Achilles

Of heel fame.  Just your Achilles' heel, isn't it, Doctor, the University, when you are dragged into the real world.  I can think of a lot of people who will find you a huge sick joke, wordless, mindless, bestial, intellectually incapable, bestially ignorant, ineducable, a capering monkey who can't construct an argument, has not progressed to language and reason, and thinks it can hit and hurt and destroy anyone it disagrees with, a  wild and savage animal,  every writer, every artist, every historian, philosopher, linguist,  classicist, every graduate in English in the English-speaking world, and of course every physicist.  Medicine, the missing link.  And that's just doctors.  Wait till they get to the nurses, especially the Fenton brute, with its joke chair in a joke subject from a joke university. Of course they think the bloody nurses have degrees.  Nurses are just another kind of technical worker, mechanic, able to wield every tool but the one that matters, the one between the ears. 

The absolute insolence of Oxbridge of course is yet another dimension.  In fairness it must be said the products of those particular institutions are usually well informed and widely read.  Not if they’re doctors.  Well informed, widely read and capable of reason.  Not if they’re doctors.
 
In London of course the hoi-polloi are quarantined from the rest of the University by being in medical schools but I thought the college system forced integration.  Nonetheless creatures such as Whelan and Ardeshna appear to have got through Cambridge without ever having met anyone who can read and write.  Quite a feat, really. 

Of course they are the very models of medical practitioners.
 
Need to clean up the scansion:
I am the very model of a medical practitioner
I read  the monthly bulletins from the Health Commissioner
I labour with the greatest care not to offend the Madam President
And daily send her emails saying at her feet I'm resident
I prove my academic cred by writing abstracts by the score
I once had one accepted! I deny that most are pretty poor
It's really very critical there's some research on my CV
It never once occurs to me I'm guilty of illiteracy
And after ten to fifteen years, when finally I've my MD
Then I'll do lots of private work, make myself a heap of money.
Mix in the best circles and twitter influentially
(That's twitter not Twitter - think of confidentiality)
I never cause upset and frown upon all argument
God told me categorically that doctors are all heaven-sent
I know He's looking after me and He tells me everything
That's why my mind is sealed tight-shut and I never learn anything
Philosophy has passed me by, and books in general I suspect.
On no account should anyone suggest that I have intellect
Thinking is a dangerous act, which could cause unhealthy dissent
I think it could make you blind; ideas are not relevant
It's so much more productive to masturbate the President
I fool so many people into thinking I'm omniscient
That when I sniff dismissively at what I do not comprehend
The idiots are awestruck and assume my patience at an end!
When people dare to put to me that nurses do not have degrees
I purse my lips and roll my eyes, frown really quite appallingly
It' never once has crossed my mind, not ever once occurred to me
Intellect and reason are required to gain a real degree.
It’s not like that in Medicine, I assure you categorically.
That nurses all are saints is basic science learned as a student
For more than once it was plain that crossing Sister was imprudent
Some say it's actually something the nurses put in our tea
An excellent decision, wider access to the formulary.

I really cannot understand why people do not love me more
I heal the sick, I raise the dead, sort of Jesus in miniature
And if I care nothing for truth, lie to advance professionally
Use knowledge to cause injury to those who put their trust in me
Care not a jot for anything called medical morality,
(Sounds some arty-farty nonsense, something like philosophy)
And if the very raison d'etre of the University
Demands the rule of reason then it's it that has to change not me
I am the agent of God's Will to whom all must at once defer
I am the very model of a medical practitioner.

Many different opinions of religion exist in this society:

I would like to propose that religious beliefs be placed in the DSM as a category of mental illness for the following reasons:

(1) Hallucinations - the person has invisible friends who (s)he insists are real, and to whom (s)he speaks daily, even though nobody can actually see or hear
these friends.

(2) Delusions - the patient believes that the invisible friends have magical powers to make them rich, cure cancer, bring about world peace, and will do so eventually if asked.

(3) Denial/Inability to learn - though the requests for world peace remain unanswered, even after hundreds of years, the patients persist with the praying behaviour, each time expecting different results.

(4) Inability to distinguish fantasy from reality - the beliefs are contingent upon ancient mythology being accepted as historical fact.

(5) Paranoia - the belief that anyone who does not share their supernatural concept of reality is "evil," "the devil," "an agent of Satan".

(6) Emotional abuse - ­ religious concepts such as sin, hell, cause feelings of guilt, shame, fear, and other types of emotional "baggage" which can scar the
psyche for life.

(7) Violence - many patients insist that others should share in their delusions, even to the extent of using violence.
https://www.thecheers.org/Opinion/article_3111_7-reasons-why-religion-is-a-form-of-mental-illness.html

My addenda here are of course the ability to distinguish between believing something to be true and its factual veracity and the capacity to connect with day-to-day reality, whether a person accepts facts about the society around him or her, whether he or she is capable of seeing others as distinct, running on separate tracks, equal in rights or whether he or she regards all others as subordinate, at his or her command.

Just answer Mr Benn's questions, Doctor.  Just explain to everyone how you come to be empowered to abolish democracy.  Just explain how you come to be empowered to assault and destroy me.  Do just fucking explain.  Then all the dirty little slave-sluts can explain why they pay you five seconds' attention, whe you are clearly clinically insane. 

They repel me.  They turn my stomach.  They revolt me.  I told you I had a gagging reflex.

Dill: “Is this what’s called a propaganda war, Dad?”
Mitch: “No, I should not say that.  This is what’s called wiping excrement off the sole of one’s boot.”
 
Nah, ‘course they ain’t fucking illitrit.

​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 Act1988 to be identified as the author of this book.
 
MITCH: Greetings, worldlings, except of course for Azt, which is on another planet.  My partner Karula and I have been doing a little work for Sardun in the City, and are now safely back Kadun-side.  This work has included analysis of the Kadun economy.  We should be interested in discussion of the social and economic aspects of the – let us call it in this respect the Dabidan model: industrialized society did not of course exist in Narulis’ day. 
AGOU: That is the Mitch? Var-sega’?
MITCH:  I am he!
KAFV: Knew already but well done you!
AGOU: Indeed.
ASDINAN: Defo well done you!  Greetings ‘cross the plague-ridden wastes of Vaudos.
MITCH: A most unpleasant obstacle between us.
 
     Cantilip finished reading Mel’s Place.
     “There is more garbage here about earthpower than I thought existed.”
 
CANTILIP:  Hi, I’m Cantilip from Van-senok.  I do have to say some of you guys are a little out on earthpower, confusing it with womanspirit, invented by modern Harn. We do not do healing crystals! Look forward to talking to you.
HARNWITCH:  Now, excuse me, a whole lot of scholarship went into re-creating the ancient belief-system of our foremothers and womanspirit is nothing if not authentic.  What do you think you are talking about?
CANTILIP: The Cult. 
HARNWITCH: That does not seem to me to be an answer.
CANTILIP: That’s the point.  I’m renowned for my tact.  Let me say at least I do understand where women in Harn are coming from.  They burned us, too.  When they caught us, which wasn’t often.  As I understand womanspirit, it’s a pacifist reaction to High Harn, than which of course there was nothing lower.  Earthpower is non-aggressive.  Pacifist, not.  When we caught them, we killed them.  The other thing is that earthpower is balance.  If you take a list of opposites, strong-weak, passive-active, rational-irrational   The third thing, of course, is that the Cult only crossed the water to Kadun after the fall of High Harn and it sure wasn’t healing crystals and non-violence which caused that.
HARNWITCH: I can sure see that, at least.  But if you are saying your earthpower caused the collapse of High Harn - that makes no sense!  Everyone knows the darned Cult took over Kadun.
VARIOUS:    Burned you???  WTF?
CANTILIP:    Better than the cage.
VARIOUS:    The what?
CANTILIP:    You don’t want to know.
HARNWITCH:          I know.  It was beyond obscene.
 
“Time we saw the world,” said Baz.
MITCH: Ours was not derring-do, though of course it would not have been a good idea to have been caught by Searc, not least since I dined with him and attended several other events in circles not wholly virtuous. Naturally my reputation preceded me but young men are headstrong, are they not, they mature.  As a marketing consultant it was reasonably easy to argue that my chief concern in life was now selling soapflakes and establishing the public image of morons, and of course our three kids enabled Karula to play the perfect stay-at-home Mom, while occupying her rather fine brain with the real family business, Kaduna-gar-jaht, this matter of Kadun.  Naturally also of course a rift with my father, I wished no part of the politics of Var-sega’, of course the kids had occasionally to visit their grandparents, but we really could not stand the place. We actually got rather good at it.  At any rate we are still alive.  Our business was twofold, to use our position to get the hang of the undersea world and financial analysis.  The derring-do was that of those who extracted the information from Azt, where they are somewhat behind the times and still record critical information on dead trees.  This is not the place for spreadsheets for a variety of reasons but I think it may be useful to delineate the rationale for our work.
AGOU:  Bloody impressive stuff.
MITCH: I thank you.
VARIOUS: Like wow!  This is a-maz-ing! Etc.  
KARULA: Kadun is bought by the banks in the City, on the small scale as well as the State.  I of course was not raised in the world of high finance and was extremely entertained when Mitch explained to me some of its mysteries.  From the grass-roots perspective, the small shopkeeper, the prospective home-owner, the situation is somewhat opaque and I should like to shed light on it.  Kadun does not strictly speaking have ‘an economy’: it has two economies, clean money and soiled, which are conjoined.  In both cases the guys at the top deal with their own; the guys at the bottom don’t necessarily know who the hell they’re dealing with, hence the entwining.  But in order so far as possible to keep decent people safe and sound, some enterprises which are very far from profitable have to be underpinned. 
MITCH: We have for instance on the books a most interesting shop, dedicated to things arboreal.  (It is not of course wholly irrelevant, evil grin, that this concern is located in the north of Var-sega’, where we are under the influence of Van-senok.)  We failed to persuade them to floristry – you cannot cut flowers, you understand – but we did manage to persuade them to saplings and bushes and also to move to the outer suburbs where people might actually buy saplings and bushes.  In other words  businesses are propped up which would not otherwise survive – though perhaps in a new Kadun this one might take on a new lease of life!  I would not see these guys go under but I feel there may be new opportunities for both employment and self-expression to which they are better suited.
Harn attempted nationalization.  The bankers undercut the state companies which promptly went broke requiring more borrowing from the bankers, there being insufficient numbers of Harni willing to pay more for their gas.   If Harn attempts to cut loose, the banks call in their debts.  Harn cannot pay those debts.  Harn's capacity to borrow further is thus up a well known creek.  Unless some real nice guys over the water are prepared to lend? Of course Harn no more wishes to be in hock to southern capital than do we but we at least have choice. To Van-sandos it is actually not a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, but the lesser of two evils.
To prop up Harn while they do some serious killing.   Kadun is the cash-cow. We all know that.  We also know they have holdings everywhere the hand of man has ever set foot. Shark-hunting is an intensely complex pursuit involving nothing less than the global economy.  That the Cult corrupts individuals, specifically the poor and vulnerable, has indeed been delineated here previously by Asdinan (I should love at some point to hear more about that).  The City banks provide apparently limitless funding for the Cult.  Central government subsidizes the building of housing that is dangerous and the manufacture of food that is poisonous and so claims to assist the poor. If you ask how the housing is dangerous, how many ways can housing be dangerous? The wiring is unsafe, the foundations are inadequate, the roofs crack under heavy snow - I swear that actually happened. Fortunate indeed we are not in an earthquake zone. Fine shiny hospitals are built by big pharma, setting an example to the world, only down the road people are dying of pneumonia because they afford neither heat nor medicine. If someone from the south  were to go to Giraga on business, he or she would think it looks much like anywhere else, shops, supermarkets, theatres, but would probably not stray into where the workers live, and would not wear the clothes they are offered or  eat their food, especially the meat, unless possessed of a penchant for rat. Azt tells the world it has public health inspectors and food hygiene laws like everywhere else. It forgets to mention no-one pays the slightest attention to them. 
CANTILIP:    Longbows and cannon caused the collapse of High Harn.  As we know, the Cult has certain mind-control techniques, like hypnosis.  You do have to be in range, so to speak. Pacifism was not on the menu. Exactly what am I saying?  The Mosai Wars could not have happened if the indigenous culture of Harn had been pacifist.
HARNWITCH:  I am following that bit, but you are still not making any sense, if you will forgive my saying so!  Then the same must be true of Kadun and everyone knows it took Narulis to free Kadun.
“Baz has been posting about PANTHER,” said Num expressionlessly.
Seani snorted.
“Baz, who’s Baz. How can that possibly be news?”
“Nothing to what Mitch has been posting.  There’s brave and there’s brave. Mitch is a story on his own.  Sardun agent in the City.  Currently kicking the shit out of social conditions in the cities.”
“Zeshazesh!  Somewhere, somehow, this is revolution.  Do we  actually want to get in the way?”
“Spectator sport,” said Num.
QINE: Sardun, CLIK: There are folk here who are surely rolling, and I would like to ask them their views on capital. I would first say I’ve been up here with Sardun for many years now, segani by birth, and mixing with folk from different backgrounds broadens your views.  Then again like us all I’m only too aware of how capital can work for good or we wouldn’t flipping be here.  I have friends in CLIK in Zur and I am aware that AMI might as well be in a different world for all in resembles what the  average working-man in Kadun thinks is a factory and I know there are folk who’ve made a packet on the Grid though no labour but their own, so I do not want to be stupid about these things and I hope no-one else will be, either. It seems to me Kadun is somewhat divided between one lot of capital and another lot which for all the nice talk about democracy seems to me to mean that the power stays with the money.  I would like people’s views on that.
[Mitch PM to Qine: Where are you!]
Qine: I will catch up with you later, Comrade Var-sega’.]
MEL: Capital is power, agreed.  But in a democracy, all power is accountable, and I mean all, not like in Ciletij.  Put that in because I know Zulagan too and I hear a lot about CLIK in Ciletij. All AMI’s accounts are on the Grid.  Every business is legally required to put everything on the Grid and in fact there’re public accountants who just do check that it all adds up and that doesn’t just apply to business.  Every private individual who has above a certain level of assets, and that includes Tar, has to say what he or she’s spending on  So if I go into the Megamart and buy a packet of biscuits no-one’s noticing, I bought a Seanti, worst flak I got was from the environmental police, Sarat and Hass, but if I decide I want a fleet of private airliners or tanks the whole world knows. There is no safe space for pay-offs, private deals and the rest.  I think you might say and you’d be right that;s not the exact point.  If I want to pop across the Straits and talk to Airoch, it’s a five-buck ferry ride, so it’s pure matrix as above, not what you know, not even what you have, but who you know. 
SEANI: Straits Times.  Ah, the dear old matrix.  Good point. It’s not whether people travel by bus but what they say to the people they’ve travelled to. Unless every single conversation is recorded and published, it’s not possible to monitor it
MEL: Ah, so that’s why I found a mic in the plug-hole.
SEANI: Would we, would we!
MEL: Probably not.  Glitz would.
SEANI: [Sniffy expression of intellectual superiority]  You know Glitz hate you.  All those private jets you don’t have, the conspicuous consumption you don’t do.  WYSWIG, by the way, dear world, not that the décor on the hill is anything less than elegant.
MEL: Glad you approve.
GALLIA: (Batna-kri Chronicle) There’s stuff here about women in Kadun that is extreme.  It’s just so interesting.
“This is extreme,” said Karula.
“Inevitable,” said Mitch.  “Just enjoy.”
HASS: All the stuff you see in Glitz about jet-setters, we don’t actually jet-set because there’s nowhere to jet-set to.  Mel was at the Schools but the City’s pretty much off-limits to us now too.  Oh, we could have mega maximum security, but what a total pain.  Mostly drive into Carlin.  We do have a private plane and a heli, landing pad on the hill.  Fleet of jets not.  Then there’s the simple matter of accumulation.  If you don’t spend it it grows.  The basic expense of most people is somewhere to live and we’ve been in the same rabbit-warren on the hill for 600 years.  When Pietri, Tar’s brother, left the nest he bought himself a house.  It’s a very nice town-house but it’s not huge.  Obviously we’ve got relations scattered all over the places but none of them lives anywhere you could call ginormous.  That’s because there’s no conceivable reason they need to; the hill is sort of everyone’s private hotel, conference centre, formal party, informal party, we accommodate your needs!  It’s such a mad maze there’s room for half a dozen separate events at once. 
VIJ: Mel’s cousin, son of aforementioned Pi`etri.  Des res is on Gulia Plaza. Has to be said the parents are not exactly socialites of the year, but yes, essentially what Hass said.  It’s very much a question of people we know well, I think. Like, I think, most people, whom do we actually want in our home. I think it’s reasonable to say we’ve all got a sense of ‘home’.  Makes sense for any official entertaining of virtual strangers to take place on the hill.  Mitch, too damn long!
HASS: Home is for family and friends.  Except of course for poor us.  Couple of memorable occasions of overlap. Mel and I and our friends were having a distinctly informal party and Tar and Saski were entertaining some rather uptight guys from Ciletij.  Tar, damn him, decided it would be delightful to show his guests around.  I think he wanted us to shock them.  No, I know he wanted us to shock them.  So there’s Mel in his I am a child of the universe phase, which means shorts and thin shift falling off one shoulder, Maya and Fal in the Leotard Look, Tet in army surplus, Sarat practising chords on an acoustic guitar, etc. 
MEL: I think actually they wanted to meet Dabida’s heir.  They met me.  They may by now have recovered.  We’re not landlords.  We don’t profit from people needing somewhere to live.  Not many people in Dabida are, because of the LLR: Law of Limited Returns.  CLIK love it.  Limits the amount of time any landlord can charge rent.
“600 years?  ” asked Mitch. 
 
“Couple of cats pitched up,” they said to Saban.  That is not news.  “Ah, but these are special cats”  Anyone involved in Sarat’s exercise in insanity had at least heard of Baz and Paw.
“Greetings,” said Baz, “from the sun-drenched shores of Fidub.”
“Nothing like meeting new people,” said Paw.
“Bit of a loose end,” said Baz, “thought we’d do the rounds.”
Marula continued to scrutinize them with growing interest; she has rarely met anyone so wholly immune to her scrutiny.
“We know you’re getting the transcript,” said Paw.  “We are not here to meditate upon the inner Sarat.”
“What, then?” asked Saban.
“Curious, get a feel for how you guys live and work.  It’s got to be different from what we know.  Climate, geography.  Thought we’d fill you in a bit and see what you think.”
“We have a cunning plan all our own,” said Paw.
 
 
 
MITCH: Vij, my friend and ally! Indeed much water has passed under the bridge.  Your close family of course includes.
VIJ: As, Mardis, Pilo and Retri, Saryulin, Duvi, all the small fry. Gets quite crowded at times.
GALLIA: I think I am right in saying that there are no working-class irturbi women here, or if they are they’re silent.  Anyone any reflections on why that might be.
THEWALLFLOWERS: Yes.  They don’t think they can.  Partly it’s simply level of education.  Obviously the currency here is words and Kadun education isn’t renowned for teaching working-class girls how to express themselves.  But it’s more than that.  Class and education give us the confidence to think we can speak. And of course whom we’re speaking to makes us think we’ll be heard.  My experience is women of all classes talk readily enough but it’s below the radar.  Mostly they assume they won’t be heard, little mice squeaking in the corner.
SEANI: Ah yes, our intrusive and virtually totalitarian State intruding on the rights of property.  Think that was the The Voice of Reason.  Don’t think the Azt Star knows words that long.  But of course there is much there which requires further elucidation.  Evil grin.  Would it be at all possible to tell everyone about the sheepdog.
CARIE: CLIK.  Working-class girl.  Friend of Qine’s.  Kadun education teaches us to do the washing-up and sew.  What Mitch said about the clothes in the shops, absolute crap, fall apart if you look at them.  Most women make their own clothes, clothes for their kids to have decent clothes.  Tell you something strange.  Money’s tight, right, can’t afford to have everything.  People’ll have a sewing machine rather than a fridge.  Can’t spend your whole time with a needle and thread but going out every day to the shops, that’s no big deal, even if, as so rightly said, the food is crap.
GALLIA: Can I ask how the food is crap – apart from being rat.
CARIE: Veg aren’t kept properly, already wilting.  Same with everything, really.  You buy some eggs.  Half of them are probably rotten.  Think they probably make the bread with sawdust.
HASS: Mel at 16 was what the revered elders called bloody impossible. Just the age Tar and Saski thought he should start to mix with the grown-ups. The rules of Tar’s ship were few.  If we’d been on the foreshore all day, mostly we just came in and fended for ourselves.  This was dinner with half the Cabinet.  Mel pitched up in the aforementioned shift and shorts together with  flip-flops. Tar told him to go away and change. Saski pointed out that others had taken trouble with their appearance.  Mel argued.  Usual teenage stuff, how can a piece of fabric affect the essential me.  Tar explained that Mel had been somewhat unwell of late, a disease generally known as adolescence.  Saski suggested he go and lie down and return when he wasn’t embarrassing.  Mel said that they told him to think and he’d thought and he really couldn’t see what the problem was.  Out! said Tar.  Shoo, scram! Tar had really had enough of Mel and thought he needed a quick kick up the backside.  If he wanted to argue in the grown-up world, he could make his case to the whole of Zur.  As you know, he leaked it to your august organ in consequence of which the cartoon of Mel as a large muddy sheepdog slinking out of The Room looking guiltily behind him at his muddy paw-marks.   It was the difference between public and private.  When Mel was representing A-M, he had to look how Dabida sees A-M, which was not as a bunch of beach-combers.
KARULA: My family are not poor but like all ordinary people they do have to be a bit – cautious is I think the word.  When Dad finally bought a new car, he did not then splash out further.  I would say frankly that the gulf between the lives of ordinary people and rich people is no need for caution.  Suppose the House burned down!  It would be an emotional catastrophe for Heela.  It would indeed be a cultural catastrophe.  But financially it would mean nothing. 
GALLIA: Yes, of course.  Always got it if they need it.  May I ask what your parents do?
KARULA:  So long as you do not ask what colour drapes in the bedroom!  Dad is an architect and Mom a teacher.
GALLIA:  Honest, we’re not Glitz!  So two incomes.  Is that usual in Kadun?
 
“Oiling the wheels,” said Baz.  “What we thought – if we give you the outline of what PANTHER’s going to do, you can think about what Sardun’s going to do.  Sarat can go through every whisker and twig of it with you when he’s up here.”
SORG: Army, Caniba. Asdinan’s cousin.  Alas, I cannot desert my post.  But the grapevme is excellent.
SITSIN: KAF, Carlin.  Of course before it got hairy a lot of us used to pop down to Zur for the weekend or just for dinner.  Too damn’ far to get back in a hurry.
SEANI:  .  Any stories about Sarat?
AGONCOS: Few stories to tell that might be of interest, from the lads.  Dad died at 43 of pneumonia. Four kids in all.  One our lad, one in work.  Took a bit of time for our lad to hear of it because we were a bit busy at the time and the wages of the one working didn’t cover the rent, so they were evicted.  Tell you something else, Azt says there’s ‘social support’, but it’s garbage.   Then of course there’s you are going to work unpaid overtime, aren’t you, cos you’re out on your ear if you don’t.  Or attend our ***** little rally of course. Unsafe machinery, one bloke’s brother got electrocuted. Etc.
ME:  I’m a working-class woman in Vaudos.  Mum had ideas above her station and made sure I went to a decent school and my partner’s good at IT.  I think that’s dead right, what the ladies said about schooling, but there’s something very simple. You think we’ve all got terminals?  Even if we have, wouldn’t know how to register.
 
“A lot of people are going to scream,” said Baz.  “Sarat and Maya are going to start their own forum, so people can scream at them there.  They’ve made a vid for the landing-page.”
Black screen.  The Anile Emperor in letters of imperial silver 
‘They came, the skull-faces, but we laughed.’  Narulis’ Journal.
Screen fades. We are at the Great Gates. Death the guardian sits on the Anile throne.  A garbage-truck appears.  Sarat and Maya get out. “Yuck!” says Sarat.  “What is that! That’s my chair.”  A ring of shimmering silver is thrown at him from off-stage (detail, detail).  He catches it and throws it over the throne.  It falls to the ground. Death tries to lunge at them but is clearly contained by the circlet.  Death exhibits cartoon signs of rage, jumping up and down, smoke coming out of ears. “Terribly antsy,” remarks Sarat.  He and Maya confer.  “How’d it go?” asks Sarat.  “Begone, foul spawn of desecration,” says Maya.  “That’s the one,” says Sarat.  “Remember now.”  He turns to Death. ‘Begone, foul spawn of desecration.  Creature of slime and destruction, fell servant of dark and despair, I say to you, begone!’”  “It really pays to read,” says Maya.  “Pick up some awfully good lines.”  Sarat says, “You just never know when you might need a line like that.  Didn’t you hear me the first time?” “Me the second,” says Maya.  Little arrows appear on the screen identifying them; Narulis’ heir.  Zani’s heir..  “Need a hoist,” says Sarat and gets out his phone.  Another truck draws up emblazoned with ANILE ENTERPRISES INC, a black paw with silver claws on one side of the lettering and a silver birch on the other.  A giant hook descends, lifts Death from the Throne and drops him at Sarat’s feet with a truly satisfying cracking and crumbling of bone. “Needs a broom,” says Maya.  “I’ll get,” says Sarat.  He returns from the truck wearing rubber gloves and carrying a small vacuum cleaner, a second pair of rubber gloves and a broom, which he hands to Maya, and a bin bag.  Maya puts on the rubber gloves and sweeps the fragments up into a heap, while Sarat picks up the bigger pieces of bone and throws them in the bag.  Sarat switches on the vac and sucks up the crumbs then empties the vac into the bin bag, which he throws in the back of the refuse truck while Maya gets in the front seat and fiddles with levers.  The grinders staru t and emiscerate the garbage.  Meanwhile the hoist has collected the throne and the circlet and deposited them gently besides the garbage-truck.  Sarat and Maya load them into the cab then get in themselves and start the engine.  They fast forward through the Great Gates into Azt, pull up in the Colonnade, get out. “Needs a good spring-clean,” says Sarat.  They get out of the truck two buckets, two mops and a collection of bottles variously labelled PESTICIDE, RAT POISON, DISINFECTANT.  Azt is transformed, only it doesn’t look shimmering, unearthly, ethereal so much as like an advertisement for washing-up liquid, Screen goes whooshy then again black with silver lettering.  NARULIS’ RULES, OK!  (Punctuation is terribly important.)
Democracy – transparency – oversight
We do not do private deals.  We do not do hole in the corner. 
Free elections – equality of rights – minimum wage – healthcare for all
We do not do people frightened to speak. 
We do not do starvation wages.  We do not do rat-infested slums.
We do not do swanning around at Blatni.  We do not do criminals out of reach, untouchable.
(Inset of Searc and Sar-fenan dining at Blatni, heavy white linen tablecloth, crystal chandeliers, etc.)
Screen goes whoosh again.  Sarat and Maya are just finishing polishing a shimmering luminescent silver chair.  “Good as new,” said Sarat.  He sits on it.  “Room for two.”  “Hudge up, then!” says Maya.  He hudges and she sits beside him.  He puts his arm around her.  “You have a problem, my lord Krarlik, you have a big, big problem.  In fact two problems.
Screen fades to a black furry paw under which are strugglingly fruitlessly a number of rats with the faces of the government in Azt. 
 
“I do not think anything further need be said,” said Marula. 
Baz paused before wading into the inner Sarat, decided that what he was going to say was that he was not going to get involved in the detail.
“Being emperor doesn’t in itself mean much to him.  What it represents does.  That’s what they were trying to make simple.  My chair.  Not in a million years that on it.”
“I may have a copy?” asked Saban. 
Baz pulled his woolly hat further down over his ears.  Maps didn’t show that Da-conan, in a wide valley at the meeting of two rivers, got the wind straight from the Arctic.
“I have never in my life felt this much enthusiasm for a shopping mall.”
Double doors excluded the polar blast.
A mooch around the IT store confirmed all state of the art.  If there’s anything they need up here it’s comms. 
A seductive pile of sweaters caught their eye.  They walked firmly into The Great Outdoors.
“We’re visitors,” said Baz cheerfully.  Obviously.  Paw, chisel profile, long straight black hair, earrings, walnut tan, screamed Fidub.  “We’re really not sure we’ve got enough clothes for this weather.  We’ve got our thermals but we still weren’t exactly  warm.  Any tips?”
“Especially around the ears,” said Paw.
She examined their jackets and pronounced them good but recommended another layer, and hats with ear-flaps.  Fur hats.  They grinned at each other both thinking Sarat’d kill us. 
Tough, kill the whole of Van-senok.  Survival fur and fashion fur are clearly morally different.
“Got ice-grips?” she asked.
“No.”
 They came away with fur hats, oiled double-knit woollens and two vicious-looking pairs of ice-grips for their boots.
              “I’m sure there’s a man-made equivalent,” said Paw, imitating Sarat.
              “Ah,” said Baz, “but think of the natural resources that go into its manufacture.”
              Now for Loni’s Mart.  See what they eat around here.
              In-te-res-ting!  Frozen fruit, canned fruit, yes.  Fresh fruit, no.
              This is a peach-free zone.  Can we survive! Maybe in high summer.
              Hang on, there are no veggies, either.  Must have to go to a greengrocer.  Hope yet.
              Baz examined a few labels.  Not AMI!  None of the nutritional stuff you get in the south.  Probably 50% sugar.  Frozen won’t be.
              They checked a few more labels, especially those of a hearty stew to keep the family glowing and calcium is essential for strong bones and teeth, help your children grow tall and straight with our delicious yoghurt dessert.  Just doesn’t say how much calcium.  Defo no food regs.
              Our delicious yoghurt dessert came in a variety of flavours.  They selected blackcurrant and raspberry, and decided what went with their picnic-lunch, yeah right, we’re going to recline under a tree sheltered from the sun’s burning rays, was bread and cold meat. Similarly a butcher and a baker were required.  Convenience shopping in Da-conan extends, we hope, to all in one mall, not all in one store.  Home-delivery, they wondered.  Local shops have always done that.  Presumably if they can reach you through the snow-drifts. 
They found a scrumptious smelling baker, bought a loaf and asked where they could get some cold meat, smoked beef, maybe, a bit of ham.  While the assistant was slicing and wrapping, they surveyed the goods.  Woo-hoo, beef labelled not pre-frozen is twice the price.  Somewhere, presumably south a bit, is a prize herd.  Ah, a greengrocer.  You can tell that by all the greens.  Clearly senoki get their veggies.  There were many varieties of cabbage and onions, leeks, a sort of frondy lacy thing on a stalk which reminded them of seaweed but surely couldn’t be. There were large pink and green apples in plenty and a few oranges.  The woman in front of them was paying cash in small denomination coins, and apparently her eyesight was not good. The shopkeeper was being kindly. 
“We’re foreigners,” said Paw, “and this is going to seem a stupid question. Do you get soft fruit up here at all?”
“Is it because of the war?” added Baz.
The shopkeeper bellowed with laughter.
“You are from the south?  It is very different here.”
“Fidub.”
“I think Fidubi do not shop.  They pluck the peaches from the trees.”
“Bit like that,” said Paw.
“I have been.  When I was younger, merchant fleet.” We didn’t think of the sea.  Stupid of us.  “In season we get a little from Var-sega’  Mostly it goes to children and the Army.”
In-te-res-ting!  We didn’t have the Imperial Miltiary down as fructivores, though we have heard that for a lot of the lads the Army is the first decent meal they’ve had.
“Of course!” said Baz.  “Guess it’s apples or apples.  Don’t mean to be rude, but where do the oranges come from?”
“Harn.”
The sea, the sea!  Think hard about that one, wonder what else comes from Harn and it’s not necessarily edible.
“Could we have six apples and an orange, please.”
The shopkeeper gestured to them to help themselves. Not worried about transferring bugs.  Probably too bloody cold.
They arrived back at the double doors, where a small crowd was assembled, through which weaved their way a larger number of people coming in.  It had started to snow.  Women with shopping-trolleys were on their phones.  Can you come and collect me, guessed Baz.  It can’t do this!  It’s spring!  OK, the total Van-senok experience.  Snow-cats!  It’s not far to the inn. 
So. This – is – snow. It’d be all right if the polar blast wasn’t lashing it into their faces.
“Brrr!” said Baz.  “Afternoon!  Would you have two rooms for two nights, please.”
“Good afternoon to you!” said the receptionist.  “Will that be with dinner?”
“Yes, please,” said Paw.
They filled in the register.
“Wow!” she said, “Fidub!  I’ll need to see your passports.”  She sounded very apologetic about it.
They reached in their jackets and produced the circular, apple-green (yes, well, they stand out) passports of the Republic of Fidub.  Even Fidubi think the circles on the cover are weird, pretty, but weird: top left, off-centre and bottom right are embossed concentric silver circles.  She flipped through their passports.  All PANTHER passports have diplomatic stamps.  If she noticed, she didn’t say anything.
“Would there be lunch?” asked Paw, yoghurt desserts abandoned at the prospect of hot food. 
“Need to go to the bar for that,” she said.  “Plenty of time yet, finish lunches at half-two.  Show you to your rooms.”
The rooms were about the width of three beds and little longer with low ceilings and ye olde beams that were probably real.  They were also warm.  They sat on Baz’ bed.  Paw tore a hunk off the loaf. 
“No trace,” said Baz.
“How can you tell!” said Paw.
Whatever they saw and heard would get back to Sarat.  They assumed Sardun would track them out of an intelligent curiosity as to what that would be.  They also assumed that, this near to both House and Camp, anyone and possibly everyone could be Sardun.  Swaddled in fur and padding, senoki were not easy to tell apart. Since they enjoyed the thought of Saban being regaled by their interest in agriculture, they didn’t bother to get serious about whether they were being followed.
“Thought-experiment.  If Marula had been wandering around the mall, could you tell.”
“Rich, poor,” said Baz, “all swaddled under padding and fur.  Fur might be better quality!”
“We can assume no-one’s perishing of hypothermia in Da-conan.  Vaconik might be different.”
“Clean Air Act,” said Baz.  “I mean let’s assume everyone’s got a grate.  Every house here is going to have been built with a grate.  Modern housing maybe not.”
“Ciletij has masses of coal,” said Paw.  “No way anyone’s flying in coal.”
“Non-perishable.  Rail?”
They decided to stick to plain food, not because they weren’t adventurous but because there was no disguising what it was. After looking at the menu, they realized this was just as well because plain food was all there was.   Baz had a steak in a huge roll with fried onions on the side and Paw had tench and potatoes with mint and butter.
“Guzzling,” said Baz between mouthfuls.
“So fresh it’s wriggling,” said Paw.
“Don’t do gourmet specialties.”
“Bar lunch.  Maybe at dinner.”
Dinner indeed proved more exacting.  There was a choice of four main courses, one was grilled pork, one was fried shark, and the other two were written in irturbi. 
“Do a few things well?  This must be where the locals come when they want to dine out.”
“And the plain stuff is for aliens?”
“Really sorry,” said Baz, “we’d love to try something new, but what is it?”
“Moose.  It is a stew.”
“I’ll have that please.  Do you eat it with potatoes?”
“Bread.”
“Whatever’s usual, please.”
“I’ll have the shark please,” said Paw.
After they’d completed their order, Baz said, “That didn’t swim in any local river!”
“That’s the interesting bit,” said Paw.
Baz’ phone gave a small meow to indicate he had mail.
Taja to Baz:  What the pluperfect iridescent 3D quintessential hell are you two doing?  The vid is all over the Army!
Baz: Don’t exaggerate.  I gave Saban the distribution list.  WYSIWYG. 
Taja: That at least is true!  Where are you?
Baz: Da-conan. A Delightful Town In the Middle of Van-Senok.  Would be if it wasn’t brass monkeys.  We are hardy.  We are valiant.  We have been out in SNOW.  Doing a little recce-ing. 
Meow.
People around looked up once more.  I think Vibrate mode.  Did not expect to be in demand.
Cho to Baz: Excellent.  Double brownie points with crossed paws.
Baz: Get Deelan [Cho’s cook] to cook you up some figisi-jahsonan. It’s really yummy. If she can get the ingredients, which I doubt.
Cho: ROTFLMAO.  You are at the camp?
Baz: Doing good by stealth.  Looking at the local shops, seeing what’s available to eat round here.  I’m just working out how to break it to Sarat.  Fresh fruit, not a lot of.  Make that soft fruit nil.
Cho: I’m sure he will survive.
Baz: Lots of veggies.  Get their vits.
Five trains a day run from Vaconik to Ge’at in Var-sega’, a journey of thirteen hours.  The train stopped at This Halt and That Junction only if required.  Seems sensible, don’t suppose the numbers hold it up.  Oh right, think I get it, leave work in Vaconik, pick up your backpack, catch the 19.32 and you’re in Ge’at at a reasonable time to get some work done.  Sounds less aggro than flying.  Do it in reverse but who uses it the rest of the time?  From Da-Conan to Vaconik, the journey is three hours and 22 minutes according to the timetable.  Clearly not for commuters, then.    What do people go to Vaconik for, a day in the city, must be museums, theatres, big shops of course.  All the same, seven hours travelling.  S’pose you can sleep. The last train back to Da-conan was at a highly respectable 23.20.  Go to the theatre, if you want to get home at 3 in the morning.  Maybe not something to do all that often.  Paw differentiated firmly between 3 in the morning in a bloody blizzard when it was probably -200 and 3 in the morning on the Leolisle.  When they arrived at the station for the 8.47 they thought there’d be maybe half a dozen other travellers.  More like 20, 25.   Even Baz can’t walk up to total strangers and demand their purposes. After all, he didn’t have a clipboard.  Just doing a survey… Added to the list of find out more about.  The train was warm and comfortable with a buffet car in which they sat and watched Van-senok speed by.  At last the trees thinned out and gave way to heath, and then the beginnings of a built-up area, at first sparse, then modern housing, builders’ merchants, hoardings, a park, a playing-field.  Vaconik Central possessed what they ticked off as attributes of main-line stations, restaurants, a grand hotel, cash machines, a pharmacy, a newsagent and stationer’s, a coffee-shop, a food-store and senoki and presumably also some segani quietly availed themselves of these facilities.  Buzz, it did not.  Frivolity, such as art, music, entertainers, was absent.  Well, they are at war.  Paw gazed at the departures board and thought somewhere underneath this is wow!  Down to Wintawa, up and round to G-T, reach the whole continent.  Then they go to Vasucula and Vasuculi arrive.  A quick look round espied no obvious Vasuculat.  Train came in some time ago?   Central it certainly was and within minutes they were in Gava-san, the hub, a broad and ancient highway, still cobbled, closed to traffic, down which they slowly ambled.  Again, ‘everything’ was there, movie-houses, theatres, department stores, a music-shop or perhaps more exactly a shop for musicians, for it was huge, a department store in its own right, and, unusually, appeared to sell everything from grand pianos and exquisite violins to the latest drum-kits, synthesizers and amps.  Hip young men with green hair argued vociferously about guitar strings, but it didn’t break the tone, the mood of the place, which Baz thought decidedly subdued.  They wandered into a network of alleys and found ‘usual shops for alleys’, specialist book-sellers,   jeweller’s, shops selling items of the ilk of incense-burners, floor cushions, rugs, tapestries, scented candles and cheap sets of bowls and cutlery, which Paw designated ‘furnish your student lodgings shops’ together with grocery-stores and a bicycle-shop.  They must, they thought, be very near the Collegium: ‘usual shops for student quarter’.  We cannot have come this far and not see the ocean.  Their alley ended in a large plaza.  Oh.
              “The Shrine,” said Paw softly.
              “Maybe they don’t call it that,” said Baz cautiously, suddenly feeling totally ignorant of earthpower.
              “Old, old, old,” said Paw, “maybe as old as M-P.”
              It looked like but of course couldn’t have been a single block of marbled grey stone the length of the plaza, two storeys, two rows of round windows, a steep over-hanging roof, the edge of which was carved with leaves and flowers.  In the centre, the door, nearly the height of the building, had carved in it a silver birch and two women, one in armour bearing a sword and one with a bow.  Gaurding the door were two stone bears.
              Hasty consultation of phones.
              ‘The Viledeen is the oldest building on the continent still in use today.  The foundations were laid in 6700.’ 
              ‘The Ladies, as they are called, were once believed goddesses, one of the fight and the other of the word.’
              ‘The inscription at the foot of the door reads ‘Enter, who can.’  The meaning of this has long puzzled historians and archaeologists.’  Baz frowned.  ‘Perhaps ironically, the Great Door is now kept sealed.  Entrance is at the side.’
              “There’s a side-door on the left.”
              The side-door led through a long  passage to a (warm, covered) courtyard with noticeboards on the walls, benches and a single large slatted wooden doors with great black hinges opposite the Great Door. A couple wrapped round each other consulted their phones.  There was no centre-piece.  A tree before it got warm and covered? Can’t believe they’d have felled a tree! 
              The two rows of windows on each side lit the grey chamber.  They saw the roof was supported by pillars.  The walls were intricately carved, with trees, with flowers, with bears, with wolves, with stranger things, fantastic creatures, half-stag half-man, giants with many heads. Fragments of paint remained. There were inscriptions but in irturbi, so they didn’t understand.  There were thick dark green carpet (added? replaced?) and benches cut into the walls on which were thick dark green velvet cushions (added? replaced?)
              What, thought Baz, do you do here, what did people do?  He liked the absence of any plaques, sign-posts, translations, it made it current, not just a museum-piece, but they clearly didn’t expect strangers.  Right now, any way.  He thought that before the war Vaconik had probably enjoyed a steady stream of travellers if not tourists eager to partake of their ancient culture and doubtless knowledgeable about it. 
              It must have had some rites and rituals.  Mel would know.  There’s no centre, no centre-piece, focus.  It is the centre-piece.  You’re ye ancient trader, come in out of the forest with your skins or meat or whatever and this is the meaning of Van-senok.  What is? 
If you have the forest, you don’t need pictures of the forest.  Go back, back, back, impossibly far back.  What else was here in 6700? Probably nothing. It would have stood majestic, alone.  Don’t understand.  People who worship goddesses don’t do it sitting on benches.  Then he wondered if he did.  A house for them? Of course it was all painted.  Must be a reconstruction on the Grid. No furniture?
              Paw had already let go.  Time loosened not slipping.  Shadows of the past.  Green, green, their robes were forest green and they had flowers in their hair.  Then death, blood, such violence, pain, then tiny flowers, everywhere, the walls, the ceiling, a carpet, a canape of tiny red flowers
              Something happened, he said rather feebly.
              I know, said Baz. Not human…
              The violence was that of animals, grizzlies ripping and tearing, wolves devouring still living flesh.  And trees drinking blood.
              They had a zoo here?  Trees in zoos don’t drink blood. People were sacrificed to wild animals?  Not unheard of but the venue, no, the venue does not mesh with that. 
              At the First Turn, the pain, blood, death were gone.  I think I see, do I see, an attempt to conquer, an enemy repelled, the enemy? Now the carvings on the walls were all of trees and flowers, great trees, small trees, trees of fantastic size and shape, leaves and branches in spirals, leaves climbing up the walls, leaves in circlets as no leaves ever grew.  For a moment he saw it as it was, a magic forest of brown and green and gold. 
At the Second turn they are in what was probably a starry vault, painted, painted, remember it was painted.  Stars, constellations, spheres, sun and moon are carved into walls. Look up! hissed Paw. The ceiling gave the illusion of open sky, all grey but distinctly full of cloud in more shades of grey than they had thought existed.  
At the Third Turn they are in the sea, fish, crustacea, seaweed, crashing waves, and great ice-floes, seals, polar bears.  Totally amazing.  Why has my sadly limited Fidubi education not told me about the Viledeen.
The woman with the bow came to meet them.  Baz smiled, suddenly feeling he understood everything about earthpower, everything, nothing, it didn’t matter, all he needed to know.
              But of course there was no-one there.
              “I think,” said Baz. A succession of wild thoughts came to him.  Sarat must come.  He must meet her.  Narulis met her.  That explains everything.
              They emerged shaken back into the courtyard. For a while they just sat.  Whew! 
              They padded off to see what lay behind the Viledeen and followed the path round.  You can walk all the way round the outside too.  Does that mean anything to you?  At the back was cluster of single-storey buildings also of grey stone.  Clearly it was thought fitting modernity impinge on them for covered walkways linked them and there were signs directing you to conference rooms and café.  They made a beeline for the caff. The furnishings included the sort of hyper-hip chairs that don’t have individual legs, instead consist of a curved metal frame that is three sides of a rectangle.  A poster covered in diamonds in various shades of pink, red and purple, against which some rock hero unknown to them strutted his stuff was entirely in irturbi.
              They sipped coffee thoughtful.
              “An eye-opener,” said Baz.
              “Broadening of perspective,” said Paw.
He consulted a map of Vaconik, then brooded over a larger map of the coast.  “So the port is there but we’re well inland.  Flooding?”
              Baz said: “Funny.  Earthpower.  Has to include water!  I was thinking – did Narulis represent the sea?  Like the two halves of the Whole.  Can we get a bus?”
              “Oh, this is mega,” said Paw.  “The Cult marched in from the sea and headed for the Viledeen.  Vaconikans or whatever the word is apparently sat back polishing their nails and having another coffee.  The Cult had – like a totem, the IoD, they carried before them. 
After a while senoki wandered in to remove the corpses, all of which if not stricken by arrows – as well as being stricken by arrows – bore the marks of wild beasts.  History of course tells it as an ambush, hidden archers, couple of tame bears.  The totem was smashed and covered with tiny red flowers.
              “I have just had the Viledeen Experience,” said Baz.  “At this moment I’d believe anything.  Whether I do believe anything – does it say anything about her?”
              Paw was grinning.
              “Don’t laugh.  The general belief is she was a construction-worker.”
              “Say that again slowly.”
“Yes, she looks as the goddess was depicted, but the goddess was depicted as an upper-class senoki huntress.  They even have a name for her, Mivalia za-plenit, It seems she was killed in an accident on the site, as happens on the best regulated building-sites. And some people see her ghost.”
“I want,” said Baz, “to say that was no ghost!  However, my experience of ghosts is zero, so what do I know!”
“This is interesting.  Apparently the people who built it were all exiles, rebels, whose concept of earthpower was more sophisticated than that current at the time.”
“If there’s one thing for sure,” said Baz, “this place does not function on the level tree not like fire.”
Consultation with the girl behind the counter revealed a bus linking Vaconik to the next town on the coast, more of a suburb really.  Of course it’s really nice in the summer.  Nothing going on there right now.
              The bus-driver said cheerfully that he stopped on the promenade.  He did.  Baz and Paw pulled their hats down to their eyelashes and their scarves up to the tops of their noses and leant against the railings of the sea-wall watching a malevolent dark-grey ocean batter the shore and smash onto ancient groynes.
              Visibilty was good and far on the horizon were frigates.  Makes you think, doesn’t it, said Baz.  Coastal security, must be a freaking nightmare.  Anyone could slip ashore.  Don’t really think about the Fleet, admitted Paw.  A particularly vicious gust assailed them.  Don’t think we need to linger.  Behind them shops and cafes were heavily boarded up and battered hoardings gave glimpses of another world, half a smiling brown child wearing water-wings.  A quick circuit of Hinsinil told them its core was another Da-conan, neat grey stone houses, with modern bungalows on the outskirts.  Guess you don’t build high. Baz continued to mutter about the antithesis between sea and land.  I mean, sea is basically lethal.  You can’t drink it, you can’t water your pot-plants.  There’s something there and I’m missing it.  Paw pulled up pictures of Hinsinil in the season, unrecognizable, a fun fair with a roundabout with highly painted horses, families on the beach in swim-gear, the shops along the promenade adorned with tubs of shrimp-nets and flip-flops.  
              “There’s a documentary I saw once about the tundra.  How it comes alive in summer, covered in flowers.  I think it’s all like that.”
              Baz grinned.
              “Senoki?  They’re little green shoots just below the surface.”
              “It really throws us, doesn’t it, no street-life.”
              “Commuter-land, either working or at school.”
              Two men passed them, accompanied by large, thickly furred and very lupine-looking pooches.
              “hmm.  Nice fluffy pet for the kids.”
              “Cross-breeds?”
              “Dunno how it works.  If you let your bitch in season into the wilds, does she saunter back in an orgasmic glow?”
              “Is there abortion for dogs?  I mean seriously.  Do you sincerely want a litter of wolf-cubs?”
              “A few tame semi-wolves.  In the Viledeen?”
              Baz was chortling to himself.
              “Just thinking, vet up here, maybe Sarat just needed something a bit more dangerous.”
              “Steel gauntlets to talk to your patients?”
              “Bet you anything they’re fish fans,” said Baz.  Paw’s face said yer what? “Tropical aquaria, exotic jewel fins darting about the room.  Or else they like everything grey.”
              “Tundra,” said Paw again.
              A large square van decorated with pictures of baskets of veg and bread, smiling cows presiding over pitchers of milk, a cheeseboard with crackers slowly passed them.
              “Bet you that’s home-delivery.  They just don’t have to go out.”
“What about exercise?  Can’t have pools in the basement, can they?”
“I run.  You run.  I just do not have the urge.”
Baz slowly lowered his scarf.
“Mainly cos I feel the air would be ripped from my lungs.”
“They must get used to it.  Be used to it.  Think if you grew up here.”
They returned to the  train-station.
              “We could go all the way down to Wintawa.”
              “Recline in the sun-soaked lagoons of the archipelago.”
              “It’s the job,” said Paw sorrowfully.
              “How do we get from this Ge’at to the House?”
They returned to Da-conan for the night, resolved upon a day of wandering around (if it didn’t snow again) followed by the 17.09, which, they noted, had the decency not to get to Ge’at until 6.40.  Did it pause for a rest, did it just dawdle?  They suspected, rightly, that the view would be mostly trees. 
Thirteen hours of train, in which to sleep, read-up, watch the changing landscape (has to change eventually)  and catch up on email. Taza had gone silent so Baz decided to wake him up.
Baz to Taja: Was Narulis ever associated with the sea, particularly in Van-senok?  Thinks: earth/sea, two halves of Whole.
Taja: Diligent cats if somewhat wayward…Yes. The prince of water.
Baz: Meaning unity?
Taja: Yes.  Fidubi are/were called the People of the Sea.
Baz: We went and saw the western ocean.  Had thoughts.
Taja: You have never seen the sea?
Baz: Not after the Viledeen.  Did Narulis meet her?
Taja: !!! Yes. You – went – Viledeen?
Baz: Bloody amazing.  Enter, who can?
Taja: I understand, he said drily, the level of experience may be different.  The Cult attempted desecration.
Baz: Read that bit, lacerated corpses.
Taja: No comment.  Have you seen the Fortress?
Baz: Eek, no.  They knew about us, then, Fidub, before Narulis, I mean.  Got this far.
Taja: Or we got that far!  Not sure egg/chicken.
Baz: ‘There are many Fidubi artefacts in the museum at Car-sandis.’  Not sure that’s the important bit.   Shit, missed the museum.  Must be on-line.
Taja: Not in Vaconik?
Baz: On a choo-choo.
OK, museums Vaconik.  The National.  Why do I think that does not mean the nation of Kadun.  The National is the preserve of Van-senok’s historic.  Baz entered ‘Fidub’ in the search-box.  Woo-hoo! Of course there would be zillions of entries, silly of me.  Narrow it down.  Sea-faring? Why would they have sea-fared?  Turn south-east and start walking.  Riding.  Probably quicker. ‘Contact with Fidub.’    ‘During the Sirenian – ‘ the what? Quick detour. 
“The Si-turnit dynasty ruled Van-senok between 5903 and 6427.  They were overthrown by Sibenis za-fenan.  Marula’s lot.  I didn’t know that!”
Paw said: “What was the grouse?”
“Hang on…Slightly weird.  ‘The Sirenians occupied – conquered is too strong a word given that these regions were almost entirely uninhabited – ‘ Conquerors would say that.  “ – much of the north of what is now Var-sega’ and the north-west of what is now Vaudos.’  What is now?”
“We’ve always known the borders shifted a lot.”
“Za-fenan’s crew saw that as a dilution of earthpower, the strength of which lay in the trees. Actually wasn’t what I.”  He flipped back.  “Oh, double yikes.”  He silently passed the phone to Paw.
“As you say….”
‘This pair of exquisite silver dolphins was a gift from Fidub to the Suzerain of Van-senok.  Fidubi sailed the length and breadth of the continent but never settled in Van-senok, as they did further south, doubtless finding the climate not to their taste.’ 
“All right, all right!”
“You do just have to wonder exactly what they made of Narulis.”
“Wonder a lot of things.  If they were gung-ho for the integrity of their borders.”
“Empire fixed the borders?”
“Fidubi settlements in Var-sega’?”
They felt a bit subdued themselves: there’s such a hell of a lot we don’t know. At least it’s all ancient history.  See how Mel’s Place is doing.
 
BAZ: One or two.  There are four of them, right.  Between them, they turned that house into a zoo.  Essa, that’s Sarat’s dad, said fine, you’re the keepers.  How that house works is really pretty much the same as the hill. Run by cubs responsible for supplies. If in normal usage by sensible people they ran out of loo paper then cubs had to zip to the Megamart. Since we only train people who can count, that did not happen.  Sarat used the entire stock of kitchen roll looking after rabbits with the squits and he and his mate Petrush had to do the zipping.  Of course Tar only has the two of them.  Essa had four and then Mel and Hass in the summer and all their little friends. When they were all little it was simply nice family meals.  Then they got sick with adolescence, fridge-raiders.  Essa put his foot down pdq. They were capable of going to shops.  They could order on-line.  They could fend for themselves. They were given own larder and fridge and told to sort it.  And bloody well clean up after themselves. Sarat and Hass had a NoZone meeting to go to.  Sarat was talking. He’s good at that.  Somehow they just didn’t have time.  They did pile everything up as a sort of concessionary gesture.  You know how kids do.  That’ll be all right…Essa and Baya were entertaining unexpectedly. They did not appreciate the state of their kitchen.  Sarat got a right bollocking when he got back.  You have a phone.  You are capable of utterance.  He was still bleeding next morning.  Got him a plaster.
ME: Think a lot of people see this as Army too, meaning men.  A few ladies here doesn’t change that.
HASS: The fate of the skagga appears to have passed to me.  Whether I am able to bear that terrible burden is another matter.  The skagga’s basic problem in life is that it’s so stupid it bears its young in open land, where they promptly get eaten.
CANTILIP: I started to type the same with us, of course.  We in Van-senok do not bear our young in open land where they promptly get eaten  Where are supposed to be jet-setting to!  Especially with the plague-pits of Vaudos in the way.  I have been to Dabida and Fidub a couple of times, but what an appalling journey.  As it happens I did it by scheduled flights.  Can’t make it any quicker.  In the City of course there’s now a price on our heads.  Mummy’s put a fortune into Sardun.  I have to say what by most people’s standards is a fortune remains, largely I think for the reason given by Hass.  We don’t bloody spend it.  I bought a new sofa last month and indeed it was an extremely expensive sofa but conspicuous consumption is notably not my scene.
SEANI: Baz and Paw of course are Sarat’s cats.  Been with him for ever.
Fishing, Seani, fishing.
GALLIA:  Sorry, think I’ve been thick here.
BAZ:  Just conceivable there are naughty people in Azt who think the world would be better without a dynamic media-savvy radical doesn’t give a fart about dumbfuck crap Anile heir who happens to look like a movie-star.
Huge numbers of splutters of laughter off-line. 
SEANI:  That could well be.  Indeed that is the Sarat we all know and love.  But the skagga!  The ozone layer!  These appear gravely neglected of late.
AGOU: We have to confess our curiosity is piqued.  May we ask what kind of ‘dumbfuck crap’?
QINE: No servants?  I find that hard to believe, though as I say I have comrades in Zur who back it up..
MEL: Cubs, colts, trainees, as said.  Who had no hesitation in telling us to take a running jump if we got stupid.  And ahem the sheepdog, the business about public versus private.  Official/unofficial.  If it’s official, colts help out wait at table and we just have to hope they don’t spill the soup.
HASS: I think self-starting is the jargon.  The point is to make us fully functioning human beings, not dependent.  A sort of cosy basic training making damn’ sure we know how the world of ordinary people works and can function in it. Clothes have to be laundered.  Dishes have to be washed. 
Varulin choked with laughter.  My mum used to say but he didn’t post exactly what his mum used to say because Hass is gay.  His mum used to say there are no flipping kitchen-fairies.
AKADUNNCO.  Sounds to me like you lads were brought up proper.  My mum used to say there’s no kitchen-elves, no litte elves magicking the dishes.
YMOU: I think any parent who has experienced those suffering from the appalling disease of adolescence knows there are no elves of any kind, kitchen, bedroom, sitting-room.
VARNA: So Sarat can do the washing-up with the best of them.  Take out the trash, give the place a good spring-clean.
 
Now Varna don’t be naughty.  Videos travel fast.
 
BAZ:  If you want to be literal, he can fill and empty a dish-washer.
 
They were roused at 3 by soldiers whose apparent demeanour was we’re sure everyone’s a good guy, but we do just check: you are now entering Var-sega’ you are from where and your business here is what? They had decided that, if anyone asked, the best story was the closest to the truth: seems to us we can dawdle  south. Had business in Van-senok and a couple of days free, never been this far west before, thought we’d dawdle back south, look around, change at Ge’at.  Their pretty little passports were handed back to them with a smile.  OK, you don’t arrive in Ge’at raring to go after an uninterrupted night’s sleep.  Guess you get used to it, grunt and go back to sleep.  Waaa! said Baz as they passed through sheer snowy peaks illuminated by the light from the train.  Shit, we must be going straight through the middle of the Lausanine.  Total freaking awe, said Baz after a while.  As they emerged into rolling and occasionally steep grassland, the sun began to rise. This soon gave way to the less prepossessing outskirts of Ge’at.
“Industrial,” said Baz.
“Leave it to the heavy mob,” said Paw.  “Fidubi citizens arrested trying to gatecrash factory!” 
“‘We were just trying to take a quick look at the conditions for Sarat,’ said Paw, 43.”
“This looks the kind of place Mitch was talking about.  If you stray to where the workers live.”
They found a page reviling conditions in Ge’at’s slums, but it didn’t say where they are in relation to the town-centre.  It did, however, name a street: Finskit Lane.  They found it on the map.
              “Car-hire time, I think.”
              There was an Information Centre at Ge’at Station.  Paw picked up a random selection of leaflets.
              It was not possible to hire a car. Take a taxi, she suggested, rank just outside.
              “Bicycles?” suggested Paw.  “We’re strangers. Just want to look around town.”
              She seemed to think that was a rather suspicious thing to do, but admitted you could hire bikes.  Bosen’s Cycles, just round the block.
              “What,” asked Paw outside, “does that tell you about the average income of the arriver?”
              “Hmm. 
              They chose a route and cautiously set off.  Heavy traffic did not appear to be one of Ge’at’s problems and soon they were free-wheeling through a residential though not impoverished area.  It began to get run down.  The houses were less cared for; everything was less cared-for.  Pieces of old newspapers flapped in the gutters.  There was a smell of drains.  Sacks of garbage and miscellaneous domestic detritus, an old bedstead, lined the pavements.  They passed the high brick wall topped with barbed wire of a factory.  Yeah, we’re really going to get in there.  A banner along the wall proclaimed it VInin Associates – Plastics.  Round the next corner boys were kicking a ball around in the street. 
“Look where you’re bleeding going,” they shouted.
“Mind where you’re bleeding kicking,” retorted Baz.
He thought the ball was aimed at them but they had whizzed out of reach.
They had passed a girl of about 12 or 13 with a sacking shopping-bag who did not look warm, but since middle-aged men surround a young girl and demand what she’s wearing only if they’re very serious indeed about getting arrested if not beaten to a pulp by the throng summoned by her screams they hadn’t stopped or even slowed.  They would have liked to try out the Three Turnips, which offered food, but reckoned the risk of getting their bikes nicked too great.  Got to be some kind of grocery store around here, one of us can stay outside with the steeds.  Another factory, this time garment-manufacture, an ironmonger’s, some of his wares displayed in boxes on the pavement.  Since he stood in the doorway to make sure they didn’t steal anything, Paw took the initiative and said he was just window-shopping, what he really wanted was a spanner for the bike.  The man scrutinized the wing-nuts and said he had just the job.  Paw followed him in observed all that enabled this quarter of Ge’at to continue functioning: meticulously labelled drawers and boxes of every size of screw, nail, drill-heads, paintbrush, shiny pots of paint, though you could only have black or white, rollers, paint-trays, turps, pliers, hammers, screwdrivers, chemicals to unblock sinks and drains, paraffin stoves, ladders, and nor was this all for in a small yard behind the shop was a small amount of timber: window-frames and doors and some planks labelled SHELVES CUT TO SIZE.  Baz asked if there was store nearby, maybe get a bit of bread and cheese.  They could get a loaf and a decent bit of Canardan at Bentifil’s.  If they’d a mind for something hot, get a good pie at Creggie’s.  The dread question: not from round here of course.They had not been able to think of a good excuse for being in Ge’at, one that would check out, so had settled for something like the truth.  Had some business in Van-senok.  Never been that far west before.  Thought we’d take the opportunity.  Ge’at’s where the train comes so we came here.  Better places to see, he said, you want to go south, Miranavit, train’ll take you. 
They pedalled on and came to Creggie’s.  There was a large red and white sign in the window.  NO RAT.  BEST BEEF ONLY with a picture of a bull with a ring through his nose.  Ah-ooh.  Paw discreetly took a pic while pretending to fiddle with holding the bikes.
Baz emerged with in one hand two  paper bags, one containing two steaming square meat pies and one he held up proclaiming, “Chundil, local food, gotta try it. Veggie pie, leek, carrot, tomato, turnip, onion.” In the other hand were four sheets of kitchen roll which were apparently paper napkins in Ge’at and two plastic forks  They thought they’d eat away from Creggie’s watchful gaze; Paw had located a patch of green on the map. 
              Baz carefully lifted the lid off his meat pie, and grinned.  He pinioned a cube of meat, chewed for a moment, and grinned more.  “Got it.  It’s good meat.  There’s just not a lot of it. Four small cubes in mine.  Need spoons for the gravy.”
              They finished eating.
              “So far,” Paw pronounced, “as bang for your buck goes, the chundil has it by a direnta.  Bulging.  But if you want to think you’ve eaten a meat meal I recommend the pie.”
 
CARIE: Labour-saving things like dish-washers.  Course a lot of people can’t afford them.  The other thing is it doesn’t occur to the men anyone needs them.  Got a dish-washer, haven’t they, two-legged one.
VARIOUS:   Owwwwww!
Qine to Carie: Think that was a direct hit.
Carie:  Might just get the hang of this.
GALLIA: Would you say that applies to just about everything, vacuums, washing-machines.
CARIE: Yeah.  Yes.  And of course it’s all women’s work.  Lads say, oh we do the heavy stuff, like you need real muscle to fix a plug.  Nothing light about wet sheets.
QINE: Something else too, and I think this applies to rich and poor alike.  What was said about Sarat, had something on.  I would think there are many families in Kadun, the lad has summat  to do, naturally the lasses prop him up.  If he’s rich, it’s servants.  If he’s poor, it’s his mum and his sisters.  What women are for, supporting men.
Carie: Not so bad yourself.
GALLIA: So would you say it’s how boys are brought up, to just assume they’re more important?
AKADUNNCO: Not making excuses for anyone but I think there’s stuff here not quite what it looks like.  My lass, she’s 14 and right bright.  She wants to get on and I want her to get on.  There’s a phrase she got off the Grid, she says to me, Dad I know there’s a glass ceiling.  But it’s more than that.  Too young to understand.  Says her teachers are holding her back.  We do keep our girls down, there’s no denying.  Course some of it’s just prejudice.  Point is, where we are, lass gets anywhere near the top, she’s going to run into them.  Want to do politics, love?  Just run the flower-show.  We’ll do anything to protect our girls and **** what it looks like.
FRINSI: Carlin, sister of one of the guys at Vobin.  Army brats the pair of us, grew up all over, just as it was asll starting.  I really hate to say this but the Cult aren’t stupid.  They don’t spend the whole time doing horror.  What I’m trying to say is they manipulate, they play on existing prejudices.  If you’re in a group of people with certain attitudes, you don’t push it, you don’t argue, because you don’t know.
KARULA: I think that is a real important point.  I was taught from an early age, you do not speak freely to people you do not know and trust.
FRINSI: I think there are two things.  It makes for silent women, but also – don’t know what the word is exactly.  Cliques.  As opposed to CLIKS!  Same thing really.  Small groups of people talking together, no open dialogue.
SORVAN:  Army, bloody Tjulsit.  Again, not making excuses for garbage but what he does about the house, it is more important than what she does when it keeps the flipping place standing.  Unsafe housing, spot on, and what makes it possible to live in the bloody place, the work the lads do.  Tell you one example I know, windows were totally warped.  Would she rather lift wet sheets or have a nice icy blast roaring in on their kids?
SIMUL: Of course this array of spoiled striplings of the privileged classes can hardly be expected to understand that.  Really what filthy nonsense this all is.  No-one would deny the existence of poverty in Kadun.  Naturally we do our utmost to alleviate it.
SORVAN: Poor people haven’t noticed.  Funny, that.
MITCH: Who is ‘we’ in your post?
SIMUL: We the solid phalanx of the middle-classes, the backbone of Kadun, who actually work for a living.  I myself am a tutor at the Grindalsat Collegium.
MITCH:  And you do what to alleviate poverty?
SIMUL: I teach the children of the working-classes mathematics.  My partner organizes trips for them to the countryside.
MITCH: Honourable pursuits.
SIMUL: That is not the point.  You, my lord Var-sega’, what do you do?
At little hard to say just at this second. 
MITCH: At this moment I freely avow little beyond sit at a keyboard.  However, I have described the work I have been doing and it is my contention, or I should not have undertaken the job, that that work was vital to laying the foundations for a future Kadun.  With due respect to the work of you and your partner, I contend also that vital to individual lives as work such as yours is, an entire overall of society is required to nail the problem at its root.  I think I may say that many others beside you have attempted piecemeal solutions, the unions, my family indeed (my grandfather set up many hospitals) but I thnk we can agree that to make people better is inadequate if they return to cold, damp and dangerous housing.
SIMUL: That at least sounds honest, if somewhat deluded.  How can such a overall change be effected?  You envisage the working-classes rising in revolt perhaps!  Have you ever met a working-class person?
MITCH: Yes.  Several.  They tore my balls off when I was 17, resulting in my current politics.
SIMUL: That sounds extremely honest!
MITCH: I was taken to slums.  The residents refused to believe my father could do nothing.  The reason he could and can do nothing is the sacred right of property.  I think we may agree that certain laws are a joke, in any case toothless, but when upheld upheld against for example the sole proprietor, the samal man.  The big fish are never touched.
ASDINAN: My cousin Mardis ran a soup-kitchen in Azt.  I think we might also be talking about degrees of poverty.  Perhaps the conditions wherever you are yes, bad, but nowhere approaching the horrors of the slums of Azt.  And pretty much what Mitch said.  Mard saw right from the start, no point in yelping, you just get squashed.
SIMUL: Perhaps indeed I have been too quick to judge.  That indeed was also an honourable pursuit!  But you plan communalist revolution? A little hard to think of you destroying the rights of property, though of course undoubtedly there are abuses.
Either this is completely innocent or very clever.  Keep those ears flapping.
MITCH: I think we must differentiate between communalism and common decency.  I do not think any landlord in the south upholds the right to let property evidently unfit for habitation.
SIMUL: I see something here about a ‘Law of Limited Returns’.  That is perhaps not communalism, but I do not see Var-sega’ or Carlin surrendering their tenants.
ASDINAN: That goes back to what Mitch said about the sacred rights of property.  So long as Saryulin and people who think like us own the land  and refuse to sell, no - covert inroads can be made into Carlin.  It’s too too easy to think of fronts for the Cult sliming in, buying up piecemeal, before we know it, it’s an infestation.    As I understand it, sure Mitch will correct me, the difference in Var-sega’, why they’ve got slums in places like Tjulsit, we never got urbanized, industrialized like they did.  Don’t think even Car-sandis quite counts as a city.  Niyian, Gatrenol, Tecisan, they’re bustling commercial centres, but Carlin historically a) didn’t need heavy industry because of its proximity to the Azt region and b) was too busy feeding the rest of Kadun to bother. 
MITCH: Ah, the lush green pstures of Carlin!  As a matter of pure geography of course, only the lowlands stretching down to the Archipelago are fertile lands.  Much of us is mountainous or merely hilly and of course used for grazing.
SIMUL: All very interesting.  May I ask what in the current situation happens to Carlin’s produce?
ASDINAN:  That’s a fun one.  Increased trade with Dabida and Fidub. They say we’re revolutionizing the Fidubi diet.  AMI acting as middleman.  They can or freeze it and export it to Var-sega’ and Van-senok.  The surplus we dump gratis on Vaudos.  Serious, we will not be compromised by taking Cult money, but we odn’t actually want vaudosi to starve, so the squished, the curling, the yellow at the edges we dump in the plague-pits, if only to fee the cattle.  Of course Vaudos has plenty of fertile land of its own.
SIMUL: So if Carlin merely burned her surplus, Vaudos would be the worse for it.
SITSIN: That seems to me clever.  I mean if the farmer were all owners they’d have to take money.
SIMUL: Strangely it strikes me as not dissimilar to communalism: instead of the State owning the produce of the land, the San-yaega-bahts do.
CANTILIP:         Aaaaargh!  No, no, no!  Some of us call it the Fidubi scam.  The Cult landed on our west coast.  We failed to push them back into the sea.  We drove them east.  Perhaps I should fill in a few gaps.  Narulis did not arrive in Carlin to find irturbi passive under the heel of tyranny!  He arrived to find Kadun in a state of war.  His general position appears to have been is this a private war or can anyone join in.  The armies of west and east met broadly in the middle.
ASDINAN: That’s the broad picture.  To colour it in a bit, it’s more that all hell was breaking out in the west/ - literally - and rumour reached us in Carlin, people fleeing east to escape ye foe.  The second time it was because the Anile Court turned rotten.  This current infestation is more complicated.  There are three strands.  Industrialization and a poorly educated and plain poor population of workers to prey on.  Technology, spreading the word.  Behind both: apparently limitless capital from the banks in the City.  They snare people.  With sex, with drugs, with the promise of power for the powerless.  I know someone who answered some grubby little ad pretending to be a working-class guy.  He doesn’t know if it was Cult or not, being wise enough to get out before he found out, but it was all there, women at your disposal, promises of wealth and power. 
NONTIA-LI:  Hi guys, I’m Vasuculi, heard this was worth a look and wow, what do I find!  I’m reckoning if anyone can answer my question it’s you guys.  Why is Kadun susceptible to the Cult.  With all due respect, it seems to me there must be a vulnerability in this earthpower.  It doesn’t take any great knowledge of human nature to know that if people do not fight the bad guys take over but it has been emphatically stated earthpower is not pacifist.
CANTILIP:  The doctrines of the Cult are a foul inversion of earthpower.  Earthpower holds everything is in some sense alive, has energy, the Cult holds everything is in some sense dead, is inert, or if it isn’t now it will be.  Death is the one true reality of existence.  All life is to be lived in fear of death and if you’re not afraid of death the Cult will rectify that.  The torments they inflict in life will be yours to enjoy for eternity.  The relationship between that and inertia is not immediately apparent: what is inert is you.  You have no will, no choice, no hope.  Certainly earthpower is non-aggressive: we do not seek war.  Certainly it is not pacifist.  What one may call the vulnerability lies in the doctrine of being.  In earthpower, people simply are, at one with the universe.  This loss of self is perverted by the Cult into submission to its will, deemed co-terminous with the reality of the universe. 
NONTIA-LI: I thank you.  I am learning so much!  But how can any sane person believe you spend life after death in agony?  I personally would not be sure I believe in life after death at all, but I sure think that if I did it would be a field of flowers.
CANTILIP:  Evil grin.  What, not Va, the Silver Homeland?
NONTIA-LI: More Fidubi scam?
CANTILIP: We can be detached and academic about this or we can scream.  It’s a very simple scam.  When the empire was good it was Fidubi.  When it was evil, it was irturbi. 
MEL: And of course what the good guys in Kadun believe and think is what Fidub believes and thinks.
CANTILIP: !!!!
MEL: My innocent Dabidan mind was severely jolted by Carlin.
ASDINAN: Evillest grin.
MEL: The essence of what the Cult teaches is that people are filth. You will see that going around  merely telling people they are filth is not the most obvious way to win followers.  For that you need to refer back to what As said about sex and drugs.  By corrupting people you can get them to see themselves as filth.  By terrorizing them, you can get them to do filthy things.  Filth deserve punishment.  If I can just correct one thing Cantilip said, in the more - I use the term advisedly - diseased reaches of the adept’s brain it is possible to escape eternal pain by begging for ever greater torment.  At a certain level of self-abasement, not surprisingly ill-defined, one is released and subsumed into the Great Master.
              ASDINAN: Going back to what Cantilip said, it’s actually quite complicated, isn’t it.  Kadun sort of half thinks the opposite.  I’ll make sense in a minute!  What I’m getting at is lo our glorious empire, Narulis, symbol of the true Kadun.  Nobody thinks of Narulis as some Fidubi interloper.
              CANTILIP: Point taken!  That said, we weren’t quite so sure here in the west.  Did you know that when Narulis reached the borders of Van-senok we refused to let him in?  He carried the Flame.  Trees don’t like flames. 
             MEL: To some irturbi at least, he typed cautiously, the Fidubi belief-system was simply a particular kind of earth-power.   The archaeological evidence is fascinating.  Goes back to forever.  There’re Fidubi pottery, coins, weapons in the museum in Car-sandis and equally there’s a whole gallery in the National at M-P devoted to irturbi artefacts from the Utmost Isle.
             ASDINAN: Of course we’re sea-farers here in Carlin and Fidub meant everything to us, first landfall after the endless ocean, sign we were nearly home. 
             MEL: The lighthouse at Bela Point is said to be the oldest in the world.  That’s on the Utmost Isle.  There’s still a sort of travellers’ rest there but nowadays most major shipping goes on to the port at Famita on the Leolisle.  That’s everything from passenger liners to the Kadun Fleet.  Of course if they’re based in the west they stop off with us in Zur, in Batna-kri, in Wintawa.
             AFALIN: Wow, basically!  I mean I’m Fidubi and even I don’t quite think how old Fidub is. Here’s a pic I just found.  Isn’t that totally amazing.  Obviously it must have been renovated, electricity installed, but it doesn’t look renovated! Before electricity, they must have constantly tended fires.
             CANTILIP: You must therefore have met our Fleet.
             MEL: Sure, and the guys at Stok-chasit, Birindit and Insalta.
             ASDINAN: Mel’s been coming to Carlin since he was 10, it would be weird if he hadn’t.  The really fun bit is the Zur electoral roll.  Yes, there are Sybs, and I don’t mean my cousin Sarsh.  Half Zur must be descended from Jaizal’s army.
             CANTILIP: Var-sega’ of course has close ties with Vasucula and we with Ciletij.
              NONTIA-LI: Sure, I know many segani

There does of course remain the question that I ought to be paid for all this anyway, but that is silly: you can't be paid for defending the realm when no-one wants the realm defended, when it has been decided by the seedy sly and evil that democracy is to be abandoned.

You really should not have stripped quite so thoroughly.  Just wasn't enough for malice-ridden, vicious, narrow, psychotic inadequates to have crippled, not enough that you crawl over my body for the rest of my life, cackling at your triumph in controlling every move I make, you wanted to destroy me.  I mean, that would prove to an ape its superior intellect and capacity to write English, the capering monkey would have proved it's a more important monkey and eveyrone gotta crawl to it and obey it and do and be and say and think and read and write only what it permits, cos it's a very, very important monkey. 

Go fuck yourselves, the lot of you.

There is a saying in Carlin, Never ask them to strip.” Carlini were observed attempting to retain grave and serious demeanour.  “It derives from this.  Cartoon strip in three frames.  Two onlookers, one saying to the other ‘Never ask them to strip!” observing 1, a trio or Corsin officers, foul but magnificent in black leather.  2.  This trio apparently relaxing at the end of the day’s work about to remove helmet, jacket, boots. 3.  Legs, feet torsos disintegrating into a foul blood strained mucosal ooze forming a puddle around them.
Really, Ardeshna, is it the leathers, is it the shouting?  They’re stripped.  All that remains are puddles of foul poisonous acidic ooze.
 
The cartoonist at Purple Prose, Zur’s gay paper definitely got something further from it: Varchulan as a snorting bull, tail raised having emitted a steaming heap.  At the other end the ring through his nose was attached to a chain attached in turn to a grinning skeleton labelled HOMOPHOBIA – SEXISM – TORTURE – MURDER – CORRUPTION.  To his amazement it instantly went viral.
 
Ah, but will it go viral?
So the next on-line edition of the Azt Star was naturally gross? Well, no, actually, more  remarkably, startlingly,  obscene, even for that collection of used toilet-paper soaked in infected vomit.  Maya in leotard split open at the crotch, the top of her thighs bare and bloodied, legs splayed, face contorted into porn star fake orgasm, caption ‘Come and get it!’
 
Baz of course got the short straw.  Sarat was chatting away.
“Sorry to interrupt.  There’s something Sarat needs – “ Wrong word but there isn’t a bloody right one.  “ – to see.  Can we just step aside a minute.”
Sarat was surprised but stepped.
“You really really aren’t going to like this.  Deep breaths.”  After a moment he said, “You’ve never really wanted to strangle before, have you.”
Sarat rang Maya then returned to the chattering throng and called for silence.
“The Azt Star has responded with a piece of pornography I shall not project.  Who the hell do they think they impress?”
Maya among Carlutan’s adoring young men, both acutely embarrassed and totally livid, said calmly, “Take it you have tailors, guys who can sew a seam.”
Run that up for you in two ticks, Miss Maya.
“I have been in Carlin 24 hours,” said Sarat, “and I haven’t yet been to the Rabbiters’.  I don’t think they can stop us laughing.”
All catapulted to their feet.
                  Sarat waved his hand.
                  “It’s cool, guys. How are we doing?”
                  “Toast to His Imperial Majesty!” said Vishtu.
                  Sarat realized this had as much to do with Smudge as with empire.
                  “It was PANTHER.  They moved like greased cats!”
                  They toasted him anyway.
                  Baz periodically checked his phone until he said, “Big fat grin.”  He passed the phone over.
                  “Maya has responded to Azt,” said Sarat.  “Can we project – wall will do.”
                  People hastily shifted themselves to clear the way.
The cammo leotard didn’t fit terribly well but it didn’t have to, fur gilet atop and combat boots at the bottom. Maya sat on a tank slightly forward of a great many other thanks.  She also wore an Army cap and cradled a machine-pistol.  Around her were an Imperial Guard of Rewn’s guys.  Legend: How to talk to men who hate women.
Whistling didn’t seem appropriate and nor did any formal response so the gathering in the Rabbiters’ burst out clapping.
Baz got a further text.  He showed it to Sarat.
Sarat smiled almost shyly and stood up.
“Duty calls.  Please do come and watch if you like.  A small ceremony.”
“Not telling,” said Baz, “but I think you’ll like it.”
“We are agog!”
A convoy of trucks, cars and bicycles meandered back to the House.  Yea, from afar was it perceived the House was floodlight.  From closer to was it perceived the drive was lined with military rigidly at attention.  What the - ?!
Sarat had grinned to himself: There can’t be any protocol of which I am dismally ignorant for this one.   I think it should be on behalf of, symbolic.
Baz got out first and had a word with the military.
Sarat got out and began to walk up the drive.  Half a dozen men tailed off and fell in behind him.
Follow, Baz judged, at a distance.  The throng obeyed.
The military band at the front of the House began to play the imperial anthem.
People said after the whole of Kadun got to its feet, an obvious exaggeration, of course, but concealing a deeper truth (wrote some newshound or other).  Thought you were a republican.  It’s not about that, it’s about Kadun.  About a mad kid with a supreme talent for telling Azt to go fuck themselves. Nonetheless and heretofore in bars and offices, barracks and factroies, streets and squares the omnipresent camera saw Kadun stop and stand.
You want Kadun’s answer? asked Airoch.  That is Kadun’s answer.
At the end of the drive was a small table covered by a black velvet cloth.  On it lay Narulis’ sword.  Behind it stood Saryulin.
“Imperial Majesty!”
“My lord of Carlin,” replied Sarat.
“My lords, my ladies, ladies and gentlemen, I present to Sarat-ban-essa-eban-Narulis, Anile Emperor, Master of Kadun, Narulis’ sword. It is our honour to serve Narulis’ heir.”
Saryulin picked up the sword by its heft and held it high, then placed it across his outstretched palms.
Sarat carefully took it.  Whether a chorus of dancing bears high-kicked across the floor of the Ciletij Senate is not recorded – I think we should be told – and nor did the sword appear to possess any alarming properties such as those associated with the throne, but Sarat said after he felt something, call it history.
He turned and laughed.
“And now, Madam Minister?”
Then he said rather quiet unSaratish things about the honour being his, unlooked-for and truly not yet deserved, things that were totally Saratish about accepting the sword on behalf of Kadun’s fighting men, and things that were also Saratish but from deep within him, things he had not thought to say in public, or at any rate not today, about the weight of history and the responsibility of representing Va, and some fiend played with the lighting and the startlingly good-looking young emperor stood silhouetted against the House, sword in hand and he is bloody Narulis.
Amida held Cho’s hand very tightly and with her other hand wiped away his tear.  She kissed his cheek. 
Sarat laughed again and made a couple of experimental swipes with the sword.
“Yes, I can see why guys liked them. If ever there was a reminder there is work to be done.”  He grinned.  “If I had a home I could hang it on the wall, but I don’t right now have a permanent residence.  The Jumesit will do fine.  I think it should hang in the camp, on the wall of the canteen.”   He laughed again and gave another swipe.  “It feels part of me, but I suspect wearing one has to be learned.”  He turned to the soldiers.  “Could you do that please, have it hung on the wall.”
On this auspicious occasion…What he wanted to say, what he had to say, welled up inside him and just this once he was a tiny bit anxious about getting it right.  Really not so good at the eso stuff,  can we talk about the drains.
“My lords, my ladies, ladies and gentlemen, once again I thank you. I think now we should party.  Is that appropriate?  Some might ask it.  I’m asking it.  On a day that has seen great horror and misery.  Yes, because that is the message of Va.  Maya said it.  They came the skull-faces, but we laughed.  Va is the music they cannot silence, the dance they cannot terminate, the laughter they cannot make haunted and afraid, the triumph of life over death, the light without shadow. That is the point, that was Narulis’ point.  Or there is no point  There is no dark. You can say it’s crazy.  You can say how very evidently real is evil.  I’m a scientist, a biologist.  I’m the first to tell you blood is real, pain is real, death is real.  But somewhere it’s still the point.  We can still live unshadowed.”  Baz cooed internally, it’s all right, you’re doing fine, everyone understands. Well, as much as anyone ever does.   Sarat would have felt well rewarded by just one irturbi saying, know what you’re trying to say, lad. Not sure if I believe it meself, but I know what you’re saying. Of course, you’re a scientist, you’re not going to be silly about this stuff. He wasn’t.  He found his thread.  “Of course we as humans can’t do anything about mortality, accident, but the shadows of hunger, of violence, of endemic disease, these can be, must be, will be destroyed.  Living in fear can be eradicated.  People age and eventually die.  That is natural.  Dying at 40 of a readily treatable disease is not natural.  It is the result of human evil.  That evil is contempt, contempt for the being of others.  And so – “ He grinned.  “ – that impeccably practical and scientific sense I’m saying this empire stands for a Kadun where there is no dark.”
Sarat still wasn’t quite sure how to terminate this oration, so yeah, let’s all go and have a drink didn’t seem quite  the right note.    He walked over to the bandmaster.  Not exactly a band-piece.  If they couldn’t do it, he’d have to find it on his phone. 
Ah, said the more reflective reaches of Kadun.  Not just a pretty face.  So that’s the point.
“Now he is Anile Emperor,” said Cho.
Baya gave a naughty laugh, knowing how deeply Sarat preferred not to talk about that kind of stuff.
“This,” said Sarat. 
The notes of a lone trumpet soared into the night, followed rapidly by drums saying leap! Dance! Vault the heavens! Girdle the earth! The flutes joined in, the delighted gurgling of a thousand streams. 
And far away in the hospital at Car-sandis, Smudge by the bedside of the unconscious Midi took out his headphones and adjusted the volume and let the music dance over her.  “There is no dark,” he said softly, “stupid, ridiculous and true. Or there is no point.”  Then he knew he had to draw the music.  On a phone?  Later, but draw it he would.
And far, far far away in a bar in Girag Mitch bubbled over and grabbed Karula by the waist and began the wild dance, which is probably what Sarat would have done if Maya had been with him. In Zur Vij was a tad more decorous about it, taking Sarshi’s hand and leading her ceremoniously into the middle of the Sa’aanda Senta.  The wild dance, you will have gathered, is performed with one’s partner.  It’s not exactly, people try to explain rather feebly, that it’s erotic, it’s that it’s alive.  It’s generally described as naked life, the act of generation, someone once remarked drily, without physical contact.  Life that will not be gainsaid. Someone once described it as like a tree pushing up through the ground, from seedling to mighty lord of the forest in ten minutes flat.  Nothing is less like a tree than a couple twirling and spinning but everyone knew what he meant.  Someone else said it’s like an electric shock.  Divaldin looked at his young men and thought, the night is ended, Kadun is alive.  Stupid, ridiculous and mad.  Or perhaps not.  We have more urgent questions than metaphysics.  Or perhaps not. 
“I understand everything,” pronounced Ritawa.  Not surprisingly, the others choked.
“We all know you’re gifted.”
“Earthpower is latent.  Of course it’s earthpower, but it’s blatant.”
Munzi grinned.
“Insolent.  I sort of know what you mean.”
“The next bit,” said Ritawa.  “Break-out!”
“I really don’t know very much,” said Inyulat, “but I’m not sure Sardun would agree.  They’re pretty blatant.”
“But that’s here in the west,” said Ritawa.  “This is what Narulis brought to Carlin, this is why.”
It just sort of gets you, said those with fewer words.
Sarat walked over to the guys on parade, thanked them and asked them if they’d like to join him in the Rabbiters’
Baz, who of course thinks of everything, quietly had Narulis’ sword returned to the House for safe-keeping over what looked like being a long night.
Midnight  came and went.    Sarat thought it was time quiet came to the village and retreated to the canteen at the camp with those around him.  No sword.  Baz explained. The guys grinned and some of them formed themselves into a sword party which would go to the House in the morning to retrieve the relic.
So this is home, is it.  It’s a lovely little hut, purred Paw, better than the Falsit by a long chalk.  Ah me, the luxuries of rank.  Sarat saw that his clothes had been unpacked and neatly hung or otherwise stored  and made a note to thank someone (they included by the way the lemon flip-flops, which now assumed the role at very least of slippers; if the weather stayed mild he would – and did – wear them outside; besides clothes, razor, comb, toothbrush he had brought almost nothing. He saw appreciatively he had been provided with things like scissors, a scribble-pad, a selection of pens.   His sparse collection  of artefacts had been carefully laid out on the table.  Mirror shades (he thought people should always be able to see his eyes, 98% of the time, unless he felt very difficult indeed), a tiny model aircraft of dated model that amused him as a sort of totem, since Airoch had given it to him when he was seven; there was a small silver tray given him by Cho of the kind you might put on your hall table and dump your keys on when you came in, but wallet, keys, cards, all that belonged in another life; the only thing that had wowed the unpackers was an a small and exquisite silver panther, muscles rippling, clearly prowling, also from Cho.  The imperial laptop, the pulsating hub of the empire had been taken to another part of the NO GO complex, that labelled Ops, where he had his very own office.  Most of it was in any case in the cloud known as cat heaven.  Baz sat on the bed.
“You went and did and done it.”
“Quite a day,” said Sarat.
“Kadun is at your feet, you do know that.”
“Bit of an exaggeration,” said Sarat, snorting at a mail from Hass beginning ‘Dear Narulis…’  “Ring Maya.”
“And how has your day been?  Anything interesting happen?”
They evaporated off.
Others continued to toil into the night, even if it was a labour of love.  We too have a sense of humour and know how to use it.
“There!  First thing the Press blokes will see in the morning.”
“Of course we’ll take it down if Sarat doesn’t like it.”
At breakfast it was remarked that a mural had appeared.