And of course they ain't fucking illitrit

Goodness, of course Ners and Doctor know everything about writing English.  Who could even conceive anything different?  Ignorant ineducable cunt-for-brains butchers who 'communicate' by wordless mindless bestiality, who can possibly doubt these are the intellectual elite of the nation.

And of course I have (repeatedly, like everything else) quoted Pericles at them
Alcibiades. Please, Pericles, can you teach me what a law is?
Pericles. To be sure I can.
Alcibiades. I should be so much obliged if you would do so. One so often hears the epithet "law-abiding" applied in a complimentary sense; yet, it strikes me, one hardly deserves the compliment, if one does not know what a law is.
Pericles. Fortunately there is a ready answer to your difficulty. You wish to know what a law is? Well, those are laws which the majority, being met together in conclave, approve and enact as to what it is right to do, and what it is right to abstain from doing.
Alcibiades. Enact on the hypothesis that it is right to do what is good? or to do what is bad?
Pericles. What is good, to be sure, young sir, not what is bad.
Alcibiades. Supposing it is not the majority, but, as in the case of an oligarchy, the minority, who meet and enact the rules of conduct, what are these?
Pericles. Whatever the ruling power of the state after deliberation enacts as our duty to do, goes by the name of laws.
Alcibiades. Then if a tyrant, holding the chief power in the state, enacts rules of conduct for the citizens, are these enactments law?
Pericles. Yes, anything which a tyrant as head of the state enacts, also goes by the name of law.
Alcibiades. But, Pericles, violence and lawlessness--how do we define them? Is it not when a stronger man forces a weaker to do what seems right to him--not by persuasion but by compulsion?
Pericles. I should say so.
Alcibiades. It would seem to follow that if a tyrant, without persuading the citizens, drives them by enactment to do certain things--that is lawlessness?
Pericles. You are right; and I retract the statement that measures passed by a tyrant without persuasion of the citizens are law.
Alcibiades. And what of measures passed by a minority, not by persuasion of the majority, but in the exercise of its power only? Are we, or are we not, to apply the term violence to these?
Pericles. I think that anything which any one forces another to do without persuasion, whether by enactment or not, is violence rather than law.
Alcibiades. It would seem that everything which the majority, in the exercise of its power over the possessors of wealth, and without persuading them, chooses to enact, is of the nature of violence rather than of law?
To be sure (answered Pericles), adding: At your age we were clever hands at such quibbles ourselves. It was just such subtleties which we used to practise our wits upon; as you do now, if I mistake not.
Xenophon, The Memorabilia (trad. HG Dakyns)
 
So come on, sue me for Plato, sue me for Homer, sue for Sophocles, sue me for Euripides, sue me for Xenophanes, Xenophon, Thucydides, Ovid, sue me for Marx, especially, sue me for Lenin, sue me for Engels, sue me for Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, sue me for Paine, Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, Racine, Corneille, Baudelaire, Zola, Balzac, Sartre, Camus, Giradoux, Prevert, sue me for Rumi, Hafiz, ibn Arabi, Khayyam, sue me for Buddha, for Lao-Tze, for the Vedas, sue me for Byron, Shelley, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Auden, Wilde, Sitwell, Spender, Eliot,  Sue me for Tolstoy, for Tolkien, for Stephen Donaldson, Julian May, TH White,  Salman Rushdie, Nicholas Montsarrat, Rumer Goden, Len Deighton, JK Rowling, and thousands of others, sue me especially for Schrodinger, Einstein. Tell you what,  ape, sue me for having the temerity to point out we live in a quantum universe or universes not the universe as depicted by your monkey-shit religion. Sue me for pointing out e = mc2. Sue me for having studied English, French, German, Italian and Latin grammar, come on you dirty illiterate ignorant animal, you know you ain’t having that. Sue me for not being a sly, sordid, dirty, cowardly liar, a squalid cockroach that creeps around behind closed doors.  You certainly ain’t having that.
Sue me for having read a thousand books you’ve never heard of, and starting from somewhere different to your  lame empty narrow stupid irrational brain.  That ain’t allowed, is it, cos you got Troof. Sue me for being educated when you are ignorant and ineducable, which is what your hysteria amounts to.  Sue me for being intelligent, which is what your hysteria amounts to.   Of course no educated person is going to think what the ignorant think.  Labour has a solution!  Exterminate the educated.  This of course was basically the solution of both Hitler and Stalin. The reality of the society I which they dwell and in which people possess hundreds of different ideas, many directly opposed to their own, offends them and is a threat.  Labour’s cute solution is that everyone else must cede.
Of Kirit it may be said/He read a book.  It hurt his head/Not liking such a pain/He never read a book again. 
Or any of them. Philistines, savages, barbarians.
1933 is readily recalled as the year Hitler was elected, but it’s also the year Schroedinger got his Nobel prize for physics.
It’s a useful dichotomy.  The ape will win or civilization, knowledge and reason will win. 
It is forbidden to reside in a mental world unacceptable to a sick monkey.  Forbidden, forbidden!
Tough fucking shit.  It’s called the C21st.
 
Do rest assured I am not about to surrender either Jesus or Artemis, Plato or Ibn Arabi, the Upanishads or Einstein, Pan or Schroedinger, Voltaire or Marx, Athena or Rumi, to the ravings of cunt-faced filth, dirty stinking obscene traitors, ape creatures, grovellers, sickos, psychos, totally intellectually and morally corrupt filth-monkeys who abandon all fact, reason, ethics for a smile from their master.   Look at the dirt-monkeys, grovelling, how may we best please you, o master, to the ravings of hairless baboons.
 
Your lack of any observable rational processes, Doctor, is really not my problem.  And so I have been thrown on the scrapheap, badly beaten up, to rot and die, or to be exact I was thrown on the scrapheap 22 years ago, when all the filthy cockroach vermin wildly wiggled their antennae and worked out what lies they should tell to make sure no-one ever supported ne and how best to target my spinal fusion.  Scum is an inadequate word for these creatures.  Beneath contempt.  Lower than vermin.  All these things. 
 
Ain’tcha fucking illitrit?  Ain’t yer really. 
 
Extracts from The Anile Heir ©2006.
I, Ysabel Jehan Howard, hereby assert and give notice of my right under s.77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this book.
 
That’s one thing.  The real question is of course Sarat.
Munzi raised his hand in  imitation.
“Cool it, guys!”
“It’s not that the authority isn’t there, it’s that it is.”
“There you have the nub, I think.  Undoubtedly there is metal under the paddy-paws.  What is its chemical composition?”
What, we wonder, warms it up around here?
 
 “It’s not the same,” said Inyulat.
“Oh but it is,” said Ritawa.  “You’re missing the point.”
“You can’t fake it,” said Munzi.  “The animal does not get antsy.”
“You want to see if you can make Sarat antsy?  Are you completely insane?”
“Bit more to it than that,” said Ritawa.
“Morons,” said Munzi, “piss-artists, time-wasters.”
“We want to know what he damn’ does,” said Ritawa.
Inyulat spluttered.
“Other than summary execution, you mean.”
“That would be very uncool,” said Ritawa.
“Spetzi wouldn’t want you to go this way!”
Challin came in.
“We were planning a little intolerable insolence,” said Ritawa
“Entirely insufferable and insane behaviour,” suggested Munzi, “time-wasting and tedious.”
“An experiment,” murmured Challin
“We do not entirely understand.”
“Clarification,” murmured Challin. “I imagine execution will be swift.”
“I know how I should respond,” said Ritawa.
Challin pondered that a moment.
“Would it not be less painful to ask Mitch?”
“You really think there’s a point to be made?” asked Inyulat. 
“Yes,” said Challin.
 
 
So here is long trellis table.  It is not an exciting table, slatted and of a dirty brown.  There are many of its kind around.  Sarat and Maya are sitting at it, along with several other people of various species.  Behind them there is a hot-water dispenser, a basket of tea-bags, powdered milk, sugar and a box of polystyrene cups.  Other guys mill around. 
Ritawa and Munzi sprawled themselves nearly opposite, waiting for a good opening.
Maya turned, cup in hand and half-rose to make herself another cup of tea.  Some nice person took the cup from her, and she sat down again.  Gripping this, isn’t it.
“Ah,” said Ritawa.  “The Dabidan whore.”
Heads jerked up, people half-moved, started to speak, fulminate, as people do in situations in which an electric current has passed through them.
Sarat raised his hand signalling my call.  Ritawa’s eyes met his, quizzical, mocking.
One duels, sir?
And of course journos routinely trailing Sarat around broke into sweats.
            “Not the Azt Star again!” said Sarat.  “Do they never give up!”
“Be saying I am The Star next,” said Maya.  Jaizal’s favourite tart, you will recall.
“Haven’t they done that yet?”
One chance to say just quoting the papers?  Fuck, they’re good!
            “Did someone speak?”
“Hearing loss?” asked Maya.
            “Guess he should be invalided out,” said Sarat.
            “It seems we have a Fidubi homosexual and a slut from Zur Master and Mistress of Kadun.”
            Maya bit her lip.
            “I think he doesn’t like us!”
            “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
            “There was this guy Narulis.”
             “How slut?” asked Maya
            “Clearly you were sold to gain power in Kadun.”
            “Clearly,” said Maya, in a voice that -  clearly – said loon!
            “You can scarcely claim to hide it!  All too plainly the only coup here is one by AMI.”
            “Aw,” said Sarat, “haven’t I done anything?”
“Are you from Glitz?” asked Maya. “All a bit chaotic, thought you might be a press-fiend who’s stolen a uniform. Trying to goad us into revealing the secrets of the imperial bed!”
            “After all,” said Sarat, looking extremely innocent, “we have promised transparency.”
            “Not that transparent,” said Maya briskly. “I can sincerely assure you Sarat isn’t gay.”
            What do you do with it!  Raw unforgivable insolence, I think
            “You are of course too scared to command, take refuge in puerile repartee, a pansy who defends neither his lady’s honour nor his own.”
            Sarat burst out laughing.
            “What commands d’you think I should give?”
            “Oh for -  get on my feet! Apologize, retract, crawl at my lady Maya’s feet.”
            “But you want to be a fuckwit,” said Sarat. “Why should I get in the way?”
            I do?
            “You are the bloody Anile emperor!  Supposedly.”
            “Prove I’m the boss?  I know I’m the boss,” said Sarat.
            “Hardly if no-one obey.”
            “Define ‘obey’,” said Sarat.
            “You did go to school?”
            “It is a transitive verb meaning do what one is told.”
            “Try again.”
            “Fidub speaks a different language?”
            “If I command you behave like a fuckwit, undoubtedly you obey.”
            “Implicit is doing something you don’t want to do.”
            “You’re all here because you’ve been made to do something you don’t want to do?”
            “Of course not!”
            “You want to be made to do something you don’t want to do?”
            “Of course not!”
            “Why should I want guys to do something they don’t want to do, something which has no purpose other than to prove I can make them do it, prove I’m more powerful and important than they are.  Prove I can jerk people around like puppets.  That’s what the other guys do.”
            “Surely authority has to be established in the face of gross insubordination.”
            “But it’s phoney,” said Maya. “Either everyone here wants broadly the same thing and so wants to work together to achieve it or they don’t and we pack.”
            “Alternatively of course,” said Sarat, “you pack.”
            “You would say we are – surplus to requirements.”
            “Suppose I enter into your dumbfuck game, order you to get on your feet. You refuse.  If I accept that, I’m weak, scaredy-cat, in your view.  I play your game. What then? PANTHER drag you to your feet?  Oh the drama! What has been achieved that is of the remotest use, help or interest to you, me, Kadun?”
            Of course we want it! There is the small detail that we do not understand what ‘it’ is.  Let us continue.
            “Our job is to listen,” said Maya.  “Doesn’t mean we have to like what we hear.  Doesn’t mean we have to coo over it.  Doesn’t mean we accept having our time wasted if it’s garbage.”
            “We need to listen,” said Sarat.  “See if there’s any non-garbage.  You decide how you behave.  If it’s gross, you’re pulled up and you go on with it, then you’re a waste of oxygen.  That has nothing to do with military discipline.  That’s true in the Sa’aanda Senta, in the student caff.”
“Student caff, guys just walk away,” said Maya.
            “Bo-o-o-ring,” said Sarat.  “Hey, it’s an offensive little shit.  Leave it drivelling to itself. But if I walk away you say I’m scared, yes?”
            “Yes.”
            “Why?”
            “You have noticed you are Anile emperor?”
            “It has crossed my mind.  So?”
            “Leader of the pack, was it not.  People in senior positions do not tolerate – drivel from people in junior positions.  Nor get displaced!  I should have thought that was pretty universal, even in Fidub!”
            “And here we are at a board meeting of Sohenoil.”
            “What would happen?”
            “The fuckwit would be asked to wait until it was over, when he or she could scream at Cho all he/she liked.  I prefer here and now.”
            “Why!”
            “If someone’s at the screaming stage, s/he has a problem or thinks s/he does.  It needs hearing.  Maybe it’s garbage, maybe not.”
“The tolerating,” said Maya.  “What does it indicate?”
            “If we get away with it, then everyone will think they can get away with it.”
            “That,” said Sarat, “presupposes that ‘everyone’ wants to, that it’s only being crushed from above that maintains order.”
            “That is rather what we’re against,” said Maya.
            “And a loss of face, I am -  we are supposed to be lessened by your crap? Is that what you think?”
            “No.  It is a – an element in some people’s thinking.”
            “So ‘scared’ is – scared to do that which maintains an order which is essentially corrupt – why should I want to do that!  Suppose I tore your balls off verbally while you stood rigid, forbidden to speak.”
            “I’d have asked for it.”
“It’s still a grotesque  abuse of power,” said Sarat, “to insult, anger, distress a man who cannot answer back.  Like hitting a man who’s tied up. Do you have a partner?”
“Yes.”
“Suppose for instance I amused myself abusing her, with the pathetic excuse that it was just tit for tat.  Wouldn’t that be pretty filthy?”
            “Yes.  I really can’t say I should like you very much after that.”
“And  you would have no means of redress, no means of making it entirely apparent I was a total – consider the third letter changed! And of course you would have to continue obeying me.  Isn’t that a pretty filthy way to run a country?”
            “Of course.  The answer to -  unconstructive conduct not equally unconstructive conduct, then?  That is interesting.  It may even be correct!  Nonetheless - let us list our offences!  We have called your lady a slut and a whore, your lady who is by the way Anile Empress, Mistress of Kadun, to whom our loyalty is pledged.  We are therefore probably guilty of high treason. Additionally we have accused her and with her the Crown of Dabida of – actually I’m not sure what of, fraud, theft? General venality.  Called you a pervert, a liar and a coward.  Denied and mocked your authority.  How can we possibly be permitted to get away with it?”
            “Don’t forget wasting my time. Yea, mine honour is besmirched.  And of course Maya’s. Why should your drivel be of the slightest importance to either of us?”
            “Does it come out in the wash?” asked Maya.  “Smirch.” She began to examine her sleeve for stains. 
“I think it’ll wash out with new improved PANTHER,” said Sarat.
“You have just said people have to be heard.  Now you say – drivel has no importance.  Would it be at all possible to clarify?”
“Emotionally,” said Sarat, “to us personally.  Ravings no importance.  Do we strike you as having hissy fits?”
Whew!  Many things strike me.  Not that.
“Truly,” asked Maya, “you expect me to be stung?”
“You have said you want to know what people actually think.”
            “Yes.”
            “I am telling you what people actually think.”  This in the tone of one addressing someone of limited mental endowment.
            “You are telling me what some people think.  If it were the view of everyone I shouldn’t be here.”
 “Let us say it is a segment of public opinion.  May I not introduce to you something called reason?  On the one hand you say you wish to know what all people actually think.  On the other when presented with what some people actually think you mock it, dismiss it.  Is that entirely logical?  Further, you have said that you recognize that persons of socially conservative opinion are not necessarily, what was it, creatures from the pit of desecration – “
            “That was Mitch.”
            “But you concur.”
            “I concur.”
            “But you treat their opinions with complete contempt.”
            “I find them contemptible.”
“So you will ride roughshod - ?”
“Basic human rights are non-negotiable. Women and gays are about 60% of a population. How can a country be fairly governed by 40% of its population? Nobody knows exactly what All-Kadun thinks.  Until everyone is equal in rights, free to speak and in the polling booths no-one will know. You appear to be saying my conduct should be shaped by the Azt Star.”
            “You seem to be saying  lack of courtesy is frowned upon – “
            “My lord Cile, do you have to be totally moronic?”
            “Among other bons mots…”
            Morons, I think, are decidedly non grata.
            “How else would you describe what is probably the only course of action anyone anywhere on this continent right now can pursue which ensures that lots and lots of guys with partners and kids get dead?”
            “Let an insult be only true!”
            “Broadly based in fact! Or rational argument.  I’m also saying, fine, you’re concerned about Dabidan and Fidubi influence in Kadun.  You get a few facts and figures together. You present me with arguments. It’s all on the Grid, AMI, Sohenoil.” Pause.  “There are two – can’t think of the word, must be my limited education – “
“Realms,” suggested Maya innocently.
“There is the world of the mostly sane based on fact and reason and there is the world
of the out of it.  Insult falls into one or other category.”
            “Insult is then – merely a joke if grounded in nonsense and directed at the mostly sane.”
            “And a weapon against the out of it!”
            “The Cult owns approximately half Kadun.  It is just a little kooky to rave about me rather than  Madam Minister.”
            “Perhaps there are concerns about exchanging one set of masters for another.”
            “A valid point.”
            They looked at each other and started laughing.
            “We appear to be having a civilized conversation. But of course those in the world of the out of it think themselves in the world of fact and reason. It would  be fair to say you don’t like idiots?”
            “Don’t do idiots,” said Sarat.
            “It would seem to me,” said Maya, “that the basic – perception is that most people are idiots and require their idiocy controlling.”
            “Except,” said Sarat, “the people who want to control other people generally are the idiots.”
            “Freedom,” said Maya, “sort of idiot control mechanism basically.”
            “But it has to work both ways?”
            “But it has to work both ways.”
             Maya said: “Someone tells us we’re out of it, nuts, we can’t possibly take Azt.  No, we’re not going to explain how we can, we don’t know whom the person might sing to.  But we need to know that people are worried and need some reassurance and we need to hear why.  They might know something we don’t.”
            “There is nobody,” said Sarat, “who can’t be wrong, misinformed, flawed in his or her reasoning.”
            “And obedience is the opposite of that?”
            “Deference is the opposite of that.”
            Oh, right, lad, thought Varulin, so that’s why I want to fall at your bloody feet.
            “So here are Sarat and I in the lush green fields of Carlin,” said Maya, “a couple of screaming loons who think they’re going to take Azt and establish democracy in Kadun.  Who are these nutters?  Where are they coming from?”’
            “Obedience is switching off one’s brain?”
            “There isn’t an insult in the world that isn’t coming from a point of view.  Next question is whether that point of view has any basis in fact and reason.”
            “Could we possibly behave intelligently!”
            “Pretty-please,” said Sarat.
            “I think – among some – there is a – perception that the mere act of questioning shows a lack of respect.”
            “For what?  Omniscience? Psychosis?”
            “Who,” asked Maya, “is actually being treated with a total lack of respect in that scenario?  The only serious offence is to think people are your property, your tools, creatures of your will.”
            “We have of course observed the extreme deference of Zuri”  He stood.  “My lord, my lady, we have been moronic.  Our abject apologies.”
            In days of yore, thought Baz.  Will he do it?
“Accepted,” said Sarat. “Kilana siy tan.”
“Kilana siy tan.” said Maya.
            “Spring has the to-do list,” said Sarat, “if you want to hang around.”
           
LIVE FROM KADUN
 
Gee, Bal, he’s just bonding with his officers.
 
Karmen (Harn State Security) rang Faun: “Purr, purr, purr, such a cutesy little pair of cubs, I deem!  I may invite myself along?”
“Wondered what was keeping you,” said Faun.
“You have a fairly international gathering, I hear.”
“Nobody wants to miss this party.”
 
What was that about!
“It is an ancient formulation,” said Mitch, “as old as Narulis.  It is generally translated as ‘there is no harm’.
“And the modern formulation would be ‘everything’s cool’!”
“Forgotten, over.”
“That is mind-bending.”
“We are mind-bending.”
 
….
Ritawa had a moment to himself once more. 
      I have, he typed, played over certain scenarios suggested to me.  I think the best one was where Sarat walked away, bo-o-ring, leave you to Maya.  One day, some time way in the future, I might ask him or at least someone why he didn’t.  Or is that being unfair to myself?  He not she designated himself leader of the pack, he not she is recognized as CinC.  Enough of empty speculation! What you do around this joint (Spetzi choked softly as she read: vocabulary, darling, quite so) if you do not know something is ask.  I therefore cornered a cat, with due everyone is busy, hardly time for lengthy, is it at all possible to tell me briefly what is the party?  I do hope you have your smelling salts to hand.
The party is an elevated plane of consciousness.  Nor is this all.  It is a place where nothing matters and everything matters.  The usual lucidity and directness of speech that attends our new continuum appeared markedly absent.   I must have looked pitifully woebegone for my puss relented.  We agreed to meet later. 
 
Kilana siy tan.  There is no harm to the ego, the self, because it is illusory.  It does not get antsy, threatened, because it isn’t there, or if there is not dominant, does not automatically, as one does, assume itself of greater importance.  Thus ‘you cannot talk to me like that because I am the emperor’ has no place in the construct; nor of course does ‘you cannot talk to me like that because I am an officer’.  I have received a certain amount of straight talking from what used to be called the other ranks though equally many have understood what I was trying to do; I think Challin possibly had a discreet hand in that. In any case the general consensus is that I bit off a great deal more than I could chew and got delicately, courteously, possibly the biggest bollocking it has ever been my misfortune to receive, an outcome with which they are of course content.   No harm done….No, I am not digressing!   Sure, you can talk to me like that, because I am a human being.  As such, however,  I am not required to like what you say.  I think I noticed.      The physical body, however, is very much there.  Harm lies in physical injury, physical duress, because any such damage, any physical constraint upon volition is not illusory.  I did just wonder when he mentioned PANTHER dragging me to my feet.  Never in a million years.  I should have to have become violent first.  That is the principle of the initiation of force.  Everything’s cool, so long as both parties are free to walk away. I’m not sure it’s quite that simple, but it seems a more than adequate base.  The everything that matters therefore included me.  This guy is upset.  That matters. What is he upset about?  However, also, I am adult and fully in possession of my faculties.  I can be expected to communicate in an adult fashion and I can expect to be told how moronic I am, whether I have an ego or not! Also a lot of other things are mattering too so do not waste my time, puh-lease!  I have learned another one for the dictionary: ‘my stuff’.  But Ritawa, this is all your stuff, man, nothing to do with us.  True-untrue? Certainly nothing prompted by the immediate situation, as for instance a remark about AMI with which I took issue. 
Everything not tainted by harm has a gurgle of laughter in it.  I just think about that.  I saw it.  I think that must be serious harm.  Obviously they don’t find the Cult funny but I don’t think it would much have spoiled the party if I had made to hit him or something grotesque like that. I think I may be flushing even as I write this but I think overall they would have found that – not unfunny.  I took a deep breath and asked: had I made to hit her?  Should I not instantly have been clapped in irons!  Er, no.  My lady Maya is Hadin-Wadud.  I should probably have found myself on the floor with my arms twisted behind my back.  Let me say that increases the number of counts on which I am remarkably glad I did nothing so vile!  
All of it, all of them, the Anile throne, Alzani-Meta, PANTHER, VILE, the Hadin-Wadud, are the outward and exoteric aspects of the party, its interface with the normal world. You simply do not push other people around, smear your self over them and they are not to be terrorized into submission because they have redress.  Of course today in the south they equally have redress through the courts, but that essentially is ‘Narulis’ gig’, always has been, so far as possible, and I trust always will be: if you have certain kinds of problem, you find a cat. Or of course the emperor’s stewards. Thus under imperial law anyone at all had right of access to the emperor (or presumably empress) and it was a crime to impede that access.  ‘From no man may the right of speech be withheld.’  I think some of the chaps think we must be running under Fidubi law, or possibly international statute, the Treaty of Sal-venon.  We’re not!  Or more exactly – some of it didn’t entirely mesh with the modern world, I am given to understand,  extraordinarily minimal property qualifications.  You had to be of fixed abode and have three head of sheep, whatever that is! They are?  Presumably if you had neither you homed in on the nearest cat and asked why am I homeless!  Imperial law tweaked to accord with international law where it gave people fewer rights.  International law completely ignored if it give fewer rights.  I think the precise term for this may be Sarat’s Law! 
What happened to the empire  - the First Empire, we must now say – was purely a question of metaphysics.  I do not recall having read that in any history book.  Contempt for human rights justified at the metaphysical level.  Because the pain, anger, confusion experienced by someone who has been hard done by, or feels he or she has been, is illusory, it was felt not to matter. That in tandem with what was described to me as ‘perverted esotericism’: nothing of this world matters, therefore you watch a man starve to death. The third letters walked in, walked all over the Anile Court. Clearly if there is another world it left it open to them to designate that other world as that of Death the Great Master, though initially of course that was not at all what was meant.  What was?  What was?!??!  I think another layer of reality to this world, where things look different. Obviously as previously indicated in letters of steel it may be rubbish but it has to be heard in order to decide whether it is rubbish or not.
The other matter may be several lessons down the road, I think.  It does not for the moment matter.  I wanted to know what is now governing Kadun.  Now I know.  I am, I suppose, fairly stunned.  Yes, I want to know more. 
Oh, and you were essentially right, I think.  Sarat is ‘an essentially outer and exoteric kind of guy’.  Maya is ‘frantically eso(teric)’.  Shall I say there are no fucks where Maya is? Surely lese-majeste! Certainly no dumbfucks.  He relates to people at the level of the normal world.  She, I think, is a more complex affair, not that I should describe Sarat as simple.
What do you think?
 
I think I think what we have already thought, that we have been utterly confused by language.  They put this in the language of modern human rights – how else could they put it when empire was soiled, defiled, when the very idea may yet cause war with Ciletij. That is not a complaint.  I don’t think you can stand live on camera today and babble about metaphysics, even if it is all that actually matters!  I believe we might have dimly grasped they are Narulis’ and Zani’s heirs and all that that implies concerning the Cult.  We did not properly put the two together.  I think a lot of other things too.  I need to think about what I’m thinking!  Write more later.
 
Just something to add to your thunks.  An awful lot of that, now I come to think about it, economics, social conditions, was actually Mitch.
 
 
Nothing from Spetzi
Two days later: nothing from Spetzi.
Ritawa to Spetzi: I yearn for the sight of your name. I lust after the movements of your fingertips. 
We shan’t bother with the rest of that one.
Spetzi to Ritawa: I went back to Mel’s Place and read all of it.  What I am thinking is blowing my mind.  Just trying to put it all together.
 
 Cantilip and Mel both had succinct things to say about earthpower, about the – psychology of the Cult.  If anything what was wrong with that was it was NOT couched in the language of modern human rights: student philosophizing, no great connection with the normal world.  In any case, it was before the arrival of Mitch, the real box-office draw, I believe you put it! I am going to sit very tightly on my fingers and not say a word about how few would have concerned themselves with critical delineation of the nature of earthpower from my lady Van-senok in comparison to the many gripped by the orations of my lord Var-sega’.  Evil grin.   Neither Sarat nor Maya was actually heard until Ground Zero – except of course for the excursion to Van-senok which ran through us like a forest fire.  About which we were of course free to make whatever the hell we liked. True-untrue, can we accept this.  Can our itsy-bitsy little egos take it.  Let us be exact.  Let me be exact.  The rule of the Cult is to sustained because no-one is going to call me ‘Miss’ any more? There was of course what Sarat looks like.  From the perspective of female people and one must assume gay male ones also! No, one does not choose the future leader of one’s country because he will look awfully good on a postagestamp.  It is a question of tone, of body-language, of course of class.  We concluded in demeanour sufficiently imperial, but did not dwell on precisely what that word means to Kadun – rather more than opening a hospital in a constitutional monarchy. Language versus body-language….You said it!  If a man have the appearance of – of a damn’ panther padding about the place, the language of Harn is not inappropriate, though can scarcely be said to be fitting at any formal occasion.  But then why should the emperor not pad around Azt, have we not already concluded he looks the part  – it tied us in knots.  From their side, I’d guess an absolute determination to make clear – forewarn – of what the offer was and what was entailed in acceptance.  Totally obscuring what was actually on offer?  One is a brash Fidubi brat, one will make waves that will shake Kadun to our foundations, but oh, what is the nature of the waves.  And so some of us, being less stupid than others, took a closer look at those foundations.  Interesting, certainly, fascinating, startling, amazing – but rather long ago, in a pre-industrial setting.  To bridge a mere 1500 years we have of course the Dabidan model – but then again is that not merely a quirk of Zur. The panther will not be caged, tamed, contained, that the clear message.  But of course – even indulgently – one is young, one will mature, come to understand one cannot possibly behave like this! Ah, six is the killer.  Are we not now, as from the moment he crossed the border, living in a democracy?  Isn’t that what democracy is supposed to be, power given by the people and which can be retracted by the people? Here I get into 6a and 6b, oh and 6c.
6a) of course is, its being the case that our noble Army was probably deigning to support him, some thought they would be able to cage, tame, contain, do deals.  That above all in 5, I think.  Guys, guys, we’re doing this my way or not at all.  Naturally we played the less delectable scenarios, amongst which working-class revolt.  I told you, Daddy said it: to fight the licit heir is treason against the idea of Kadun.  A milder version of which of course: to fight the licit heir to postpone change we know inevitable merely silly. 
6b) of course is Sarat’s mere existence as a focus for what I shall I call it total democracy completely changed our frame of reference; many had thought reasonable a limited democracy; the name Ban-varna was heard, often.  That CBV would accept some role more akin to, if not a mere figurehead…The cub clearly intends total overhaul.  Nothing if not refreshing.
6c) of course is the damned ratters are out of the barn.  All of us who are sentient – even female ones – have grasped the real war is against the Cult. That PANTHER are at war against the Cult, waging total war.   Which impinged on practically everything.  6c)i therefore, no I’m not going to do this, like some ghastly piece of bureaucracy.
      7!    Sarat/Cho co-terminous with PANTHER?
              Dropped straight into the other matter. 
Where we went from there entirely determined not by gender politics or ego or nationalism but by what we knew of the other matter
Or didn’t know.
What is behind him? Sohenoil!  What is behind him? Conceivably AMI!  What is behind him? Fidub?
What is not behind us?  Fidub.  To have the Fidubi scam plainly expounded of course a delight and a pleasure unlooked-for.  The only problem with some wistful hope that Mitch would keep them in line being of course that Mitch was worse.  This then coming from Mitch? Somewhat unlikely that Sohenoil would be manipulated by Var-sega’ but if we get to Azt, the shots called from the Sohenisle?
Just trying to summarize our permanent state of confusion. 
Some pooh-poohed it but largely it is and was given that only PANTHER have the necessary skills to defeat the Cult. Van-senok and Sardun excluded here because they are not part of the pairing that so sadly fell apart.  What those skills are – perhaps I should say were since I understand amplifiers!  Hypnosis, mind-control and of course wilder stories. I am actually getting to the point!  PANTHER are waging total war.
Why?
Obvious, surely.
Of course we all loathe the Cult.
Of course they are the most repulsive and contemptible of animals
Naturally concern for the most elementary human rights, the most basic civilized behaviour.
The  ethos, the ethic, the drive, the motivation thought too obvious to ask.
There was something so absolutely critical said at Mel’s Place by Cantilip that of course everyone missed it.
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. 
We’re all bloody tree-huggers, Ritawa, do you understand, everyone clean, all you cold hard men of steel! Of course we’re not passive!  But nor are we active.  We just are, in a field of flowers.  Some filthy creature in a black robe comes along with a – with a mowing-machine! Then we fight. 
Of course we adore!
And so we have been – accepting.  Not of starvation.  I don’t know anyone who would not help the desperate.  I should not want to know anyone who would not help the desperate.  But at the level of the individual.  What is to be done about the cities?  Something has to be done.  The difference is you don’t just say something has to be done, you do something?
But then you might say, but we understand that, Carlin understood, Var-sega’ understood, Van-senok understood.  Most of all you might say, that’s crazy: Van-senok, heart of earthpower, is the worst of the lot!  Though I might just investigate dark-green hair!  Radical earthpower? 
I think the core of this is action.   I don’t exactly see how.  They live life in the active voice.
What do you see when you see another human being?  Anyone, Sarat, Challin, me, well possibly that’s an exception! The squaddies who bollocksed you.  A stranger in the street. There’s something in the idea that we see something stationary and they see something in motion, though I don’t know what.  I suspect it has a lot to do with hierarchy deforming.  They see something the motion of which isn’t impeded by its place in the pecking-order. 
Sarat refuses to be dammed, two m’s, as a river is dammed, by the triviality of being Anile emperor.  It has no place, no meaning, in that other level of reality and the existence of modern human rights gives him, all of them a gloss, a place in the normal world. 
So my grand conclusion is that when we look at people we see them as they are in the normal world, which means we take in - accoutrements of position or lack of, even if we disapprove of at least some of them.  They see a person as he or she is at that other level, without any of the crap.  A being being in a field of flowers?  An active being in a field of flowers?
Do-be-do-be-do.  Can that be set to the tune of the anthem?
The problem is/was it’s not all the things the south said about us, that they are egalitarian and we are really hierarchical (though of course for some it is/has been), it’s that it’s so nearly the same.  But different.  That came out at Mel’s Place.  When there were still empty seats.  Carlin shocked Mel.  He had assumed how the good guys in Kadun do things is how they’re done in Dabida and Fidub, but that was at the level of Va the Silver Homeland or would you prefer a field of flowers. I suppose we call that the exoteric level.  I think we’ve returned the favour, assumed how Dabida and Fidub do things is how we do them, with modern human rights as distinct.  ‘Modern human rights’, give or take a head of sheep, are how Fidub has always done things.  Would that by any chance be at the esoteric level, that we have assumed a shared metaphysics?  Assumed we’re all talking about the same thing when we’re just not.
I know some of this is st-range! Not only have I probably not put it correctly, I’ve probably not put correctly exactly what I’m trying to think might be correctly putting it. Add to that that I know very little about metaphysics!  But Mel actually said it for all the world to see: To some irturbi at least the Fidubi belief-system was simply a particular kind of earth-power.   The whole history of recent years, all our confusions, all bound up in the relationship between earthpower and the Tradition.  When we’ve thought we were talking the same language we were talking different ones.  When we’ve thought we were talking different languages we were talking the same one. I just can’t work out what that relationship is.  Maybe a bulb, a plant-bulb, I mean, not a lightbulb!  Two separate shoots.  Or – like conjoined twins, you separate them and they die?  No, die can’t be exact.  Become something different?
 
May I show this to Challin, typed Ritawa, deleting of course the last paragraph.  Evil grin.
My fame spreads!  Of course.  He’s senoki, isn’t he.
He indeed is.
 
“Have you got five minutes sometime?” asked Ritawa.
“Of course.”
“There’s something I should like – I should be grateful if you would read.  I could mail it but I’d also like to be present when you read it.”
“Indeed?”
“Spetzi has been thinking about the relationship between earthpower and the Tradition.  No, more: its relevance to everything that has happened.”
“Ah,” said Challin.
“I realized I was invited to the party,” sighed Ritawa.  “Our conversations have taken an unusual bent.”
“After dinner, about 9?”
“I thank you.”
“I shall come and find you.”
 
Challin held out his hand for the phone.
And smiled.
And smiled more.
“You are a very fortunate young man.”
“I know,” said Ritawa.
“Are you aware of an incident at Carlin?  You are probably too young.  It must have been 15 years ago.”
“No…”
“Marula’s partner was a drunk.  There are no excuses.  On a visit to Carlin he tried to put out the Flame.  San-yaega-baht of course threw him out.  Shortly afterwards Marula threw him out.  It was probably the worst rift for 600 years. Publicly, at least.”
“Six – “
“Van-senok was livid that Zani would not take the Anile throne.”
“I have never entirely understood – “
“Nor I.  Nonetheless, he founded Dabida instead.”
“And so here we all are!  But why?  Why put out the Flame?”
“It burns,” said Challin.
“Burns wood?  That’s a bit – “
Challin was laughing softly.
“Primitive?  Oh it is, it is.  There is more to it than that. I too am no metaphysician – physicist?  Let us consider the natural world.  Are we not all tree-huggers?”
“Fire equally devastates a field of flowers?”
“And what is left?”
“I suppose ash!  I’m really very lost.  No, actually I’m totally drowned.  If Van-senok wanted Zani to crown himself emperor, surely Van-senok approved the Flame.”
“You have to think in metaphor.  These fields, suppose they are seared by fire, what then?  I believe some farmers do just that.”
“For a time nothing and then regrowth?”
“Make a senoki of you yet.  And what regrows is different, the constitution of the soil has been changed.  It is not Marula’s thinking, nor I think that of most senoki who consider these things, but there are branches – little more than twigs -  of earthpower where the Flame is perceived as a threat, an intrusion, a disturbance of the balance.  No, not  the green-haired brigade.  Kuran’s cronies, however.  The green hairs are at least superficially a far simpler proposition.  I should imagine Sarat’s views on the planet are identical to theirs.”
“Love at first sight.  But if that is not mainstream – “
“Why am I wasting your time with it?  Because it embodies the difference.  Union in earthpower means union with the physical world.  I do not know what that means, though there are of course others here who do. The Flame is an interloper from the non-physical world. You have considered talking to Cantilip?”
“No!”
“It would be somewhat indelicate,”  agreed Challin.
“What – oh no!”
“What Spetzi strives to establish is the relationship between fire and earth.  It is of course the practical.  It sent waves through Van-senok of many kinds.”
“Hostility?”
“On the whole no. An acute curiosity.”
“And union in the Tradition means union with the non-physical world. Oh I see!  I think.”  Challin waited.  “Provided one accept there actually is a non-physical world, these are the two halves of the Whole.”
“I have never doubted your considerable intelligence.”
“Having previously considered myself if not quite a cold hard man of steel  I find myself strangely ready to flush these days.  Then earthpower denies a non-physical world?  I may still be lost.”
“That,” said Challin, “is what it does, one goes through a door only to find another one.”
“Do I know you well enough to ask - ?”
“Frankly, no,” said Challin, “but this much I say: my  refusal to enter the maze was the root of my difference with Marula.”
“May I call that a refusal to join the party?”
“An invitation I am reconsidering.”
“We are all being changed.”
“Fire burns,” said Challin.  “What regrows is different.”
“Put like that, it is a little.”
“Frankly petrifying?”
“May I ask.”  Ritawa stopped, as one does when three questions at once occur to one and none of them makes sense.  “The last 600 years!  In your view.”
“An avoidance of the party?  Many social and economic factors of course.  The apparently independent development of human rights.  Must we not join the modern world, the party an inevitable if somewhat disruptive piece of baggage in the train. But then of course, as Spetzi identifies, the party was already here, cats at every base.  I do not think we should be here now had we not learned to swim in the shallows.  The less fortunate rescued from bottomless filth.  Perhaps above all why cats at every base.  Leaving us free to choose.  Tell Spetzi to remember that all she describes was atop a fundamental appreciation of cathood. Unless of course, as she says, there was no comprehension of the feline.”
         Ritawa was frowning.
         “That is perhaps the opposite of – “
         “What you have frequently heard me say?  No.  What was it, total democracy.  The party demands it.  You think older people could successfully have explained the party to you? Given that we fail to understand it ourselves.”
         “And the cats were – are – irtubi.  I am contemplating – too mild a word – another layer of what I understand is called my sexist conditioning!”
         “Oh yes,” said Challin.  “Perhaps unwise to think too hard.”
         “The cats in uniform had necessarily to be male.  The cats fighting with Sardun must therefore have been overwhelmingly female.”
         “I imagine our refusal to accept women was the cause of some irritation.”
         “Since we didn’t see them or saw them less.  The other matter.  Is it – would you say – an element of – we little tree-huggers in our field of flowers – no, that makes no sense!  If I may start again!  Anything from deny to shun the non-physical world.  But presumably Sardun must – embrace it.”
         “I understand Sardun harness the power of the physical world.  I have of course no idea how, though I understand the reasoning is that all life is part of the physical world.”
         “If there is a non-physical world.”
         “There is the question also of what in their terms is the non-physical world, which I have never remotely understood.  If the Flame represent light, is light not energy?  Non-material possibly a better term, but then – what is matter, never mind!  There are always more questions.”
         “Would you regard that as a warning or just guidance?” 
         Challin laughed.
         “Let us say intellectual curiosity can lead in unforeseen directions.”
 
         Challin pondered then dropped a line to Cioulis.  He’s really getting awfully good at doing good by stealth.  Several lines, in fact.  Very bright. Possibly a purely intellectual curiosity but not sure.  Possibly still a little shaken.  I know there is what in other circles would be called an aptitude test.  He would pass.  Would you meet him?
         Cioulis mailed back: Sure, but isn’t this PANTHER’s bag?
         I think not, replied Challin, and explained about Spetzi.
         Aren’t we sweet, aren’t we cute? Is it not wonderful to just be!  I see a slight embarrassment here.
         Of course
         Thank you!
        
         “Well, didn’t I just get the turkey,” remarked Cioulis to no-one in particular.
         Karmen looked up.
         “How so?”
         “The young guy who was so very entertaining, department Dabidan whore, Challin thinks he’s interested and thinks he’d jump the hurdles.”
         Saban said: “He is senoki?”
         “Segani.  So’s his partner.  It seems it struck her in a moment of illumination – we’re all bloody tree-huggers, just being in a field of flowers.”
         Saban truly does have a sense of humour.
         So of course does my beloved.  He arranged to meet Ritawa in ‘Opshar’s Glade. In the interim he digested the world according to Spetzi.
        
         Cioulis settled himself comfortably into the leaf mould, his back against a handy bush.  Ritawa squatted on a small fallen log.
         “Now,” said Cioulis, “where are we?”
         “A little late in the season perhaps,” growled Ritawa.  “A field of flowers?”
         “Aren’t we!” said Cioulis enthusiastically.  “Are we being or doing?”
         Waa!
         “I suppose if we were motionless, without speech.”
         “Without heartbeat,” added Cioulis.
         “Life is movement?  I have to see that.”
         “And non-life? The physical world?”
         “Glaciers?” suggested Ritawa.  “Rivers.”
         “Thus the Great Divide.”
         “Everything is in motion, just a slower pace…
         “Even corpses,” said Cioulis.  “A dead rat, does it stay fixed, like an exhibit in a natural history museum?”
         “You are telling me something about the Cult?”  Ritawa had gone rather rapidly back to Mel’s Place.  “Everything is in some sense dead.”
         “It’s a question of control,” said Cioulis.  “There isn’t any, so they try to make some.”
         “The final control to murder.” 
         “Movement versus inertia.”
         “Then there is no – being, no stillness?”
         “Everything is itself,” said Cioulis, “that is its being. Sarat.”
         “Sarat is being Sarat.”
         “The unique lovable individual he is.  He will not be the Anile emperor.  The Anile emperor is whatever Sarat is. So?”
         “Being is doing?” sighed Ritawa.  “You are – recruiting officer?”
         “Take your time,” said Cioulis.  “Just at the moment we’re not training.”
         “What does it entail?”
         “First there are – you could call them aptitude tests.  In the first half we completely screw your surrounding reality and see how well you hang onto it.  Look around, drink it all in, imprint it.  See that lissome frond.  You are in a clearing in a small copse in Carlin. Strictly not your mind, that’s way down.  You are Ritawa.  You have a  really rather bright partner called Spetzi.  For reasons that possibly just at the moment escape you you are in a clearing in a small copse in Carlin talking to a loon from Sardun, whose preferred attire appears to be pirate. Thus the earrings, which appear to be in the form of a knot.  You are sitting on a small log.  The sun is sinking slowly into the west, which is thataway. A squirrel is watching us from that tree, wondering if we’re tree-huggers.  You are sitting on a log.  The path out of the clearing lies over there.  It veers sharply left at its start.  You are sitting on a log, aren’t you. And the ground is firm beneath your feet.”
         “Then what?”
         “Sure?”
         “Yes.”
         No! yelled Ritawa’s mind. The pirate-craft rocked gently under him.  The sea stretched to the horizon.  The sun was in the wrong place. I am not even bloody well standing up! He found it is quite hard to rise from a sitting position when one is already standing.  Squirrel – detail.  The squirrel was a small fat puffin perched on one of the masts.  What does reason tell me!  I put one foot in front of the other.  I walk out of the clearing.  Into the sea.  Sharks milled below him.  You bastard!  Not sharks  not sharks what sharks. Vegetation?   Not bloody fucking there, not real not sharks. What should I like to be there?
         Cioulis grinned to himself. A trio of sharks rose out of the water, performed graceful porpoise spins and sank slowly below the waves.  Land appeared, apparently a rocky outcrop on which was a lighthouse.
         What! Swim. Land.  Raft.  You’re not even bloody porpoises, you’re a raft!  The sharks manfully resisted and remained sharks. Not sharks, wrong shape sharks.  Not going to be able to do this but I can try.  He walked into the sea and tried to clamber aboard a raft.  It was still a shark, but what the hell.
         Normality.
         “Excellent start,” said Cioulis.  “Not of course maximum intensity. What happened there?”
         “You tell me!”
         “Think back to your conversation with Sarat.”
         “What!  I – I was in two places and my mind told me with – nearly equal fervency both were real.  What did you mean – yes, one might have been more – not sure what the word is.  Fragile.  Thinner than the other.  But I wasn’t sure. A bit, maybe, coming in and out of focus?”
         “Ever used a graphics program?”
         “Sometimes.”
         “Reducing the transparency of a superimposed image.”
         “Yes, that’s the word.  Real reality isn’t transparent!”
         “And you chose the real one.  That is good.  But?”
         “It didn’t bloody well work.  Was I right the sharks were less transparent!”
         “Ah, no.  That was the survival instinct kicking in.  Every neuron in your subconscious mind is telling you not to commit suicide.  Every neuron is focused on one small part of the whole.  The ship doesn’t matter, even the sea. So what did you do next?”
         “I tried to turn it.  I mean I couldn’t but.”
         “Focus on the essential, that is good.”
         “But wasn’t my focus split?  Isn’t that a bad thing?”
         “You could not have jumped if you were not fundamentally sure none of it was real.  If you had turned it, some things are sometimes best done incrementally, to climb back to – claw one’s way back to – reality.  The raft become an island, the island land known to you, etc.”
         “That is startling.  I thought you said every neuron of my subconscious mind!”
         “Beneath that.”
         “Hmm. My conversation with Sarat?”
         “You mean he didn’t enter the dumbfuck game and turn it?”
         “Aargh may be my response.  You said there were two halves.”                                           
         “Evil grin. Worse.  I increasingly bring to bear the full weight of my forceful personality on you, giving you orders you resist with every cell, every atom of your being.  Gold stars for retaining a reasonably relaxed posture and telling me to go fuck myself.”
         “I really know how to draw attention to myself,” said Ritawa. “I am thinking there must have been people around Sarat.”
         “Never in a million years,” said Cioulis.  “1) There is a large number of progressively more searing hurdles.  We have to be sure.  2) That is precisely why we hate them.”
         “And it’s all the same party?”
         “Is a party not a varied place?”
         “Obviously you didn’t – mess with my mind.  I felt – all my wits about me, in full possession of my faculties.  What did you mess with?”
         “Pixels,” said Cioulis.  “I think one may call them pixels.”
         “I don’t understand.”
         “One to think about,” said Cioulis.
         “May I tell Spetzi?”
         “She might like to join too.”
 
It was then, typed Ritawa, I felt angry. At myself of course.  Having had my reality smashed fazed not your cold hard man of steel.  Much!  Why do I keep doing it!  Obviously I can rationalize.  Ingrained, not as a man but as a soldier.  Need to know. 
Spetzi took pity.  Poor darling, kiss better.  Etc.
 
After a while, Ritawa wrote.  We don’t just see with our eyes.  Locate ourselves, I mean. We only see with our eyes.  I was of course too thrown to think all that through.  Does the air smell of salt? Does my face sting?  Can I feel the log?  Should I have registered that subconsciously?
I think that might depend on the density of the pixels!  Suppose – not that I understand or anything.  An illusory reality put in front of your eyes.  You can’t not react.  As far as your field of vision stretches, you are on that bloody ship! Or suppose you were simply cocooned in an illusion, so everywhere you interface with the external world was cut off from it?
Hmm-hmm! What really puzzles me – did I just write that – Cioulis himself was nowhere to be seen.
Invisible man!
Not that too!
Time I went back to school.  The biology of vision.  I really want to know exactly how we see.
That would be brilliant.  Cornea, rods.  Remember bits but if you asked me to describe exactly how I am seeing the screen in front of me, I get about as far as light hits the eyes and signals are sent to the brain.
We don’t actually see with our eyes at all, do we.  They’re just the interface.  Obviously they’re critical, of all the awful things that can happen to people I’ve always thought being blind was worst.  But – technically, eyes are just a piece of machinery.  But – when all this is over, shall I write science fiction!  If a piece of machinery could be devised that registered, imaged, the external world and communicated it to the brain, then a blind person could see. Sight actually is all that matters, in the context of this.  So long as you could see the clearing it wouldn’t matter that you couldn’t feel it or smell it.
I’m wondering – this is weird.  So if I had simply shut my eyes, proceeded like some poor blind person by feel.  Maybe!  That depends on your cocoon. Isn’t it called a camera?  The machine!  Small matter of connecting it to the brain.
Doctors must have thought of this.  Have you ever heard of artificial eyes?
No.  That is hair-raising.  The surgery required to connect to the brain. 
I’m actually thinking  about what we’ve been saying, without turning a hair.  A illusory reality has been created.  What of?  Literally out of thin air?
There are about 90 naturally occurring elements, remember that bit!
That does somewhat simplify the whole thing!  So if you have all of them you can make anything that exists?  And presumably – what’s a rare metal?  Inessential to – most things I guess?
Actually not.  Vital to phones!
Why has Sarat not banned them entirely! But the natural world.  Presumably there are no rare metals in a fallen log.  The natural world is chemically fairly simple? What’s air made up of? Mostly oxygen?
Mostly nitrogen. 
What chemically is an image.  That seems to be the question.
Physically? I’m not saying there was a deck under my feet, only a good imitation?  A sensation, if we casually affirm we have dealt with vision.  What actually is a pixel?  Let me look….Oh great.  It is a ‘logical  - rather than a physical unit’.  That is clarifying! The ‘smallest addressable unit’.
O great pixel, impart to me your secrets. But that of course is in the context of a screen.  You can’t have a pixel in the open, all on its own. What I was starting by going to say is that in terms of sheer hair-raisingness – a surgeon is only human, his or her hand can slip, remember anyone can be wrong! Even if it were possible I’m really not sure a scalpel being wielded in my brain isn’t more hairy than this.  Except of course.
Except of course there would be a clear logical progression. 
There has to be, doesn’t there.
I’m wondering two things.  The first is – what you said about a different level of reality when looking at people.  Why just people?  Why not a blade of grass?  No idea what that means of course. Even if it’s true.  The second is – the Whole.  If everything is whole, it must follow that any part of it can be reached from any part of it.  No idea what that means, of course, even if true.  The third is saner and possibly madly more interesting.  We don’t just see what’s there like a camera.  Suppose you despise poor people or are terrified of dogs.  If you see a poor person or a dog, your brain adds a generous dollop of ‘your stuff’ to the image.  Doesn’t it.  I don’t just mean you have an emotional response.  Your brain edits the image.  So you only really see ragged clothes or dirt or teeth.
You don’t see a person and you don’t see the dog is really rather small! Were they big sharks?
ROTFL.
Tush, I was being serious…Imagine a shark the size of a goldfish.
Think that might be called a piranha. Well, smaller.  Not entirely sure that’s better.
All of this, all of it is about seeing. 
All of this is about what Sarat saw when he looked right back at me!  My life seems to have got quite exciting since then.  I couldn’t read what he was thinking.  I think now it might have been something like, OK, you want to play? I play.
 
And Spetzi wrote.
I kept thinking about those 94 it is actually elements.  Like a fully-stocked kitchen.  Only you can’t put them together any way you like because they won’t go -  but there must still be a mind-numbing number of combinations, with or without human aid.    So then I found a site for kids on chemical bonding and reminded myself – honestly, this girl was taught science! So then I wondered can something that doesn’t exist come into existence or is everything that can exist in existence.  Has life diverged as much as it can and if it can’t diverge more what stops it.  At which point I more or less decided that I needed a chat with Cioulis because the alternative was ten years at the Schools! But I remembered, when we were staying at Tamal-va, there was a mutant in a litter, a poor little two-headed puppy.  It was put down of course but it wasn’t viable, that’s the point.  Back to ten years at the Schools, no idea why, maybe because two brains. So then I started to think a couple of strange things, if an insect can manage on six legs, why shouldn’t a puppy if unfortunate enough. Why would it be unfortunate?  An insect is lighter. Wouldn’t a dog benefit from six legs to carry it?  Why shouldn’t a dog have two tails!  We have of course been asking ourselves for many years now why are things as they are and can they be different!  Not, however, on the cosmic scale.  Crazy questions, why isn’t a shark the size of a goldfish? How dare a panther be bigger than a house-cat!  They’re the same design, can’t be a basic design-flaw that stopped goldfish from growing!  Can a shark grow more? How fixed is reality, Ritawa?  There are giant things like planets and minute things like bacteria and it all seems immutable, but if it’s all made of the same stuff is it? Two things.
People have always imagined things that don’t exist, though whether they can’t is something else, from the five-headed monster to unicorns.  There is nothing beyond the capacity of the human mind to imagine, which is a commonplace enough idea except that in the current context it is just a little nerve-wracking. 
Fundamental particles.  I was actually quite good at physics but it wasn’t that kind of physics.  Back to the Grid.  Everything indeed is the same stuff. Jolly little tidbit with which to wow your friends: only 5% of the universe is actually visible.  Isn’t that completely mind-bending?  What it seems to mean is so far as we can calculate only 5% of what is calculated to be the mass of the entire universe is made up of normal matter that we can quantify.   Most of what I seem to be currently reading I feel as though I understand about one word in ten – yes, I can cope with ‘the’ and ‘a’ – but I do seem to be able to grasp the essential: the universe is out of this world!  It’s defined as literally everything, did you know that, not just everything that is, everything that ever was and everything that ever will be.
And Ritawa wrote:
I knew I had to do it and I knew he’d understand and somehow that made me feel worse, as though I was messing up the party again!  I asked if I could see Sarat briefly, at a time of his convenience of course.  I was asked to pop back at 3, so I popped.  I was shown in.  He was sitting on the desk on the phone, just ending a call.  Hi, he said.  Grab a coffee, do.  There’s a hot-plate and a mini-fridge.  I made polite noises about not wishing to take up his time but I grabbed a coffee anyway.  He motioned to me to sit and I sat, one of those frantically uncomfortable canvas folding-stools. He said: I hope Cioulis is treating you properly, I guess to show he was up to speed.   I grinned. I just wanted to ask a quick something, if I may. It – may sound a bit odd. What did you see when you looked at me? Ah. A person.  A person who actually isn’t a shit.  As to how to – progress. Pretty much the same, age, class.  Brought up differently. How differently? See how the budgie bites!
Does that answer - ?  I managed to say, I thank you.  Some of us, I admitted, are compiling phrase-books.  I don’t think I’ve met that one before.  He said: we’re all on a learning-curve.  My other question -  you are the Tradition.  Cioulis is earthpower. Cioulis said the  party is a varied place.  Does that mean I’d get different answers depending on whom I was talking to?  Woo-hoo.  Yes and no.  There’s only one reality.  They tell me it’s entirely mind-bending. For certain I’m not in its more esoteric reaches.  Upper branches, as you prefer.  I think Cioulis is capable of telling you reality is a tree.  I was made to learn a bit about it. Apparently it’s in the job description, essential qualification for the post.  I could not help laughing. What I wanted to learn about was how electricity is supplied to entire communities.  What unites the party is attachment to reality, seeing the real, what is there, not what you think is there, but – people are people.  They have their favourite bits of it.  They see it at different levels.  So – yes and no, essentially the same answers but they might seem different.  Does that help?  Very much, I said.  I thank you. And it’s based in physics.  Yes.
Of course I completely longed to say please may my partner be the first female member of the Imperial Army but of course that would be preposterous unless everyone’s female people not to mention children pitched up!  We are after all in this crazy nothing happening war.  A propos of which there was a very large map on the wall.  Can’t possibly tell you what I thought it was indicating but it was very, very interesting.
 
And Spetzi wrote:
Some of us female people have formed a kind of militia, just in case something disastrous happens, but I think we all understand that we don’t have a place in strategy planning, so it’s back to war to the death with leptons!  So no, I’m not doing anything particularly dramatic to assist the war-effort – though I may wish bloody Azt would bloody do something, preferably come out with their hands up, though probably not quite as much as all of you -  but I am very definitely working for the peace. 
 
 
Ritawa.  There’s only one reality but it’s constantly changing?  That actually sounds strange and is rather obvious..  A tree isn’t the same in spring as it is autumn. The geography of the planet isn’t what it was millions of years ago. What I think today most certainly isn’t what I thought a month ago! But the change is contained.  A tree is limited in its movement.  It can’t change itself into a daisy.  What limits the change is what it is. What limits change to people is what they think they are? Mental change I mean! And of course what other people think they are.
Spetzi.  Cantilip can’t have got that wrong.  I don’t mean she’s incapable of error.  In the situation, in the context, she could not have put on line total nonsense. Of course it might just have sounded different!).  People just getting on with their lives, not looking for a war. What have we learned?  The apparent difference is – let’s not say superficial, why not say superficial!  It works in the context it is, on level it is.  If there was no difference, it’d be the same.  Gold star, Spetzi, top of the class! There are different ways of climbing a tree but it’s still the same tree.  That’s pretty obvious too.  I mean you can start at that low branch on the left…What did you see when you looked at Sarat?
Ritawa.  That’s the funny bit, isn’t it. Pretty much word for word the same.  Only of course what you said.  So you’re His Imperial Majesty.  Let us see how this budgie bites!
Spetzi.  So what’s the difference?
Ritawa. Hierarchy, obviously.  We’ve been there.
Spetzi.  So he didn’t see a bloody offensive little shit of a junior officer, who bloody dares.  What does it mean?
Ritawa.  What do you mean?
Spetzi.  I don’t know!  But it means something, something to do with controlling, containing.  Don’t tell me that’s hierarchy too, I know it’s hierarchy too!  People are not to be controlled.  Of course there have to be ground rules for when they can be controlled, people being people. Let me try kindergarten steps. You wanted to establish how and in which circumstances he’d control you.  He didn’t see anything that basically needed controlling. Something in motion.  What did I say, hierarchy controls the motion.  A person can only behave in the way ordained by his or her position in the hierarchy.  Though of course there is only one way to behave.  Fun, this, isn’t it.    But we, but earthpower. In some fundamental sense sees people as being, not moving.  Not fluid.  It doesn’t  - wish you were here to soothe my brow.  You can put it really hierarchically or totally unhierarchically.  This is some filthy little man far below me.  This is a friend who’s really upset.  IS, Ritawa, IS.  Am I making the remotest sense?
Ritawa.  Yes but I don’t understand it either. We don’t think people are fixed.  Hierarchically or un.  If your friend is very upset you want her to be happy again. . 
Spetzi.  Oh no! I thought - what if Sarat were earthpower.
Ritawa.  So?
Spetzi.  Do you remember when I yelled at you for joining Challin and you said he wasn’t like what I thought.
Ritawa.  I told you other stuff too, didn’t I.  How none of us had ever met anyone like him before.  It wasn’t that he didn’t keep us on our toes, it was how he did it. 
Spetzi.  Never met a senoki senior officer?
Ritawa.  Now you come to mention it.  That’s interesting, isn’t it.
Spetzi.  I do of course keep every jewelled word that falls from your fingers.  Hang on a minute… ‘He just looks at you and that look says, oh this is ridiculous, but true.  I don’t mean the look says that, though I suppose it actually does. When I stop babbling, I mean the look says what are you? Munz describes it as biologist examining a new life-form.  He might say something like, ridiculous man. Then he’d ask you how you were ridiculous.  In a detached sort of way.  As though it were an open question rather than in a domineering way.’
Ritawa.  Of course we were all with him because we hated it all.  The last thing we wanted to be was ridiculous.  Does this sound familiar?
Spetzi.  Don’t tell me you expected Sarat to behave like Challin!
Ritawa.  Of course I didn’t. The problem just might be how very much he did.
Spetzi.  I suppose if you are a civilized being faced with a moron there can’t be that many variations on a theme.
Ritawa.  Thank you for your tender words.  It’s still what you said though, about motion.  I wish I could nail it.  Supposing Fana’s really upset.  Your focus is – what’s there. It’s not that the upsetness - is there such a word - is fixed, she can’t be happy again.  What IS is that she’s really unhappy. But – but if being is doing,  That IS – it’s the IS that’s fluid.  As if - this sounds good, no idea what it means.  As if the IS isn’t really an IS – this is going to drive me nuts -  means there’s a struggle.  Like that image going in and out of focus.  There’s something else there,
Spetzi.  That’s silly but I know what you mean.  About Fana I mean.  Seeeing the whole of her as her upsetness.
Ritawa.  You want to be a fuckwit.  Not of course you my angel!  There’s something there about choosing.  Earthpower doesn’t focus on the choosing but the choice?
Spetzi.  Could that possibly make sense? If there’s an illusory self, it’s pretty obvious where the struggle is.
Ritawa.  Then earthpower doesn’t believe in this illusory self?
Spetzi.  Earthpower says all of you is upset.
 
Cioulis had said: mail me any thoughts you might have if you like.  Quality check.  If it’s passable, I shan’t bother to reply, only if you go screamingly off in the wrong direction. 
 
“These two,” said Cioulis, “are nothing if not interesting.”
Karmen tapped his fingers on the table-top.
“I of course am more of a free agent.”
“She’s really going to relish some loon from Harn turning up on her doorstep.”
“I suspect little niss Spetzi would prove more than equal to the occasion.”     
“Just talk to her about fermions.”
“That is precisely my thinking.”
“I think not,” said Cioulis.  “He’d want to go and join her, not of course that he would and not of course that he doesn’t anyway – you know what I mean.”
“An activated wanting!  I know what you mean and I take that point.”
Cioulis was grinning to himself.
“What do you know about Challin?”
“A decent man, as clearly evinced. A brave one – “
“Nothing about his personal history?”
“Divorced, two kids with their mom, who does not seem to be anything of particular note.”
“Challin comes from deep VS, as I do, the area around the House.  Plenty of senoki in the Army of course but yes just possibly only one or few at least from the heartlands, the rest of us having joined Sardun.”
“So indeed he is unique?”
“You have to be pretty unique for Marula to fall in love with you.”
“I am entirely startled.  An affair – it would seem to me that you cannot be either Sardun or my lord of Van-senok if you will not go the whole way.”
“Ex-actly.  Joined up instead.”
“So long as Cantilip is not his daughter!”
“Dates are wrong,” said Cioulis.
“I am relieved to hear it.”
“Daddy is the fuckwit who tried to put out the Flame.”
“That did reach even our distant ears.  It would seem to me – that particular lady.  What is the vogue expression, socially conservative opinion.  My lady Van-senok perhaps the cause of a more conservative opinion of the female of the species?”
“No,” said Cioulis.  “Of course it may be our tendency to see what IS, block capitals.”
“You have lost me.”
“It isn’t that he thinks less of women. It’s that he thinks less of men.”
“You sound as if you know him – the same community?”
“Worse than that.  He had a run-in with the geralis.  Mate of mine was part of the rescue-party.”
“Oh, oh, oh,  I would guess it was after that he declared himself non grata – or grata, as you prefer.”
“He left it three months and planned it exquisitely.  That impressed us.”
“Indeed persons post do not necessarily think at their clearest.”
“What was of consuming interest to us is whom he talked to in those three months when we weren’t watching because we didn’t know there was anything to watch.”
“Cho?  You cannot believe in view of what you have said that it was a feint.”
“No, no, no.”  Cioulis looked quite shocked.  “Protected by a steel ring of fur, to mix my metaphors.  That took arranging.  It also means that PANTHER understood something essential, there had to be a focus for decent kids like young Ritawa who were nonetheless not quite ready to boogie naked in the Sa’aanda Senta.”
“They do that in Zur?  I must visit more often.  That is interesting,” said Karmen, and thought: you cannot be more than a year or two older.  But you of course have seen it and he has not.  I guess that is also what we are fighting for.
 
From Spetzi’s archive:
Spetzi: you have joined – I too can use the language of Harn – that sexist pig!
Ritawa: He’s not like that, Spetz. You’re probably thinking of someone like Ban-vardan, intellectually inferior, weak minds, all the rest of it. Yes, he has profound reservations about suitability.  They come from being bloody civilized.  He is.   
Back to the Viledeen.  The walls are thick and it can be made cosy inside.  The company is good too.  There are more interesting things to write about than the psychiatric problems of the criminally insane, who should in fact be in Broadmoor and no longer troubling society. Still cooing over malignant psychotic vermin, are we, oh they’re so precious, oh they’re so important, oh how we love any enemy of England who hates freedom.  So you think I require your permission to speak, do you, you jumped-up piece of garbage.  Indeed clearly I require your permission also to be able to walk properly and to run because these abilities may freely be removed from me by you.  And nobody laughs in your face, laughs at the sicko but fall at your bloody feet begging to do thy will.  You’re nothing, aren’t you, nothing, a sad squirming heap of infected shit, without all the obedient slaves to carry out your commands. 
 
Reason in revolt now thunders
Ends at last the age of cant
Cast aside your superstitions!
Servile masses, arise, arise!
 
But the servile masses were shocked, appalled, the servile masses believe in obedience, BEfehl’ sind Befehl’, you gotta do what you’re told, the servile masses merely redoubled their efforts to obey Master’s commands.  Probably think of themselves as on the Left, hilariously, rather than the dull dirty little fascists they actually are. The greatest superstition of course is not anything to do with religion, the supernatural, it’s belief in Authority, Authority all-wise and all-knowing, Authority that cannot be misinformed, whose reasoning cannot be faulty, Authority that cannot be evil. 
 
I said once, a long time ago, you do not put a collar and lead on me, you do not enslave me, domesticate me, but you managed, didn’t you, you put chains around my legs and stopped me running free and how much they must have enjoyed that, how powerful and important it showed them to be, as I went from lithe and agile and upright to bent and lumbering around on two sticks, oh how that proved who was boss around here, didn’t you enjoy it, Linch, Goldstone, Naylor, Ardeshna, Whelan, Boden, Fenton, oh how you are kings and queens and masters and mistresses, you have the power to cripple a woman, and instead of turning you in the whole world is ganged up on me, not so much an outlaw as a non-person, and psychopaths used all their sick monkey words against me, rebellious, wilful, arrogant , impudent, even as they brought their clubs down on my spinal fusion, and they all nodded in agreement, yes, o master, and I’m supposed to be in awe of their power, I too am supposed to be a dirty animal who understands only violence, was supposed to fall on my knees and cower and beg forgiveness, anything you say, o master, only please don’t hurt my back, apologize for having spoken, grovel. Because of course they are all complete vermin.
 
The word you are looking for is free. I say what I think.  That’s so evil, isn’t it.  Not to fall on my knees first and ask my master if I may dare to utter.  I actually think I can speak, I can say what I think not what a freak thinks he has the right to tell me to think.  And they make an issue out of it, perverted evil old men like Linch, Goldstone, Naylor, it’s supposed to be some major issue, depraved, degraded twisted animal-women like Boden and Fenton  think it’s a major issue.  Words frighten sick animals. Words challenge their madness.  Words threaten the façade that they are these wonderful people, the con that ony works so long as everyone is terrorized into obedience, terrorized into believing every word of ape-drool that falls from their twisted animal mouths.  Words have desperately to be controlled, don’t they, animals can’t be expected to deal in language. Psychopaths can’t be challenged because they have no words.  So long as everyone says ooh, it is our master, they’re safe.  They’re not safe when someone pipes up who the hell do you think you are?  Of course they do and did nothing.  They think everyone is their property and  I’m a rebellious slave, rightfully punished.  I have no independent, separate let alone equal existence.  They see no problem, no issue. And I laugh in their faces because whatever they dribble and drool they’re vermin. What is the Left’s chief contribution to the last 30 years or so, to create a climate in which people are frightened to speak, think they have to watch their words, create, cultivate support an  army of vicious illiterate ignorant fascists who’ll turn on anyone they deem to have the temerity to speak out of turn, demand apology.  Either you mean what you say or on reflection you didn’t, in which case you take it back. You take it back because your better nature prevails, you take it back because you realize it was nonsense. You do not take it back because someone is waving a club at you and ignoring your closely reasoned arguments, your firm adherence to fact. 
 
“Do a bit of sightseeing,” said Baz, “the other mighty ocean. Take a look at Vaconik.”
“Have we not traversed the entire continent from the farthermost isles of the east.  Don’t s’pose you can recommend a B+B for a couple of intrepid backpackers.”
The Sardun guys recommended they took the train and were informative about road and rail routes negotiating the forest.  The main line ran down the coast.  That was an obvious one.  Less obvious were snaky little tracks along valleys, single tracks with two trains a day, and trains that stopped by request at that.  Of course you had to ring ahead to the station.  The nearest station to the House was at Da-conan, described as a country town.  Pix were pulled up and they beheld streets of grey stone building interspersed with occasional weathered brick.  Da-conan boasted a shopping precinct, but really thought Baz you could hardly tell.  Da-conan clearly didn’t do garish.  Paw examined the list of enterprises and mentally ticked off the essentials of senoki life, heating engineers, plumbers, IT.  It must be a services hub.  The history of the precinct was described to them.  At first  a general store, of course a cobbler, a tailor, and of course traders, traders who traversed such of Van-senok as was traversable then a small group of shops, then someone thought it sensible to cover them all in, then some entrepreneurial type thought the happy shopper would like coffee and something to eat without venturing outside. The general store had presumably become Loni’s Mart.  Paw decided he very much wanted to see Da-conan and find out what people ate. The railway was clearly vital to trade.  All goods were distributed to the hinterland by rail.  Baz  examined a rail-map. It was clearly a long journey up the coast then east to Ciletij.
“Not easy to get to Ciletij.”
“There used to be a line,” said one of the Sardun guys.  His finger traced a route from a junction in the hinterland due north.  “We closed it.”
“Ah,” said Baz.  “Not a lot of trust.”
“Those who need to visit fly.”
“Trade has suffered?” asked Paw.
“Theirs has!  What we got from Ciletij, we get from Var-sega’.”
“We always got,” said another of the Sardun guys, “agricultural produce from Var-sega’.”
“Is any of Van-senok arable?” asked Baz.
“In the south we grow wheat, barley, cabbage.”
Not the most varied of diets.  Wholesome, thought Paw. He returned to the map of Da-conan. He hoped the Four Bears Inn (is that supposed to be a pun?) was a good place to stay.  It was the only place to stay.
 
“Fall at his bloody feet,” said Ritawa.
 “Funny,” said Munzi, “of course he loathes and despises them as much as we do.  It’s still nice to have it in pictures.”
“Isn’t it just!”
“Good practical bloke,” said Varulin.  “Rolls up his sleeves and gets the job done.”
 
“Bloody brilliant,” said Carlutan.
 
“Delectable,” said Rewn. “You can have speeches or you can have the garbage-truck.”
“Oh yes,” said Challin.  “Rather liked the literary bit too.”
 
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.
………………….
 
DEMANJI: As a gay woman, I am of course double-prey.  As Sardun, I escaped.  But you can argue it rebounds on women, all women.  Men understanding we’re seen as prey get at best over-protective.  Karula asked a question.  Haven’t seen anyone answer it yet.  Isn’t this part of it.  Their intentions are honourable!  Got a few wires crossed on the way.
 
SALI:  I think it all goes back to the Kadun cock-up, most things do.  As Maya’s said,
CALUNIN: I do not think I am alone in failing to find modesty and decorum a stain. Men do not flaunt our bodies.  Indeed cats and trees do not operate half-naked.  It can hardly be argued a woman needs to expose herself to be considered the equal of a man.
TIRO: Change of tune.  Thought you couldn’t tolerate a woman pilot. 
CALUNIN:  I prefer to argue one thing at a time.
TIRO: You haven’t argued anything yet.
DIBESIT: I stand by my previous comment. 
OBAYA: Well, you wouldn’t like it to run away.
CONRULAT: Five points awarded for not being a coward.  Makes the score  minus 295.
MUNZI: Do give him credit for the courage of his convictions.
CONRULAT: The defendant asked for multiple previous offences to be taken into consideration.
BOLAN:  Do you have to?  Grown-ups are talking.
OBAYA: Us or him?
CALUNIN:  It is undoubtedly one of the drawbacks of this forum that it descends into puerile adolescent repartee.
CONRULAT: Detect sense of humour failure.
CALUNIN: The sense of humour of a pervert is necessarily flawed
CONRULAT:  The only perverts in Kadun are in Corsin.  Never did credit them with much wit.
DIBESIT:  This is the conversation of the gutter!  I shall complain.
OBAYA:  Who to?
FURRIER: Yes, Firas will hang on his every word!
DIBESIT: No woman with any self-respect would flaunt her body.
FURRIER: Change the record!  You said that before.
 
MAYA:  And here is our fashion bulletin for the day…The Leotard Look is intensely practical, dress it up, dress it down, and if someone dares you race him to the next breakwater you can do that too.  You have comment, guys?  Bring it on down.
 
VEENA: Women have bodies.  This is official.   We can even use them, which may defy credibility.  Do you run regularly?
MAYA:   No.  Swim, ride, play tennis and hockey.  We climb a bit in the hills above Am-Arkna, but you can’t call them mountains.
VEENA:  Sorry to interrogate, but – you swim publicly?
MAYA:  Publicly, privately.  We’ve got a pool.  If I’m on the beach I swim in the sea.
VEENA: And you go to a public beach?
MAYA:  There isn’t any other kind.  Partly it’s security, no way part of the shore off-limits, partly it’s a feeling the sea can’t belong to a particular person.  Except of course the Fleet!  They have their enclaves.  Swimming not.
GOSA:  Interesting.  In  fact we encountered that in Carlin.  Private beaches were – requisitioned, I suppose is the word.
 
DIBESIT:  This is completely intolerable.  First, this pair of foreign interlopers, now foreign military.  I have complained to Firas.
SARAT:  Biological toss-up.  You are, yes.  How ‘foreign’ I am.  900 years of irturbi genes!  It just depends which ones are dominant.  Lot of them from Camp Five went to Kadun.  Did you hiss at that?
BARVENIN: Look but don’t touch.  The usual word is prick-teaser.
MAYA: So the only possible point so to speak of the LL is to arouse men?
BARVENIN: What a little tart you are.
MAYA:  Have you anything intelligetnt to say?  So the offence is being recognizable as a woman by those unfamiliar with the female form?  Men on the beach in Zur are not in a state of constant erection due to the presence of women on the beach in Zur.
SARAT: Civilized men of course are interested in women as individuals not as receptacles for semen.  To trash like you the LL is like the petals on a flower, an invitation to pollination.
Don’t pull your punches, lad, don’t be mealy-mouthed.  And her.  Bloody hell!
DIRENIN:  Really, can we not discuss things like civilized people.  That is grotesque. 
KARULA: I think I might think twice before describing myself as a little flower!
MAYA:  I’d imagine I feel about my lean strong fit body must the way you guys feel about yours.  It feels good to have it, it does what you want it to.  I see no need to hide it.
BARVENIN: Ridiculous nonsense.  Men do not flaunt our bodies.
MAYA:  It’s this word ‘flaunt’.  Try not ashamed of and not concealing.  [Pic of bare-chested men in shorts and long loose boleros standing around a stall in the Sa’anda Senta, in fact a NoZone stall where Sarat was trying to convince them of the necessity of signing a petition.]
SARAT:  There is a particular reason men rarely wear the close-fitting on the bottom half.
Not so on the beach of course so some guys wear swimming shorts, not trunks. 
CONRULAT: Gay men wore make-up in Azt 1300 years ago.  Whether they also got awful skin diseases because there was no safety testing, I know not but an otherwise completely harmless activity it was and is. We know the story they spin, the ‘licence’ of the empire eventually corrupted it and showed its true face.   I think some dudes here associate sex with the Cult, so they shy away from it.  As long as everything sterile and asexual we’re clean.  But sex is a perfectly healthy part of being human. Exactly what Essa said, contempt and denial of love, wherever they can. 
 
OBAYA: So the – blueprint is the heterosexual male and any variation is a pathetic striving.  Sardun, female.  Stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine.
CONRULAT: Sardun, gay.  Probably your worthless neck I saved.
CALUNIN: A lady officer.  At least no stripy socks.
A low opinion was held of the attrie of the gallant army of Dabida, who rejoiced in their stipy socks. 
OBAYA:  You have to talk about it.  What that girl said.  If you really think women can’t analyse data or run Stores, then you are out of it.  But that’s not what you think.  I still don’t know what you do think.
CALUNIN:  I cannot countenance a woman in the cockpit next to me.
VEENA: We get the reasonable stuff, guys, we really do.  We get women are not to be shot down over Cult territory, we get they are not to be posted to Cult regiments.  We even get concern about physical ability, though it never did cats any harm.  But there’s a whole underbelly that is not reasonable and we all know it.
MUNZI: Female cats taken prisoner?
VEENA: You don’t want to know.  Her choice to risk it.  Maybe that’s the basic point.
OBAYA: While you sit in your Messes, silly little girls are living rough, silly little girls are running around with great big guns, silly little girls are being obscenely tortured, though not often because we are very very good.
MUNZI: I was at Boral.
OBAYA: Shit! Apologies.  But you know it’s true of some of you.
MUNZI: Some.  And that is exactly what was wrong with that damn’ interview.  She made it sound as though we are in some last-century time bubble while Kadun has moved on.  We’re the ones most in flux.  Everything has been turned on its head.  Trust, respect for elders, for authority?  Who sold Kadun out?  Who got us into this mess?  The sacred chain of command?  Yessir, of course, sir – until we shot them and made a break for it.
VEENA: I’m guessing you’re vaudosi.  Experience must be very different in Carlin.
DIBESTI: You talk of a sell-out.  Carlin is clearly wholly corrupted.  To even think of giving time to this lamentable young man and his dreadful little tart.
SITSI: We appear to have here a screaming loon.
DIBESIT: [Pic of Maya in the Leotard Look].  Small wonder they call her the Dabidan whore.  You tell me any lady dresses like that?
BARVENIN: And the other, the San-yaega-baht woman, sold to Alzani-Meta.
SITSI: I think you stop right there.  Sarshi is a complete darling, a small blonde whirlwind.
BARVENIN: Ah, a feudal vassal.
OBAYA: Oh dear haven’t we opened the tin.  All the little squirmy wormy things crawling out.
 
SORG: Sarshi’s brother.  Who is this baboon?
 
VIRUN:  Desk-jockey.  Never heard a shot fired in anger.
DIBESIT: And what does ‘my lord of Carlin’ do?
SORG: Caniba.  The whole of Carlin knows it, so no point in pretending mustn’t say where we are.
DIBESIT:  Then you too are a ‘desk-jockey’.
SORG: Yes, but I’m brilliant and you’re not.
DIBESIT: Naked display of the intolerable arrogance of the self-styled upper classes.
FRENSAT: Not if you know what they do at Caniba.
DIBESIT: And other one, Asdinan, why is he not in uniform.  Too busy knocking up the girls in the village.  Not of course that they are regarded as fit to be my fine lady of Carlin.
SORG: As was a student in Azt for a year, all he could stand.  He met a lady.  It didn’t work out.  The House is bringing up the result.
BARVENIN: What absolute prostitute abandons her child?
MARDIS:  Uzz’n don’ ‘ole with no tark loike that.
DIBESIT: We have the yokels here now?
MARDIS:  You keep on like that, in absolute droves.  Suggest you don’t come to the Rabbiters’ any time soon.  San-yaega-baht, old boy.  Asdinan’s cousin.  For the record, As and I are both cats.
 
MIDI:  Me, pig-shit, me, I’m the mother.  You listen hard, boy.  Asdinan is about the most decent upright guy you could hope to find in this country. He wanted to make a go of it.  I didn’t.  I did not and do not see myself as Mistress of Carlin!  Of course Carlin has our child, a much better life than being alone with me in the city. Turd like you are the bloody corruption, making everything normal and human dirty and sordid.  Actually what drew us together in the first place, shared loathing of shit like you.
 
KARULA: Kudos, honey, kudos.  I too had to choose between two very different lives. 
VEENA: Yes, gentlemen, where appropriate of course, women can bloody speak.  We are not talked about as though we are defective children with no hearts and minds of our own.
 
SADIA:  Just assembling my weapons.  Physical strength.  Manual dexterity.  Intellectual proclivity.  These must vary between individual women.  Equally they must vary between individual men.  Or all men are hard-wired to drive tanks?
SITSI:  I think if we’re honest – one problem for some chaps.  You start with a woman flier.  Next thing you know she gets promoted and you have a woman in command.
MUNZI: Undoubtedly some of us would have difficulty taking an order from a woman.
SADIA: Yes but why.
KARULA: Men lead.  Women follow.  That is a Kadun essential inside the military or out.  The usual expression is pretend-men
SADIA: How interesting.
KARULA: The unreconstructed Kadun male repays close study.  The essence is that human perfection lies in masculinity.  Some women do not properly understand we are a separate species and attempt to ape men.
SADIA:  Didn’t you leave out a hyphen: ape-men.  So being fully female lies in being nurturing, supportive, etc.  Male is active, female is passive, etc.
KARULA:  They claim it’s a question of the Whole.  For sure that conceals a whole load of grunting and knuckle-walking.
MUTAN: You can’t deny male and female are the two halves of the Whole.
SADIA: Looks more like 80:20 to me.
KARULA: ROTFL.  But each of us is both male and female. All the ‘hard’ attributes are assigned to men, strong, rational, hard, leaving women weak, irrational, soft.  But we are all equally human.  Each of us is a continuum from strong to weak, rational to irrational.  I am a real soft Mom, but if anyone threatened our children, I should not bleat and scream for Mitch to do something but simply blow his brains out.
SOBRENIN That much surely anyone can understand.
FILI: And we know of individual acts of heroism by women.  Unfortunately, for the purposes of the discussion, they were civilian women.  Couldn’t be anything else could they.  What do I mean, perfectly ordinary women.
SOBRENIN: Ludicrously, from the perspective of the discussion.  I think you probably mean ‘real soft Moms’.  That’s how Var-sega’ speaks these days?!
ZITAN:  Or the girls at the college in Boolan.  I’m wondering vaguely something in the idea, it’s OK for women to defend.  Attack is ‘unfeminine’.
MUTAN: I think that’s a really interesting one.  Just thinking.  Yes, we like the idea of our grisl being safe but if the line collapsed and our homes were under attack – think we rather expect/hope they’d defend themselves and our kids.
SADIA: By the time she’s blown out the brains of a few rats….
CONRULAT (Sardun, male, gay):  This of course is the root of the objections of some to gays.  That it affronts the Whole.  I certainly should not bleat and scream if anyone threatened me.  Whether I blew his brains out possibly depends on whether his name was Ban-tisol.
 
“Bomb just went off, Mitch.”
“I shall be most interested in the response.”
 
MUNZI:  No prejudice personally.  Know some here have.  Kudos for raising the matter.  I feel I half-understand, but we do have bodies.  Can you discount bodies?  There are of course aspects we would not discuss in mixed company.
SADIA: Maybe you should start trying.
DITSI: Gay. 
CONRULAT: The argument is the male unites with the female but that’s ‘male’ and ‘female’ as Karula said, he’s hard – so to speak, she’s soft, he’s rational, she’s irrational, etc.
 
CONRULAT: It doesn’t seem to have been considered that women and gays both have more at stake, more to fight for.
MUNZI: I am  unsure about that.  Not so stupid that I do not understand your fate is worse.  If we say we face absolute evil, how can it be more absolute. 
CONRULAT: I actually understand that.  Just torture us for longer before letting us die.  There is nothing they do to us they do not do to the heterosexual.male, bar of course rape of women, but as has been said you get it for what you do.  We get it for what we are.  It’s a question also of the future.  Under Cult rule we should have no future. 
OBAYA: Nor any woman who doesn’t think of herself as a stuffed toy.
KARULA: It is sure the case that, imperfect though some things are, we are all at least capable of civilized conversation.
OBAYA: Meaning they are.  OK, gentlemen, I think you probably are, you are having this conversation because you recognize things have to change.  Sensible bunnies. As touched on above, if you think females can’t be trusted with data analysis, catering, cleaning the freaking latrines, you’re out of it.  But you don’t think that.  I still don’t understand what you do think.
SADIA: Probably a lot of you haven’t – what’s funny in all this is what Airoch looks like.  Yea, under those pretty shawls is a mind like a freaking laser.  [Pic of sweet little old lady fiddling with her beads, draped in fringed dusky pink shawl.]
KARULA: ROTFLMAO if that is not disrespectful!  To one of the most powerful women in the world.  That raises questions does it not of women feeling it necessary to pretend in some respect to be men in order to succeed. 
MAYA: Airoch is superificially repeat superficially your dear old aunt.  She calls everyone darling and offers smoky tea out of bone china cups.  Then she kills you.  I shan’t tell you the name out of respect for the dead, but there was one rather senior Dabida politico who was irritated with Fidub over some obscure point of maritime law, can’t remember the details.  May he rest in peace.  Probably the Straits.  We’ve been grumbling at each other over whose Straits for 600 years and we’re not going to stop now.  Yes, dear irturbi, Fidub can be irritating!  But we love them anyway.
SADIA: Of course they’re our Straits.  Grin, duck, run.
 
But it was announced Mel and Hass were off to Var-sega’
You can see that.  Of course your cousins must visit.
Immediately? asked Seani.  “While Sarat’s stll there?”
Oh.  No low profile, then Hass?
Hass in riot in Var-sega’!
You’ll remember that gay guy Sarat met at the House who, it transpired, was shortly hosting a meeting.  Hass could chair it, said Sarat, not wholly seriously.  Clearly that was a very good idea indeed and naturally Hass honed his claws and started packing.
And here is a homely scene from the streets of Giraga.  A large square brick building with steps leading up to double doors, one of which is open.  T is surrounded by tarmac, parking-spaces.  A crowd of people are blocking the way to the doors, holding up posters with legends such as NO! TO PERVERSION.  NOT IN VAR-SEGA’.  THEY SHOULD BE SHOT.  There is a number of trucks on the tarmac, not parked in the designated spaces but facing the doors. 
Bloody foreigner aren’t you
Honorary irtubi, suggested Hass.  Maya’s cousin.  Then we hold the meeting at the House.  Either way, we hold the meeting.  Proved you ware rational, you are of course welcome to attend.  I would ask you what the hell business it is of yours how others conduct their private lives.
The demeanour, observed the for, the against and the undecided is not that of someone to mess with.
“What usually happens around this point,” said Mitch, “is someone calls for arrests for disturbing  public order.”
“They are, yes,” said Hass.  “I do not of course know local law.  Is it possible to have them removed for impeding lawful progress?  Or something.
“No-one wants anyone arrested,” said Mel, “just quietly put aside.”  He went back to twisting a couple of strands of wire together, a sort of physical doodle.  Another one, thought Mitch, not a curl ruffled. 
“Or we hold the meeting here in the open,” continued Hass.  “OK, I shall start.  We are gathered here, in a carpark, on a not particularly balmy evening, to discuss – what are we here to discuss – stupidity, ignorance, malice – will that do for a start.  The stupidity ignorance and malice that mars the lives of LBGT people in Kadun and other places in the world. Which alas we so clearly see around us.  Or in other words, guys, what is your little problem?
Flashpoint.  How do you bloody dare! You’re not in bloody Zur now, boy.  Talking about decent people defending their country, defending their kiddies.  You do not talk about it in the open!
“Has anyone anything sensible to say?” asked Hass in a lull.
There was nearly an hour of it, there would probably have been five hours of it, but it started to rain so the demonstrators were left to get wet and the meeting went back to the House.
 
What else d’you think you’re going to dribble, the intellectual excellence of bloody nurses?
 
Or of course the perv stuff about how I must do what I’m told.  If you want to physically abuse me, well, who am I to argue?  IF you want to cripple me, what does my view matter?  I think the courts might have a small problem with that. 
 
 
DEMANJI: As a gay woman, I am of course double-prey.  As Sardun, I escaped.  But you can argue it rebounds on women, all women.  Men understanding we’re seen as prey get at best over-protective.  Karula asked a question.  Haven’t seen anyone answer it yet.  Isn’t this part of it.  Their intentions are honourable!  Got a few wires crossed on the way.
 
SALI:  I think it all goes back to the Kadun cock-up, most things do.  As Maya’s said,
CALUNIN: I do not think I am alone in failing to find modesty and decorum a stain. Men do not flaunt our bodies.  Indeed cats and trees do not operate half-naked.  It can hardly be argued a woman needs to expose herself to be considered the equal of a man.
TIRO: Change of tune.  Thought you couldn’t tolerate a woman pilot. 
CALUNIN:  I prefer to argue one thing at a time.
TIRO: You haven’t argued anything yet.
DIBESIT: I stand by my previous comment. 
OBAYA: Well, you wouldn’t like it to run away.
CONRULAT: Five points awarded for not being a coward.  Makes the score  minus 295.
MUNZI: Do give him credit for the courage of his convictions.
CONRULAT: The defendant asked for multiple previous offences to be taken into consideration.
BOLAN:  Do you have to?  Grown-ups are talking.
OBAYA: Us or him?
CALUNIN:  It is undoubtedly one of the drawbacks of this forum that it descends into puerile adolescent repartee.
CONRULAT: Detect sense of humour failure.
CALUNIN: The sense of humour of a pervert is necessarily flawed
CONRULAT:  The only perverts in Kadun are in Corsin.  Never did credit them with much wit.
DIBESIT:  This is the conversation of the gutter!  I shall complain.
OBAYA:  Who to?
FURRIER: Yes, Firas will hang on his every word!
DIBESIT: No woman with any self-respect would flaunt her body.
FURRIER: Change the record!  You said that before.
 
MAYA:  And here is our fashion bulletin for the day…The Leotard Look is intensely practical, dress it up, dress it down, and if someone dares you race him to the next breakwater you can do that too.  You have comment, guys?  Bring it on down.
 
VEENA: Women have bodies.  This is official.   We can even use them, which may defy credibility.  Do you run regularly?
MAYA:   No.  Swim, ride, play tennis and hockey.  We climb a bit in the hills above Am-Arkna, but you can’t call them mountains.
VEENA:  Sorry to interrogate, but – you swim publicly?
MAYA:  Publicly, privately.  We’ve got a pool.  If I’m on the beach I swim in the sea.
VEENA: And you go to a public beach?
MAYA:  There isn’t any other kind.  Partly it’s security, no way part of the shore off-limits, partly it’s a feeling the sea can’t belong to a particular person.  Except of course the Fleet!  They have their enclaves.  Swimming not.
GOSA:  Interesting.  In  fact we encountered that in Carlin.  Private beaches were – requisitioned, I suppose is the word.
 
DIBESIT:  This is completely intolerable.  First, this pair of foreign interlopers, now foreign military.  I have complained to Firas.
SARAT:  Biological toss-up.  You are, yes.  How ‘foreign’ I am.  900 years of irturbi genes!  It just depends which ones are dominant.  Lot of them from Camp Five went to Kadun.  Did you hiss at that?
BARVENIN: Look but don’t touch.  The usual word is prick-teaser.
MAYA: So the only possible point so to speak of the LL is to arouse men?
BARVENIN: What a little tart you are.
MAYA:  Have you anything intelligetnt to say?  So the offence is being recognizable as a woman by those unfamiliar with the female form?  Men on the beach in Zur are not in a state of constant erection due to the presence of women on the beach in Zur.
SARAT: Civilized men of course are interested in women as individuals not as receptacles for semen.  To trash like you the LL is like the petals on a flower, an invitation to pollination.
Don’t pull your punches, lad, don’t be mealy-mouthed.  And her.  Bloody hell!
DIRENIN:  Really, can we not discuss things like civilized people.  That is grotesque. 
KARULA: I think I might think twice before describing myself as a little flower!
MAYA:  I’d imagine I feel about my lean strong fit body must the way you guys feel about yours.  It feels good to have it, it does what you want it to.  I see no need to hide it.
BARVENIN: Ridiculous nonsense.  Men do not flaunt our bodies.
MAYA:  It’s this word ‘flaunt’.  Try not ashamed of and not concealing.  [Pic of bare-chested men in shorts and long loose boleros standing around a stall in the Sa’anda Senta, in fact a NoZone stall where Sarat was trying to convince them of the necessity of signing a petition.]
SARAT:  There is a particular reason men rarely wear the close-fitting on the bottom half.
Not so on the beach of course so some guys wear swimming shorts, not trunks. 
CONRULAT: Gay men wore make-up in Azt 1300 years ago.  Whether they also got awful skin diseases because there was no safety testing, I know not but an otherwise completely harmless activity it was and is. We know the story they spin, the ‘licence’ of the empire eventually corrupted it and showed its true face.   I think some dudes here associate sex with the Cult, so they shy away from it.  As long as everything sterile and asexual we’re clean.  But sex is a perfectly healthy part of being human. Exactly what Essa said, contempt and denial of love, wherever they can. 
 
OBAYA: So the – blueprint is the heterosexual male and any variation is a pathetic striving.  Sardun, female.  Stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine.
CONRULAT: Sardun, gay.  Probably your worthless neck I saved.
CALUNIN: A lady officer.  At least no stripy socks.
A low opinion was held of the attrie of the gallant army of Dabida, who rejoiced in their stipy socks. 
OBAYA:  You have to talk about it.  What that girl said.  If you really think women can’t analyse data or run Stores, then you are out of it.  But that’s not what you think.  I still don’t know what you do think.
CALUNIN:  I cannot countenance a woman in the cockpit next to me.
VEENA: We get the reasonable stuff, guys, we really do.  We get women are not to be shot down over Cult territory, we get they are not to be posted to Cult regiments.  We even get concern about physical ability, though it never did cats any harm.  But there’s a whole underbelly that is not reasonable and we all know it.
MUNZI: Female cats taken prisoner?
VEENA: You don’t want to know.  Her choice to risk it.  Maybe that’s the basic point.
OBAYA: While you sit in your Messes, silly little girls are living rough, silly little girls are running around with great big guns, silly little girls are being obscenely tortured, though not often because we are very very good.
MUNZI: I was at Boral.
OBAYA: Shit! Apologies.  But you know it’s true of some of you.
MUNZI: Some.  And that is exactly what was wrong with that damn’ interview.  She made it sound as though we are in some last-century time bubble while Kadun has moved on.  We’re the ones most in flux.  Everything has been turned on its head.  Trust, respect for elders, for authority?  Who sold Kadun out?  Who got us into this mess?  The sacred chain of command?  Yessir, of course, sir – until we shot them and made a break for it.
VEENA: I’m guessing you’re vaudosi.  Experience must be very different in Carlin.
DIBESTI: You talk of a sell-out.  Carlin is clearly wholly corrupted.  To even think of giving time to this lamentable young man and his dreadful little tart.
SITSI: We appear to have here a screaming loon.
DIBESIT: [Pic of Maya in the Leotard Look].  Small wonder they call her the Dabidan whore.  You tell me any lady dresses like that?
BARVENIN: And the other, the San-yaega-baht woman, sold to Alzani-Meta.
SITSI: I think you stop right there.  Sarshi is a complete darling, a small blonde whirlwind.
BARVENIN: Ah, a feudal vassal.
OBAYA: Oh dear haven’t we opened the tin.  All the little squirmy wormy things crawling out.
 
SORG: Sarshi’s brother.  Who is this baboon?
 
VIRUN:  Desk-jockey.  Never heard a shot fired in anger.
DIBESIT: And what does ‘my lord of Carlin’ do?
SORG: Caniba.  The whole of Carlin knows it, so no point in pretending mustn’t say where we are.
DIBESIT:  Then you too are a ‘desk-jockey’.
SORG: Yes, but I’m brilliant and you’re not.
DIBESIT: Naked display of the intolerable arrogance of the self-styled upper classes.
FRENSAT: Not if you know what they do at Caniba.
DIBESIT: And other one, Asdinan, why is he not in uniform.  Too busy knocking up the girls in the village.  Not of course that they are regarded as fit to be my fine lady of Carlin.
SORG: As was a student in Azt for a year, all he could stand.  He met a lady.  It didn’t work out.  The House is bringing up the result.
BARVENIN: What absolute prostitute abandons her child?
MARDIS:  Uzz’n don’ ‘ole with no tark loike that.
DIBESIT: We have the yokels here now?
MARDIS:  You keep on like that, in absolute droves.  Suggest you don’t come to the Rabbiters’ any time soon.  San-yaega-baht, old boy.  Asdinan’s cousin.  For the record, As and I are both cats.
 
MIDI:  Me, pig-shit, me, I’m the mother.  You listen hard, boy.  Asdinan is about the most decent upright guy you could hope to find in this country. He wanted to make a go of it.  I didn’t.  I did not and do not see myself as Mistress of Carlin!  Of course Carlin has our child, a much better life than being alone with me in the city. Turd like you are the bloody corruption, making everything normal and human dirty and sordid.  Actually what drew us together in the first place, shared loathing of shit like you.
 
KARULA: Kudos, honey, kudos.  I too had to choose between two very different lives. 
VEENA: Yes, gentlemen, where appropriate of course, women can bloody speak.  We are not talked about as though we are defective children with no hearts and minds of our own.
 
SADIA:  Just assembling my weapons.  Physical strength.  Manual dexterity.  Intellectual proclivity.  These must vary between individual women.  Equally they must vary between individual men.  Or all men are hard-wired to drive tanks?
SITSI:  I think if we’re honest – one problem for some chaps.  You start with a woman flier.  Next thing you know she gets promoted and you have a woman in command.
MUNZI: Undoubtedly some of us would have difficulty taking an order from a woman.
SADIA: Yes but why.
KARULA: Men lead.  Women follow.  That is a Kadun essential inside the military or out.  The usual expression is pretend-men
SADIA: How interesting.
KARULA: The unreconstructed Kadun male repays close study.  The essence is that human perfection lies in masculinity.  Some women do not properly understand we are a separate species and attempt to ape men.
SADIA:  Didn’t you leave out a hyphen: ape-men.  So being fully female lies in being nurturing, supportive, etc.  Male is active, female is passive, etc.
KARULA:  They claim it’s a question of the Whole.  For sure that conceals a whole load of grunting and knuckle-walking.
MUTAN: You can’t deny male and female are the two halves of the Whole.
SADIA: Looks more like 80:20 to me.
KARULA: ROTFL.  But each of us is both male and female. All the ‘hard’ attributes are assigned to men, strong, rational, hard, leaving women weak, irrational, soft.  But we are all equally human.  Each of us is a continuum from strong to weak, rational to irrational.  I am a real soft Mom, but if anyone threatened our children, I should not bleat and scream for Mitch to do something but simply blow his brains out.
SOBRENIN That much surely anyone can understand.
FILI: And we know of individual acts of heroism by women.  Unfortunately, for the purposes of the discussion, they were civilian women.  Couldn’t be anything else could they.  What do I mean, perfectly ordinary women.
SOBRENIN: Ludicrously, from the perspective of the discussion.  I think you probably mean ‘real soft Moms’.  That’s how Var-sega’ speaks these days?!
ZITAN:  Or the girls at the college in Boolan.  I’m wondering vaguely something in the idea, it’s OK for women to defend.  Attack is ‘unfeminine’.
MUTAN: I think that’s a really interesting one.  Just thinking.  Yes, we like the idea of our grisl being safe but if the line collapsed and our homes were under attack – think we rather expect/hope they’d defend themselves and our kids.
SADIA: By the time she’s blown out the brains of a few rats….
CONRULAT (Sardun, male, gay):  This of course is the root of the objections of some to gays.  That it affronts the Whole.  I certainly should not bleat and scream if anyone threatened me.  Whether I blew his brains out possibly depends on whether his name was Ban-tisol.
 
“Bomb just went off, Mitch.”
“I shall be most interested in the response.”
 
MUNZI:  No prejudice personally.  Know some here have.  Kudos for raising the matter.  I feel I half-understand, but we do have bodies.  Can you discount bodies?  There are of course aspects we would not discuss in mixed company.
SADIA: Maybe you should start trying.
DITSI: Gay. 
CONRULAT: The argument is the male unites with the female but that’s ‘male’ and ‘female’ as Karula said, he’s hard – so to speak, she’s soft, he’s rational, she’s irrational, etc.
 
CONRULAT: It doesn’t seem to have been considered that women and gays both have more at stake, more to fight for.
MUNZI: I am  unsure about that.  Not so stupid that I do not understand your fate is worse.  If we say we face absolute evil, how can it be more absolute. 
CONRULAT: I actually understand that.  Just torture us for longer before letting us die.  There is nothing they do to us they do not do to the heterosexual.male, bar of course rape of women, but as has been said you get it for what you do.  We get it for what we are.  It’s a question also of the future.  Under Cult rule we should have no future. 
OBAYA: Nor any woman who doesn’t think of herself as a stuffed toy.
KARULA: It is sure the case that, imperfect though some things are, we are all at least capable of civilized conversation.
OBAYA: Meaning they are.  OK, gentlemen, I think you probably are, you are having this conversation because you recognize things have to change.  Sensible bunnies. As touched on above, if you think females can’t be trusted with data analysis, catering, cleaning the freaking latrines, you’re out of it.  But you don’t think that.  I still don’t understand what you do think.
SADIA: Probably a lot of you haven’t – what’s funny in all this is what Airoch looks like.  Yea, under those pretty shawls is a mind like a freaking laser.  [Pic of sweet little old lady fiddling with her beads, draped in fringed dusky pink shawl.]
KARULA: ROTFLMAO if that is not disrespectful!  To one of the most powerful women in the world.  That raises questions does it not of women feeling it necessary to pretend in some respect to be men in order to succeed. 
MAYA: Airoch is superificially repeat superficially your dear old aunt.  She calls everyone darling and offers smoky tea out of bone china cups.  Then she kills you.  I shan’t tell you the name out of respect for the dead, but there was one rather senior Dabida politico who was irritated with Fidub over some obscure point of maritime law, can’t remember the details.  May he rest in peace.  Probably the Straits.  We’ve been grumbling at each other over whose Straits for 600 years and we’re not going to stop now.  Yes, dear irturbi, Fidub can be irritating!  But we love them anyway.
SADIA: Of course they’re our Straits.  Grin, duck, run.
 
But it was announced Mel and Hass were off to Var-sega’
You can see that.  Of course your cousins must visit.
Immediately? asked Seani.  “While Sarat’s stll there?”
Oh.  No low profile, then Hass?
Hass in riot in Var-sega’!
You’ll remember that gay guy Sarat met at the House who, it transpired, was shortly hosting a meeting.  Hass could chair it, said Sarat, not wholly seriously.  Clearly that was a very good idea indeed and naturally Hass honed his claws and started packing.
And here is a homely scene from the streets of Giraga.  A large square brick building with steps leading up to double doors, one of which is open.  T is surrounded by tarmac, parking-spaces.  A crowd of people are blocking the way to the doors, holding up posters with legends such as NO! TO PERVERSION.  NOT IN VAR-SEGA’.  THEY SHOULD BE SHOT.  There is a number of trucks on the tarmac, not parked in the designated spaces but facing the doors. 
Bloody foreigner aren’t you
Honorary irtubi, suggested Hass.  Maya’s cousin.  Then we hold the meeting at the House.  Either way, we hold the meeting.  Proved you ware rational, you are of course welcome to attend.  I would ask you what the hell business it is of yours how others conduct their private lives.
The demeanour, observed the for, the against and the undecided is not that of someone to mess with.
“What usually happens around this point,” said Mitch, “is someone calls for arrests for disturbing  public order.”
“They are, yes,” said Hass.  “I do not of course know local law.  Is it possible to have them removed for impeding lawful progress?  Or something.
“No-one wants anyone arrested,” said Mel, “just quietly put aside.”  He went back to twisting a couple of strands of wire together, a sort of physical doodle.  Another one, thought Mitch, not a curl ruffled. 
“Or we hold the meeting here in the open,” continued Hass.  “OK, I shall start.  We are gathered here, in a carpark, on a not particularly balmy evening, to discuss – what are we here to discuss – stupidity, ignorance, malice – will that do for a start.  The stupidity ignorance and malice that mars the lives of LBGT people in Kadun and other places in the world. Which alas we so clearly see around us.  Or in other words, guys, what is your little problem?
Flashpoint.  How do you bloody dare! You’re not in bloody Zur now, boy.  Talking about decent people defending their country, defending their kiddies.  You do not talk about it in the open!
“Has anyone anything sensible to say?” asked Hass in a lull.
There was nearly an hour of it, there would probably have been five hours of it, but it started to rain so the demonstrators were left to get wet and the meeting went back to the House.
 
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.”

I shit on you daily.