CONTEMPLATING THIS MATTER OF KADUN
 
I plan this, I plan this, I plan this, said Sarat..  Will you help?  He is genuine, they say - but power corrupts.  What says the Cile?  What, says the Cile, say the people of Ciletij?  Sarat resisted the urge to scream and prepared himself for explaining to the Ciletij General Staff he wished to visit the site of the rape of Ciletij and remove from it the Anile throne.
The conversation lacked that happy meaninglessness that oils the wheels.
                "Why does a Fidubi vet require the Anile throne?"
                Do you not watch television! thought As.  .
                “Fidub made it,” said Sarat.  “Fidub gave it to Kadun.”
                “irturbi placed it in Casin-ruhn,” said Cantilip.  “Now we wish it back.”
                Silence.
                "There is," said Sarat, "an Anile emperor with or without the throne."
                “Sacrilege.”
                “There we must differ,” said Sarat.  “I am not Jaizal.  This is evident to perhaps 90% of the continent.”
                “You have no shame?”
                “None.  I wasn’t born.”
                “If we refuse, shall Kadun again violate Ciletij?”
                “That’s a really interesting one,” said Sarat enthusiastically.  “To pursue the matter through the courts would reveal the whereabouts of the chair to the Cult.”
                Reakoed laughed.
                “I don’t think we in the H-W could find our way to putting up with that.”
                “From their base in Van-senok,” added Cantilip helpfully.
                “Or the mlitary strength of Ciletij is dedicated to the defence of a chair!”
                “Which is actually someone else’s property,” said Sarat.
                “That at least we must acknowledge.”   
                "The throne has surely rusted!  If it were ever there."
                "We shall see," said Venga.
                Ciletij is on a war-footing and Casin-ruhn in no-man's-land.  The northern wilderness is no longer threatened - unless Kadun detonate the mines.  A sea-plane must land on the lake.  The trees are very tall, very dense, very, very hostile, their business to protect earth-power from predation.  Airoch sings to them.  The Ciletij look startled.  There is a yowl from the forest in reply.  Zesh! What a place! says Hass.  The northerners laugh.  There is ice in the wind.  The forest comes to the edge of the lake, save on the eastern shore, which is barren.  Dead wood protrudes into the lake, rotting, once a jetty.
                "Men!" says one of the Ciletij.
                "Not for many years," replies another.
                But those who see with other eyes are transfixed, see a smart and worman-like pier and beyond it nestling at the forest edge a ruin and also a dwelling, all of wood, but sparkling, varnished against the elements, loved.  Sarat wants to go first and alone but no-one will let him.
                *There is no harm,* says Paw.  He gestures at the Ciletij.  It keeps them happy!  Sarat stands aside, surveys his surroundings.
                "Zesh!"
                "This is a terrible place," says one of the Ciletij.  He does not mean it is horrible.  Sarat and Hass examine the ground.
                "Bears!"
                The Ciletij have machine-pistols at the ready.
                "Put them away," says Hass.  “We have skill with wild things.”
                He continues to feel.  "I who am One, who am One with the One, and You who are All, You who are All, Protector and Preserver, Creator and Destroyer, in Whom all are One - "  Something whiffles towards them then vanishes, a shaft of light, a bat, who can be sure.  *I feel - *
                *It's amazing.*
                Baz and Paw emerge, entranced.
                “Is it there?”
                Baz seems surprised.
                “Oh yes.  Yes.”  He collects himself.  "All clear!" he says brightly.
                Sarat starts to walk forward.  As he draws level with Paw, Paw turns suddenly, salutes him, then returns to his trance.
                *It is well?*  asks Sarat.
                *It is well!*
                Sarat reaches the open door.  He feels impelled to speak.  "I am Sarat-ban-essa, licit heir to the Anile Throne, Anile Emperor, Master of Kadun."  He is not unduly surprised when non-one answers him, but there are these things in the air, these bats, these darts of light.  He crosses the threshhold.  Here too are signs of wild things, but they have fled, perhaps at the first sound of the 'plane (are and are not for also there are carpets, cushions).  They have learned to fear men?  Sarat goes through the remains of the doorway, half-expecting evidence of carnage, but the room is empty save for a silver chair and tight curled upon it (for it knows no foe can harm it there) a wolverine.  *A ruin with rotting timbers and also clean, white, whole, lived-in!*  There are flowers, warmth, glass in the windows, books [*Books!*] on the trestle table and is not the chair pushed aside from it as though a man had risen to answer the door?  *In both a silver chair.*  Sarat walks slowly across the room (room or rooms) half-expecting something to happen, but nothing does.  He bends over the wolverine, laughs, strokes it gently.  The wolverine wakes, stretches, unafraid. Come!  He scoops it into his arms and sits cradling it on his lap.  The throne bursts into song.  Zeshanzesh!  The wolverine purrs.  Not bats but darts of light flit prancing across the room.  The others find him.
                "My lord emperor," says Hass gravely.  The Ciletij start.
                *He is here, then.  I'm not imagining.*
                *And happy.*
                The wolverine has rolled on its back to have its tummy tickled.  Sarat complies, dazed, unthinking.  The Ciletij gaze in awe at the throne.  It frightens them.
                "Malik Zesh!" says one.  "This - "  He shakes his head.
                Cantilip laughs
                "You expected baubles?"
                "Ma'am," says the Ciletij.  He shakes his head again.  We didn't expect anything at all.
                Sarat stumbles from the throne.  Almost the wolverine falls but he grasps it, puts it round his neck.
                "I - " says Sarat and cannot continue.
             There is the sound of women's voices.  The Ciletij turn sharply, guns at the ready (but Hass will ensure they cannot fire).  One woman appears, about forty, lined but not worn, hair piled in a bun.
                "You are friends," she says.
                "We are," says Sarat.  "Lady, may I ask it - ?"
                But she seems transfixed by the wolverine.  Unexpectedly she repeats Sarat's words.  "You are Sarat-ban-essa, licit heir, Anile Emperor, Master of Kadun."
                "I am."
                "And these?"
                “Friends,” says Sarat.
                Only Vasuculi missing," says the woman.
                Hmm.
                "We did not understand," says Sarat.
                Three men have entered behind the women, saturnine, very hairy.
                *The werewolves!*  "You guard the Throne?" hazards Sarat.
                "The Throne guards a greater mystery," intones one of the men.
                "What?" demands Sarat.
                "Underneath?" suggests Venga.  He smiles.  "If there is an Anile Throne, must there not be an Anile Crown?"
                Is there something you'd like to share with me? thinks Sarat.
                *PK?* he asks Hass.
                *It can only refuse.*
                *What kind of a reception d'you think the bad guys get?*
                *Scared to death?*
                *If Kaminua's watching us – oh no!*
                *Put him down very gently and maybe he won't mind.*
                *On the Throne where I found him?*
                "The slab," one of the werewolves is saying, "is triggered by standing on a sequence - "
                *Tell it to the - !*  "So, if someone treads on them accidentally, the throne - tread, then!*  The man shows fear.
                *Here we go again!* says Hass.  As the slab rises, it becomes clear the special effects department worked overtime on this one.  The robot drones line the carrier, brown, with pointed heads, holes for eyes.  Behind them, the UnMakers.  The world explodes with the brilliance of a thousand suns, then strange clouds like toadstools fill the sky.  Then the smell of death, rotting flesh, rotting vegetation, and now the Planet is dead.  60 billion minifara died, 200,000 billion other life-forms.  There are men's voices speaking some unknown tongue.  As they quarrel, they take form, each with the spectre of death behind him.  They are hideously disfigured, half their faces gone to scale.  Then there is screaming.  The Ciletij have been massacred, their villages strewn with the dead and dying.  There comes the fire sweeping down to the lake and the screaming of the trees.  Wild things mad with terror rush forth, bears, rats, elk, stampeded by the flames.  Rank upon rank of ghouls follow them, then strange and savage war-cries, then weeping, then silence.  Then lamentation. Sarat thinks, if being Anile emperor means I'm supposed to know what to do next, maybe I'd better just go home.  But the special effects department hasn't finished yet.  Sun reaches this place, it seems, for sunlight glints on the water, otters play, and now the sun is directly overhead, and through the roof it dances on the throne and around it are men in white but they do not move or speak and as time passes their clothes fall from their bodies and their bones crumble to dust.  Now wolves frolic round the throne and wolf-cubs play chase-my-tail between its legs.  *The message I'm getting is leave it here!  From whom?*  Sarat turns to the undertakers.  "Who set that up?"
                "Ask," suggests Hass.
                *Try anything once.*  "I am Sarat-ban-essa, licit heir to the Anile Throne, Anile Emperor, Master of Kadun.  Now I wish to heal irturbi.  If I require the Anile Throne, who gainsays me?"  There came the sort of howling you'd expect werewolves to make if there were such things as werewolves.  *What I think is that more of that lot are directing stage-right.*
                *Concur.*
                *There has to be something down there.*
                *Concur.*
                "I will descend," decides Sarat.
                Baz and Paw move forward.
                "I'll go," says Hass.
                *Steps,* Sarat is saying.  *How handy.*  Sun-ka-sun!  Light guides their footsteps.
                *The Fidubi buried what they could find, is that I?  I am no grave-robber - "
                They have found the tomb of Kaminua and Asyrion, locked in eternal embrace.  The stone Kaminua embraces a woman whose every curve expresses adoration.  *She loved him.*
                *Still does,* says Hass.
                Sarat bowed his head.
                "I'm sorry," he whispers.  "I didn’t mean…"  At the base of the statue is an inscription.  Sarat bends to read it.  "'In love who lie - In love who live.  In love who live/In love must die'"  He touches Kaminua's hand.
                "You must open it," says Hass.
                In the tomb are two circlets of silver.  Sarat reaches out.
                For a moment, there is nothing, then memories crowd him, not his own, but Asyrion's.  The Planet is dead.  I grieve.  I knew them, the minifara.  I loved them. They were stars.  We cannot complete the circle!  There is terror now in the voices.  Night falls.
                Who is Asyrion?  I love you, he is crying.  I love you.  He enters her mind.  Save yourself, she begs.  My lady, I am saved.  He strokes her hair.  There must be separation.  Only in death, he says.  He fuses his mind with hers.  Kaminua-Asyrion would drive forth the Thing, but it is in her tissues, her bone, her life.  Some power there must be can save us.   My lord, we lie encircled at the world's end.  Come, he says, thought you cannot stand I will hold you.  My lady is wounded unto death.  I cannot leave her.  First is the matter of Kadun.  The Fidubi weep.  Then Asyrion is a child among flowers.  Then nothing.
                Sarat gently replaces the crown and puts on the other.
                Now it is decided.  Kaminua strides to and fro.  He inspects the building of his future home.  In Azt the Anile heir now grown embraces his father.  I love you, sobs the boy.  Sooner, later, young men lose their fathers.  The wound will heal.  Remember your mother loves you, as do I.  He kisses the boy on the cheek.  I am ready, he says.  Then nothing.
                Sarat's face is saturated with tears.
                "Peace, my lord, my lady…"  He removes the crown and hands it to Hass, who demurs.  "Please."
                So then Hass too is cryng.
                "Zesh!"
                They replace the circlets, close the tomb and return to the surface.  Sarat smiles at  his friends and thinks, you lied.  Or you do not know the truth. 
*Fidub will make a new Anile Crown,* says Hass.
                "Where are the rest of you?" he asks the undertakers.  "I understand now.  The Throne I take.  Not yet."  The undertakers change into Denzines.  "Slow of me," murmurs Sarat. "I will stay, make my peace with this place."  The five Ciletij have said no word.  Sarat has forgotten about being in a Ciletij war-zone.  The Ciletij protest, but feebly.
                "We have supplies," say the Denzines.
                "I too will stay," says Hass.
The Ciletij find voice, no communications, animals, flood.  "We shall return in three days."
                "Fine," says Sarat.  He is not looking at anything visible to the Ciletij.
                Baz and Paw exchange glances.
                "I think I have a duty to the Anile emperor," says Tannan..
                "Which of us does not," says Hass.
                Sarat comes out of his trance.
                "I'm sorry…Of course, please!"
                The Ciletij are too disciplined to roll their eyes, but clearly the world has gone to madness when Alzani-Meta proclaim its duty to the Anile throne.
                They are waved good-bye.
                "We shall not intrude," says Baz.  "Here if you want us.  You won't."
                They head for the forest.
                "Oh Hass."
                A naturally freezing wind comes at them across the lake.
                "Inside!"
                The wolverine has gone.
                The grate, the chimney mostly remain.  They light a fire but see that other room and feel the warmth from it.
                "If we just sit quietly, they will return," says Hass.
                "Who!"
                First come the small things, the voles, the shrews, then the snuffling of bears.  Hass strokes one absent-mindedly.  Hares hop across them, fearless.
                "Do I destroy this?" asks Sarat.
                "I don't know."
                "Outside they must kill to live."  The bear licks his hand.  Sarat hugs it, buries his face in its coat.  "It's all lies!"  Hass feels his anger.  "It's a worm-hole.  Here time was breached by the UnMakers, here Asyrion was mortally wounded defending Ciletij."  Tears glisten on his cheeks.  " Why?"
                "Oh Sarat."
                "Why?" Sarat asks again.  "Is it not painstakingly done?  The throne guards the crown!  The crown bears the secret of UnMaking!  A word to frighten children.  Asyrion was not UnMade, nor any of them.  But the Planet is dead."
                "Mel doesn’t know."
                "Yea, do we not all trust Fidub, guardians of the greater truths, the higher realities."
                "I should hate to be Airoch," murmured Hass.
                I can't bear it, thinks Sarat.  It's still the most awful story in the world and I have made it worse.
                Sarat sits not on the throne, but on the floor, his back against it.  Night has fallen, but the room is suffused with light and music.  Come the Lord and Lady of Kadun, arms round each other.  Sarat and Hass jump up.
                "You are welcome!" says Asyrion.
                "My lady…."
                She is young still, willowy, her hair short, wispy round her cheeks, and her eyes are the green of the forest, but he is grizzled and his arms are thick with muscle.  He might be taken for a woodsman.  What else is he?  There are not ghosts, but worm-holes in time and, for those who can bear it, immortality.
                "Sarat," says Kaminua.  He kisses him on the forehead.
                "You have a terminal!" said Sarat.
                "I have followed your activities with interest," said Kaminua.
                "Can they come through?" wonders Asyrion.  "It is not meet our guests recline on earth…"
                "They are not Denzines."
                "Is it true," asks Sarat, "the Denzines are called also the Time-Lords of Endor?"
                "It is," she says.
                Hass laughs.
                "I never knew that before.  And you - you are become Denzines?"
                "Of a kind.  Later.  First we must solve this problem."
                "I wondered," says Hass.  "Where is the worm that made the hole?"
                Asyrion grasps his meaning.
                "Yes," she says simply.
 
                "They came from a world they called Sug.  They were not refugees.  They were men who - they had devised weapons consonant with a policy they named mutual assured destruction - MAD.  Facing each other across a great ocean, two continents, each bent upon world domination, so it seemed to them.  When they saw this destruction, desolation inevitable, they fled.  They had power enough to cross the Zones.  They saw a green planet.  They had been deceived before, noxious gases, algae, but here in truth was air and grass.  Here they would start anew!  They were many, women, children, too.  They were stunned to find people, humans like themselves.  The bio-system was conducive: why not?  That they took as an omen of good fortune, to be born again among their kind.
                "They came to rest here by the lake.  It was summer, the shores a carpet of flowers.  The water was fresh.  They had on disk all their culture, its music and also its engineering.  They needed only an atmosphere capable of sustaining life.  They thought they had been given a second chance.  Ciletij came raiding and they fired upon them, aiming to miss.  They had weapons like those of the modern age.  They had not launched themselves into infinity to be massacred by the first life-forms they came across, but nor could they bear to kill.  The Ciletij were not attuned - after some few had been wounded (but these men offered the medicine of their time and healed them) - there were seven dead.  I always remember that…
                "They befriended the Ciletij, in some measure civilized them.  They were sick with the horror of their contrivance.  Still, it had not happened and perhaps, far from Sug, they could surrender to hope - perhaps after all it did not.  News of these strange men (women and men) reached first our garrison, then Azt.
                "I wanted to meet them," said Asyrion.
                "MAD came to Sug, but death comes slowly from that corruption."  He halted a moment.  "Others found the track of their craft, followed them, bent on their destruction.  These others landed.  Is it not the paradox of man? These men, they tend their children, love their ladies, civilize Ciletij.  They grow their crops, desire no harm to their neighbours and yet they have spent their lives propagating the destruction of all that lives.  Are they or are they not evil?  Incarnate evil.  To those that followed, the remainder of their lives can be given meaning only if they destroy them.  What purpose does it serve, vengeance?  Are these men irredeemably evil, unfit to live?
                "My lady has arrived now, and with her many from Azt.  They sense at once the sickness.  Toxins, poison, disease, they understand.  The body heals itself, given time, by lending strength the wounded body endures and so lives.  This sickness they could not heal.  These men were sick in essence, each cell corrupted, energy defiled.  Also - also they had another sickness.  This too we could not heal.  A toxin self-duplicating, the body doomed by two foes living to each one destroyed.  This poison, it disfigured, turning skin to scale.  Muscle to stone, unmoving.
                "By looking into their minds, by drawings, by teaching language mind on mind, we came to understand the horror that had befallen Sug, explosions so vast cities crumbled, the energy released the poison in the seas, the air.  Rain and wind carried death across Sug.  The men who had contrived the horror, they fled into the forest, made alliance with Ciletij, who understood only that danger threatened their friends, and now we have Ciletij allied with the men who were and were not incarnate evil and their enemies in pursuit.  And the Mistress of Kadun must find resolution."
                "Hate, I understood," said Asyrion, "lust for power, the desire to annul, these I understood, but still my understanding failed me, for though men rationalize their feeling, the emotion is plain, love of self, but there was in this the mechanical, man become machine, devoid of emotion.  I would leave them be.  Later, we will heal them.  But the other men, the dying, they are in turmoil,  They say - for this sickness too there is no healing.  They will destroy our world and must be exterminated.  These men, they arm themselves with the weapons of their place and go in pursuit of their foes.  They massacre Ciletij.  Their enemies they will drive Into the open by the lake.  They fire the forest."  Kaminua tightens his arm around her.
                "My lady…" says Sarat.
                "It is long ago.  Yesterday and long ago.  I, with me those of the court and with us irturbi, we run out into the night red with flame.  The wild things are mad with panic. The men who contrived the evil are now half-mad with rage and fear.  Do they bring death to all they touch?  The fire reaches the lake and dies.  They are dying, we say.  There will be an ending.  If they but leave this place, say some, but their craft is overgrown.  We know we are not proof against these weapons nano-distant.  In time they die, but we who have spent long hours with them, Ciletij and Fidubi alike, we too develop this sickness for which there is no healing, I among them."
                "And now I am summoned from Azt.   My lady dies before my eyes and I can do nothing.  I say - I say, I will die with you.  I cannot for there is the matter of Kadun and we have a son.  I have the seed of an idea.  Ciletij mortally sickened are found prostrate among the trees.  And hating.  How shall we tell them we are without blame?”


                It is simple, the home he built for them in which to share etermity - eternity or until love dies, but love cannot die - and they sleep well with the proper kind of bearskin rugs, the ones that still have the bears in them, but sleep is shattered by the sound of an aeroplane.
                Kaminua frowns, but already Hass is having a strip torn off him.
                "It is my brother," he says.  "The fault is mine."
                My brother unusually well dressed, my brother looking every inch a future king.  My brother, who has made his mind exceeding plain in Gula-Toon.  That was probably rather fun.  Wish I'd seen it.  Mel loses his temper too rarely these days.  "Those who are with him stay behind.  I apologize."
                As Mel approaches, he knows.  The whirlwind subsides and when he enters he is quiet, almost meek.
                "My lord, my lady."  He bows to Kaminua and Asyrion. "You three…"
`               "Sit!" says Kaminua.
                "I thank you."
                "If I may be practical," says Sarat, but practicality is not really the issue, "the throne…"
                "It is yours," says Kaminua.
                "It belongs here," says Sarat, "and I must find my own resolution."
                Kaminua laughs.
                "Perhaps we have fewer guests."
                Mel stands up again.
                "My lord, my lady, I for one would spend time if it be fitting.  Airoch is distrait," he says to Sarat.  "In good faith she - harm has come of it?"
                "No," says Sarat.
                "Then I take my leave as swiftly as I came!"  In the doorway he turns suddenly.  "My lords, my ladies, my service - "  He looks lovingly at Hass.  "Except you, half-wit.  Come outside a minute."  Hass follows him out. 
                "I had brothers," said Kaminua.
                "Sisters,” said Sarat, possibly with a note of relief.
                "I know you," says Mel.  "You want to stay.  Hass - this is Ciletij!  Also it is Ciletij!  They are safe?"
                "I've been thinking about that," says Hass.
                And Mel thinks: Hass, come back!  While you still can.
                "You do not need me.  Only Venga needs me."
                "We love you!"
                Hass hugged him.
                "Go now.  This is for later."
                And now you cry: is this not the fallacy of the Anile Court (so-called?) Hass will recall the world means more to him than it seems.  In principle no, also.  The Anile Court did not live in cottages in the wilderness nor relish the prospect of living on fruits and a little milk.  If the world needs saving, Hass will rally to save it.  But of course it does depend on what you mean by the world and by saving it, which bit of the world you have in mind. 
                Kaminua fills a few of the gaps in our story.  Jaizal must have the Throne!  Casin-ruhn is part of the Empire that reaches to the northern sea.  Many Ciletij have been captured, enslaved, but others live wild in the forests, Casin-ruhn to them a place of dread.  Rumour, legend, here a place of evil repute, monsters rising from the deep.  Here dwells the eater of souls.  Here is treasure, riches beyond imagining (but the Anile Emperor, not yet Jaizal, does not know the throne he sits on is a fake).  The throne is found first by deserters lost in the forest fleeing for their lives.  They are hard men, but not insensate, superstitious and easily awed.  They see a shelter and know (though cannot see) it is more.  They see the throne.  Some great prince long dead once ruled these lands.  Also they hear, but they do not recognize the music as coming from the throne.   The temptation to sit is irresistible.  They singe.  Even they have heard the legends of the Anile throne.  Awe and terror overwhelm them.  When Kaminua returns, he is in a quandary.  These terrified, haggard, hungry, beaten men are his people.  What can he doe for them?  He causes sleep to overtake them and when they awaken there is food and water.  They believe they have found a haven.  We could live here, they say.  When they regain energy, they will hunt.  Kaminua has his neighbours to consider.  He is not supposed to interfere in the ways of the world?  His neighbours he reckons his world but nor can his people die before his eyes for the sake of the family of Eiko the elk….
                "We have come far," says Hass. "May we not reach the end?  There is consonance between truth and the story told Sarat - in sort there was an UnMaking, my lady wounded beyond healing, it seemed to Ciletij.  Once Airoch talked of worm-holes, later of the Anile Crown, she is not so stupid as to give herself away.  I, who will tell Maitlan, who will tell no-one.  I, who will tell Mel, who will tell Kai, they will tell no-one.  Your son, who told no-one.  The Time-Lords, the Denzines, who tell no-one.  Where is the worm that made the hole!  And these men who contrived the destruction of Sug, what became of hem, did they tell - no-one?  They were taken perhaps to Fidub for healing, and so long years later Airoch is descended - I do but muse.  They would not know of worm-holes or the fate of the Anile Crown!  But you see the tale is a curious one.  If Rill remain unmatched, then there is no Anile heir!  A lady of Fidub, perhaps.  The UnMakers - did they not breach time?  Fidubi made the Anile Crown. Whence this vehemence against my lady Asyrion?  Does Airoch rely on folk-tales from Ciletij?  Knowledge is passed from generation to generation and what must be becomes what was.  Men came from another world!  Here what was is no stranger than what must be.  That is my question."
                "What," asked Asyrion, "is your answer?"
                "It is too petty.  There is that Fidub cannot heal."
                "They healed me," she said, "but I was no longer Asyrion."
                "To challenge the nature of reality, that is petty?" asked Kaminua.
                "To blame an innocent woman.  Some still hold separate the Creator."
                "All is One," said Asyrion.  "All is not One, this we learned.  Men did this thing."
                "Men?" asked Hass.
                "There were five men and four women.  The Throne, the earth, are these not in some manner live?  I was corrupted!  Is that not your answer?"
                "What," asked Hass, "is my question?  To me there is no challenge.  That is the difference between before and after."
                That spark in life-forms which is life is energy, light, love.  Love is turned to self or to other.  Each is divided between altruism and self-interest and each makes his choice.  This spark, this energy, suffuses also the whole universe, is the energy of atoms, reactions, motion, change.  Before, they believed the creator equalled the created.  These atoms, these reactions, this motion, this change, this life was the manifestation in our dimension of what in its own dimension is only light.  Before also they believed this energy, this light, this love, selfless, for does it not burn away the illusion ego?  If you let it.  This light reality and the self illusion, 'I' the centre of the universe, the value of another defined relative to that 'I'.  They made a value-judgement: the light is good.  It is not, it merely is, and to perceive it to move with the stars in their courses, but not (thus the Anile Court) to be incapable of harm - for in that dimension what is harm, life, death but one continuum.  After, they knew the energy that is life could be turned against life.  Man could make it so.  With the force of many minds they isolated the life that was Asyrion.  She became a star while the other energy ran rampant through her body.  They withdrew.  And they took her back to when she was not wounded and from there to eternity, which is but out of time for they are not weared by yesterday or perturbed by tomorrow, each day is new, but in Fidub they knew man the master of creation and, well, they didn’t like it, though neither did they exaggerate it, life gone from one planet only among millions.
                Sarat went instantly to Fugitry.
                "How can a handful of men take the life from an entire planet?"
                "Were you not an ecologist?"
                Sarat spluttered.
                "It's not the same…"
                "it is the same and it is different.  Slower."
                "Exactly what does it mean, the Planet is dead?"
                "No shoot grows, no bird sings, no child plays, no fish jumps, no wolf howls.  No life lives.  There is no atmosphere, for there is no respiration.  No worms bury in the soil. The sun bakes the scorched earth.  Only there is chemistry.  One day again there will be life."
                "This you know?"
                "This I know.  You have heard of radiation?"
                "Of course - "
                "Then ask your question.”
“You prevent this knowledge?”
“We prevent it,” admitted Fugitry. 
“You prefer the Cult?”
“Is the Cult not preferable? Let men of evil dwell on mind not matter!”
                "Are they safe? If I take the throne?"
                "It is yours."
                "That doesn't answer me."
                “No?” wondered Fugitry.
 
                “I’m getting really good at running Kadun,” said Maya.  “It’s sociologically fascinating.  In the absence of the lord and master, they are forced to listen to me.”
                Sarat burst out laughing and held her very tight.  Then he started talking. 
                “I didn’t realize,” he finished meekly.
                “Popping over to Ciletij to pick up an old chair,” said Maya. “Sarat, what are we into here!”
                “I suppose,” said Sarat, “it was always going to be more than the drains.”
                “It really sings?”
                “It really sings,” sighed Sarat.  “That isn’t all it does.”
At length he said, “Now I need to talk to Mel.  You can come too.”  He ducked. 
                They returned to G-T
"We aren't going to wait any longer," Sarat said to the Cile.
                "We thought it was only honourable to tell you in person," said Mel.
                "We're ever so honourable," said Sarat.
                "Honour is our middle name," said Mel.
                "That's along with virtue, integrity, high moral tone - "
                "Silence!" roared the Cile.
                "You know what I want," said Sarat.  "The thing is, am I going to get it?"
                "We can do it without," said Mel.  "Which you know."
                "And if," said Sarat.  "Ciletij would be painlessly bloodlessly kicked out, which you also know."
                "Ciletij do not know it!"
                "You want them to find out?"
                "Trust us," said Mel.  "Everything will be all right."
                "Unless of course you make it all wrong," said Sarat.
                "His people need him," said Mel.
                "The irony, of course," said Sarat, "is that you know Krarlik is confined within his borders.  You fear - "
                "Be silent!"
                "Trust me," said Sarat.
                "Trust him," said Mel.
                Choose.
                With or without us.  Choose.
                Powerless.  Choose.
                "You have my word," said Sarat.
                "As an officer and a gentleman," said Mel.
                "Am I not Commander-in-Chief?" said Sarat.  "I have no designs on Ciletij."
                "What of Casin-ruhn?"
                "It belongs to Ciletij."
                "Do not play games with me, boy!"
                "Shouldn't dream of it."
                "Suppose I buy the land," said Mel.
                "And give it to your friend?"
                Mel looked surprised.
                "How about my brother?"
                The Cile shares the unreasoning trust in Hass of moose or bear, trust he cannot give to his too-clever-by-half brother or his formidably reckless friend.  This much he knows: as surely as moose or bear, Hass belongs in Casin-ruhn.
                "I will consider it."  Pause.  "It is good to travel."
                "Meet new people.  Exchange ideas.  Help them."
                "There is much to be done in Kadun."
                "Can I interest you in Krarlik's files?"
                The Cile took his pen and dipped it in the ink-well, an affectation he stalwartly refused to surrender.
                "Ciletij - the people of Ciletij - "
                "And the people of Kadun."
                The people of Ciletij are pleased to accord to Sarat-ban-essa, Anile Emperor, Master of Kadun, all necessary assistance in pursuit of his claim to the Anile Throne and in the great task of the reconstruction of Kadun.
                The thunderbolt lay there in black and white or pink and grey or lilac and maroon, of course, depending on what your screen colours were. 
                "It's all over, then, sir," said a junior to Prog.  "Or do I mean it's just starting."
                "That is what you mean," said Prog.
                "I believe some of them are quite civilized," said another.
                "It seems they eat from his hand, sir."
                Prog grunted. 
                "All of us do that."
               
As he approached the chair, he said suddenly, “My lady, you sit.”
“Sarat…”
“She is not Mistress of Kadun?” he asked, curt, imperious. Once again he was Sarat: “How can it hurt you?”
He ceremoniously took her hand and bowed to her as she sat. I hope I know what I’m doing, he thought. I have no idea what I’m doing.
Maya sat transfixed. I am old and these are my memories. The faded pages of an album turned before her. Here is Mel in the Saa’nda Senta, here is Hass on the beach, Sarat playing with the puppies, that is Mitch holding forth in the Room, Venga, Sorg, Bris, Qine, all of them gone, Azt killed them, and here am I, where am I, but now I am young, Daddy is mending my swing, and I am laughing, in a field with flowers, Asyrion in a field with flowers, and they are all coming to greet me through the flowers, laughing and talking, but as Mel approaches he is Zani and as Sarat reaches out to put his arms around me he is Kaminua, for am I not Asyrion, not, not not Asyrion. I am Maya-ban-essa, Anile empress! My voice rings out or perhaps not, but all around is the music and the people-space is crowded, for this is my court, and there is Mel sitting on a step. I go towards him. Is it really you? And he grins, that irresistible Mel grin. Really, really me! I reach out, stroke his cheek. Sarat comes up behind me and puts his arms around my neck, kisses my ear. Are we all dead? I ask. Sarat just laughs. Am I not Doom of Death? There is no death, says Mel. But I think: only we who are dead can say that. I say to them, this is not real! Nothing realler, honey, says Mitch, but this is Mitch as I have never seen him, Mitch robed in silver. We’re dead, I say, and you don’t even know it.
Tears pouring down her face, she fell real-time into Sarat’s arms. He cradled her head, stroked her hair. Then they flew to Fidub.
Cho and Amida were watching a documentary on wildlife in the Vasucula Archipelago.
“There is a very, very angry emperor to see you,” said Vax.
“Oh dear,” said Cho meekly, “what have I done?”
Sarat and Maya entered without further ado.
“Darlings…” said Amida. Her voice fell away as she took in the vibes.
“Azt killed us all,” said Sarat. “Or not. Not if I have anything to do with it. Would you care to share with me a little more data concerning the Anile throne than you have thus far condescended to impart?”
“What has happened?” asked Cho quietly.
An impossible strain, thought Amida.
Maya began her story. Cho closed his eyes.
“It is a conduit,” he allowed as she finished.
“Or it is death!” said Sarat.
“Never that,” said Cho.
“What then?”
“There is rooted evil in Azt. It is in the earth. It seeps into the bricks. It will kill you if you let it.”
“How do we stop it!” cried Maya.
But Sarat said: “That’s nonsense!” then stopped. “Or if it is not nonsense, then earthpower must heal it.”
“Must we raze Azt to the ground!”
“If you had thought to speak,” said Sarat, “why should I not have sited my capital elsewhere?”
“Conquer Azt,” said Cho, “or it will kill you.”
“Earthpower,” said Maya. “I was the only one to realize. Because I’m a woman?”
“What did you realize?” asked Cho. Think now, Maya, think.
“Love is the illusion and death the reality. It is a very good illusion, we were very happy. Also very dead.”
“But you know that is not so.”
“So?”
“That is the untouchable reality,” said Sarat. “Out of time.”
Cho reached for the ‘phone and dialled.
“Baya, my dear. Their Imperial Majesties have had a little tiff with ultimate reality. Do you think you could give them a vacation?”
Sarat’s head filled with the number of people he had to see, It cleared.
“Out of Kadun for two days seems to me good.”
“What, then,” asked Cho, “did you realize because you are a woman? Think, now, Maya. Consider the history of Kadun.”
“All of it?” asked Sarat in mock-horror.
“No,” said Cho. He grinned suddenly, recalling Sarat’s deep aversion to this particular question. “Now, ma’am, what our readers surely want to know is what it felt like.”
“There was earthpower,” said Maya, “then there was Narulis, then there was Jaizal, then there was – limbo.”
“This ‘rooted evil’, said Sarat. “Krarlik woke it? I just do not believe in rooted evils!"
“You’re being too literal,” said Cho.
“I’m being literal? What about seeping into bricks?”
“You believe in Singing Isles.”
Maya stared.
“A fault in the earth itself.” Cho looked alert. “It felt – if being dead feels like anything, that is what it feels like.”
“That is your gloss,” said Cho. “You have no idea what being dead feels like.”
“That,” said Maya slowly, “is how we really are.”
“It’s this time,” said Sarat. “Now!”
“Then why was it spooky!”
“You are under stress.
“Oh thanks,” said Sarat.
“Every minute of every day – “
“Expecting to be shot? That is not true.”
Cho shook his head.
“Your undivided attention given to four conversations at once, watching the body language of an entire room, an entire city, knowing every word will be repeated and many words will echo around the world. And sleep? An unnatural life.”
“When people just are,” said Maya. “Which they never are, but if they are, they’re like flowers in a field.”
“So?” asked Cho. “Are people not wildlife too?”
“Life,” said Sarat, “is the earth’s partner. If the earth is ‘female’, life is ‘male’ and love the sum.”
“The earth,” said Cho, “can only heal herself through love, in union with her partner.”
“Or life – created the wound?”
Cho smiled.
“Were you not once a member of NoZone?”
“Everyone knows,” began Sarat, “so I used to think, at least – acid rain and greenhouse gases are a long way from – the whole point is it’s universal, affects the whole planet. It’s a long, long way from a five-headed monster lurking under Azt! How can it be localized?”
“Because it’s contained?” asked Maya.
“If everything is a metaphor,” said Cho, “it may be helpful to consider the five-headed monster.”
“Will you not speak plainly!”
“No. We do not know. Only that the ogre is there.”
“Fine. So I unsheath my gleaming sword – “
“Something of the kind,” said Cho.
“Humanity at war with the earth,” complained Maya, “is a product of science, industrialization.”
“An ancient evil,” intoned Sarat. “It’s got to be nonsense!”
“No,” said Cho.
“Narulis built Azt…”
“On the fault. He never fully understood.”
“Fidub built him the chair. Ores. Earth. As a sort of – weapon?”
“Eventually the empire was corroded?” asked Maya.
“That’s what I said.”
“There was an immediacy, but that’s how my little human brain would see it. The long view…”
“Conquer Azt or it will kill you?”
“Jaizal must conquer Fidub!” said Maya.
“A metaphor made real?” asked Sarat. “Only by crushing the earth?”
“You gotta factor in the minds of men,” said Cho.
“Men?”
“Where – where a whole city was at? We antagonize the monster!”
“Because you are so close to victory.”
“Metaphorically speaking,” sighed Sarat.
“They will fight to the death.”
“That at least is comprehensible. OK, let me put this in nice normal words. The evil in Azt has its back to the wall and will stop at nothing to destroy us. That’s something we didn’t know already?”
“It’s all perfectly straightforward. Except you stroll in and tell us it’s not a sentient evil.”
“The earth is not sentient?” asked Cho.
Maya remembered.
“It doesn’t always burst into song, does it,” she said with a wild grin. “Even if you are direct successor. It only bursts into song if you’re a boy.”
“Orgasmic, man,” muttered Sarat.
Cho started then bellowed with laughter.
Sarat and Maya walked slowly up the drive of the white house in the dunes. Once more time hiccupped, they were 17, Hi, mum, we’re back. We’re going straight upstairs…Sarat was aware he had awakened an area in his mind not immediately apposite to the day-to-day running of Kadun. I guess this too is what being Anile emperor is about.
Baya opened the door.
“Darling…” She hugged him very tight, then Maya.
Another hiccup in time – no, this was memory. Mummy and Daddy really didn’t want to know that Sonny had screwed up. Not this time. He felt suddenly resolute but in a vacuum. Essa hugged them. Sarat knew the girls and their partners came home from time to time,
“Has anything much changed upstairs?”
“There is still a kitchen.”
“That’s great.”
Who said to be is to feel everything, think everything, and then to walk away. To feel everything is unbearable, thought Sarat, Kadun had taught him that at least. Must my heart be wrenched by every child with festering sores? And so there must be detachment but most people never feel anything at all. They did not teach me that explained Kadun.
“I think if you don’t mind we’ll go straight to bed,” said Sarat.
We who were 17, we raced upstairs, bounded, laughing, shut the bedroom door behind us, fell on the bed. What, supposed Sarat, is memory other than hiccups in time.
Baya looked at B and P, but their faces betrayed nothing.
Baya on the ‘phone to Cho: “He is bleeding to death!”
“He is coming alive,” said Cho.
“Oh for….”
And Maya held Sarat in her arms while he cried because right this minute the pain of being Sarat was unbearable.
Baz mailed Faun: Cancel everything for the next three days. Urgent family business in Fidub.
Where are you? asked Faun.
Home.
And so the world assumed Cho was on his death-bed and Cho made no demur.
In the morning they were clearly better and dawdled over breakfast in the kitchen. The radio babbled of a suicide off Sindon Head, the neatly folded pile of clothes on the beach, the brief note pinned to them, and once more Sarat is the schoolboy, the callous fledgeling scientist listening to such a tale and observing that the sharks would get him, but the older Sarat wonders, yes, what does it feel like, what does it feel like when your strength fails and you know there is only surrender to the sea. Must there not be a moment of unspeakable terror? Can you not float? popped up his rational mind. Hypothermia, coma. His imagination was seized by the image of the strong swimmer striking out to eternity with no chance of return and it didn’t exactly tax him to work out why.
“Kaduna-gar-jaht,” he said mildly. “It would have helped if someone had told me what this matter of Kadun is.”
Before returning to Azt, they went again to see Cho and Sarat said, I shall do this, this, this, and Cho smiled. Then he said: “You must tell PANTHER in case it goes pear-shaped.”
Sarat sighed and agreed he must tell PANTHER in case it went pear-shaped.
“It’s all nonsense, isn’t it,” he said. “The throne doesn’t understand genetics. Any of us, Mel, Hass. Tar.”
“It’s all nonsense,” admitted Cho.
In Azt he gathered Mel, Cantilip, Hass and Venga.
“By loving each other we get that bastard off the chair,” he said. Slay a five-headed ogre. Which I guess is death.
He asked them if they minded letting Mitch and Karula into the gang and of course they didn’t mind at all, though no-one was particularly volunteering.
Venga looked at him a long time then said, “There is no other way.”
“That,” said Sarat with a dryness that surprised himself, “would appear to depend on what is the destination. As much garbage as the rest of it,” suggested Sarat. “Where is the wolverine now?”
“We’re going to have to go back,” said Hass.
“You mean you’ll mind?” asked Sarat.
And so Mitch and Karula were let in on the joys of sex and Mitch cackled and said, “Well, you know, I did wonder. Sarat and Hass at least.”
“I am a naïve little girl from the ‘burbs,” said Karula.
So then they were eight. Sarat handed them each a scrap of paper and a pen.
“It’s a little game they play in the best asylums. I want you to each write down what you think the matter of Kadun actually is. My little world,” he added, “just went ack over. Fill you in after.”
“His writing’s terrible,” said Cantilip, “won’t be able to get more than five words on.”
“Please, sir, may we use the other side?” asked Mel.
But Hass smiled.
“Do we have limitless time? Because now you come to mention it.”
“Ex-actly,” said Sarat.
Done.
Hass: It doesn’t just play in real time.
Mel: High Harn.
Cantilip: The desecration of the earth and all that lives.
Venga: Illusion taken for reality.
Mitch: Power
Karula: The conviction love is effeminate
“OK,” said Sarat. “There’s one more thing I want you each to do for me and that’s sit on the Anile throne.” And while Mitch, Karula, Mel and Hass squawked, he smiled at Cantilip and Venga. “It’s OK, I guessed.”
At which Mitch nearly dropped his glass.
“There is no harm,” said Venga.
“It’ll love Zani’s heirs.”
Mel looked pleading.
“Could we possibly have a little detail here?”
“The Anile throne,” said Sarat, “is freaky, is very, very freaky, far freakier than previously advised.”
“Freaky,” said Mel.
“Refreshes the parts other attempts at channelling do not reach. It may blow your mind but it won’t hurt you.” I hope.
They arrived at the Jumesit Palace. The bronzes laughed at them. Sarat laughed back.
“I may be a little out of my depth here frankly,” said Karula.
“I think we may be getting used to each other,” said Sarat.
Mel sat. The throne began to hum but Mel seemed oblivious. Narulis takes Nautschka in his arms. Our first-born shall be Anile Emperor, Narulis is saying, our second my lord of Van-senok. Then Mel is clearly engaged in a dialogue or a duel. No, that is not the case. I stain my honour to save your own? You cannot win.
Hass is pale.
“He – “
“He is Zani,” said Sarat.
Mel stumbled down and walked over to the window.
“OK…” said Mitch. If he is Zani who in hell am I?
He sat. The music roared. For a moment nothing seemed to be happening and he was disappointed. Then sword in hand he is fighting for his life but the enemy has no face or form. The shadows clear and Sarat is leading him into the middle of the people-space. My lord of Var-segan! proclaims Sarat but when Mitch turns to bow in acknowledgement there is only Narulis. Just as Maya had, he says very gently, we are dead, we died centuries ago. No, says Narulis. Heela touches Mitch’s shoulder. Papa! They embrace. I have so much to tell you, oh I so wish you had lived to see it. Heela smiles. I have my grand-daughter. Baria is running towards them. Mitch picks her up in his arms, honey, honey. Daddy, oh Daddy, says Baria, then, it’s nice here, Daddy. Why didn’t you bring me to visit before?
Mitch rises, tears streaming down his face, enfolds Karula in his arms.
“Venga,” said Sarat.
“Again?”
“Again.”
Light streams from me. I am enfolded, I who am the universe. I fade. For a moment his outline blurred. My lord Kaminua! His Imperial Majesty commands. The universe cannot obey. I must find form. A wolverine appeared curled up on the throne. He is Sarat-ban-essa, Anile emperor, Master of Kadun. Behna laughed. But it is long over.
Now that was interesting, thought Sarat.
Hass a star, impeccable, but then there is the noise of battle and the pounding of hooves. Come the hadin and of course the horse. A black star falls from the sky and sears the earth, which moves. Flowers cover the scar, spread north, south, east, west, and again there is Asyrion. She turns, smiles, but the Ciletij are screaming and the fires sweep over the flowers and there is only ash and bone. Never again! said Kaminua. A young officer walks the field of desecration and is Sorg. His face turns to a skull, his flesh withers, he crumbles to dust. Asyrion who is also Fal is screaming.
“Cantilip.”
I move through the forest. I am in and of the trees. Marula appears. You are not my mother. The earth is my mother. It was a mistake, Marula said earnestly but she is Nautschka lying in Narulis’ arms. I laugh. Then must I not be Mistress of Kadun! In the beginning were the trees, says Marula. Now let there be an ending.
“Karula.”
Baria is rushing towards her across – yes, you’ve got it, a field of flowers.but suddenly she stops. I can’t go any further, Mom, it’s like there’s a tape in the way. She begins to cry. Never mind, honey, Mom has magic scissors. Karula brandishes them. Karula feels in front of her. I can’t find the tape, honey! It’s there, Mom, it’s there. Just give me your hand, honey, I’ll help you over. I can’t reach you, Mom. Death wearing a silver coronet and sitting on a silver chair is quietly laughing. Hey now, you bastard, says Karula, these are magic scissors. Suddenly Narulis is by her side. He whispers to her. That’s crazy! says Karula. She stands back from the invisible barrier, begins her approach, leaps, soars. Sarat catches her. She looks at him in horror. You’re – Sarat smiles. We’re all here. But where is here?
“Right,” said Sarat.
“Not Maya?”
“Been there, done that,” said Maya.
Mel turned.
“I think perhaps light, coffee, explanation.”
He sounds exactly like Tar, thought Sarat.
They repaired to the Eyrie and Maya related her story.
“I’m an outer and exo kind of guy,” said Sarat, mocking them, mocking his younger self, mocking the universe, “and after all I’m just a kid. I ran back to Daddy, or rather Grandaddy. Very, very fast.”
“To tear a strip,” said Maya.
Venga smiled
“Why was I not told the facts of life!”
And Sarat laughed because it was so very exact.
“Sent to reduce the number of single parents without any knowledge of biology. We’re going to have to plot, guys. Start over from scratch. Only this time we know what we’re fighting. Sort of.”
“That would seem advantageous,” murmured Mel.
I have never seen Mel so shaken, thought Sarat. Perhaps I have never seen Mel shaken.
“Sarat, dearest,” said Hass.
Sarat sighed and told them about the fault.
“Single lady,” said Maya, “seeks devoted partners to make music with.”
“I trust this is all metaphor,” said Mitch.
“I’m standing back from that one,” said Sarat.
Hass grinned.
“No line of dancing bears high-kicked across the floor of the Ciletij Senate.”
“How do we know?” demanded Sarat. “We are going to act as though it’s metaphor. How I summarize it is we have been killed by Azt because we didn’t know. We go about our daily business thinking we have achieved something but we might as well be dead for all we have really achieved.”
“And equally our – unnatural lives,” said Mitch. “In purely basic physical terms. We shall all be dead if we do not slow down.”
“Sleep deprivation as a path to altered states of consciousness,” said Karula. “Where did I read that?”
“True enough,” said Mel, “the protective layer most people have wears thin.”
“The field of flowers,” said Hass, “are they the endless dead?”
“I don’t think so,” said Sarat. “I think they’re the love, the children of the earth and her partner.”
But Karula said: “It is a standard image among the ordinary people. When they ‘cross over’, those waiting for them on ‘the other side’ run towards them through flowers.”
“I suppose in Van-senok it’s a wood in spring time,” laughed Mitch.
“Actually,” said Cantilip, “it is.”
“Sorry,” said Mitch.
Mel said: “With us it’s a coming out of darkness into Light, capital L.”
“That does not say much,” said Mitch after a moment, “for living on this earth.”
“All is illusion,” said Venga. “My lords, my ladies, let us not go the way of the Anile court.”
Sarat looked at him sharply.
“Why they thought that,” said Mel.
“They got too close to death,” said Sarat. “It seemed to them death is better than life.”
“Different,” said Venga, “just different.”
Maya looked taut.
“Is that what we have to do? Eyeball death.”
“Do we ever do anything else?” asked Sarat.
Karula gave a little squeal.
“Do you realize what we have just said?”
“So many appalling things – “ began Sarat.
 “However simple, however sophisticated, however down to earth, however numinous, it’s always you, you the – “ Mel stopped suddenly. “I was going to say, you, the corpse, who shapes the trip.”
“But that is not at all what we are talking about,” protested Mitch. “We are talking about the beliefs of the living as to what will happen.”
“NDEs.”
“The whole point of NDEs is they are not dying.”
“We have no idea what being dead is like,” said Maya. “Cho was really quite sharp.”
“We know there is a continuum.”
“Shaped by us.”
“I don’t think,” said Hass, “this is particularly getting us anywhere. Exactly what is happening when we sit?”
“Cho said it was a conduit. I think we’re finding stuff we already know but don’t know that we know and we’re very bad at understanding what we’re telling ourselves.”
“We’re shaping the trip.”
“Certainly. And a pretty restricted trip it is too, confined solely to a rather limited social circle.”
“It would seem to me,” said Mitch “the universe should return to school for it surely has a problem with making itself plain to folks.”
“Why are we all obsessed with Asyrion!”
“I’m not,” said Mitch virtuously.
“You didn’t – “
“We never told him,” said Hass.
“This is not my first – interlude with the chair,” said Sarat. “Somehow there was so much else going on.”
Mitch listened.
At length, he said: “If there is a problem with Asyrion, clearly the solution is to ask her.”
“Common sense is a terrible thing.”
But Karula cried out: “Then how can you say you have no idea about dying!”
“Oh. No,” said Sarat.
“I suppose,” said Mel.
“Our understanding,” said Hass.
“Do we have one?” asked Sarat. “How we understood that particular excitement was as a worm-hole in time. It’s not that they were dead and gee, here they are large as life chatting away to us. They had – had stopped their time and we were able to go there.”
“Is that better?” growled Mitch.
“Normal!” said Maya. “Darling, you only have to spend a night in the Palace to understand the walls of time can be very thin indeed.”
“Especially,” said Sarat, ”anywhere near the throne? I am really not sure I totally suss that particular home furnishing.”
“We are decided?” asked Hass. “Sorg is Fal’s projection?”
“I don’t know,” said Sarat. “I simply don’t know.”
“In a sense and heretofore,” murmured Mel, “if you have continued, you are by definition not dead.”
“That,” said Mitch, “would appear to depend on what you mean by ‘dead’.”
“Which sounds like a student argument about semantics!”
“I think, two things,” said Sarat. “One is what everyone in the world including us means by dead, corpse, funeral, something we do not want to be. The other – we don’t know what being dead is like, we can’t know, because that by definition is what dead is, loss of self-awareness. Some think it happens when the doc pronounces brain-death. Some think – other things. But that’s what it is.”
“Kaminua was a tree-hugger, wasn’t he,” said Maya, “and Asyrion was earthpower.”
“Deep,” said Mel approvingly, “while the rest of us prattle about unknowables, Maya thinks.” I prattle on, he thought, evading….He looked at Cantilip. “I think perhaps we might clarify.” He gave a small smile. “Two near-misses.”
Cantilip sighed.
“Nautschka was the second child of the Master of Van-senok. Her elder sister, the heir, was killed in the – the battle for Kadun. Nautschka was already pregnant by Narulis.”
“Then Sarat is Master of Van-senok!”
“It’s more complicated than that. There are always three lines, d’you see. The female, the male and the first-born.” Has anyone got – “ She held up her summation of the matter of Kadun. “ – a decent-sized piece of paper?”
“You’re not the eldest?” asked Sarat.
“Now he’s getting it!”
“Shavli was Anile heir.”
“Except of course not because you four are dependent on the x million preceding generations,” pointed out Mitch.
My head is swimming, thought Mel. I never knew what it meant before.
“So each of us, each title, has three holders. At some level.”
Amidst all this talk of dying, thought Karula, could it not be construed as symbolic that (if anything happens to us and of course it will not) Shavli a woman will succeed Sarat and Hass a gay man Mel. I think I shall not say that because I have no idea what I am talking about. But then by the looks of them nor do they.
“Narulis did first-born, gender irrelevant,” said Cantilip. “Nautschka bore him a son, the Anile heir. It wasn’t an issue. Nautschka then had a daughter, who became my future lady of Van-senok. We continued down the female line.”
So the successors of Narulis’ eldest daughter, if you’re doing things by the female line.
“Who’s the third?” asked Sarat.
“We honestly don’t know,” said Venga.
Honestly, thought Mitch, a word injected into speech to indicate one is lying. He tutted at himself.
“Oh come on,” he said, with some asperity. “For us in Var-segan it has not been a question that the line that returned to Fidub – “
“Surely it must be clearly signposted,” insisted Karula. “The first Anile empress in her own right. Who had a younger brother. That must be when the divergence.”
“But we are not talking yesterday,” allowed Mitch. “Once the divergence took place, there would be no genealogists lovingly documenting it. Only – “ the words screamed in his brain. “ – adepts of the male line.”
“Krarlik?” suggested Sarat.
“Probably,” said Venga.
“Exactly what,” said Sarat, and people had the sense he was choosing his words with extreme care (if they didn’t have that at the start they sure had it when he’d finished), “have certain elements in Kadun expected of me?”
“We think you’re doing brilliantly so far,” said Cantilip.
“We, my sweet lady of the trees, we?” Not Sarat but Mitch.
Karula gave up keeping her face straight.
“Unswerving in your loyalty to the Anile throne, honey?”
“You sat on it,” said Mitch, “knowing you were Mistress of Kadun in the female line. But he?”
Venga shrugged. I am the universe.
“Why has Van-senok never - ?” began Karula, then realized the complete impossibility.
Cantilip smiled. Cantilip became a slim dryad, tendrils of vine in her hair, clad in leaves and not many of those.
Thus we storm the Great Gates!
“So?” asked Sarat.
“We understood only we had to make it happen.”
“So you - ?”
Venga smiled.
“Made advances?”
I think I have pressing business elsewhere, thought Mitch.
But Cantilip just laughed.
“The abandoning of Van-senok to be Queen of Dabida was not expected of me.” She looked calmly at Mitch. “Or I am a power-crazed hag. If not Mistress of Kadun then Queen of Dabida, a runner-up prize?”
He looked calmly back.
“I do not believe that, honey. But I do not understand.”
Mel took her hand and raised it to his lips.
“My lady is my completion and my resolution, my other half and my culmination.” Then he grinned. “Metaphorically speaking.”
“Yes,” said Cantilip, “Neither of us had ever met anything like them. Head-over, darling, absolutely head-over.”
It came to Karula: sometimes they talk as though they’re separate species. “I do not think,” she said, “at the most fundamental level anyone has ever explained to me the difference between earthpower and – “ She clapped her hand over her mouth and whistled.
“We, humans,” said Mel, “are finite and infinite. You can’t have a one-sided piece of paper. The separation is illusion. Earthpower is the approach from one side. We are the other. Each contains the other.”
“Together,” said Mitch drily, “you represent ultimate reality.”
“The interface,” said Mel. “Where one side of the paper joins the other.”
“Of course one knew that theoretically,” said Cantilip briskly.
Karula spluttered.
“Then it – then neither is the end of the trip.”
“It’s the beginning of the trip,” admitted Mel. “It is advised not to go further.”
“But you do!”
“That’s quite different,” said Mel.
“Physical,” said Hass helpfully.
“Cuddles,” said Venga.
“We have to be human,” said Mel. “To know we are love. Anyone who doesn’t at some level acknowledge that is intolerable to himself and all around him. “
“Most of the messes people get into are because they think they can extinguish human,” said Hass. “Go around intoning, ‘I do not need’. Fine. Starve to death.”
“’Nothing matters.’ Watch other people starve to death. We seem to have somewhat digressed.”
“They do not understand which part of them is saying these things…What were we talking about!”
“What fills our days. Does it matter? How and to whom does it matter?”
“In other words,” said Mitch, “what the hell are we doing here?”
“Literally,” said Sarat. “OK, there’s a fault in the earth. Why is that down to little us to resolve?” He stopped, not sure what he meant, then continued. “Because it’s all one continuum. What Hass said. There is no here without there and no there without here. No socio-political change without disposing of the Cult and no disposing of the Cult without socio-political change.”
“School,” said Mel. “I think a little word with the ‘Time-lords of Endor’.
Mel walked with Fugitry in the gardens.
“In simple words,” he demanded, “why did PANTHER not put Zani on the throne. No nonsense about direct succession.”
Fugitry turned to him and bowed.
“Imperial Majesty! Deal with it, Mel.”
What did I once say? thought Mel I expect to be heeded as much as any other leader of the pack? He took a deep breath.
“Right now, like any other - world-leader – me, little me, truly? – my time is short. I do not expect to be messed about. But that is the opposite.”
Fugitry nodded.
“Your people,” he began, and Mel stiffened, knowing he meant irtubi, “are united in one reflection.”
Mel sighed.
“We listen. All night if need be. We appear to have limitless time. Now time has boomeranged?”
“Why,” asked Fugitry, “is time running out?”
Mel is in a field with flowers. Skip the flowers, said Mel irritably. Fugitry laughed. The rest of our lives stretch before us and when you are 17 that is for ever. At 50 strikes mid-life crisis, time foreshortened. I am 25! shouted Mel. 25 and the world is (mostly) at my feet. Am I not Master of Kadun! And also Sarat. It is I/we who rule the world. Our part of it at least. What is this garbage?
He looked up.
“Tar is soon to die?”
Fugitry looked approving.
“Not bad. But total nonsense. Let go, Mel.”
“What of! Time…”
Every historic building in Azt except the Jumesit Palace had been opened to the public and this, it was widely understood, was simply because Sarat intended to live there.
The Star tumbled to his feet. Imperial Master!
Go in peace, sweetheart, said Sarat.
“Problematic,” said Maya, “I think that’s the word. How can we possibly live here?”
“If I’m right,” said Sarat, “it will change. If I’m wrong, they’re building luxury flats over in Tirin.”
“If we are very wrong,” said Maya. “Sarat – does it occur to you we can burn out our little brains on this one?”
“Not if we let go,” said Sarat.
And Maya too said: “What of!”
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” said Sarat.
“Kadun?” asked Maya. “Life?”
“Oh no,” said Sarat.
Something in his voice told her been there done that.
Then he gathered PANTHER and told them everything but most of all what he wanted from them which every reference they could lay their hands on to the Jumesit Palace and its site, the history, archaeology and geology thereof.
“Blame them,” said Sarat, gesturing toward B and P. “They taught me to take my responsibilities seriously.”
“Including,” sighed Faun, “every veiled allusion to the heart of evil, etc.”
“Rooted evil,” said Sarat.
“Deep in the festering heart of Azt,” said Baz. “Only journos write like that.”
“Do they really.”
The landscape gardeners began work and the builders moved in. PANTHER prowled to contain the unexpected. The builders had no eyes to see but they could feel.
“Strange old place, this.”
“How so?” asked Jaizi.
“Spooky.”
“Wouldn’t like to be here after dark, I’m telling you!” said another.
“Old,” said Jaizi cheerfully. “Everyone sometimes gets the feeling old places – have their past with them.”
“These walls have seen a few things, all right!”
“You’d think a modern lad…”
“Wouldn’t be here if he didn’t have no sense of history!”
But they decided that on the whole there were three rooms, right at the back, almost like an outhouse, they didn’t want no part of.
“Like someone’s walked over your grave!”
“Nah. Like you’re walking over someone’s grave.”
Oh dear, thought Faun. He padded off to explore. The reek of death hit him. Are we really going to have to dig? What is left after 600 years?
“No,” said Sarat, “we’re going to exorcise.”
Faun said: “Letting go of Kadun: the metaphor. What is Kadun?”
“Mine,” said Sarat instantly, then, “Me. Indissolubly linked.”
“The man made the running,” said Faun. “The woman fell into his arms.”
“Was she shy?” asked Sarat.
“Terrified,” said Faun.
“By the way,” said Sarat, “find me everything Narulis wrote about metaphysics.”
“You know already,” said Faun.
“None of it, I think, exactly as transmitted from generation unto generation.”
Mitch surveyed the finished product.
“One well sees that only court dress is appropriate to such an environment.. Does that not act as a deterrent to the ragged of Azt?”
Sarat said: “Perhaps the only point of gleaming robes is to get them filthy.”
The silver palace was apparently opened to the public. Oh man, it’s beautiful. Then puzzlement. Where are Sarat’s private apartments? Does he live here or not? I guess he has to have somewhere for State occasions. This is no nine-day wonder we have here.
He has created a jewel in the heart of Azt, wrote Seani rather feverishly. Recreated? Seani began to research the history of the Jumesit Palace.
“What is he doing?” asked the Cile
“Frankly, sir,” said Bris, “I haven’t a clue. I only know it’s the other stuff.”
“Perhaps,” said the Cile, “Ciletij should examine a higher plane of consciousness.”
Bris wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
“They keep it so low-key it’s invisible. Except somehow you know it is all that matters.”
Sarat lit the eternal flame.
“OK, guys, this is the shrine.”
He understands. What does he understand? The point of all this was at least in part bait, but still hidden Azt did not reveal itself.
“This is not Zanocki Park – “ where Azt had decided public debate was held. “This is a place for people to be quiet if they want, a peaceful place. It’s also where I live, at least part of the time, so you will be sure to keep the noise down, won’t you, kids.”
Then, just as the elders were beginning to turn away, their very shoulders murmuring relentlessly casual even on an occasion such as this, Sarat continued, a lasso holding them in place.
“There is the love way or the power way. There is reciprocity, harmony, union. All are One. Some do not know it. Thus it is said, each is both One and the Other and each makes his or her choice. There is harmony with one’s fellow-humans or there is distance, separation, hierarchy, retreat from fellowship when only Might is Right. There is harmony with all that lives. There is harmony with the earth herself, for the final union is that between the earth and all that lives, indissolubly bonded. This Narulis understood. This I know.”
He turned and stepped down. The silence was absolute. Was it something I said? thought Sarat.
He turned, no, not to Maya, but to Cantilip.
“My lady of Van-senok, may I lead?”
“My lord, there is only the dance.”
He led her out into the middle of the people-space.
I don’t know this dance, he thought, but that doesn’t matter. I am being danced. It is dancing me. Cantilip twirled and span, ever faster. I am the trees, thought Cantilip, and he is the wind. The wind stopped abruptly and raised her hand to his lips.
“The time is now,” said Sarat. I think I can hear horns.
Something of a platitude, thought those still retaining control of their brains, which weren’t many.
 
Then he knew what he was hearing and threw Cantilip to the ground as PANTHER shouted, “GET DOWN! Everyone flat!”
The blast hit the centre of the dais. For one terrible moment Sarat thought, Azt killed them, all of them gone, but a ring of light contained it and there is Mel, ring-master. Sun-ka-sun. I shine. But perhaps he is dead. How else does Mel look in death? Sarat ran forward Halfway to the dais he realized Mel wasn’t the least bit dead but couldn’t work out what the hell he was doing. Venga realized and his pleasant baritone echoed through the hall. Come, hadin, come, come not alone, come hadin, come. Is that wholly appropriate, thought Mitch, then realized it was an invocation.
Maya walked slowly forward.
“No!” said Sarat.
She ducked and the bullet whizzed harmlessly past and into a priceless painting.
“Give me the gun. That is an order, Colonel.”
She held out her hand.
He made to turn the gun on himself, but found he couldn’t.
PANTHER led him away.
“Eh,” said Mel, “someone should give that lass a medal.”
“Looks like I got a reaction,” said Sarat.
Sarat turned to making sure no-one was hurt (no-one was or not badly). It’s as though everyone is talking in whispers, thought Mel.
Slowly the tree began to grow. This may be too much like hard work, thought Venga.
Dabida wasn’t sure what had happened, only that Mel had escaped death by seconds.
COME HOME, MEL! demanded the front-page of the Zur Gazette. Must Mel Die for Kadun? asked The Times.
Mel looked stunned. No. It’s – leave, how can I leave?
“Time just ran out?” asked Sarat.
“I’ll follow on,” said Cantilip. “I think just at this minute they want all of you.”
Mel flew immediately to Zur. Nobody’s going to die – it really wasn’t a very big bomb – look, not a scratch on me
Their answer was pictures of Maya walking towards a loaded gun. Tar and Saski were in Vasucula for the Round-the-Islands Races. In place of parents, thought Vanya. Me? Or I want a constitutional crisis.
Vanya inspected him.
“Quite mad, of course. Nonetheless we love you. Mel, this has to end.”
“That is Sarat’s view.”
“At what cost!”
“I don’t know.”
“Zur has sweated. Quite apart from – I swear your mother is a size smaller.”
“I know,” said Mel.
“Sarat has to do it – perhaps in a sense Sarat had to do it. Now he has to do it. You do not.”
“But I do.”
“How so?”
Vanya listened to a truncated story.
“You will explain that to Dabida?”
“No,” said Mel. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
And he thought like Marula: Now let there be an ending.
“Or you are my lord of Van-senok and the emperor’s cousin.”
Mel frowned.
“That sounds like an ultimatum.”
“Oh, my dear boy, no.”
“What then?”
“I shall not offer fatherly advice. For that you have a father.”
“The real problem,” said Mel, “is Hass was there too.”
“No, Mel, that is not the real problem. The real problem is Zur loves you.”
Mel managed a small smile.
“I can’t think why. I’m treating her very badly. For – for 98% of my young life, it was inconceivable I visit Azt, let alone live there. Everything has shattered, do you see, good, bad, indifferent. Everything. For 98% of my life, Zur was my life. “ Then I realized I was Master of Kadun. “Everything must be remade.” Time. Time stretched out before him like an endless field of flowers. But that is only because I am dead. We are finite, damn it! Infinite and finite. Mitch’s voice echoed in his mind. I have no problem with the notion I am finite. Here and there, alive and dead, Azt and Zur, Zur and Van-senok, why is nothing whole? The image returned. Hand in hand, the eight of us are walking into the Light, capital L. “Meanwhile I need a vacation!”
“To that at least I give unqualified assent.”
Vanya rang Tar.
“You must abdicate!”
“I must? To keep him here?”
“To keep his feet on the ground. Or find him some project equally engrossing.”
“What,” asked Tar, “is bigger than the universe?”
“Let no-one deny hands-on experience.”
 
Tar and Saski arrived back and were frankly relieved to find Mel and Cantilip lounging in The Room looking healthy and normal, a relief which lasted about five seconds.
“There is this recurrent image,” said Mel. “The eight of us are walking hand in hand into the Light.” But then he said: “It’s like a flashback.” He paused. “The thing is, none of us can any longer keep a lid on what we are.”
“Then you must return to the Denzines and learn,” said Tar briskly.
Sure, Dad, sure.
“Even Hass?” asked Tar.
Mel didn’t answer directly.
“What I understand is that everything I have been taught since I first managed to stammer why? was directed at keeping my feet on the ground. Nothing is whole!”
“Everything is whole.”
“The healing lies in the balance? Papa – “ which Mel hadn’t called him since he was about ten. “ – how is it possible to be both alive and dead?”
“Darling,” said Saski, “you do not appear to be doing badly so far.”
“Do you understand that – that in earthpower I am Master of Kadun or more exactly - ?”
“Of course, darling,” said Saski.
He’s going to say it, thought Tar. He said it.
“What does it all mean?”
“I want my sons home,” said Tar.
Mel realized it was an order.
“Shall Essa order his son home!”
“Where,” said Tar softly, “is home?”
But Cantilip said: “You leave with Sarat Maya, Karula.”
“And Mitch of course,” said Mel.
She didn’t seem to think Mitch mattered.
And Fal, thought Mel. Is that it, only women can heal Kadun? Then death returned and said: Then Shavli must rule Kadun.
“No!” said Mel, then realized he had spoken aloud.
Tar looked alert. Mel explained.
“You become obsessed with death,” said Tar.
And Mel said: “That is the matter of Kadun?”
Cantilip cried out: “Don’t you see! No-one foresees our deaths because we’re dead already. It IS a flashback. Maya was right, we’re dead and we don’t even know it.”
“This is madness,” said Tar.
“That,” said Mel grimly, “is why we’re going to sane it.” No-one laughed. He turned to Cantilip. “We’re packing.”
“You return to Azt?” Tar kept his voice level.
“Great heavens, no! We are going to Fidub.”
“Wring his neck for me,” said Tar.
“We’re putting our own gloss on it,” said Mel. “We understand that. Or we are putting Azt’s gloss. Refracting it through what we think we know. What are we seeing?”
“It was illusion,” said Cantilip. “Karula and I weren’t there.”
“Unless of course,” snapped Mel, “you were dead.”
As the door closed behind them, Saski lay back in an attitude of complete collapse.
“Appalled beyond belief,” said Tar. He held her, then stood back and laughed. “Get packing. We, my lady, are going to Azt.”
“I shouldn’t have said that,” said Cantilip. “Total loony.”
“True-untrue,” said Mel. “Not true-true.”
“Catharsis,” said Cantilip.
There’s a heli-pad on the roof, drop you in Cho’s back garden in an hour.
But Por reported that they hadn’t left.
“They’re just sitting up there, talking.”
“Stop calling it death,” said Mel. “The part that’s there not here, the part we can no longer keep down. Death is a gloss and a corruption. We’re not seeing it as it is.”
“Because it’s been kept down, it – it isn’t properly integrated, That’s why it’s so erratic.”
“No balance.”
“Yes,” said Cantilip. “No. Mel, we’re doing this to ourselves.”
“We know that.”
“Why are we doing this to ourselves?”
He rested his head on her shoulder.
“I guess because we’re scared shitless.”
“We’ve brainwashed ourselves. There is no choice. No choice but to wander round Azt bare-headed, no choice but to behave as though Azt had been at peace for a thousand years. Do you not think the rational part of our minds rebels?”
“Thinks we’re suicidal,” said Mel.
“Think of a prey-animal, Mel. A rabbit. If rabbits had human consciousness how long d’you think they’d last before going psycho?”
“Simply as a result of existing,” said Mel.
“We’re not built for it.”
“Except we are,” said Mel.
“The ‘there’ part to which – to whom?”
“Nit-picker!” said Mel.
“To what the fear is meaningless, says, hey, man, it’s cool, what’s the hassle.”
“You’re dead already,” said Mel.
“What is the one thing our – hah! – uncensored selves have not experienced?”
“Total terror,” said Mel.
“Of losing you,” said Cantilip.
“Of losing you,” said Mel.
“Because,” said Cantilip.
“Because,” said Mel.
“It’s not terror at one’s own demise,” said Cantilip.
“It’s absolute powerlessness to prevent,” said Mel.
“Anything happening to any of us,” said Cantilip.
“Love is destroying us,” said Mel.
“Nobody told us,” said Cantilip.
“What could they have said?”
“Imposed detachment!”
Mel gave a little start, then turned and kissed her gently on the cheek.
“We have been so stupid. What is not whole?”
“What is forced apart. Oh Mel.”
“Love, they told us, love with all your heart and soul, become one.”
“It only works,” she said.
“When nobody wants to kill your beloved!”
“Grubby little rational minds. We understand the risk. We accept it.”
They looked at each other in horror.
“Letting go.”
“Of each other.”
He took her hand and began slowly to recite.
“I who am One, who am One with the One, and You who are all, Protector and Preserver, Creator and Destroyer, in whom all are One, give peace to this house and all within.”
It began to rain, but they didn’t mind. Finally two wet little rabbits descended and found Tar and Saski gone,.
We want to talk to a grown-up.
“It’s the opposite of everything we’ve been taught!” shouted Mel. Am I shouting? “Sorry.”
“No,” said Por. He ploughed on. “Cantilip leaves you? Is she not free? You let go.”
“That’s different. She has choice.”
“Here – the here part of you – accepts totally she is – discrete.”
“But there we are One – “
“What is time?” asked Cantilip. “It doesn’t matter. We shall meet again and then it will be for ever.”
“That is faith,” said Mel. “Must we cross in real time to know!”
“You do not trust?”
“What?”
“Love.”
We are dead and do not know it. It is as simple or as sophisticated.
“What Fal is doing is projecting – realizing, real-izing, making real.”
“Must we suffer the terror and the loss?” asked Cantilip.
“For what?”
“To be free.”
“It seems to me,” said Por, “your little minds are doing a pretty good job so far. Feel it.”
Cantilip lolled across the Plaza, half her head blown away. Mel’s mind shut down. “Feel it.”
Mel walked slowly through a hostile, jeering crowd. They’ll kill him, said someone helpfully. Cantilip retched. “Feel it.” Mel stared at him blindly. “Feel it.” Cantilip sprinkled earth on Mel’s grave then screamed No!. Mel alone in bed turns, reaches for empty space. Desolation overwhelms him.
“Poor little rabbits,” said Mel. “Such complicated minds.”
“Or,” said remorseless Por.
“I am walking behind your coffin,” said Mel steadily. “But the sun is in my hair and I am laughing. It doesn’t matter. What is in the coffin is not you. It has nothing to do with you, with us. Because you are beside me, clutching my hand. So why am I crying?”
“Do we have to make up our minds!” shouted Cantilip.
“No,” said Mel. Immediately it flashed into his mind: time is foreshortened. Oh shut up! he said to his mind. “We’re dragging ourselves under, aren’t we. How do we get out?”
“Only by turning our backs on the whole thing.”
“Not.”
He wrote at length to Sarat.
How can I be this stupid? thought Sarat. There’s one thing we didn’t do. How can I be this thick? We didn’t sit on it together!
Once more he approached the throne, his mood much OK buster, now you get your come-uppance. He sat firmly and with what the tabloids would have called a very male gesture of possession sat Maya on his lap. She snuggled against his chest and put her arms around his neck.
Well? asked Sarat. They surrendered their minds to each other, melded.
Er, yes, well.
I/we look around. Where are we? In the dream, if it is a dream, there is the distant sound of hammering. We follow it, taut, aware of being defenceless in a dream, if that makes sense. We seem to be in a tunnel. Under the earth? Under the Palace? The fault. We do not find these terribly comforting thoughts. Our feet are getting wet. A trickle of water from behind has reached us. The trickle becomes a steady flow. This is a very uncomforting thought indeed. Shall we outrun it? Did we not proclaim we wished to cleanse the sewers of Azt! Er, yes. Not with us in them. At least we know where we are. Must there not be a moment of unspeakable terror? Feel it. I have led you to your death! That is clearly not an ‘us’ thought. At least we’ll go together. But the water levels out at waist-height. We’d better swim! This is clearly the maddest trip yet. We begin to strike out for land. The beaches of Fidub appear before us but recede with each stroke. The fault.
We’re so convinced we are shaping the trip we don’t try to shape it. But then what’s the point. Think, think, think ourselves onto the beach. Here we are, vigorously towelling our backs as the sun beats down and the earth cracks beneath us. We cling to the edge of the fault. Steps appear, worn by many weary climbers. We begin our descent to the centre of the earth.
For a moment they clung to each other taut.
“Why,” demanded Maya, “did it stop when it was just getting interesting?”
Sarat’s mobile rang.
“Oh,” he said. “Another kind of disturbance in the ether.”
Tar and Saski surveyed the plotters.
“You are all mad or only Mel and Cantilip?”
“Darlings,” said Saski, “you didn’t finish growing-up. Now you must grow up on the job. It is hard.”
“Oh, is that what happened?” said Sarat.
“You don’t look too bad,” allowed Tar.
“Smile for the camera,” said Sarat. “It’s probable I went mad when I was 17. I may just be getting over it."
“Cho,” said Tar, “if you took a break.”
Sarat smiled wanly.
“D’you think he could cope?”
“What has Mel said?” asked Hass.
“I have said I wish my sons home. Perhaps all five of them for a short while.”
“I thank you,” said Sarat.
“You are not here,” said Tar.
“Something else has happened,” said Sarat.
“We are feeling just a little fragile,” said Maya.
Tar caught up with the missing episodes. He put his head in his hands.
“Mel and Cantilip must sit.”
“We’d got there,” said Sarat.
Mel had got hold of a graphics program. He sat back from the monitor.
“There! I thought I’d externalize it.”
Cantilip looked at the eight of them walking hand in hand into the Light and began to cry.
“I did that,” admitted Mel. “Then I thought – supposing – “
He opened another image.
“Oh Mel!” She laughed and cried at the same time.
“First I put silver blur round each of us, which I found rather cheering. No change of state. Then of course the blur all joined up and the blur is what joins us. So in the end I had the beginning of a solid block of silver blur and then I thought paint out the people, because the people are the blur. But in the middle of the people.”
In the middle of a shimmering radiant block of silver were eight tiny rabbits.
“What is it that our little brains are screaming at us that we cannot begin to accept because it’s so sick, so crazy?”
“There is no difference between life and death. But we know that or we shouldn’t be as we are.”
“Poor little rabbits. Then I thought something else. I thought we’re going through the Light.”
“That’s a bit scary,” said Cantilip. “But it’s still a flashback.”
“How do I know what time does? Does it ask me? Except maybe it’s something we’ve done. We are at the interface.”
She looked around Mel’s old bedroom and began to giggle.
“Cosmic, man!”
“I know, I know! But mentally we’ve taken ourselves over the top and that’s what we don’t know.”
“Because it’s we who are calling the shots. Our little brains are squealing that there’s something we need to let hang out here…”
“Life is death. It only sounds so repulsive because time programmes us to see it linearly.”
“When my grandfather died, I knew he just wasn’t there. He was somewhere, but not there. A dead person is sort of conclusive.”
Mel thought of his dead.
“Yes.” Then, “It’s what Mitch said. But not linear. Every moment in life is the opportunity to come out of the dark into Light.” But then he frowned. “I can’t believe the Anile court didn’t know that.”
“Anile Throne Excursions,” said Cantilip. “Suppose – there’s the Interface, capital I. What all the trips are about is interfaces. No barriers. What is being screamed at us is everything is whole.”
He was summoned to the telephone.
“Make up your mind!” he said with some acerbity.
“Your mood has not improved?”
“Somewhere,” said Mel, “I’m a happy bunny. I just haven’t got there yet.”
Cantilip began to bunny-hop around him. He smothered a laugh and agreed to return to Azt. Then he began to bunny-hop too. They were in love and under a lot of strain.
Mel scowled at the throne.
“It’s not very big. Suppose I sit on the back and Cantilip sits on the seat.”
Tar looked at him. He sat on the seat. Cantilip sat on his lap and leant back against him.
Oh-oh-oh!
We are in total darkness then sunlight streams in through a gap ahead. We seem to be rabbits. Yes, but we’re magic rabbits. Hippity-hop out into the open but the glare of the sun apparently is so strong that we see no grass, no lettuce but only light. We go crazed, begin to bite and scratch at ourselves. We stop as suddenly as we started, look at each other in shock. We don’t know what to do. A fox is coming towards us. Remember we’re magic rabbits. We jump forward, over the fox’s head, soar. It seems we shall never land. Flying rabbits frightened of falling. But the air – light – air thickens beneath us and we are human again, Mel and Cantilip standing on air. The light stretches all around us. We jump, land in (sigh) a field of flowers, stumble to our feet, laugh, run hand in hand through the flowers. Asyrion and Kaminua are running to meet us. They’re trying to tell us something, but we can’t hear. We meet, fuse. Now I Mel who am also Kaminua call the hadin home to Azt, but they stop, rear, refuse to go further. There is something scary about Azt. I Cantilip who was also Asyrion and am also Kaminua and Mel stand in the centre of the people-space and the Palace crumbles around me, tendrils shoot around the pillars as the earth takes over. But the earth herself is crumbling beneath our feet and we again are falling into the light.
And Cantilip-talal-za-fenan, who has been also Asyrion, ran from the throne whispering, “No, no, it’s impossible!”
Mel rose shakily.
“I think. Not. I don’t think. Thinking is a very bad thing to do in this situation.”
He and Cantilip held each other as though they’d never let go.
Mel turned finally.
“We’ve all been pushed over the edge.” Nobody, least of all he, was sure which edge.
“That bloody field with flowers,” said Hass, who never swore.
“Mel,” said Saski.
He hugged her. Time lurched and he was six, where does it hurt, darling, let Mummy kiss it better. And you can damned well behave yourself too, he said to time. Time crept obediently back into its corner.
“There would appear,” he said, “in some kind of way, to be a sense in which, although perhaps the choice of words isn’t terribly good, the throne is alive.”
Of course, of course, of course, of course. Sarat ran to the chair and sat.
“I am Anile emperor, Master of Kadun, Doom of Death. I command – myself.”
The throne yodelled, as one of those present was later to put it. No-one was in a particularly good mood.
That’s all you did the first time, thought Sarat. Time upsets you, doesn’t it. Sorry, no. we did not understand. It’s being so near the fault, the wound, but it’s all right. You’ve got me now. I’m your partner. You can tell me everything. (Keep searching now, searching for the mind, intelligence, liveness.) What is this, bigamy? Let me just keep busking it, keep my little mind babbling away and not dragged off to cloud-cuckoo land. Until something happens. If something happens. Something will happen. You’re desperate for us to understand. I can see that. You must think we deserve prizes for stupidity, We’re only human. Still, let me try and stretch my little mind. After all I am Fidubi. Singing Isles, right. (Just keep feeling. It won’t have any shape or form known to me. It can’t have. It? Sorry! She.) And what keeps them singing, the union, the partnership. Singing Isles sounds better than Orgasmic Isles! How about we take you to Fidub! Would that be better, calm you down a bit? So we can do this the long way or the short way, right. Healing, I mean. If life in Azt is in partnership, doesn’t that heal the wound? He yawned suddenly. You know, I’m pretty tired. I really need that break. Maybe I should just take a nap. Molecules, we’re all just molecules, you and me. It seemed to him (oh come on, that’s crazy!) that the chair was less hard beneath him. All is One, isn’t it. So how about we just shape ourselves to each other. Cuddles. Everything in the universe needs love. The chair was definitely softer. Oh how can I be this thick. Look I don’t begin to remember how to do this, the theory, never mind the practice. Can you help me?
And
A panther snoozed in the middle of a decidedly curvaceous but much enlarged throne. Its – its? His thought was lost to the on-lookers. I think I’ve stopped breathing, thought Mel. Where is he?
It seemed to him that Sarat answered sleepily: You know.
The interface?
Silence.
No-one moved.
Maya looked helplessly at Tar.
No, he said.
I must. Must or I shall never in a thousand lifetimes forgive you, must or I shall die, an over-riding, compelling, irresistible, unified must.
He showed her how to do it.
A panther stalked up to the chair, jumped onto the seat and began to lick the ears of her sleeping partner. He rolled over.
At least he’s alive. How is he alive?
Maya-panther curled up beside him. I – no, that is what I don’t do.
Sarat-panther began to show unmistakable signs of wanting to make love to or have sex with as panthers put it Maya-panther.
“Perhaps we should leave them to it,” said Mel.
Undoubtedly alive.
He’s responding to our thoughts? The only way he can?
Pantherish croons emanated from the throne.
This is really rather embarrassing, thought Karula. Of course I’m hysterical!
Something has to make him jump down, thought Venga.
 
He laughed suddenly
And became
A mouse.
Venga-mouse scurried up to the chair and squeaked vociferously. Hey, big boy, notice me!
“Not hungry, I guess,” murmured Mitch. Or not worth the effort. “Wouldn’t a gazelle - ?”
Oh.
“The period of gestation appears somewhat foreshortened,” murmured Mitch.
It seemed that the room was filling with panther-cubs. Venga returned rapidly to human form.
The illusion to end all illusions, he thought.
He strode towards a cub and scooped it up in his arms.
An unmistakable growl came from the throne.
Venga felt hurt. Hey, Sarat, it’s me, your best buddy, as if I could harm –
He doesn’t know who we are.
Idiot me!
“Chase the cubs away!” he ordered. “Shoo, kitty, come on, out of here!”
They began to understand.
Sarat and Maya bounded down.
And stood stock still.
Returned to human shape.
Fainted.
Strong arms cradled them. Venga felt for Sarat’s mind, Cantilip for Maya’s.
Sarat…
Who is Sarat?
You are!
It’s…, said Maya.
Slowly she came back.
Sarat’s memories returned, past, present and future.
My time is now! But his mind continued to protest. All times are now.
I am – everywhere. But Sarat. All places Sarat has been, there am I.
“I think,” said Tar, “this is perhaps not the best place. Let’s get them out of here.”
Walk? Fly, prowl, crawl, creep, hop. Walk!
I am the rivers and the seas. I flow.
I am the earth and the sky.
“Get him outside,” snapped Venga. “On the grass.”
“Genius,” murmured Hass, but Baz looked at him thoughtfully.
Venga, my son, exactly what do you know about this particular trip?
Venga smiled: I didn’t go all the way.
I am the planets and the stars.
I am the universe.
Not.
All universes.
Not.
Sarat felt for the wet grass around him.
Where am I!
What am I?
Sarat?
It’s what I have to do, Dad.
Slowly his head was clearing. Slowly.
“Sarat, my dear,” asked Saski, “do you know me?”
Sort of.
“You know me,” said Maya firmly.
There…
“Could I ever leave you!”
Sarat touched the grass again.
Not-I.
Affirm separation! commanded Venga.
You not-I.
Sarat blinked.
Me.
He ran his fingers down his forearm, the border of his self.
He blinked again.
No words.
“You have to speak,” said Venga.
I – I – “I – “
“Yes, darling?” said Saski, much as though she were coaxing first words out of a tot.
He reached out and touched her cheek.
“Saski?”
And everyone started breathing again.
“Saski, darling.”
“Where – ?” Sarat looked slowly around. “You’re all here!”
“Of course,” said Maya.
“What happened?”
“You,” said Mel with some asperity, “tell us!”
“Perhaps not at this moment, darling,” murmured Saski.
“Puh-lease,” said Mel, “don’t do that again in a hurry. My little nerves can’t stand it.”
Sarat began to laugh then tried to stand up.
“Weak as a kitten.”
“Cub,” said Venga firmly, “new-born cub.”
He staggered – they all staggered – to the cars.
Now he is Anile emperor, thought Mel. What on earth does that mean? The total Anile throne experience! I think I’ll give that one a miss, said Zani. Of course, said Mel. How relentlessly thick we all are. How we complexify things. Is there such a word? You mean this is simple? I know what I mean, said Mel.
 
Mel and Cantilip decided upon a day out in the country.
“Stop!” screamed Cantilip.
Reakoed slammed on the brakes, prepared for anything.
Nothing happened.
He turned round.
Mel and Cantilip were gazing out of the window.
“What?” asked Sem.  “I can’t see anything.”
“Oh yes you can,” said Mel. 
It’s just -
“Waaa.”
“A field of flowers,” said Mel.
“The field?” said Reakoed in mock-awe.
“What are those things called?  Look like buttercups but red.”
“Sheeps-eyes,” sighed Cantilip.
“How poetic.  How numinous.  Those, a tree on the horizon, stage left.”
“I’d know that tree anywhere,” sighed Cantilip.
“And believe me, this is a girl who knows her trees.  Sparse woodland to the right.”
Reakoed executed a U-turn so tight it was practically an I and they headed off to Car-sandis.
Sarat went ape.
“Lemme guess.  Bordering the Great Divide.”
“Quick, this lad, int ‘e,” said Mel.
The rules of this game, I learned, are that only the Denzines are supposed to be free to feed you a load of hogwash which you have then to unpick.  Grandfathers are barred from this. 
Sarat arrived once more back in Fidub. 
Thundercloud approaching, Faun had mailed.  Be prepared for rainstorms.  Cho had chuckled and gone off to a recital.
“Dear boy,” said Cho, “always a delight to see you.”
Sarat turned from the monitor.
“Isn’t this a fascinating map?”
“Geology,” said Cho vaguely, “an absorbing topic.”  He poured himself a drink.  “A refill.”
“Could there possibly be a rift in the earth more commonly known as the Great Divide?  Thank you.”  Sarat held out his glass.  “You are my dear grey-haired old grandfather.  You are not supposed to bullshit me.”
“How so?”
Amida put her head round the door.
“Is it safe to come in yet?”
Sarat appeared to consider this seriously.
“It is not in the immediately foreseeable future going to get any safer.  Perhaps we should put a guide-book together. Twenty Short Trips Through Time and Space you can take using Carlin as your base.
“That rhymed,” said Cho.
Sarat felt in his inside pocket and produced a sheaf of photographs.
“This is the field of flowers.  It’s on the edge of the Great Divide.  Would you care at all to revise the story of the five-headed monster?”
Cho sat down sharply.
“Sarat…”
“Oh dear,” said Sarat.  “You didn’t know.  Sorry.  OK…While we were in Carlin, we must have seen this damned field a hundred times.  It was the wrong season.  No flowers.  But we subconsciously registered it.  I guess.  Though why it should then have burst into bloom in our minds.  However.  Now – “ he clicked. “A nice straightforward map of Carlin.  Not only do we locate the field of flowers, we locate the stream, the one Sorg – haunts.  Or not as the case may be.  Indicating, possibly, there is something a little unusual about this particular landscape.  The H-W waved their pretty little minds over it and picked up nothing except deep peace.  Mel and Cantilip, however, melded  - interface is not a word I use in polite company – and picked up – activity.  This they proclaimed, geiger counters to the Anile Throne. What kind of activity was not identifiable and they will return to conduct a more thorough survey.  Thus the plot so far.”  Then he added:  “You said you didn’t know.  It was about the only plain thing you did say.  That means anything else you said was your gloss.  Or Faun’s.  Or that of some ancient cat whom people have – essentially arbitrarily – chosen to believe.”
“You have finished?”
“Making speeches is contagious.  Yes, no.  I think this has something to do with Zani.”
“Why?”
“There having been 900 preceding years of ‘ancient evil’, I know, I know.  When Mel sat on his own, he was Zani.”
“Mel’s subconscious is a little unnerved by having passed through the Great Gates and found the earth thinks him consort to the Mistress of Kadun.”
“Growing-up can be a painful business.”
“Sarat…”
“I know.  At some level, as much as he can be, Mel is embarrassed.”
“Venga and Cantilip.”
“It’s just an old chair.  Been in my family for generations.  Something of an antique, of course.  And everyone seems to know more about it than we do.  It had to be me, because of the unique blend of sterling qualities that earmark me as the right man for the job.  Only that’s a gloss?  Or at least a guess.”
“Start,” suggested Cho, “with why it was put out with the rubbish?”
“Casin-ruhn?   I’ve thought of that as some kind of – consecration.  Like raising a memorial to the dead.”
“Supposing,” began Cho, then began to laugh.  “You buy a kitten.  It grows and grows.  A panther, a sabre-tooth, a cat the size of a room.  It is impossible to have it around the house any more.”
“Or a threat,” said Sarat.”Then I thought something else.  It was put out with the rubbish.  Our little green friends rescued it and put it where no-one would readily find it let alone look.  People who repeat the lies they’ve been taught don’t know they’re lying.  Who said - ?”
“And she was happy in Casin-ruhn?”
“Cruelly snatched from a life of rural bliss – what is happy to a glitter of sparks?”
“No disturbance in the ether?”
“She’d lived in the big city before, but she’d become progressively more upset by – there is nothing by the guys who made her, zilch, the big O.”
“It was a very long time ago.”
“Not in Fidubi terms.”
Sarat picked up the mouse, put it down again, moved it around
“Suppose – suppose – haven’t we assumed, peace reigned and those nice Fidubi made Narulis a present.  Suppose it wasn’t at all like that, chaos reigned and they made him a – weapon, tool.  They’re not going to be penning odes at the time.  Fidubi ores?”
“That makes sense,” said Cho.  “If they understood the problem was of the earth.”
“Time travel,” said Sarat.  “I haven’t read much about it.  Perhaps I have subsequently over-compensated.  The point is it doesn’t seem to tell you much that’s interesting.”  He hesitated.  “I feel I can say with – absolute crushing certainty that – that all times are now, that it is possible to – access everywhen but – 1) what those times are like I haven’t a clue; 2) I draw the line at asking for a quick word with Narulis.”
“Va,” said Cho.  “The symbol came from Va.”
“That’s all right, then,” said Sarat.  “Even I can’t be expected to go somewhere that never existed.”
“Except in human minds.”
“That may be an interesting thought.”  He played with the mouse again.  “I am, I think, aware that it may be possible, in the Palace – it would be a pity to escape the assassin’s bullet to be lost in the mystic vortices of time.”
Cho laughed.
“But all times are now.  Anyway, we should know where you are.”
“If it happens, it happens, but I don’t think I shall beg it to happen.  None of which is particularly – “
“Carlin,” said Cho.
Sarat  yelped.
“Under our noses.”
“The field - ?”
“Oh, the field, yes.  Not the field.  The journal.  The plot thickens.  It’s been a walk-over.  Has and has not.  You know what I mean!”
“If they wanted us so badly, speech was invented some time ago.”
“There’s something roaming around in my brain which goes something like there was no point without the chair.”
“That is a little superstitious, on their part, I mean.  Does one really imagine Saryulin is persuaded of the divining powers of a throne?”
Shav turned from avid contemplation of a mollusc, not because she was a closet biologist but because she liked time on her own, and getting it could be hard;  she was in Essa’s beach-hut and Dad working away at the other end was so peaceful it was like being alone, except maybe a bit better.
“I was remembering,”: she said, “when Turny died.  I remember bits – the apple!  We were babies.  I don’t really – Sarat was very upset.”
Essa looked up.
“She was put down.  He didn’t like that.”
“Killed.”
“I thought you were old enough to try to understand.  You and Sarat.  Zik wouldn’t be left out.”
“I think I understood about wearing out.  I got lost after that.  That didn’t matter.  You gave us a sense – your sense - of – completeness, that death is part of life, not something – intrusive, alien.  It was reasonable and right.”
“You think of a death neither reasonable nor right.”
“I think she was pregnant,” said Shavli.
“Shavli…” Essa put down his pad and walked over to her, feeling as though in slow motion.
“People say he froze,” Shav was continuing.  “Seconds.  No-one – holds it against him.  He didn’t, did he.  He went straight in.  I think what he found stunned him.”
Essa put his arms round her shoulders.
“If he doesn’t want to tell anyone,” said Shavli, “or yet, anyway.”
“I do not see how the death of my beloved Turny - ?”
“I just thought,:” said Shav, “after that he really got the zoo bug, there were so many small furry deaths.  I can hear everyone shouting it’s not the same!  Of course it’s not the same.”
“We already had the hamster and the rats!”
“I can’t get rid of the feeling there was something strange.  Of course there was something strange!”
“How do you know unless you try?” said Essa.  “I said the vet could do no more.”
“That is so Sarat.”
Essa smiled.
“Start as you mean to go on.  Move over…”  He sat beside her.  “The problem is she was dead. Therefore he connected with her mind at the moment of death or with another about to die.”
 “What I know,” said Shav, “is how Sarat would react to anything small, furry and terrified.”
Essa laughed.
“You think he would see no difference.”
“I don’t think he’d see any difference at all.”
“I too think.  He found himself where the living do not go.  That is enough. The physician in the emergency room performing resuscitation does not relish interruption but Baz is not the fool who interrupts.”
“If he didn’t know, she couldn’t have been – viable.  Ghastly word.”
“Shavli, you do not know.  She?”
“She’s not here any more.”
“Let us stand back a little.  The two people perhaps in all the world we think do not – what is the word, perhaps panic.”
Shav gave a small frown of concentration.
“Flip.  Baz flipped.  Sarat does not freeze.  Baz does not flip!  And remember,  there must be a hundred million watching worldwide.  They don’t even flip or freeze in private!”
“We are all human.”
 
Sarat lay by Shavli’s pool.  His intent seemed even madder than it had in the Jumesit.  That, he said to himself firmly, is why we have other people to run things past.  Shav and Petrush emerged from the house in swimming-gear. The table was laden with fruit, iced juice and pretty pastel sorbets.  Vaccinating sheep didn’t seem such a bad choice.
Petrush took a running dive and surfaced spluttering.
“You’ll need a cool head,” said Sarat.
“Cool is my name.”
He heaved himself out of the pool and helped himself to a bowl of sliced peach.
“What drags you away from the delights of Azt?”
“You fly,” said Sarat.
“We do.”
“Of course you only have the entire Kadun Air Fleet at your disposal”
“This would be so secret even I don’t know I’m doing it.”
“Ah-uh!”
“The reason I’m not entirely mad is that the empire used to have a northern coast.  Now it doesn’t.”
“Ah-uh doubled in spades?”
“I could be difficult.  I could go to court.  I could waste ten years of my life on lawyers trying to prove the old maps are forgeries.  I could stir up a hornet’s nest that’d reach the stratosphere.  I don’t want to do that.  I just want to know a couple of things.”
“You don’t want us to bomb anywhere, then.”
“I’ve read up a bit on stealth.  Stealth and spy-planes.  I think you can do it without being spotted.  If you are spotted – that’s one of the things we’re going to talk about.”
“You’re talking about the no-fly zone?”
“Jaaba Sen,” said Shav. “Are we not all one people, the continent at last at peace?”
Petrush made to play a violin.
“There’s a spy-plane called a 580.”
“There sure is.”
“It’s the nature-lover in him,:” said Baz.  “The last untouched wilderness.  More violins.”
“Sarat, surely you are not cynical and disbelieving.”
“There are more angles than – something with an infinity of angles?  Marula’s zest for a tree-hugging emperor might have led one to suppose that she would want me to ask for her trees back.   There are more conspiracy theories about that place.  Bar the total loon element – site of an ancient civilization – the consensus is not only that there are no humans there but that there never were any humans there. That’s why it’s protected as a world heritage site. Even the loons think the ancient civilization was on the coast.”
“Why does that make them loons?”
“They were aliens.  Maybe the loons are aliens too.  It’s not the principle of aliens.  I just think there should be more of them, more centrally located.  They set up house on about the most inhospitable bit of the planet then vanished?”
“Maybe the climate suited them then changed?”
Petrush was grinning evilly.
“Quite apart from that’s what you were kind of told at C-R.”
“Quite apart from that. I started with – I start with the Denzines are going to wreck the perception of any human instrument.  I want to know what’s there not what that bastard Fugitry wants to show me.  And I do want the crowns, number two, two in number, I mean, which is interesting in itself because the one thing every spotty teen knows about Narulis is Brig, Nautshka and Vrim.  The crowns were made for a pair.”
“He does not speak with awe of Denzine Master Fugitry.”
“This is my territory?”
“There’s an air corridor,” said Petrush.  “I think we might have some fun here.  Make the switch in mid-ocean?  Suppose we set up a dummy flight from the City to G-T.  Somewhere in the water, it lands on a carrier and gets replaced by our bird.  Our bird zooms respectably between the fences then vanishes off the radar.   All hell breaks loose because they think it’s crashed.  I’m working on it!”
“I knew you’d understand,” said Sarat.
“I’m an understanding kind of guy.”
“What usually happens if you’re found in a prohibited area?  Shoot on sight?”
“That may depend.  Most no-fly zones are known sensitive areas, military installations, government buildings.  This one – it may be hard to justify shoot on sight when the crime is disturbing sleeping moose and the weather is shit.  There are no fences along the side of this road.  Folks can get lost.  Shoot down some Ciletij tycoon in his private jet!”
“Some strange magnetic force played havoc with the instrumentation!  Of course we do have to contend  with the proposition that there is some strange magnetic force, which may be why it’s a no-fly zone.”
“I need a map,” said Shavli.  “What occurs to me is there’s a research station on the ice. Supplies have to come in.  People have to go out.  They go round?”
“Surely only if they’re going to Vasucula.”
“It’s an international zone.  Some of them must be going to Vasucula.”
“I should imagine,” continued Petrush, :”they put up sheep-dogs to guide the stray lamb back to the true path. Depending on what kind of lamb it is of course.”
“Bearing in mind,” said Baz, “it may be some tree-hugging Fidubi, closely associated with NoZone.”
“Ciletij is not your friend.”
“Parts of Ciletij are my friend.  I might even think all Ciletij was my friend if I hadn’t had the affrontery to succeed.  A powerful and prosperous Kadun, it is argued, only needs someone less nice than me in charge.  It’s a kind of – it’s ingrained in some quarters.  Why would Kadun want Ciletij.  It’s cold, it’s windy, and it has a northern coast which even it can’t want.”
“Less nice and more acclimatized?”
“Kadun has minerals too.”
“Nonetheless and heretofore, here you are, taking a real intelligent interest in that which you swore I recall – “
“You see my problem!  For 600 years they showed no sign whatever of wanting the empire back.  Kadun had to modernize.  All-Kadun was geopolitical convenience, as Karula put it
Fanfare of trumpets, Mitch and I, as rationalist as we are revolutionary, in equal parts loose cannons and saviours – that vital continuity with the past, you know.”
“That would be the past in which no-one on the whole continent wanted the empire back.”
“That past.  The one in which being modern go-ahead young men we are thought safe: we shall have no interest in the past..”
“And still less in the more sequin-studded aspects of the other matter.”
“None whatever in those.  I demand dancing bears.”
“That Ciletij does not relish a united Kadun is not ground-breaking.  There had therefore to be something worse in the offing, which we know, and in particular, which we also know, that worse was centred on the other matter.  OK, let us call it The Secret, capital T, capital S.  The Cult could not be allowed to discover The Secret. With which it could do or perhaps has done still greater evil?  That would tend to suggest the chair and admirable though she is I do not know that one can say one can do anything with her.”
“What you really want,” said Baz, “is him to tell you all the mad crap he’s found on the Grid.”
“We do?”
“The best part is some of it’s real,” said Sarat.  “If we go inside I can project onto the wide screen."
“It’s the zig-zags,” said Baz.  “Do your head in.”:
They sat round the TV screen looking at a jagged red line.
“The ancient enmity,” said Sarat dreamily, “ between Ciletij and Kadun might lead one to suppose the border – a broiling pit of magma might suffice.  That is the border.  It follows the course of the River Gradun, faithfully follows that course, every curve and loop.  It stays ten nani south of the river at all points.  Those who’ve been on the ground – guys who were in the resistance – say there is no physical border, not even a piece of rusted barbed wire.”   “‘Welcome to Ciletij.  Please do not disturb the wolverines. They have just as much right to peace and quiet as you do.’ The trees, the trees!” 
“Nor is there any no-man’s land or no-fly zone.  What do you notice about this border?  Suppose I took off from VS  to fly directly to Azt?”
“I cannot quite believe,” said Shavli, “Ciletij are happy for KAF to wander in and out of their air-space.
“When was this border delineated?  Oh, of course!”
Sarat grinned happily.
“It was not negotiated with the entity Kadun because no such entity existed.  North of Azt it follows the general rules laid down for borders, sentries, guys who want to look at your papers.  At Var-sega’ it’s a couple of rows of electric fence and two crossing-points.”
“Marula is in this up to her neck?  Conclusion: VS handed over a whole chunk of itself in return for what?”
“We may assume then at the semi-hysteria surrounding Kadun territorial ambition is a complex feint.  One may appreciate – though then again one may not – they wanted C-R in Ciletij but it would seem to me the creative cartographer – when the name of a country and of its people is the same, a certain ambiguity is achieved.  Rape of Ciletij, the nation, which did not in fact exist.  We could posit the – price of the Rape was Van-senok, but that in itself seems a little odd.  Unless of course, etc, etc.  Superficially odd.”
“How about this for a story?” said Shav.  “We’re testing a new ground-penetrating radar.  We want to see if it works through trees. Not too much untouched primeval forest on Fidub.   Contacts in KAF – pause for violins, hands across the sea – offered  Van-senok. Unfortunately, some strange magnetic force played havoc with the instruments and we became hopelessly lost.  What happens if we play that in real time?”
“How about that’s Act Two?” said Petrush.  “We could get good pics, go back for a second look and then get caught?”
“You don’t seem to think FAF will have a problem with this,” said Sarat.
“PANTHER operation.  PANTHER wants a look at Ciletij, we do what PANTHER tells us.”
“He said with wide-eyed innocence.  I haven’t talked to Cho and don’t intend to.  The fewer people who know I’m not going to invade Ciletij the better.”
“If Ciletij poses a threat to the security of the continent…”
“This space-rock of yours,” said Shav.  “Ours!  I’m wondering – suppose it’s incorporated into terrestrial weapons?”
“There’d be explosion, death, injury in the area of impact.   A normal bomb.  But just maybe  the – fall-out! Play havoc with the perception of those within an unknown radius?”
“Isn’t that an interesting thought?” said Sarat.
“Baseline is people on the ground are not harmless charcoal-burners.  They see us, they call.  If they see us.  They’re cautious guys.  They call even if they’re not sure what they’ve seen. Missiles rising out of the lake. That is one short call.”
“I have an overwhelming desire to see,” said Shav.  “I quell it.”
“Exactly,” said Sarat.  “Land or air I do not see this as a Sarat-friendly zone.”
“If we came in from VS, it’s minutes.  On the other hand, they will not expect anyone coming in from the north.  OK, lemme set the scene.  A Fleet ice-breaker with spy-birds on board is there.  And what are they doing?  They are surveying the ice.  Probably there already.  If they aren’t, we are.”
“Inspirational,” muttered Sarat.
“Range?” asked Shav. 
“I thank you.  These birds go for ever.”
“I hadn’t realized that,” said Sarat
“I think not the 580.  They make a bee-line south-east.   How much artificial intelligence is required?  What is the role of and who are the human controllers?”
Baz looked up from a book not as gripping as the surrounding narrative.
“We are.  Cats hate the cold.”
“Tick that one off,” said Petrush. “The rest is detail.  As to where we land, having done the deed, my choice is a Fidubi carrier in mid-ocean.  Whatever happens, whatever is said, this is nothing to do with Kadun.”
Sarat grinned.
“Just figure out how I give you a medal.”
“We can talk about that when we’ve got the goods. All we need now is not to smash into a tree.”
“All of it is apparently untouched wilderness, from the ice right down to VS. Terrapin shows just that.”  Terrapin was a Fidubi satellite.  Terra pin, geddit.  Some people have a strange sense of humour.  The other one was called Turtle. “It has quite a reputation. Sightings of almost every monster the human mind has conceived – I noted with regret none had five heads – giant reptiles, lush vegetation, the ancient civilization.  A particularly popular theory is genetic mutants.  The bears are the size of houses, the wolves the size of rooms.  Some tone this down to merely larger than normal, consequent upon genetic isolation.   I hear the next question hurtling to your lips.  Terrapin shows blurred at C-R. Extremely poor quality images.“  He pursed his lips.  “Heavy cloud cover, you know.”
“It’s live, real-time?”
“Shielded?” said Shav at the same time.  “Artificial clouds?  I know!  It’s all the chemtrails from the air traffic.”
“It only passes over twice a day.”
“Every day,” said Petrush.  “You assume of course.”
“I assume of course.  Eagle-I –  who the hell names these things?  All the Ciletij commercial satellites only release data under licence. “
“All the geophysical data, GPR, that has to be interpreted.  We have to learn to interpret this stuff?”
“The hands-on approach. Do you trust anyone, present company excepted?”
“That is an interesting question.  Yes.  ‘Our specialists’, no.”
“A select few who handle potentially highly sensitive data.”
“Let me tell you about Jaaba Sen. You might think it a tourist attraction.  There will be signs not just of humanity but of tourism at the very least at the periphery.  If people do not put more than a toe inside, still they may gaze in awe and wonder.  There is a fairly substantial town called Cood and it has no such signs. Closer to the trees are other smaller towns, equally pristine.  That there are actual wolves and bears is not in dispute.  It may be they are the best deterrent.  Ciletij mythology abounds with the terrors of the forest.  Certainly there may be terrors in that forest for those who penetrate too deeply, even if they are only shape-shifters pretending to be terrors of the forest.  It may also be that if one penetrates too deeply, one is politely halted and turned back.  Military installation.  Or of course not turned back, merely turned into snow-drift.
“That figures in the more complex conspiracy theories.  The military are breeding mutants.  Some escaped.” 
“There remain zoologists, ecologists – and archaeologists. Two hundred years ago an explorer called Stoobard Solden ventured too far and returned broken and babbling.  That of which he babbled was perhaps more interesting.  He said the dead walked the forest, his every move was watched.  He saw the shades among the trees, but no shadow was cast on the ground.  Scientific psychology decided this was a variant of snow blindness, visual hallucination caused by an excess of light.  Unscientific psychology talked about it a great deal but showed no particular inclination for field work, at least until high summer.  They returned - thoughtful, convinced indeed they had been watched and what watched them were the spirits of trees.  I fear they were not tree-huggers.  It had not occurred to them there could be harm in cutting down a young tree and building a friendly fire.  It would seem the trees thought differently.  It would seem the trees moved in the night and blocked their path.  The only opening was back whence they came and they took it.  That of course stinks of Van-senok.
“The Academy of Geobiology took to the skies and mapped the region, thus providing photographs of some of the most spectacular scenery you never saw.  An intrepid band of white-water freaks tried penetration by kayak and vanished, presumed drowned.  More latterly the Institute of Zoology gained a permit – from whom is surprisingly or not as you prefer obscure – to conduct some form of census, head-count, of Ciletij’ indigenous wildlife and to map survival in so extreme an environment..  Nothing untoward was seen or they agreed not to let on.  The moose thrives, you know.  The extent to which the territory they covered was controlled may be implicit in the survey method or may just be one of the few ways to conduct such a survey in such terrain.  They selected squares of each kind of habitat and tagged their inhabitants.  The scientists had no problem with ‘spooky as hell’ and I quote but attributed it to the constant howling of wolves and  cracking of trees under the weight of snow.  They even admitted to a feeling of being watched but of course it was nonsense and indeed directing cameras at what wasn’t there confirmed its absence.  They concluded that thinking a wolf-pack has you ear-marked as lunch wears you down.  One of them said that when he stopped to adjust his pack and the rest of the expedition were just that bit further away than normal he felt as vulnerable a new-born moose separated from the herd! Never being able to be off your guard.  It must have been like that for early humans.  That was very much the overall conclusion, that it’s ‘like being at the beginning of the world, not just somewhere humans don’t go but where we’ve never been’.  Let us say it is not a hospitable environment.
“Following that there was a flurry of interest in our wonderful wildlife but few people sincerely want to get eaten and visitors to Saaba Valley, the national park north of GT where you may see wolves under carefully controlled conditions, substantially increased.  From the other side, numbers of large dangerous and potentially dangerous carnivores, includes lynx and wolverine, caused concern that in a bad winter they might venture down to human habitation and gobble small children, but it appears to be the perfect self-regulating eco-system. Perhaps interestingly, fell creatures that emerge from the trees and eat babies are not among the myths. 
“Where there are no people, there is no archaeology. There are people in Ciletij.  It does not cause hearts to race to think there were previously people in Ciletij. They know there were previously people in Ciletij.  The question is the furthest northern extent of human habitation: there is no reason to think this prehistoric community would be any different from those disinterred in more accessible places.  We know the world is slowly warming.  The myth of the remains of an ancient civilization is dismissed totally.  Of what would it have been built, blocks of ice?   Thus the aliens…The overwhelming emphasis is actually on guilt-tripping Ciletij.  Behold the original extent of the forest and dwell in shame on how much of it was felled to create the Ciletij we know and love today.  Before you bite me, I know I might have said something of the kind!  That was from the simplicity of my tree-loving heart, not a part of what perceive as a sustained campaign to make sure no-one gets close.”
“Suppose I went to this -  what was it called?  Cood.  OK, there’s no tourism industry.  So I’m a trail-blazer – Zeshanzesh, are there not  - folks who never saw a reason to leave the Leolisle find the entire continent open before them!.  I’m there with my back-pack and I want to go hiking.  I’m not some extremes freak and I’m not stupid, I know if I get lost my chances of survival are not high.  A little gentle exploring.  First, I buy a map, right?”
“Fat lot of good it does you!  We’re not completely backward,” said Baz.  “We sent a cat to Nyon-Va, ten nani from the trees.  It showed exactly what you’d expect.  A lot of contour lines, some on top of each other, a lot of inverted green Vs, meaning trees, and a lot of water.  No roads, no trails, no trains.  By the way, there’s nowhere to stay.  Against the odds, the natives are friendly and put you in their spare room when you politely conceal your disarray at having dropped off the edge of the world.”
“What was his story?” asked Shav.
“Her story.  Fidubi geographer now working in Kadun, which she is.  Had a few days off and wanted to see the real north.  Touring.  Which she was.  It’s the southernmost of the – I was going to say settlements.  I guess that’s what they are.  I guess the ancestors of the good folks of Nyon-va go back to the beginning of people in Ciletij.  They’re wired.  They have bright lights and music and a weekly dance and all the news but they’re not expecting callers.”  He sighed.  “There’s just one slightly jarring note.  There’s a family runs an international mail order biz in fur, fur hats, fur boots, fur jackets, fur gloves, fur gilets, hand-stitched..  Of course no-one goes into the forest.  Of course it’s the perfect untouched self-regulating eco-system.  I’d guess Nyon-va has been going into the forest since there were people.  It’s cottage industry at base.  It’s not going to decimate the fur-bearing populations.”
“No, Petrush,” said Shav.
“The sooner you resolve this matter of Kadun, the sooner I have freedom of movement back!”
“I shouldn’t bet on it,” said Sarat. 
“VS,” said Shav.  “Where does Mel fit in?”
“As I read it, everyone is to some extent caught up in someone else’s plot.  What I think is that Mel knows everything Cantilip knows.  What Cantilip knows is what Marula has chosen to tell her. I think it fair to assume Cantilip’s initiation into her heritage was abruptly curtailed by her choice of partner.  Cantilip and Mel are running their own investigation.  I read that as Cantilip taking an independent look at her heritage.  I can relate to that.”    He paused.  “I said Marula hasn’t asked for her trees back: I have not been asked to pull any levers.  It may be Mel has.  It would be a great deal less painful on all sides for Mel to negotiate with the Denzines or Ciletij.”
“For a start he doesn’t want a bit of his country back. The past,” continued Shav, :”may be as embarrassing as the present if the present is built on a lie.”
“That’s the one.  I don’t think this is about any of us in the here and now.”
“But can that be the case?” persisted Shav.  “Do people not fight for their history?  That is not – very recent history?”
“Owww!” said Sarat.  “I don’t think I’m going to find VS worked for the Cult or assassinated Kaminua.  Some comparable crime.  What I do recognize is the extent to which I have been compromised.  The charade at CR.  It’s peculiar.”
“It was that, all right,” said Petrush.
“You’re sure it was a charade?” asked Shav.
“No! First I thought, why on earth draw my attention to the place at all.  Then I thought once I’d sat on her I’d know she was odd, so it was  kind of double bluff.  Once I had ‘experienced the mystery of Casin-ruhn’ I should be drawn into the conspiracy to leave everything alone.  Mel has no control over the Denzines.  Cantilip has no control over her mother.  Neither of course has any control over Ciletij – “
“Cantilip,” said Shav, “is independent of her mother in a way that could never have been foreseen.”
“That too.  Cantilip is in a position to do things she could not have done until Marula was dead.”
“Looks to me,” said Petrush, “there are two ways of looking at this at base.  One is that persons unknown know the full story and are keeping it from you.  That is an unfriendly act, the next question being why.  The other is that no-one knows the full story although he or she may think she/he does.  Either way, you are being kept in the dark and fed shit.”
“It annoys me,” said Sarat.  “I am Anile emperor, you know.”
Petrush grinned.
“A third – perspective is that everything worked to constrain you once you reached that august position.  You are tied down, Sarat.  The price of empire has been that you would not even think of interfering in the affairs of the rest of the continent..  How gross would that be!  Why would you?  Or how badly do they want you to keep your hands to yourself?  I am not making insinuations against your fellow-plotters.  I understand you are bonded in blood.  But our illustrious elders?  Airoch, Tar, Marula, Saryulin.”
Your best friend won’t tell you, thought Baz.
“Or again there is a double-bluff?” suggested Shav.  “You have rewritten the continent’s history.  It cannot occur to you it needs rewriting again.”
“Cho?” asked Sarat.
Shit, thought Baz.
Shav didn’t answer directly.
“They did not predicate – isn’t that a good word? Exactly who you are.  The staying Sarat clause.  I think if you fail to stay Sarat you think you have failed.  True?”
“Very,”:said Sarat.
“Both of you,” said Petrush, “you and Shavli, for the first what 16 years of your lives you were Fidubi kids.  Surely well-heeled ones, surely well-connected ones, but you grew up – “ He grinned suddenly.  “ – And remember I am not some writer for Glitz fabricating your early life and struggles, I was there.  With the – perspectives of ornerry folks.  Most of it’s down to the Straits!  A vital separation from Zur.”
“Most of it’s down to Mum and Dad,” said Sarat.
“His Imperial Majesty’s mother is a Fidubi housewife,” said Shavli.  She giggled.  “Like me.”
“You use the last of the lavatory paper,” said Petrush, “you go down to Zerq’s and get more!”
“You remember that!”
“I remember.  That was one sick rabbit.   Sure Baya had cubs to help, but they did not undertake to run the joint.  That is the difference.”
Shavli grasped the nettle
“Cho – loves you to pieces.  They have sweated blood.  We all have.  Cho would do anything for you.  Bomb Ciletij!  Possibly.  That doesn’t make him incapable of – as you said, being part of other things. Cho could not do anything that would hurt you.  Sarat, does it occur to you they don’t want you to know because it would hurt you.”
“No.” said Sarat, then, “What can hurt me more than I have hurt myself?  That is – responsibility for being alive,” said Sarat.  “We live with the consequences of our choices.  Suppose all of it’s crap.  Suppose Susheela didn’t flee to Fidub with her son!  Would it matter?”
Shav considered.
“To you?  To the working-people of Kadun? That’s why you are not safe!”
“Others,” observed Petrush, “may be more deeply  - invested in history.  To an extent – “ He sighed.  “You have augmented.  History – you stop any Fidubi in the street.  When we were kids, it would not have been – relevant – not sure that’s the word, but you get my meaning, that Fidub was responsible for the empire.  There was a nice – a safe? – gap between us and the past.  We were now.”
“For the record, that’s not what I think.  Or that the empire was always the shit-hole Ciletij said it was.  There is absolutely no justification for that.  What I do think revolves around Zani.  I think that story is a deal more complicated than the official version.  But it wouldn’t – diminish him.  I don’t think I’m going to find he didn’t lead an army to the Great Gates and found Dabida.”
“Could Mel have an interest in that story!”
“History tells us Jaizal sent a mighty army to crush him and he emerged victorious.  I’ve heard less plausible stories but not many.  I do not doubt Zani’s courage, oratory, weaponry or numbers and I still think they would have been massacred if there hadn’t been something else, some display of power to convince irtubi he could defeat Jaizal.  The field effect is apparently confined to north of the GD, to which I say oh yeah?  Second, I – we, this one comes from Mel.  We think Zani sat on the chair and that’s why he didn’t proclaim himself Anile emperor, simple, humble guy that he was.  There are other questions keeping historians busy, whether eso or exo.  PANTHER was unable to stop the rot and then suddenly proved capable of both defeating Jaizal and cleaning out Kadun.  Zani marched across Carlin and Carlin failed to notice. 
I think all of them, VS, Carlin, PANTHER, wanted the collapse of the empire.  I think Zani was in league with them up to his neck and the deal was he’d defeat Jaizal so long as he did not become emperor and they could have their independence back.  I think – some show of power and/or who are the Imperial Army!  Senoki, Segani, Carlini.”
“Certain resonances,” said Shavli.
“The world was confounded when the Army of All-Kadun joined me.  But of course it didn’t:” “I think there are two things.  I do not on what I have heard see any likelihood of any government – or throne – falling.  To the extent that this is bound up in the eso, it cannot make the six o’clock news and – dislocate the continent’s image of itself, that of the man or woman in the street.  But I would say the relationship of the academic discipline of history to the other matter is necessarily at times somewhat jagged and to that extent the man or woman in the street may be living a lie.”
“That’s why Mel loves Kyse,” said Sarat.
“Kyse?”
“His rationalist if not revolutionary historian friend.  He says the word is lying.”
“I should like to meet Kyse.  I conclude this mystery of ours is eso.  That may seem obvious given the centrality of a silver chair.  I thought it worth wondering if riot and revolution might ensue!”
“The spill-over?” suggested Shav.  “We started by talking about Ciletij missiles!”
“We try to keep them separate,” agreed Petrush.
 “If we filter that lot,” asked Sarat, “do we come to something with which I could go public?  The cause merely of terminal embarrassment, caught lying?”
“It’s a possibility.  It says a lot for Mel.”
“Oh yes,” said Sarat, “it says a lot for Mel.”
“Apart from having sat on the chair and chatted to Kaminua, you are squeaky-clean.”
“And Maya,” said Sarat.
Baz looked up sharply..
“I was going to say I cannot believe anyone who knows would sink so low as to use that.”
“Who knows?” asked Petrush.
“Us,” said Baz, “you, family, Pietri and Caluna. Hass and Venga.  Mel and Cantilip.”
“Marula.” said Shav.
“There would have seemed no harm?”
“Sheds a whole new light,” said Baz.  “Mel may be trying to make up for being a bloody fool!”
“Eh, our Mel?  Never!” said Paw sauntering in.
“Missed all the fun.”
“Tell me later.  Cool off…” 
He headed for the pool
“OK,” said Petrush.  “We know how the Quadrant worked.  Division of labour.  Fidub handled space.  Shall we list what we do know for a change?  We know that the military use of nuclear power is banned world-wide.  We know that all physical manifestations of military power are essentially a side-show for the masses because the only serious wars  ever fought were fought with mind.  We know that guys with dangerous minds are not immune to being shot which makes it a good idea to have handy something to shoot them with. We know that Ciletij historically has a horror of mind-power and prefers tanks and – again historically – has relied on the south for the fancy stuff, in particular Fidub.  We know that PK can stop advancing tank but it takes as many guys as there are advancing tanks and on the whole it is simpler either to blow up the tank or for those guys to work together on the terrain. We know that the Ciletij sense of vulnerability is increased a thousand-fold by your little venture.  We know that there are other forms of modernization besides main drainage and all the guys who worked with Ciletij in Kadun know that thinking Ciletij know that too – “
“Concur,” said Sarat.
“We know that elements in both Ciletij and Kadun forced into a shotgun marriage do not wholly warm to sharing their little secrets with each other – “
“Concur,” sighed Sarat.
“We know that the Cult is active, particularly – curiously perhaps – in Ciletij, calling for continent-wide disarmament because why retain the military when clearly there is and never will be anyone to fight.  I am thinking hard about your space-rock.  I do not much like my thoughts.  Suppose it were incorporated in a normal common-or-garden bomb.  Its power has survived travel through aeons of space and we may – predicate it would therefore survive the heat of explosion.  That explosion may be expected to cause the normal level of damage of a blast but I am wondering about – fall-out.  Might the fall-out not cause havoc with the perception of those in the surrounding area?  I am of course wondering also how that might mesh with the CR charade.”
“Mmm! Radiation as some kind of cutesy clue.  The idiot boy has been told…That occurs to me too.  This stuff is powerful and it has a half-life?  We know it’s powerful.  It may be a faint feeble remnant of its former self?  It’s terribly tempting to think of the Rape as this power on the loose among people who had absolutely no way of handling it, but there wouldn’t seem to be any way the dates fit.”
 “We’re good boys and girls and everyone knows we’re good boys and girls, but your heirs and successors getting hold of a power - ?”
“Maybe that’s what happened before?” said Shav.
 “I am not prepared,” said Sarat, “to be put off by a theory.  Possibly a conclusion I am duly supposed to reach.  Nor am I an idiot.  I shan’t leave matches around for the kids to play with.”
“Sarat and Hass played with alphabet-bricks on the floor of the Room,” said Shav in a good imitation of Mel.  “No-one is going to think him a second Jaizal.” 
“They don’t want you to have that power now,” said Petrush.  “It’s too dangerous.  The mere fact that it exists becomes a threat.”
“It comes back to who knows what. They couldn’t say the chair was lost because VS knew damned well it wasn’t.”
“The stories around the chair are all good,” said Sarat.
“Maybe that’s the point of the nuclear metaphor.  The power itself is neutral.”
“Jaizal must have the throne!  Why, if she’s one of the good guys?  I had her assayed.  Young Scientist of the Year.  Fidubi ores!  She is indeed made of impure silver and the more detectable impurities are those of lodes formerly found in extremely small quantities on the Utmost Isle and now exhausted, as evidenced by artefacts in the Museum of Early History.   I actually read the assay report – don’t start me on wavelengths and photons – but of course ‘trace elements’ rang no bells at the time. Or after for that matter.  Did you know the average friendly homely meteorite is mostly iron?  But if this space-rock contains something unknown, literally alien, it reacts - ?   What is she, guys, what is her – potency, if that’s not a sexist word?”
Baz looked at Shav and Petrush and answered for them.
“Earthpower.”
“Does it not crumble mountains and shatter continents?”
“It might just,” said Petrush (Cool is my name), “be beginning to come together.”
“This is a pure flight of fancy,” said Sarat, “but suppose, just suppose, on some immeasurably distant planet, something sentient looks to us like rocks.  Rocks can be hurled through space, we know that.  Suppose some humdinger of a cosmic cataclysm - ?”
“Who noticed the sentience?” asked Shav.
“Who do you think!” sighed Baz.
“Cantilip? That rather puts her in the clear.”
Sarat said mildly, “You have to remember we have been through a remarkably wide range of experiences together.”
“I’m going to assume you have tried simple questions.  What is your name?  Where do you come from?  What do your parents do?”
“It doesn’t work like that.  Maybe you should sit.  The nearest I can come is our – pre-occupations taken outside time until time itself dissolves.”
“She is your pre-occupation!”
“How can I put this?” said Sarat.  “I haven’t sat on her since Maya died.”
“Sorry.”
“It shook us all more than we let on. What is being screamed at us is everything is whole.  There is no difference between life and death.  These are not things I want to hear right now.” 
“Oh Sarat.”
“But she responded to you?”
“She responded to love.”
“Time to eat, I think,” said Petrush.  “I fear that having been insufficiently forewarned, the range of seeds we have to offer is limited or indeed non-existent.”
“Lad were brought up proper,” said Shav, “Eats what he’s given.”
“News travels fast,” growled Sarat. 
“If you want to really freak Kadun,” said Baz.  “Anyone who noticed the diet before put it down to the hot weather.”
Sarat grinned.
“Meaning Mitch.”
“You have to understand,” said Baz, “food underpins the entire empire.”
“I think you need to go into that a bit more…”
“It’s our memoirs, at once riveting, unclassified and seminal.  Tell you later.”
 
Later, with Sarat catching up on the news of old friends as Petrush told it, which wasn’t necessarily how the old friends saw it, Shav  curled up with B and  P.
“His way,” said Paw.  :”Like everything else.”
“That’s how it seems to me.”
“It’s been too long, man!” Petrush was saying.  “Friends, family, never mind the other crap.”
“Busy, busy, busy!”
“A week makes a difference?”
Sarat grinned.
“A week here, a week there, where will it end?”
“So when did you last have a vacation?”
“A real one?  The honest answer is I didn’t.”
“Shav, she likes chilling out on her own.  Me, if I have nothing to do I want to do it with her!”
How am I? thought Sarat.  Am I really as OK as I seem?  But nicely done and with distinct possibilities.  It might be too much to think a member of his family actually understood.
“That’s the one.  I’m not absolutely sure I can explain.  Thinking of Maya is a state of mind, a state of being, not an – activity, except it’s not thinking of, it’s loving.  The loving does not stop.  It has its down side.  The – emanation from  - “ He gestured in what he hoped was the direction of the Sohenisle.  “I need a month off to think of Maya, to talk about Maya. And what?  I spend a month thinking and talking and the problem’s solved, she’s not dead any more?” I do not think Cho is handling this well, thought Petrush.  Guilt? “There is a gap in any – flopping at the end of the day, lying by the pool.  A space.  I can’t play racquetball on my own.  Sure, I could find someone.  I don’t want to play racquetball with ‘someone’, I want to play it with Maya.  We made up our own rules and – I don’t actually want to play racquetball at all, don’t care if I never play again.  What I want is the – Sarat-Maya experience we found faffing about on the court.”
“If you are not finding it necessary to visit Fidub because Cho-Sarat relations have taken a downward turn, independent of all the crap we went through earlier, that is itself crap.”
“I know,” said Sarat.
“Good!  I think we can offer you a week of constructive idleness.  You have friends.  They regard the lunatic with amused but deep affection.”
Sarat grinned.
“I know!  Some of them were at the Imperial.”
“Of course, the hub of the known world. It is about this time of day that old friends and brothers decide to go out for a drink but that is perhaps a little complex.  Nor do I think we should be seen going to the base to initiate our mission, interesting though that might be. What shall we do?”
 Sarat stretched out his legs.
“Nothing sounds good.  Seaweed. :Do you  remember the ten minutes we thought we’d made botanical history?”
Petrush blinked then broke into a huge grin.
“It’s a whole new species, man!”
 
“Raw veggies,” said Shav.
Paw chortled.
“You know this diet.  It’s the Sarat diet.  It bears no relationship to any trend, fad or meticulously researched biochemistry – you find me a raw food freak who starts the day with a jug of strong coffee, cream and sugar.  He’s perfectly happy to entertain sometimes.  He’s perfectly happy to eat normal food if someone puts it in front of him. On the whole, he doesn’t.”
“Home from home.”
Baya had been fairly ruthless.  Neither she nor anyone else was going to move a muscle to accommodate The Diet.  If he wanted to purchase, prepare and subsequently peck his way through a tray of seeds when everyone else was having steak, that was fine.  Later, Ven went vegan.  The white house in the dunes is, well, in the dunes; they ate a lot of fish.
“On the whole, coffee is about the only hot thing that passes his lips.  We see it in context.  Cho doesn’t.  What it was like. All of them, when they arrived in Azt, they didn’t have meals, except in the canteen if they were lucky.  Grazed on the nearest shrub.  If it was crap, they ate that.  Very definite views on.   When things began to settle, there was the pressure for – suitable. Who could forget crates!  The editor of Mode cornered Maya and told her damn it. people want diamonds, not as though you haven’t got it.  There was an element of having taken the candy away from the kids, glam enough when they were networking in the City.  You have to understand – I’m sure you do.  It was one thing to read reports, even hear first hand from CLIK.  They insisted on seeing for themselves and they did.  The total immersion poverty experience.  I hadn’t seen conditions like that.  I don’t suppose you have.  They were outraged and they said so and what they said they meant.  We all know Mitch’s granite slab.  They saw it.  The schools are crap, the hospitals are crap, the building you live in is crap, the bed you sleep in is crap, the blanket that covers you is crap, the clothes you wear are crap!  There is no way out.  It really puts you in the right frame of mind to organize the social event of the century!  They did take the point about having it.but there was no way they were going to waste time on it. Then Bal announced he wanted to inspect the joint. Urban legend that Sarat grunted he’d have to eat in the canteen  like everyone else.  As all good readers of Glitz know, they used the museum, formerly the Summer Palace.  Unfortunately by then it opened late to enable working people to visit.  Fortunately it had the necessary chandeliers and wide aisles.  You think the plot was precision planning?”
“That was the seed of the people space?” asked Shav.
“It was.  There was no point in inviting them to dinner because they wouldn’t go.  Part of that was the no-diary no-schedule stuff, but a lot of  it actually wasn’t, rejection of a – socialite element.  We are not repeat not here to be seen with all the ‘best people’.  Anyway, Mitch said, we are the best people.  Soul-brothers….They settled to having their dining-table as the social centre of Azt and that meant anyone could be invited, builders, bankers, barmaids and they served the sort of food anyone could be happy with and by the way stamped the imperial seal right through the heart of Azt.”
“After Maya it changed. Sarat still invited anyone he damn well pleased to dinner but it was much more one to one or two or three, much cosier and more private.  Then he changed his diet.  You cannot invite citizens of Azt to dine and offer them seeds.  Apart from anything else if they’re poor it’s gross.  But by then we did indeed have the people space and the Jumesit as the social centre of Azt was established.
“So what’s the point of all this if I can’t even eat what I want! That’s what we think’s going on. Basic decisions about how he is prepared to live his life, about what he has done to his life, and he’s not sharing.   Another sixty years of this!”
“But he likes it.”
“Oh, he enjoys it all right.  Not sure that’s the same thing.  Don’t ask me to explain that!   I think there’s a lot of – not sure I can explain this one, either.  The cliché, the joke about love, so long as I’m with you we can live on rotten apples on a rubbish tip and I won’t notice.  I think there was a lot of that in their relationship.  He’s noticed his life and is assessing it.”
“Sarat is taking excellent care of Sarat,” said Paw.  “If there were evidence of self-neglect, we should be concerned.  There isn’t and we aren’t.”
“The word,” said Shav, “is the student life he never had.”
“He doesn’t go to bed, either.  I take it you’ve heard.”
“I’ve heard.  Maybe not from the horses’ mouth.”
“Neeeigh!  You know there’s that one ginormous super-gigantic sofa.  When he’s finished for the day he turns out the light and sleeps on it, worries about washing in the morning.”
“It’s very comfortable,” said Shav trying to keep a straight face.  “I hope he cleans his teeth.   I can see – a kind of a watershed, getting rid of your double bed.  Apart from the obvious that it’s too empty.”
“Only 50 other rooms to choose from. If he were a student, I don’t think anyone’d turn a hair.  Being a bereaved emperor makes them make it into 50 different kinds of grief syndrome.  There’s a – ditching of inessentials because they don’t seem to matter and even don’t matter.”
“What would concern me is exactly that. As though he feels chased by time.”
“Facing the possibility of his own death?  How can he not?”
“Yes,” said Shav.  “But you’re happy.”
“We’re happy,” said Baz. 
“Most young people have a period when they were single.  I think Cho’s so worried because he’s never been on his own.”
“Cho should have more sense,” said Baz rather shortly.
Paw nodded.
“We all know where the buck stops,” said Shav.  “If it goes pear-shaped, it won’t be Mel or Cho in the firing-line.”
“It’s more character-forming to live in a bedsit?”
Shav laughed.
“I’ll remember that!  But Cho, do you really think living in a bedsit - ?  What about Hass and Venga? Do they eat seeds?”
“We remember,” said Baz after a moment, “all of you when you were tots, babes.  You had a pink velvet headband with silver sparkles.  You loved it and wept buckets when it finally fell apart.” I did, thought Shav, but what - ?.  “His first date with Maya, the first time they went out on their own, without the gang, he took her to a beach-party, all flutes and candles.  You’d have thought it was frantically respectable if you didn’t notice the horizontal shapes in the dunes.  They didn’t, not for some time I think, obviously we didn’t know exactly when.”
“Maya staying the night wasn’t a clue,” sighed Paw.  He grinned.  “Until her bed wasn’t slept in.”
“I do know about Sarat and Hass,” said Shav, thinking this was where Baz was going.
“Nobody knows about Sarat and Hass.”
“They’re not - ?”
“Oh no, no, no.  I was there, Shav.”
Where?  Oh.
“Oh Baz.”
“The way I feel about is it’s not just the most awful thing that’s ever happened to me, it’s the most awful thing that could ever happen to me.  Now imagine how Sarat feels.  He said it was like an axe-wound in his head.  You have a cut, the edges come together, it slowly heals, but if you’re not a bit careful round it the edges spring apart and it bleeds like it did when it was new.  Maybe for a shorter time.  I’ve really thought about that one!  It’s the best analogy I can think of.  How are you feeling!  I never thought about it till it was me doing the feeling, thought it was just the sort of dumb-arse question journos ask, like Karula said, how do you expect me to feel?  It’s much more than that, or rather Sarat’s total antipathy to his nearest and dearest – I feel the same.  There you are, you’re dealing with it.  If that sounds crude, getting the edges of that wound together is major microsurgery but you’re hacking it.  Then your dear grey-haired old grandfather asks how you’re feeling.  That’s bad enough, but he wants you to talk about it.  Pull the edges of the wound apart, really get in there and make it bleed.   Sarat talks to Hass. When he wants to.  I do too.  Doesn’t matter if it’s 3 in the morning.  Hass knew what he had to do and he did it.  Just be there whenever Sarat needs him.  He doesn’t get excited, he doesn’t gush.”  He paused.  “He doesn’t try to analyse.  He – knows what it feels like.  When I say he’s there I don’t exactly mean Azt.  He pours love on it.”
“It sounds awful,” said Paw, without saying what sounds awful.  “We all Cho would move heaven and earth for him.”
“I don’t know,” said Shav.  “It’s not the same, is it.  I can’t see Sarat appreciating Cho and Amida moving in, however selfless they were about it.”
“We didn’t see how it would work,” said Paw.
Baz said: “When I say he’s there I don’t mean literally, every minute!  They seem to do exactly what they like.  They wandered in, without much of a by your leave to the host.  That’s what I mean about Sarat and Hass.  Sarat understood, in his heart if not his brain.  They chose a few rooms, they decorated them to taste, they got on with being Hass and Venga.  Last seen at the Round-the-Islands Race.”
“That’s what I mean about rubbish tip,” said Paw “There’s an awful lot of that in Hass and Venga.  They don’t care where they are.”
“After all…” muttered Baz.  “Fluid.  It’s the fluidity in Hass.  He doesn’t go with the flow.  He is the flow!  Anyone else, there’d be sharp edges.”
“I’ve always had a lot of time for Hass,” said Shavli.  “I didn’t know quite how much. Cho’s not an idiot.  I guess he’d do anything to help but can’t unless Sarat talks to him.”
“Come on, you know it’s more than that. This bloody notion of his Sarat and Maya are still – connected somewhere.”
“Is it so bloody?” asked Shav.  “I don’t mean it how Cho means it.”
“Maybe…I mean it how Cho means it.  It’s 30-carat crap and Cho knows it.  Hass would know instantly.  I think I would too.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” said Shav.  “He thinks Hass is too – ethereal.”
“Hass is about the most level-headed guy you could ever hope to have by your side in a crisis! The head of PANTHER does not go lame-brained just because he dotes on his grandson.  Which I told him.”
 “Never a dull moment,” said Paw.
“I’m ethereal,” said Shavli.  “I think – I’m sure you do see but like the gang were shocked by total immersion poverty, we at Base Camp Fidub were a bit shattered by the ramifications of going to Kadun to fix the drains.  I mean really Sarat, I know you want everyone in on the act, but the entire universe?”
Baz chortled.
“Dear Mum, we have had such adventures, today all of us sat on the Anile throne…”
“Sorg,” said Shavli.  “This is to do with Falita and Sorg?”
“Could be,” said Paw.
“Maybe he’s not putting it very well,” went on Shav, “Cho, I mean.  That does not seem likely.  Not saying exactly what he means.  Obviously Sarat isn’t experiencing a ghost.  Maybe he thinks because of the – connection a – a door is open, the ghost can be inside Sarat’s head?”
“OK,” said Baz, “I don’t believe that and as I said Hass would know. So what you’re – your train of thought is neither of them – Sarat and Hass – want to shut the door and Cho is adamant – and if were true he’d be right – the door has to be shut.  The axe-wound was me, Shavli.  I think you need to understand that.” He looked at them both.  Paw put his arm round him. “Calm, centred, honest…Bloody wound up, but not because of me, because of bloody Cho.  I was there.  I forced them apart.  I am sure. Maya went – wherever, whatever.  The first thing Sarat said was the second most awful, she’s not here any more.  It was very, very final.”
“You’ve said that to Cho.”
“I have said that to Cho.  Sarat says – he has not said to Cho – yet – feels like a damn research animal.”
“That’s awful.”
“The trouble is,” said Paw, “in the nicest possible way, that’s what we all are, the subjects of our own experiment.”
“There’s only one way of studying what happens when we die,” growled Baz.  “Maybe two – take a finely judged overdose and be very close to the hospital.”
“I suppose we’re all thinking,” said Shav.  “Cho’s getting on, etc. Whether it’s of more immediate interest.”
“We’ve thought,” said Paw.
“It hasn’t changed what I think,” said Baz.  “If you ask me if we continue in any – recognizable form, I’d say no. But.  That’s what you mean, I guess.”
“There is a question of volition.”
“Oh, there is.  Again, if you ask me – she wanted to go.  Whatever ‘she’ and ‘wanted’ mean in that context.”
“It must have been unbearable. But he – “
“How can you describe an instant which is past everything?  I work on it.  Yes, he tried to kick me out.  He did not want to follow.  Maybe I shouldn’t have….He – wanted to keep that instant – stay suspended out of life, out of death, out of time.  He did not want to keep her here.  He just didn’t want it to end.  Does that make sense?  It was down to him to end it.  Or her.  Or the – natural order of things.”
The most private part of a very private relationship and Baz wrecked it, thought Shavli.  That I do not say.  What Sarat and Baz have said to each other, that I do not ask.
“Shall we lighten up? Next thing, Sarat and Petrush come in and find us with tears pouring down our cheeks.  They’ll have to ask how we’re feeling.”
“That would be appalling,” said Paw.
Baz looked at her thoughtfully a minute. 
“We seem to have taken a nosedive from dietetics,” she said.  “I’m thinking. A man has a solid relationship with someone who really understands him but then someone else comes along and the relationship is just as solid, just as meaningful, but the second person seems much more glam – “ They looked puzzled.  “Then there’s a dislocation in the second relationship and the guy really needs to talk to – his first love, but he’s terribly embarrassed, maybe even a bit ashamed, but the first person wouldn’t mind, wouldn’t notice…”
“You’re talking about your dad, aren’t you.”
“He knows that!  Sarat, I mean.  Shavli – he does not want to talk!  Except to Hass.”
“I was just thinking,” said Shav.
 
“Did they talk?” asked Petrush.
“Boy, did they talk!   Did he talk?”
“Oh yes.  Succinctly.  Man, I take a month off to ‘talk about Maya’, the problem’s solved, right, she’s not dead any more.  After that we talked plants.  Cho is not handling this well.”
“You noticed! I got all of it.”  Pause.  “After Maya died, I talked to Dad.a bit.  We decided – if there was something Sarat didn’t want to say, that was cool.”
“You would not seem to have shared with Cho.”
“I think Cho – I don’t know.”
“You have a clue what the something is?”
“Oh yes,” said Shav.  “D’you remember when Turny was put down?”
Petrush tried to recall.
“I was away with Ma and Dad.  That’s right!  What I got was the upside, I guess.  Sarat, you are becoming a biology bore!  It was after that he was really hooked.  Your Dad talked you through it.  Wasn’t there something about an apple?”
“Even Zik remembers the apple.  Dad thought Sarat and I were old enough to try to understand.  Zik wouldn’t be left out.  What we got was a sense of wholeness. He said you couldn’t have all the people who’d ever been born in Fidub still alive and all the dogs and all the mice and all the flies, and all the birds, and, and because there wouldn’t be any room for plants and if there weren’t any plants there wouldn’t be anything.  I was totally lost on the detail, but I remember the feeling of how it all fitted and I do remember the apple! He took an apple and held it against Sarat’s arm.  He said that everything you need to keep alive, air, juice, that apple, it has to be processed inside you.  You can’t just hold it against your skin and it becomes part of you!  We could see that had to be quite complicated and fascinating and brilliant and it’s why you have blood, to take the tiny bits of processed food and air all over your body to feed it and the heart is what sends the blood right through your body.  But because it’s all so complicated over the years things start to go wrong, little things, and your body’s really good at putting them right, but eventually more things go wrong than right and when something major goes wrong, like with the heart, your body isn’t getting any food, any air, so it just stops, and that’s all it is.  So of course Sarat protested.  Dad reminded me.  He explained that every bit of Turny was basically worn out, not working properly, beyond mending and it was kinder to put her to sleep.  Sarat said how can you be sure unless you try.”
Petrush smiled gently.
“That’s my man!”
“Isn’t it just.”
“Your thinking is – “ I’m trying to put this in standard form.  “They’re doing CPR in the emergency room and some moron – sorry, Baz – interrupts.”
Shav was taken aback.
“No, basically.”
“I would agree.  If that had been the case, Baz not being a moron would not have interrupted!  The point is surely that so far as we understand that word she was dead.”
“That’s exactly what Dad said.  I said – she was,” said Shavli, slightly emphasizing the ‘she’.
“Who - ?  Shavli!”
 “I don’t even know if it’s possible.  Nothing Baz said today went against it.  He said it was like a suspension of time.  Sarat didn’t want to keep her or follow her or any of the words of volition.  He just wanted to keep that moment.  He knew he couldn’t keep their baby alive.  He wanted to be there when she died.”
“She?”
“She’s not there any more.”
“Before I burst into tears you have not one scrap of proof!”
“She died in his arms!  People say froze, shock, or just love.  He didn’t freeze.  He plunged in. I think what he found stunned him.  Dad follows that bit, but he thinks it’s something to do with what happens when you die, Sarat found himself somewhere – because, you see, she was dead.”
“So far as we understand that word.”
“It was all seconds.”
“There does not seem to be any question of Maya trying to heal herself.”
“There’s just something that doesn’t mesh.  What I feel like – a bit  - is a detective picking apart a suspect’s story.  If he wants to tell us.”
“So Cho thinks the worst because it does not compute!  Thank you, Cho.  That will be all…I am remembering – when they really confused us.  Yes, we could heal people.  Yes, we could heal animals.  Our aged pets should still be – if necessary put down.  But not of course our aged humans.  I am curious.  How did your Dad hack that one?”
“Bluntly.  He said no, we did not swan around healing.  We could not and did not heal without preferably the participation but certainly the wish of the being being healed.  When it was trivial, whether a cut paw or a cut finger, it really wasn’t an issue.  Non-human animals have a sense of their lives which is different to that of humans.  A human can want to go on living despite total physical disability.  A non-human animal has a sense of having reached its end.  To over-ride that is an evil, a violation. Yes, you can have your old dog bouncing around like a six-month old puppy, but  it’s not actually your dog, it’s a creature of your will, because you do not want to lose it.  That, hopefully when we are older, we shall have to confront in ourselves at any death.  Shock is natural, a sense of loss is natural.  Do we cry because we needed the dead person or do we cry because the dead person enjoyed being alive?”
“Why does that not surprise me?  One appreciates these things of course, perhaps less bluntly.  The core of PANTHER is is it not there be no over-riding of will, human or non-human.  If we consider our Denzines friends are not capable of talking straight, that Fidub could not heal is that which does not wish to be healed?”
“Eeek,” said Shav.  “At which point the story become ludicrous.”
“I want to think about that one, hard.  What’s the rest of the goss?  What was that about food?”
“Hilarious.  He’s gone back to the Sarat diet, bearing in mind one cannot decently offer the starving poor raw grain.”
“I thought they weren’t starving any more!”
“A history of diet from rotten burgers to raw grain!”  She filled him in.
 “So people are finding his conduct a little odd?”
“I think Baz fingered that one clearly enough.  If he were a student, no-one would notice.  Since he’s Anile emperor, it has to be some kind of grief syndrome.  He does talk.  He talks to Hass.
Only to Hass.  And Baz.  That was made entirely clear. It’s part of my circumstantial evidence!  Have you ever talked to a gay guy about fatherhood?”
“Now you come to mention it…So Cho thinks what you think and thinks Hass can’t truly understand.  You think!”
“I think.”
“Was there an autopsy?”
“No-one told me about it.”
“Pretty little PANTHER minds could surely have established.  If and only if, I should doubt Sarat is the only one to know.  I can well see that if Cho sees himself as surrounded by a conspiracy of silence, that would make him just a little on edge. I would add that the progress made in Kadun is not such that Faun – for example – could stand up in court and delineate the nature of Maya’s injuries and the state of her body, shall we say, because he looked.  One thing I grokked.  Because of that accident of geography, Fidub is largely free from memories of Maya.  Oh, not home.  Specifically I guess his relationship with me.”
“Isn’t that interesting,” said Shavli.
“I told him straight down the line, if he is – not finding it necessary to visit because of this hiccup with Cho, that is crap.”
“Good one. “
“I may just have got him to spend a week with us chilling out.  These are delicate negotiations but I think it a firm possibility!”
“That would be brilliant. Something else I remembered.  When we were little.  Often, often we went to stay with Cho.  But Cho hardly ever came to stay with us.  It suddenly struck me, Cho probably doesn’t really have much of an idea of what home was like.  I like to think if I could just sort out Sarat and Dad, everything else might fall into place a bit better.  Butt out, Shav!”
“He has a problem with your dad?” Frank disbelief.
“I think he thinks he does.  When he was 17, he ran away with Cho.”  She shared her analogy.  “They are so alike.  People see the superficial, mover and shaker, wheeler and dealer.  Ah, how he takes after his grandpapa!  It’s crap.”
“I have always known that.  Believe me, I do not have Cho down as one excited about algae.  I do not think you can call the moving and shaking superficial.”
“He’s Anile emperor,” said Shav, then stopped.
“Do continue,” said Petrush.
“B and P think all of it is making some fundamental decisions about how he’s prepared to live the rest of his life, ‘what he has done to his life’ and I quote.  That’s all quite ordinary and exo.”  She sighed.  “I wonder if Cho fully even understands that. Sarat was set for ordinary life.”
“Honey, he was never going to spend his life in a lab! He would have had a future in NoZone marketing the environment.  He chose to market something nearly as big.  To which I would add, he wanted to rock and rock now.  If scientists rock the world at all, it is in their later years, when all that meticulous research has paid off!”
Shav giggled.
“Maybe that’s because they don’t have the resources of half a continent at their disposal.”
“Oh we are so thorough!  Where are you going?”
“All that was pure Dad, the exposition.  We all know the identity crisis, but that’s not the two people.  The brash Fidubi brat is Cho and the Anile emperor is also Cho.  Sure, Sarat and Mitch did the marketing but they also did the research.  Mitch spent years in the PANTHER records.  It works because of that ground-work, because the foundations are solid.”
Petrush laughed.
“While I take that point, I would add that we spent the afternoon undermining everything the continent ever thought about itself.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“Wherever we’re coming from, it doesn’t affect where we are now.  Do you see- a sequence of events can be described, each following from the one before, but that doesn’t mean the end-point can only follow from the start.  Suppose we proved Narulis never existed!  Oh, there’d be repercussions…But there’s no way – some guy is getting his chronic asthma properly treated only because Narulis existed and if Narulis hadn’t existed he wouldn’t be.”
“I am not entirely sure about that.”
“Couldn’t be.  No alternative sequence of events is conceivable.”
“No-one else was or is capable of the idea – I do not know that Narulis wrote about the treatment of asthma. That may be to say someone embedded certain ideas in the history of Kadun.  Surely Mitch’s point that they were indigenous is very much the issue here, indeed that they came from Narulis the foreigner very much why they were resisted.”
“It’s a lousy analogy?”
“It may be better to say suppose Zani never existed!  Someone undoubtedly founded the kingdom of Dabida with certain core values, for there it is for all to see…What I thought – there are facts – “  He grinned.  “The sort of fact at which Mitch excels. Facts which are not scientific facts, but may be given the status of scientific facts, although they are not the facts of science. The existence of Dabida as we know and love her is surely one.  But I was thinking of the minutiae.  Science told them- if you call statistics science - what percentage of the population had no piped hot water or no main drainage.  Mitch took us through a day in the life, what exactly that meant.  Only when you have defined the problem can you define the solution.  It is that I see as independent of any forebears.  We seem to have digressed.  I say seem.  Would it be incredibly unjust to say you too think Sarat should talk to an elder male relative, just a different one?”
“No.  What would be incredibly unjust is to think that I shall prod, encourage or otherwise interfere!”
“That is a fine sentiment and the simple human conviction of knowing best is of course apparently where Cho is coming from. Sarat in this scenario would be secretly longing to share,  Cho is not an idiot therefore Cho’s apparent conviction that the person Sarat should be sharing with is he must be regarded as having some rational basis.
Shav gurgled.
“Baz told him the head of PANTHER does not go lame-brained because he dotes.”
“Children, children!  I am shocked!  My problem here is my genius for seeing both sides with equal clarity.  Poor Sarat!  Not only two people, but four, possibly eight, sixteen…We all of us may have our loving families playing that kind of game, but he has the entire world.  It is impossible not to side totally with his desire to tell the entire world to butt out.  But Cho is not an idiot emotionally or any other way.  I do not think even I can draw a parallel between this and our new mission – but I can try.  If that territory is demonstrably Kadun and remembering transparency is his middle name – he could go the long way round, right, the international court.  If I assess my man correctly, he does not give a damn where the border is as a matter of principle.  He would merely prefer what is on the other side of it not to be a secret weapon aimed at Azt!  I can relate to that.  There would be a hell of a lot of – fall-out! – for perhaps very little.  If we take it as given Cho has something serious on his mind, why the hell does he not come out with it?  Perhaps he chooses not to because the fall-out would be too great, though I cannot imagine what that could be.”
“I have a plan,:” said Shavli.
“What happened to the fine sentiment?”
“Observe, my sweet, observe.  If he comes and stays with us, we can have a family reunion.  It must be ten years since we’ve all sat round the same table.  Unless Sarat really objects – “
“I do not think Cho will press him with Zika by his side!”
“Which would be of interest in itself, we can have a look at them together and see what we think then.”
 
Dill is a free autonomous individual.  Dill has ideas of her own.  Dill took herself off to Azt.
“Mel says you two were always the esoteric ones.”
“That is our fate!”
“So you love it here, but Sarat’s not so sure.  If he loves it here.”
“Short talks with Narulis.  Perhaps they pall.”
“With its history.”
 “Maya is a part of its history,” acknowledged Hass.
“I have noticed,” said Dill, “or think I have.  Naturally he comes often to Azt.”
“But doesn’t hang around?” suggested Venga softly.
“That’s Sarat’s business,” said Dill firmly.
Hass touched her hand.
“Not yours?”
“I think I do not have a problem talking to a – a hologram of Maya.  It would not wrench my heart.”
“Hologram.”
“I combine my father’s rationalism with a profound esotericsm.  That makes me – “
“Adorable!” said Venga.
“Anile empress,” said Hass.
“All these things,” agreed Dill.  “Sarat does not want me to sit on the chair without him.”
“Ah,” said Hass. 
“Do women obey their partners in the modern age?” asked Venga gazing intently at the ceiling.
“Surely the root question is my safety.  I’d be a real fool if I did it with no-one knowing.”
“Hard to argue with that,” said Hass.
“I think Sarat might try!” said Venga.
“How I feel,” said Dill.  “As you know, I have had an experience I should wish to have avoided.  I should not be able to say categorically my mind is clear of that experience.  It seems to me that the chair might not be a wholly comfortable trip.  Some women want their partners with them when they give birth.  I don't think I particularly want him around when I’m covered in goo.  Does that make any kind of sense?”
“Unfortunately,” said Venga, “yes.”
“No.” said Hass.
“Imperial Majesty,” suggested Venga.  “I do not frankly see how we can stop you..”
“That was not my meaning,” said Hass.
“The grapevine is good or you guessed?”
“I understand Sarat.”
“Not physically present,” amended Dill.
Venga looked sharply from one to the other.
“Let’s say I test a hypothesis,” said Dill.
“He’ll go ape!”
“We shall see.”
 “What,” asked Hass, “does your father’s rationalism make of the Anile throne?”
“That too is what I want to find out,” said Dill.
 
Formless bodies.  How can bodies be formless?  Bodies of shadowy shifting form.  Disembodied fingers.  Pawing, mauling, No.  She screamed: Sarat!  There was a shaft of light and a silver stallion appeared. They want me to leave the throne.  Try harder.  Then she was the silver stallion, repeat stallion.  Hey!  But the stallion dissolved into starburst.  I am Dill, said a star.  Who are you?  The stars danced around her.  I am Sheehela, I am Jaizal, I Santian, I Asyrion, I Galia, I, I, I…Which of you is Narulis? asked Dill. One star shone brighter than the rest.  I am Maya, who am Dill, who am Sheheela, who am Asyrion.  Formless bodies, said Dill.  Why are you not also Heela, also Baria, also Sorg, also Qine, also Mom? Did we not say! laughed Asyrion.  That may be the problem, said Dill.  Then she was under an alien sky and Jaizal was running to meet her.  Oh no, said Dill.  I am not Sheheela.  I am Dill. (Just don’t say, your pardon, I mistook you!)  My lady Var-sega’! laughed Jaizal.  You join the dance!  Is that supposed to scare me? said Dill.  One day we all die.  You mistake me, said Jaizal.  He took her in his arms.  All times are now!  This is your time, said Dill.  He laughed again.  Is it not also yours?  My time is now, said Dill.  Then where is Sarat?  Here, sweetheart, said Sarat, no longer Jaizal.  What is all this crap? Dill asked him.  It’s a piece of metal! From another world, said Sarat.  Meteorite! said Dill  Radiation! said Sarat. My lord, said Asyrion, there is that Fidub cannot heal.  Anyhow, objected Dill, why didn’t it spread south? Magnetism? suggested  Sarat, sounding sleepy.  Attracted to the north?  Am I not?  He buried his face in Dill’s hair. Who said it didn’t? said Zani, dead Zani, that is.  Then she tottered on the floor of The Room, but no, she was watching the tot take a brick from our grandson, said Dill.  The future!  A future.  Oh no! said Sarat.  I am Master of Kadun, said Mel.  Dabida, said Sarat, doesn’t know that.  We can explain everything! said Cantilip. No you can’t, said Dill, you just damn’ think you can! Mitch laughed.  If the meteorite, Mitch was saying, was radio-active they’d hardly have forged the damn’ chair – Half-life? said Sarat.  Exactly how many aeons ago?
 
Sarat had one of those spooky dreams that are so real you can’t believe they haven’t happened.  Since he was  in Var-segan, he knew it hadn’t happened.
“OK, sis,” said Sarat.  He was talking to his throne.  “There are some things we need to clear up here.  Ground zero.”
He sat.
She sang.
“Is that a positive note?  I am Anile Emperor.  My time is now.”  He realized the music wasn’t coming just from the chair.  “Interesting.  What do you expect me to do?”
Sheheela stood in front of him laughing.
“Marry her, my lord, marry her!”
That was not an expected answer, thought Sarat, to a possibly rhetorical question.
“Of course,” he said.
Sheheela faded.
For a time nothing happened. 
“I am Anile Emperor,” he repeated.  “Master of Kadun.  Doom of Death.  That has meaning?”
“You know it,” said Maya.
“Love,” said Sarat.  He wrapped her in his arms.
“Sweetheart,” she said.  “Be happy.” 
She turned into Dill.
 “I love you,” said Sarat. “Sit!” .
“And stay!”
There was mocking laughter.
“Is Time your pet dog, my lord!”
“Perhaps,” said Sarat.
Dill vanished.
Then all times were now.  It was confusing.  One scene faded into another.  Sarat turned to the chair.  It was occupied, by Narulis, by Kaminua, by Santian, by Sheheela, by Maya, by him, by Jaizal, by people even he couldn’t identify, by someone he knew to be his grandson, and still the slide-show, panorama went on and he began slowly to understand though he could not have said exactly what he understood. 
“Move over,” he said to the current occupant, who was Asyrion.  “My time is also now?”
She laughed and kissed his cheek.
History abruptly disappeared and the outlines of the room with it.
“That would be awkward,” said Sarat.  The sun sparkled on the window and he knew that wherever he was it was not his time.  He woke up in a rush of realization.  Dill!  Seemingly immeasurably distant, she answered. I love you!
They didn’t have windows in pre-history. 
 
Dill got off the chair as Hass’s mobile burst into life.  Wordlessly he handed it to her.
“I’m fine,” said Dill.
She takes my breath away, thought Venga.
She actually momentarily took Sarat’s breath away.
“You sat.”
“Sure.”
Oh, er, well, it’s happened, thought Sarat.
“And you’re OK,”
“I’m cool with it.  I just insisted on being Dill.”
“I’ll come.”
There is absolutely no point in being Anile emperor if one cannot  instantly summon air transport.
Hass looked at her.
“Do it again any time?”
“It’s what you guys said about shaping the trip.  My time is now.”
`”And what, pray, dear chair, do I tell myself about now!”
“Interesting, wasn’t it,” said Dill.  “What’s it like to watch?”
“Like a movie a long long way away.”
“Until he went beyond reach,” said Dill.  “That is what I did not want to do!”
Venga heard Maya: That is what I do not do.
Hass laughed to himself.  The right man for the job!  Or the right woman.
Venga thought: What did I realize because I’m a woman?.  The arbitrary association of attributes to ‘male’ and ‘female’.  Only a woman can heal Kadun, a woman with Narulis’ values, or of course a man who is earthpower. 
 
He rang Fal.  Had she an addy for Kyse?  Good grief, yes! said Fal.  We’re an item.   Um, it doesn’t – you can talk!   We really talked, said Fal.  It seems to me, this government is like a new-born baby!  First few years, it needs all your time.  He’s in Azt?  Still in Zur.  I haven’t got time, said Sarat, to go down comparison road.  You’ve answered my main question.  You’re cool to work with him!  Any excuse will do!  What work!  Let me state for the record  it in no way encroaches either on your position in government or on Kyse’s integrity as a subject of the crown of Dabida!  I like it!  What work? she asked again.  Looking at maps, said Sarat.  Silence at the end of the line.  I knew that’d get the adrenalin pumping!  Maps of Kadun?  You got it!   Because, said Fal at length, we’re Zuri and we have no preconceptions?  I look forward, said Sarat, to duly addressing you  as Madam Prime Minister.  And how is Her Imperial Majesty? asked Fal.  Sometime, said Sarat, we’ll have the talk we didn’t have.  If you still want to, of course.  I’d like that, said Fal. D’you want his mobile?
 
Sarat rang Kyse.  Then he rang Dill again.  Then his pilot veered south-south-east for Zur.
 
Kyse listened. 
“Let the dog see the rabbit.”
Sarat opened a Gridpage.  Kyse burst out laughing.
“Has the imperium no experts!”
“One tends to think,” said Sarat, “we have seen – it is the integrity of the human sciences that suffered, medicine, psychology, biology.  One tends to think the physical sciences can have no bearing on the bases of corrupt government and so went their merry way.  I do not doubt the geologists and geographers of the Collegium – “
“And of course those from Fidub or Dabida would have their own preconceptions!”
“I do not want to share,” said Sarat.
“Top secret, for your eyes only.  I take it Mel is in on it.”
“He will be. All it needs is a brain.”
“My brain,” said Kyse, “points out to me that the integrity of the maps themselves.”
“Exactly,” said Sarat.
“So let me be clear about this, you want me and Fal, who are neither professional geographers nor possessors of intimate knowledge of the surface – what’s the word – topography, that’s it – nor possessors  of intimate knowledge of the topography of Kadun, to direct our searing gazes to telling which bits are forged, which bits are made up to conceal the reality of what I suppose I must call the earthscape.”
“To tell me where to look,” said Sarat without batting an eyelid.
“But you know where to look!  Even I have heard of the field of flowers!”
“That’s good,” said Sarat, “you know where to look too.  Look, let me show you.”  He opened another page. The continent loomed before them.  He touched a finger to the screen then held it up for inspection.  “fraction of that dot in the middle is our field of flowers.  If you zoom in normally, go too far, you lose the resolution – ”  He zoomed in to blur.  “ – which is why I found a program that doesn’t.  Much, much, much magnified, a pinprick on the earth’s surface, who’s going to notice?  If there’s one thing geology has, it’s scale, aeons of time, whole continents.”  He clicked and zoomed again. “Who is going to notice?” he asked again.  “What is remarkable about it?”
Kyse sighed.
“It doesn’t have any geology! It doesn’t have any geographical features!  It’s as though someone’s taken an eraser to it.”
“And we know the stream is there,” said Sarat.
“OK, I’m hooked.  It’ll probably take the rest of my life.  What you actually want is us to cover the whole of Kadun at this scale to look for areas of blankness.”
“Then we join the dots,” said Sarat, “if there are any.  You can start with Van-senok, Casin-ruhn, which is in Ciletij, and the site of the Jumesit.  Myth tells us there’s a five-headed monster under Azt.  Did you know that?  Truth may be stranger than fiction.”
“You want us to obtain the evidence,” said Kyse.
“Of compromise? Oh yes.”
“I doubt it will come to court!”
“No comment at this stage,” said Sarat.
“Truly no learned monographs, the geology of western Carlin?”
“How dare you suggest the Great Divide is anything other than a perfectly normal valley, millions like it?”
“It’s an estuary,” said Kyse.
“How true, how true,” said Sarat with seeming delight.  “Two things, therefore.  The sea comes in.  The river goes out.  Such as it is.”  More rapid clicking.  “Behold the Velun-sa at its source! It forces itself out of the ground, the whole thing is the most enormous effort.  As rivers go, it’s a loser.  It’d probably be still-born, if it didn’t have help from a distributary of the Fanil.  Wonderful how one can model things.”  Sarat’s kind of click, click, click. “Based on flow-rate, rainfall, gradient the Davin  itself – the tributary – wouldn’t make it to the sea.  It’s had a long journey.  It’s tired.  Help is at hand.  A valley, into which it gratefully comes to rest, has been made for it, and so we think it flows to the sea, as any decent river should.”
“In another world,” said Kyse, “I attended a meeting of NoZone.”
“Nature,” said Sarat.  ”Nothing quite like it.”
“So?”
“I have some – not theories.  Notions that might be theories when they grow up. The mouth of the GD is a tectonic estuary, meaning movements of the earth created the rift that created a single valley.  Now, all that is possibly nonsense on the grounds that we cannot possibly know the status of the Velun or the Davin millions of years ago; they might have been mighty torrents. I don’t think so.  If they’d had any get up and go they’d have meandered.”
“The Fanil, of course,” said Kyse, “flows through Van-senok”
“Isn’t that interesting?” said Sarat.
“What about the Horze?”  The Horze is the river on which Azt stands.
 “The Horze rises in the wilds of the northern forests.  It’s a grown-up river.  It has distributaries.  One of them flows into the Fanil.”
“I take it a distributary?”
“Tributaries feed.  Distributaries branch out on their own.  Start reading up on meteorites.”
“What!”
“Standard form is that the GD is a rift valley, about which no big deal.  I think it’s a crater.  I think that whatever it was that came from wherever it came from somehow causes  disturbance in the ether.  I think this was millions of years ago.   I note the effect of the field is startling but hardly negative or evil.  I think when people appeared and – became aware of the situation they buried whatever under what is now Azt.  I have absolutely no idea why!  I mean, whether they thought they were removing it from circulation or whether they thought of it as some kind of guardian.  I think whatever leaches into the water.  I have been told whatever may be harnessed by the Cult for evil.  I have been – somewhat melodramatically – been presented with a – parallel, a teaching-story.  I think at some point it was discovered by the Cult and used for evil, hence the five-headed monster. I think all this is broadly science, though not necessarily our science.  It has been - mused that the Matter of Kadun is the intrusion into our dull humdrum lives of a different set of physical laws.  I think  it - possible that whatever follows the same rules but the effect is – distorted by its being in terms of both time and space a long, long way from home.”
“Astroshit!” said Kyse.
“I knew you’d love it,” said Sarat.
“You think the areas of blankness are going to map out against waterways?”
“Give you a definite maybe – there may be reasons to do with the nature of the rock and soil why the effect is stronger in some places than others.”
I think the Anile throne contains whatever, explaining or at any rate excusing her more interesting qualities. Intelligent metal?  Intelligent life that looks like metal to us?  What does she want to do?  She wants to go home.  She dissolves into space-time.  The rest is us.  Maybe.  Truly I am not responsible for the welfare of the universe!  Whatever cosmic cataclysm wrenched whatever from its home, I can never know.  But I just might be able to resolve this Matter of Kadun.
 
Flying across the GD, he leered at it through the window.  Memory stirred.  I believe in possibilities. Are metaphysics immutable?  Then ‘will’ survives, I said.  It’s lousy metaphysics!  All these dead people keep talking to us, he complained to himself.  What then is my problem with Hass?  My problem is he appears to take the Jumesit at face value.  He doesn’t talk about it.  He wouldn’t, would he, not if he has periodic chats with Maya.  Sarat grinned to himself.  Anyway, they’re in it over their heads now!  It’s good to talk.  Take at face value.  Enter the dream.   Oh, what did happen at Casin-ruhn? 
 
Scene: Her Imperial Majesty sits sipping tea, not a hair out of place, while two elegant young men gaze at her in rapt adoration.  If they weren’t gay, I might be jealous! He’s not bloody gay!  Somewhere there is a person in a female body.  I got there first!  Suppose everything is a metaphor.  Did something just fall into place?
“Move over!” he said to Asyrion, as time lurched.  Or something.  Oh pooch! he nearly said.  Pooch, pooch, pooch! He pulled Dill close.  “Grrrr! The warmth of our bodies,” he said.
Dill snuggled closer.
“Darling, is this quite the place!”
“On the chair.  She responds – why does she – why can she not – stories about the Jumesit abound!  But that’s because of the five-headed monster!  Bring her here – she was ‘responsible’ for Casin-ruhn.  But it’s all still there, so someone replaced her – “  His mind was working very fast now.  He wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
“Is it something they put in the water?” wondered Venga.
“How are we?” asked Hass.
“Cold,” said Sarat.  “It’s cold in Casin-ruhn.”
“Zur,” said Dill, “can be uncomfortably warm in summer.”
“Suppose what screws it is magnetism,” said Sarat.
“Is this a private conversation?”
“How much have you told them?”asked Sarat.
“Would I dream of doing anything without you!”
He told them everything as he had always known that he would.  Finally, he took a deep breath, held Dill so tightly that she muttered, “Oof, you’re squashing me!” and asked steadily, “Have you seen Maya recently?”
“No,” said Hass.
Another theory bites the dust.
“I didn’t – when I was here after.  I wondered if I was – preventing myself.”
“Our social circle,” said Venga, “remains limited.”
“Perhaps,” said Sarat, “people who knew something.”
“Perhaps,” said Venga, “people who were something.”
“Who found out something, who – changed themselves.  Wouldn’t they say so!”
“Something in the water?” suggested Venga.  “Perhaps they didn’t know.”
“You talk as though these guys are real,” said Dill.
“It’s difficult, isn’t it,” said Sarat.
But Venga said, “You talk to Jaizal.  You decide if he’s real.”
“I suppose we’d better live here,” sighed Sarat.
Hass smiled.
“There Has Been No Announcement.”
“That was yesterday,” said Sarat.
 
Sarat Comes Clean!  We’re An Item Says Sarat.  Sarat Names The Day.
 
The last time I stood here, I said things I now confirm. With all my heart, with all my mind, with all my being, I love Dill. Also I love Maya.  Maya is dead.  If we continue, we are in some place immeasurably distant.  If we do not, there is an ending. We cannot, we should not live our lives in a place, a time of our imagining, in a world bounded by death.  Our place is here and now, our meaning to be alive and to live to the fullest extent of our being.  We should live our lives in reality.
Some will say, that is the opposite of what I said.  I say…..He laughed.  Tough.  I do not have today to be solemn.  I do not feel the need to be formal.  I do not have to explain my innermost feelings to the world.
 
I am here because I love Dill.  Dill is my grace and my truth.  Dill is my resolution and my culmination. To Dill I say, nothing can destroy our love.  This I know.
 
Dill entered the House of Silence and walked down the aisle towards him in the little black dress.  He wrapped his arms around her then kissed her cheek and left her to it.
 
Some people, they know who they are, will try to pour scorn on Sarat’s feelings.  They will say, either he truly loved Maya or he truly loves me.  I say, they are idiots, who understand nothing of the human heart.
 
Zulagan bit his lip so hard it nearly bled and stole a glance at Mitch.  Mitch was sitting forward, his head in hands, thinking why do I feel the eyes of the world are upon me! My lady, thought Challin, why not call them morons and be done. Cho looked at Kile, poker-faced, save for her dancing eyes. 
 
Of course he loves Maya.  Of course he loves me, as much and as deeply as he loved Maya when she lived.  If you cannot see the difference, then truly you are a lost cause.  And I love Sarat, with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my being.   I am here because I love Sarat.  Sarat is my grace and my truth.  Sarat is my resolution and my culmination. To Sarat I say, nothing can destroy our love.  This I know.
 
He did not, observed Seani, get where he is today without a certain amount of raw nerve.
Nor by the sound of it did she!
 
Dill hadn’t finished, not by a long chalk.
 
Love has no bounds.  This I know.  Love does not distinguish between life and death.  It is we who do that, we who must do that.  I do not live my life as though my sister were still with me, though she never leaves me.  My father, my grandmother, do not live as though Heela were still present.  Would it not be nonsense to say I am not Mistress of Var-segan because my grandfather is dead.  Life is a process of change.  Have we not said it?  They cannot destroy our laughter, our joy, our delight in life, in each other.  This we know.
 
They are bound in understanding, thought Cho, and that also is the message – and if you don’t get it,
you’re a moron.  I shall enjoy my grand-daughter-in-law.
 
You have to look at the father, sir.
Oh no, said small, tubby and balding, mother-panther in defence of her cubs. You have to look at the mother!
 
Of course the pain brought them together…Sweet, thought Challin.  Perhaps even true.
 
And you never lose owt by being honest with folks.  Appreciated.  Some as thought it’d be like it never ‘appened.  Not them as knows you, mind, but what could you say.  Flat truth of it is, them as ‘as lost loved ones understand in their gut, their ‘earts.  If them as ‘asn’t don’t – tough!
 
Of course the view from Var-segan is bound to be biased.
“It is generally accepted,” said Dill, “that the walls of time fade and reform, that our guests are real. That they are going about their business in their own time and not indeed visiting.”
“Yes.”
“I understand, although I have yet to experience them, there are other manifestations of this in support of this theory, scenes that could not be taking place in the here and now.”
“Yes.  The Bronzes.  The Bronzes are a frieze which does – emphasis on does – not exist.  There anyway!”
“We may and do – constantly – ask precisely why this temporal phenomenon should be so.  We may indeed ask if it is so. I do not think we question that it could be so.  Is the phenomenon of Kaminua and Asyrion of a different order?  It is the proposition that one may choose to continue one’s terrestrial existence in – what shall we say?  A time bubble, a space out of time where time does not exist.  Again we may say this could so but clearly a more complex and so more questionable  process would be involved, though we may adduce the fact that each of us is – “ She broke into a grin. “ – a part of the bloody Whole extant outside time.  Nonetheless our physical, our corporeal beings are rooted in time and to – clothe our essence in a physicality rendered proof against time is to say, is it not, that the physical form must be generated, created by the essence.  Or at any rate controlled, and this too is not outside the boundaries of what is known to us, or how could we heal?  What else after all is shape-shifting?  We may indeed posit that we choose mortality.”  Sarat realized why she was in lecture mode.  “That Kaminua and Asyrion reached a place where they were capable of making that choice is indeed not wholly outside the bounds of possibility. However, we have been told stories – fed a lot of hooey, as you prefer, that – deliberately? – counter that possibility.  She died of that which Fidub could not heal and he grew old and grief-stricken.”
“I love you,” said Sarat.
She smiled benignly.
“But it is not only to say that, not only to say that the physical form must be generated by the essence.  It is to make profoundly – “ Again she grinned.  “ – profoundly rather than mildly dubious statements about the nature of life and death and time.  And will.  What precisely is it to say? It is to say that the essence after they died was capable of choosing to generate a permanent non-changing physicality and health.  Or is it?  Is it perhaps to say that at some moment, say at the middle age they appear to chosen for eternity, they decided to exchange normal life for that eternity.  I know little of the Denzines.  I may be about to learn a whole lot more.  Principally I refer you to the load of hooey.  If Kaminua had knowledge that they would one day be together for ever, why was he grief-stricken.  I would ask also how Asyrion at middle age could have made that choice when history – for what history is worth – records that she died young, whether or not of ‘that Fidub could not heal’.  A further possibility is of course that they were not Kaminua and Asyrion but Denzine shape-shifters.”
“Baz tried,” said Sarat.  “Baz and Hass.  The conclusion was that if they were not real then the falsity was impenetrable.”
“They’d have to be real good,” said Dill.  “Lastly, and lastly is perhaps most interesting of all, because it applies to the Jumesit, the reality of the phenomena of which is least in doubt, it seems to me the walls of time do not fade when our ancestors were doing anything interesting.  No window is opened onto Narulis’ councils of state.  We do not see Susheela fleeing with her son. I accept of course that had they resolved the matter of Kadun we should not be having this conversation but one would have thought they had either perception or experience to impart. I do not know what to make of that.”
“It may be,” said Sarat.  “No.  Yes!  Possibly.  Can we possibly be shaping that trip?  This is my experience and others may counter it.  We’ve become so used to the – phenomenon we don’t instantly report Susheela brushing her hair!  I have noted that Narulis does not drop in when I’m working.  Oh of course!  It’s only when we switch off our conscious minds that we can see – “
“Oh of course!  It’s there all the time.  All times are now.”
“That is a little dizzying,”: said Sarat.
“A little.  The other thing is that it would seem that of all the emperors only Narulis and Jaizal actually lived in the place.”
“I can’t think why.  Fortuitous.”
 “Fortuitous also that you and Narulis should be taking a break at the same time. Nor do we apparently perceive the day to day work of the palace, the staff, the cooks, the soldiers, the servants.”
“Tell you in a minute,” said Sarat.  “If we go back to the original – proposition – that their existence is their own time is tenable, then  - they are trying to break through to our time.  Is that conceivable?  To the time when something happens which might not have happened yet which happens to be our time?  We know party-tricks take a considerable amount of energy and that particular trick – maybe they never get down to the nitty-gritty because they can’t make the final leap.”
“I like it.  I am not sure I believe a word of it, but I like it!  And depart because it hasn’t happened yet?”
“They were literate!” said Sarat with some irritation.  “If I were just capable of passing through time to convey something to my successors, should I not write it down beforehand and hand it over?”
Dill pealed with laughter.
“Suppose  two – phenomena are indeed the case.  A frieze is not I trust making a frenzied effort to communicate with the future. People are.”
“The Bronzes are a bit more than a mere frieze.  The Bronzes are a frieze which is alive.  It’s a battle scene, warriors in chariots, chargers, and sometimes they laugh at us.  If you wanted to communicate with another time, wouldn’t you make your push where the walls of time were known to be thin? There’s something else.  In purely human terms.  They may not know exactly what they’re doing any more than we do.”
“Or of course,” said Dill, “they might not want to be here at all but end up here because the walls of time etc.”
Sarat burst out laughing.
“At which point they exchange a few commonplaces to be polite and retire to their own time thinking, oh shit, failed again!”
Dill had wrinkled her brow.
“These Bronzes then parallel Kaminua and Asyrion?  They are a moment frozen in time – presumably the battle never ends – and they do not accord with our physics?  Have you assayed them?”
Sarat was still grinning.
“Risk a spear in the ribs…The Star tried to seduce me. I don’t think I told you that.”
“In novels concerning time-travel,” said Dill after a moment, “a big thing is generally made of not changing the past.”
“My point exactly!” said Sarat enthusiastically.  He made wide eyes.  “Suppose you got pregnant!”
“We must talk about that.  She – accepted your argument?”
“She accept my polite decline!”
“I must confess I have never wholly been at one with that point about not changing the past.  It always strikes me as somewhat deterministic – except of course in this case when it is crucial to my well-being!  That is because if the past is co-existent, the past is also now and indeed do we not repeat that like some kind of mantra. 
“As fixed points go,” said Sarat, “it’s a dodo.”
“That – I think – is my point.  If we say they wish to communicate with a particular future, then equally that future – any particular future – our now – must be co-existent with their past.  We can therefore drive ourselves mad thinking that possible futures also are co-existent: they arrive here but it is the wrong future!  What is it you would like them to tell you?:”
“The chair.  Where. When.  How.  You realize we have no proof  she was ever here!”
“About that,” said Dill, “I have theories.  The first emperor and the last (but one)!  You know of course there are stories, Jaizal must have the throne!”  Sarat nodded.  “You know that when you arrived here there was a replica and not a modern one.  And of course you know that Van-senok is implicated in a fashion we have yet to determine.”
But it is long over, thought Sarat.  What - ?
“When each of us sat – hang on. I’m thinking about five things at once.  The uppermost is probably Mel knows.  I don’t mean – he’s an anthropologist.  He must have studied earthpower academically.  Venga’s trip included Behna laughing and saying, but it is long over!  The subject of which was apparently I in wolverine mode on the chair.  Damn!  There’s something there.”  He closed his eyes.  “Space-rock.  Is rock.  Cantilip.  Kai.  What’s in a word?  Earthpower in Harn has nothing to do with earthpower in Kadun.  The – creed of earthpower in VS derives from that damn’ meteorite.”
“That you do not know formed the lake!”
“That’s the one. And Cantilip knows that.  Or guesses.  They came from Sug.  There hasn’t been time.  People haven’t been around for long enough.  Nor do or did I believe Fidub could not heal.  Have you seen me glowing lately?  OK, let’s count the ifs.  If and only if there was indeed a meteorite and if the throne was made of rock from it, then its fall pre-dated Narulis.  If it was something we might identify as radioactive, bearing in mind its physics might be different, then, nonetheless, that – those – emissions – oh.  What you just said.  Something Cho wondered.  Narulis was given a kitten and found it grew into a sabre-tooth the size of a house so he regretfully gave it away to a good home.”
“But  look at her now, placid as a new-born kitten!  Fidub was her home.  Or if you prefer somewhere a few million light-years away.”
“Lending incredibly tenuous support to the meteorite at the bottom of the lake!  Why C-R is a perfectly rational question to which no-one appears to have an answer.  If you really wanted to hide her, you could go much deeper into the trees, not build her a little house. I’m trying to remember what I said in that casual way one says things apparently of purely academic interest!  That we’d assumed peace reigned and Fidub made Narulis a present.  Maybe chaos reigned and they made him a weapon.”
“The Singing Isles,” said Dill.  “I am thinking something that blows my head off.”
They looked at each other.
“The culture of Fidub is earthpower?”
“Now,” said Sarat brightly, “if we just explain how a chair made of incarnate earthpower constitutes a weapon against the Cult we’ve cracked it.” 
“But she must do,” said Dill.  “She is independent of time.”
“How,” repeated Sarat.  Dill was shaking with laughter.  “What’s so funny?”
“I am thinking of Mitch and the Fidubi scam.”
 
“The Great Divide,” said Hass, “is for many reasons such an obvious name.”
“One never thinks it may be symbolic of a greater truth!”
“Did they have plumbing then?” asked Dill..
“Fidub had plumbing.”
“Ah, yes, Fidub,” said Sarat dreamily.  “Theory – Notion – Notion 127 suggests the cataclysm threw Fidub up from the ocean-bed.”
“Meaning the centre of the crater may be somewhere in the middle of the ocean.”
“Which.”
“Which makes it a little hard,” said Dill, “for irtubi to have been scurrying around collecting pieces of space rock.”
“Shards,” said Hass and Sarat at virtually the same time. 
“Bits broke off?” said Dill.
“Why shouldn’t they?” asked Sarat.
“If you’d come light-years through space-time, wouldn’t you be feeling fragile?”
“Earthpower.  Rock-power!  The power of this earth?”
“The problem with that being Harn.”
Dill giggled.
“This empire rocks!  Suppose there is confusion, conflation, isn’t that a good word, of the two?”
“Suppose it was more like a shower,” said Sarat.
“I like it,” said Dill after a minute.  “Not that I’m sure it fits or anything!”
 
“Done for dumping,” muttered Sarat. 
Sarat’s desire to test a hypothesis by putting the chair in the field of flowers was restrained by not wanting anyone to see him do it.  
“There will be a prize,” suggested Dill, “for the most convoluted but plausible story anyone can come up with to seal off the field.”
“Why not sort of tell the truth?” suggested Venga.  “A radioactive meteorite!  A very, very old one,” he added hastily. “Mass panic!  One cannot be too careful.”
“He has led a sheltered life,” said Hass.
“Space rocks,” said Dill, “are like big bucks, man.”
“You mean there’s money in this?” asked Sarat.  “I don’t see a connection.”
“When did you last monitor the meteorite market!”
“I really don’t see a connection!  This is about concealment.”
“Unless it’s about possession,” said Hass.  “If the Cult can use this whatever – and if it knows there are bits of it around – “
“It’s had 600 years to dig up Azt!”
“You remember the throne guards a deeper mystery.”
“How could we forget.”
“Suppose the five-headed monster is on our side!  I mean, suppose it guards whatever.  You know,” he added brightly, “like the werewolves.”
“What happens to the bad guys?” asked Hass.
“Frightened to death,” said Sarat.  He paused. “What I think is we’re going to go on with this until we prove ourselves wrong.  If  we prove ourselves wrong, we’ll have a lot more information to  go on.  Does that make sense?”
“We might,” said Dill, “even have some facts!”
“Optimism is a wonderful thing.”
 “Why,” asked Sarat, “are the supposed tombs of Kaminua and Asyrion in an underground cavern in Ciletij?”
“Been there, done that,” said Venga.  “I didn’t mean – I meant, it wasn’t Ciletij when they – “
“Didn’t die,” finished Hass.
“What,” asked Sarat, “does Cantilip know about the crowns?”
Venga sighed.
“Meaning what do I know?  Very little.  What Van-senok knows…”
“Kai,” recalled Sarat, “is – satisfied whatever Cantilip and Mel are doing is to do with Zani.”
“Somewhat surprising, therefore,” said Hass.
“Indeed.”
“There is of course no absolute binding reason why Zani should not have – could not have – “
“If you were Cantilip – or indeed if you were Mel – might you not describe having discovered Zani roamed around Van-senok as a piece of different puzzle?”
“In your own time,” said Dill.
Sarat turned to her.
“I am truly sorry. “  He made it sound as though he was confessing to murder.  Then he laughed.  “You didn’t grow up in Zur.  Give us a minute on egg-shells.”
“Come, hadin, come, come not alone, come hadin, come?” asked Dill
“There are of course two versions,” sighed Hass.  “School-books and the other.”
“So is there a third?” asked Dill.
“Fourth, fifth, tenth?  Zani became King of Dabida in the year the empire fell apart.”
Hass laughed suddenly
“But the shattering of the empire was not a single instant in time like dropping a cup from an upstairs window.  In other words what chiefly reigned was chaos.”
“But always Fidub,” objected Venga.
“Ah, the great chroniclers,” said Sarat.
“Suppose,” said Venga, “we start from the proposition that the only cats who know what went down are those who were there.  We might then wonder what they told the folks back in Maona-pri.  If ‘there’ was Van-senok, of course.
“We know – we think we know – we might know – Zani didn’t want the Anile throne.  Literally.  Which suggests he sat on it.  Where was it?:
“Or perhaps he didn’t want the crown?” suggested Venga half-jokingly.
“When someone reaches the top of the heap – unless he’s Anile Emperor, of course.  In Dabida, in Fidub, to become Prime Minister – or King – one is informed of certain things.  There are therefore persons who know these things already.”
“When these things are,” said Sarat.
“Exactly,” said Hass.  “When these things are contingency plans in the event of invasion or natural disaster.  When they are other kinds of information, it may be that the passage of time has mangled them in transmission, even if the original version were correct.”
“Volunteer requested,” murmured Sarat grinning.  “I wondered how many days’ hard riding from the Great Gates to Van-senok and that at least we can determine.”
“My understanding,” said Dill, “is that as history measures these things, two weeks out of Zani’s life would not have appeared significant.”
“Before?” asked Hass.  “This was before?  We know – think we know – Jaizal was defeated and Zani withdrew to the south.  Peculiar, certainly, and also very public.  Zani therefore – agreed to defeating Jaizal and already knew he had no interest in the Anile throne. Jaizal’s grip on the empire was – I was going to say tenuous but I think in Var-sega’ in Van-senok non-existent.  There was no empire, only a shell, an entity in people’s minds.”
“An agreement,” said Dill slowly, “an agreement with Var-sega’ with Van-senok that no attempt would be made to maintain the illusion.”
“The first plotter,” said Hass.  “No wonder we’re so good at it.”
“Then of course there’s Carlin,” said Venga.
“Most certainly there is Carlin,” said Sarat, “Carlin which so admirably failed to notice being crossed by an army of invasion.”
“Where have I heard that before?” murmured Venga.
“Oh no, no, no, no,” said Sarat.  “The deal was that he’d save them the trouble.  Of having to fight for their independence.”
“Certainly,” said Hass, “as far as the Houses were concerned, the empire had outlived its purpose.”
“I shall dwell on that,” said Sarat. “When I’m having a bad day, it will lift my spirits.”
“Where have I heard that before?” murmured Venga. “Save them the trouble of having to actually do something.”
 
 
 
“The national mythology,” said Venga. “A simple lad, our Zani, bright, certainly, brave, certainly, but not a – complex character.”
“Ah,” said Dill.  “I wondered where the egg-shells were.”
“I might also observe,” continued Sarat, “that he was probably exceptionally well briefed. To put it another way, PANTHER knew what was really going down in Kadun.”
Dill said: “It really nagged at Mom and Dad.  Why PANTHER allowed the empire to collapse.  If PANTHER were all they are cracked up to be and PANTHER are all they are cracked up to be.”
“Were they?” asked Sarat suddenly, emphasizing the ‘were’.  “Suppose there was something new, something PANTHER couldn’t handle and learned how to handle but by then history had taken over?”
“No Anile heir, no you,” said Dill.
“I hope!”
“That would be a turn-up.”
“He was a kid,” said Venga.  “Probably thought he wouldn’t have a hope.  I mean a real kid, about seven!”
“I think,” said Dill, “we may be – satisfied that the Houses were not hanging on for him to reach maturity.”
“We know that,” said Sarat, “as much as we know anything.  Fidub brought the goodies to defeat the Cult.  If Fidub could not – could and could not – defeat the Cult, then it was business as usual.  Only when All-Kadun became a political entity was there any point.”
“The same point,” said Hass.
:”Oh yes,” said Sarat.  “Mitch and I are loose cannons.”
“I take that point,” said Dill, “but it is surely more complex than that.  There was the pressing need for modernization, for dragging Kadun into line with the rest of the continent.”
“Vastly easier if someone else does all the work.”
 “Someone or ones cleaned out Azt.  Someone or ones killed Jaizal. Someone or ones for most of 600 years kept the Cult down.  I think for the moment we shall leave it open who.  An open mind!”
“Let us start with what we know!” said Venga enthusiastically.
“Who we know,” corrected Sarat.  “Kai.”
It took them a moment to catch on.
“Mel could not have known,” said Hass.
“Known what?”
“Let us take this slowly.  Before he met Cantilip, Mel had a – liaison with Estanzia Morsen’s daughter and would-be Chief Minister of Harn whose – academic enthusiasm is the defeat of the Cult in Harn.”
“Who possibly knows everything there is to know about how Harn became a democracy and possibly has been fed an alternative history like the rest of us.”
“And – possibly – told Mel something neither of them thought remotely significant at the time?”
“Eight years later – “
“Oh no, no, no, more like eight months.”
 “And who else knows about the history of Harn?  Why, Mel’s friend Kyse.”
“Whom we all adore.”
“We all adore Kai.  It remains a – curiosity.”
Hass sighed.
“My sons have paired with irtubi!  They wish to restore the Anile throne!  I know Tar is super-cool.  Couldn’t he have pretended to be surprised?  I am remembering – when we thought Bal should urgently get to know and love us, we told him Fidub wants them screwed and we’re the screw-drivers.  If Mel knew anything before he went to the City, Tar told him.  I remember also – the – urgency with which he wished Tar to know about Cantilip.”
“And things,” said Sarat.
“Certainly things!”
“When we are children,” said Dill, “when we are young people, we go to school.”  She smiled.  “Occasionally.  If we are good students, we learn history.  I liked history.  Only – “ The smile grew broader.  “They have us over a barrel because we are just starting our journey into the other matter when we are just finishing our schooling and unless we investigate a particular aspect most extraordinarily thoroughly we not perceive that the two histories do not always tell the same story.  In this case there are three histories.”  She looked around.  “You are listening intently.  That is good.”
Venga grinned.
“Dare I ask it!”
“Do I consciously imitate Mitch?  Half and half.  I enjoy imitating Mitch. We learn that the fall of High Harn was an on-going process.  We learn that initially the extremity, the bestiality of the Cult sparked rebellion among its very adepts who nonetheless retained some spark of humanity and curtailed its more obscene practices.  And those two histories mesh for assuredly only adepts of some kind could withstand. We learn further, hard though it is to believe, that the City is the core of an ancient civilization on the eastern seaboard, far from High Harn, and that when their more local practices had been reined in, High Harn sought not exactly empire but dominion and spread eastwards and there they were stopped.  What does this spell?”
“D-E-N-Z – “
“You are correct.”
“PANTHER learned from the Denzines?”
Dill giggled.
“You are probably correct.  Mitch refers to my education as being carted about the continent.  That should be continents, of course.  Until the modern age, the Age of Communication, Var-segan was as remote from Azt as from the City, indeed as humans measure distance the City is closer, and we are sea-faring people.  I do not know that a piece of water was endowed with any great significance.  If you say it was possible to drown in storms, I do not know that there was any greater risk of that than of having one’s throat cut or worse riding to Azt. You will recall I ended up in Zur but by far the majority of my schooling was in the City or in Var-segan.
“One way traffic not,” suggested Sarat.
“Harni are not unfamiliar with Var-sega’.  But do we not see something plain bizarre?”
“Such as why you are approaching this in a roundabout fashion?” asked Venga.
“I merely assess the facts.”
“When are we talking about?” asked Sarat.
She looked at him approvingly.
“And what is missing from this history?”
“Earthpower.  If this is Cantilip’s jig-saw, I can only empathize”
 “The City, the City-state it governed, did not extend the length of the coast.  The knowledge there was land on the other side of the water we may assume did.”
“So the Cult arrived in Kadun and again spread east, north and east.  If we plot their course, we observe three things.  1) they stayed north of the Great Divide, 2) they stayed west of at least that part of Carlin in which a certain field is to be found, 3) there was a multitude of contact between Carlin and Fidub along that eastern seaboard, as at least one of us undoubtedly knows. Azt in those times was itself some kind of a city-state, ruling a surrounding territory the borders of which were ill-defined.  It did not, however, represent any notable attempt at civilization and so we may imagine the Cult found it fertile soil.”
“Has anyone got a map?” asked Venga.  “I try to visualize the ancient world.  A few centres of trade, of arts and a great deal of almost nothing in between.”
“In my bag,” said Dill.  “Netbook not aged parchment!”
“Quicker to draw it,” said Sarat.  “It needs to be blank.”
“Nearly blank,” said Hass.
Sarat reached into the drawer of the coffee-table and produced a piece of letterhead.
“How appropriate…:”  He turned it over. 
“OK.  Spheres of influence.”
“Or we could just talk to Fugitry,” said Hass.
Sarat grinned.
“I want answers.  Now.  Has anyone ever tried that?”
“Anyone,” said Venga, “is not the Anile emperor.”
“Of course,” said Hass, “:if they wanted us to know, they could have told us.”
“Denzine involvement in Van-senok, that’s our theme?”
“The Denzines put her in Van-senok?”
“Let’s take this slowly.  The convulsions in Kadun came to the attention of our little friends across the water.”
“Back a step.  If earthpower defeated the Cult in the west, then there was no need for Narulis, therefore the Denzines defeated the Cult in the west.  Discuss.  Or of course there was no need for Narulis.”
“I strive,” said Sarat, “to be kind, to be generous.  Kindness and generosity dictate that I believe that no-one knows the full story, only all the stories have not been put together. Oh yeah.”
“I have never seen a good moment to introduce this into the dialogue,” said Dill.  ‘The meaning of ‘anile’.
Venga chortled.
“But it sounds so good!  It was the name given Narulis by the Cult and it stuck.”
“No smoke without fire?” suggested Hass.
“An insinuation the real work was done by the Denzines?”
“I should think more subtle,:” said Sarat.  “Not flattering, but more subtle.  Narulis did the spade-work.  The Denzines had the understanding.”
He ferreted in the drawer for a pen and to his surprise emerged clutching a fountain-pen.  “So this is where I inscribe decrees?”  He uncapped it and tried it out.  It worked, so he sketched out a couple of continents. 
“OK.  Deel, the site of High Harn.  Enbahaluk over there somewhere.  Simaluk down below….”
“Mel talked to Fugitry,” sighed Hass.  “Fugitry told him to remember the Mossai Wars.”
Dill smirked.
“Mom would be real proud of me.  The Mossai Wars  were a struggle between two cousins, whose names it will astonish you were Enbah and Sima for governance of a single territory, ending in the division we see today.”  She stopped suddenly.
“Oh dear,” said Venga.
“I do not envisage war with Dabida,” said Sarat drily.
“You know they talk in metaphors,” said Hass.  “Suppose the ‘single territory’, metaphorically speaking, is Van-senok.”  He paused.  “Are we avoiding saying we keep coming back to Mel?”
“And the ‘governance’ is – that’s absurd!  No-one wants to – eradicate earthpower.  Even if that were possible.”
 “Metaphor, metaphor, metaphor. The indigenous culture of Kadun.  Suppose we’ve got a few things wrong.  The Anile Court turned rotten.  That wasn’t because – “  He burst out laughing.  “Could have been something in the drinking-water, could indeed.  But if you are earthpower watching the whole thing go down the tubes, you think the flaw is in Fidub   But the culture of Fidub is earthpower.”
The guys stared.
“Worked that out ages ago,” yawned Dill.  “It is my thinking that we in Kadun should launch our own space programme,  Earthpower I, Earthpower 2, Earthpower 3, in order to make certain people sweat a little, for assuredly there appear to be three distinct bodies of thought under the same name, and I should say also there is deliberate attempt to confuse the three. . I and 2 both originate in the idea of a creator or creatrice.  Mark I holds that the power of the earth is limitless, being that which pushes up mountains and creates rivers and that that is the physical manifestation of the power of a creator distinct from the earth itself, which or whom assuredly no human can constrain.  Mark 2 often appears in what is at least in appearance a trivialized, a castrated – a most inappropriate word! – form.  In this version it is the earth that is the creatrice – the goddess – and the sentience of the earth gives life to that which we more normally consider as living.  As I say, the trivialized form may appear as look at all the pretty flowers.  In your Singing Isles – hence I may say Fidub’s insufferably high opinion of herself – “ Venga pretended to smother a grin and Hass murmured something about disassociating oneself.  “ – the case is different.  The story is, is it not, that Fidub has kept her people sufficiently elevated in consciousness not to produce a human smog that crushes the music from the singing earth – “
Sarat might have been heard to mutter something about nobody believes exactly that.
“I have been to Fidub!  I cannot doubt the music.  I can, however, as can everyone with half a brain, doubt the explanation.  Or else this planet is even more extraordinary, Exhibit A of course being Jaaba Sen..  Concerning the emanations from the soil of Fidub I grant you and I have read widely on this matter that no-one else has a better explanation, not least of the phenomenon, grudgingly attested to throughout known history, that the bad guys do not feel comfortable in or perhaps on is a better word the Isles, their feet hurt.  What might seem a simple medical condition vanishes when they catch the ferry.  There are for the moment – I may think of more – two things to be said about this phenomenon.   One is that this group of islands is surely geologically odd – yes, I am aware that geophysicists have failed to detect any oddity.  The other is the take on the nature of the earth, which is here not all-powerful but subject to the life that inhabits it.  Here the earth is vulnerable,but the vulnerability is not – NoZone notwithstanding – vulnerability to pollutants but vulnerability to the emanations of the human mind and this is the root of the concept of the Whole..    This is a fundamental difference and interesting!  In Mark One and Mark Two the human consciousness aligns itself with the power of the earth If you ask what older adepts of earthpower could do to defend themselves against the Cult – that defence I gather that Cantilip side-steps by appearing in dryad form – you really do not want to know.   If you do want to know, they entered their minds and conveyed the experience of being eaten alive, together with being severely mauled, usually by bears. – “
“Do look at all the pretty flowers,” murmured Hass.
“Among, therefore, the truckloads of hooey we are being fed is the concept earthpower could not defend Kadun – among, therefore, the histories we re-assess is precisely what Narulis achieved in Kadun.”
:”One feels quite faint,” said Venga.
“The power harnessed,: contributed Hass, “was – therefore – the power of the earth.”
“Just so and that power does not have a – morality attached.  As we know non-human animals are not kind to their prey, they do not have a code of humane slaughter.”
“Into this tripped Fidub,” said Sarat.  “So Fidub said the power of the universe is love – and earthpower laughed in her face?”
“We have to ask why this power is called love. 
Sarat here. Our chief narratrix insists I finish this off. What is it you wish to know? I can take being interviewed, truly I can, extensive experience thereof. No, no, she coaxes, just write it like it was. All of it? I ask in mock-horror (what’s mock about it?) I think I’ve done a reasonable job, she says. There are bits you need to do.
 
There are now two main areas they wish – they? Fal and Kai! The undoubted ringleaders here. Two areas they wish me to explore. One is of course such resolution as was achieved of this Matter of Kadun. The other is my experience at the retreat on the Leolisle. Oh, and how they overlap and probably one or two other things. An editor is a terrible thing.
 
Other gaps in the narrative that only I could relate I have of course filled in already. In truth we cheat: what you have read so far has been edited for accuracy by all of us.
 
It was not long after Maya and I set up house in Zur. The first thing we’d plotted was how to hack our life together. We were under no illusions about how desperately we needed the Press. Consequently there could be almost nothing we should not have been happy for the world to know. That which preferably did not make a special issue of Glitz they covered at the retreat. Should that be we shall cover? Furniture and I appear to have no particular rapport, with the obvious exception, and we never did have much. A magnificent dining-table was given us by Cho, tongue very much in cheek, and we grasped that we needed a couple of sofas in order that our dinner guests didn’t have to sit on the floor afterwards, but the only rooms we were interested in were our bedroom and the HQ of Plotters Central, which ran the width of the top floor and which looked far more like an Ops Room than anything domestic. We had breakfast and most other meals in our large ultra-modern smoked glass kitchen and so one morning when we’d tumbled down to grope for the orange juice was lying on the table The Letter with BY HAND in the top left-hand corner of the heavy-duty water-marked envelope, in the sort of black ink that’s so impenetrable you could drown in it. I can probably remember it off by heart, some of it, anyway. We read it often enough, presumably in the hope that would reveal the message in invisible ink that told us what it meant. It was formal but friendly. Dear Sarat, I gather you have somewhat distinctive ambitions. I am therefore inviting you to spend some time with us on the Leolisle to complete your education. As I am sure you know, we taught Narulis. Clearly for your own safety you cannot be permitted to enter Kadun otherwise…
 
Clearly. Naturally invoking the question, oh right, how are you going to stop me? Naturally, a lot of things. I had no plans to fall defenceless into the hands of the Cult but no-one was more aware than I that walking to Kadun wasn’t going to be tomorrow. Surely the fancy stuff could wait. For the moment we had important practical considerations, such as how to start. Let us be positive. I am being taken seriously.
 
Baz grinned. Job interview. More a selection board, said Paw. Aptitude testing. Psychometrics, said Baz. Maya and I looked at each other. Our lightning brains…As they are sure I know. I hadn’t known. Suggesting the job is in their remit? Baz shrugged. Major corporations employ outside agencies.
“In this case,” I said, “the ‘major corporation’ looks like my family.”
“The major corporation,” said Maya, “is PANTHER?”
Baz beamed.
“I take it your lips are sealed,” I said
“Think on your feet and keep your cool,” said Paw, which I could have worked out for myself.
“You remember,” said Baz, he really said – the critical value of children’s annuals to the Anile throne – “those quiz-books you had as kids. A vast range of usually useless general knowledge. What was the capital of the province of Fantigri now known as Maltic when it was an independent state?”
”Don’t think in tram-lines?”
“He’s renowned for it,” said Maya. “What about me?”
“That’s different,” said Baz.
“If that is not the most sexist remark of the millennium – “
“And it is not. I don’t recall your going to Pietri and claiming the Anile throne.”
She giggled. “Well, not exactly.” See below.
 
We wondered how to reply and sorrowfully decided that being coolly witty could wait until we knew what we were being coolly witty about. None of the stuff that ten years down the road would have seemed screamingly obvious occurred to us. Was I fit for the inner and esoteric aspects of being Anile emperor? Gee, guys, it’s a learning-curve. A PR vehicle, quite so. As far as I was concerned, Anile emperor was shorthand for the elected democratic government that would replace it.
 
Was I fit for the outer and exoteric aspects of being Anile emperor? I didn’t think I had any major character flaws – except of course possibly insanity. Looking at the thing from the outside, I had to accept that it might look off the wall. I was going to have to marshal my arguments, check my facts. What I knew was that I didn’t yet have the facts. Ah, but I knew the capital of Maltic. I could wow people who knew a great deal more about Kadun than I did with that one.
 
So long as I don’t come over as over-confident….
 
Insofar as there was anything resembling a clue in the letter, it was, I decided, the reference to Narulis. I was not yet ready for the public library to reveal that Sarat had taken out every book on Narulis he could lay his hands on, but fortunately Cho and Tar have extensive private libraries and these were somewhat more revealing than Great Figures of History: Narulis. Oh I see, I thought after a while. I wasn’t exactly sure what I saw. Narulis. Cult. PANTHER. Exactly what is the end of the piece of string? I tried it out on B and P.
 
Narulis dealt with the Cult and so became hero of the hour. No-one in Kadun is dealing with the Cult. Make that demolishing. First question, why? But anyhow Kadun needs the south to get rid of the Cult. I actually don’t think I get this. It might be about my being a convenient figurehead, the guy who deals with the drains, while PANTHER actually take over Kadun.
 
“Extreme justification is required,” said Baz piously, “for interference in the infrastructure of a sovereign state.”
“Being invited in is better,” said Paw.
Rather unfairly I glared at them.
“The right track?”
“There are many tracks,” said Paw. “Some of them are left by Kadun PANTHER.”
“It doesn’t make sense! Is that the question?”
They smiled infuriatingly.
“Why doesn’t PANTHER just deal with the Cult and then - ?”
“You could be a country vet,” said Baz enthusiastically.
“There are two questions,” I said. “102? Why in the last 600 years has Kadun not developed, not – learned to defend herself?”
Marshal my facts. What facts?
“If you tell me PANTHER can’t corner Krarlik and his – acolytes and deal with them, I don’t believe that.”
“Who said that?”
“Then what happens?”
Oh.
“Civil war. That’s worse?”
“Relatively few people are actually dying.”
“Or - nothing happens. The power is gone but the politics are the same. Then civil war, inevitably in the end civil war because Kadun has to move on, the modern world is here?”
“Keep going.”
“Factions. CLIK, capital, democracy, totalitarianism, the CCD, the Army. And the Houses.”
The CCD was and is (but Dill’s working on it) the Coalition of Conservative Democrats. They want universal suffrage, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, a living-wage and the rule of heterosexual men.
“You are a rather neat solution to a lot of problems.”
“Then why isn’t Cho in Azt!”
“He’s not that good-looking?”
“Shy, retiring, no understanding of the media.
“You’ve jumped over it,” said Baz
“What? Oh. They – they didn’t think they needed help. Now they do. I’m a brash Fidubi brat whose socio-economic politics are not – necessarily abhorrent. They see it works in Dabida. Then it’s the other way round. I need them.”
“Broadly,” said Paw, “we think the two cancel each other out.”
“Until I bankrupt them?”
“That is unlikely. Conspicuous consumption has rarely been part of the menu. What they have is often priceless if not beyond price having been given to them by Narulis. The Pika.”
“What’s the Pika?”
“Sarat!”
I had been to all the major museums and art galleries, but Cho had never given me a coffee-table book entitled The Treasures of Var-Segan. Remiss of him.
“What you seem to be telling me is the – power-brokers are the Houses. But their power comes from land and if they don’t have the land. The industrialists, the bankers. You can’t tell me they’re separate, any more than – in my family. There must be investments.”
“Why has there been no peasants’ revolt, no successful one, anyway, no popular uprising?”
“Because of the game. That’s what Mel calls Carlin. The contract.”
“It’s been called hi-tech feudalism. They have consumer goods. They are not poor by anyone’s standards. The poverty is in the cities – and the less – maintained areas of the countryside. The important thing to understand is these are five going on three nations. Kadun nationalism comes from the government in Azt. If you ask the guy next to you in the bus-queue where he comes from, he’s going to say Carlin or wherever. He’s not going to say he’s a proud citizen of the Republic of Kadun. He might be persuaded to say he’s a proud citizen of the Anile empire.”
“It is not incidental that the worst poverty is not in Carlin, Van-senok or Var-segan but you won’t go far wrong so long as you grasp these are nations, they have their good guys and their bad guys, their black-spots and their gems, and do or not have a prevailing ethos which might broadly be described as civilization.”
“They can read,” said Baz. “They know about the Law of Limited Returns.”
The LLR is a Dabidan gem which limits the duration for which a landlord can demand rent. It slays the CLIK guys.
“OK, what the tenants get isn’t – quantifiable. It’s an assurance of a measure of – civilization. If you are in deep shit nine you go to the House. All that’s pretty basic if you live in the village. Suppose you work on an industrial estate. Or is that why Kadun nationalism? They want to break the link?”
“Not bad for a beginner. Yes, in a word. The same and different. Lost your job, can’t pay the rent, out on the street, three kids under ten. There’s unemployment pay even in Kadun, but it’s crap. The emperor’s stewards will not let you starve or die of exposure. That’s the contract. Never ever under-estimate it. It’s why they’re still there.”
“Did you just rap my knuckles?”
“Maybe. Think on. Remember you live in a slum.”
“Or I did until I was on the street. So I’m really going to canter up to the House.”
“Even if it occurred to you, you couldn’t afford it.”
“Half the people around me are in nearly as bad a state. Half don’t care…I think I heard it at dinner once. Social workers to the Anile throne!”
“You got it. Where there are rats there are cats. Kadun PANTHER prowl the industrial heartlands – could think of a better word. Where being sensible and savvy is enough they’re sensible and savvy. When major help is needed, they get that. If they’re not arrested, of course. Of course it’s not fool-proof, there aren’t anything like enough of them. But it spreads a thin skein – I’m getting poetic – the length and breadth of Kadun. If you think of the strands in the skein as a rope thrown to a drowning man – it makes it easier to find a rope, more likely someone will know someone who knows someone.”
“What is in it for Azt to have people starving? But I think. With a democratic state, with a civilized state, the Houses wouldn’t have that responsibility any more. Are you saying/could it be said it’s not a service provided free of charge?”
“Don’t think that would go down at all well. You could say every single carlini has a vested interest in the continued existence of the House. Unless and until they are convinced there is a viable alternate source of – safety is probably the best word, moral and physical.”
 
“OK. I – I’ve been murdered. I’m drawing my last breath. I think I should really hate for that to happen before I’ve achieved something.”
They laughed. Callous, I called it.
“And even then?”
“I – I could be living to a ripe old age on the Leolisle.”
“So?”
“So am I completely nuts? If it was my country…If it was my country it wouldn’t be an issue. That’s back to one of my very first thoughts. Someone has to act. I can. It would be wrong not to. Someone has to do something effective not just bleat. Unfortunately I can’t not end up Anile emperor. Well I could, but I’d spend more time avoiding being Anile emperor, denying that I wanted the Anile throne, than I should being – effective. D’you see? I’m not a back-room boy. Anile heir takes lead! Of course he’s just a dynamic, public-spirited, Fidubi lad. Why is anyone listening? Not because I’m a kid from Maona-pri. The moment I shoot my mouth off about Kadun all anyone will see is Anile heir. So I’ll use it. Do I want to be Anile emperor? What does it mean? Anile emperor, not ‘do I want’. It’ll mean what I choose to make it mean. Brash Fidubi brat who doesn’t think people should be tortured! What it means to other people is their problem. It means something fundamental in terms of Narulis’ values to me. That’s the link with history. I’ll use it – ruthlessly in terms of whatever other people want to think it means. I reckon that’s the upside. Anile emperor means what I decide it means. Something else. I don’t suppose Zani thought I want to be King of Dabida, king of somewhere that didn’t even exist as an entity. At least I have a clear idea where this leads and where I don’t want to go.”
“Just sifting through that lot,” said Baz. “What does ‘whatever other people want to think it means’ mean?”
“Did I say that? It means – be damned to what other people expect me to be. In terms of class, in terms of history, in terms of politics. It means what Dad said. Staying Sarat. Who he? I haven’t finished with that one yet, but at least I’ve started. Do I want to be Anile emperor? Why do I want to be Anile emperor? The answer to the first half depends on what I mean – what the questioner means too – by Anile emperor. At any rate the question depends. I think what I’m trying to say is whether or not it sounds completely insane to someone depends on what they think it means – what they think it means to me – but - there’s a sense in which the question is meaningless. Do I want to be? I am. Except there’s the – ravine between being Anile heir and being Anile emperor. In practical terms. Out in the real world. But also in the real world – I am Sarat. What Anile emperor is is what I am. This tends to make my head hurt. I don’t see myself as doing anything, as wanting to do anything, that isn’t Sarat, who – theoretically – could be the next president of Fidub. Am I being unsubtle here? If I really want to influence world affairs. Truly, democratic leaders have far more opportunity to go off the rails! I’m surrounded by a rather thick – skein, the large number of people – I think we could start with Mum and Dad. I am assuming the absolute power to do what a lot of people want done. They have to be irtubi, that’s the point. I think I could quite readily be sent packing, hopefully while still breathing. If irtubi don’t want what’s on offer, I’m not going to get across the border. Sarat Anonymous from M-P could shout from the roof-tops and get nowhere – nowhere further than Dabida. Being Anile heir means the outcome can be different but it’s not I’m ‘also’ Anile heir. Being Anile heir is part of being Sarat, can’t not be.”
“Whew!” said Baz
“Any good?” I asked.
“You’ll get there,” allowed Paw.
“Azt, you mean? I am Anile heir. I can’t not do anything and still be me. There’s just one problem. You grow up with stuff and because it’s not particularly relevant you don’t necessarily think about it. Why am I Anile heir?”
They howled.
“Your father, the emperor?”
“My father, the emperor. Or my grandfather. I thought maybe some tradition, the youngest, but then it’d be Ven.”
“World, be thankful it’s not Zik!”
“Aw,” I said, “don’t you want people shredded.”
“We wondered when you were going to ask that,” said Baz.
“The matter having become of at least passing interest,” said Paw.
“Then we wondered if you knew and were being shy.”
“After all, he’s not Zika.”
“What is so funny?”
“Co-terminous,” said Baz.
“Let us break this to you gently…”
“I’m not Anile – “
“No, no! In terms of your family, you are Anile emperor.”
“I – “
“It’s the inner and esoteric meaning of the Anile throne.”
“Especially that stuff on the Grid. We wondered lots.”
“Hang on!”
“There is always an Anile emperor,” said Baz. “Being in Azt is – in a sense – peripheral.”
“But Cho – “
“Said what?”
“Absolutely nothing!” I growled. “I said, It’s your chair.”
“Now shall we talk about others’ perceptions.”
“Keep me on my toes. Don’t give me a chance to recover from the shock.”
“What does it change?”
“I don’t know! It does seem to connect with earlier, about Kadun PANTHER. And the Houses? Some people in Kadun know and that changes their perceptions of my future career? Kadun PANTHER has a problem? You can’t attack the infrastructure unless you’ve got something to put in its place.”
“A rather neat solution, as I said.”
 
You could have told me! may not be the most mature and constructive of sentences but I said it anyway.
“Dear boy,” said Cho, “you were so very uninterested.”
“I what!”
“In the other matter.”
“And now I’m going to get a crash-course?”
“Something of the kind.”
 
Maya had simply giggled and wriggled closer.
“I can’t wait!” she said.
Eso. Maya.
 
The great day dawned. It was a shock to be greeted by Faun, though it shouldn’t have been. I think maybe I had the idea this was going to be strangers but after all how well did I know Faun? A household name, but know? Hardly. PANTHER is the outer and exoteric manifestation of the shrine, you know. I hadn’t known. The Mysterious and Shadowy Head of PANTHER grinned at me and remarked, “We shall be working together in the future. We need to get to know each other better.”
“Great!” I said. .
My first question was, “So this is about dealing with the Cult? Shan’t I have forgotten it all by the time I actually get to Kadun?”
“Possibly,” said Faun.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to do this later?”
“No,” said Faun.
I was given a timetable. This wasn’t Fal wandering around sketching, more the crash course in finance.
 
Discipline/self-discipline? I wondered. I’d got good grades despite having decided to be Anile emperor/actualize my inner being, whatever. Didn’t that count!
Not in the slightest, being the consequence of study and revision. I rapidly recalled the capital of Maltic, the year Ciletij changed the name of its currency and what that change denoted, how many years after the declaration of the republic was the counter-revolution in Harn aimed at restoring the monarchy, what name is given to the unprecedented archaeological find in Arit that changed our entire concept of pre-history. A series of oral presentations was required. Subjects were thrown at me. I was expected to say something intelligent about each of them, even if the only intelligent thing to say was I don’t know. If I didn’t know I was supposed to say something sensible anyway – the right century if not the right year, the right country if not the right city. They nearly threw me by asking me things I actually knew: how birds fly and what was the rationale for the creation of NoZone.
OK, thinking on my feet, I thought. I can see that.
“I can see,” I said, “this is relevant. What I can’t see is – is why Cho can’t do this over dinner!”
“Breaking you in gently,” said Faun.
Uh?
Half-an-hour in which to tell us about Narulis.
Oh, right, hardball.
I hoped I could see that this was a test of whether I presented the data in a logical fashion and didn’t waste time with irrelevant detail. Assuming I knew any irrelevant detail, of course. Thinking-time , I murmured and disappeared into my whirring brain, though I knew that was a risky judgement-call – I could spend too long conceiving the perfect presentation to have enough time to present it. Also, of course, perhaps I was supposed to start talking straight off. Tough. This one couldn’t have an RL equivalent. I thought I might have detected the slightest flicker when I mentioned the Journal, but other than that I might just as well have been telling them today’s weather.
“26:32:10,” said Faun.
Taja smiled lazily.
“You have been to Carlin?”
“Not a hope.”
“We know Mel visits – unofficially.” Do you, indeed! “We wondered.”
“I think I have a streak of common-sense somewhere. Anyhow, I couldn’t get to see the House. Unofficially. Sorg told us about the Journal.”
“Ah, Sorg.”
“How would you describe Sorg?”
“With difficulty? My brother-in-law once removed? Or is it twice?”
“You have remarkable connections, thanks to Maya.”
Hmm.
“Not really. Not really thanks to Maya, I mean. It wasn’t Maya who caused Vij and Sarsh to pair. Vij would be Mel’s and Hass’s cousin anyway. Essa and Tar have always been friends. It would be hard not to be close to A-M and that closeness does date from our cradles, long before any thought of Kadun.
“A charmed life. Why risk it for Kadun?”
“Someone has to. Half-an-hour or half a year?”
“Take your time.”
It had been good to go through it with B and P. I was, I noted approvingly, markedly more coherent.
“So Mel can relax?”
“What? I – I nearly said Mel doesn’t come into this. You’ll say that’s garbage, so I shan’t bother.”
“How does Mel not come into this?”
“A-M in no way suggested, persuaded, instigated. The idea was mine. Part of my problem was not having the faintest idea what anyone who is otherwise closest to me would think of it.”
“Including Maya?”
“Might it not be said you have in fact dragged Alzani-Meta into your plans?”
“It becomes remarkably hard for Tar to object.”
I was taken aback by the suddenness with which the attack-dogs closed in but showing it wasn’t on the menu..
“Then you don’t know Tar as well as I do. I find it very hard to imagine his having difficulty objecting to anything he thought objectionable.”
“Naturally his niece on the Anile throne.”
“600 years,” I said, “but they did it in the end. From – from the point of view of my popularity rating in Kadun you could say Maya was a liability.”
“Nice one,” said Faun.
I smiled, but didn’t relax. That was prudent.
“You truly wish us to believe you devised this notion entirely on your own.”
“I expect that’s because it’s true.”
“In consequence of which alliance with Maya Talal became a necessity?”
“My relationship with Maya began long before any thought of Kadun.”
Self-control, Sarat. Self-control.
“A teenage romance that conveniently became a grand passion.”
“Fact. I thought I’d lose her.”
“So you convinced Cho.”
Self-control, Sarat, self-control….
“Do you have nothing better to do than call me a liar? These are – “ What are they?” Think. Hard and fast. “Different strands in my life. Separate. Yes, I see what they can be made to look like. Start with – with something there’s evidence for. Talk to all the kids in my year. We all want to change the world. There is nothing weird about being political. The – weirdness comes from being Anile heir! Maya is – was – a – different strand of my life – “
“One can be political without wishing to rule someone else’s country.”
Hmm, hmm.
“There’re twists in that.”
“Tell us more.”
“Sounds like Fidub’s about to invade. In an outer and exoteric sense.” I didn’t think I had thinking time here. “I want to establish democracy equals the people of Kadun ruling Kadun. All the people. In order to do that, I have to have the broad consent of most of the people of Kadun. Otherwise I never even get over the border. Of most people from all levels of Kadun society as represented by the Army. So now I want a military dictatorship! So it rests on most people in Kadun recognizing that democracy and the modern world must come and I’m a much better bet than other possibilities. So – if they want something they aren’t getting, who’s ‘someone else’ in your sentence, the Cult?”
“You support CLIK.”
“I do. I’m told my land-ownership politics won’t be an insuperable problem. I haven’t of course yet asked the land-owners. I don’t think a standard working-class revolution in Kadun would get to first base, which is one thing, and I’m a capitalist and a democrat, which is another. I do think that many of CLIK’s aims are necessary. I also think that an emperor can get away with being far more radical than some working-class guy from Tjulsit.”
Grins
“Why, exactly?”
“Why exactly is because I’m not going to shoot myself in the head or anyone else. Some in CLIK of course would call that protecting the interests of my class, but I don’t exactly think – there’s a difference between protecting interests and protecting people, whichever class. The socio-economic model is Dabida. Do you know how property works in Dabida? It slays the CLIK guys.”
“Actually,” said Taja, “I don’t. Do tell!”
“It stems from the Morag-Fahdi. Where I pitch my tent is mine! In the beginning, people found a bit of land and built on it and so it was theirs. Where you lived was yours. And land from which you drew your livelihood was yours. So I think if people have farmed a piece of land for ever it’s theirs. Property isn’t theft. Rent is theft. In that context. There are different kinds of lets. Suppose you have an apartment over in Mersedin and your work takes you out of Fidub for a year. Of course you’re entitled to let it. That particular difference is not subtle. X is mine and you are paying me for the use of it. X is not mine – “
“Is X yours?”
“So far as Cho knows, after the collapse of the empire the State miraculously acquired imperial property. My family was not paid for it. How it came to be imperial property may or may not be according to the where I pitch my tent is mine principle. I don’t know. I do know – I think I learned it in school – Narulis built half of Azt, landscaped is a better word, designed. I think it’s reasonable to consider a park or a building intended for public use public property. I also think it’s reasonable to consider the imperial residences mine.”
“Property in Dabida.”
“After all, no-one’s paid us any rent. Not impossibly they cast half an eye at what went on over the border. There’s a land register and every address is on it. If the address pre-dated the register, the LLR starts from the date the register was compiled. Suppose a couple of hundred years ago someone built a house and left it to someone who already had his own house and didn’t want to live in the one he’d just acquired. He can sell it or he can let it. But any given residence can only be let for 100 years, doesn’t matter if it’s one tenant or one a year, how many owners. It’s generally called the put up or shut up principle. If a dwelling hasn’t been needed by its owner for 100 years, it’s assumed a) he doesn’t need it and b) that he’s received at least the selling-price in rent. So… In 4010 you built a block of six flats. You were 40. You died at 90 = 4060 Your heir was 70 and he died at 90 = 4080. His heir was 40 and died at 80 = 5020, having received 30 years of rent from 6 flats he stopped being able to let in 5010. It’s not anti-capitalist, it just says all good things come to an end. So then what? You can do what you like bar let. Keep them, sell them. Sell some of them and give one to your grand-daughter. If it’s a house by the time a couple of generations have passed there’s usually a family member to take up residence. It keeps property ownership mobile. That’s part of the point. Leases in Dabida on older properties tend to end in 9s.”
 
There was a very great deal of that, what exactly did I think about….Break for lunch, break for dinner, finishing at 10.00. We’ll see you at 8, then, sleep well.
 
 
The interrogation committee next day were all strangers. I just hoped they weren’t going to ask for the same stuff all over again.
“Your sexual relationships.”
My what?
“Your homosexual sexual relationships.”
“Ah,” I said. Something fell into place. I grinned and said, “Oh, I see.”
“What do you see?”
Did the cottage really freak you guys?
“I think I see. Am I really gay and Maya just a front because there is absolutely no way Kadun at her present level of psycho-sexual development - ?”
The small guy in the corner reached under the table and chucked a magazine at me. ‘More beautiful than pictures?’
“His Imperial Highness! The what, prince consort? But he’s got a partner! Or is that in your fiction just a front too? How on earth should we keep it secret? I think – true, this revolution of mine is – not even an embryo. Sperm wriggling towards egg? I think there’s something you need to understand.” They looked interested. “Pretty well the whole thing depends on WYSIWYG. The Press are going to do this for me.” They didn’t look properly convinced. I can’t think why! “It’s a long way in the future.” I don’t know why that seemed a relevant thing to say because it wasn’t to the Cult telling the world I was gay for the next ten years. Gee, folks, you just have to get to know me. “The whole point – “I began. Unlikely that anything was the whole point, but still. “They’ll probably say I eat live hamsters. I don’t, for the record…The Cult is not going to like me and there is nothing they won’t say. Ciletij is not going to like me and there is nothing they won’t say. The only defence is this is me. Here is me in the Megamart. Here is me.” I just said that. “There’s one person who can tell the world I’m not gay and you can be sure she won’t be shy about it.”
“One person who can tell the world you are.”
“Don’t be bloody ridiculous!” Gee, guys, it just came out. They seemed unfazed. “Several people if it comes to that.” They still seemed unfazed. I do not think these guys faze. Is there such a word?
“All of whom are Dabidan.”
“Venga isn’t. Nor’s Baz!”
“Ah yes, eban-tole.”
“You guys are out of it.”
“Why?”
“Mel at the cottage. You might just as well say Mel is gay. It cannot be in the interests of Dabidans – well, these Dabidans.”
“A pathetic attempt to smear Mel in response to the truth coming out.”
“I think I’m looking for the end of the piece of string here. You’re – alleging that one of the Six might think Dabida threatened and – leak that I’m gay. But you’re also alleging that my enemies will say that anyway, so if any one of us – my enemies are Dabida’s enemies, so Dabida wouldn’t be impressed by one of the Six and anyone in Kadun who wanted to hear that has heard it anyway. It’s not the sort of people we are – they are, precisely because of their closeness to Mel. So – there are two, no, three things here. If they felt Mel was betraying Dabida, if Mel felt threatened, if Mel felt Dabida was threatened. Dabida is the model. The Dabidan model derived from Narulis. What I want in Kadun is that model. I cannot pose a threat to Dabida. Dabida will not tolerate an emperor in Azt! Don’t see why not, really. Jaizal wasn’t trying to occupy Dabida. It didn’t exist. Fidub will not tolerate an emperor in Azt? I don’t actually hear a lot of people saying that, possibly for reasons too obvious. Suppose this turns rotten. Suppose Kadun doesn’t want democracy. I’m still on exactly the same side I was to start with, which is the side of Fidub and Dabida, and which is critical the side of democrats in Kadun. There is no way I end up opposing Mel.”
“Dabida may oppose Mel, for instance if economically threatened by a successful Kadun.”
“It’s not each other we want to economically crush! There is a very great deal I don’t know and I’m not going to pretend I do know it. Let’s say the road leads over the ocean and then there’s a lot to find out. Bearing in mind that I don’t know anything, there’s no immediately apparent reason why a Kadun allied with the south can’t form an – economic union to stand up to the City.”
“Young man, you are nothing if not interesting.”
“I aim to please…I thank you.”
“Forcing Ciletij into the arms of the Cult?”
“Our noble ally in the Quadrant? I am told – this is only what I’ve been told – Ciletij will scream the place down because it’s just something you do if you’re Ciletij, sort of stamp of being a true son or daughter of Ciletij, hating the empire, mark of citizenship, but since to hate the empire is to hate the Cult, behind the scenes she will come down on the side of truth, justice, freedom and economic power.”
“The rape is not attributed to the Cult.”
“I don’t believe in the rape of Ciletij. Earn me friends far and wide, I know, I know. We’re told Kaminua trapped them in the forest and then – burned them alive. Nothing I have read about Kaminua tells me he was a mass murderer. We’re told he found them a threat. What to? The empire? Be serious! I know a bit about forest fires. That’s one of the things I want to find out a whole lot more about.”
“We seem to have digressed.” Lazily. “Tell us about your relationship with Hasiyata. How it began.”
“When we were 3 playing with alphabet-bricks on the floor of The Room? We were always close. We – “
“Consummated it?”
“Gave it full expression? It was the last summer Mel and Hass came over. Mel had said he’d had enough of beetles and taken himself off to M-P. Mum and Dad had taken the girls out for the day. We were alone in the house. Except for PANTHER of course, but PANTHER don’t barge into a guy’s bedroom.” I looked at them. “At least not at the time. We were working. Not very hard. Bugs and beetles. And joshing about. I’m sure neither of us had sex in mind but we – our hands touched and suddenly – we looked at each other. You know how it works in a set like ours. Unless you fall head-over with someone outside the set, if you just want to see what it’s like, you do it with a friend, someone you trust absolutely. The rest you can work out, except it was slow and dreamy and eso and unfrantic, except the obvious bits. I’m sure you’re dying to ask, so we did it both ways. Except when we heard the front door. Unfrantic, I mean. We did not want to be woken from our dream by Ven! That’s why I fell – I didn’t just fall in love with Maya. I fell into Maya. Until then she’d been a friend. I somehow realized what she was.”
“A female Hasiyata?”
“His friends call him Hass.”
“After, immediately after?”
“Of course we talked about it! Half the night. And we did it again. We were working something out, working something through. Of course we didn’t think it was for ever. How many teenagers - ? We didn’t think it was the start of going out together either! I hadn’t been and I’m not attracted to guys. It was something – eso, apart from the world, about us. I loved him. I love him. I always shall love him.”
Someone entered my mind.
I jerked out of my romantic reverie fast. What the fuck!
So throw me out.
Great waves of foreboding filled me and visions of extremely nasty things rising from graves. I don’t like this. What do they teach us when we’re having a bad-hair day, a lousy mark in math? Focus, focus, focus. Everyone’s going to die. That’s reality. Focus. Light. There might have been a pinprick in the darkness but I was so angry – use that anger, it’s just energy, light. Gather that energy – oh really, what is the point. Helpless, drained. I am not bloody well helpless! There was a great deal of unpleasant laughter. Try harder, dumbfuck, try harder. It was like an enormous weight pressing down on me. I was just going to nimbly fling myself out of the way, when they took the image over. I have been washed overboard and the ship’s propeller is coming closer and closer. Any minute now I’m going to be pur?e. All in my mind, all in mind…In my mind I can swim for hours under the water. I headed for the ocean-floor and the propeller passed harmlessly overhead. Oh look, there’s a shark and above is only darkness for the ship is vast, a destroyer, a tanker, a liner. Trapped, helpless. It’s not a very big shark. It instantly became enormous but all in my mind, if I get on its back it may not like it but it can’t eat me. All in my mind, that’s the basic one, all in my mind because actually I’m – no time for actually I’m sitting in a high-backed swivel-chair because I am going to get eaten. What crap is that? No time for breath-control exercises to quell the visceral fear – all in my mind. Make it a dolphin. So then we struggled. So it’s a small bottle-nosed shark but what is more to the point the assault became three-pronged, lungs bursting, must have air, but above is total darkness. I am Sarat with an aqualung swimming with the dolphins. Keep that one unified thought. The pressure grew. They let go.
“Not at all bad.”
“What is this, Lesson One!” My chest felt as though it hurt a bit, though presumably not as much as it would have if I’d just almost drowned. I told it not to be stupid and pushed my hair back fighting off the conviction it was sopping. “Isn’t anyone going to offer me a towel?”
“Have a sip of water.”
“I did that. It was salty.”
“What have you just learned?”
“I couldn’t escape from the dream. I wanted to reject it. I’m here in this room. I could only function inside the dream. And I guess. If I’d learned the eso stuff, I could have tickled its little sharky brain and told it I wasn’t edible.”
“There’s an interesting picture on the wall behind you. Go and look at it.”
The problem, you will have guessed, is that there was no wall behind me. I am not damned well standing in the Saa’nda Senta! Have you ever tried to stand up when you’re already on your feet? I really do not recommend it. The fountain continued to sparkle in the morning sun. Lemme just be logical about this…Oh! Use the dream. OK, OK, I am walking towards the fountain but it is not bloody well the fountain it is the long table behind which are three guys, so I can turn my back on the fountain/table and walk in the opposite direction towards the wall/Kendar’s. I really need to go to Kendar’s to get Mum a birthday-present. No, I don’t! I need to go to Saba’s, the gallery. There’s a new - I began to feel a bit pleased with myself, tinged with a liking for reassurance I was on the right track. Of course no such reassurance came. You surrender to the dream, at least until you find the weak spot. If there is one, of course. Hass had raved about Ban-finsil’s exhibition, there’s an abasanth in bloom I really have to see. Flaw. I haven’t seen the abasanth but I do know what one looks like. OK, I’m going to look at the first picture I see. Since I don’t know what that is, I can’t superimpose the image. I am entering Saba’s and looking at a painting. I am not repeat not in Saba’s, I am in a room in the retreat on the Leolisle which I believe is pale green, though just to thwart me they might have made the walls lilac. The bay window is to my right and it looks out over gardens, what kind of gardens. I rather hoped I had a photographic memory, perfect recall, but I didn’t think I did and, even if I did, I’d been so intent on the interrogation committee that I’m not sure I noticed the gardens in the first place. Focus, focus, focus on what? What did I remember about the room behind me? This is fiendish. OK, this is 3D: me standing in the middle of – space – behind me is a high-backed swivel-chair, a rug intricately patterned in greys and greens, a long highly-polished certainly antique table but I couldn’t place the period, three men, a small one with closely cropped grey hair, a high-bridged nose, in front of me is Saba’s and a miniature of a ruined tower on an outcrop being battered by the sea.
They withdrew.
Yes!
The rest of the room came into focus and I drank it in. Might need it again some time.
I turned.
“Where is it? The tower, I mean!”
“Harusin Point.”
Eeek! Harusin Bay is where Narulis first landed.
“I can see it’s very old. That old?”
The skinny one smiled.
“Not that old.”
“So you decorate the retreat with mementoes of Narulis! Or just for me?”
“Let us return to Maya.”
“I wish! I notice you’re not – what are you not, training me, testing me, with Maya, with any of my friends being attacked. That’s because in RL, on the ground, they’d be able to look after themselves? Not that there’s anything particularly RL about the rest of it. Forced below the waves to face a ravening shark! I mean – I’m not sure what I mean.”
“Maya.”
“It’s a good thing I have a sense of humour. OK…I was staying on the hill. Pietri, Caluna and Maya came to dinner. The four of us – Mel, Hass, Maya and I – excused ourselves after dinner. Mel had an essay to write. Between sex and revolution we’re very studious. That left the three of us sprawled around the pool. Maya said she wanted to make a phone call. She shot us a completely wicked grin. If you can be trusted to be alone together. Hass blew her a kiss. So long I said as you don’t tell me you and Maya - ? He just grinned and said, Maya is someone it’s really easy to talk to. You don’t have to explain things. Yes, I said, though I couldn’t possibly have said what I meant. I – I suppose Maya suddenly became more interesting and – and the girl for me would have to be one I could share what I’d shared with Hass. But nothing happened till Hass’s birthday party, which was pretty much an all-day event. Lunchtime till late. The vague theory was the afternoon and the early evening was adults and young children, family, and then we turned the volume up. Loads of people I didn’t know. The family is large. Anyhow – do you know the hill, it’s like a rabbit-warren. Anytime they wanted more room they did more tunnelling. There’s this crazy crooked outside stair that’s the quick way down to the stables. You have to come up for air sometimes. In this case down. Halfway down I found Maya, sitting hugging her knees. I didn’t know her then! Are you OK? occurred to me. Do you feel all right? Maybe she just wanted to be on her own. She just smiled and patted the step beside her. Oh wow, I said. She turned and grinned and said I found this place when I was a tot. It’s my favourite view. Ahem, as we know, Maona-pri is the Silver City and lights up at night to make the point. This was a view directly across the Straits to M-P. I like looking at the shipping too, she said. Where have they come from, where are they going? Am I not an islander! I do shipping. All right, most Zuri do too. We talked about our respective harbours. How romantic can you get! Broadened our scope to all things sea-faring. Somewhere in the middle of telling her about the lighthouse on the Utmost Isle it began to wriggle around in my brain I like this. Maya is someone I want more of. The sentence – this’ll make you laugh. I’m not usually lost for words. The sentence you’re really nice occurred to me. I didn’t say it. After a while we became aware it had got much quieter. Yikes! she said. D’you think everyone’s gone home? I made wide eyes. No search-parties? Mel and Hass know I come here, she said. Indeed, as we got to the top of the stairs we collided with Mel. Ha! he said. Well, well, well! Some of us, she said, prefer the pleasure of civilized conversation. Him, civilized? said Mel. I shall ignore that remark, I said. Found her! he carolled to I don’t know who. Them, he muttered. Gazing into each other’s eyes. Shut up, Mel, said Maya, before I could. Seconded, I said. We were reunited with our loving families and Maya went home. I lay in bed thinking I didn’t even get her number. Ah well, hardly as though she’d vanished off the face of the planet. I think – I think that was the beginning of my – awareness of what’s basic to our relationship. It – touches somewhere I don’t want to share. I’m not exactly shy and retiring but somehow it had seemed impossible to ask her for her phone number in front of people. How, I hear you cry, does that mesh - ? Our relationship is. It’s not for explaining. Of course every tabloid on the planet will explain it. We don’t have to. The other thing – when I was distressed about telling her, it was – like I’d hurt our relationship by intruding something into it that needed explaining. I’m hungry. May we stop now?”
“No.”
“Great! A crust? A dry biscuit?”
Presumably there was tele-talk because a guy duly appeared with a plate of what looked suspiciously like ship’s biscuit.
Meanwhile…”How did the relationship develop?”
Gee, guys, I’m nearly lapsing into sarcasm. Would you like to know what I had for breakfast on the day of the biology practical? Why do you want to know? How about we explore something here, such as the meaning of ‘personal’.You could ask, why am I answering your questions? Then again, we could cut to the chase here. “I think,” I said, “it’s sit back and think time. How personal would you like me to make this, and why? Gee, Sarat, what did it feel like when you first kissed her, dot, dot, dot. We both know we’re going to be asked questions we’re not going to answer and we both know – gee, what did it feel like when you made love for the first time? There are people in newspapers who aren’t sentient. So…externally this is how do I do under fire? Internally – are you sentient? Your apparent fascination with my sex-life – just trying to get the full picture here? Not my sex-life, my sexuality. If it were a different person every night, alternating gender, that might have some bearing on my - fitness for the job you’re interviewing me for. There’s another angle – just one? I seem to be here to answer your questions. In – in a scenario in which it appears - if I fail to answer your questions, if I don’t want to answer your questions, I’ve – failed to satisfy the examiners! But I don’t know you from a hole in a ground. Why should I answer your questions?”
“A brash Fidubi brat,” said the little one.
“You are possibly thinking,” I said, “this is steering the conversation away from talking about the cottage. Not true.”
“Let us return to Maya.”
“Who didn’t – doesn’t – mind in the slightest?” Where the hell are these guys going? “We’ve all had a certain kind of education. Since you devised it – without gender, without boundary. Here and there. Everything I – we’ve done falls within, follows from. An – an experiment in being both fully human and fully love. Fun, too.”
“That is how you saw it?”
“That’s how it was. That’s the other reason. I say we can’t betray each other. We shouldn’t know how to. You query query say I’m sweetly naïve. Shrug.”
“Alliance between Alzani-Meta and the Anile throne is unlooked-for.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that one so I made the remark I was later informed PLT quoted from the ice-floes to the seas and even made it to the dictionary. The dictionary is where they record anything particularly perceptive someone might come out with, aphorisms. And anything particularly, delectably, deliciously, moronic.
“It’s no big deal, is it, the Anile throne. The big deal is in people’s mind. Nobody has a fit of the vapours at Dabida being a monarchy. Zani and Narulis had the same values. The modern model of those values is democracy. It’s history. Use it and be heard. Maybe you need to look at the other side of this. I mean, I don’t have any particular enthusiasm for sitting on the Anile throne. It happens to be who I am but the only – terms in which I’m prepared to be Anile emperor externally are that His Imperial Majesty is a brash Fidubi brat who will have matured but not become any less radical.”
“Maya.”
“Invite her to the theatre, invite her to a disco, invite her to come swimming, invite her to go for a walk, what’s the big deal. It is when you want it to be really right. And when it’s a foursome. Baz and Paw didn’t figure in this picture. I asked them straight out. I want to take someone out, as in being alone together. How do we hack this? Depends who, where and when, said Baz. We are masters of discretion, said Paw. By then I’d decided I wanted to invite her for a day out on the Utmost Isle. I don’t think we need get in the way there, said Baz. We’ll be around, said Paw. So then all I had to do was invite her. She must be on the private network, I reasoned. @thezaniest.com. But would she go by her name! Mel, should you really want to know, uses a number of avatars. I was pretty sure Maya would be Maya. Use brain: the thread about the party, bet she was copied in. One problem solved. I invited her. She accepted. I met her off the ferry. We took the bus cross-town to Bala Pier. We set to sea! We wandered around the ship and bought ice-cream and even identified shipping. We landed on the Utmost Isle. I could see she was enchanted and whoopee! I’d got it right. All I had to do now was be sure she was equally enchanted with me….We walked barefoot along the beach and climbed the cliff and went right out onto the promontory to examine the famed lighthouse – after all said to be the oldest lighthouse in the world. We walked right round the island to Saada, and had dinner in the Old Town, then we wandered. We’d got as far as holding hands. It was getting quite late. Somehow I’d pictured this as a day out and home for dinner. We knew Pietri and Caluna wouldn’t worry in one way, with ever-present PANTHER, but if we were out half the night they just might think other things. On the other hand one of us was going to have to stay the night at the house of the parents of the other whatever we did next. I couldn’t send her off to Zur on her own in the middle of the night, and by the time we got to Pietri’s it’d be daft for us to about-turn, or she could come home with me. She said she didn’t have anything in particular to do tomorrow so I rang Mum and she rang Caluna. Mum said Gorse’d pick us up at the quay. No, we didn’t, not for some time, either. The next day we just bummed around the neighbourhood. There was only one grey cloud, the Straits! We thought maybe alternate weekends at each other’s but we didn’t really have any clear solution because there wasn’t one. I realized the picture I had of myself of ‘always’ popping over to Zur was garbage. Of course I went pretty often, but at the weekends, not after school. We’ll mail, said Maya, and I rather grunted. Whatever people think of email, it’s not usually that it’s romantic, but as usual she was right. We mailed when things went right, we mailed when they went wrong, and then I – fractured that because there was a part of me I wasn’t sharing. Fortunately at the time we were revising – well, she was. She’s amazing! Parents gossip as much as anyone else. She said she walked in on Pietri and Caluna one day and the sudden silence was so obvious that Pietri felt he had to speak, if you see what I mean. He said, It seems Sarat’s taste for politics is turning his thoughts to Kadun. Has he said anything to you? No, she said. Nor to anyone, he said, other than Krarlik. He explained. Not even Cho? she asked. No-one. Then he obviously doesn’t want to talk. At least until school’s out. It’s rather a large conversation, isn’t it. Not something to clear up in an hour. Do you really see him as a vet? But Caluna asked, Do you understand? The danger? asked Maya. Yes. He will make you Anile empress, said Pietri. By this time even Maya was feeling just a little bit cornered. A girl has to have a job! I gather frivolity did not go down well. Maya said she refused to talk about it until she’d talked to me and talking to me could obviously wait, since – obviously – I was going to talk to her. This was not, she said, something I could do in secret. Don’t think that went down very well, either. She said, OK, there’s the phone. Call him. Demand his intentions! Pietri had the grace to laugh but Caluna asked, The relationship is permanent? That just might be the question, said Maya, very unfrivolously. Because – because if there’s the slightest doubt it’s not for ever – A lot to ask, said Caluna. Maya said: he may not be sure or he may not be sure I’m that sure. We think/thought of it as permanent. There are other things, aren’t there. Sarat isn’t an idiot. If he hasn’t told Cho, that means he doesn’t want parents to know, obviously yet. It is not a personal decision, said Pietri. Yes, said Maya. I mean it’s not. So then it was Maya’s turn to be up half the night. It definitely occurred to her to get on the phone, WTF, but then the whole thing would unravel. I don’t think anyone in that house slept well. Seeing her light was on, Pietri knocked on the door. Truly, he said, I am very fond of Sarat. Oh Dad, she said, and hugged him. If it were Dabida, she said.
“So there it was until I realized that I had to know. It was like not knowing was a bridge too far. I could cope with respiration in the amphibian and do I want to be Anile emperor. Biology seemed frankly pretty unimportant to my future, but I’d do it, I’d do the exams – hey, I might need a job one day, not sure that a track-record of consistent failure. Once I’d talked to Cho I couldn’t move forward without knowing. She told Pietri and Caluna. She can be quite direct, you know. I understand she made it very clear she was telling them because they’re her parents not because she’s A-M and everyone was to leave me alone, was that entirely clear…
 
 
It was of course all recorded and that is the annotated transcript. I could have written that last bit from memory but I should not have enjoyed the experience.
 
Somewhere in all this – when he was talking to Petrush – Baz says Tela’s beach-party was our first date. I picked him up on it. He just grinned. Dates are when you ask her out for the evening. A day’s hiking is friends. I didn’t expect, I said.
 
Saada is a place to which I have no cause to return. Therefore I don’t. Perhaps I should.
 
Shav’s faith in me is touching, but Maya was not pregnant. If you like, I froze. Of course I did nothing of the kind. I was simply entirely absent from the world. One might think Shav would understand that but then why should she. It is not a conversation-piece and I have never discussed it with her or anyone except Hass and Dill. You may say I went too far. I do not intend to discuss it now. Or only obliquely.
 
I have told Dad that all his grand-children – we now have two – are alive and well.
 
I do not think in tram-lines! Usually. It filtered through to me that Fal was at that damned place on the Leolisle. As you know, the trend of our thinking was that the older generation did not want us to know. It took Dill to point out that, were we to gather assorted members of that older generation, hand them slips of paper and demand they summarize this Matter of Kadun, we might get unexpected answers. It suddenly seemed blindingly obvious to us that, if anyone knew exactly what was going on on this continent, the shrine did. We took ourselves off to M-P. Dill was fixated with the shrine. She mailed Mitch and Karula: my education which you have rightly described as being carted about the planet nonetheless managed to encompass the cultural beacons of our continent – I thought. You did not take me to the shrine at Maona-Pri. That is neglect, child-abuse. Go there! It is literally out of this world.
A slightly bemused Mitch mailed back: you’re in Fidub, honey?
Dill of course knowing these were not quite Mitch’s perceptions replied: Am I not Anile empress! The spiritual home of the Anile throne!
 
 
Taja asked: “Do you trust us?”
Dill said: “To wish no ill? Of course. But might you not think to deter ill?”
Taja laughed.
I said: “I have known these guys a very long time. They taught us, among other things, why not to lie.”
“To create a false reality,” mused Dill. “To send people on a wild-goose chase?”
I looked at Taja
“On the other hand,” I said, “I know from experience that questions they do not wish to answer they simply ignore. I might say, just thinking aloud here, that that was within the context of the – selection-board, that the victim was to be kept deprived of information – that rings a bell, does it not. Does that not also send people on a wild-goose chase? I might also say I asked why I should answer their more personal questions and in fact did not. I now see I was not actually asked the details. What is the difference between a wrong assumption and an educated guess?”
We are going to discuss the principles here. We are not going to dig into what precisely I am talking about. Taja smiled a little too gently.
“That’s an easy one,” said Dill. “An educated guess is based on limited knowledge of the facts. An assumption is based on belief.”
At some point, not this visit, I am going to have to talk to Taja alone. Why not this visit?
At some point I am going to have to talk to my father.
I thought: they never did spell out the precise inner and eso qualities required of the Anile emperor.
I said: “You put me through the wringer. As I recall, you never did spell out precisely why. What, may I ask at this late date, were you looking for?”
“Could you do the job,” said Taja blandly.
“Which one?”
“Are they separate?”
“They began that way. I once described the situation in which we found ourselves as sent to reduce the number of single parents without any knowledge of biology.”
“Oh dear,” said Taja.
“Given my stay here was before Mitch, before Cantilip, though certainly after both Marula and Cantilip had made overtures – long before Ciletij. The chair was safely in Ciletij? Short of a special forces raid - ? It seemed extremely unlikely I should ever sit on her. Something may be slithering into place. You didn’t want to alert me to this Matter of Kadun but you wanted to be sure I could cope if it introduced itself. “
“It was an enormous shock when you went to Casin-ruhn.”
“You thought it was a shock.”
“You knew?” asked Dill.
“We knew something.”
“What did you know?”
“That the tomb of Kaminua and Asyrion is protected from intrusion by the Denzines.”
“They are,” I said after a moment, “I take it, thoroughly dead.”
“We think so. We are not sure. Sarat, we understand certain principles. How these may be manifest.”
“I think they were Denzine shape-shifters,” said Dill. “It is ingrained on our little irtubi hearts – those of us who have a fondness for history, at least – that Kaminua died grief-stricken. Now why would he do that?”
Taja shot her a broad grin.
“A lot of things,” I said. “The tomb? I. Oh. Where are they actually buried?”
“A sustained assault on perception,” said Dill. “By the time your efficient little brain had broken free sufficiently to grasp that there weren’t actually any bodies you were talking to them.”
I burst out laughing, to the apparent surprise of my solemn-looking audience.
“Naturally the bodies they died in so to speak were the ones they were wearing. So to speak. We got to the story from the circlets, so let’s make it a really good one, but the – what, memories, perceptions in – from the crowns, while intense – while in fact devastating to a poor unsuspecting lad from Fidub – nonetheless belong in the same dimension as Karula’s magic scissors. Which she indeed found pretty devastating.”
Taja looked puzzled. So unfortunately did Dill. Somehow she’d missed Mom’s magic scissors. I explained.
“Oh Mom! I guess – I guess I shall make the understatement of the millennium. Nobody quite knew what they’d signed up for.”
“The trips,” I said, “are – are an image of reality, but have all the solid factual content of Kar’s Toons. Cantilip said what was being screamed at us is everything is whole.”
Dill said: “The crowns are fake.”
I felt a bit shocked, then said: “Of course!”
“You’ve lost me,” said Taja.
“If,” said Dill, “we are to assume from what shall we say the circumstantial evidence that the chair and the crowns are made from the same peculiar material leading the human mind to strange places and which is also in some sense sentient, there is no reason to suppose that any particular – revelation would result.”
I said suddenly: “A silver coronet above a silver chair. I wonder what happens if one wears the coronet while sitting on the chair!”
“I think that is important,” said Taja, rather glumly. “Why, I don’t know! You know of course that in Cult imagery Death always wears a silver crown.”
“The message,” said Dill, “to our sensitive, upright and not least verdant young hero is undoubtedly leave this place alone. But if the tomb had already been tampered with?”
“Don’t forget,” I sighed, “the throne guards a deeper mystery.”
“Does it indeed!” said Taja.
“Such as the tomb,” I sighed. “The problem is, had the special effects department left well alone, we should probably have simply removed the chair and not discovered the tomb. Since I removed the chair anyway. 1) I they directed our attention to the slab. 2) Hass said you must open it and we PK’d but is that exactly normal? We’d already decided, we already knew at some level the wolverine was Kaminua, we already ‘knew’ there were no bodies. The wolverine was Kaminua?”
“Many cultures,” said Taja with a nearly straight face, “believe in some form of reincarnation.”
“Something of a come-down,” said Dill. But if the wolverine was Kaminua, why shouldn’t Kaminua have been Kaminua!”
“That is a rather large question,” said Taja.
“It was not exactly normal,” said Dill, “to assume the wolverine was Kaminua.”
“What’s a thousand years between friends? Why focus my attention on a rotting shack on the edge of a northern lake where for reasons best known to themselves Van-senok decided to dump the chair.”
“Because you are Anile emperor?” said Taja.
“Could there be,” wondered Dill, “not sure, two – factions here? Different aims. His biggest problem is he wants to go back unannounced and he can’t.”
“I should not advise it,” said Taja. “We could.”
“I do not want to be responsible for ‘accidental’ death!”
But Dill was quicker
“An archaeological expedition?”
I grinned.
“Can there be minds here less readily screwed than mine?”
Taja grinned back.
“Oh I think so. Did you remember your lessons?”
“It was friendly fire,” I said. “In other words no. In fairness to me, to all of us, it was a different order of reality from anything we had been taught to handle. There were these bats, these shaft of light. It was like walking into an enchantment.”
“I suspect,” said Taja, “that is exactly what it was.”
“Geological,” said Dill. We did a lot of filling in.
“Do you still have a forge here?” I asked. “Metal-workers?”
Taja gave a quick bellow of laughter.
“You made her. Alas, not you personally. Would it be too much to hope that you knew why?”
“If we posit for a moment,” said Dill, “that Kaminua was Kaminua, though I do not believe it, is that not a strange place to spend eternity? Of course it’s out of the way, not many casual visitors.”
Taja gave a small frown.
“There are two possibilities. The first is that the location has particular properties making it the only place that particular trick may be performed. Let us say that is not totally outside the bounds of possibility, given this Matter of Kadun. The second is that the location is of such overwhelming personal importance as to make freezing winds of minor significance. Of course I am a southerner!”
“It was where Asyrion died, but since she didn’t, within the context of the fairy-story.”
“But the chair is gone.”
“The throne guards a deeper mystery.”
“Still in free-thought. Perhaps your claiming of the chair. If I may summarize. – “ He laughed. “The licit heir took possession of the Anile throne. Not a great deal to work with.”
“Once he had the chair,” said Dill, “he would learn something, which required a considerable display of amateur dramatics, either to explain or to pretend to explain to deflect attention from the actual mystery.”
“Only either I didn’t or I’m too stupid to see that I did.”
“Or,” said Dill, “you haven’t asked her.”
“The intensity of our union on the chair. I haven’t sat since Maya died.”
Taja asked: “Have you shown Dill the Utmost Isle?”
WTF?
“An – image of reality, the factual content of which?”
“Everything is whole,” said Taja.
“Sorg,” I said. “I know you can’t tell other people’s stories, but I know you talked to Fal. There’s – there’s a parallel with Kaminua. Yes, no, maybe. One – one could argue that in a parallel universe, an alternative reality, he didn’t die. Sorg, I mean. But he seemed to Fal, to me – I talked to him – a – ghost. But the overwhelming reality of his death to Fal - could she have shaped that trip? Or did he seem – ethereal because – because that parallel universe did not – query, query cannot fully – materialize. But in the Jumesit, it’s linear. Are there two things going on here? We can’t cope with one!”
“Oh,” said Dill, as she grasped what I was groping towards.
“That seems an appropriate response,” said Taja. He laughed. “I suppose you didn’t ask what time it was.”
“That does not compute,” said Dill. “All mod cons. Let us be imaginative! In an alternative history, after the Rape Kaminua abdicated and decided to live out his days with his beloved Asyrion, who did not die, at the site of a – defining event. On top of their tomb.”
“But everything is whole. If everything is whole, then – one could argue – two realities do not merely co-exist, but are fused.”
“I think I may tell you,” said Taja, “that Falita had an experience she described as a time-slip for want of a better term, in the garden of the retreat. It seemed to her that Sorg was standing over her. It made her rather cross, for of course there is no past, present, or future in this universe in which that is possible.”
“The – “ I said.
“My chief problem with that,” said Dill, “is that it happened in Fidub.”
“The water, he said with a sort of delirious leer. But then the whole of Carlin. But then Fal’s problem is that she is ragingly eso.”
How is everything whole? How in this very normal situation, part of the human condition, does it not jar, clash to take Dill to see the light-house? A super-imposing? A betrayal? Message received loud and clear: Maya cannot constrain my life. But that is absurd. We live in the same rooms. We sleep in the same bed. We go a thousand places daily. Only there are – what? Peaks? Peaks I do not re-ascend. Ah, that peak where everything is whole!
“Taja, may I invite you to Azt for the total Jumesit experience!” And just possibly to hold the little boy’s hand when he once again plants his delicate backside on the Anile throne.
Who said - ? Maya, who else. You don’t have to do everything on your own. But I did. Did and didn’t. But I have. Have and haven’t. The buck stops here. Perhaps not with this Matter of Kadun. Or of course that is meaning of being Anile emperor.
Of course the block is sitting with Dill.
“I should be delighted!” Taja was saying.
“Come back with us,” Dill said.
“Do I?” I asked of anyone who happened to be around, “to what extent do I – what Dill said earlier. We none of us actually signed up for the Matter of Kadun. Main drainage! Waterways. Gee, guys, everything is whole.”
“You are at heart a scientist,” said Taja.
“And it shows!” At some point I have to talk to Essa. Did we not say we wish to cleanse the sewers of Azt! “We have all learned – people may suddenly cease to be around. But that is not true of those in Fidub.”
“Including ourselves,” said Dill. “That is not a pressure? He does so hate to leave a job half-done.”
“If – a very long time ago, Baz forced me – I have been murdered. I am drawing my last breath. Was it worth it? I should hate, I said, it to be before I had achieved something.” I could see Taja was wondering where this was going. As if I knew. I laughed suddenly. “I may be trying to assess my level of responsibility in terms of the universe or universes, of which there may be many. The – that which we – lump together as the Matter of Kadun exists and will continue to exist. It is not a mystery to itself. I – opened a door. I wasn’t looking for anything. I think what I said before. Nobody expected that I’d get Ciletij on board. But it was the only way. Well, it wasn’t, theoretically.”
Taja was chuckling.
“Mel, you fucktard, you’ve taken the continent to war.”
“Oh no,” I said, “they’re on our side.”
Dill asked: “Who is’nobody’ in that sentence?”
“Until I went to G-T, only I, Maya, Hass, Venga, Cantilip, Mel, Mitch and Karula knew exactly what I wanted to happen.”
“In exchange for the chair?” asked Taja.
“It occurred to me.”
“Cantilip is the key,” said Dill. “Have we said that before?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “But are we right?”
“Venga?”
“I really hesitate to say this,” said Dill, “knowing as I do that you and Hass are not merely brothers but – “ She grinned. “ – one flesh.”
“It’s occurred to me,” I said.
“Let us not call it an ulterior motive. Let us call it perhaps – someone who knows something needs to be around when the shit hits the fan.”
“That suggests I have to do something.”
“How alien, how out of character. Maybe he doesn’t know what it is either. Once the door is opened, we do not know what is on the other side.”
“Sounds like one of those spooky horror movies.”
“Then of course there is Mel. What I note is that the Denzines are apparently in this up to their necks, yet no-one boards a flight to the City and says hey guys, what’s going down. There is a marked absence of the pooling of information, hands across the sea, are we not all one happy family united against a common foe.” Taja chortled. Possibly even guffawed. “I have gathered - remember I lived on the hill, though alas any secrets possessed by Mel and Cantilip remained wholly opaque – that Mel and Fugitry remain in contact. I did not know Fugitry was Mel’s mentor. I have also gathered that answers to direct questions are so oblique as to be wholly opaque. Nonetheless, it seems to me these guys are real practical – “
“She enjoys imitating Mitch,” I muttered.
“Real practical,” repeated Dill with relish, “when it comes to defending whatever they are defending.”
“The Denzines,” said Taja, then stopped. “I was about to say live in another universe. As one does.”
“They came from a planet called Sug?” asked Dill. We stared. “Further, I gather they established the Schools. That is in its way a markedly practical endeavour.”
“An answer so oblique as to be wholly opaque,” mused Taja. “I am wondering something rather different. Perhaps it matters who asks the question, like putting the right key in the lock.”
“And the time of the next flight to the City? I didn’t ask anything.”
“Perhaps you did,” said Dill. “Obliquely! Who/what is the Anile emperor?” She turned to Taja. “Is there any record here of Denzine engagement with Narulis?”
“None I know of. History tells that was our gig. History may of course lie.”
“OK, now we know who was Narulis, a fine upstanding son of Fidub. This is not the Matter of Narulis, this is the Matter of Kadun. Let us posit – always entertaining among consenting adults – the Matter of Kadun, which is intrinsic to Kadun, which one may say is rooted in the soil of Kadun, or at any rate its rivers, pre-dated Narulis. Have you records of previous Fidubi engagement in Kadun?”
“Yes, but nothing of substance. Sailor sees land. Sailor grateful for fresh water and fresh food. Sailor goes away again.”
“You guys have always roamed the oceans. And the natives were friendly?”
“It seems so.”
“After all, our indigenous culture is earthpower, just like Fidub.”
I was glad I was looking at Taja at just that minute.
“Sssh,” he said, “don’t tell everyone!” His eyes were dancing.
“That of course is the true Fidubi scam. Is it not interesting how the esoteric world and the exoteric world mirror each other?”
“Don’t hold back,” I said. “Tell him what the Fidubi scam is.”
“When the empire was good, it was Fidubi. When it was bad, it was irtubi. Who calls Jaizal Fidubi?”
“Owww!” said Taja.
“Think they own the damn’ continent,” I said.
“That at least we have overcome. Many things have been overcome,” said Dill. “Convincing Micheal ban-sarndit-vaq, my future lord of Var-sega’, that Fidub had no imperial ambition here.”
“I should imagine being president helps.”
“I do not think anyone thinks of Sarat as Fidubi.” Taja smiled to himself. I wondered if he was thinking of Fal. “Now, let us continue to posit. Earth-power is a trifle more than enthusiasm for trees, and indeed one only has to listen to Cantilip to be convinced that among many loads of hooey is that the poor tree-hugging irtubi had no means of fighting the Cult and Narulis saved us. So why did they make him emperor and indeed one may continue to the present day. The problem with the foundation, the core, the DNA of Sarat’s determination to save us is that it is absolute balderdash. What does this mean?”
“Do tell,” said Taja. “I am enjoying this.”
“Grrr,” I said.
“I put it to you, gentlemen, positing as we are, that it means a decision was taken that earthpower could not be unleashed because – here I surrender, gracefully, I trust – of this Matter of Kadun, because it would awaken, dot, dot, dot. Possibly because true earthpower and by that I mean power, not the beliefs of peasants that the after-life is a field of flowers, is this Matter of Kadun. I would think – a lot of things. The Isles of course sing. There must a connection, a stratum. The geology of Dabida and Vasucula and indeed Ciletij appears tediously normal. I note in this respect the – ancestral aversion to the other matter which prevails in Ciletij and which perhaps pre-dates the Rape. They claim they are a rational people. My father is a rationalist. It is different, He is not afraid of the unknown. He merely prefers to leave it others. I would think that many centuries before Narulis Fidub learned from Kadun. Or let us be geographically exact. From Carlin. I would suggest that Narulis was crowned emperor because it was clear to those in Kadun who knew about such things that Fidub had found a way to use earth-power without – whatever is the barrier.”
“Are you always like this?” asked Taja.
I looked smug.
“Alas, I haven’t finished,” said Dill. “Sarat has posited that there is something buried under Azt which brings us to our delectable Venga, aka my lord of Fas-sigree, given that he is eban-tole. Five kingdoms did not unite under the imperial crown. Four kingdoms united and occupation of Fas-sigree was ceded to the emperor, a fit custodian? The stewardship continued nominally – the guys who deal with the drains – but the line is said to have died out.” Pause. “Mitch tried quite hard to discern the precise agenda. I really know nothing about the guy bar what I see and hear. Perhaps you know more?”
“We tried very hard,” said Taja. “The story holds.”
“And what is that story?”
“He went to the basket-weavers, same as As,” I said. .
“The what?”
“Simtian Lye!” Posh progressive school, tendency to arts and crafts. “Sorg called it the basket-weavers. Missed As by some years, of course. Mummy’s arty circle - she’s a poet – was rebellious if not openly (or covertly) resistant. By the time he was 17 he’d hooked up with Kadun PANTHER. On to the Collegium in Azt. Stuck it out – unlike As, but then he had a clearly defined aim: resistance. He became a handyman. All those arts and crafts. Education for life.”
“We loved this bit,” said Taja. “His story was he was a student with a minute private income. Since he detested dry bread, he needed to earn some jam. Since it seems he is very good with his hands, he had no shortage of the small jobs that people always need doing, putting shelves up, cutting hedges, creosoting the shed. Broadly, as you know, in pre-revolutionary Kadun, the further from Azt you were, the less bureaucracy you encountered as local officialdom tended to take their cue from the emperor’s stewards, though of course it was not a good idea to draw oneself to the attention of local officialdom in case those higher up the tree took note. Cutting hedges was not deemed a seditious act even in Kadun, but he was banged up for being of no fixed abode – he always gave his parents’ address and some officious copper didn’t think that counted in the middle of Var-sega’, indeed. So he PK’d his way out in the middle of the night, which made it a little hard to get out the creosote next morning. He vanished into Van-senok.”
“Then he went to Casin-ruhn with Cantilip and his life was never the same again! He says - they both say – they really didn’t expect anything to happen, but it threw him and he had the sense to know there was only one person to talk to about it and that was Cho. Only he never got there! Since sitting under the stars contemplating the universe wasn’t on in V-S, he crossed the border and took up with the Morag-Fahdi. And there he met Hass. Nobody – the H-W tried pretty hard too – has been able to prove that was anything other than what he said it was: rampant curiosity! He was with one troop of M-F, Hass was with another. The M-F talk to each other. He knew who Hass’s best mate was. What better approach? How better to gauge? His experience on the chair was distinctly multi-dimensional. It just isn’t the sort of thing you bring up in casual conversation and – yes, even Venga can be embarrassed! Shy, even. Of telling Cho Cho’s chair had told Venga he Cho had to retake Kadun. That’s what it boiled down to. His – perception sitting under the stars were that Kadun had gone downhill ever since the theft of the chair. If you grew up where he grew up there isn’t a lot of opportunity for the more abstruse kind of historical research, which of course is the other reason he headed south. He badly needed information. He found us.”
“He shared that perception with Cantilip. Clearly she cannot be embarrassed. Ah well, if we just grasp why V-S stole the chair, we’ve hacked it. Could it perhaps connect – it must somehow connect – with the Rape, with what we said earlier about the unleashing of earthpower. Their perception must have been that she was too dangerous. That of course goes back to what Cho said. You take in a stray kitten and she turns into a sabre-tooth. But Fidub would not have created a kitten. Something changed, something was revealed at the time of the Rape.”
“Or of course,” I said, “V-S put her there, rightly or wrongly, to sort what was going down in their neck of the woods. It must have been with Kaminua’s consent. Take back stole!”
“It would follow from that,” said Dill drily, “that, though I trust the years have attenuated it, what is going down is going to blow.”
“Then something changed again – oh no, of course. Indeed something changed. The chair was no longer in V-S. It was not on the cards that Ciletij would give it me. In which case the whole thing was some kind of damage limitation exercise, which makes no sense at all.”
“Venga wanted you to have the chair. Cantilip wanted you to be Anile emperor. Different. But Cantilip knew you wanted Ciletij in on the act.”
“I said,” I said, shaking my head, “I said, do I destroy this! Of course it makes sense! I was supposed to be so over-awed I’d leave her there. Hey, he’s an outer and exo young guy, what does he want with a historic relic! The one thing they didn’t expect was I’d recognize special-effects, not that I did – I mean, ha, sir, you are unmasked! wasn’t on the agenda. The experience - when these fiends were training me, there was a gig – I was here and my mind told me I was in the Saa’nda Senta. I was in one very real, very physical place or the other. But at Casin-ruhn – suppose there were three realities fused. There’s a derelict shack. There’s – perhaps – how it looked once when it was new and freshly painted – raising the question why, whose home? - there’s the con that that’s its –transcendental, eternal appearance (perhaps) and there’s filling it with people to make it more real.”
“That’s four. Have these people had any training in the stage?”
“Surrender to the dream. The other point - it was aimed at Hass, wasn’t it. I was supposed to be a eso nonentity. You can’t say they didn’t pick the theme, but on the other hand the set was tailor-made. Of course he wanted to believe, we both did, but the really eso people I know well – have known. Dill, Hass, Maya are were quite irritatingly practical and matter-of-fact.”
Taja pretended not to cast a highly speculative glance at Dill, who said, “Since he is irritatingly practical and matter-of-fact himself, he gets on well with us.”
“The other thing of course,” mused Taja, “is that you were too damned busy afterwards to think about ultimate realities. That they could bank on. What did you do with the experience, mentally?”
“It was like a particularly powerful dream. It didn’t have anything to do with 857 emails an hour.” Taja made a choking sound. “Would PANTHER lie! They counted them at one point. Not, you understand, every hour. Not all requiring action. Fair number of kids saying like wow! More staid persons: Sir, this is a great day for Kadun. Or alternatively not. All requiring reading and some kind of response. It was at the bottom of the to-do list, next to sitting on the Anile throne. That’s just a little embarrassing with hindsight. I didn’t sit on her at C-R, partly because that seat was already taken, partly because we were there courtesy of the armed forces of our noble allies and to fling myself down and carol, Mine, all mine! seemed – impolitic. Venga had told me about his trip, which at least had the merit of being fairly anodyne, in a sense, anyway. I’m afraid I stupidly thought that’s what she does. If ever I wanted a vacation, a relaxing cruise through the universe… She was crated up and flown to Azt and put in the basement of the Imperial. Then we moved to the Jumesit. I was wandering around in mine all mine mood. Not only am I Anile emperor, I have a throne to show for it. There is, you know, a throne room and there she had been ceremoniously placed, my very own kitchen chair. I sat on her, mildly curious. Time and space dissolved, as it does. I have mentioned my frame of mind. It was only long after I realized that the deeper levels shaped everyone’s trips. I was on Dad’s boat, apparently alone, and apparently in the middle of the ocean. Oh, the symbolism! I looked over the side. There didn’t seem to be any sharks. Then there was bustle and the ship was full of lean weathered Fidubi. Most of them wore breeches and broad-brimmed hats. I did not think the time was now. I saw distant lights, two long, three short, one long, one short, two long, three short and I knew it was the lighthouse on the Utmost Isle. Land ho, Captain! shouted one of the sailors. Home at last, said Narulis. Brig admonished him and he laughed. You tease, allowed Brig. Is not Fidub all our homes? he asked, but Cho said: Then Kadun must rule Fidub. Somewhat uncomfortable and pragmatically largely senseless, like the rest of it! My first thought was of you guys here at the shrine who were supposed to have prepared me for being Anile emperor. Then I thought: think of it as having been given a tool-set. I don’t know what I have to do but I have a wide range of equipment…. I ran through what you taught me and frankly it didn’t seem to help. When Maya came in, I asked her to sit and – she didn’t have a comforting experience, either. By this time I was fairly pissed off. We paid a lightning visit to Cho, who fed me some gobbledy-gook about the myth of a five-headed monster, I suppose to see how I’d react. When we’d calmed down a bit, we did absorb that – bar stray Vengas and I guess the odd Ciletij woodsman – it had been a thousand, as in one-zero-zero-zero, years since anyone had sat on her, so first-hand accounts were not readily to hand.”
“Oh really,” said Dill.
“Certainly the first-hand accounts bit,” said Taja.
“Van-senok’s private line to the cosmos? What possible use- ?”
“The lady is sentient,” said Dill. “Not in a way we understand, this is true, but what is happening when one sits is in some sense an interaction of minds. May it not then be said that it is possible to learn how to communicate with her?”
“It may, but in that case why wasn’t she hidden in the basement! That’s question 493,” I said to Taja. “Why did Van-senok give the empire’s northern coast to Ciletij?”
“Superficial answer 493,” said Dill, “is to keep it out of the hands of the emperor, with particular reference to Jaaba-Sen. Unfortunately until there was no emperor there was no Ciletij. However, that is not to say that some kind of deal was not cut between V-S and the Ciletij tribes. The only conceivable reason for any such deal would be to give them a western seaboard – ah-uh. To give our friends the Denzines a western seaboard.
“I suppose,” said Taja, “and this I grant is far-fetched and markedly different from published accounts, or indeed historic ones, but after all how many of the authors of those accounts were actually there? The Rape was not some kind of frontier-battle? We might – “ He grinned. “ – posit that Kaminua found out what was going on and – perhaps – did not think the autonomy of the emperor’s steward extended to surrendering half his territory?”
“Why don’t I find that far-fetched?” asked Dill. “If we’re in the fusing times game, maybe much earlier they came from a planet called Sug.” She grinned. “I insist someone came from a planet called Sug. We find that planet and we’ve cracked it…”
We all looked at each other.
“So – sit and focus on Sug and ask her?”
“It may just be crazy enough to be worth a try.”
“One of the few people we can trust,” said Dill. “It is not often – once is a word that occurs to me – that I feel the urge to pull rank, water off a duck’s back though I suspect it would be.”
“Marula?” asked Taja
“Damn Marula. Damn Mel. Damn Cantilip. Damn Denzines. Marula, one may say, is the weakest link but I do not think her loyalty to the imperium extends to keeping her mouth shut after I have departed and, since we do not know to whom she, or any of them, might sing, I do not think we should yet start the chorus.”
 
Mel
I began to laugh though I was not completely sure of the root of it.
“Poor Mel,” I said.
“He’s real cuddly,” said Dill, in a fair approximation of her Mom.
“Oh yes,” I said, “Mel is very cuddly.”
“Whom have we not pulled apart?” asked Dill.
I decided. And undecided.
“Mel, Hass, Cho. Mitch!”
If I can’t talk to Mel, it’s all pointless. Hyperbole. Ludicrous nonsense having no bearing on – what does it have no bearing on? Day-to-day reality. We said we’d do it and we did it. This is something else. The question is what?
“Now there’s a thought!” said Dill.
“Yes, exactly!” I said, answering myself as much as anyone. “If you try and connect this, all that we’ve been saying, with Mitch’s work, with Mitch’s life – there is no connection. It lives in its own little world. It’s – I was going to say, it’s like a hobby, life goes on without it. It’s like art, better analogy. It enhances life, gives it another dimension. It’s all lumped together as ‘the other matter’, that’s what I’m trying to say. Without love, life is dead, but life does not need to fret about how many universes there might be.”
“Or perhaps,” said Dill, “that is the fallacy underpinning your relations with so many you think closest to you. Or perhaps I should say their relations with you.”
I sighed.
“Any minute now you’re going to say everything is whole. Or of course that, if that is the case, then there can be no big deal.”
“While I grant that I am not without bias in this respect, it would seem to me that my father’s rationalism preserves him from an alternative agenda.”
“It occurred to me,” I said. “That Mel and Fugitry have been in this together from the start. Then I recalled how shaken Mel was. That could not be the exact truth.”
“More hooey?” suggested Dill. “The possibility would have seemed remote to Fugitry that Mel would sit on her.”
“Not as remote as his falling in love with Cantilip za-fenan,” murmured Taja.
“How true!”
“Perhaps part of the attraction was inside knowledge of V-S. Historians,” she said suddenly, “would not necessarily be lying even if they were there giving a commentary. Why would you depict something as a frontier battle if you did not know there was a frontier?”
“That,” said Taja, “is a rather juicy one.”
“That one I can do,” said Dill. “In comparison at least. We have always known what is Var-sega’, or perhaps rather what is not Var-sega; and is now Vasucula but the how and the why – what did a border mean a thousand years ago?”
“I should love to meet your father,” said Taja. “Busy, I do not doubt. Does he take vacations?”
“Mitch,” I said, “is very thorough.”
“Oh, we are so thorough,” muttered Dill.
I grinned.
“He spent hours, possibly years, in the PANTHER archives, but of course what he was looking for was rather different, and of course he no longer has time.”
“Mom is real thorough,” said Dill. “Mom has time.”
Taja was looking at us intently.
“I do not think we can refuse you. Your other question, of course.”
“Our other question, of course, is is there anyone here who knows anything? I find it possible to believe that the people who made the chair either refrained from recording it or quite possibly encoded it, but I find it less possible to believe that there are no ancient records at all. I also understand that in the ancient world it was a very long way away. Against that is the famed curiosity of cats.”
“We return to the Fidubi scam,” said Dill suddenly.
A very old memory, at least in terms of my young life, suddenly stirred. I laughed.
“The brown rat theory of history.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Dill.
“Years ago, I was pointing out that – a black rat mated with a brown rat and then a brown rat with another brown rat. In other words the empire ceased to be Fidubi the moment Brig’s son became emperor. Everything I have read tells me that Fidub was rapidly – assimilated, swallowed up, that both sides thought of Kadun as a separate entity.”
“On the level of day-to-day reality. But if you tell me there was no cultural exchange, no intellectual exchange, that I should doubt. We too are a sea-faring people where we have a sea to fare.”
“Carlin.”
“I am looking at you with new eyes,” said Dill. “Indeed there must be much of the brown rat about you. I had not thought. Isn’t that silly?”
“Six hundred years is a very long time.”
“We are related!”
“Susheela? We are.”
“I am thinking of the sea-faring folk of Carlin who must assuredly have discovered the Isles. I asked the wrong question.”
“Home from home?” I suggested.
“Narulis,” said Dill. “I too am thorough. Narulis described us or perhaps I mean them, carlini, as a confident people.”
“Fidub,” I said, “doesn’t know much about vast rolling plains. Car-sandis certainly predated Narulis..”
“A bustling port, the inhabitants of which did what? It is given that what one might call Kadun’s insularity is another word for her self-sufficiency. Carlin has food, Var-segan has minerals. Where there are sheep and cattle there are wool and leather. Where there are trees, there is wood. Where there is rock, there are stone and ores. To the west, the Denzines. To the east the ranges of Manubria, offering no invitation to penetrate further. To the south, Fidub, the fish-eaters.” Taja and I snorted. “It goes with the territory. Where there are rivers, there are fish. What did Fidub trade?”
“Silver,” I said instantly.
“Ah, the famous Fidubi silver lodes.”
“Do our brains work?” I muttered.
“I shall pass no comment on that. Nonetheless, you follow me closely, I trust, with particular reference to my earlier comment regarding possible geological similarities. However, for the moment, I ask with whom did Fidub trade?”
Taja ignored that one and asked: “You’re suggesting – positing – that – possibly – Fidub – ?”
“Is a piece of Kadun that broke off and floated away. Possibly. Kadun too has precious metals. So I ask again, with whom did Fidub trade?”
“Anyone who dropped in,” I said. “Worked silver is highly portable and greatly prized.”
“He said keeping a straight face. So we conclude it is the worked metal that is the true commodity, that Fidubi craftmanship is prized wherever it strayed. I am sure we are all aware of the place of silver in mythology, the magic properties perhaps not wholly inexactly attributed to it.”
“Put like that,” I said, “it all sounds terribly obvious.”
“Though in this instance,” added Dill drily, “it would seem werewolves are –argentophile.”
“I’m wondering about going to Zur,” I said.
Dill cocked an eyebrow at me.
“I am sure Taja and I will have a most illuminating time on our own.”
I sat back considering my feelings.
“Perhaps you can shed light on why – why I feel so damned adolescent about it! Wrong-footed.”
“Could you expand on that?”
“Unwillingly. I suddenly felt – a need to know which had very little to do with the facts of science, politics or history.”
“Trust?”
“I know that feeling. The last time I had it I was 17. I had been up all night. I had to know where I was with Maya.”
“Oh Sarat.”
“Try more exasperation!”
She grinned
“Oh Sarat!”
“Ex-actly. I’m sure Mel would be most understanding of my second childhood. There is something awry with Cantilip’s explanation? More to the point, have we shared? I had not previously listed paranoia among my failings. What possible reason do I have to think in due course all will not be revealed?”
“But you know.”
Taja looked at both of us.
“Your trust in him I suspect unwelcome!”
Dill said: “Hass here is pig in the middle.”
“Adolescent,” I said again. “Wrong-footed. For the first time in ten years I have no idea how to approach a situation.”
“The problem surely,” said Taja, “is whether there is a situation to approach.”
“That would seem to be our position,” said Dill. “The fruits of our independent enquiry will surely establish that. That of course is what he is finding unbearable.”
“Why here? Why now! What were we last talking about?”
“Brown rats?” suggested Taja.
“I am aware of a very distinct feeling of not being earthed. I am suddenly adrift.”
“You have suddenly realized you are - adrift,” amended Dill.
“Oh thanks!”
“But are you? Throughout everything there have been fixed points. It now seems to you one has - one might have - shifted from its position. I should say rather the trajectory has changed.”
“Isn’t that an about-turn?” asked Taja.
“My partner,” observed Dill, “my beloved, my hero, the light of my life, not to mention the co-ruler of a good part of my world, if only constitutionally, is behaving like a six-year-old whose best friend has gone out to play with someone else.”
Taja snorted.
“OK,” I said. “You have – confirmed – although of course you haven’t really – my – supposition that – you think I’m right in thinking that they won’t say anything unless cornered. But on the other hand you see nothing – sinister in that. Does that compute?”
“If you trust Mel. If you then switch on your brain.”
Taja bit his lip.
“If I get the hang of the possibility that that this just possibly is nothing to do with me.” I sighed. “What is personal to Mel, what is private? Zani.”
“Or of course,” said Dill.
“It’s personal until he finds out what it is!”
Mel was out. Cantilip was out, though apparently on a separate mission. That left Zani-Marula, which was probably rather a good thing. The colt grinned at me evilly and asked me if I’d like to read her a story. Nothing like getting some practice in.
Baz fiddled with a toy owl. Z-M sat on my lap and pulled my hair.
“No,” I said. “We don’t do that.”
Z-M smiled understandingly. Clearly the fault was mine but she was willing to forgive me and go along with it.
“Leg, possibly,” muttered Baz.
I picked up the board-book.
“Once upon a time there was a small red house standing alone in a big dark wood,”
Z-M pulled a face.
“Heard that one before? How about I make up a story? This is one about - a little owl who’d lost her way in a big dark forest.” There were some crayons and a pad of paper on the floor. I decided to have fun. “I have your attention?” Clearly I did, though I don’t think I totally imagined that it was not untinged with a raised eyebrow at the feckless youth who dared pick up her green crayon. “There were hu-uge green pines.” Green pines came into being. “Tangled branches. Wolves.” I’ve never seen a crimson wolf but there’s nothing like being creative.
“Is there money in it?” muttered Baz.
“Foxes. Wild-cats.” Foxes are orange and wild-cats are brown. Everyone knows that. “And they were all hungry and right in the middle of them hiding under some fallen branches was the little owl.” Definitely brown. It was rather a good owlet, actually. “She didn’t dare call for Mummy or the foxes and wolves and wild-cats would find her. What was she to do!”
Z-M listened intently but failed to show any distress. Her mother to the life. I hope I can solve this.
“Suddenly enormous great drops of rain began to fall and it grew really dark except for lightning and thunder and the thunder and lightning scared all the foxes and wolves and wild-cats away.”
“Badgers, martens,” muttered Baz.
“Don’t be awkward. They all ran away to their warm dry nests but the poor little owl didn’t have anywhere to run to and if she cried out for Mummy no-one would hear her above the noise of the storm.”
“You have a flair for this,” said Baz. “Looking for a job?”
“She was hungry and frightened and she’d never learned to fly but she knew that if she stayed where she was she’d die so she hopped out of her little hiding-place and began to open her wings and flap them feebly and of course nothing happened, but she hopped and flapped more and more until she was getting tired and it seemed there wasn’t any hope when suddenly she was in the air!” Baz and the toy owl whooshed and swooped with wild abandon. “She didn’t go very far and landed a bit bumpily on a low branch but all her tiredness seemed to have gone and the rain had stopped and it was quiet and safe and she began frantically calling for Mummy.” Our toowit-toowoos were impressive even if I do say so myself. “A grumpy old wood-pecker looked out of his hole and told her to shut up. She said she was lost and calling for Mummy and that made him even crosser and he told her he didn’t want her sort around his chicks and tried to push her off the branch but she knew the flying-trick now and fluttered further up the tree away from the woodpecker and Mummy who had been looking for her for hours but got caught up in the storm came and rescued her.
Z-M said one word: “More.”
I’m a success!
“Say please,” we chorused.
She gave a squeal of delight instead. Mel had appeared.
“You missed all the drama,” said Baz.
He picked up Z-M, held her up above his head, then kissed her and put her on his shoulders.
“You were going to be hours.”
“Any excuse to escape. ”
“Owl,” said Z-M.
Baz did more whooshing and swooping and Z-M gurgled merrily.
“What brings you to our charming old city?”
“Run a couple of things past you. We’re in Fidub for a few days.”
A colt appeared and took Z-M.
“See you later, sweetheart,” assured Mel. “When are you going to have one?”
“Not sure yet.”
He cocked his head.
“I do not think being carted about the continent a bad thing!”
“How about halfway down the backstairs leading to the stables?”
He paused fractionally.
“Maya-stuff?”
“It can’t not be.”
We settled on the stairs.
If I cannot strip before Mel, lit and fig, the hell with it.
“The last time I felt like this I was 17. I needed to know where I was with Maya before proceeding,”
“Sarat…I didn’t know you cared!”
We grinned at each other. That was the easy part.
“Dill thinks I have a screw loose. It is obvious that the object of your quest is Zani and that is deeply personal to you and nothing to do with me. Maybe. I think there’s an embarrassment factor due to Van-senok’s theft of the chair.”
“Putting the two together.”
“We know the universe thinks you’re the Master of Kadun.”
“Could that not prove hugely embarrassing?”
“To whom on what occasion!”
“Me. I’m very sensitive.”
He made huge woeful eyes at me.
“Shall we start at the beginning?”
“No,” said Mel. “I think on the whole no. I have promised Cantilip I shan’t talk to you UNTIL caps underlined bold I know what I’m talking about. The precise expression was stirring it. Sending you off on a wild-goose chase came into it. So of course did the juicier parts of senoki history. We really don’t want you to declare war on V-S on the grounds of a theory.”
“Am I that thick? Handing over imperial territory to Ciletij is not a theory.”
“We are feeling a little sensitive.”
“I haven’t shared either. Dill restrains the urge to confront Marula. She desists because she doesn’t know to whom Marula might gab. The Denzines figure largely in that model.”
“You think me compromised?”
“I think we have all been to some extent manipulated by Fugitry.”
“Ex-actly,” said Mel. “But the question has arisen - ?”
“I think not. It arose. You’re not that good an actor.”
“Being all on the same side, why the secrecy? See above….You do not therefore think that I shall relate this conversation to Fugitry.”
“I do not think that.”
“Though Fugitry must by definition be on your side.”
“Must he?”
“He is not on Bal’s.”
“Interesting! That wasn’t what I meant. A number of strands…When are there not? Perhaps a skein. It is not on my side to keep things from me. I think the Denzines know what went down in V-S, what is this matter of Kadun.”
“What was it they used to tell us in school?”
“Well?”
“You understand things so much better if you work them out for yourself. Fugitry has not confided in me.”
“It’s that aspect – I could be difficult. I want to know not to understand. Presumably this is the long view.”
“It’s very important to understand.” This in the tone of a teacher of infants.
“Been there, done that?”
He just grinned.
“Understanding will determine - ? Oh, the future of Kadun, the future of the continent, possibly the future of the planet. In concrete terms what we do. Not doing badly so far on the grounds of limitless ignorance. What we do about things about which we have yet to do anything?” I feigned horror. “You mean we left something out?”
“My preliminary researches,” began Mel. “I think I can go with this one. It’s hardly original. Five kingdoms united under the imperial crown – “
“I seem to have heard that before,” I murmured encouragingly.
“- I think we did not understand the very considerable autonomy retained, exercised and indeed jealously guarded.”
“Nor,” I said, “that it is nonsense that the poor little irturbi were defenceless until Narulis dropped by.”
He looked at me a minute.
“Educational, pairing with daughters of the Houses.”
“Most educational,” I said. “Ah, the Fidubi scam! The indigenous culture of Fidub is of course earthpower. Actually it may be silver-power.”
“Earthpower defeated the Cult,” said Mel.
“Ah, but whose earthpower! Dill has mused upon the word ‘anile’.” I felt a wave of laughter rising up in me. “If we have reached a place where Narulis was irrelevant and you are – let us be exact,” I tutted, “Zani was Master of Kadun, our next question must be in what sense was Narulis relevant. No, it mustn’t. Our next question – who was actually the architect of Narulis’ victories – if not Narulis. It wouldn’t have been the Master of V-S by any chance, would it.”
Grrr,” said Mel.
“Gee, Mel, you have to understand none of this changes the people we are here and now.”
“And the very real, very genuine feelings we have for each other.” We grinned. “If Narulis was irrelevant. It sounds like a Fidubi joke to me, teasing those in Kadun who thought him irrelevant. There would still be many unanswered questions.”
“The one after that is the one that has bugged everyone for centuries, namely that if – since – since Kadun is not defenceless why has she repeatedly fallen under the sway of the Cult?”
“I’ll talk to Cantilip. When did you stop trusting me?”
“When did I perceive our relationship had changed? Not the same thing.”
“Maya,” said Mel.
“What was previously automatic is now not. I actually find it hard to clod-hop all over it. Our private life was shared and now isn’t. That may have to do. With the addition – that which concerns Dabida was one sphere of your life, this Matter of Kadun another. There is now a third not clearly either and I am a simple guy, readily confused.”
“I’ve been an idiot,” said Mel. “I thought – you have Dill. You do have Dill. You also have Hass. No. I’m confused.”
“My tact defeats me. Cantilip.”
“She adores you! She adores Dill.”
“My problem lies in Van-senok.”
“Our problem lies in Van-senok. Your problem lies - ” He grinned. “Chivalry is a terrible thing. I cannot imagine that we should have reached this situation had you felt free to corner Cantilip. Of course she may not want to talk to you. Is that part of the problem?”
“I have noted that questions my future lady of Van-senok might reasonably be expected to answer may be dismissed by the Queen of Dabida.”
“By hiding behind being Queen of Dabida? Cantilip has a considerable temper, you know.”
“Just as well she’s not pregnant again. I trust!”
“Even as we speak one sperm more nimble, more dynamic than the rest…We think we can cope with another one.”
 
I thought he was over-doing it but after all he knows her better than I do.
“You need to talk to him,” Mel finished.
Cantilip gave a quick yelp of laughter.
“What,” she asked demurely, “is it you would like to know?”
“Never been terribly good at listing things I don’t know exist. The empire previously extended to the northern coast, encompassing the area of Ciletij now known as Jaaba-sen. Can you input on that at all?”
“You’re cross with us.”
“’Us’, you and Mel, or ‘us’, Van-senok?”
“Both.”
“How true! How limpid! Why did Van-senok steal the Anile throne?”
“To keep it safe.”
“Meaning?”
“To keep it out of the hands of the Cult. They would have destroyed it.”
“At that time the log-cabin was in Van-senok?”
“In 3015 the log-cabin was in Van-senok.”
“I know you well enough to know you can enthuse, perhaps even gush.”
“Never gush!”
“The expression that occurs to me is blood out of a stone.”
“Then you ask the wrong questions.”
“I didn’t say it’d be easy!” hissed Mel.
She bestowed a gracious smile on him.
“Try ‘what is Marula’s cousin’s relationship with a Ciletij intelligence officer?’” suggested Mel.
For a fraction of a second I thought he was teasing.
“Ah,” I said. “Hadn’t thought of that one. Business or pleasure?”
“Serious,” said Cantilip. “Long-standing. And complex.
“May we start at the beginning. This has nothing – apparently – to do with my conversation with Mel earlier. There are two stories?”
“Correct. His problem and my problem.”
“They are actually the same problem,” added Mel helpfully.
“What,” asked Cantilip, “seems to you an extremely good reason for losing part of our glorious empire, fast?”
“The bears as big as houses and the wolves the size of rooms? I’ve been on the Grid.”
She laughed.
“Pretty well. It seemed a good idea at the time. Responsibility for that particular section of the planet was not required.”
“What exactly is wrong with it?”
“We don’t exactly know. Evil is the all-purpose term.”
“There was no Ciletij – something went wrong when the border was drawn up? No, V-S drew an arbitrary border. Ciletij demanded the lake? Oh, of course, Ciletij demanded the site of the rape.”
“It was not part of anyone’s plan that your chair end up in Ciletij! If we now fast-forward, their eyes met across a crowded room…She is Alinta. He is Hiran. The scene is a soiree in Far-disit. You would have been about ten at the time. He is supposedly an art-dealer, no disguising his nationality, plenty of travel, all the best people. Where is the money? Where’s it being put? It’s not critical stuff, but it’s useful. Not surprisingly he doesn’t at first tell her what he does. They get serious and he feels honour-bound to inform her that if he’s caught she’ll be in deep shit nine. At which point she points out the reverse. Let us say we in V-S are not well regarded. They laugh and think oh damn, or words to that effect.
“On the other hand of course international public opinion….They talk. She moves to G-T and runs an international biz from there, which is probably why they never crossed your radar. Two things about Alinta. She is an interior designer. I do not say she hates trees – “
“That would be impossible,” murmured Mel.
“She prefers them in bloom, blossom fluttering slowly to the ground in a warm breeze, or if bedecked with a fine pattering of snow seen through double-glazing. We forgive her. Apart from that, she’s as strong, tough and loyal as the rest of us. She comes to the House for Mummy’s birthday, which fortunately is in the spring, and she wrote frantically amusing mails about G-T. Nothing much changed until you began to growl. I shall not bore you with the range of reactions well known to you…For the purpose our narrative Hiran at that point has a problem. His bosses are all over him like wasps round a jam-pot. The SSS – “ Special Security Service. “ - idiots want Hiran to encourage Alinta to cuddle up to the House. However….Scarcely have the SSS digested the presence of a troublesome young man in Zur when I run off with Mel. They are not quite stupid enough to push it, since policy, such as it is, is to keep Dabida on board, though of course they rather hope that Dabida will not warm to her future queen and as we know anyway a good part of the smear campaign came from Ciletij.
“I actually thought the one about you dancing naked at 4 am on the Lawns celebrating your primitive cult was rather good,” said Mel.
“As you said at the time.”
“I missed that one!” I said.
 
 
 
 
​