass would know instantly. I think I would too.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” said Shav. “He thinks Hass is too – ethereal.”
“Hass is about the most level-headed guy you could ever hope to have by your side in a crisis! The head of PANTHER does not go lame-brained just because he dotes on his grandson. Which I told him.”
“Never a dull moment,” said Paw.
“I’m ethereal,” said Shavli. “I think – I’m sure you do see but like the gang were shocked by total immersion poverty, we at Base Camp Fidub were a bit shattered by the ramifications of going to Kadun to fix the drains. I mean really Sarat, I know you want everyone in on the act, but the entire universe?”
Baz chortled.
“Dear Mum, we have had such adventures, today all of us sat on the Anile throne…”
“Sorg,” said Shavli. “This is to do with Falita and Sorg?”
“Could be,” said Paw.
“Maybe he’s not putting it very well,” went on Shav, “Cho, I mean. That does not seem likely. Not saying exactly what he means. Obviously Sarat isn’t experiencing a ghost. Maybe he thinks because of the – connection a – a door is open, the ghost can be inside Sarat’s head?”
“OK,” said Baz, “I don’t believe that and as I said Hass would know. So what you’re – your train of thought is neither of them – Sarat and Hass – want to shut the door and Cho is adamant – and if were true he’d be right – the door has to be shut. The axe-wound was me, Shavli. I think you need to understand that.” He looked at them both. Paw put his arm round him. “Calm, centred, honest…Bloody wound up, but not because of me, because of bloody Cho. I was there. I forced them apart. I am sure. Maya went – wherever, whatever. The first thing Sarat said was the second most awful, she’s not here any more. It was very, very final.”
“You’ve said that to Cho.”
“I have said that to Cho. Sarat says – he has not said to Cho – yet – feels like a damn research animal.”
“That’s awful.”
“The trouble is,” said Paw, “in the nicest possible way, that’s what we all are, the subjects of our own experiment.”
“There’s only one way of studying what happens when we die,” growled Baz. “Maybe two – take a finely judged overdose and be very close to the hospital.”
“I suppose we’re all thinking,” said Shav. “Cho’s getting on, etc. Whether it’s of more immediate interest.”
“We’ve thought,” said Paw.
“It hasn’t changed what I think,” said Baz. “If you ask me if we continue in any – recognizable form, I’d say no. But. That’s what you mean, I guess.”
“There is a question of volition.”
“Oh, there is. Again, if you ask me – she wanted to go. Whatever ‘she’ and ‘wanted’ mean in that context.”
“It must have been unbearable. But he – “
“How can you describe an instant which is past everything? I work on it. Yes, he tried to kick me out. He did not want to follow. Maybe I shouldn’t have….He – wanted to keep that instant – stay suspended out of life, out of death, out of time. He did not want to keep her here. He just didn’t want it to end. Does that make sense? It was down to him to end it. Or her. Or the – natural order of things.”
The most private part of a very private relationship and Baz wrecked it, thought Shavli. That I do not say. What Sarat and Baz have said to each other, that I do not ask.
“Shall we lighten up? Next thing, Sarat and Petrush come in and find us with tears pouring down our cheeks. They’ll have to ask how we’re feeling.”
“That would be appalling,” said Paw.
Baz looked at her thoughtfully a minute.
“We seem to have taken a nosedive from dietetics,” she said. “I’m thinking. A man has a solid relationship with someone who really understands him but then someone else comes along and the relationship is just as solid, just as meaningful, but the second person seems much more glam – “ They looked puzzled. “Then there’s a dislocation in the second relationship and the guy really needs to talk to – his first love, but he’s terribly embarrassed, maybe even a bit ashamed, but the first person wouldn’t mind, wouldn’t notice…”
“You’re talking about your dad, aren’t you.”
“He knows that! Sarat, I mean. Shavli – he does not want to talk! Except to Hass.”
“I was just thinking,” said Shav.
“Did they talk?” asked Petrush.
“Boy, did they talk! Did he talk?”
“Oh yes. Succinctly. Man, I take a month off to ‘talk about Maya’, the problem’s solved, right, she’s not dead any more. After that we talked plants. Cho is not handling this well.”
“You noticed! I got all of it.” Pause. “After Maya died, I talked to Dad.a bit. We decided – if there was something Sarat didn’t want to say, that was cool.”
“You would not seem to have shared with Cho.”
“I think Cho – I don’t know.”
“You have a clue what the something is?”
“Oh yes,” said Shav. “D’you remember when Turny was put down?”
Petrush tried to recall.
“I was away with Ma and Dad. That’s right! What I got was the upside, I guess. Sarat, you are becoming a biology bore! It was after that he was really hooked. Your Dad talked you through it. Wasn’t there something about an apple?”
“Even Zik remembers the apple. Dad thought Sarat and I were old enough to try to understand. Zik wouldn’t be left out. What we got was a sense of wholeness. He said you couldn’t have all the people who’d ever been born in Fidub still alive and all the dogs and all the mice and all the flies, and all the birds, and, and because there wouldn’t be any room for plants and if there weren’t any plants there wouldn’t be anything. I was totally lost on the detail, but I remember the feeling of how it all fitted and I do remember the apple! He took an apple and held it against Sarat’s arm. He said that everything you need to keep alive, air, juice, that apple, it has to be processed inside you. You can’t just hold it against your skin and it becomes part of you! We could see that had to be quite complicated and fascinating and brilliant and it’s why you have blood, to take the tiny bits of processed food and air all over your body to feed it and the heart is what sends the blood right through your body. But because it’s all so complicated over the years things start to go wrong, little things, and your body’s really good at putting them right, but eventually more things go wrong than right and when something major goes wrong, like with the heart, your body isn’t getting any food, any air, so it just stops, and that’s all it is. So of course Sarat protested. Dad reminded me. He explained that every bit of Turny was basically worn out, not working properly, beyond mending and it was kinder to put her to sleep. Sarat said how can you be sure unless you try.”
Petrush smiled gently.
“That’s my man!”
“Isn’t it just.”
“Your thinking is – “ I’m trying to put this in standard form. “They’re doing CPR in the emergency room and some moron – sorry, Baz – interrupts.”
Shav was taken aback.
“No, basically.”
“I would agree. If that had been the case, Baz not being a moron would not have interrupted! The point is surely that so far as we understand that word she was dead.”
“That’s exactly what Dad said. I said – she was,” said Shavli, slightly emphasizing the ‘she’.
“Who - ? Shavli!”
“I don’t even know if it’s possible. Nothing Baz said today went against it. He said it was like a suspension of time. Sarat didn’t want to keep her or follow her or any of the words of volition. He just wanted to keep that moment. He knew he couldn’t keep their baby alive. He wanted to be there when she died.”
“She?”
“She’s not there any more.”
“Before I burst into tears you have not one scrap of proof!”
“She died in his arms! People say froze, shock, or just love. He didn’t freeze. He plunged in. I think what he found stunned him. Dad follows that bit, but he thinks it’s something to do with what happens when you die, Sarat found himself somewhere – because, you see, she was dead.”
“So far as we understand that word.”
“It was all seconds.”
“There does not seem to be any question of Maya trying to heal herself.”
“There’s just something that doesn’t mesh. What I feel like – a bit - is a detective picking apart a suspect’s story. If he wants to tell us.”
“So Cho thinks the worst because it does not compute! Thank you, Cho. That will be all…I am remembering – when they really confused us. Yes, we could heal people. Yes, we could heal animals. Our aged pets should still be – if necessary put down. But not of course our aged humans. I am curious. How did your Dad hack that one?”
“Bluntly. He said no, we did not swan around healing. We could not and did not heal without preferably the participation but certainly the wish of the being being healed. When it was trivial, whether a cut paw or a cut finger, it really wasn’t an issue. Non-human animals have a sense of their lives which is different to that of humans. A human can want to go on living despite total physical disability. A non-human animal has a sense of having reached its end. To over-ride that is an evil, a violation. Yes, you can have your old dog bouncing around like a six-month old puppy, but it’s not actually your dog, it’s a creature of your will, because you do not want to lose it. That, hopefully when we are older, we shall have to confront in ourselves at any death. Shock is natural, a sense of loss is natural. Do we cry because we needed the dead person or do we cry because the dead person enjoyed being alive?”
“Why does that not surprise me? One appreciates these things of course, perhaps less bluntly. The core of PANTHER is is it not there be no over-riding of will, human or non-human. If we consider our Denzines friends are not capable of talking straight, that Fidub could not heal is that which does not wish to be healed?”
“Eeek,” said Shav. “At which point the story become ludicrous.”
“I want to think about that one, hard. What’s the rest of the goss? What was that about food?”
“Hilarious. He’s gone back to the Sarat diet, bearing in mind one cannot decently offer the starving poor raw grain.”
“I thought they weren’t starving any more!”
“A history of diet from rotten burgers to raw grain!” She filled him in.
“So people are finding his conduct a little odd?”
“I think Baz fingered that one clearly enough. If he were a student, no-one would notice. Since he’s Anile emperor, it has to be some kind of grief syndrome. He does talk. He talks to Hass.
Only to Hass. And Baz. That was made entirely clear. It’s part of my circumstantial evidence! Have you ever talked to a gay guy about fatherhood?”
“Now you come to mention it…So Cho thinks what you think and thinks Hass can’t truly understand. You think!”
“I think.”
“Was there an autopsy?”
“No-one told me about it.”
“Pretty little PANTHER minds could surely have established. If and only if, I should doubt Sarat is the only one to know. I can well see that if Cho sees himself as surrounded by a conspiracy of silence, that would make him just a little on edge. I would add that the progress made in Kadun is not such that Faun – for example – could stand up in court and delineate the nature of Maya’s injuries and the state of her body, shall we say, because he looked. One thing I grokked. Because of that accident of geography, Fidub is largely free from memories of Maya. Oh, not home. Specifically I guess his relationship with me.”
“Isn’t that interesting,” said Shavli.
“I told him straight down the line, if he is – not finding it necessary to visit because of this hiccup with Cho, that is crap.”
“Good one. “
“I may just have got him to spend a week with us chilling out. These are delicate negotiations but I think it a firm possibility!”
“That would be brilliant. Something else I remembered. When we were little. Often, often we went to stay with Cho. But Cho hardly ever came to stay with us. It suddenly struck me, Cho probably doesn’t really have much of an idea of what home was like. I like to think if I could just sort out Sarat and Dad, everything else might fall into place a bit better. Butt out, Shav!”
“He has a problem with your dad?” Frank disbelief.
“I think he thinks he does. When he was 17, he ran away with Cho.” She shared her analogy. “They are so alike. People see the superficial, mover and shaker, wheeler and dealer. Ah, how he takes after his grandpapa! It’s crap.”
“I have always known that. Believe me, I do not have Cho down as one excited about algae. I do not think you can call the moving and shaking superficial.”
“He’s Anile emperor,” said Shav, then stopped.
“Do continue,” said Petrush.
“B and P think all of it is making some fundamental decisions about how he’s prepared to live the rest of his life, ‘what he has done to his life’ and I quote. That’s all quite ordinary and exo.” She sighed. “I wonder if Cho fully even understands that. Sarat was set for ordinary life.”
“Honey, he was never going to spend his life in a lab! He would have had a future in NoZone marketing the environment. He chose to market something nearly as big. To which I would add, he wanted to rock and rock now. If scientists rock the world at all, it is in their later years, when all that meticulous research has paid off!”
Shav giggled.
“Maybe that’s because they don’t have the resources of half a continent at their disposal.”
“Oh we are so thorough! Where are you going?”
“All that was pure Dad, the exposition. We all know the identity crisis, but that’s not the two people. The brash Fidubi brat is Cho and the Anile emperor is also Cho. Sure, Sarat and Mitch did the marketing but they also did the research. Mitch spent years in the PANTHER records. It works because of that ground-work, because the foundations are solid.”
Petrush laughed.
“While I take that point, I would add that we spent the afternoon undermining everything the continent ever thought about itself.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“Wherever we’re coming from, it doesn’t affect where we are now. Do you see- a sequence of events can be described, each following from the one before, but that doesn’t mean the end-point can only follow from the start. Suppose we proved Narulis never existed! Oh, there’d be repercussions…But there’s no way – some guy is getting his chronic asthma properly treated only because Narulis existed and if Narulis hadn’t existed he wouldn’t be.”
“I am not entirely sure about that.”
“Couldn’t be. No alternative sequence of events is conceivable.”
“No-one else was or is capable of the idea – I do not know that Narulis wrote about the treatment of asthma. That may be to say someone embedded certain ideas in the history of Kadun. Surely Mitch’s point that they were indigenous is very much the issue here, indeed that they came from Narulis the foreigner very much why they were resisted.”
“It’s a lousy analogy?”
“It may be better to say suppose Zani never existed! Someone undoubtedly founded the kingdom of Dabida with certain core values, for there it is for all to see…What I thought – there are facts – “ He grinned. “The sort of fact at which Mitch excels. Facts which are not scientific facts, but may be given the status of scientific facts, although they are not the facts of science. The existence of Dabida as we know and love her is surely one. But I was thinking of the minutiae. Science told them- if you call statistics science - what percentage of the population had no piped hot water or no main drainage. Mitch took us through a day in the life, what exactly that meant. Only when you have defined the problem can you define the solution. It is that I see as independent of any forebears. We seem to have digressed. I say seem. Would it be incredibly unjust to say you too think Sarat should talk to an elder male relative, just a different one?”
“No. What would be incredibly unjust is to think that I shall prod, encourage or otherwise interfere!”
“That is a fine sentiment and the simple human conviction of knowing best is of course apparently where Cho is coming from. Sarat in this scenario would be secretly longing to share, Cho is not an idiot therefore Cho’s apparent conviction that the person Sarat should be sharing with is he must be regarded as having some rational basis.
Shav gurgled.
“Baz told him the head of PANTHER does not go lame-brained because he dotes.”
“Children, children! I am shocked! My problem here is my genius for seeing both sides with equal clarity. Poor Sarat! Not only two people, but four, possibly eight, sixteen…We all of us may have our loving families playing that kind of game, but he has the entire world. It is impossible not to side totally with his desire to tell the entire world to butt out. But Cho is not an idiot emotionally or any other way. I do not think even I can draw a parallel between this and our new mission – but I can try. If that territory is demonstrably Kadun and remembering transparency is his middle name – he could go the long way round, right, the international court. If I assess my man correctly, he does not give a damn where the border is as a matter of principle. He would merely prefer what is on the other side of it not to be a secret weapon aimed at Azt! I can relate to that. There would be a hell of a lot of – fall-out! – for perhaps very little. If we take it as given Cho has something serious on his mind, why the hell does he not come out with it? Perhaps he chooses not to because the fall-out would be too great, though I cannot imagine what that could be.”
“I have a plan,:” said Shavli.
“What happened to the fine sentiment?”
“Observe, my sweet, observe. If he comes and stays with us, we can have a family reunion. It must be ten years since we’ve all sat round the same table. Unless Sarat really objects – “
“I do not think Cho will press him with Zika by his side!”
“Which would be of interest in itself, we can have a look at them together and see what we think then.”
“It is generally accepted,” said Dill, “that the walls of time fade and reform, that our guests are real. That they are going about their business in their own time and not indeed visiting.”
“Yes.”
“I understand, although I have yet to experience them, there are other manifestations of this in support of this theory, scenes that could not be taking place in the here and now.”
“Yes. The Bronzes. The Bronzes are a frieze which does – emphasis on does – not exist. There anyway!”
“We may and do – constantly – ask precisely why this temporal phenomenon should be so. We may indeed ask if it is so. I do not think we question that it could be so. Is the phenomenon of Kaminua and Asyrion of a different order? It is the proposition that one may choose to continue one’s terrestrial existence in – what shall we say? A time bubble, a space out of time where time does not exist. Again we may say this could so but clearly a more complex and so more questionable process would be involved, though we may adduce the fact that each of us is – “ She broke into a grin. “ – a part of the bloody Whole extant outside time. Nonetheless our physical, our corporeal beings are rooted in time and to – clothe our essence in a physicality rendered proof against time is to say, is it not, that the physical form must be generated, created by the essence. Or at any rate controlled, and this too is not outside the boundaries of what is known to us, or how could we heal? What else after all is shape-shifting? We may indeed posit that we choose mortality.” Sarat realized why she was in lecture mode. “That Kaminua and Asyrion reached a place where they were capable of making that choice is indeed not wholly outside the bounds of possibility. However, we have been told stories – fed a lot of hooey, as you prefer, that – deliberately? – counter that possibility. She died of that which Fidub could not heal and he grew old and grief-stricken.”
“I love you,” said Sarat.
She smiled benignly.
“But it is not only to say that, not only to say that the physical form must be generated by the essence. It is to make profoundly – “ Again she grinned. “ – profoundly rather than mildly dubious statements about the nature of life and death and time. And will. What precisely is it to say? It is to say that the essence after they died was capable of choosing to generate a permanent non-changing physicality and health. Or is it? Is it perhaps to say that at some moment, say at the middle age they appear to chosen for eternity, they decided to exchange normal life for that eternity. I know little of the Denzines. I may be about to learn a whole lot more. Principally I refer you to the load of hooey. If Kaminua had knowledge that they would one day be together for ever, why was he grief-stricken. I would ask also how Asyrion at middle age could have made that choice when history – for what history is worth – records that she died young, whether or not of ‘that Fidub could not heal’. A further possibility is of course that they were not Kaminua and Asyrion but Denzine shape-shifters.”
“Baz tried,” said Sarat. “Baz and Hass. The conclusion was that if they were not real then the falsity was impenetrable.”
“They’d have to be real good,” said Dill. “Lastly, and lastly is perhaps most interesting of all, because it applies to the Jumesit, the reality of the phenomena of which is least in doubt, it seems to me the walls of time do not fade when our ancestors were doing anything interesting. No window is opened onto Narulis’ councils of state. We do not see Susheela fleeing with her son. I accept of course that had they resolved the matter of Kadun we should not be having this conversation but one would have thought they had either perception or experience to impart. I do not know what to make of that.”
“It may be,” said Sarat. “No. Yes! Possibly. Can we possibly be shaping that trip? This is my experience and others may counter it. We’ve become so used to the – phenomenon we don’t instantly report Susheela brushing her hair! I have noted that Narulis does not drop in when I’m working. Oh of course! It’s only when we switch off our conscious minds that we can see – “
“Oh of course! It’s there all the time. All times are now.”
“That is a little dizzying,”: said Sarat.
“A little. The other thing is that it would seem that of all the emperors only Narulis and Jaizal actually lived in the place.”
“I can’t think why. Fortuitous.”
“Fortuitous also that you and Narulis should be taking a break at the same time. Nor do we apparently perceive the day to day work of the palace, the staff, the cooks, the soldiers, the servants.”
“Tell you in a minute,” said Sarat. “If we go back to the original – proposition – that their existence is their own time is tenable, then - they are trying to break through to our time. Is that conceivable? To the time when something happens which might not have happened yet which happens to be our time? We know party-tricks take a considerable amount of energy and that particular trick – maybe they never get down to the nitty-gritty because they can’t make the final leap.”
“I like it. I am not sure I believe a word of it, but I like it! And depart because it hasn’t happened yet?”
“They were literate!” said Sarat with some irritation. “If I were just capable of passing through time to convey something to my successors, should I not write it down beforehand and hand it over?”
Dill pealed with laughter.
“Suppose two – phenomena are indeed the case. A frieze is not I trust making a frenzied effort to communicate with the future. People are.”
“The Bronzes are a bit more than a mere frieze. The Bronzes are a frieze which is alive. It’s a battle scene, warriors in chariots, chargers, and sometimes they laugh at us. If you wanted to communicate with another time, wouldn’t you make your push where the walls of time were known to be thin? There’s something else. In purely human terms. They may not know exactly what they’re doing any more than we do.”
“Or of course,” said Dill, “they might not want to be here at all but end up here because the walls of time etc.”
Sarat burst out laughing.
“At which point they exchange a few commonplaces to be polite and retire to their own time thinking, oh shit, failed again!”
Dill had wrinkled her brow.
“These Bronzes then parallel Kaminua and Asyrion? They are a moment frozen in time – presumably the battle never ends – and they do not accord with our physics? Have you assayed them?”
Sarat was still grinning.
“Risk a spear in the ribs…The Star tried to seduce me. I don’t think I told you that.”
“In novels concerning time-travel,” said Dill after a moment, “a big thing is generally made of not changing the past.”
“My point exactly!” said Sarat enthusiastically. He made wide eyes. “Suppose you got pregnant!”
“We must talk about that. She – accepted your argument?”
“She accept my polite decline!”
“I must confess I have never wholly been at one with that point about not changing the past. It always strikes me as somewhat deterministic – except of course in this case when it is crucial to my well-being! That is because if the past is co-existent, the past is also now and indeed do we not repeat that like some kind of mantra.
“As fixed points go,” said Sarat, “it’s a dodo.”
“That – I think – is my point. If we say they wish to communicate with a particular future, then equally that future – any particular future – our now – must be co-existent with their past. We can therefore drive ourselves mad thinking that possible futures also are co-existent: they arrive here but it is the wrong future! What is it you would like them to tell you?:”
“The chair. Where. When. How. You realize we have no proof she was ever here!”
“About that,” said Dill, “I have theories. The first emperor and the last (but one)! You know of course there are stories, Jaizal must have the throne!” Sarat nodded. “You know that when you arrived here there was a replica and not a modern one. And of course you know that Van-senok is implicated in a fashion we have yet to determine.”
But it is long over, thought Sarat. What - ?
“When each of us sat – hang on. I’m thinking about five things at once. The uppermost is probably Mel knows. I don’t mean – he’s an anthropologist. He must have studied earthpower academically. Venga’s trip included Behna laughing and saying, but it is long over! The subject of which was apparently I in wolverine mode on the chair. Damn! There’s something there.” He closed his eyes. “Space-rock. Is rock. Cantilip. Kai. What’s in a word? Earthpower in Harn has nothing to do with earthpower in Kadun. The – creed of earthpower in VS derives from that damn’ meteorite.”
“That you do not know formed the lake!”
“That’s the one. And Cantilip knows that. Or guesses. They came from Sug. There hasn’t been time. People haven’t been around for long enough. Nor do or did I believe Fidub could not heal. Have you seen me glowing lately? OK, let’s count the ifs. If and only if there was indeed a meteorite and if the throne was made of rock from it, then its fall pre-dated Narulis. If it was something we might identify as radioactive, bearing in mind its physics might be different, then, nonetheless, that – those – emissions – oh. What you just said. Something Cho wondered. Narulis was given a kitten and found it grew into a sabre-tooth the size of a house so he regretfully gave it away to a good home.”
“But look at her now, placid as a new-born kitten! Fidub was her home. Or if you prefer somewhere a few million light-years away.”
“Lending incredibly tenuous support to the meteorite at the bottom of the lake! Why C-R is a perfectly rational question to which no-one appears to have an answer. If you really wanted to hide her, you could go much deeper into the trees, not build her a little house. I’m trying to remember what I said in that casual way one says things apparently of purely academic interest! That we’d assumed peace reigned and Fidub made Narulis a present. Maybe chaos reigned and they made him a weapon.”
“The Singing Isles,” said Dill. “I am thinking something that blows my head off.”
They looked at each other.
“The culture of Fidub is earthpower?”
“Now,” said Sarat brightly, “if we just explain how a chair made of incarnate earthpower constitutes a weapon against the Cult we’ve cracked it.”
“But she must do,” said Dill. “She is independent of time.”
“How,” repeated Sarat. Dill was shaking with laughter. “What’s so funny?”
“I am thinking of Mitch and the Fidubi scam.”
“The Great Divide,” said Hass, “is for many reasons such an obvious name.”
“One never thinks it may be symbolic of a greater truth!”
“Did they have plumbing then?” asked Dill..
“Fidub had plumbing.”
“Ah, yes, Fidub,” said Sarat dreamily. “Theory – Notion – Notion 127 suggests the cataclysm threw Fidub up from the ocean-bed.”
“Meaning the centre of the crater may be somewhere in the middle of the ocean.”
“Which.”
“Which makes it a little hard,” said Dill, “for irtubi to have been scurrying around collecting pieces of space rock.”
“Shards,” said Hass and Sarat at virtually the same time.
“Bits broke off?” said Dill.
“Why shouldn’t they?” asked Sarat.
“If you’d come light-years through space-time, wouldn’t you be feeling fragile?”
“Earthpower. Rock-power! The power of this earth?”
“The problem with that being Harn.”
Dill giggled.
“This empire rocks! Suppose there is confusion, conflation, isn’t that a good word, of the two?”
“Suppose it was more like a shower,” said Sarat.
“I like it,” said Dill after a minute. “Not that I’m sure it fits or anything!”
“Done for dumping,” muttered Sarat.
Sarat’s desire to test a hypothesis by putting the chair in the field of flowers was restrained by not wanting anyone to see him do it.
“There will be a prize,” suggested Dill, “for the most convoluted but plausible story anyone can come up with to seal off the field.”
“Why not sort of tell the truth?” suggested Venga. “A radioactive meteorite! A very, very old one,” he added hastily. “Mass panic! One cannot be too careful.”
“He has led a sheltered life,” said Hass.
“Space rocks,” said Dill, “are like big bucks, man.”
“You mean there’s money in this?” asked Sarat. “I don’t see a connection.”
“When did you last monitor the meteorite market!”
“I really don’t see a connection! This is about concealment.”
“Unless it’s about possession,” said Hass. “If the Cult can use this whatever – and if it knows there are bits of it around – “
“It’s had 600 years to dig up Azt!”
“You remember the throne guards a deeper mystery.”
“How could we forget.”
“Suppose the five-headed monster is on our side! I mean, suppose it guards whatever. You know,” he added brightly, “like the werewolves.”
“What happens to the bad guys?” asked Hass.
“Frightened to death,” said Sarat. He paused. “What I think is we’re going to go on with this until we prove ourselves wrong. If we prove ourselves wrong, we’ll have a lot more information to go on. Does that make sense?”
“We might,” said Dill, “even have some facts!”
“Optimism is a wonderful thing.”
“Why,” asked Sarat, “are the supposed tombs of Kaminua and Asyrion in an underground cavern in Ciletij?”
“Been there, done that,” said Venga. “I didn’t mean – I meant, it wasn’t Ciletij when they – “
“Didn’t die,” finished Hass.
“What,” asked Sarat, “does Cantilip know about the crowns?”
Venga sighed.
“Meaning what do I know? Very little. What Van-senok knows…”
“Kai,” recalled Sarat, “is – satisfied whatever Cantilip and Mel are doing is to do with Zani.”
“Somewhat surprising, therefore,” said Hass.
“Indeed.”
“There is of course no absolute binding reason why Zani should not have – could not have – “
“If you were Cantilip – or indeed if you were Mel – might you not describe having discovered Zani roamed around Van-senok as a piece of different puzzle?”
“In your own time,” said Dill.
Sarat turned to her.
“I am truly sorry. “ He made it sound as though he was confessing to murder. Then he laughed. “You didn’t grow up in Zur. Give us a minute on egg-shells.”
“Come, hadin, come, come not alone, come hadin, come?” asked Dill
“There are of course two versions,” sighed Hass. “School-books and the other.”
“So is there a third?” asked Dill.
“Fourth, fifth, tenth? Zani became King of Dabida in the year the empire fell apart.”
Hass laughed suddenly
“But the shattering of the empire was not a single instant in time like dropping a cup from an upstairs window. In other words what chiefly reigned was chaos.”
“But always Fidub,” objected Venga.
“Ah, the great chroniclers,” said Sarat.
“Suppose,” said Venga, “we start from the proposition that the only cats who know what went down are those who were there. We might then wonder what they told the folks back in Maona-pri. If ‘there’ was Van-senok, of course.
“We know – we think we know – we might know – Zani didn’t want the Anile throne. Literally. Which suggests he sat on it. Where was it?:
“Or perhaps he didn’t want the crown?” suggested Venga half-jokingly.
“When someone reaches the top of the heap – unless he’s Anile Emperor, of course. In Dabida, in Fidub, to become Prime Minister – or King – one is informed of certain things. There are therefore persons who know these things already.”
“When these things are,” said Sarat.
“Exactly,” said Hass. “When these things are contingency plans in the event of invasion or natural disaster. When they are other kinds of information, it may be that the passage of time has mangled them in transmission, even if the original version were correct.”
“Volunteer requested,” murmured Sarat grinning. “I wondered how many days’ hard riding from the Great Gates to Van-senok and that at least we can determine.”
“My understanding,” said Dill, “is that as history measures these things, two weeks out of Zani’s life would not have appeared significant.”
“Before?” asked Hass. “This was before? We know – think we know – Jaizal was defeated and Zani withdrew to the south. Peculiar, certainly, and also very public. Zani therefore – agreed to defeating Jaizal and already knew he had no interest in the Anile throne. Jaizal’s grip on the empire was – I was going to say tenuous but I think in Var-sega’ in Van-senok non-existent. There was no empire, only a shell, an entity in people’s minds.”
“An agreement,” said Dill slowly, “an agreement with Var-sega’ with Van-senok that no attempt would be made to maintain the illusion.”
“The first plotter,” said Hass. “No wonder we’re so good at it.”
“Then of course there’s Carlin,” said Venga.
“Most certainly there is Carlin,” said Sarat, “Carlin which so admirably failed to notice being crossed by an army of invasion.”
“Where have I heard that before?” murmured Venga.
“Oh no, no, no, no,” said Sarat. “The deal was that he’d save them the trouble. Of having to fight for their independence.”
“Certainly,” said Hass, “as far as the Houses were concerned, the empire had outlived its purpose.”
“I shall dwell on that,” said Sarat. “When I’m having a bad day, it will lift my spirits.”
“Where have I heard that before?” murmured Venga. “Save them the trouble of having to actually do something.”