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.

The perps emerged from the attentions of Mitch and Cantilip.
So that is the doom of the miscreant!  I think flogging preferable to Var-sega’s tongue.
Challin laughed, being inclined to agree.
 
If there’s one thing we’re all sure of, they all have tongues in their heads!
 
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. “I shall in due course write to your fathers.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Ritawa demurely.
​
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.”
 
“Pair of drivelling morons,” observed Challin cheerfully.
“Of course you want to be a fuckwit,” enthused Fanos.
“I flushed, didn’t I.”
            “Just a little.”
            “Psychologically, it’s really interesting.  Why is it worse?”
            “Obviously because it puts the buck back where it belongs.”
            “Course you can say anything you like.”
            “Only you just might not like what you get back!”
            “I didn’t expect to like it,” said Ritawa plaintively. “I don’t even know how to explain. Of course I expected a strip torn.  A different strip!”
            “Never met anything quite like them,” said Munzi.
            “As in them.”
“A decidedly plural them..”
            “Naturally my lady Maya burst into tears and asked you how you could possibly, how you could bring yourself, what kind of monster are you,  to say such  awful, awful things about a poor helpless little girl like her.”
“It wasn’t like that!  She ran to Sarat and he said that.”       
“I did not expect that!”
“That she’d speak or that she’d cry?”
            “That’s quite a double-act.”
            “Now touring the empire to rapturous reception!”
            “I do fear we have to courageously confront what bloody little oinkers we are.”
            “It didn’t occur to us, did it.”
            “An active role in the proceedings?  Inconceivable.”
            They caught sight of Mitch who had strolled in and was now half-choking with silent laughter.
            “Just wondering if you’re still alive.  What did you think, guys.  Zur, well, that’s Zur, but this is Kadun, this is war, this is command, this is men’s business.”
            “Ow!”
            “Witty, is she not.”
            “I think perhaps I need to know her better before pressing her on the subject of transparency.”
            “The other place I nearly cracked wasn’t even addressed to me.  Smirch.”
            “What did you expect?”
 “Not that!  Does he know, Mitch?”
            “I should not think so.  I at least have not told him.  He will of course have absorbed your demeanour, that you are a very upper-class young drivelling moron.”  Many splutters of laughter.  “It will of course be my delight to tell him.  Truly, what did you expect to happen?”
            “I honestly don’t know.  Something more – formal. I assumed he’d be civilized, of course.  Mitch, we don’t have the vocabulary for this.”
“A limited education.”
“Assumed what?  He’d be tougher, harder…Does that not then imply?”
“What, you did not find him weak and soft!”
“There was no way to get into it,” said Ritawa.
“What?”
“The backchat.”
“Ah, the puerile repartee.”
“I thought that was rather good.”
“Except of course by joining in.”
“Oh yes, I recognized the invitation to the party.”
“I think they would say that once you laughed and turned into natural normal human being game over.”
“I sort of recognized that. That I was under full-scale attack!”
“Of a kind unknown in military history.  Except maybe in Kadun.”
 “It had to be done, Mitch.  We had to know.”
            “If I did not understand that, I am frankly not sure I should be honouring your freedom of expression.  I found the list of offences truly impressive.”
            “Mitch – if I have this correctly, just observe the normal rules of behaviour, and everything’s cool.”
            “And?”
            “Behave in the same way – behave as you would among your peers – to everyone.”
            “I do not think Sarat said anything to you that one young man would not say to another who was being an offensive little shit.  It was you who kept dragging in the emperor crap.”
            Ritawa leant forward, put his head in his hands, pushed his hair back and looked up and around at comrades blinking like owls in daylight.
“The – that’s what he thinks of it, truly?”
            “I should not wish to be inexact here.  That is what he thinks of the entire apparatus of hierarchy.  It is not what he thinks about the chair, about his heritage.”
            “You can’t have one without the other…”
            “9/10: the Aniles have managed that for 600 years.  You cannot have one without the other with the Cult in Azt.”
            “But that’s not exactly so, how can it be.  It wouldn’t have been like that if we’d be inarticulate, working-class.”
            “I cannot of course write the script but I should suspect in essence it would.”
            “Differently worded, essentially the same.”
            “Or if we were Cult!”
            “For this we have to wait I think until some working-glass guy in Azt quotes the Star!”
            Ban-rehna came in with Rewn.
“Ah, that damned anarchist Var-sega’!”
            Mitch turned.
“Well now.  It has been a long time!  May I ask your opinion of anarchy?”
            “Cool, I think,” said Ban-rehna, “on the whole decidedly cool. You will observe I am learning a new language.  I find particularly delightful ‘hissy fit’.”
“If you have not already come across it, I think you will like also the word ‘antsy’”
“Perhaps you would give examples?”
In a fair imitation of Sarat: “You expect me to get antsy about this?”
Ritawa gave way to laughter.
“Mitch – is that what cool really is?”
            “Is what?”
            “That bloody nerve-racking detachment.”
            “One is who one is,” said Challin.  “And knows it.”
            “He just doesn’t think it should be allowed to get in the way,” said Mitch.
            “A species of animal too long absent from our shores,” said Rewn.
            “Differently worded, essentially the same!”
            “Perhaps at bottom,” observed Challin, “that was our question.  Is it the genuine article?”
Karula appeared.
            “Come to find you.  Gentlemen.  Should I perhaps retire, not speak until spoken to?”
            “Have mercy!” said Ritawa.  “We are feeling a little delicate on that point.”
            “Great goodness, they have learned women can speak! I would say to you not only ‘Remember Tonsa!’, surely by now a household name the length and breadth of the continent, but whose idea Tonsa was.”
“Who indeed named her a sensible bunny.  What’s up?”
            “Harn has recognized us.”
            “Oh dear, dear, dear,” said Mitch. “Varchulan darling really will not like that at all.”
           
            Varchulan darling sat glowering at the monitor.
            “So that is – His Imperial Majesty.”
            “The theory, Cile, really does not constitute adequate preparation for the practical.”
            “The gulf was too great – rebellious student tree-hugger in the safety of Zur.”
            “Live on camera, that is how one behaves.  Impossible to retract a word of it.”
            He rang Vanya.
            “We are approaching civil war.  You understand that?”
            “That is my intelligence.”
            “Half say – is he cool or is he cool.  The other half appear to wish us to bomb Carlin.  Fortunately that is sufficiently insane to be dismissed. The man is a bloody pin-up!”
            Vanya laughed.
            “You saw of course.”
            “It does not help!”
            “Varchulan – Sarat is sitting in a field waiting for Corsin.  He has enough problems without your contributing to them.”
            Demographics, thought Vanya.  How fortunate that no-one ever called Tar boring and as for Mel! Unlikely therefore that young Dabidans would demonstrate over rule by boring old farts.
            “Damnit, I understand that.”
            “Your essential problem.”
            “My essential problem is that if they take over half the Army I shall not be able to prevent – moronic behaviour.”
            “I tell you frankly I have no idea what Sarat is going to do about Vaudos but I understand it is on the menu.”
            Unexpectedly Varchulan laughed.
            “Could they not simply walk into his arms like the rest of them!”
            “Corsin.”
            “I know.  I tell you frankly that I have considered talking to him.  What point?  Even if he trusted me, which I should very much doubt, in the current situation I cannot guarantee it would not leak.”
            “I wondered,” said Vanya.  “Might you talk to Cho?  He of course will tell you nothing specific but there may be financial information worth sharing.”
            “Some hold on them?”
            “There remains the ocean between you and Searc.  I do not think Cho fires all his guns at once.”
            Varchulan snorted.
            “After all, he only needs one.”
            “A most disruptive young man,” said Vanya primly.
 
            “Inevitable,” said Essa,
            “That they’d push it? Absolutely inevitable.”          
            Cho went on laughing softly to himself.
            “Do we know who he is?”
            “They would hardly choose anyone else as live bait.”
            “Family?” hazarded Essa.
            Oh what a lot of long-lost rellies you have to meet, Sarat.
            “Not us.  Mitch’s second cousin.  With Challin.”
            “You think Mitch stage-managed – “
            “Actually no.  I don’t know.”
            “Challin possibly!”
 
 
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.   
 
                                                                                                                                                                            
            Spetzi arrived in Carlin, having driven there, south into Vasucula, all the way through Dabida and across the border into the village where she rightly assumed that even if it had been there before the hordes of press-fiends had annulled any notion that a woman on her own was suspect, but wrongly assumed there would be so much as a sleeping-bag vacant.  Uzzn mun troy Car-sandis.  She went into the Rabbiters’.  Couple of empty tables at least.  Food therefore and coffee while I plan.  Vishtu absorbed her slowly.  Thart bain’t no journo. A lot of people absorbed Spetzi. 
     Spetz decided she was having an adventure and liked it.  What should the next phase be? Presumably I just drive up to the camp.  Ritawa had told her there were many female people so it wasn’t going to be as though an alien had landed.  Of course the female people wouldn’t look as if they had just stepped out of the pages of Elegante.  Tet used to call Hass Non-stick. Infuriatingly to the rest of them, not wholly clean, smelling of salt if not fish, Hass would emerge from a day on the foreshore looking much as when he started. Spetz is of that ilk.  She decided she would ask for Ritawa.  If there were the slightest demur, she would simply ask to see Maya.  After all, everyone has right of access.  This she did.
            “Ritawa ban-garion.  He was part of Challin’s gang.  Not quite sure what he does, properly close-mouthed about it.”
            “May we ask why?”
            “I’m his partner. It’s more than that.  I should like awfully to see my lady Maya.  It seemed only kind to let Ritawa know I’m here first.”
            “So he’s not expecting you?”
            “Grief, no.”
            Well, won’t this be a lovely surprise.
            If she would just pull over and park, they are sure they can track him down for her.
            Ritawa was diligently data-crunching, discussing a column that obstinately failed to be chewed and digested. 
            A cat sauntered into the room
            “Is there a Ritawa here?  Someone to see you.”
            Ritawa swung round on his swivel and jumped as though electrocuted; more than one kind of electric current effect, there truly is.
            “What the – are you doing here!”
            “I had an idea about women.  I think I need to see Maya.  It did seem awfully callous not to let you know I was here first.”
            Oh really.
            “Ah,” said Ritawa.  “Then I shall catch up with you later.  Where are you sataying?”
            “Not a clue.  Thee village is packed out.  I suppose Car-samdis.  May I meet you in the Rabbiters’, about 7?”
            “No!  We get mobbed by what are so rightly named press-fiends if we go to the village.  Link up with Karula and I’ll find you.”
            He returned to his numbers.
            Spetzi grinned to herself: you behave like a boy, you get treated like a boy.
            You lucky sod, thought Ritawa’s colleeagues.  You must have hidden depths!
            Not yet named by physicists, the Spetzi effect.
            “You’ll have to wait,” said the cat.  “Obviously if you were desperate, you’re not desperate are you.”
            “Not in the least,” said Spetzi.
            The Spetzi, Maya asked
            The one and only.
            What’s she like.
            I think the word is stunner.  Stops traffic in a 10 nani radius.
            Will I do? asked Sarat meekly.
            I think not,  actually.  Girl-talk.
            Spetzi sat in the outer office, watching and listening.  It’s crazy.  I like it!
            Maya came straight over.
            “You must be Spetzi.  Come through, come through…”
            “It is so absolutely wonderful that you are here!  I thank you.”
            “We do appreciation,” said Maya.
            Spetz noted Maya poured two cups of coffee and handed her one.  Normal human being time.
            “I had an idea,” said Spetzi, “about women in Kadun.  Ordinary women, who perhaps don’t quite understand that they’re people.”
            “I think I’m going to like this,” said Maya.
            “And who see themselves as part of the class-system.  Naturally I understand there are those who have decided – not.”
            “Sure,” said Maya.
            “I’m sure you understand this, most of it, at least, already.  But you are not inside the structure.  Does that make sense?”
            “Certainly,” said Maya.
            “If I say they are frightened of not being controlled – you impose an absence of hierarchy in which they are uncontrolled but is that not controlling?”
            “Listening closely,” said Maya.
            “There is a question,” said Spetzi.  “In our previous everyday class-relations.  The person in a superior position was himself or herself controlled.  Or perhaps not.  But not merely by persons, by an entire situation, an infrastructure.  Heela for instance. Had he not to behave as my lord Var-sega’?  But Mitch threw away the infrastructure.  To – impose another in which – in which it matters more to be Heela than to be Var-sega’.”
            “Ears flapping,” said Maya.
            “I hope I don’t strike you as rambling,” said Spetzi.
            “Very much to the point,” said Maya.
            “But Kyle, where does she fit?  Was there not a parallel infrastructure?  But you – if a young girl of limited education were worried about her periods, should we not both assume she need talk to a woman not a man.  But then might we not both say she should talk to a doctor, who may be male or female?”
            “Yes,” said Maya.  “So it’s more than an question of interchangeable?”
            “Individuals, sure.  I think I am trying to say women in Kadun have inhabited a parallel world.  It’s more than getting inside that world.  The fundamental control is within.  It comes from being a woman, from looking down at one’s body in the bath and knowing what one is.”
            “What is one?” asked Maya.
            “A separate species,” said Spetzi. “I wasn’t sure if I was perhaps over-dramatizing or alternatively if it were too obvious. I tried it on one of the cats in Var-sega’.  When senoki meet carlini, when Fidubi meet Vasuculi. It’s not quite the same animal. Do you agree?” 
            “Sure.  Dabidans meet Fidubi.”
            Spetzi grinned.
     “It did occur to me. Ritawa has never given the remotest sign he thinks me intellectually inferior, because he doesn’t. Everything between us is between equals. But. But, Imperial Majesty in the feminine gender, you are nonetheless a member of a different species.  He is not capable of what he staged had you been on your own.”
     “That could have been interesting,” said Maya. “Sarat there to protect me?”
     “I think just there.  I really don’t want to sit here and dissect my beloved – it’s the obvious example of something I thought might be opaque.”
     “Sure,” said Maya.
     “Whether I have shed great light!  It’s in all of them, regardless of how sweet they are, how – egalitarian they are towards female people, at least of their own class. Even if not egalitarian, they are relentlessly civilized.  As you of course know, as has been said often enough, the mere existence of the Cult contaminates normal relations between the sexes.  For this reason, when they say they are gentlemen, they really mean it.  Even if a woman were a real prostitute inviting them, they would not.”
     “Behaviour,” suggested Maya, “that in other societies might be perceived as harmless fun, stopping well short of rape, is taboo?”
            “Exactly,” said Spetzi, “and surely to be little angels is a reaction, not a taint.  I read at Mel’s Place – no-one ever had boobs that big.   I may say, I think, a man is controlled by his place in the pecking-order. If those above him make no demur, a behaviour is accepted, if not approved.  Thus of course your matrix.  The extent to which this underpins His Imperial Majesty’s freedom to behave as he damn’ well choose I may one day write a book about.”
            “Please!” said Maya.  “More coffee?”
            “That would be wonderful, thank you.”
            Maya found the biscuit-tin.
            “Look a bit sad.  Could get some sandwiches sent in.”
            “I’m really not hungry, thank you.  Lunch in the Rabbiters’.”
            “I so want to go,” said Maya.  “Mel and Hass have told me so much.  Fiendishly  uncontrolled press-fiends!”
            “Ritawa mentioned!  I said could I meet him there. Practically recoiled.”
            Spetz sipped. 
            “A woman, on the other hand, is controlled from all sides, top, bottom, peers. Intellectually, emotionally and of course morally. Of course, not all irtubi males are little angels.  The incidence of rape in remotely civilized regions is low for the cultural reasons outlined. But just because they don’t act, doesn’t mean they don’t think – or jeer, or cat-call, possibly a peculiarly inappropriate expression!  I said a woman controls herelf. She does because she doesn’t want everyone to think less of her.
            “Ritawa and I have discussed the Leotard Look.”
            “Indeed?” said Maya.
            “We decided he should be with me.  I do not give a damn what anyone thinks.  I do not particularly want groups of men not quite impeding my path, uttering apparently to each other remarks I am clearly supposed to hear.  If I wore it in certain areas of the cities – perhaps the cammo version complete with machine-gun.  The point of course being that men and not just men of all classes would think me lessened.
     “So,” said Maya, “with a man that would be – that’s all right because it’s my lord Var-sega’ – “
     “And with a woman, that int right, no matter who.  Of course I paint with a broad brush. Broadly, yes.”
     “It sort of explains something,” said Maya, “and sort of doesn’t! Azt’s enthusiasm for attacking Sarat’s female attachments.  And they could only bring themselves to attack him in the context of his being gay?  That’s crazy.  I do not believe they are sitting there, oh, but this is His emphasis on His Imperial Majesty! Anyway. Sorry, do go on.”
     “What makes ‘fun’ harmless or otherwise?  It may be as simple as the female people pointing out no-one ever had boobs that big!  I have intervened in conversation I did not find harmless. It is interesting that they clearly did, since they were having it in front of me, but that is an aside.  I recognized I had to be careful.  Not because they would have attacked me, not because they would have destroyed my reputation but because – this is where it becomes strange.  I wanted to keep the channels of communication open to continue to be able to civilize the savage.  May I be naughty and ask you what you think I mean!”
            “Alien?” suggested Maya. “No: you’ve already said women are an alien species! Not-alien. Oh I see. I think. Neither male nor female?”
            “Something preposterous. A woman who thinks she’s a man.  A sort of mutant.”
            “Like all of us?”
            “I have heard it said. I have to recognize that Ritawa played a role in the not attacking and so on.  As you have observed it matters to be Var-sega’. That it was an element in my thinking naturally annoys me.  Of course my looks are in my favour.  A fashion-plate is well placed to insert a knife under the ribs without its being wholly obvious at the time.”
            Maya grinned.
            “Of course you can’t possibly have said what you seem to have just said because your most
pressing concern clearly your next manicure?” 
            “Exactly. It is as Sarat said.  When the woman is silenced, even though she silence herself, then the ‘fun’ is not harmless.
            “And a woman controls her mind because of all the things there is general consensus women simply don’t do. That said, if a person, male or female, clearly has both intelligence and aspiration, PLU will generally give a helping hand; some of us of course think that is what we’re there for.  Within of course the boundaries delineated by Varulin - sorry, AKADUNNCO, Munzi’s sergeant.  But I think my point is she, if she, has to have the aspiration in the first place.”
            “So it’s not – not only – that women may be suppressed, oppressed but that they suppress, oppress themselves.”
            “Something has to unlock that,” said Spetzi.
            It is ten to seven. I think I’ll just, said Karula, and rang the outer office.  Still with Maya.   She probably had to wait to see Maya, reasoned Mitch, maybe they’ve only just got started. Ritawa arrived. High-level talks, said Mitch.  The thing is, do we hold eating?  Spetz, said Ritawa, has an awful lot to say about women in Kadun.  Invite Maya? suggested Karula.  Mitch turned to Ritawa.  You are still feeling sensitive?  Not at all, said Ritawa. Karula picked up her phone agan.  Honey, we sure are getting hungry.  May I invite you to join us.  Maya turned to Spetz. I’m happy to continue here if you prefer, get some food sent in.  Or we can have dinner with Karula.  I think I’d like that, said Spetz.
            Karula examined her beloved.  He reacts to it. As I react to Sarat.  Who does not react to a work of art!  Perhaps not quite the same hormones.
            Sarat of course does not sit all on his own in his little room wondering where Maya is but asks.
            Maya looked up from texting.  Sarat would like to come over.
            Quite a party, said Mitch.
            Always find you a job, suggested Mitch much later.  Why should there be only one Deputy  Press Officer?  It would of course be grossly unfair to the other guys.
            Ritawa laughed.
            Apart from the more homely aspects, I don’t think they’d be wholly capable of seeing Spetz as a free individual over whom I have no control whatever.
            As separate from you, said Maya.  A train running on a track called Spetzi!           
            Jobs for the girls, suggested Karula.
            Surely that is the exact point, said Mitch.
            I should like that, said Spetzi, to stand on camera and point out I am only here because I think I can be.  Why should I not be Deputy Press Officer in Var-sega’?
            I should like that, said Ritawa.
            I think we should introduce you first, said Sarat.
 
            Much, much later, Ritawa said to Mitch: I don’t think I should spend the night here. A search-party might prove embarrassing!  Apart from its being somewhat pointed and possibly even against Army regulations. 
            But you would like a little time together, suggested Mitch. I think Karula and I may discover something so urgent it cannot wait till morning.
            That is kind.  I thank you.
            I too am in love.
 
            What are you doing back? demanded Munzi.  Didn’t expect to see you till dawn’s first rays.
            It did seem a bit unfair – began Ritwa.
            The unfair bit is having a Spetzi!  What, we ask ourselves dumbly, has he got that we haven’t?
            Can it be cultivated?  Grown in a test-tube?
            You’re not bad-looking, of course.  No-one could call you plain.
            Like Maya, said Ritawa.
            Undoubtedly one could have had any woman in the world.
            They click, said Ritawa.  On camera, off camera.  What I have actually been doing is dining with Their Imperial Majesties.
            I am sorely tempted to behave like a fuckwit!
            It was all Spetz, said Ritawa. Tell you in the morning, if you like.  Not sure you’ll like!  Spetz’s views on male people can be a little painful.
            I believe you may have previously intimated – not of course that it was necessary we pay too much attention. 
            As taken straight to the top to a female person.  We are liable to experience public pain?
            I believe the expression, said Ritawa distantly, is telling it like it is.
 
            Karmen: Oh-oh-oh!  What happened to leptons?
            Cioulis: Women are leptons too.
            Karmen: All the same stuff!
 
            I’m Spetzi.  My partner is in the Army.  He’s related to Mitch. Is this not jobs for the girls, you perhaps think, whatever the feminine is of nepotism.  I have a lot of ideas about women in Kadun, have had for some time.  I took them to Maya, to someone who has functioning ears. I arrived here off my own bat.  I am here because I think I can be.  I’m not here because I’m posh, though of course I am.  I’m not here because I’m good-looking, though of course I am.   I’m here because something inside me says, I’m human, I matter, I have a right to be heard. Class and education are what give me confidence to speak.  I think everyone should be confident.  Now they can be.  We – female people in Kadun – we’ve all been in situations where we’ve perhaps thought, why bother say anything, no-one’s going to listen.  Lots of people now who want to listen.  PANTHER, Sarat, Maya, me, Karula, Mitch. Some of us have maybe been in - situations which could have turned a bit nasty, or even in situations which did turn nasty.  Let’s say I’m aware of the protective value of class, protective value of having a partner who’s close to the House. Being aware of it doesn’t mean I like it. It shouldn’t be like that.  No-one should be frightened to speak is one thing.  No-one should feel that she needs a man to protect her, that’s she’s not safe standing on her own two feet on her own, because she’s just a woman and no-one will care what happens to her. We’re not ‘just women’, a separate species.  We’re people of the female variety. We matter just as much as men.
 
Fana to Spetzi: Welcome to Kadun, land of opportunity!
Spetz: They take the ball and run with it.
Fana: Who doubted it. May I ask what you’re actually going to do and can I do it too.
Spetz: Mitch has suggested I link up with someone called Qine from CLIK.  Maya is kindly lending me clothes for the occasion.
Would Fana get it?
Fana got it: Somewhat aggressive and unfeminine!  What’s she like in person?
Spetz: Extraordinary, as in extra-ordinary.  Naturally I didn’t expect standard issue.
Fana: Well?
Spetz: Damn’ party.  Impressed that Ritawa stood his ground with that opposite him, and I don’t mean Sarat.  He kept saying he recognized he was invited to the party. I didn’t understand he meant physically!  Not exactly the word.
Fana: Simply have to meet.
Spetz: As soon as a couple of things are settled, they’ll come to V-S.
Fana: Sarat too?
Spetz: Oh yes.
Fana; The love?
Spetz: Just possibly intertwined with a couple of hungry panthers!  I don’t think I should neglect my studies.
Fana:  I was never any good at science.
Spetz: I suppose you could try ancient history.  They didn’t have force-fields in Narulis’ time. Have, know about, call them.
Fana: That bad?
Spetz: Also met the extra-extra-ordinary Cioulis.  He said I was receptive.
Fana: That bad!  Never quite saw you as sitting contemplating the infinite.
Spetz: Am I inner and eso or outer and exo!  Don’t know, actually, not sure
Fana: Maya indicates you can still function in the world, not sit in a tree meditating
Spetz: Lots to think about.  Meanwhile I shall do  - which is of course being.
Fana: Exactly what are we going to do?
Spetz: I think accessible is the word.  D’you remember about Mardis?
Fana: What about Mardis?
Spetz: He ran a soup-kitchen in bloody Azt.  I talked to him too.  He said if you’re just there, making yourself useful, people get to know you, they talk.
Fana: Bless his little stripy socks!  I didn’t know that. You can’t cook for toffee, even communal soup.
Spetz: I think – advice. I’m no expert in anything but I do know how to be independently functional.  Obviously I’m no doctor or nurse, but I do known basic biology
Fana: Bank accounts and stuff. Contraception? How women can keep their money separate?  There’re going to be men who really don’t like that.
Spetz: Hence the cammo!
Fana: No kidding.
 
Qine noted a tendency in himself to make sure his clothes were just a bit smarter than usual and his hair better combed; he suppressed it.  Not because she is a ‘lady’, no, no, no. He thought he was going to enjoy being seen around town with Spetzi.
 
He and Spetz found themselves in a situation unlooked-for.  It had been agreed that such matters attended victory.  No-one had told Spetz and Qine didn’t care.  No harm in looking, is there.
“Can’t come in here.  Private property.”
The dogs snarled in agreement.
“Imperial envoy,” said Spetz promptly, “go where I please.”  Not that I have the faintest idea if that’s true of course.  Worry about it later, hauled before Sarat for trespass?
The man sneered.
“That what you stand for, is it, abolition of private property.”
“Personally,” said Qine, “aye, but I doubt young Sarat, owning half Azt as he does.”
Spetz smothered a giggle.
“There’s been a complaint about conditions here,” she said.  “Someone has to investigate it.  On behalf of the government of Kadun.”  I may be getting good at this.
“It is trespass.  An abominable infringement of the very civil liberties you claim to uphold!”
“Got something to hide, have you,” said Qine.
“Is it, though?” asked Spetzi.  “The way we see it, a crime has been committed here.  You couldn’t keep the police out if there’d been a report someone had been stabbed or something.”
“Obstructing the course of justice,” said Qine.
“Show me the law!”
“Not off the top of my head, frankly,” said Spetzi.  “We thought you might be reasonable about this, want to help improve things.”
The man moved to unlock the gate.  They didn’t think that was to let them in.
Of course the dogs are really the size of goldfish.
“We’ll be back,” said Spetzi firmly.
 
They retreated to the nearest bar, which caused another set of problems.  Never a dull moment.
“Can’t come in here, girl, don’t serve women.”
“Imperial envoy,” said Qine, grinning broadly.
“I am she,” said Spetz.
“Hope I am too,” said Qine.
“Yes, of course.  He is too.”
“Some bloody upper-class tart.  What are you, boy? Bleeding servant.”
“CLIK,” said Qine, “and if you flaming well shut up for five minutes you’ll want to help with our little problem.  Lass here works in the Advice Centre.  Lass of ours came to her with a problem about conditions in that dump down the road.  If the inside’s anything like the outside.  Won’t let us in to look.  If you just give us something to drink, then we can work out what we’re going to do about it.  Supposed to sit on the step, are we.”
“Bleeding tarts, all of ‘em.”
“Tell me more,” said Spetzi
“Dumbfuck,” said Qine.  “Flaming dumbfuck.  Good job we all know most lads in Kadun int like that.”
     “Bought and paid for, int yer.  Sold out to the flaming bosses.”
     “Aye, that’s why we want to look at his bloody air-vents!  Make us some tea, would you please, good strong brew, mind. That’ll make you feel a bit better.”
     OhIsee, thought Spetz, not having previously fully absorbed that no alcohol should pass her lips lest she become wanton.
     “Think this is a ladies’ tea-room, do yer!”
     “I think this is a place for people,” said Spetzi.  “I’m people and I’m thirsty.  I’d love a good strong mug of tea.”
     “Aye, and I can think of good strong things I’d love to give yer.”
     “Hey now, lad, keep it clean!”
     “Better out than in.” said Qine firmly.  Spetzi bit her lip. “Now if you just put it away in yer pants, we can have a little talk about your problem with female people.”
     “Of course,” said Spetzi, “it’ll really slow down important stuff like establishing decent working conditions.”
     “Do you or do you bloody not want this country to change?” asked Qine.
     When the landlord’s partner brought two mugs of tea, she didn’t say owt, but she did possibly seem unusually happy.
     Spetz dug out her phone.
     “The thing is, we’re running under old laws.  They didn’t have factories in those days, so we need to see if there’s anything that covers it.”
     Qine read a bit on his own phone.
     “Not giving not taking, just looking.”
     “Good bit here,” said Spetzi, “no-one shall be deprived of his rights.  I call clean air a right.  Wouldn’t have been written down, would it.  No-one’d have thought air could be dirty.”
     “How about this?” asked Qine.  “To no-one shall justice be delayed.  Being delayed to the lass as talked to yer.”
     “Any complaint should be investigated immediately,” said Spetzi briskly.
     Qine grinned.
     “By the time you’re getting a whole flood of them.”
     “As soon as,” said Spetz.
     “Gives ‘em time to cover up,” volunteered one of the regulars.
     Nothing like audience participation.
     “And that,” said Spetz enthusiastically.”
     “Don’t think as they can cover up this one.  Lass said the machines produce like dust and it’s all in the air.  Like you sweep the floor then breathe through it,”
     “Mam works there.  Sick all the time, chesty.”
     Qine faced the basic problem here.
     “No jobs, lads? I think we can do something about that too.”
     “Factory inspector,” suggested Spetz.
     “Fixing air-vents!” said Qine.  “Lot of work to be done in Kadun.”
     “Praecipe,” said Spetz.  “This is interesting.  It’s a command either you do something or you explain why you won’t do it.”
     “We know why he won’t do it,” pointed out Qine.
     “From no-one shall anything that is possessed be taken, whether ox, ass, land.  Oxygen?” 
     Qine laughed.
     “Bit here that’s right annoying.  The law shall be maintained by those with knowledge theretofore.”
     “This is beginning to irritate me,” said Spetzi.  “You can’t arrest or detain in any way without evidence but how d’you get the evidence?”
     “Writ of inquiry sounds good,” said Qine, “but it’s the wrong end.  Seems to mean you can form a jury, put together a court.”
     “Still sounds good,” said Spetzi.
     “Wonder who could issue one of them.”
     “Right, we ask Sarat if he would kindly, then we take it to the police to enforce.”
     Spetzi was dialling.
     Mitch here.
     Spetzi.  Could you ask Sarat to issue a writ of inquiry please.
     A little more information.
     Spetz supplied it.
     I am sure that can be arranged.
     “Ask him for a Clean Air Act,” chipped in Qine.
     I heard that, said Mitch. OK, shall sort.  Mail it you. Detail, name, address?
     “Oh!” said Spetz.  “Qine’s just taken a photo!”
     “Mail it yer,” said Qine.  “The empire in action!”  He looked around.  “Anyone know the name of the owner?”
     “Open the gates?”  suggested Sarat. “Let them in.”
     Mitch grinned.
     “Just a bit more formal?”
     “We need to fill in the gaps fast.  If there’s one thing I actually know about it’s Fidubi clean air legislation.  Meanwhile, I request – I refuse ‘we’.  The imperium requests?  I see a problem here.”
     “So do I,” said Mitch.  “I thought I’d leave it to you.”
     “Name the complainant not.  OK, the plaintiff, is that the word.”
     “Sounds good to me, but maybe not the word.  Think it applies in court. Clean air law applies to the open air.”
     “Why should it?  Shouldn’t it.  If you want to pollute your own air by smoking or an open fire, that’s down to you, but shouldn’t you expect clean air where you work? Subsequent upon receipt of appeal for investigation.  How about that?”
     “I like it!” said Mitch.
     “OK, I request and require.  It needs samples of air.  Someone to examine how the machines work.”
     Mitch looked shocked.
     “That would be tampering with private property.”
     “Wouldn’t it just.  Air is not private property!  Full medical exam of anyone working in the proximity.  The trick is to start the ball rolling.”
     “I am sure the good citizens of Imperial Kadun are more than equal to the task.”
     “There’s going to be a lot of this, isn’t there.  So I’d better get it right.”
     Mitch grinned.
     “Practice does not make perfect?”
     “Basically it has to be like a standard letter, a pro forma.  OK, subsequent upon receipt of appeal for investigation received on dot, dot, dot, I, Sarat ban-essa, Anile Emperor, Master of Kadun, request and require that the named officers of the Empire dot dot dot pass without let or hindrance – where’d I read that – in – what’s the word?”
“Pursuance,” suggested Mitch
“That’s the one.  In pursuance of evidence to support or refute the charge levied below dot dot dot Such evidence taking the form of – “
     “Such evidence as may be acceptable to a court,” suggested Mitch
     “Good one.  There’s still the minor detail of which law!”
     “The right to breathe?”
     “I think once it’s in context that’ll do. No-one’s going to stand up and say there is no right to breathe!  No-one is to be deprived of his or her fundamental rights within this realm, in the present instant – something like that.”
     You have mail.
     Spetz grinned like a fiend and asked if there was a printer around.
     You have mail.
     Mitch grinned like a fiend and forwarded it to Ritawa.
     “OK,” said Sarat, “who’s going to have the right to complete this.  Me, you, Maya, Karula, Faun, B and P.”  Sarat’s turn for fiendish grin.  “Mum and Dad, Cho and Amida.  People have to make themselves useful around this joint.”
Sarat to Law Office: Do we have anything slightly current, pretty-please? Factory acts? Clean air?
Law Office: Use of mobile phones in war-zones. Thought you were making it up as you went along.
Sarat: One must always be able to think on one’s feet.  Serious, guys.  There’s been a complaint.  I made it up as I went along.  I don’t exactly think dot dot dot. No-one is to be deprived of his – or her – rights.  It just needs what those rights are.
Law Office: There’s a problem. If you implement Fidubi law, you’ll bring parts of Kadun to a standstill.  Guys out of work for months.
Sarat: Then you’ll just have to find a way round it, won’t you.
Law Office: We figured that.
Sarat: Anyhow it doesn’t make sense.  Some guys wanted to gain access to a factory to look around but they couldn’t find anything about right of entry.  Even in Narulis’ time you must have been able to enter a barn to see if there was a stolen cow there or something.
Law Office: PANTHER as officers of the emperor had that right.
Sarat: Oh, I see.  Not PANTHER. OK, can’t you transfer to nominated aforesaid PANTHER’s right to search?
Law Office: We’re making it up as we go along.  It’s mostly the rights of Fidubi cops and smashing down the door isn’t one of them, except in very exceptional circumstances.
Sarat: I am getting confused here.
Law Office: PANTHER didn’t write it down.  Don’t tell me PANTHER wrote everything down.  Even PANTHER thought they wrote everything down! We think it was because it was all forged in war.  It would have seemed to them like bothering to write down – Corsin is attacking you? Verily you have the right to fight back. You want the right of instant access to private property wherein you have received complaint that an offence has been or is being committed, yes?
Sarat: Yes.
Law Office: Think carefully about that one.
Sarat: OhIsee.  Exposing non-PANTHER to the Cult.
Sarat picked up his phone and called Mitch.
“Have you got Qine’s number?”
“Sure…”
“Qine,” said Qine.
“Sarat.  Where are you?”
“Just on our way – “
“Stay put.  Wait for PANTHER.  If there’s anything nasty in the air-vents it’s had time to get reinforcements.”
“Understood,” said Qine.
Law Office: They have trebled their numbers.  The impossible they do at once.  They cannot and should not be investigating every complaint of unsafe wiring, but not only may there be something nasty in the corner, but such a complaint may be if not a PANTHER-trap, then a people-trap.
Sarat: You’ll just have to find a way to sort it.
Law Office: I suppose part of the pleasure of being emperor is delegation.
Sarat: You got it in one.
“I’d never have forgiven myself,” said Mitch.
“Nor me,” said Sarat.  “I had to be told how stupid I’d just been.”
“The fact remains PANTHER cannot investigate every complaint of faulty wiring!”
“That,” said Sarat, “is what Cho employs some of the most brilliant minds in the south to solve.”
 
Ritawa, meanwhile, fortunately oblivious to all of this, was reflecting on peeling paint, a cracked table-top, men in worn clothes and something stranger, his Spetzi looking as though she were part of the scene, not a super-imposition, a piece of image manipulation.  He printed the pic out and stuck it above his desk, whereon heretofore he would not have had a purely decorative photo of his other half.
 
Spetzi to Ritawa: It was so interesting.  PANTHER brought guys able to collect such evidence as may be.  The whole place stank.  If smell constitutes air pollution, it’s an open and shut case.  Not sure exactly what the smell was.  People and their clothes not terribly clean, I suppose waste-products from the machinery.  The people, the workers, rather looked at us all as if we had five heads, but we all assured them we were just doing a bit of a clean-up.  In the middle of it all I rather wanted to go to the lavatory.  It was actually just about OK but I was told it was only OK because the lasses kept it at least as clean as they could.  I guess intractable stains. Same with the little kitchen area. Bits of the sink were yellow, but clean yellow!  I’m wondering something along the lines of obviously there is no way the workers could have done something about the overall awfulness.  No-one could have expected that.  Past tense.  Sarat can!  I guess it would  need some specialists, even if you can cope with your domestic electricity, doesn’t mean you can wire a whole building.  But how to get round the sacred rights of property!
Ritawa.  I don’t see a real difference.  I mean, if it is agreed that the whole place has to be revamped, what does it matter who does the revamping.
Spetz.  The creep paying them their wages might think it matters.
She said something of this to Qine.  Always buy him out! said Qine.  Don’t think that’s quite the way to go! said Spetz. 
“I would agree there,” grinned Qine.  “I do not quite think we want His Imperial Majesty owning every means of production in Kadun.”
“You’d have it taken over by the State.  One of the probs has to be at this particular moment there’s not a lot of difference.  What about taken over by the people?”
“Lass, they could not possibly afford – “
“I can see that.  There has to be some way.  Look, let’s just – if we just say Sohenoil could buy out the whole of Giraga.
“Aye,” said Qine suspiciously, “and?”
“There’re so many things I don’t know.  Productivity, that’ll do.  Assume productivity would increase if the place were sane.  What I’m thinking doesn’t quite make sense because the existing share-holders’d scream the place down.  Some of them might be little old ladies with barely more than the workers.  Not saying there are no fat cats, promise!”
“Not a guaranteed income,” said Qine.
“Probably about as guaranteed as you can get psychologically, with Kadun in a state of paralysis.  As things are, so they shall ever be!”
“That’s been shaken up for some time.”
“Maybe not if you’re a little old lady!”
“So young Sarat’s frightening little old ladies!  Don’t think he’d like that.”
“What I was trying to get at is supposing everyone who works there got a share of the profits.  There has to be capital, Qine, new equipment – “
“Let’s say for the sake of the argument I’m with yer.  But Sohenoil doubtless gets the lion’s share.”
“Only on condition they put it back in?  Most of it anyhow.  Suppose it cost – no idea.  A cool two potatoes to buy everyone out.  Then Sohenoil’s down two potatoes.  Which you will tell me they can surely afford but maybe not all over Kadun! So then Sohenoil is the owner of the place and has to pay all the workers an increased wage along with pay for the repairs, so Sohenoil isn’t doing particularly well out of this.   You will agree that, whatever Sohenoil is, it’s not a charitable foundation.”
“I don’t know,” said Qine grinning evilly, “heard some right interesting things about Mr Fix-It. Funded CLIK in Zur for a start.  Mind you, they didn’t know at the time it was to run his revolution for him.”
“I didn’t know that!”
“Tell yer later.  I’m interested.  Because as of now the whole place is practically worthless, int it.   Can’t continue full production if the place is being ripped apart. Profits ripped apart by the cost of repairs. The share-holders are probably selling even as we talk.  If they can.  Still, so far Sohenoil is losing, if I have it right.”
“Right!”
“So how do they claw back money earned from the sweat of the workers?” asked Qine enthusiastically.  “I know about co-ops, but that’s starting from scratch.”
“By the time you’ve clawed back and started from scratch,” said Spetz.
Qine didn’t think he knew her quite well enough to give her a friendly punch on the arm.
“How does everyone stay purring? No cat-fights, mind.”
Spetz gave a quick gurgle of laughter.
“So there are poor old Sohenoil, left holding a rather costly baby.  The workers are basically doing their own repairs, they know what works best for them, but as previously they’ll need some outside help. I’m wondering if that can come from the Army.  Assume everything’s settled, they won’t have anyone to fight, will they.  Anyhow, it’s money out not in and there isn’t going to be much in the way of producing.  That great day comes when the place reopens for business.  Now, bearing in mind no idea of the sums, no idea if it would or even could work.  Suppose Sohenoil took all the profits for – no idea, whatever covered outlay then a bit, then said, that’s cool, guys, all settled, all yours. Trouble is, I have no idea if that’s five months or fifty years.  Somehow there’d need to be something left in the kitty.”
“Keeping a straight face too.  I think certain people would say we need to have some facts here.  I’m just wondering if certain people might not be better at getting them.  Fancy a trip south, do you?”
“Toss-up,” said Spetzi, “between dereliction of duty and pressing imperial business.  I think it’s the second actually, but I also think it can wait. Going to court and stuff.”
     “No reason not to run it past folk.”
     “No reason at all.”
     “Would it be time Mitch showed his face around here?”
     “Always glad to see Mitch.”
 
            Ritawa said: “So essentially there are two separate species of money.  They are capable of interbreeding and indeed there are hybrids, but the offspring are not judged fertile!”
“I was not raised in the world of high finance,” said Karula.  “I have to say that, when Mitch first explained to me that any enterprise is judged not by its profitability, the quality of its product, its efficiency or even its apparent innocence but solely by where its money comes from, my first reaction...”
“That's loony,” said Mitch.  “One of our minor madnesses.  We have on the books for purely political reasons a certain number of enterprises which defy profitability.”
Karula giggled  and muttered, “Sweet but loony.”
 “It is a most interesting shop,” said Mitch, “dedicated to things arboreal.  We failed to persuade them to floristry – you cannot cut flowers, you understand – but we did manage to persuade them to saplings and bushes and also to move to the outer suburbs where people might actually buy saplings and bushes.
“In other words  businesses are propped up which would not otherwise survive – though perhaps in a new Kadun this one might take on a new lease of life!  I would not see these guys go under but I feel there may be new opportunities for both employment and self-expression to which they are better suited.
“Harn attempted nationalization.  The bankers undercut the state companies which promptly went broke requiring more borrowing from the bankers, there being insufficient numbers of Harni willing to pay more for their gas.   If Harn attempts to cut loose, the banks call in their debts.  Harn cannot pay those debts.  Harn's capacity to borrow further is thus up a well known creek.  Unless some real nice guys over the water are prepared to lend?   To prop up Harn while they do some serious killing.   Kadun is the cash-cow. We all know that.  We also know they have holdings everywhere the hand of man has ever set foot.”
 
Spetzi to Ritawa: And yes, it did seem rather unfair to you stuck in that bloody field for me to go gallivanting off all over the place, though of course you have lots of interesting conversation too.  And yes, I am entirely sure Qine’s sole thoughts were of revolution! But that of course is something we’re all going to have to get used to, if you work with people of the other gender, you may need to travel with people of the other gender.  But those aren’t my most important thunks.  Clearly people think differently on a wide range of subjects.  Clearly also entirely free to voice ‘socially conservative opinion’ though people are, no-one is going to pay the faintest attention: no-one is going to say Ban-vardan thinks it inappropriate if not indecent that Qine and Spetzi sit together in a working-mens’ bar, have a nice cuppa and plot phase two of our attack, so they cannot possibly behave in so shocking a fashion.  Clearly people are equally free to voice total opposition to the rights of capital and no-one’s going to pay any attention to them, either!  But it’s not the same, is it.  Not exactly sure why/how.  Basic human rights comes into it.  No: not just ‘come into it’, it’s the common ground.  And also it’s not true that no-one is paying attention to opposition to the rights of capital because basic human rights are opposition to the unfettered rights of capital.  What the whole thing is is unshrinking opposition to the unfettered rights of capital. 
Ritawa: So Sarat is saying even capitalists have some rights and CLIK presumably say no.  I think I can see – if you are free, then must you not be free to accumulate. Part of the interesting bit comes from when there’s no labour involved, no paid labour, labour other than your own: if you write a best-seller, or are a successful artist.  Another interesting bit is when there’s nothing anyone can call labour at all, a knack for buying or selling at the right time, that capital moves in a world of its own divorced from those whose lives it affects, which must be rather a lot of the point.  But none of that is what I was particularly thinking.  What you said about getting us in to help with specialist stuff.  I’m sure we could do that but that’s not the point.  Might some of it not be better automated and if so people are out of work.  There would seem to be an awful lot to be done, so I don’t know that that’s a financial problem.  For that matter, people might want to do something else.  But it might just be an emotional, a psychological problem.  And more: no matter how ghastly the place is, it’s local, convenient, you’re not going to want to travel 30 nani to the nearest job.
Spetzi.  Not everyone sees life as an opportunity to gallivant around the continent!  I did get a sense of community.  That’s important.  I looked up CLIK in Zur.  Deeply hated in some quarters, sold out, etc.  Loathed particularly in Ciletij, which may have other implications.  Emperor is bad enough without stinking rich!  We’re all of us going to have to recognize that there will be a constant attempt to stir up the working-classes against ‘their new masters’, and I think that’s desperately important because most of us are a step behind here, thinking what Sarat is doing is stirring up the working-classes. But the comrades in Zur are completely unperturbed. They say: look before you judge; it works here in the south; nobody flaming starving in Zur, don’t think you can say the same in Ciletij. You ask an employee of flipping Sohenoil if he or she feels in any way oppressed.   You come and look round AMI.  No-one’ll stop yer.  That’s the killer bit, isn’t it.  So much for the rights of property.  Of course, as Sarat said, the word is politeness, the word is civility!  You don’t get in people’s way.  That’s what he basically thinks, isn’t it. Transparency goes all the way.  Doubtless an armed guard around their bedroom. If lots of people’s lives are affected, they, their partners, their children, their parents, possibly an old aunt whom they look after, it’s not, it can’t be, concealed, private. 
Ritawa.  One must wonder if Sarat were required urgently in the middle of the night – alas, the telephone has been invented.  Or Maya of course, but what possible need could there be for Maya in the middle of the night, a line of thought which just possibly is not so much grossly indelicate as striking at the core of our sexist conditioning!  What, indeed, might PANTHER say?  Sarat, you need to come?  One of you needs to come?  I think I’d better elevate this!  Would he leave that urgent external matter – no, that doesn’t work.  What –  riots all over Var-sega’ about women in bars!  Would he leave it to her?  Would she leave it to him?  I think we can assume if it were urgent the two of them.  Did it occur to you, either of you, to ask Maya for a writ of inquiry?
Spetzi.  Owwwwww! No.  No, and if it had it would have seemed – contrived, is that the word? And you are now going to ask me if I should have said what I said to Maya to Sarat.
Ritawa.  It crossed my mind.  Go back to AMI.  I should imagine most things are agreed among the workers themselves.  But everyone knows that if you have a problem with the consensus you are entirely free to scream all the way to the top, which is not just Tar, Mel, Hass, Vij but Saski, Cantilip - Maya’s mother - and I should imagine people do, which is probably the point?  Suppose I asked a Zuri what he, emphasis on he, would do – did – if he felt he couldn’t get any sense out of anyone, might he not say he went to Saski.  Until people don’t see a difference, there’s a difference?  Can we conceive the female halves acting unilaterally?
Spetzi. I may be just starting to conceive it!  What do they do in AMI?  Can fruit!  It has to be more complicated than that, not least because it’s probably automated.  But the other thing, going back to our word of the day fixed, suppose whatever you’re doing, quality control, infection control, it might be quite interesting but if you decide it’s not what you want to do for the rest of your life and your personal circumstances make it hard to change, I’d imagine you’d be supported, you’re regarded as a person, not just a cog in the wheel.
Ritawa.  The meaning of your existence not to control quality!  I have wondered what is the meaning of my existence, in purely practical terms.  I rather think that depends.  If staying in the Army means automating factories, teaching IT, I don’t think there will be many dull moments.
Spetzi.  Wow!  That just sounds so brilliant.  D’you think there will be riots specifically about that – gender roles?
Ritawa.  I rather think that depends on people like Qine. 
Spetzi.  He was rather cool.  And of course I’d have got nowhere on my own.
Ritawa.  And if accompanied by a female comrade the argument we have had before  - or keep having!  Shall we survive on my salary and yours?  I asked Mitch the fate of my unearned riches.  He said that depends on precisely where it comes from and that needs peace to be fully investigated.  This is the ultimate war on capital, which is of course why CLIK have fallen in.  Only it’s being fought by capital. Having money is one thing.  Clearly no-one, at least no-one outside the less progressive communalists, has a problem with that in itself.  But I at least do not care to think that it comes from frank exploitation of my fellow beings. If you were to put me in that factory and say, Ritawa, this is where your money comes from – I trust it doesn’t – I should feel ashamed.  There are only two kinds of money in Kadun, clean and dirty.  Cho wants the City banks out and, according to Mitch at least, knows how to achieve that.  What else do we know? We know about the LLR, the Law of Limited Returns limiting the length of time rent may be charged.  Interestingly enough, that is generally regarded mainly as a knee straight in the groin of the Houses, who appear indeed entirely unwounded thereby, though others I think may be quite severely wounded thereby. We know Sarat has a great deal of private property, though I should guess he’ll give a lot of it to the people! We know they all in the south have private property and it is to be assumed Sarat and Maya do not intend to live in a terraced house, if for no other reason than security.  And it may just be sinking in that the value of certain shares will collapse.  Other investments of course came out in a field with the Ciletij Rep!  ‘Kadun doesn’t actually have an economy, it has two economies. On each side the guys at the top deal with their own.  The guys at the bottom don’t know who the hell they’re dealing with, hence interaction and the illusion of one economy.’  I suppose I was aware of something of the kind, but I hadn’t heard it put so succinctly.  Capital is inanimate.  Capital has no intent or feelings.  Everything is in what people do with it.  All this of course underpins the situation in Azt: not just how much is on the books but where it comes from.  I think Sarat would enjoy – I think everyone would enjoy – using Cult money to fund  scholarships for women or facilities for mentally handicapped children. But is some of it underneath it all a loan.  Actually I think Sarat would probably enjoy being sued by the Cult for theft, but it might somewhat disrupt proceedings.  There was another gem.  Mel’s observations on Carlin.  I think all of us recognize to some extent this particular game.  It’s a contract.  A game.  Everyone has his or her allotted role. The pieces interlock, the fortress is secure.  If one of the pieces refuse the game, cast himself out from the herd - he is at risk, a straggler prey to wolves, who may one day return a wolf himself. Everybody gets a prize.  Good landlords, good tenants, good living.  Outside the wolves circle.  They have nothing, they have everything. They have phones, they have excellent schools and hospitals.  They say what they damn’ please.  And they’re trapped in the game.  You’m go to Rarbbiters’? You’m tark Carlin.  Damn it, I want to go!  I digress.  That’s the biggest scam of all.  Of course all of them can talk normally.  All that state-of-the-art TV!  But so long as that’s the face of Carlin, there’s no trouble.  Uzz’n baint but ‘armless yokels ‘ere, zurr. Never mind that uzz’n been plarting revo for years!  Do not, by the way, I learn, imagine this was merely Mel and Asdinan. And Cousins Sorg and Mardis of course.  There are people in the village in this up to their necks and beyond!  But if the wolves are gone?  It’s more complicated than it unravels.  Nothing changes, everything changes.  Could I have said something like that before?  Nobody need be doing what he or she was doing before?  Suppose one of the Rabbiters gets elected to the Senate in Azt? What effect does that have?  After all, there’s only one authority in Carlin right now and it’s not the House.  Shut up and let you get a word in edgeways!
Spetzi.  All of it, it’s an ‘is’ change!  Everything is open when it used to be closed.  Fixed.  It wasn’t just we thought of it as fixed, it was that it was fixed by the game. You’ll say, everything is not open.  Example: Saryulin, Heela, Marula are no more going to surrender the Houses, the stewardships than fly to the moon, I should imagine.  I should imagine flying to the moon is more likely.Gg
Ritawa.  I think I got there, just put it differently.  It’s a question of what belongs in both worlds, isn’t it. 
Spetzi.  That’s exactly what it is.  Now let me be difficult.  Suppose some beady-eyed newly elected Senator wants to abolish the Houses as an outmoded feudal construct.  I’d think Sarat would probably say, they go, then I go, but the people, what do the people say? I should think that after this they tell him he’s talking out of his.
Ritawa.  Evil grin.  So among many many other things, this is a way of maintaining the status quo!  There’s something else there.  The Houses were a gift from Narulis.  Short of the extreme vandalism of destroying the buildings, they can’t be evicted.  I’ve thought – enough going on without tourists!  I really do think a more than idle curiosity might prompt me to ask very politely if I might see the Window.
Spetzi.  Not in the middle of the night, I trust!  I think I should probably retire to my alas single bed.  It is after all 2 in the morning.
Ritawa.  Are we not young, fit and in the middle of a revolution!
Spetzi.  It’s not called beauty-sleep for nothing.  Yea, even I can look a bit ragged.
Ritawa. Ah, well, if you put it like that.
 
“An object of outstanding natural beauty,” Sorg had said. “Are we not connoisseurs of beauty?”
“That is grossly sexist!  Is one not a human being?”
“I am, I am!  Exactly my point. Is it not simply my duty as representative of Carlin in the benighted west.”
“Offend her feminism, offend Var-sega’.  What’s the hat-trick?”
“Behaving like a normal human being,” said Sorg promptly.
“You don’t know how to.”
“Now that is a real slur. How can we be useful around this joint?”
Consequently Spetz is sitting at a long low table on which are strewn leaflets about indeed such things as contraception and opening bank accounts, talking to three people, two female and one male, by their clothes working-class, when Sorg and Karci stroll in.  The boyfriend? think the people around, but Spetz gives no sign of glee, running into arms of beloved.
“San-yaega-baht,” said Sorg.  “The subspecies generally known as that lunatic Sorg.  A friend of mine, Karci.  We’re at Caniba, heard you were in the neighbourhood.”
“He yearns wistfully for news of Carlin,” said Karci.  “Actually we both do.”
“Mostly,” said Sorg, “we wondered if we could help.”
“Excellent!” beamed Spetzi.  “How about you pick up coffees – “ She gestured at a battered but functional coffee-machine.  “ – and tell us how? I’m Spetzi.  This is
“Representatives of a sort of all-ranks committee,” said Sorg. “Some of the chaps up at Veli too.”
“Where’s that?” asked Spetzi.
“Barracks over in Asanti Road,” said Cari.
“We don’t see it as our sexist conditioning, just common sense,” said Karci.  “If female persons are going to go where they’re not f-lipping wanted, maybe you could do with guard-dogs?  No slur on you guys, quite sure you can look after yourselves and anyone with you.  Only maybe you have better thing to do than act as guard-dogs.”
“In a perfect world,” said Sorg, “the female persons ought to be able to work solo, but it isn’t and they can’t.”
“Of course we’re aware of the class-dynamic,” said Karci. “We thought lads with  lasses like our Spetzi, officer-class with ladies like you.”
“Just want to make trouble, don’t you, lads!”  This with considerable enthusiasm.
“That’s the general idea,” agreed Sorg.
“In a perfect world,” said Spetzi.  “I can shoot.  Last thing anyone wants is anyone getting shot.”
“Oh I don’t think so,” said Sorg. 
“Just muscle,” said Karci.
“Of course we’re not just muscle,” said Sorg.  “We have many talents.  Holograms, for instance, we’re awfully good at holography.”
“How d’you fit holograms into this!”
Sorg got out his phone and fiddled.
Out of the phone sprang a 3D image of a child stricken by poverty, spindly legs pimpled with cold, a thin blouson clearly inadequate against the falling snow, dirty canvas shoes.
“The sort of footwear,” observed Sorg, “people in the south reserve for the beach.”
The child re-appeared, first in his shorts, now clear-skinned and brimming with health, then clad in a quilted parka down to his knees, with solid rubber boots, then bending down to scoop up a handful of snow. Phut!  The snowball exploded in mid-air.
“Happy kids,” said Karci. “We think kids should be happy.”
“How about this,” said Sorg.
The centre of Giraga as is, dirty, peeling paint, battered vans, the yellow smog and people in gas-masks a nice touch.  All the shop-fronts are freshly painted in a variety of pastel shades.  Two of the more dilapidated shop-fronts transformed into a shiny clean chest clinic, only it’s not a white shiny clean, it’s a pale yellow shiny clean.  There are trees along the road..  Obviously it’s spring because blossom lies thick on the ground.  The bar has two well polished wooden benches outside and troughs of flowers.. 
Thing is everyone can see them.  Don’t have to all crowd round a phone.  Get out bits of paper.
Flaming brilliant!
 
Ritawa to Sorg: Hi.  I do tech.  Can you tell me how it’s done.  Ritawa (Spetz’s other half)
Sorg: It’s basically an app.  We fiddled with it a bit.  Totally illegal but we’ll sort that out with the geeks later. Mail it you.
Ritawa.  With instructions!  Not then a real hologram, not that it matters.  How about the real stuff?
Sorg. Plenty of experts in holography at your end!  Don’t think I can say more but if you showed an intelligent interest.
Ritawa.  Got it.  Thanks. How about 3D printing?
Sorg: Have I found a soul-mate?  Certainly 3D printing.  Really, sir, is that entirely appropriate.  If I might just print the Anile throne for you….Being Sarat, he’d probably sit on the ground with his back against it.  Apparently some loon is actually marketing designer crates as the latest in interior design. 
Ritawa. Do I believe that!
Sorg.  I didn’t.  Found it on the Grid.  You find me a sadder, wiser and chastened man.
Ritawa.  Spetz and I have talked a bit about automation in the factories.
Sorg.  Unemployment.
Ritawa.  Exactly.  They’re only as they are/were because it was thought mass unemployment would be the last straw.
Sorg.  Exactly.  So guys need to get their heads around different kinds of work.  Slow-ow-ow-ly, I think slow-ow-ow-ly.
Ritawa.  Theorizing on too little data.  Me.  What do the mass of people in the south do to earn a living?
Sorg.  I really don’t know either.
Ritawa. I’ll look it up.
 
Ritawa to Spetz; I find my mind jumps on his being basically Maya’s brother in law.
Spetz: It is a bit more complicated than that.
Ritawa.  Not much more.
Spetz.  Those guys in the bar, if men are either employed or conscripted, why were ethey unemployed.
Ritawa.  Not a clue.  Had jobs when they were called up and didn’t trouble the authorities when they lost them?
Spetzi.  Then they wouldn’t be getting even our pathetic unemployment pay.  So how could they – I was going to say how could they afford to drink, but now I think about it they weren’t, just haging aroud
Ritawa.  Maybe also still living at home?  We need to think about unemployment.
Spetz.  I’d feel pretty sure it’s been thunked.  Nothing tells me there’s anything stupid about this exercise and I can’t offhand think of anything stupider.  And of course there’s masees of basic stuff to be done.  Though that of course runs into the other problem.  A quick amble round Girnad and you feel it’d be no bad thing if every road and pavement were resurfaced.  Bringing everything to a standstill.  I suppose – hold your nose and swallow the medicine.  If there were enough people doing it and it were done overnight.  Wonder if anyone’s thought that before…
Ritawa.  Not impossible!  Something else too.  I think the word is scale.  When we think of anything as simple as road-resurfacing, we probably think of that pot-hole at the end of the street and a gang of maybe four blokes to fix it. But it may be much worse than that!  I don’t really claim to know anything about what’s underfoot, but there have to be sewers, water-pipes and all the rest of it.
Spetzi  So here Sarat and I sit, a couple of raving nutters who think…Actually I think I’ll ask Qine. If there’s one thing CLIK would have wanted to be sure of.
 
Sorg to Ritawa.  I creep back to Carlin from time to time. In on the Big Bang.  I have permission from the highest levels to – tell you that, essentially.  I wondered if we might meet and talk about 3D printing?  At the House?
Ritawa,  That would be excellent.  May I ask if you will be pressed for time.  I have never actually seen the House. Would it be at all poss to combine business with culture?
Sorg.  ROTFL.  Mardis does the best tour-guide impression.  Just drop in. I’ll mail him.
 
Speeetzi said, “Of course you all know some kinds of work are much more automated in the south.”
“That we do, lass,” said Qine.
“Reckon it’s what Kadun needs, good kick in the, bring us slap up to date.”
“So what are we going to do with folk put out of work?” suggested Qine.
“That and other things,” said Spetz.  “That first.  The way I see it, the one thing that would have kept CLIK for sure out is mass unemployment.”
“Spot on there,” said Qine. “The word is aspiration.  There are of course some backward-looking comrades as thinks that’s a nasty bourgeois word, wanting to make more money, get a bigger car, push other folk around, and I won’t say something of the kind did not occur to me.”
“Most of them, bluntly,” said Cari , “haven’t got much.  Int to say they can’t.”
“Would you think it fair to say,” said Spetzi, “not everyone can be a flipping IT genius like Sorg, or even get close, but there’s some as might surprise you if anyone gave them encouragement, training.”
“I would not say that is light-years away from my own view.  Point is, if you say to the lads and lasses what would you like to do, loads of different things to be done,  some of them’d look a bit blank.”
“So you have to get them interested in something in the first place?”
“Our Sarat does not want anyone out of work who’s fit and healthy.  Wants a job.  Lasses staying at home with kiddies – or maybe lads, that’s another story – “
“Can of worms?” muttered Spetzi.
“Won’t deny there’s wriggly things there! It was put to me quie forcefully – as you may know, some comrades are of the thinking that kiddies should be looked after communally.  Oh right, and which female members of the helot class staff the nurseries? Nowt wrong with wanting to look after your own.  Then again there’s quite a few working who int fit to, who’lll be looked after better.  Maybe folk have mental troubles, don’t want to do anything, not interested in anything, can’t get them interested in anything.  Maybe they’re just plain hostile.  Politics don’t mean you don’t want a cleaner town, better fed kiddies.  Anyone who refuses to do anything despite pleading, Sarat said he’d talk to him himself. Perhaps not literally every case but I do not think there is anyone else, elected or not, I’d believe on that one, but I believe our Sarat.  Lad ‘as no bloody side, that’s what everyone says, as has met him.”
“So,” said Spetzi, “to wickedly digress.  What does ‘Anile Emperor’ mean to you?”
“What it means to him, from what I hear!  Leader of the pack.”
“Someone’s got to lead your revolution?  But it’s not your revolution.  I mean it’s not CLIK, standard model.”
“It is and it isn’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“Mainly the bloody Army isn’t shooting at us.  Your lad too, I don’t doubt.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” said Spetzi.
“Wouldn’t he?  Under the – standard model.  Take it you have a nice house. Protect your house.  Protect you. Your mam, maybe.”
“He would.  I would. This isn’t the conversation I thought I was going to have!  Just might be more interesting.  One of the things that annoys – people like me, people with property.  It wouldn’t be quite so bad if they said we all have to live in cottages – I’ve been in some very pretty cottages – tear down the nice houses – vandalism, of course – but would you do that. Wouldn’t your leaders live in them. Apart from being theft or more theft if you prefer, that’s just one lot of a small number of people with nice things instead of another.”
Qine gave a quick bellow of laughter.
“Aye, and maybe there’s some of us with more brains than others can see that.  I don’t think I’m fighting so Jakan and friends can swan around in the lap of luxury.  That’s one of our more unreconstructed comrades.”
“Does it always come back to property?”
“Else we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Nationalism,” suggested Cari.  “Comrade Jakan is currently calling for no border with Ciletij.”
“Aye, and there’s two things there.  Folk from the south going to take our jobs?  Doubt they’d touch them!  We going to take their jobs? Why would we when there’s work here?  Could we do them, that’s something else.”
“Ritawa’s thinking of teaching IT.”
“Interesting lad you have.  Hear he’s had a few problems with the new order, mind.”
“Grr!  An experiment.”
“Take it he’s a nice boy really, or he wouldn’t have you.”
“He’s a nice boy,” said Spetz. “Thanks! I take it the whole camp leaks.”
“Like a bloomin’ sieve.  Tell the lads they’re free to write home after a nice chat with the young master, write home they do.”
“Freeborn citizen of Fidub, mate, freeborn citizen of Fidub!” said Spetz.
“I would guess that’s a lot of it. Best one was after that lass from Harn told about her mum.  A bloke whose dad was sick like that, couldn’t afford the medicine.  Not quite sure how it got to Sarat, weren’t the bloke himself, who was really shy – that’s the punchline.  Two hours later, dad were in hospital getting treated right here in Var-sega’. We heard certain ruptions from the hospital, but that’s another story.  Fidubi doctor who by all accounts was right rude about so-called doctors who only treat folk as can pay.”
“I’d love to have been there!” said Spetzi.
“I would second that!  Anyhow, then the lad felt he had to say thank you.  Sarat just said, hey, it’s cool, what I’m here for, to cut the crap, asked him about the rest of his family, what he did, what he’d like to do.  Ten minutes later they’re chatting away like old friends.  Wouldn’t have believed it, ‘cept CLIK in Zur said the same.  Tar, Cho.  Something you can’t buy, you can’t sell.  Say they all sound as if they really want to know what you think, what you do, what you think about it, and we can all be a bit cynical about that, but the trouble is they actually do.”
 “Believe it, Ritawa and I spend hours figuring out the new order!  They don’t think things are fixed.  Does that make sense to you?  What you are, what you do, why you do it?”
“I’d say there’s everything in that. 
“They just make things happen,” said Spetz.  “That’s all part of not-fixed, isn’t it, what we were saying about aspiration. You just need to – let something loose in people that’s tied up.”
“Like you maybe?  I would not press you on what you were doing this time three months ago, but I would guess it was – a bit more boring.”
“We’re all in this together,” said Spetz.  “I don’t mean – any of the usual things I might mean.  I mean – do I mean we’re all equally confused.  Whoever we are, whatever income, whatever class, this is something that doesn’t fit our models.”
“But liking it,” agreed Qine. “There’s no doubt also some folks are happy doing – boring work.  Do they have road-sweepers in Fidub or is that machines too?  Out in the open air all day with their climate, who wouldn’t like it.  Not the same in Vaniv in mid-winter, driving snow, but you’ll get my gist.  Kadun has not been a happy place.  I find it sticks in my throat, sounds a bit daft to me if I’m honest, they want people to be happy, but I do not think I can deny there is something of that. The basic point is who wants to be in a stinking factory all day.  Not like folk can’t go on doing something wonderful.”
“Talk about stick in throat,” said Cari.  “Some of the stuff in the Press, Sarat is their friend!”
Spetz burst out laughing.
“Fingers down the throat,” said Qine.  “Tell yer what it is like though, from what I hear.  I don’t drive and you do.  Say I had summat important to do in Tjulsit and you agreed to drive me.  The day comes and you’ve decided not.  I’d be pretty fed up, wouldn’t I.  If you had a good reason, like your mum was sick or something, but you don’t.  Wouldn’t I tell you what I thought!”
“If you ask me how that’s done,” said Cari, “Trick with mirrors, some as called it.  Lad of the boss class expects things to happen yesterday and everyone loves it!  Mind, they’re not stupid things, saluting and marching and all the rest of it, lot in that, I grant.”
“Cutting the crap,” said Spetzi. She glanced at her phone.“Time! I’ve been invited to dinner at the Housee, tell them about my derring-do.  D’you want to come, it’s your derring-do too!”
Qinee froze
“She’s young,” offered Cari., “Maybe she don’t know, Qine.”
“I were born at the House,” said Qine.  “Dad worked there.  How I met Mitch.”
“Brilliant!” said Spetzi.
“Got meself in a bit of trouble.  Wrongful arrest.  Mitch raised  hell and saved me neck.”
Speetz frowned
“Heela minded?”
“No,” said Qine.  “Maybe that’s me problem.  He didn’t mind one bit.”
Spetz picked up her phone and got though to Heela.
“May I bring Qine and a friend of his, please.”
Heeela smiled.
“Tell him welcome home.”
“Heela says welcome home,” said Spetzi
Qine was nearly as pale as that fateful day.
“Right gracious,” said Qine.
 
Spetzi to Ritawa. Obviouly sensitive subject so of course didn’t pry but looked up after, something in the papers maybe.  What Mitch did! Practically started a war.  I guess it must be rather hard to be a fire-breathing communalist and owe your life to an outmoded feudal construct. 
Ritawa.  I knew there’d been some of incident and Mitch had gained an unparalled reputation for havoc – surpassed only now by Sarat, I assume – but I didn’t know the man’s name.
 
Ritawa to Mitch; May I see you privately a minute please sometime.
 
“Why did you not tell us abut you and Qine!” Mitch looked unusually taken aback.  “Spetz was going to dinner at the House and invited him along.  Says the poor man practically fainted.”
“I was not to know Spetzi’s commitment to revolution would include such a step,” said Mitch with fake meekness.  “Did he go, that is the point.”
“Oh yes.  Apparently a good time had by all.  Spetzi hadn’t known Nodsi would be there.”
“And I am lingering in this field!”
“Pretty much my own feelings!  Mitch, do you not know you did something amazing?”
“No,” said Mitch.  “I could not possibly have done anything else.  Any more than you could for a friend.”
“Yes, of course,” said Ritawa.
You did not understand ‘friend’, thought Mitch.  I shall not embarrass you by pushing it.
Ritawa added: “You’re the social conditions buff.  You must have considered automation.”
“Unemployment, sure.”
“Is there a – committee sounds horrendously bureaucratic and thus thoroughly unimperial – “
“Focus group,” suggested Mitch.
“Long-term strategists, think that covers it. Presumably the workers themselves must have a say, they could decide for instance to just automate the most boring bits.  Humans are obsolete, Mitch.  In terms of manufacturing. I’ve been talking to Sorg by mail. 
“At the point,” said Mitch calmly, “where many if not all domestic consumers can print their own spare parts, print their own new sofas, does capitalism itself not fall apart?”
Ritawa grinned.
“Just checking.  I was thinking something like – say in every community at least there’s a printer?”
“And could it be free or at least of minimal cost?  If it is not free, how is the money to pay for it be earned?”
“And of course who owns the raw materials.  And what I should guess is very much Sarat’s angle.  Are they not finite?”
“Perhaps not quite in our day,” said Mitch, “but once the direction is set it is inexorable.”
“People,” said Ritawa, “have to be very very unfixed.  Before it’s too late.”
           
“Welcome to Carlin,” said Mardis.  “The House was built – erected, puh-lease, never use a short word when a long one will do.   A delectable array  of refreshments is available in the Herb Garden.  We did actually open it one afternoon a week before things got difficult.  Saryulin and Duvi simply took themselves off to the Rabbiters’.
“It is of course completely amazing,” said Ritawa.
“Sorg calls it our little wooden hut.  Most people are devastated by how small it is.  But of course perfectly formed. “
“It’s the contrast as well as everything else,” said Ritawa.  “Have you been to Var-sega’?”
“The House?  No.”
“Consider yourself invited! I’ll ask Mitch.  Here every single exposed surface is carved.  In V-S, everything is smooth.  I’m trying to think of an analogy.  Both are perfect.
“Maybe the difeerence between the Pica and the Window?  That’s not the problem, though, is it.”
“No,” sighed Ritawa.  “It looks as if it were built yesterday.  You have no weather in Carlin?”
“The general facile explanation is Fidubi timbers.”
“Of course you’ve always looked after it.”
“Of course.”
 
Spetzi lives in even smaller but not much less perfectly formed house not entirely on her own after some discussion with the cleaning-lady/shopper/all-purpose helpng hand – couldn’t do what you’re doing, lass, wouldn’t have the nerve quite frankly, yet, said Spetz, but Piva does not live in.  Consequently Spetz has not invited her new friend Qine to dinner, and he hasn’t expected her to, and nor for that matter vice versa, but the addition of  Cari to their gang of two of course changes that.  What more natural than they all go out for a drink after?
 
Talking of weather, it’s getting colder, wetter and windier.  Good honest mud has to be covered by duckboard and southerners are discovering the delights of cable-knit and rubber boots.  They are saying of Sarat he moves too fast to feel the cold but yea, even he makes some small concession to climate: fur, faux of course.
 
No-one, certainly no ‘world leader’, has the right, it is generally agreed, at least among persons of the feminine gender, to look that damn’ sexy. Except possibly Hass, similarly clad.  There are of course gay men in the Imperial Army.  Some of them have even had a private discussion with Hass about coming out and agreed it can wait till peace.  Women have number on their side; gay men don’t.  Let us say they find all aspects of the new order not unattractive.
 
The young panther in his black fur gilet is explaining some stuff.
“We think, don’t know, don’t don’t don’t know, we have time on our hands. Two things they’re maybe keeping us waiting for.  One is Xu-Laman.  The other is snow.  Yes, fighting for every paving-stone in Azt in a blizzard is just going to be such fun.  Can it wait till spring? If we can take Vaudos it actually possibly can.  Is it not fun, Madam Minister, to hold such conversations under the watchful ears – did I just say that? – of the Press?  I think we have time to experiment.  Even Xu-Laman is six weeks away.  Shall we talk about Azt?  I understand you can’t shoot round corners.  I think what I’m trying to get at is when you can:  smart bullets.”
“Never quite figured the electronics, to be honest.”
“If I get hold of some, d’you want to play?”
“Love to.  If they’re controlled by the onboard electrics, I can see no intrinsic reason why you wouldn’t change the trajectory to anything you want.”
“Nor can I,” said Sarat.
“Like a cartoon.  Up, round, couple of circles.”
Not, said Bris, the sort of conversation generally associated with tree-hugging.  What, after all, has he said?  What is obvious, what is on the Grid.
“What guys need to remember,” Sarat was continuing, “is that neither Maya nor I have ever seen snow.  So we need to know everything.  Slipperiness, black ice, frost, all the stuff you maybe think is obvious.”
“Not – ski-ing and stuff.  Thought - people like you went jet-setting!”
“Laters?” suggested Sarat.  “Where to jet to!  Non grata in Ciletij. Cho and Amida have been to Blatni a few times, mostly to wind up the locals.  Not recently. Same with Harn.  Cho has mingled. No quesch of letting his little cubs near Searc.”
“Maybe next year! So you’d be interested in how our experience translates to the city.”
“Very,” said Sarat.
 
Just remember, said Varchulan, every word is meant for Azt.
So whatever he sounds like he’s going to do, he’s probably going to do the opposite!
 
It is of course ludicrous and grotesque puerile nonsense that the intellectual life of the country be subject to a handful of books, themselves full of contradictions, for which reason, whether one prefers the nice bits or the nasty bits it is impossible to believe the totality literally, all of which are products of ancient and therefore largely illiterate societies in which a single book was something amazing. You have to have total mental puree in the C21st to believe that Truth is contained in one book.  But all are adamant, unswerving, unyielding.  Not only do I object to the insistence I be destroyed, I object to being destroyed on the orders of the Vatican (oh, I think so), a body of pervs who have no position in this country whatever.  I object to being destroyed by traitors and the loyal agents of a hostile, fascist foreign power.  I object to that hostile, fascist foreign power being in charge of the country.  Who calls the shots.  Isn't it just so fucking interesting that no-one else does.