Animals let loose on my body, filthy animals let loose to butcher my body and wreck my life, crawl over me for the rest of my life, impede every move I make, by universal approval, universal agreement, filth and vermin all of you, ooh no, no-one can help, ,it would upset filth and vermin who should be on the gallows.  I want to know who and why, and how much the dirty apes of doctors have been paid, they and the filth tard nurses who run the sewer for them, and I intend to find out who and why and how much the dirty apes of doctors have been paid, they and the filth tard nurses who run the sewer for them, if it's the last thing I do, which it may well be, sub-normal animal women devoid of intellect, intelligence, education, ethics, reason, principle, integrity, the scum of the bloody earth, the precious bloody nurses of criminals, perverts, psychopaths, traitors.   

Extract from The Anile Heir ©2006.
 
I, Ysabel Jehan Howard, hereby assert and give notice of my right under s.77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this book.

 
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.” Extract from The Anile Heir ©2006. I, Ysabel Jehan Howard, hereby assert and give notice of my right under s.77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this book