And the other thing of course...

Assiduously taught their own perfection as the illiterate and ignorant products of Trot education are, taught the world revolves around them and that therefore any criticism of their perfection, any suggestion there is something imperfect about them, their manners, for instance, or their grasp of writing coherent English is really where possible dear old hate speech; 'you only said that because I'm gay'.  Oh, are you a loony too?  I should suspect therefore that Jackson and Hughes cooked up an accusation of homophobia, which doubtless the cockroaches enthusiastically disseminate behind closed doors, but which wouldn't actually survive five seconds in the real world, exposed to my beautiful brilliant gay characters.  What I write probably does more for gay rights than they have done in the whole of their lives.  It is hardly my problem that a slum lout who strutted around with his legs apart (literally) and his flies open (metaphorically) is delusional.  Keep it in your pants, boy.  There is a lady present.

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

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.
….

“We seem to have digressed.” Lazily. “Tell us about your relationship with Hasiyata. How it began.”
“When we were 3 playing with alphabet-bricks on the floor of The Room? We were always close. We – “
“Consummated it?”
“Gave it full expression? It was the last summer Mel and Hass came over. Mel had said he’d had enough of beetles and taken himself off to M-P. Mum and Dad had taken the girls out for the day. We were alone in the house. Except for PANTHER of course, but PANTHER don’t barge into a guy’s bedroom.” I looked at them. “At least not at the time. We were working. Not very hard. Bugs and beetles. And joshing about. I’m sure neither of us had sex in mind but we – our hands touched and suddenly – we looked at each other. You know how it works in a set like ours. Unless you fall head-over with someone outside the set, if you just want to see what it’s like, you do it with a friend, someone you trust absolutely. The rest you can work out, except it was slow and dreamy and eso and unfrantic, except the obvious bits. I’m sure you’re dying to ask, so we did it both ways. Except when we heard the front door. Unfrantic, I mean. We did not want to be woken from our dream by Ven! That’s why I fell – I didn’t just fall in love with Maya. I fell into Maya. Until then she’d been a friend. I somehow realized what she was.”
“A female Hasiyata?”
“His friends call him Hass.”
“After, immediately after?”
“Of course we talked about it! Half the night. And we did it again. We were working something out, working something through. Of course we didn’t think it was for ever. How many teenagers - ? We didn’t think it was the start of going out together either! I hadn’t been and I’m not attracted to guys. It was something – eso, apart from the world, about us. I loved him. I love him. I always shall love him.”
Someone entered my mind.
I jerked out of my romantic reverie fast. What the fuck!
So throw me out.
Great waves of foreboding filled me and visions of extremely nasty things rising from graves. I don’t like this. What do they teach us when we’re having a bad-hair day, a lousy mark in math? Focus, focus, focus. Everyone’s going to die. That’s reality. Focus. Light. There might have been a pinprick in the darkness but I was so angry – use that anger, it’s just energy, light. Gather that energy – oh really, what is the point. Helpless, drained. I am not bloody well helpless! There was a great deal of unpleasant laughter. Try harder, dumbfuck, try harder. It was like an enormous weight pressing down on me. I was just going to nimbly fling myself out of the way, when they took the image over. I have been washed overboard and the ship’s propeller is coming closer and closer. Any minute now I’m going to be pur?e. All in my mind, all in mind…In my mind I can swim for hours under the water. I headed for the ocean-floor and the propeller passed harmlessly overhead. Oh look, there’s a shark and above is only darkness for the ship is vast, a destroyer, a tanker, a liner. Trapped, helpless. It’s not a very big shark. It instantly became enormous but all in my mind, if I get on its back it may not like it but it can’t eat me. All in my mind, that’s the basic one, all in my mind because actually I’m – no time for actually I’m sitting in a high-backed swivel-chair because I am going to get eaten. What crap is that? No time for breath-control exercises to quell the visceral fear – all in my mind. Make it a dolphin. So then we struggled. So it’s a small bottle-nosed shark but what is more to the point the assault became three-pronged, lungs bursting, must have air, but above is total darkness. I am Sarat with an aqualung swimming with the dolphins. Keep that one unified thought. The pressure grew. They let go.
“Not at all bad.”
“What is this, Lesson One!” My chest felt as though it hurt a bit, though presumably not as much as it would have if I’d just almost drowned. I told it not to be stupid and pushed my hair back fighting off the conviction it was sopping. “Isn’t anyone going to offer me a towel?”
“Have a sip of water.”
“I did that. It was salty.”
“What have you just learned?”
“I couldn’t escape from the dream. I wanted to reject it. I’m here in this room. I could only function inside the dream. And I guess. If I’d learned the eso stuff, I could have tickled its little sharky brain and told it I wasn’t edible.”
“There’s an interesting picture on the wall behind you. Go and look at it.”
The problem, you will have guessed, is that there was no wall behind me. I am not damned well standing in the Saa’nda Senta! Have you ever tried to stand up when you’re already on your feet? I really do not recommend it. The fountain continued to sparkle in the morning sun. Lemme just be logical about this…Oh! Use the dream. OK, OK, I am walking towards the fountain but it is not bloody well the fountain it is the long table behind which are three guys, so I can turn my back on the fountain/table and walk in the opposite direction towards the wall/Kendar’s. I really need to go to Kendar’s to get Mum a birthday-present. No, I don’t! I need to go to Saba’s, the gallery. There’s a new - I began to feel a bit pleased with myself, tinged with a liking for reassurance I was on the right track. Of course no such reassurance came. You surrender to the dream, at least until you find the weak spot. If there is one, of course. Hass had raved about Ban-finsil’s exhibition, there’s an abasanth in bloom I really have to see. Flaw. I haven’t seen the abasanth but I do know what one looks like. OK, I’m going to look at the first picture I see. Since I don’t know what that is, I can’t superimpose the image. I am entering Saba’s and looking at a painting. I am not repeat not in Saba’s, I am in a room in the retreat on the Leolisle which I believe is pale green, though just to thwart me they might have made the walls lilac. The bay window is to my right and it looks out over gardens, what kind of gardens. I rather hoped I had a photographic memory, perfect recall, but I didn’t think I did and, even if I did, I’d been so intent on the interrogation committee that I’m not sure I noticed the gardens in the first place. Focus, focus, focus on what? What did I remember about the room behind me? This is fiendish. OK, this is 3D: me standing in the middle of – space – behind me is a high-backed swivel-chair, a rug intricately patterned in greys and greens, a long highly-polished certainly antique table but I couldn’t place the period, three men, a small one with closely cropped grey hair, a high-bridged nose, in front of me is Saba’s and a miniature of a ruined tower on an outcrop being battered by the sea.
They withdrew.
Yes!
The rest of the room came into focus and I drank it in. Might need it again some time.
I turned.
“Where is it? The tower, I mean!”
“Harusin Point.”
Eeek! Harusin Bay is where Narulis first landed.
“I can see it’s very old. That old?”
The skinny one smiled.
“Not that old.”
“So you decorate the retreat with mementoes of Narulis! Or just for me?”
“Let us return to Maya.”
“I wish! I notice you’re not – what are you not, training me, testing me, with Maya, with any of my friends being attacked. That’s because in RL, on the ground, they’d be able to look after themselves? Not that there’s anything particularly RL about the rest of it. Forced below the waves to face a ravening shark! I mean – I’m not sure what I mean.”
“Maya.”
“It’s a good thing I have a sense of humour. OK…I was staying on the hill. Pietri, Caluna and Maya came to dinner. The four of us – Mel, Hass, Maya and I – excused ourselves after dinner. Mel had an essay to write. Between sex and revolution we’re very studious. That left the three of us sprawled around the pool. Maya said she wanted to make a phone call. She shot us a completely wicked grin. If you can be trusted to be alone together. Hass blew her a kiss. So long I said as you don’t tell me you and Maya - ? He just grinned and said, Maya is someone it’s really easy to talk to. You don’t have to explain things. Yes, I said, though I couldn’t possibly have said what I meant. I – I suppose Maya suddenly became more interesting and – and the girl for me would have to be one I could share what I’d shared with Hass. But nothing happened till Hass’s birthday party, which was pretty much an all-day event. Lunchtime till late. The vague theory was the afternoon and the early evening was adults and young children, family, and then we turned the volume up. Loads of people I didn’t know. The family is large. Anyhow – do you know the hill, it’s like a rabbit-warren. Anytime they wanted more room they did more tunnelling. There’s this crazy crooked outside stair that’s the quick way down to the stables. You have to come up for air sometimes. In this case down. Halfway down I found Maya, sitting hugging her knees. I didn’t know her then! Are you OK? occurred to me. Do you feel all right? Maybe she just wanted to be on her own. She just smiled and patted the step beside her. Oh wow, I said. She turned and grinned and said I found this place when I was a tot. It’s my favourite view. Ahem, as we know, Maona-pri is the Silver City and lights up at night to make the point. This was a view directly across the Straits to M-P. I like looking at the shipping too, she said. Where have they come from, where are they going? Am I not an islander! I do shipping. All right, most Zuri do too. We talked about our respective harbours. How romantic can you get! Broadened our scope to all things sea-faring. Somewhere in the middle of telling her about the lighthouse on the Utmost Isle it began to wriggle around in my brain I like this. Maya is someone I want more of. The sentence – this’ll make you laugh. I’m not usually lost for words. The sentence you’re really nice occurred to me. I didn’t say it. After a while we became aware it had got much quieter. Yikes! she said. D’you think everyone’s gone home? I made wide eyes. No search-parties? Mel and Hass know I come here, she said. Indeed, as we got to the top of the stairs we collided with Mel. Ha! he said. Well, well, well! Some of us, she said, prefer the pleasure of civilized conversation. Him, civilized? said Mel. I shall ignore that remark, I said. Found her! he carolled to I don’t know who. Them, he muttered. Gazing into each other’s eyes. Shut up, Mel, said Maya, before I could. Seconded, I said. We were reunited with our loving families and Maya went home. I lay in bed thinking I didn’t even get her number. Ah well, hardly as though she’d vanished off the face of the planet. I think – I think that was the beginning of my – awareness of what’s basic to our relationship. It – touches somewhere I don’t want to share. I’m not exactly shy and retiring but somehow it had seemed impossible to ask her for her phone number in front of people. How, I hear you cry, does that mesh - ? Our relationship is. It’s not for explaining. Of course every tabloid on the planet will explain it. We don’t have to. The other thing – when I was distressed about telling her, it was – like I’d hurt our relationship by intruding something into it that needed explaining. I’m hungry. May we stop now?”
“No.”
“Great! A crust? A dry biscuit?”
Presumably there was tele-talk because a guy duly appeared with a plate of what looked suspiciously like ship’s biscuit.
Meanwhile…”How did the relationship develop?”
Gee, guys, I’m nearly lapsing into sarcasm. Would you like to know what I had for breakfast on the day of the biology practical? Why do you want to know? How about we explore something here, such as the meaning of ‘personal’.You could ask, why am I answering your questions? Then again, we could cut to the chase here. “I think,” I said, “it’s sit back and think time. How personal would you like me to make this, and why? Gee, Sarat, what did it feel like when you first kissed her, dot, dot, dot. We both know we’re going to be asked questions we’re not going to answer and we both know – gee, what did it feel like when you made love for the first time? There are people in newspapers who aren’t sentient. So…externally this is how do I do under fire? Internally – are you sentient? Your apparent fascination with my sex-life – just trying to get the full picture here? Not my sex-life, my sexuality. If it were a different person every night, alternating gender, that might have some bearing on my - fitness for the job you’re interviewing me for. There’s another angle – just one? I seem to be here to answer your questions. In – in a scenario in which it appears - if I fail to answer your questions, if I don’t want to answer your questions, I’ve – failed to satisfy the examiners! But I don’t know you from a hole in a ground. Why should I answer your questions?”
“A brash Fidubi brat,” said the little one.                                                                  ….

At which point the anti-gay mob moved in, really this intolerable nonsense has gone far enough, that we should even consider frank perversion, precisely what is meant
DITSI:  Oh dear don’t we have a little problem.
SADIA: We promised Mel we’d be polite….
DITSI: Promises can be broken.
CONRULAT: Gentlemen, which you are not, you are disturbing civilized conversation!  Or in other words fuck off!
You bloody pervert, how dare you, and blah.
CONRULAT:  Probably your bloody worthless neck I saved. 
 
SARAT: Can I throw in something the guys in Carlin told Hass.  It goes something like the further west you go the more people talk of the Whole not the Flame.  Of course V-k is the heart of the Whole but so far as it sees it in physical terms, it’s – geographical, land and water, earth and sky.  There’s more raw gut prejudice in the west because people see it as male/female.  There’s no gender attached to the Flame and you can’t give it gender.
SADIA: Interesting!  There’s something else there.  Sort of – an individual can identify with the Flame.  Don’t know anything about earthpower so happy to be shot down – is this the difference? It sounds a bit stranger for an individual to say he/she’s the Whole.
OBAYA: I am a flame,  I am a tree.  It is the same.  It is different.  Union in earthpower is with the earth/planet/cosmos.  Yes, good point, it is more concrete.
 
FILANAT:  Great goodness, the source of the rot himself, an insidious corrupting influence I understand, the forum infested by perverts, foreigners, pretend-men, the clear aim of bringing us down to the woeful level of the south.
CONRULAT:  Sardun, repeat Sardun.  Here already.
VEENA: PANTHER, repeat PANTHER.  Here already.
SARAT: Can you possibly be talking to me?
FILANAT:  Are you not yourself a pervert?  All too clearly we are to be softened up to acceptance of this preposterous young man and his vile mores.
SARAT: You really shouldn’t believe everything you read in the Azt Star.
FILANAT:  That is a vile slur in itself.
CONRULAT:  What was that again, ‘man, woman or twain’  What do you think it means?
FILANAT: Precisely.  The empire was rotten from the start, a rot which finally overcame it.
SARAT: So gays and women finally rotted the imperial court?  The fact that they were the chief victims of the rot?
FILANAT: Of course.  They had served their purpose.
SARAT:  Er….An interesting perspective.  So the Cult was behind the propagation of gay rights, women’s rights under the empire?  Or – have Igot this? It was a weakness in the Tradition they exploited.
DITSI: Then the wholeof the south is rotten.  Why haven’t they exploited us?  I think we should be told!
SARAT: Going back to what was said about concrete, that’s actually interesting.  ~You could argue it’s because the Flame isn’t concrete that the rot set in.  Nothing matters, people don’t matter, nothing of this world matters.
DIBESIT: Then you admit the Tradition is flawed.
VEENA: I did not know that!  What this says to me is there’s nothing, Flame, Whole, that can’t be turned on its head.
SARAT: The Flame, the Whole, these are immaculate, inviolate.  They can be said to be something else.
MUNZI: Exactly.
DIBESIT:  And only a rabble of perverts understands the true meaning of the Whole.
DITSI: And of course the Flame.
VEENA: Something else.  The Army’s not like the old Army, contains some of the brightest guys in Kadun – which you may or may not conclude from this forum!  Serious, guys who were preceptors, scientists, stuff like that.  What I’m trying to say is it’s not that they’re not intellectual (some of them) but the other matter is what I shall say cheerfully is another bent, you have to have a basic interest in it to be PANTHER or Sardun.  So, bluntly, we know more.
And if you tell me that the guys at the shrine in Maona-Pri or in the Viledeen haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about, but itsy-bitsy little officers who’ve never studied anything have got the whole thing sussed, quite honestly I’m tempted to…laugh.
MUNZI: History student in another life.  Who knows, I may one day be a preceptor!  You do know how much you confuse them, I take it?  What they’d rather like to say is – contemplating navels and there you are at the hard end.
VEENA: Thereby hangs a tail.
DIBESIT: So now the ‘old Army’ was stupid.  There was absolutely nothing wrong with it.  Intellectuals, of course, clear sources of corruption.
VEENA: Except it let the hebade geralis infiltrate it, clear bloody sources of corruption!
VATYA: So I want to get the hang of this, Sarat, sir, you being of the upper class.  If you come into our mess, what would you expect?
SARAT: Basically normal civil behaviour.  I shouldn’t expect guys to stand.  I’d expect to be acknowledged, offered a drink.  If I had something to say I’d expect guys to shut it and listen and not go on chatting to their mates.
VATYA: I think we would pleased to entertain you at some point, not-sir. And if you were to request me to give your good lady a good humping I would certainly obey.
SARAT: That would be pretty off, asking you to do something I ought to myself.
VATYA: Right you are, guv. Wanted to see what you’d say and now I know.  Can’t say I wasn’t warned.   So that’s the real deal, no f-affing about.  No fetch me that piece of paper on the other side of the room.  Before certain officers jump down my throat, it’s not like that at Caniba.  Plenty of places it is like that.
SARAT:  I can walk.
VATYA:  I am very glad to hear that.
 
“Strong men,” observed Munzi, “have turned pale.”
“You had to have been there,” said Varulin.  “Bloody immediate.”
 
Don’t hear that often, the sound of Firas purring.
 
VATYA: Someone was bleeding brought up right.  Speaking as a member of the ‘lower orders’. I might just point out to certain so-called gentlemen there are more of us than there are of them.
Of course real gentlemen don’t fart about waving their egos around, might tear your balls off, fair’s fair, but I tell you this much, us ‘other ranks’ can tell the bloody difference.
CALUNIN: You threaten insurrection?
VATYA:  I don’t threaten anyone, ‘cept geralis.  I’m just saying, if we stop playing your games, you can’t actually do anything about it.
CALUNIN: I see you are based at Caniba.  Perhaps a word with Tisindar?
VATYA: Just how you bloody do things, isn’t it, creepy, a word in your ear, old boy.  Haven’t got the balls to actually talk to me.
CALUNIN: Those who go out on a limb may well find it sawn off.
FALTARIN: Tisindar’s a bloody cat, you’ll get nowhere.
FURRIER: Break sacred rules fast enough when it suits you, don’t you.  What’s in the forum stays in the forum.
SARAT: No-one should be punished for what he thinks.
CALUNIN: The prospect of mass mutiny is somewhat more than an opinion.
SORG: Word inyour ear, old boy.  Actually it’s a fact.  We at Caniba are actually rather fond of Vatya.  Find him ornamental.  We tried to persuade him to take a commission but he shunned us.
VATYA: Nothing personal, Major, sir!  Good bunch, our officers, intelligent and sane.
KARCI: You have called Sorg sane.  Are you sure about that?
VATYA:  Can be, put it like that.
FURRIER:  Normal people run screaming from the room.  Caniba’s here!
TISINDAR:  I believe someone wished to speak to me?
CALUNIN: This Vatya creature.
TISINDAR:  He doesn’t tolerate fools gladly.  Nor I. 
CALUNIN:  This is nonsense.  How can you possibly command?
TISINDAR:  Rather successfully.
SORG: We’re cats, moron.  We follow imperial law.  The powers of military commanders are clearly stated.  Here, to be exact.
MITCH: Now, gentlemen, calm, centred…
BARVENIN: Of course everyone’s licks San-yaega-baht’s arse.  The nexus of capital between Alzani-Meta and Carlin that so clearly underpins thus ludicrous claim to empire must be apparent to all.
MITCH: Oh please, credit me with more taste!
SARAT: Any minute now he’ll be calling Maya the Dabidan whore
TISINDAR:  I think that might have been addressed to me?
SORG: Uzzn?  Uzzn baint but ‘armless yokels.
BARVENIN: Adolescent descent into failed attempts at wit is one of the more debilitating features of this forum.  One tries to raise serious concerns and gets no intelligent response.
SARAT:  Pssst, who’s going to tell him
SORG:  Do sit down, old boy.  Perhaps a cup of tea.  I shall try to break this to you gently.  The trouble is your ‘serious concerns’ are screaming garbage.  I think I shall mail Firas.  If that is a serious concern then clearly it must be addressed by the relevant parties.  Can Mel not be invited to join our gathering?  Yes, I have heard similar before.  Yes, I actually think Mel and As would prove highly entertaining on the subject.
 
CIOULIS: Sardun. You fucked-up pathetic little pieces of garbage, I do not think I have to explain in detail to our glorious military the depressing phenomenon of the officer (certainly not the gentleman) who is bloody full of it, who waddles around waving his grotesque self-importance at your, who regards any opposition as a slur on his greatness.  We know who are the top guns, the best of the best, we know who leads and inspires not dribbles over dinner, Challin, Rewn, Carlutan, but some of you – so maybe next time we don’t bother to save your miserable hides.  Actually we’re too noble not to do that, but you try us hard.  Endless crap about command and women and gays and order.  Total disconnect with that famous real world. Some NCO tells you the facts of life and you think you can sit on him?  Think hard, guys, hard, you think we in Sardun are going to suppress your ‘mutiny’ for you, you think PANTHER will?   Out on a limb is you farts.
VANNINA:  Calm down, Cioulis dear, calm down.
CIOULIS:  Ah, the soothing voice of a woman.  Evil grin. Vannina’s my boss.                                                                                                                                              
 
Isn’t he so cute!  Of course he wasn’t my Cioulis then, nor would be for some years to come and both of us would have howled with laughter at the idea we were meant for each other.  What’s that again about war making strange bedfellows?
“In one line, for the sake of the dear world.  Appreciate a lot was said about the matrix!  What is your objection to hierarchy?”
“As if you didn’t know!  It deforms people, puts them in boxes and forces them to be what the box says they are, behave only in ways permitted by occupants of their particular box.”
“How far does that apply to you?”
“Anile Emperor,” said Sarat, “just has to know its place.  I’m a Sarat and I’m not going to be pushed around by it.  What I think about the emperor crap is pretty much what Mel thinks about the king crap.  It’s not exactly original.  Yes, there’s a place for it, but not often.”
“Like when you post you’re Anile Emperor!  Indeed you are modern guy.  Don’t think it’s ever been done on a forum before.
“Trend-setter,” said Sarat.
“Assumed it was all a cover for what was actually going on.  I’m not even to going to bother to ask.”
Num cut in again.
“You quoted – ‘the right to live without hindrance’.  Is there anything specific about women?  Can’t believe it mentioned gays.”
“‘These rights shall apply to all, whether man, woman or twain.’”
“Narulis recognized trans?”
“Maybe,” said Num, “he had a friend who was gay!”
“Evil grin,” said Seani.  “The one thing everyone knows about Narulis is he wasn’t  I trust you do not intend to follow in his footsteps.”
Sarat pursed his lips and looked extremely prim.
“Maya really would not like that.”
“For the sake of the dear world,” said Seani.  “Narulis had three ladies, Brig, Nautschka and Vrim.  OK, now can you tell us how the command structure works in the absence of hierarchy.  Because frankly when I think about how our gallant military would function in war, I’m not entirely sure I know.”
“Team work,” said Sarat.  “Everyone’s self-starting, but part of the team.  So there’s an overall plan agreed by everyone.  If someone thinks of something else, that’s not just cool, that’s expected, but he – or she – is expected to tell everyone else.  Even if it’s a crisis.  One line mail.  We’re doing this not that.”
“OK, but someone’s the boss – in this case presumably you.  So you OK things.”
“I’m not an idiot,” said Sarat.  “I don’t tell guys who know far more about things than I do what to do.  My war is PANTHER business, Sardun business.”
“I would not think you tell PANTHER and Sardun what to do either!  So you – co-ordinate.  Is that the word?”
“I think probably,” said Num, “in the depths of our little Dabidan souls we all understand.  In this situation, Tar would be the boss.  No question. Like the guys said at the forum, the ideal, the point of what we’re doing it for.  Narulis is a pretty hard act to follow, Sarat!”
And now we have to leave Sarat because the dangerous criminal Maya is back in Zur!
Seani frowned, hasn’t been time.  Who says pix are real-time?
A truck drew up at the cordon.  Maya got out.  Meah, meah, meah!
            “I think Zur probably wants to talk to me,” said Maya.
Anile Empress, Maya?  Dangerous criminal, Maya! What is this, Maya? You have said things - you and Sarat, you cannot be Anile Empress!  Loved the vid, loved Sarat – this is crazy, Maya!
“A girl has to have a job,” said Maya. “Call us the cleaner and the refuse-man.  We’ve said.   If Sarat and I do nothing while the Cult rules Kadun, there is no point in us, in any of it.”
Sure, Maya, everyone understands a heritage.  You are Tar’s niece, FFS!
“Well done,” said Maya. 
 “You have staged a coup.”
“What have we overthrown?”
“Well, sure – not yet!”
“Threatened to overthrow? Still trying to get my head round what you’re saying, Maya.  Azt and Vaudos are part of the empire.  Azt claims Var-sega’, Carlin, Van-senok, they’re part of All-Kadun.”
“So it’s a tug of war, right, who’s in charge of – what everyone thinks of as Kadun, the lands we call Kadun.”
“There have to be free elections in Kadun.  How do we get there other than revolution?  You think Azt is going to say, sorry, we’ve been remiss here.”
“In the name of Narulis?  I just have a problem with 1500 years!”
LIVE FROM THE SAA’ANDA SENTA
“FFS what is this!”
A group of Zuris had got their heads together and decided they at least weren’t morons.  They’d designed a quick poster, Death at the border with a big red X through it, and a banner: Thank you Carlin!
Ciletij had taken exception.
“Again in the pay of Ban-varna.”
Someone had laughed.
“WE know Cho’s rich.  Doubt he’s rich enough to pay off the whole of Zur.”
 “Why do not refuse to understand, the empire is the Cult.  You welcome the Cult to your border.”
“You guys out of it?”
“Bet someone’s in the pay of.”
Flash-point.
“That repulsive and obscene smear, above all.  To label decent honest Ciletij Cult-sympathizers for standing firm against madness.”
“I’m on my way,” said Maya.
“We’ll drive you,” said one of the guys from Channel Nine.  “Your truck awaits.”
They drew up in the Saa’anda Senta.  Maya got out.
“I think guys should cool it.  You have a problem with me, you talk to me.”
“You absolute bitch,” said the Ciletij.  “You complete fucking cunt. You betray everything.”
“Start with fact,” said Maya.  “What do I betray?”
“Every civilized value for which the Quadrant stands.”
“How?”
“To know as you must know for what the empire stands.  We have watched the flagrant mesalliances, the pairing with Carlin, a feudal relic from an age long past.”
“Vij is my brother,” acknowledged Maya, “Sarshi San-yaega-baht-Talal is his partner.  Have you been to Carlin?”
“Of course not!”
“Then could you be talking about something about which you know exactly zero?”
“Everyone knows the people of Carlin are barely more than serfs.”
Maya grinned.
“Uzzn arl tark Carlin.  Uzzn don’ warn no-un proying.  Uzzn baint but ‘armless yokels ‘ere, zurr.  I’m a linguist by at least some training.  Shall we talk about the language of Carlin?  It’s a code, a barrier, a defence.  Carlin has been fighting this war for about 800 years.  It’s rather good at it.  You’m foind uzzn all tarks prarper, uzzn warnts.  Carlini are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves, so let’s cut to the chase here: opening the border.  Load of gawping tourists at the precise moment Azt attacks.  Not a good idea.  We want people to see what we’re doing, apart obviously from Azt the war bits, so we looked for work-arounds.  We shall let the Press
 in, strictly at your own risk of course.  The coast is pretty much a no-risk area, maybe one itsy-bitsy vamp gets through but it’s not likely, Fleet carriers of the coast, Varna and Barnisin, any bat fluttering out of hell is pretty doomed.  So we’ve made a sort of public region, 30 nani in from the foreshore.  Anyone can land at Car-sandis and nose around. Again it’s at your own risk.  If you think  ooh, I’ll go inland and walk into the path of Corsin,  don’t scream at us for help, we’ve got other things on our minds.  I want to really stress that, because our little internal border isn’t going to be guarded– puh-lease better things to do than save morons from themselves.  It is going to be watched, make sure kids don’t stray, but if you’re an adult of unsound mind, no-one’s going to stop you.”
“I think we might just get that point.  Fry Corsin? Serious, Maya?”
“Totally.”
“Can’t think why they want to arrest you!”
“Unbelievable!” muttered the Ciletij.
“Watch this space,” said Maya.  “May I make one basic point while I have your undivided attention.  Sarat and I are coming from two places.  One is normal clean human being.  Like the guys in the military, we’re saying no, N-O, no, a no that doesn’t know how to be yes.  But Sarat and I are also something else.  A history of no!  No is everything we are externally as well as internally.”
            Seani, feeling a bit solemn and momentous, two nos that have shaped all we are, turned from the screen and looked at Sarat’s face, saw little there solemn or momentous.
            “You’re smirking.”
            “Mine, all mine,” said Sarat.
            “I think you do not mean Kadun.”
            Dotes, everyone knows he is nuts about his pretty, witty little Maya and you don’t have to be a rat to wonder exactly what is so special about her.  Perhaps this may give us insights into their relationship, not of course that we are Glitz.  Let nothing happen to Maya.
“Women in Kadun,” someone was saying in the Saa’anda Senta.  “You are just maybe and we have seen those Sardun women but them too – not wholly typical.”
“That goes back to what Sarat said about boxes.  The basic human right to be yourself, not what others deign to let you be.  If you want to have masses of kids and stay at home with them, that’s cool.  If you want to fly fighters, that’s equally cool.”
“Until you have kids,” said Seani a touch abruptly, “Sarat’s sister is Anile heir?”
“Yes.” 
…
The oldest enemy
 
Kadun is facing the third great crisis of our existence.  It is of course unthinkable in the modern age that the Image of Desecration be paraded through our cities and yet it is happening.  I believe the dynamics of this are inadequately understood and I wish here to clarify matters.
 
It is sometimes argued that the fault lies in us, irturbi.  This is of course baloney but it is interesting baloney, compounded by what some of us in the west call the Fidubi scam. Yes, of course we love you, dear Fidubi. Nonetheless I think you will follow our reasoning.   As we all know, Narulis, the first emperor of Kadun, was a Fidubi, a scion of the House of Fire.  If we fast-forward 900 years to the collapse of the empire, there  must be few who have not heard of Jaizal.  Fewer still refer to him as our last Fidubi emperor.  The Fidubi scam is simple.  When the empire was good, it was Fidubi, when it was bad it was irturbi.  This we should laugh off were it not for the knock-on effect, which is enabling the bacilli who currently infest some of our cities to claim that the values of Fidub, of the south, of the free and civilized world, are a foreign import and the indigenous culture of Kadun is that of bacilli. A crucial element of this lie is of course that Narulis was Fidubi and supposed to have imposed alien values on Kadun.
As Sarat has outlined, the truth is the opposite.  The indigenous culture of Kadun is earthpower, which teaches the harmony of the universe, called the Whole.  Earthpower is not pacifist, but it is not aggressive and so, as a friend of mine bluntly but accurately put it, we keep getting our backsides bitten.  We seek to negotiate, not wishing in our somewhat overly warm and fuzzy little irturbi hearts to recognize there is that with which there is no negotiation.
That is not of course to say that there are not criminals in Kadun, in places high and low, there are not the unscrupulous, the amoral and the plain evil.  I can name you a dozen off the top of my head, supposed pillars of society, leading bankers and industrialists, supposed academics and other intellectuals, so called ‘leaders of opinion’, who falsify both past and present, but I suspect the lawyers of The Times would not wish me to do that.  PANTHER will be naming them on the Grid.  Then they can sue PANTHER.  PANTHER can cope. 
 For the benefit of the wider world I note what all irturbi know: that Narulis was an adventurer who landed with 22 men and found a certain amount of excitement going on.  If you are unfamiliar with this part of history, the question will jump to your lips: how on earth did he become emperor.  That indeed is something of a mystery.  My own answer is that what is now Kadun was five kingdoms.  In business terms empire was a merger.  Naturally there had to be a chairman of the board; in those terms an outsider makes sense.  To this I would add that empire presented a united front to the outside world and indeed for many years after the collapse of empire the government in Azt concerned itself almost entirely with foreign affairs. We therefore retained a seat at the world-table.  As Dabidans will know, the Constitution of Dabida is founded on imperial law.  There had been loopholes enabling infection to spread.  I am told by one who should know – Vij Talal – the Constitution of Dabida is an exercise in closing those loopholes.  You will see that the basic point is that Kadun must have an infrastructure in which there are no cracks through which infection can enter.  We must come into line with our good friends in the south.  The choices are the Dabidan model or the Fidubi model.  There are no others. We are Kadun. 
But some say, we are no longer Kadun.  Assuredly Carlin could form a bloc in the east with Dabida and Fidub, as we in Van-senok and Var-sega’ could form a bloc with Vasucula; some say, why do we not secede from this failed entity All-Kadun.  The most immediate and over-riding reason is because it would leave this continent in a permanent state of war, leave  us all with a dangerous infection on our borders.  We have had to fight with every cell in our bodies for Carlin, for Van-senok, for Var-sega’, in order that Kadun remain.  We shall continue to fight for Kadun. 
That said, the infection in Vaudos has made travel difficult, bordering on the impossible.  Some of us have been in the air 14 hours in order to get to Zur.  We assure you that is something no-one wants to do often.  But contact between west and east, face to face if possible, must be maintained, and so we are here as emissaries from the west, to share, to hear each other’s stories, and of course to confirm we are one nation.
Lastly I note there will assuredly be some squealing about our having made this trip immediately consequent to Sarat’s having arrived in Carlin.  The reason for that of course is that Sarat and I undoubtedly share some of the same politics.  On what we differ I cannot say until we have talked but I certainly reiterate: there is no justification for withholding medical care.  One further fundament of imperial law.  ‘These rights shall apply to all, whether man, woman or twain.’  There is no historical justification for the outrageous prejudice against women and gays that is to be found in some parts of Kadun.
If you paid attention at school you will recall the importance of the apostrophe:  Narulis’ rules, OK!  As I have said, as Sarat has said, Kadun must choose the framework under which we wish to live. The fundamental point here is obvious, but sometimes lost: ‘monarchy’, ‘republic’, these are merely labels.  They have no moral quotient, no moral load.  They do not describe the behaviour of people to each other.  Fidub is not superior in this respect for being a republic, nor Dabida for being a monarchy.  In the case of Kadun, of course, both ended in tears.  Other considerations will apply.  What these considerations are will form a vital part of the conversation Kadun must have with itself concerning the secure future we all require.
The fundamental question here is infrastructure.  Here we must return to ancient history.  Long before Narulis there had been contact between Fidub and Kadun.  Faced with Isles that have the impertinence to sing, irturbi in the east tended to the view that the Tradition was simply another form of earthpower.  I am no expert.  I understand that at the metaphysical level, the level at which people sit cross-legged under trees contemplating the Infinite, there are indeed profound differences between the two.  But at the level of how to behave to one’s fellow beings there is no difference at all.  Narulis established imperial law in Kadun as representative of the values of irturbi.  I am also no expert in legal history.  I do not doubt there was interplay, those values were tweaked by input from Fidub, but Narulis was a Fidubi adventurer not a conqueror.  He landed with 22 men, found mayhem and asked whether this was a private war or anyone could join in.