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Where the content of books conflicts with reality, we do not believe reality is necessarily over-ruled. Where the content of books contains ideas conflicting with ideas in a 'holy book', we do not believe the 'holy book' necessarily true and other books false.

Indeed, we live in a society shaped by a Trinity, that Trinity being broadly symbolized by the combined content of the Philosophy, Religion and Science sections of a major bookshop.

We may prefer to believe that which is demonstrably false or distinctly less likely but on the whole I think have an awareness of the thing called fact; one of the things that distinguishes the religious nutter from the religious non-nutter is whether he or she accords the Virgin Birth or Mohammed's Night Journey the status of fact, on par with water boiling when heated sufficiently.

Clearly also people who are not illiterate, who read books the content of which is contradictory, come across views that repel or otherwise offend them and do not run around screaming and shouting about it. 

It being the case that some views on life the universe and everything directly oppose others, unless you live in a hole in the ground you are going to meet people who think what you think is crap and if you then cavort and scream a) you are mad and b) your ignorance, your self-obsession and your total intellectual and emotional inadequacy are your problem. You seek to annul the external source of your distress because you are an animal with neither self-control (ability to contain your feelings) nor self-command (ability to change your feelings). Go talk to a priest. Or just try thinking of others as equals and individuals, independent, separate, not an extension of your bloody sick self, not your bloody property.
http://www.dillsplace.com/reality-102.html

To require others to believe what you believe is not love and never was.  Be what your beliefs say they are. It is total contempt for individuals.  I do not demand others are as I am.  I demand animals be contained by the norms of the free world.  They can be as illiterate, ignorant, irrational and ineducable as they like, but they may  not  suppress, destroy literacy, knowledge, reason and the right to learn.  They  may not be as bestial as they like because they may not inflict themselves physically on others. The irreducibly evil have demanded I function on the level of an animal, want the nation functioning on the level of animals, that animals rule, and have assaulted me, crippled me and attempted to destroy me mentally and physically for I refuse to comply with their insistence I empty my mind of all contrary to them, all fact which does not mesh with their illusory reality, all reason that demolishes their illusory reality, become a creature of their will on the purile pretext that their will is God's will. I have a mind of my own and I know how to use it. This of course the psychopaths, the grossly sick regard as insolence, wilfulness, arrogance, madness, disturbed, when they are the sick, the insolent, the grotesque, the diseased.  

THAT AM I

That indeed, ‘old boy’, are you, the difference being I know what I am and you do not. If you have love and the universe, you do not need God, though possibly you have It anyway. Depends on what you mean by 'God'. 

My happiness is not contingent upon your approval, your liking. That of course your sick sad ego finds intolerable. You must matter to me, no? I must find you important, defer to you, take you into account. I do not. Thus in common with sick sad monkeys of all kinds, Nazi monkeys, Stalinist monkeys, religious monkeys, you force yourself into my life physically, impairing my mobility such that you are ever-present in my life. Vulgar little man, aren’t you, not a gentleman.

As I have previously remarked:

Having class is entirely distinct from being a member of a social class. You, I suspect, may be either what people think of as a 'real' aristocrat, ancient title and blah, or someone who thinks having a lot of money and mixing with the 'right people' makes him posh.

Since, however, you are sly, cowardly, dishonest piece of puke, a thug, a wordless, mindless baboon, you have no class at all. 

You seem to think your culture (what culture?) important. We all have our cultures, of course, and within them many quaint customs that have not survived into the modern age. If we are to be civilized, we do not do such things any more. Perhaps you might ponder that? However, if you insist on being a product of the Stone Age, I would remind you that my culture used to have a fondness for stringing people like you up from lamp-posts. Shall you all swing together/Dressed in the old light blue? Just a thought. Perhaps we should therefore agree to differ? 

Hmm, that would be irresistible. No, not the stringing-up. A Labour Government was so mortified by the distress of an Old Etonian that it allowed him to cripple the grand-daughter of Labour pioneers. You do just have to see the funny side.

But then it is terribly obvious that the entire ‘New Labour’ project was dedicated to the destruction of England, the destruction of freedom, the destruction of reason.
Ah, the insolent deliberation with which democracy is rejected. Ah, the smooth voices of the clinically insane, it isn’t an issue, nothing may be said. How many doctors are psychopaths? Isn’t that an interesting question. How many doctors really believe that they are divinely or otherwise appointed to command and order things as they please? Apes find speech so unnecessary and reason too too taxing. The insolent, insolent out of hand refusal of the norms of a free and democratic society, 

For the moment, therefore, old boy, you must be jolly pleased with the outcome. The slave-sluts of London medicine have proved wholly reliable. You know you can count on them to work to destroy democracy, rely on them to shit on freedom and to beat up women who displease you. They’ll do anything for you, cripple the grand-daughter of not quite the founder of the Labour Party, after all it must be all right if it’s Master’s will. Make you wet between the legs, does it? 

Animals are obedient. I’m a human being.

You are of course a psychopath, sick mad child-monster-animal cannot see where it ends and someone else begins crouching in terror of reality of the rest of the universe, must control or fragile self will die, die if people don’t like it, die if people oppose it, die if people are themselves not what it demand they be, all must obey, what will happen if people have ideas of their own – well, in your case the loony drivel you call your religion becomes the preserve only of a handful of freaks. Keep them infantile, keep them obedient, claim to reward them with power, your power, they can determine what others may be. Cannot. Illusion. They have no power over me. You have no power over me. Except of course that of the thug. How impressive can you get.

Reality REALITY REALITY frightens little monkey, other minds, other hearts the most freaking obvious reality to any of us is another human being who is separate, distinct, equal, not permitted, not permitted TERRIFIES little monkey. Monkey must have power. Power really impresses the slave-sluts. Ooh how great it is, how important, it doesn’t need to speak to its victim. It commands. Its slaves obey. Frightened little monkey, aren’t you. Absolutely fucking terrified of speaking to me, or of course to anyone who regards you as an equal not a master. 

And so there are questions, big fat obvious questions to anyone who is not a completely enslaved nutter. The problem with a free and open establishing of the facts? The strange proposition that some people are considered innately incapable of lying and so there is no need to establish the facts because the truth is already known.

May not be. Forbidden. Monkey screams. I do not think you scream openly though of course your slave-sluts do, but rather fancy yourself as a cold hard man of steel. Can that veneer be shattered? Probably. 

And so instead of being taught to love their neighbours as themselves, to regard their neighbours as equals, they are taught a seedy hierarchical ‘respect’, taught systematically their own supremacy – are they not, brothers, sisters and comrades - taught that whatever drivel has been fed them as ‘reality’ is sacrosanct and may not be challenged and so of course they scream, taught psychosis, taught of course to be feral, to hit, to use no words, taught to despise language, logic, liberty and love.

And you old boy will do anything to maintain Corruption, keep them mad, afraid, ignorant, dependent, subservient and all the politicians suck your cock, certainly in the case of the bastardized fascist fake Left because they too believe people are property, to be and do what the State requires. They are funny, aren’t they. They babble about equality and demand slavery. We are equal in rights. That absolutely petrifies you, doesn’t it, the mere idea someone can address you as a fellow human being not an overlord. Can say things to you you do not wish to hear. Or of course ignore you.

They are repulsive. I am repelled. I trust I have made that clear, woodentops whose sole criterion for judging an idea is whether Master permits it, who would burn all the books if they knew what they contained, a cancer in the University, tumour cells replacing healthy tissue.

I have to say one of the areas in which I am wholly lacking in knowledge is the law governing the keeping of dangerous animals but it would seem to me likely, whether one is the Master of Longleat or a fan of poisonous snakes, that the law demands they be securely contained that they pose no threat to others. You wish your dangerous animals at liberty to molest others and politicians concur. That has to be funny. When others do not even wish to contain the savage beast but merely to comment on its bestiality you cry 'They must not be hurt!' and politicians, who are either fools or evil, rush to assist and to attempt to enforce silence but what is the hurt but the existence of other human beings who are not like them. 

You really believe you are set on high to dictate to others, that you are some kind of superior life-form endowed with rights particularly over me, either born to or given by God the power to dictate reality.

Hey it’s the Wizard of Oz.

This ain’t Kansas, bubba.

Keep them afraid, keep them animals, keep them impotent, incontinent, keep them terrified of words, monkey cannot cope with words, keep them hating and fearing human freedom, keep them enslaved, keep them convinced everyone is the property of their master. Keep them believing a psychotic frightened little monkey speaks for God, his will is God’s will, keep them incapable of question, keep them obedient, keep them intellectually incapable because if a cowardly thug represents God, then God is a cowardly thug.

Keep them FRIGHTENED. Keep them hating freedom. Keep them shit and then they’ll hate the freedom to say they’re shit. Keep them frightened of words. How can words hurt control change you? You change you. Or rather obviously not. HATE FREEDOM hate no control, hate no-one kneel HATE IT. Frightens little monkey. 

Try going down to Yasgur's Farm, man. Perfect love casts out fear.

What happens when people stop sucking your cock? Apart from your need for a hand-job of course.

What are you, apart from robe, gown, status, power. Have you a heart? Have you a mind? Are you anything besides a large baboon who hits people? When people are free to ignore you. Set moral example, persuade with reason. Why are you right? You cannot. Thus you think you need not, convince yourself you have Truth. You are morally superior. You ordain. The slave-sluts of course are utterly convinced of their intellectual superiority. They have Truth. Therefore I am lying. Convinced of their moral superiority, for they are obedient and their minds are dead. They do not cannot will not question. It terrifies. Cannot question Truth. 

Animals are obedient. I am a human being. 

Your Truth is a load of intellectually and morally indefensible ape-shit. 

It is not demonstrable. It cannot therefore be binding. Anyone who does not have cunt-for-brains can see that. It exists only in your head. Other realities exist only in the heads of others. Both cannot be binding. Hundreds, thousands, millions of alternatives cannot all be binding.

www.dillsplace.com/that-am-i.html

You want a place in history, Blair?  Fine: The Labour Prime Minister who left a graduate of the University of London who has qualified for membership of British Mensa, the grand-daughter of John Howard, Fabian, socialist, atheist, and Elizabeth Howard, socialist, feminist and Unitarian, to be destroyed by the religious for not being a moron, the daughter of Barrington Howard, author and atheist, for not being illiterate and ignorant, the niece of Richard Kisch, Communist journalist who fought in the Spanish Civil War and second cousin or whatever the term is (he was Barry's cousin) of Professor Rodney Howard Hilton, Party member from Balliol in the 30s to '56, for opposing religion.

So come on, guys, one more time, precisely the deep evil which must be suppressed of Fal in the shrine at Maona-Pri - both times:

Lattic said the shrine at Maona-pri had scared him, partly because anything that old defies any puny inadequate meanig you previously attributed to the word ‘old’, but mostly because he couldn’t understand it, understand what it did to him.  He said he felt absolutely safe there. Nothing inside or out could hurt him.  It’s in the stone, he said, rather helplessly.  The power is in the stone.  The mentors put the power in the stone, Narak had told him. I knew Lattic’s first impression of the mentors (it lasted about thirty seconds or until he started to explain his problems, whichever was sooner) was along the lines of sweet gentle folks who don’t know they’re alive.  Fidub has not remained a Cult-free zone for 6000 years going on ever because they don’t know they’re alive.
 
Not transformed.  Free.  Free to be Lattic. 
I wonder….The ferries run nearly all night in the summer.  I grinned to myself.  Sarat would know.  Sarat probably still knows, underneath the avalanche of further fact that must have crowded his brain.  If they haven’t changed the timetables of course, which they almost certainly have.  I logged on and looked up the exotically named Fidubi Ferries while composing a letter in another part of my brain, which went something like, Dear Tet, I understand that I appeared with a good reference!  I mean you value Hass’s views and he thought I ought to talk to you and I’m not saying it would have been different if I’d appeared off my own bat (bat-wings?) but – but what, Fal?  There was a ferry in an hour which I could catch if I moved it, and one back at about 5 in the morning, which suited what I had in mind just fine. I ought to be able to create an absolutely soothing, silent and safe atmosphere in my own den of course, but I hadn’t.  I couldn’t go to Zur’s shrine, too many people would recognize me.
 
So of course the first person I saw was Vax.  He gave a quick yelp of laughter. 
“I have travelled many leagues,” I said, “lit and fig.  Whether I’ve got anywhere is something else.”
“I look in from time to time,” he said.  “I hear things in our island fastness, you know.”
“Maybe one corner of the puzzle is complete.”
“I’m around.”
There’s a café  for when you need to eat  and the party is in the basement if you want to talk  I didn’t want to eat or talk.
Carlin just thinks it’s old.   Did Narulis ever sit here?  No, why would he, he was young, adventurous, a sea-farer – so maybe he went to sea to escape from a broken heart!  If Sarat failed, if he were ever driven out of Kadun – where on earth did that thought come from?  It had to work, it had to.  With very little encouragement I could work myself back into a state wherein it was dependent upon me to make it but no, that had never been exactly.  If everyone didn’t do their utmost that would be a betrayal of Sorg.  The thought sat more easily now that I had defined my utmost and set it in motion. The pillars the colour of damp sand, intricately carved, just a little bit crumbly, shimmered in the candle-light.   I looked more closely and cocked my head. Were those letters?  If so it was no language I knew.  I closed my eyes and no, it wasn’t a time-slip, just an awareness of time, of waves of time, past, present and future, which I suppose is another way of saying the bloody Whole. No, that hadn’t been what I meant, Sarat hadn’t been what I mean, when they did fail, when they returned to Fidub, they must have come here to recover.  All times are now.   I might just as well have been some Fidubi wench from aeons past.  It was easy to be like that here.   I am sitting in a pale-green tunic – well, at least it wasn’t crimson corrugated iron, but I guess that’s part of the bloody Whole too.  I surrendered myself because here I am safe.  The shadows came but could not touch me, not here, shadows trying to blot out the light.  ‘They came, the skull-faces, but we laughed.’  I didn’t laugh, I just went on sitting.  Somewhere it seemed Vax was saying, “And what does Hass say?” and I almost looked round before I realized the conversation was in my head.  “I have to stop,”  I replied.  “I just stopped.”  I did laugh then.  Because it was all so funny.  It never works when you try to put words to what is – the messes people get into, that’s OK, but people being killed, people in pain: It is all so funny.  That makes more sense, the bloody gurgle of cosmic laughter.  Inside.  That’s the point.  It is inviolate.  It is untouched.  It is real? And all the human crap is not real, but we are human and have to be human.  I knew enough to know better minds than mine had lurched at this one, but that is the balance.  I had a sudden image of myself on – not exactly a tightrope, because it wasn’t much more than knee-high and it wasn’t that there was no safety net, the trouble was on the contrary that nets to catch me if I fell abounded, catch and trap me, but I was skimming along, easy-peasy.  Suddenly I felt sure the rope was going to break but no, I told myself, and it didn’t.  Yet.  Suddenly it snapped.   This, I thought, is not totally unfamiliar but this time I know what to do!  I threw myself clear of the nets.  I didn't seem any the worse for wear but I was sure I was somewhere else, thought it didn’t seem to be anywhere.  Despite this mental circus-act, I was feeling very lazy, very relaxed.  I suppose very safe.  I wanted to stretch out and found myself another cushion.  There were a few other people around but they too were lost in their own little mental worlds. I wondered about other people’s pain, grief, fear (that makes a change, huh?) and where it went.  I mean, I had no doubt that some of the people here were as distraught and devastated as I had been but it sort of melts away.  Because it isn’t real.  I sighed.  OK, so let me in this safe place ask myself what the hell is my problem with reality, but it really didn’t seem to matter.  Maybe that’s the only way to look at it, casually, creep up on it unawares.   The central fact of my life is – oh, do I have one of those? A determining fact of my life is that once I was in Azt – what?  Unreal is such an unhelpful word.  No, my relationship with Tet didn’t seem unhappy or boring or even not what I wanted, it just didn’t seem real.  And Tet is not a wishy-washy person.  It was just – somewhere else.  Like everything else is right now, which might just tell me something important if I only knew what.  There is a crossed wire, a plug in the wrong socket, like – like putting the headphones jack into the power socket. A little mental game came to me, unplugging all the major connections – like I knew what they were or anything, but just pulling out any plug I could see!  And Hass would say, I said to myself sleepily, just leave all the loose ends alone, don’t try to figure which should go where.  I can’t honestly say that this little exercise made me feel the slightest bit different, but I did drift into that really nice waking dreams state – is it alpha rhythms, can’t remember – and had a really nice though not remotely revealing, so far as I could see, trip.  I came to eventually, blinking and reflected that – possibly – spending the night with myself on the floor of the shrine at Maona-pri counted as my most insane act yet.  Thirsty.  Where is the caff?  I got up and looked around.  Half-open door with light on, that must be it.  It wasn’t very much lighter, the sort of people who want a drink in the middle of the night don’t want to walk into a blaze of neon, and much as described by Lattic, benches with cushions on and broader benches in front of them to serve as tables, and really rather strange lamps on each table, like mini-inverted chandeliers which, Lattic had said enthusiastically, give you enough light to read by without disturbing the ambience, which was pale pink; the walls were pale pink, and there were paintings which looked rather good, even in the half-light.   [The loos, I discovered, were pale pink too, everything including the bowl, with good paintings, and well lit.  There was a rather gorgeous one of a tree in bud.  I wondered if I could get a reproduction.  Somehow I had no doubt these were originals.  I didn’t think the shrine lacked funding and I wondered.]  Behind the counter a middle-aged man with a bushy beard was engrossed in a book. There was a water dispenser.  I drank thirstily.  There was a solid wall of books, vids and disks cunningly illuminated by under the shelf lighting.  Lattic had raved about this.  I made my way to the counter. The guy looked up and said hi.
Hi, I said.
Hunger? Thirst?
Hot drink?
Anything in particular?  You will be amazed at our range!
I looked around.  I shall?
Under the counter. 
Lemongrass?
Come to think of it, I thought, right this moment, I could do with apple-stock!  I wondered if I actually could or whether that was me tweeting Carlin at me.
And ginger?
And I’ve suddenly realized I’m ravenous!
Do you an omelette?
That would be brilliant!  Thank you!
Give you a shout when it’s ready.
The laughter gurgled up from somewhere
You shout here?
Didn’t you notice the juke-box?
I grinned and wandered over to the books.
The Illusion of Time.  That sounded a bit heavy, a bit theoretical.  Why Am I Here?  You pick that out wondering where is here.  Here turned out to be the universe.  Something a bit more local, I think.  Why is a Zuri in the shrine at Maona-Pri in the middle of the night?  This enchanting collection of meditation music from the Age of Calpedene.  The what?  Oh, it’s the name of the performers.  You don’t call yourselves The Age of Calpedene unless there was an Age of Calpedene.  Slap your wrist, Fal, you should have paid more attention to Fidubi history in school.   I could certainly try that one, my place could just do with enchanting music and indeed there were headphones and a drive to try it with.  Oh yes, oh this is gorgeous.  All I need now is something to read while listening to the enchanting music – er, do you buy, do you borrow, do you donate?  Oh, right, a sort of ledger with a pen tied to it.  The box for donations is in the wall to your left.  We ask you to write the title of anything you take so we can keep stocks complete.  That’s simple enough.  I continued browsing.  Put The Light On!  Why are you so darned unhappy?  So life has dealt you a lousy hand.  You are in charge.  I think I’m going to like this… Eternal Flame: A History of the Shrine at Maona-Pri.  I picked up a vid, Treasures of Maona-Pri, while I was at it. Who are You and What Do You Want?  That sounded – pertinent.   Death: It’s All One Continuum.  That was definitely going to engross me, but not one for reading in a caff, even this caff.   When the chef brought my omelette I asked him if he was one of the mentors and he confessed he was.  I felt suddenly shy but came out with it anyway.  My partner died and I had a sort of experience with what might have been his – ghost.  Some people said it was projection.  I have talked about this, I mean.  I wondered is – there anything you can recommend.  Anyone saying anything sensible about – that sort of thing.  Oh you poor girl, you, he said.  I felt immediately swaddled in love.  Oh I see, I said, that’s what you do.  He cocked an eyebrow.  People can say anything, everything because they’re safe and warm and cosy and smothered in love.  That’s about the size of it, he said.  Whom have you talked to, may I ask.  I sighed.  Hass. Hasiyata Talal.  His lips twitched.  And you want a – second opinion?  I’ve had second opinions, third, tenth, I said.  I think I’d like some kind of – overview.  That’s a good one, he said firmly, pointing to Death: It’s All One Continuum.  Let’s see now, hope we’ve got one…We do try and keep everything in stock…There we are!  He triumphantly produced a small cream paperback entitled Matters of Life and Death. Your dinner’s getting cold.  Unless you want to talk.  Thank you very much.  No, I said.  But I’d better…I gestured at the ledger.  You eat, he said.  I’ll write!  Thank you, I said again.
After a while I went back to my cushions then got up and walked slowly up to the Flame.  It rather seemed to me that I saw things in it, sparks and flashes, but I rather prosaically put that down to tiredness, except I couldn’t stop looking.  ‘Love and cannot leave,’ I said to myself softly. I looked up at the Window THAT AM I and an incredible collage of starburst and flame but – rather prosaically – I guess I’d disconnected again – what had me really gaping was the structure of the Window, its divisions, though the images were different. Yes, well, I’d seen that before; so that’s where the Dacunine Window comes from. 
I was just thinking time I was mooching off when the first rays of sun hit the centre of the starburst, were refracted.  Yikes!  It was as though the whole shrine had been set alight. 
A voice behind me full of laughter said simply, “Good, isn’t it.”
“Is there music in the glass?” I asked.
Just laughter.
I turned to face the stranger.  He was a tall, thin, elderly guy, slightly stooped, now looking at me with frank curiosity.
“The lady knows Carlin.”
“Oh,” I said, “the lady knows Carlin!”
The lady, I thought to myself, has just found another – project.  Ancient history! 
I got home, said good morning to Benji, told her my night’s activities, swallowed some strong coffee and set to thinking about – oh what a cliché – making my house a home.  Then I went to bed, though I didn’t sleep, but did another session of pulling out those mental plugs, an endeavour which seemed to me suddenly as important as regular physical exercise.
My choices were strange and intricate.  Whatever tenderness Tet felt for me could not, I felt, reasonably be expected to stretch to re-creating some of the greatest work of all time for my sitting-room – though I did wonder how it worked – did the artist do the drawing and the glazier the transference onto glass?  Nonetheless, I did not like my windows.  I wanted a window to look at, not through.  I can’t be the first person to feel like that – surely there must  be specialist suppliers.  I searched, there were, but the products were artistic gunge. What I wanted, I realized, was a nest in a corner of that space, a sort of special place where I could sit in a mysteriously imposed mental safety and listen to the Age of Calpedene.  I deliberately gave the psychological ramifications of this a miss on the grounds that whatever it was it could not possibly be damaging.  My room was quite big enough to lose an end of it and this I did, replacing the window, mentally at least, with something large, beautiful and pictorial and creating a step up to an arched entrance which instead of a door was a delicate double waist-high iron-work gate. I didn’t want any furniture, just rugs and cushions and I didn’t want to put anything on the walls because the beauty would come from the window I didn’t have and couldn’t find.   Artists must work in glass, the possibilities are too intoxicating to be ignored.  I tried the galleries and did find some beautiful stuff, but it still wasn’t what picky me wanted.   All it really needs, I thought, is a huge window sticker!  What d’you call them, transfers?  Historic site and all that, there were probably hundreds of them in the shop that I hadn’t found and wouldn’t have been open even if I had found it.  Time for a day-trip to M-p.   Yes, yes, yes!  All glorious in reds and golds.  All I need now is a builder and a glazier – and somewhere to live while the work is being done?  No, I can camp upstairs.  This is rather fun.  I turned my attention to the other 90% of my accommodation.  While I have work done, is there any other work I want done, any other interesting  niches to create!  The trouble with my beautiful light and spacious room is that everything is built-in, and so everything is hidden and so the general effect is as uninteresting as living in a large box.  An artist – I grinned – might rave about the spareness of line, but I didn’t feel in spareness of line mode.  I was not going to invite an artist to give his considered professional opinion.  There were definite ramifications to having my home designed by Tet. I found some interactive interior design software – model your ideal home!  That gave baby hours of endless pleasure.  I got there in the end.  Alcoves, alcoves were what I needed, and a bay window.  My every instinct was against central divisions.  I had quite enough of those.
Oh, and I wanted to make my loo and bathroom fun and pretty
So then I’d had the builders in and got there and felt thoroughly content with not just my place but my space so I went off to spend another night in M-p, appreciating the first one had been good for me at a level I couldn’t even describe or define.  However delectable my space, there is something in the atmosphere after 6000 years, something in the stone.  Something.  Something that wards off all hurt, all pain, all fear, all anger – and all mattering.  This time I rested my back against what I ridiculously thought of as ‘my’ pillar and hugged my knees and simply breathed.  By no means a classic meditation posture but I was happy and this time I felt emboldened to actually take on my dragons and slay them, because I wasn’t.   I think I might find that impossible to explain.   I was also emboldened by having done a little bit of very elementary detective work on break-ups due to the bloody Matter of bloody Kadun from stats from the Vasuculi Civil Affairs Department (couldn’t they call it something else?) to self-help and problem-page sites.  Nobody had been lying to me!  I hadn’t really thought they had but it was good to see they hadn’t. This bit of my saga at least was entirely within the realm of normal human woe.  Of course if I knew what the question was I might know what the answer was.  Yes, this, yes, that, but why.  It’s the wrong way round!  At the centre it will be obvious why.  Again I had the sensation of some kind of fusion.  I am Fal, I said to myself, lazily, sleepily.  THAT AM I.  All are One and do not know it.  I just need to get past – whatever it is I need to get past.  Is that a good circle or is that a good circle?  A circular maze came into my mind and I came to sharply filled with the sudden realization that there was a block on the way through it, which I suppose is screamingly obvious really, but I’d never thought of it like that before.  Hallo, obstacle, what are you?  Now I’d visualized it, I could so to speak prod it and poke it.  It wasn’t very responsive.  You have to bear in mind here we’re talking about a short thick black line.  I felt fairly frivolous.  It’s my mind,  I could push it here, maybe make it change into something else, do what I like with it.  Hey, maybe I can jump over it!  Nothing changed inside but I had the definite sensation of the block rising to meet me. Aw, don’t be like that…How about brute force, pneumatic drills!  I knew the drill-heads broke.  So you want to be difficult, do you?  As though that wasn’t obvious or something. Now look, I made you, I can unmake you…Suppose I parachute into the centre.  Like maybe I fly away on my eso pink balloon and flutter gracefully down.  I enjoyed that one, but it didn’t seem to change anything. What is going to happen to me?  I knew that was the question but there wasn’t an answer.  But no look if I get centred I think I must think mustn’t I, that something so devastating will happen to me that it must be avoided at all cost.  Can’t we have a try before you buy here!  What else am I having?  This business of mattering.  What will it do to me, what shall I lose?  Are you Maya?  And  a chorus of dancing bears high-kicked across the floor of the Ciletij Senate?  No, actually, but I knew I was dead on target.  I had a flurry of the sort of thoughts you don’t want to have and since I was alone having them I was extremely glad I was where I was, in a well-equipped operating-theatre, not in my home first-aid room.  I didn’t fully love Tet, I held back a bit, I loved you.  I’d leave, betray, forget.  Sorg was a male you.  I couldn’t not.  I heard Hass telling me I’m not gay but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t in love with Maya and I felt confused because I felt I understood ‘like that’ and ‘not like that’ but not both at the same time.  I just said over and over to myself, Maya, then reason kicked in and I thought as I had before, no, the order is wrong, it doesn’t make sense, but perhaps after all it did if I thought, no felt, felt that with Sorg at last I had Maya.  Me hadn’t fully, properly – what was the bloody word – loved Tet, not the real me because me was on some kind of eso trip with Maya but I did, I do love Tet, with both of them dead I’m free to love Tet.
Umm, that’s rather a high price to pay.  No wonder I’m  ravaged by the whole thing.  Having thought I’d lost Tet too. 
The word bi floated into my mind, as in bi-sexual.  Can you be asexually bi-sexual?
So long as I can love my eso, not someone else’s. 
It sort of seemed to explain the whole Hass thing, but I couldn’t have put into words how.
Bi. You point both ways, equally attracted, or in my case un.  Hermaphrodite.  You are both. We’re all fthat.  Oh the continuum of gender indeed.  My male part saw no reason why I shouldn’t love Maya.  That made sense.  I think.  THAT AM I.  It doesn’t have a body and it doesn’t have gender.  Therefore I have neither body nor gender.  Therefore we have to be human.  Here and there and in my case all over the damn’ place.  I thought that in my case the chicken definitely came before the egg.  I mean, it all seemed so much simpler to my gang because they hadn’t fallen in love with someone of the same sex without being gay!
Eeek!
Or not exactly.  To complete the square the matching-pair that should have dined with Sarat and Maya was not me and Tet but me and Hass.  Had I oh what’s the word, subliminally understood that?  Amida, Amida, Amida, and what I’d waded into, at six-freaking-teen, I mean, was Sarat and Hass sorting out their relationship, but Sarat isn’t talking, Amida, darling, he isn’t talking about his relationship with Maya and he isn’t talking about his relationship with Hass, and in both cases why the hell should he?
Oh did I hole them below the water-line and other such allusions, not expecting me to be so thick that I didn’t see what water-line, what boat?  Sarat is an outer and exo kind of guy….What difference had that made?  Probably rather a lot. And Tet?  Tet is outwardly outer and exo.  The eso is all in the art.
And in Fal.
Right now, I think – I don’t think – I need to be – I feel, yes, sort of floaty, but in a very prosaic way or maybe that’s actually how it is, I just don’t feel – the weight of me, which is strange because I don’t feel like moving, either, don’t feel I can move from this spot.  The only need I have right now is to see the sun hit the Window again.  Practical Fal kicked in, plenty of time for that.  A drink would be good.  But that would mean both moving and saying words to another human being.  Don’t think I can do that.  To some extent and heretofore, I have just punched me in the stomach, followed by knocking myself unconscious.  Rather literally in terms of having knocked out who I thought I am, but there might be an element of wishful thinking there.  I need to grow.  To let me spread through me.  Just sit.
Eventually I wanted to go to the loo.  We are human.  Quite so, yes.
I definitely wanted the tree in bud.  That is so me. 
It was the same guy behind the counter.  He smiled in recognition. 
“Do you do strong coffee?” I asked.
“We do.”
“Yes, please!”
“There’s a painting in the Ladies’, tree in bud.  It’s unsigned.  Do you know whom it’s by?”
“Guy called Manya.  Lives over on the Leolisle. We sell a lot of his stuff.”
“That’s really what I meant.  I did come once in daylight!  Went to the shop.  I didn’t see…”
“I think it’s in the catalogue.”
“The – yes, of course.”  He cocked his head.  “I mean, you’ve only been here 6000 years.  Not just for locals.”
“I look that old?”
“This place,” I said, “you just could be!” I stifled a yawn.
“We do B and B too.”
“Sorry!  Oh.  No.  I’d miss the sunrise.”  He laughed.  “Why have I been allowed to live my life and not see! Is there music in the glass?”
“Not a lot of people ask that,” he mused.  “Something of a specialist enquiry.”
“Can we just say I know Carlin.  Rather well.” I paused.  “I think I’m being silly.  There’s nothing secret – it’s just -  I’m not here because I need to talk to someone.  I’m here because I need to talk to me. When I was five, kid in Zur, Maya Talal became my best friend.”
“Oh dear, dear, dear, dear, dear.”
Once more the cocoon of love.
“I told you the other bit.  Not the bit in the middle.  I had a partner in Zur.  In Kadun I ran off with Sorg San-yaega-baht.”
“You have been through it.”
“I have rather somewhat been through it. I’ve talked to Hass, Sarat, Amida, Vax and my ex.  I may be sick of bending other people’s ears!  I wasn’t there when Sarat let the music out, but oh I heard about it.”
He gave a grin which showed he knew all about dynamic young emperors releasing music in glass.
“Let out long ago.  You’re Fal?”
“I’m Fal.”
“I’m Taja.”
“Hi!  Do you do this all the time?  The night-shift, I mean?”
“Good grief, no.  We all do a month.  Since there are rather a lot of us, that works out about once every two years. For the caff, I mean.  There’s also the party, of course.”
The cocoon hadn’t wavered. 
“I think,” I said cautiously, “you’re thinking of what has happened to all of us.”
“The terrible pain. The ghost was Sorg?”
“If,” I said.
“Any more thoughts?”
“Not really.”
“Customer!” A thin pale young man had come in.  “If you want to talk again, mail me.  [email protected]
 “Will do!  Thank you.”
He was chuckling.
“I used to be a school-master.  Remember me to Sarat, I taught him when he was ten.”
“Local boy makes good!”
I finished my coffee and took the tray back to the counter.  Taja gave me a half-wave of thanks while talking quietly to the thin pale young man who on closer inspection looked terribly ill.  Perhaps he has some awful disease.  I think I’ve got problems? 
Such as they were, I went back to ‘my’ pillar contemplating them.  I knew I was still a long, long way from where I needed to be.  Two things now presented themselves, neither of which was exactly soothing. 
I thought I’d lost all three.  That was enough to cause havoc to anyone.  Could I say my enthusiasm for my relationship with Tet was – well, real or well – some kind of over-reaction to not having lost everything after all, like – like you think you’ve lost fifty dollars and find you’ve only lost fifty cents.  Phew!  The other thing wasn’t any better.  What would my life with Sorg have been?  Happy, certainly, but an extended fantasy that might or might not have one day crashed on reality?  It was not comforting a) to think that I could have spent the rest of my life in a state of delusion, b) to think of the hurt I should have done to him or c) worst and most unbearable c) that his murder had saved me from myself.
It happened.    Part of the bloody Whole.
I didn’t think I needed to doubt that I love Tet.  I did that before my life got complicated. I did think I needed to be extremely – distrustful of my advanced capacity to tell myself it was perfect before and will be perfect after and the bit in the middle doesn’t matter.   I remembered a bewildered Kai.  But it can’t have been, Fal, perfectly and absolutely happy.  Because to remember it like that is to deny the problem entirely, deny I have a problem.  And it’s my problem and no-one can take it away from me, so there!  
I used the pillar to scratch between my shoulder-blades, if you see what I mean. 
And what is the prime scapegoat?  Sorry, Benji.  Why, it is the bloody Matter of bloody Kadun.  What would my life with Tet have been? That’s a different can of worms.  Can I say I should have grown up, grown out of it, as Bandi had comfortingly said I should.  Probably, I decided.  We should have had children, both of us, Maya and I – the terrible pain came from nowhere then ricocheted off.  I closed my eyes a minute.  What would Sarat have been?  Not, I think, a vet.  Environmental activist? And they all lived happily ever after, except none of them ever dared use paper cups.  I managed to laugh. The wider question of responsibility.  Or denial of.  While Kadun went to hell.  Could Sarat have been happy worrying about paper cups?   Of course he couldn’t.
Was that another of my either ors.  If Krarlik had decided to invade Dabida, that could have been mildly interesting for about ten minutes, while the ‘invading army’ (once again!) settled in – oh of course, oh how freaking obvious!  I expect. The meaning, purpose and origin of Garsit is probably that it’s far enough from the border for Jaizal’s soldiers to have decided they could safely settle.  But that, the putative invasion I mean, had potential repercussions even hairier than what had actually happened.  Visions of them returning to Kadun with Sarat at their head. 
 None of this is part of the bloody Whole.  None of this has happened.  Well, Garsit has happened.
There was a Matter of Kadun, outer and exo.  By the existence of this – no, by Sarat’s choices, my life has been determined.  Or not, as you prefer. 
OK, Fal, which do you prefer?
Me.  My choices.  I could not keep me separate, being incomplete.   I could not see myself as independent, not required to give a flying fuck about the bloody Matter of bloody Kadun.  But that of course is exactly the opposite of what I’ve been saying – oh, of course, the independence had to be the delusion and the bMbK the reality.
Sorg.  My choice.  I did that.  But faced with a male Maya-clone who was mad about me – a what?  He was nothing like Maya.  Leave it a min.  I didn’t give myself a choice.  I was being controlled by me?  Not by love, not by lust.  Two halves, one on each side of the crack.  This is what I need. Like when you’re drowning you need air.  Thought I needed?  To heal the crack?
It was beginning to get light.  I went to sit in front of the Flame.  The sun rose on the Window of the shrine at Maona-pri, blotting out everything that could possibly matter.
When I’d finished being transfixed I went home thoughtful struggling with the realization that I had lost nothing or nothing that I ever had in the first place.  I had a session with Benji and then I very thoroughly and systematically searched the site of the (of course) internationally known shrine at Maona-pri.  I was having an idea.  There were lots of things wrong with it, but I was having it anyway. 
Deal with the practical side first. 
I had never in any meaningful sense commuted and taking the ferry to Maona-pri and back struck me as commuting in a meaningful sense.  So I wanted to be a volunteer, did I.  Well, it would certainly be a wholesome and constructive use of my time, but the practicalities seemed to have escaped my better nature.   Obviously I should have taken the house on the Sohenisle.  No, I am not going to move again, especially for something that was bound not to last, a fad, a stage I’m going through.  
Oh really Fal, and why do you want to be a volunteer?   Other than you have transferred your enthusiasm for any eso outside you to a place instead of a person.  I only want to help out in the shop or something…Oh yeah?
Is that a healthy suspicion or an unhealthy suspicion?
Boing!  Oh I see.  The devastation, the loss, is the loss of other people’s eso. 
I think I need to think – I think I actually need to think now.
It’s all in the mind…The crack is in the mind, the glue holding me together is in the mind.  The absence of the glue is in the mind.   The car always starts!  Is that the eso, sort of emergency starter?  When – when the rest of what you think of as you. Because it’s still there even if you think it isn’t.  So exactly what are you saying, Hass?  I need to love it.  To accept it as part of me.  I can be here and now and not float away to – but that wasn’t necessarily exactly all down to me, now was it, whether ghost or not, the bMbK made time itself hiccup.  Except time had slipped in Zur so I couldn’t in all honesty say that was nothing to do with me, whatever that was.  If I love it as much as I love me, I unite with it.  If I love it less than I continue travelling furiously in ever-decreasing circles.  If I love it more than – I – I do things which I can’t accept in some terrible sense damage me such as Sorg.  Because it doesn’t have gender or identity or boundary.  Because  - it’s not ‘my’ eso, it is the bloody Whole, and that bit of the bloody Whole that is Fal is – infused by it.  Is that the point?  Might be.  If I understood it.  Infinite and separate.  Here and there.  But that which is me cannot not be a part of the bloody Whole, whether I think I am or not.  Well now, that depends, doesn’t it, on what you mean by real.  As in whether permanence is part of it.  ‘They just want you to be real.’  Presumably not permanent.  Everyone else gets it, damn it!  Hence of course my insecurity, thank  you, Tet. 
This has to have a source.  So far as I could see, my entire childhood and early youth had been emotionally, intellectually, morally and metaphysically impeccable!  All in the mind…I had consciously/unconsciously/sub-consciously firmly plugged the headphones jack into the power-socket!  I wanted to be like Maya.  But I’m not Maya, I’m me.  Oh dear, is that a divorce or is that a divorce?  And I knew I wasn’t like Maya in what I suppose I thought of as superficial ways.  Hass even asked me, what was Maya doing while the rest of us were making mud-pies?  Oh I see.  I think.  I gave it identity, gender, boundary.  Eso was like Maya.  Not like me.  Like Hass.  Not like me.  Like Sorg.  Not like me. 
I think it’s for moments like this I created my own little hide-away.  The whole terminology – oh Fal, you can’t be that dense.  Can I?  Outer and exo.  Inner and eso.  Some people, my young brain figured, are – contain – the eso and some don’t?  And I’m one of the ones who don’t, but I didn’t know I thought that.  If I thought that.  Eso doesn’t do, it just is.  I think it would be quite easy to have embedded that one.  To have had it apparently reinforced.  Sarat did.  Maya was.  Maya got herself a rather good degree in the ancient languages of the Malpurian sub-continent while Sarat was plotting.  Could anything be less relevant?  Uncomfortable echoes there.  Did I always secretly think if it wasn’t the bMbK it wasn’t Real?  Anyway, it doesn’t follow.  Can’t say Sorg was while I did.  Oh,, oh, oh, oh, oh.  No, I can’t say that.  I just possibly can say the attraction was Sorg was and did.  Showed me how to be me? 
Enough!  I shall read something soothing and perhaps instructive.  I dug out Eternal Flame.
 
Yikes.  ‘Since before recorded time there has been a Flame at Maona-pri. Legend has it that the first mentors came from Var but there is no evidence that Var in fact existed, though the sandstone from which the shrine is constructed is not indigenous to Fidub and no explanation has been found for its remarkable durability.’  Oh really.  I knew enough about the other matter to know mind can maintain the strangest things.  So that’s what the mentors do.  My mind wandered slightly to something I had found mildly interesting.  The literature on offer was wholly what Lattic had called vanilla.  This wasn’t exactly surprising – we do not want to encourage seekers for either thrills or power or indeed those on the wrong side or even for those with apparently the most upright and academic reasons for interest in the Cult, not without a nice cosy chat first.  They must always have provided sanctuary and healing.  Where the shrine at Maona-pri fitted into the history of the continent, I shall doubtless learn if I keep reading, though some of it will be between the lines.   So what did they do in their beautiful shrine.  They tended the Flame, they healed the sick, they observed the stars.  Oh and they conducted ‘what some have called’ counter-rites at Xu-laman, ‘a concentration of power then believed’ to oppose the power of evil unleashed by occult practitioners on these ‘Days Celebrant’.  Oh did they really.  I frowned slightly.  So they knew about the Cult pre-Narulis.  How?  They ran schools.  Narulis was educated by the mentors.  The plot thickens.  Exactly what was he taught?  ‘The precise events leading to the establishment of the Anile Empire are veiled in some confusion.’  I bet!  ‘The subject is naturally one of great interest to historians but outside the scope of the present work.  Nonetheless the role of the mentors is plain.  It was they who instructed Narulis in the nature of the terrible enemy he had confronted and advised – ‘   In-ter-est-ing.  In it up to their necks, these sweet folks who don’t know they’re alive.  ‘It was mentors who formed the phalanx of the first PANTHER!’  Well beyond their necks.  Wanna know how they knew how to confront the foe.  The present  – vanilla – work is obviously not going to tell me.  When was it published?  Latest impression last year.  I ruthlessly skipped about 200 pages.  ‘At the time of writing it seems there has been an unfortunate resurgence in Kadun of those primitive practices now known universally as the Cult but perhaps more extraordinary still is the rumour that Narulis’ descendant, Sarat-ban-essa, is preparing to repeat history.  Sarat, as have all the scions of the House of Fire, has of course been extensively educated by the mentors.’  So you taught Sarat when he was ten, did you.  Nothing I knew about Sarat which is a very great deal confirmed an extensive inner education.  ‘As did his illustrious ancestor, there can be no doubt that he derives his strength for the great task before him from the shrine.’  Oh good grief!  He was going to be a vet!   I think, you know, they are not indifferent to the Great Enterprise though I was rather glad not to have the present author describe the service to mark the funeral of Maya-ban-essa.  It wasn’t optional, I said to myself softly.  Sarat, if you will insist on this particular career-choice, you are going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming from the NoZone stall into the shrine to understand the bloody Whole…Cho and Vax, I presume.
 
I rifled through the pages I’d skipped.  The Building.  The original structure is of course a circle within a  pentagon.  An open circle within a pentagle within an open circle.   The points of the pentangle are joined by obviously curved rows of little rocks such as might mark and indeed do mark the edges of  flower-beds.  Four of the triangles contain the caff, the library, the shop and the Change.  The what?  ‘The exact purpose of the area known as the Change is lost to history.’  Oh really.  Ask Vax.  The fifth triangle, that pointing due east, of course contains the Flame and the Window.  I don’t suppose they had a caff and a shop in pre-history, either, though come to think of it they probably did have some kind of refectory for the weary traveller on the road of life and indeed here that is confirmed by the present author.  ‘Sustenance has long been provided by the mentors for all who seek it.and also retreat for those who wish to fast or engage in other spiritual exercise.’  Why on earth didn’t I think of that?  Probably because it didn’t seem exactly relevant; food, drink, possessions, these are not my dependencies, just the esos of two people who are dead.  Of which I am necessarily deprived anyway.  I mean the point of fasting is it stops you taking something in to rely on and forces reliance on that within. 
Which just might be another ground zero point now I come to eyeball it.  If am not forced kicking and screaming into my eso, on what am depending?  My intellect is a rather big fat obvious answer.  Could I possibly have been told that already!   Nonetheless there is something I can resolve with my mind.  After that I might actually understand it.   Cantilip was wicked about the ancient languages of the Malpurian sub-continent. Good to have a linguist on the team.  Perhaps the team might learn to speak irtubi.  Mitch sighing and pointing out that most irtubi don’t speak irtubi.  What exactly was it I could not understand?  Apart from how to say, ‘what is your name?’ ‘would you like to go to bed with me?’ in irtubi!  Cantilip produced a not exactly serious list of ‘useful phrases’.  How Maya – why Maya – how Maya could have concentrated wholly on her studies or even concentrated at all.  Why Maya was not divided on this bloody Matter of bloody Kadun..  I realized that intellectually I understood: when she was absorbing a textbook on grammar, all of her was there, and when she was with the plotters all of her was there.  Compare and contrast my fixation that whatever I was doing I ought to be doing something else.  So what’s the proposition?  Anything that’s part of the bloody Whole is of equal value, as per washing-up and laundry, which is clearly ridiculous.  Add two words.  To me.  Complete. 
Not sponge. 
Hmm.
Not leaking?
Let me try and gee really feel the reality of this, which I know took place, year in year out, Maya studying in one room and the plotters immersed in gross national product in another.  I wondered what Cantilip and Karula had made of Maya, at least before they got to know her.  Anile empress not obsessed by Matter of Kadun!  Read all about it!   See Maya as she was, not as I thought her to be.
 
I can do that, can I?  I suppose you could say – eeyuh.  Yes, certainly you could say that.  My mind is running ahead of me.  Say cautiously that she tended to the quiet and studious.  But then they all do, don’t they, if they hadn’t/didn’t have public faces, Maya, Mel, Sorg.  To some extent.  That’s not the eeyuh factor.  That’s – Lido extending!  When we got to Kadun (we, Fal?) everyone knew about Sarat but Maya was something of a closed book.  And Maya just wandered around being Maya and if whenever she found a Lido in need of extension she said so, which was of course about every five minutes, which is what they all did and do.  What did Hass say, all the major decisions had been taken in Zur.  All the major decisions were taken in Fidub aeons ago!  Implementing change to the infrastructure is something else. 
Maybe it’s just time I went to bed.
I slept until the early hours, got up and began to fumble around in the kitchen while muttering to myself, this is no good, Fal!  Messing with my biological clock.  I went back to bed and set the alarm.  Even if I didn’t really sleep again, that was one track I could get myself back on. 
At any rate until I went to M-p again, which I felt would be rather soon, because even lying in my little bed I didn’t seem to be quite able to get myself into the frame of mind where  I actually got anywhere. I was trying to summon up the maze but it wouldn’t come into focus.  I can’t really be frightened that I’m going to crack again.  How badly did I frighten myself?  What?
Into sharp focus came my most terrible of moments but it was gone before I had a chance to anything really except feel what I felt at that exact instant, which was exactly nothing, total anaesthesia, except of course the car started, the car always bloody well starts, so – yes, so the eso is pretty hopeless at slitting people’s throats, either if the person has just murdered your partner, and in the fraction of a second after, yes, I did feel the urge but that is a long way from doing, no that’s not what I mean.  I mean – although I badly wanted to cut the bastard’s throat I was no more likely – it was like there was an impenetrable barrier which I think I now recognize as the eso I keep insisting I don’t have.  Equally I didn’t want to.  Oh, I frightened myself all right, but not by my understandable murderous urge but by being – taken over.  What am I talking about?  Not by loss of control but loss of control over loss of control!  Fal’s eso rides to the rescue to save her from herself!  That’s obvious garbage.  Is it?  Is it really?  The crack is in the mind.  The glue is in the mind.  The – the conviction that there was nothing holding me together could only be over-ridden – could not and cannot be rationally over-ridden, only in  that supreme moment of crisis or, or, or in that place of absolute safety because I am a bit frightened of my eso, of letting it out of the cage I’ve put it in.  The only thing stopping it spreading through me is me.  Frightened of letting go.  Frightened of ceasing to be me.  That’s not as melodramatic as it sounds now, is it, Don’t wanna be inner and eso.  Wanna be outer and exo.  Wanna be me. 
What a nice little argument.  So why have I spent my life latching on to other people’s esos.  Uh-oh!  How about because my own was too dangerous?  In my mind. 
They’re all so complete.  Safe.  There is nothing safe about the eso!  That’s an interesting little conviction.
Not sure when or for how long I dozed but I do know the alarm went off.
I awoke with a thought.  Just stop, Fal, just stop!  It was, however, a rather limpid thought.  ‘You’re the eso one, Fal’  Yes, I answered, I know that.  I just don’t want to be.  Think I don’t want to be.  Due to my slightly peculiar ideas about eso.
Meaning?
Skipping lightly over the minor details that ‘I’ can’t decide what to do and ‘I’ thinks that Doing Something is Crucial, what ‘I’ paramountly does not want is to find herself doing something totally different from anything I think of as me and which has been ‘chosen’ by an eso I don’t accept as me.  
The pronouns are enough to freak me.
Or in short shut up and love my eso.
Coda: But of course why I can’t decide is because my poor abused eso is screaming at me that none of the things I contemplate is me.
It is very un-me to spend daylight hours sitting very quietly doing absolutely nothing. After a while I grinned to myself and went into Zur to buy a packet of pink balloons. 
I blew them up and watched them happily bobbing around not necessarily within reach and thought: my problem with free flight is what?
The number of things I’d never thought of doing is so large it’s not possible to list them but they range, shall I say, from parachuting to the ancient languages of the Malpurian sub-continent. 
There is no given, no indelible reason why any of these things ‘aren’t me’. 
Anthropology to art.  One is enough!  I can draw in a rather basic sense, my people look like people and my houses look like houses, possibly even my fountains look like fountains and my water might fall downwards, but my people and houses don’t look like particular people or houses.  I certainly have no great talent for it.  Putting smudges of paint on a piece of paper to create a somewhat impressionistic picture of a beautiful vista is not the same.  Among the services offered by the shrine, I should explain, was art therapy.  I wasn’t quite sure what Tet’s reaction would be but I suspected it would make me giggle.  Hass’s simple (not so simple) point had been I can try anything, don’t have to magically think I know I’d like it in advance.  Do not close those bloody doors!  No, that wasn’t it.  Do not look at a row of closed doors. 
I went back to the Grid-site of the shrine. There were all the obvious soothing things for people who were feeling frazzled, art, music, dance, poetry, gardening.  There was a series of talks on things like The Window and The Building and another on what I suppose you could broadly call current affairs insofar as they impinged on the shrine or the shrine on them – give or take 1500 years.  The Shrine and the First Anile Empire.   That I have to hear.  Alas, as is usually the way when you come across a really interesting event on the Grid, you’ve missed it.  How about ‘When did the Modern Age begin?  What defines it?’  I put a mental half-tick against that one.   Then there was a section called The Inner Journey.  Self and Other.  Love and Power.  Form and Essence.  There was a section called simply Help which said the mentors can be reached 24/7 and how so to do.  Interestingly, I thought, the Study page mostly just said the same, but it also said there was a retreat house on the Leolisle.  My immediate reaction was rather that I’d done a lot of retreating and advancing was more what I had in mind, but I read on.  Somewhere between a first-class hotel and mental survival training.  You leave behind your family, your friends, your mobile, your netbook, your books, your magazines, your music, your anything you can escape from yourself into and learn to live with yourself.  You don’t even talk to anyone, except the mentors, presumably when after 24 hours you’re climbing the walls.  The menu is fruit, raw veggies, yoghurt and water.  However, our beautifully appointed rooms…Discomfort is not part of the trip, though you did do your own laundry (and make your own bed and tidy your own room if you wanted your bed made and your room tidied – the guest’s space is sacrosanct.  Be assured no-one else will enter your room from the time you enter it to the time you leave it).  You can stay in bed all day if you like and swim and ride if you don’t.   Yes, but can you paint smudgy sunrises?  Yes, there are many outlets for creative expression…  I have to try this. Hallet’s Cove was so far free of friendly goat-sitters.  Trust your friends.  I mailed Narak and Lattic and asked them if they’d like a holiday in Zur.  Whenever they felt like it, really, no rush. 
 
You didn’t book, just mailed or phoned to let them know you were coming.  I guessed they never turned anyone away even if temporary accommo had to be found in a sleeping-bag rather than a beautifully appointed room and that it was impossible to predict how long people would last out. I did know that although you are of course free to leave at any time you are asked to talk to one of the mentors first. 
 
I turned up.  The house was beautiful.  The diet didn’t bother me.  I didn’t have to stay if the other stuff did. I was a little ambivalent about what it was going to do for me but I supposed I’d find it a soothing and soulful experience.  I think I conceived it as a just slightly more disciplined version of what my life was like already, erasing all the little things that break up a day.  I settled in, nibbled some fruit and went exploring.  I found the Art Room.  There were paper, brushes, and boxes of paints, Oh I see, yes, this is good, what you also don’t have to do is start babbling in semi-explanation, gosh, you know, I haven’t painted since I was a kid, don’t know if I’ll be any good.  I noticed there was also a shredder, presumably if you found your work embarrassingly bad.   There was a slim dark girl about my age who looked up and smiled but of course we didn’t speak.  I started to mix colours until I had a pale pink I was happy with and started to smudge.  Pale pink, pale blue-grey, more a sunset really.  What this needs is a few clouds, pink ones of course.  And how about some land.  Yes, I can cope with that.  Those are fields and hedges, at least if you’re feeling generous.  It’s pretty, though. Flowers in that field, I think, little dabs of red, yellow, purple. It’s something else too. Where’s the stream?  Oh. I suddenly felt a block.   I put Carlin At Sunset aside a minute and stared out of the window.  Well it was therapy, healing, not preparation for my first exhibition. Was there a person in this landscape?  I thought there probably was but I didn’t want to wreck my achievement so far.  I took another piece of paper and dabbed out a human form, gender and identity indeterminate, hair mouse, dress dark green, quite tall, all of which told me nothing. Except not Sorg.  Not Maya.  Not for that matter Tet.  I suddenly laughed and went to find a pencil and a big fat rubber.  I was going to make a total pig’s-ear of this but no-one would ever know.  
When my attempts at drawing Tet, Sorg and  Maya were I thought as good as they were ever going to be, which was lousy but desperately well meant, I sat back and considered that actually this was technique rather than talent.  I just did not know how to get features right.  I could draw something that was clearly meant to be a nose but when I tried to make it a particular nose it evaded my clutches.  I suppose that like monkeys at a keyboard coming up with the BPC if I persevered for long enough by trial and error I’d eventually get it right but the key to my life didn’t lie in teaching myself to draw Maya’s nose and it was time to give up.  I surveyed my works.  My mysterious figure in green, I thought, needed some surroundings.  Damn it, I’m enjoying myself!   But the surroundings didn’t come.  Think I might be arted out for the day.  I guess you just leave - ? I gathered my bits together, wiped down the table and went for a walk in the gardens.  What’s that?  I giggled.  Like in the botanical gardens or the zoo, there were neat discreet boards identifying the growth, just in case you wanted to use what’s that as an excuse to start talking to someone.
I flopped down on the grass only mildly irritated by the perception that somewhere I’d mentally slotted this experience into the box on holiday and therefore given myself permission to do absolutely nothing.  There was the gentle buzzing of insects, the scent of flowers and – and someone standing over me, probably Sorg.  There was of course no-one standing over me, least of all Sorg.  I sighed. And anyone wonders why I like my eso safely behind bars?  Something sort of clicked.  All so vanilla…Yes, well, training in containing the esoteric is not one for the Grid.  Let baby not run before she can walk.  Starting by accepting the poor abused little creature would be good.  All are One.  Some do not know it.  Poor little eso! Love, love, love, love, love…My intellect protested, loudly.  OK, the bloody Whole.  OK, we do past, present and future.  Where in the past, present or future has Sorg stood or will he stand over you in a garden on the Leolisle? I answered back rather feebly, I thought, I don’t know it was Sorg and someone in the future could but as for stand over, stand guard over – whoops. And anyone wonders why I like my eso safely behind bars?   Hang on a minute.  I’d cracked – open?  And the eso roared out in the form of Sorg?  Don’t see how that – shut up a minute, I said to my intellect.  Just see what happens next.  I sank happily into alpha rhythms and a rather delectable moving picture show, places I’d never been and doubted existed to go to, strange, strange scenes of coloured rock and impossible skies, and beings that never existed on this planet.  So this is the connection, this is the trip.
The next 48 hours or so were pretty impossible too.  The most mesmerizing time-slip came as I helped myself to our renowned buffet of garden fruits and Sarat was there, emanating most discordant waves of fury.  Dragged kicking and screaming!  Oh, I think so. 
I am in a fully equipped operating-theatre.  I am under no requirement whatever to function normally.  Let’s just see if this settles down a bit first. 
 
It did a bit but I was under no illusion that I knew how to deal with it. 
 
I picked a female mentor who superficially looked 18 but close-up there were fine lines and was probably I guessed actually about 40.  She had long black hair and a sparkly bandana and she looked as though she might be fun.  Can I talk to you?  Sure, any time.
I’d given myself a bit of time to think how I was going to approach this.  I hadn’t got anywhere, but I’d tried.
“I grew up in Zur with Mel and Hass.  Maya was my best friend.  Some of the – outer aspects of how I ended up here are personal to other people.  I have talked before. To Hass and to Sarat, and to grown-ups!  Amida and Vax.  It’s the inner.  I have a very dodgy relationship with my eso.  I started going to the shrine.  Since then – it’s changed.  And since I’ve been here – time-slips, the lot.  So I thought I just want to talk about the inside.  Then I thought and my problem is what?  I mean – it is engrained in all of us, but you’re not exactly going to ring Glitz.”
She held her hand up to stem the flow of  babble.
“Which one was your lover?”
I sighed.
“Mel.  When both of us were unattached.  Maya. When she was with Sarat.  In neither case remotely turned on.  Later relationships fine.  Hetero.”
“Some people avoid talking about others so as not to appear to blame them.  Some people choose talking about others to avoid talking about themselves, whether or not blaming them.  Some people have a genuine sense of the private.  There’s a question of blame?”
He-elp. 
“That’s a chapter in itself.  It’s not – the – the key relationship doesn’t actually have anything to do with me.  It’s not a relationship I had.  It’s not even a relationship someone I had a relationship with had.”
“So it’s private.”  She nodded understandingly.  “But critical?”
“Sarat and Hass were lovers when they were 15.  There was never any question of Sarat’s being gay.  If they could express their feelings for each other like that. I couldn’t see why Hass and I couldn’t.  I am more recently assured this was an intellectual quest on my part.  Others have put it that the sexual relationship I wanted with Hass didn’t actually have any sex in it. It seems this rather upset the guys’ thinking on love, sex and gender.”
“We have all of us of course understood,” she said smoothly, “that you are all very close.”
I grinned.
“Not that close?  Sarat says now – it was he who was surrendering his boundaries.  Hass was just making love to a guy he loved.”
“Interesting.  When did Mel fit in?”
“After the Hass interlude.  Before I paired with Tet. Then Mel went off to the Schools, Hass met Venga, Sarat and Maya set up house in Zur.”
“And,” very softly, “you all thought you’d live happily ever after?”
“I did,” I said.  “That’s a rather large part of it.  I left Tet and went off with  Sorg San-yaega-baht.  Maya, Hass, Sorg, all frantically eso.  The general idea is I’ll look anywhere but.  There’s one other thing.  Because of my social circle I know about a lot of things that a lot of people don’t.  I know they exist, I mean.  If I refer to them, it’s not I’m claiming to understand them.”
She looked at me thoughtfully.
“D’you mind if I have a go at translating all that?”
“Er – no!  Don’t mind…”
“My intellectual knowledge is way ahead of my actual knowledge and I may be asking things or even wanting to learn things that might just raise an eyebrow.  These people aren’t idiots.  They’re not going to teach me how to put a key in a lock without finding out the whole story – but I don’t want to tell them that, so I hope my excellent references will in some way oil the wheels.”
I giggled.
“I think not exactly.  What I want to know is how to deal with me, how to be me, living in Zur, far from the foe.  What I know about is – what happened to Mitch and Karula, for instance.  I assume – “
“Correct.”
 “No-one else has cracked up, dropped out and taken up goat-farming. Least of all Mitch and Karula.  I’ve just realized – what they’ve been through is more than any of us but of course they’re older.  I  felt insecure compared to my friends, my contemporaries.  That – that I’d somehow failed.  Yesterday I had a time-slip at your renowned buffet of delectable garden fruits.  Sarat was there.  He can’t have been more than 18 and he was livid, that’s the overwhelming impression I got.  Dragged kicking and screaming from his mobile!  Then it came to me that everyone else was fast-tracked because of who they are.  Then I felt I put two and two together – this is the don’t really know what I’m talking about clause –   Tar, Saski, Cho, no-one would have let them within 20 nani of the border if they weren’t able to deal with the Cult.  That’s where the two things overlap.  I think.  I mean, I realize, I think, they all have – an extra layer of protection.”
Unexpectedly she grinned.
“Wise beyond their years.  Indeed.  Goat-farming?”
“I think I’d better give you a potted bio. Mel, Hass, Reakoed, Maitlan, me and Tet were a gang when kids.”  I sighed again.  “AKA the Seismic Six. Maya wasn’t part of it but my best friend anyway.  Tet and I paired.  I was H-W.  I went off to Carlin, then to Azt.  I ran off with Sorg San-yaega-baht.  After Sorg’s murder I crash-landed in Carlin on a back-to-nature kick, cottage, veggies, goat.  I also cracked, though Hass says I didn’t – fill in that in a minute.  I – experienced Sorg’s – ghost for a while.  I was just thinking I might be back if not upright then standing on one leg.  Maya was murdered.  I’d tried immersing myself in the life of Carlin.  I had more questions than answers.  I turned to my friends.  I got one thing straight and came home to Zur.  Currently living alone except for Benji, my goat.  I’ve been through what should I be doing, who am I, what is my name – I’m back to my maiden name –  which is my country. Bandi screened me for the H-W. She said I had a crack which wouldn’t matter unless I was under extreme stress.  I’d grow out of it.  Really, what stress was I going to be under?  I cracked along it instead. I’ve had a time-slip in Zur. That sent me running off to Amida.  I had one in Carlin. Kaminua mistook me for a lady of his time.  I’m told the particular field of flowers.” I could see she was quietly laughing at something else I knew about.  “The extent if any to which Sorg’s ghost, projection was also consequent upon the Matter of Kadun is something I accept I may never fully understand – why should I when no-one else does! But my more recent thoughts on that are that – more like, when I cracked I let out my eso which I’d kept – caged.  I had some rather odd convictions about the eso and I found it – chased it, needed it -  in Hass, Maya, Sorg because that was safer.”
I could see her digesting that lot. 
“Being here in Fidub with people who don’t know you is on balance less complicated than being in Zur with people who do?”
“I’m not actually sure about that one. I didn’t come to Fidub to talk to people.” 
I filled her in a bit on that one.
“But you’re talking to me, not rushing back to Hasiyata?”
I made wide eyes.
“That would be a bit rude!  When it comes to it, Hass has other things to do.  I think I probably want to do this independently.  It’s not I feel I don’t really belong in the – inner circle.  It’s I feel I don’t know how to belong.  Reakoed, Maitlan, Tet, they don’t have a problem.  They’re just themselves.  I’m not myself.”  I grinned.  “The general verdict is if I could just get over thinking I had to be Maya, I’d get somewhere.”  Her eyebrows flexed.  “Not – give my life.  Maybe risk it.  Definitely do something public.  That’s without the eso side.  I know this might sound an incredibly trivial side-line.  What I know is that Maya studied ancient languages while the plotters plotted.  She just got on with being Maya.   At the same time she was just as much part of the plot as Sarat.”
“By being themselves you mean distinct?”
“Yes, exactly.  No – overflow.”
She was laughing.
“It is your misfortune that your dearest most intimate friends, blood-brothers, I believe the Press has said, are the stars of the greatest blockbluster of the age and possibly of any age.  Reakoed, Maitlan, Tet, what do they do?”
“H-W, Fleet, artist.”
“It tells you nothing that you paired with the one who kept himself – distinct?”
“Ow!  Maitlan cut the cord.  Went off to sea.”
 “Sensible man.  Reakoed?”
“Reakoed doesn’t just seem one of those happy-go-lucky chaps who go through life unruffled, he actually is that.  Tet’s more complicated.” I explained my complicated Tet.
She seemed more interested in Maitlan.
What is it  they say about the Fleet?  It goes round the continent clockwise until it gets bored, when it goes anti-clockwise instead.  If called upon to serve his country concerning this Matter of Kadun, he would be as far as possible from the hub of events.”  She smiled.  “Or he just likes wide open spaces.”
“Neither,” I said briskly.  “Or rather I suspect the first, but not as you’ve made it sound.  He’s another Lido-extender.  Explain in a minute.  Maitlan is uber-cool and uber-bright.  I think he might have understood doing his bit lay in making friends in far-away places.  Not sure how that meshes with his most famous saying!  One can immerse oneself in the Matter of Kadun or one can get a life.”  Uber-cool, uber-bright mentors don’t piss with laughter, but her eyes danced.  “Maybe if you make it more personal?  Maitlan would have understood that whatever happened Mel was putting himself in the firing-line.  Politically I mean, as well as.  Why are we talking about Maitlan?”
She didn’t answer directly.
“Three young Dabidans.  I may assume you would fight to the death for Dabida, indeed for Mel.  It is part of your normality that your dearest friends are also Dabida’s heirs.  The rug is taken out from under you.  Your friends are the emperor’s cousins.  Mel is clear on the matter of sovereignty.  You would not fight to the death for Sarat – perhaps.  But Maya?  Is your personal perhaps rather than political loyalty to Alzani-Meta not also your loyalty to the Anile Throne?  Does it not betray Mel and Hass to ‘reject’ Maya?  You were the only one confused by Maya Talal Ban-essa?”
“There are so many things there,” I said.  “And then Maya wasn’t there any more.”
“The invisible link to Alzani-Meta is what I should imagine is the unbreakable bond between Sarat and Hass.”
“I guess,” I said, “no-one knows what Mel would do if Sarat were really in trouble.”
“No-one except Mel.”
“And Tar,” I added rather glumly.  “Mel and Hass adored her.  Maya.  She was very adorable.”
“So far they have admirably and brilliantly walked a tightrope.” 
I giggled and told her about my tightrope.
“Interesting.  So many things there?”
“This is a practical in the irrelevance of time?”   I sighed.  “I thought I’d got the loyalty one done and dusted.  Then there are invisible lines crossing lives.”  I filled her in.  “There might also – this is something I’ve only just thought of.  Dependency on the future of Kadun!  I mean a feeling that whatever I choose to do may be abruptly interrupted.  Sorg, Maya, if Kadun collapsed shouldn’t I feel I had to fight?  Tet says no.  One stray Zuri is not going to make the critical difference.”  Fill-in.  “Reason is one thing.”
“Why did you decide against the Kadun Senate?”
“I thought of something better to do!”  I told her about You Can Do Banking, Kai and Sar-fenan.  “Part of the other matter stuff is nattering about how Narulis learned to fight.  Then I was reading a history of the shrine and how mentors were the first PANTHER.”  I explained very briefly about Lattic and how the word ‘vanilla’ had entered my active vocabulary other than descriptive of a flavouring.  “Please may we talk about my eso!  My delusions are so basic here.  Don’t wanna be inner and eso.  Wanna be me!”
She smiled radiantly.
“Just getting a bit of background here. Your relationships with Mel and Maya?”
I sighed again.
“That means I have to tell you about the cottage.  Mel said – by loving each other we get that bastard off the chair.  He meant it rather literally.  He, Sarat, Hass and Venga had  - sexually experimental times together.  Maya and I were giggling about it and sort of naturally progressed.”
“An extension of your relationship.”
“Might have been if I’d been remotely sexually interested.  It was a good giggle and more but not sexually more.”
“Maya didn’t mind?  About Sarat?  She was with Sarat?”
“Oh yes.  I was about to say indissolubly.  Saski asked that.”  I grinned.  “The grown-ups were informed.  Cantilip had thought she might have a future with Venga. He went off with Hass and she had to deal with his not being gay.  Then she and Mel found each other and Mel thought Tar should know all about it.”
“I think I’m lost.  You and Mel?”
I explained about me and Mel.
“Ten of you, then, the core of whom – Reakoed, Maitlan and Tet did not take part - ?”
“They didn’t. This was future leaders of the world stuff.”
“I think I shall not attempt to analyse relations between the six of you  -  a family of six siblings traumatized during adolescence by the simple fact you were not?  The rest, one might say, is history.  What is clear is you  have caused no rift.”  I must have looked completely devastated because she pushed my tut! polystyrene cup of water towards me and murmured, “Have a sip.  Clear,” she repeated and began to laugh.  “Falita, nothing is more common than that friends of both former or otherwise side with one or other of a pair when a relationship breaks up.”
“The only rift is between me and Tet!” I considered.  “Bit pat isn’t it, sibs can’t be sundered.”
She looked pleased.
“Of course.  You have a better metaphor?”
“Not really.  There’s one thing missing.  It’s the way you put it – the idea of Hass and Reakoed being on different sides – though they do have very different views.  Hass said I half-think I have neither family nor friends.  I’m related to him.  Sarshi.  Sarshi is Sorg’s twin.  Her other half is Vij, Maya’s brother.  From their point of view, I cut myself off.  Which is sort of true.  I mean I don’t think it ever occurred to me everyone wasn’t a phone call away.  Busy, busy, busy.  There’s an element of lasting out on my own as long as I could.  When Amida said I should talk to Sarat I jibbed a bit, but that was sensitivity not distance!  Gee Sarat, we both loved Maya.  What I really want to talk about is me!  Eight out of ten,” I decided.  “The people I grew up with I’d say anything to and they to me.  I shouldn’t confide in Cantilip or Venga.”
“Time to stop, I think,” she said.  “Same time tomorrow?”
 
I supposed I’d wanted an independent view.  I felt, not shattered or anything but a bit strange.  I’d bared my soul (not just mine!) to a complete stranger.  But it’s so much easier to talk to people who’ve known you since you were five!  Or of you, or the frame of reference in which you dwell.  I wondered.  Plus side.  Independent conclusions, if they struck me as deeply wrong, maybe I hadn’t explained properly.  Minus side.  The other people weren’t putting their side.  Bit I said he said they said.   Maybe cheating a bit, but I couldn’t get away from that, have to go to the other side of the world and even that probably wasn’t far enough to find someone who knew absolutely nothing about the people I was talking about.  I made it into a mental game.  How far back would I have to go?  Obviously Narulis.  Where would I have to go?  Harn to explain the origins of the Cult.    You should write a book.  Someone should.  But then all the sexy bits would be left out.  To be published when we’re all dead, then?  Let us assume of old age.  How would our kids feel about it?  Maybe for private reading only.  But to be written now, while we remember.  Who has time to write a book?  Er, I do.  I just didn’t think it was my thing, though I suppose I’m not making too bad a job of my bit.  It does matter to the bloody Whole.  Kai!  She must be at a loose end.  So it came to pass in a beautifully appointed room on the Leolisle!
 
Aw shucks, I couldn’t even pick up my mobile and tell anyone.  I wondered if I’d been a bit naïve about the cause of Sarat’s uncharacteristic rage.  I suppose they’d turned him inside out and he didn’t necessarily like what they said.   Not as though I wanted to be Anile Emperor.  I considered Senta.  No cocoon of love had enveloped the little bird with a wounded wing.  I’d have to ask her about that. 
 
I was just thinking I might like to do something physical, maybe go for a swim, when I fell asleep.  As you know, my usual diet is light and, as you also know, I really love masali.  Perhaps it was another piece of self-deception that I should be unaffected by the menu.  Who cares!  I don’t have to do anything.  Mostly.  Umm.   I think I’d prefer to be clear-headed and well rested for further sessions with Senta.  I am, I thought, already aware of mild sensations of evisceration or perhaps that’s too strong a word.  Of being uncurled, as a fox might uncurl a hedgehog.  I didn’t mean to sound curled up, I protested feebly to myself.  It must have come across like that. I was just dozing off again when it jolted me to realize it was like that, I’d just said it was like that, sort of, anyway  It did feel strange talking about myself to a stranger.  I dozed anyway. 
 
 
I awoke feeling clear-headed, well-rested and pro-active.  Damn it, I’m going to talk about my eso!  Well, eventually.  I formulated my baseline.
 
“My baseline here is I really don’t want to find myself talking to Zani in the MegaMart.”
“But why ever not!”
“Social embarrassment? People might stare?”  I changed the subject.  Pro-active, you know.  “Taja in the shrine cocooned me in love.  I felt completely safe, completely relaxed.  With you I feel – just the tiniest bit on my mettle.  I’m wondering why, whether it’s you, me or both.”
“And?”
“It felt odd to have told a stranger the private bits, just because you’re a stranger.  Obviously this isn’t stuff I’ve clasped to my heart, my lips sealed.  It feels as though it is.  The – the sum of what Hass said to me, followed by what I said to myself.  Completely mad.  I took it all on board without feeling – what didn’t I feel!  Stripped?   Tet for obvious reasons was more – personally critical.  That sounds a bit feeble.  He was frank about having felt he hated me.  I’m not so delusional that that was something I hadn’t been able to conceive of.  There was a cushion of what you said, an unbreakable bond, a cushion of – love.  Shielding me from reality?”  That last bit came out in rather a rush.
“How can it?”
“That may be the question?  Hurt is illusion.”
“So?”
“So I feel that reality is illusion?  I’ve thought that.  But then it doesn’t make sense.”
“Reality is what?”
“Ah-uh.  I’ve asked myself if I have special Fal definitions of certain words.  I asked Hass about whom he talked to about Maya.  I’ve told you, he adored her.  Venga, Tar…But what he said was it happened.  I know it struck me as brutal.  It happened.  Sarat was standing where he was standing.  If he’d been standing where she was standing.  You can say it shouldn’t have happened but you can’t change that it happened.  That’s the – common-sense view of reality and it’s Hass’s view, so far as it goes.  And – everything that everyone else in the universe happened to be doing at the time happened.  Me digging the garden.  My Fal definition is rather that a sort of – film of unreality settles over that which is elsewhere.  It’s not exactly true that I never felt shocked or anything.  After my second talk to Tet I was appalled at myself.  I felt I’d managed to erase Sorg from the record.  I sat saying to myself.  You did that.  It happened.  Then – though I’m not sure about this one.  Ninety per cent of the continent didn’t think Sarat could do it, so I’m not sure saying it didn’t seem real to me.  But then in Azt it was like the only thing that was real.  Though I think that was a common ailment too.  I actually – I wanted to be sure people weren’t just being kind and I looked up the figures for relationship break-up consequent upon the bloody Matter of bloody Kadun!  But it was a very definite feeling.  Not that Sorg didn’t matter morally or emotionally or for that matter historically.  Not essentially that I was trivializing my feelings for Sorg or my betrayal of Tet.  More that it just didn’t happen. Tet and I had somehow got separated and now we might get back together.  I’m a sponge?  I asked myself that.  I seem to completely absorb – oh.”
She laughed.
“Oh?”
“That can’t be right, either.  A wider reality?” I wondered hopefully. “I’d told him I’d drivelled to Hass about how it had seemed to me we – Tet and I – had not grown-up, lived the lives of a couple of big kids in a delusional state about what was about to happen to our little lives.  He said nothing had happened to his little life except being smashed up by me. Cue for Fal absorbing life in Zur as all reality.”
“Or back into your life with Tet?”
“They weren’t the same conversations.  Oh, I see.  Oh shit. Sorry!  Tet was explaining – his reality was loving me as a friend, as a member of the Six, blood-brother, sister, etc.  To which of course.”
“To which of course.”
I had a strong feeling she was just managing not to giggle. 
“The word that occurred to me is ‘leaking’ which I find a bit weird.  More holes than a sieve I can cope with but it seems to be letting stuff in not out..  The bottom line is that my edges are blurred.”
“Necessarily.”
No giggle there, only a certain dryness.  Try harder, Fal?
“I can see – can I?  If I find, need, have decided that my eso lies outside me I must be – porous.  Leaking?”
“Uncontained, shall I say.  All over the place.”
“I’m telling this piecemeal,” I grumbled.  “It’s not I had it pat. It’s that one bit followed from the next.”
“Do tell,” she said.
I finally got to the rich history of my eso.  The only time she showed the flicker of a reaction was when I voiced my healthy suspicion of attraction to the shrine, but she didn’t say anything.
“It has of course occurred to you,” she said at length, “that as you change Tet may no longer be among what you want.”
“It has,” I said steadily.  “I don’t think so, but if I’m wrong I’ll know before not after.”
“And of course,” she said.
“No,” I said, rather firmly.  “By lose I mean lose as in dead or might as well be.  Never wants to see or speak to me again.  Both of us are in a – process of discovery of what can’t be lost.”
“How can you lose Maya?”
“That freaked me a bit.  ‘Cept I was in the shrine.  I think.  I think I think something like.  All the external stuff people tell me about stopping thinking I have to be Maya.  It comes from a – conception of Maya’s eso. Which I prefer to my own.  Stick to like glue?  Because I am just a little bit petrified.  All in the present tense.  Maybe.  One of the reasons I’m here is because I think I see that I can control myself by brute force, slam down the lid? Be a sort of fake me.”
“When?”
“Ever?! I’ve left out.”  I narrated That Fateful Day.
“Implying?”
“No, I don’t think that!  Except in the terms that I do!  Running on higher octane gas?  I don’t think they all know.  Knew.  Exactly what was wrong with me, Is.  I hate verbs!  Maybe Hass.  A – perception something wasn’t right?  Time!  We were all of us so hopelessly busy.  The idea that what Maya was thinking about, chewing over when she finally got a minute to herself with Sarat was me.”
“You didn’t tell me you were PANTHER.”
“For ten minutes.”
“You stopped.  Suddenly there was time.”
“Oh yes.  No Sorg, plenty of time.  I was stopped.”
“I disagree.”  I flexed my eyebrows so much they hurt.  “What is the source of your feeling of  inadequacy?”
“Oh. Control?”
“Do continue.”
I giggled suddenly.
“I guess it centres on the cup of cocoa? What they know, what they can do is stop it falling.  What I know – experientally is it was impossible not to crack.  What I know intellectually is there’s a place before the cup falls where you can stop yourself dropping it. You always have choice.  In theory.”
“What was it they said, vaccinating sheep?  Have you asked Sarat if he’d like to goat-farm?”
“He’d be bored silly.”
“And you are not?  Did you not say?  What is the difference?”
“What – what I think you’re saying.  Not least because Hass has already said it.  Why am I pretending to have had a breakdown?”
“You are more bereft than Vij and Sarshi?”
“That is painful.”
“That too is reality.”
“What you’re actually saying is a person always has choice.  No I’m not arguing, just trying to be clear.  There’s a level where I rejected choosing not to fall.  Or chose to fall.  Because it was what I needed to do.  To be me.  To be real.  But who’s me doing the deciding.  The eso I reject but which is there anyway….Which is totally divorced from me.  I think.  Thus making choices I don’t know about.  Ohhh.  It kind of forced its way through the crack and – manifest as Sorg - ?”
She held up her hand to stop me.
“As you say, why should you know when no-one else does!   I should certainly agree there was some kind of shudder in you.  I should also agree that your experience of Sorg was in some way consequent upon that.  The field effect we shall have to leave open.”
“That’s it,”  I said, feeling quite excited, “a shudder, that’s exactly.   But then that’s like there was a shell, a block with a crack in it.  I thought I’d discovered something when I thought of the crack as lateral, horizontal, between the mushroom and me.”
“The block in the maze?”
“Wha - ?  To mix my metaphors?  There was no crack in the block in the maze.”
“As you said, when Maya died, the crack wasn’t there any more.”
“But the block sealed tight?  Thinks: this is getting a bit esoteric.”
“D’you want to come up for air?”
“Thought that’s what I was doing….”
“D’you feel more relaxed now?”
“Now you come to mention it. I’ve just thought of something a bit weird.  I think it’s pretty trivial.”
“Tell?”
“I jumped from wow, I’ve never talked to a stranger to of course I have: Kai.   Depends what I mean by stranger.”
We called it a day.
 
 
I lay in the garden and tried to recreate the maze.  It didn’t want to come.  Means, I thought sourly, I don’t want it to come.  Had I learned anything?  Stop trying.  Sorry?  I thought my eso was rampaging through me.  Oh triple shit: not if I find the place I don’t want it to. Which as we all know I do without choosing. So I just need triggering, do I, Senta?  Hmmm.
 
Okey-dokey, try step by step.
Who’s in charge around here!  I seemed to remember something about laboratory rats and a maze but since I had no access to any source of information I hoped Senta was hot on laboratory rats and mazes. 
Ah-hah, o little maze!  I may not be able to read about you but I can draw you.
 
I could just paint it out, I thought, as I wandered off to the art-room.  The block, I mean.   My previous efforts lay untouched at the side of the table.  Look at them later.
 
Uh.  I am not gifted at drawing perfect circles.  I just found that out.  Why shouldn’t it be square?   My circles would do.  And it’s got an entrance.  And it’s wildly simplified, circle within circle, within circle.  This won’t do, might just as well draw a straight line.  What else is it?  The block, I mean.  The point about a maze is most of it doesn’t matter, most of it is just there to confuse you.  Hang on, Fal.  If you could just think occasionally.  Most of a maze is dead-ends.  The block, I mean, is just another dead-end.  So it’s not the way through at all.  I just think that’s the way to the centre?  Ah-uh.  I was absolutely sure.  But then I would be, wouldn’t I.   It’s a dead-end, you idiot, just a particularly flashy one.  Which doesn’t mean getting through it isn’t – dramatic.   There is an actual path through my five-year-old art-class maze.  
This does not do.  I need a picture of a really complicated maze.  It’s going to have to be square.  Set-square and protractor!  Does the equipment provided include a ruler?  It does!  As an after-thought I looked for a pair of compasses, but there wasn’t one.  I drew 20 boxes within boxes.  Now whadda I do?  Close my eyes and make arbitrary breaks?  They are – no, the dead-ends are – all my creations.  OK, put some breaks and dead-ends.  They don’t have identities, values, attached so they can’t be subconsciously determined.  That sounds impressive!  On the other hand I might end up with no way through my maze.  I guess maze design is quite complicated?  Narak might know.  Could there be a maze in the grounds?  Sort of thing landscape-gardeners have fun with. 
Time-slip.  Protracted, if not protractor.  I am eight and sitting at the kitchen-table with a puzzle book.  I have a fine-tipped green felt-pen and I am scowling horribly at the maze in the book.  Bunny needs to find his way back to his warren.  Warren?  The entrance to the warren.   I turn to the little crossword further down the page. 
I guess you could say the eso is a warren.
I sat doing nothing for a while before I turned back to my work.  Then I felt a ludicrous urge for a fine-tipped green felt-pen.  There probably was one, but I didn’t exert myself to look.  I had a pencil and readily re-created my eight-year-old’s scowl.   I also had a rubber and I stealed myself to at least giving my maze an entrance.
Need a coloured pencil to make my line of progress or retreat clear.  I got a green one.
OK, suppose I turn left, then right, then – I am travelling, very fast, like speeded-up film.  Not like being in a car or a train.  Why not like?  Along – I have no idea what along, never seen in my life, it winds and it has rails on both sides, ornamental ones with spires and curlicews.  Then it stopped, faded, no sensation of having run into something or indeed, I suppose, having fallen off the end.  WTF?
Surprise, surprise, I have come to a dead-end.
Supposing I’m irritating about this.  Just barge through, as a line on paper, you understand.  I barged. 
Quite disappointed that the point of my pencil didn’t break off or something.  I continued heedless on my merry way.  I knew what was going to happen now and it happened.  Until I met The Block.  Of course I am super-imposing…. It’s just a line of exactly the same thickness as all the other lines.  But I refuse to see it like that.   
Now where were we?
I’m talking about two different things here.  Not sure either of them makes sense.
Hallo, block. 
Oh wait a minute, it’s got to have a hairline crack.  A few moments’ delicate rubber-work.
No, no, no, no, no!  Excuse me, Bandi said I had a crack, not a block with a crack.   A crack which should heal. 
Unless of course after that I made the block round the crack?
This is doing my head in.  Ah well, it’s meant to.
I can’t draw a crack within the frame of reference of the maze without a block around it. 
Oh yes, I can.
I picked up my maze and went to look for the nearest mentor
I brandished my maze.
“Look this may sound silly, but I want to alter this but I don’t want to lose the original.  Is there a photocopier I can use?”
“Copy it for you.”  He broke into a grin.  “How many copies would you like?”
“Ten, please!” I said while working out that I couldn’t use a rubber on photocopies but I could use white paint.
When he came back, I said, “Graphics software.  I think I worked out that what a program can do is not what a person can do and a person can’t necessarily use a program properly.  Either way it doesn’t come direct from you. In instances like this…”
He smiled.
“Infinitely saveable, infinitely alterable.”
“That’s the one.”
“There you go.”
I wandered back, frowning slightly.  Maybe he didn’t have an answer.  I doubted that; it must be a common enough question. I diverted myself readily enough to technology.  A scanner, then, scan, save, print.  Suppose you wanted to take home on disc – well, you’d just have to have a scanner of your own, wouldn’t you.  This place has a specific purpose and I was entirely sure the people who had worked out what did and did not mesh with that purpose were very unthick.  This was in danger of preoccupying me.  Work-avoidance!
It’s all perfectly simple really, I thought to myself hopefully.  The crack runs straight through the centre of the maze.  Thick squiggly line.  Damn it, I want software.  Scissors and paste it must be to have the two halves slightly separate.  That means the eso is split.  That can’t be.  That means I feel the eso is split. So that’s what Mel was raving about. But the maze.  The only opening – one half is full of openings.  The other – ah-uh.  The only – what is the only apparent opening in it into the – space is blocked by The Block.  Peculiar but interesting….Oh no, of course, the rest have previous dead-ends.  The only path from the entrance that leads to my Great Divide. 
Now I may be where I need to be, where to start from.  Emphasis on ‘may be’.
Hallo, block.  So you’ve got a hairline crack in you, have you.  But you didn’t when - ?
This is frantically interesting but does it play in real-time?
OK, there I am with my lickle hair-line crack through the middle and it’s something and nothing, immaturity, I’ll grow out of it.  Then Mel puts his oar in and makes a thing of it.  Umm, it’s quite unusual for Maitlan to declare his best friend should be shot.  Nor do I think Vax makes a habit of wondering if people should be strangled – well, people who aren’t Sar-fenan, anyway.  I can either protect Mel or analyse this and know I may be protecting Mel.  Or I can jump Mel entirely, trusting my famously reliable judgement that what followed was not down to my having been in some way scarred by Mel.
Decisions, decisions. 
If it’s immaturity, then all the dead-ends are weak, they’ll collapse.  Except the Maya one which grew stronger?
Oh, oh, ohh.  I sort of feel I see something.  Not sure if I can find the words.
Let me not get ahead of myself here.
If I say, as I have said, that I was actually fully myself with Tet, taking all of me with me.  Then I can also say, yes, dear, but you didn’t feel that.  What graphically, where graphically - ?
That needs two divergent versions, superimposed.  How about an overhead?  I think I may be gurgling beneath the waves thinking I can draw this. Memo to the management of the retreat:  look, personally I think an OHP is critical.
Let me take this slow-ow-owleeeeeeeeeeee.
If I can stop gurgling a minute.  No, look, wait a min, if – but then I might as well tear my pictures up.
It’s only images.  Metaphors. 
Force you to rely on yourself.  If you can draw it, you can see it in your mind, not on a screen.  Hmmm.
Suppose this bloody crack is between my eso and what I thought of as my eso.
I rather wanted to take my sheets of paper, paint and pencils outside and arrange them round me but it was beginning to get dark.  I demand a flood-lit terrace!
Certainly I could go and nibble something, so I gathered up my latest work into a neat heap and vamoosed.
I returned to the art-room now of course in total darkness except for moonlight.  I put the lights on and returned to my task.  The light was OK, but it wasn’t dazzling.  It wasn’t as though I was working on intricate gradients of colour but there didn’t seem any reason I couldn’t continue this in my beautifully appointed room (at any rate if I didn’t get permanent white paint over the carpet – I sneaked a look at the tube: washable).  I slipped my kit into my pockets and retired for the night. 
There was a fat armchair, cream, a bit frilly for my taste, but nothing objectionable, by the window, and a reading lamp (and in the bathroom a separate tap for drinking-water).  I curled my legs up under me, sipped slowly and scrutinized my portfolio. 
Where was I?  Damned if I know…I was also – distantly aware, shall I say – I had or might have interrupted myself because I didn’t want to continue.  I was going to have to recreate continuation mode.  It apparently came quite easily and soon I was oh, yes, I see, I meant that-ing, but I was suspicious.  It was too like having been away from work for a couple of days and sorting out what was on my desk.  It wasn’t personal.  Fal, you have to really feel this…Feel is not the right word.  Be inside it, not an on-looker.  Guess that means going in the entrance to the maze. 
The crack itself, you idiot, you, is not real.  Or rather, it’s my crack, I put it there, and no-one can take it away from me, so there!  No-one else. 
OK, with Tet.  Taking all of what I think of as me with me.  Only – only what?  Only I have – imagined?  Good a word as any.  A split in my eso.  Based on this idea that I ‘can’t be’ eso because that’s not me.  Only I know that I need it.  Oh.  Again.  Gosh, did I do that?  There is something there about Mel and Hass both, but not sure it’s sharing with me.  I grew up in heavy water.  That still doesn’t mean I even knew what my eso was at the time of my non-existent relationship with Hass.  You mean I do now?  Maybe I can rephrase that.  Oh.  In triplicate.  Maybe I just sit and yowl?  The idea embedded somewhere that unity requires union.  Instead of with myself.
Union with someone else.
Half an eso looking for partner to make music with.
Gee, Fal, you really need to love yourself.
Yes, Hass, you told me that. 
Now, I am not Sarat: I am not a walking coffee-bean, pride myself indeed on lemongrass and nettle.  I allowed myself a giggle wondering how Sarat currently would react to caffeine deprivation (not earlier, don’t think he was hooked at 17).  In other words I could really do with a mug of really strong hot coffee.  Was that distracting myself from the matter at hand?  Probably!  Where was I?  Does it play in real time?  It sounds as though it does.  That may not be the same thing.
Sarat and Hass.  Sarat and Maya.  Where could I possibly have got the idea of the union of opposites?  It’s my crack, I made it, etc.
I internalized garbage in other words.  Twice over: the inner and eso is not me, only the outer and exo is me. 
Mel went ape.  Bandi said I’d grow out of it.  Mel was seven-freaking-teen and Bandi was in her 50s.  Both were right.  Discuss.
At what level did Mel go ape?  Can’t ask Maya.  Either.  Discuss.  Cantilip, I feel it is only honourable that you be present at a conversation about the relationship Mel and I didn’t really have.  Or at any rate know about it.  I imagined those delicately arched eyebrows rising somewhat.  Look, this isn’t just idle curiosity, it’s driven me halfway round the bend (only half?) and sent me to retreat on the Leolisle…  At some level – that may be a rather good let-out, but leave it for a min – at some level both Mel and Maya detected – sounds like scanning a freaking laptop – discerned that as far as Fal was concerned she didn’t have an eso to unite with – so – so they were loving but as far as Fal was concerned the whole thing was a dead loss.   Seven freaking teen.  Let’s say they didn’t have a lot of idea what they were looking for, only that it wasn’t there.  Could even have been (she said hopefully?) much more superficial than that, a – perception Fal just isn’t bringing all of herself along to this party.  Is not ready.  Is immature.
So I was a late-developer who hadn’t been fast-tracked because I and my immediate circle wanted to restore the Anile throne.  Bit of a gulf there.  I had to giggle and did.
Hang on, the bMbK wasn’t on the horizon then.  Oh.  No.  OK, who hadn’t been fast-tracked because I wasn’t the future freaking king/A-M/who just wasn’t the frantically eso Maya.
 I put aside the increasingly imperative talk with Mel and I took another look at my maze, the version of it where the only path that led to the centre ended in a block and a drop. 
OK, if that’s a block, I can rotate it (damn it, I want software!), make it a bridge.
Oh dear.  I don’t know exactly how I feel resistance and I do not rule out that I am making myself resistant
Maya is dead
I shall never see her again, laugh with her, hug her, talk to her, giggle with her.  Leech off her. 
I have memories.  I do not need this – phantom relationship.  I cannot lose her.  I cannot forget her.
I need to cross that gulf.
I love my eso.
I have – hurt it?  I have hurt me.  I am frightened of it. 
Lots of stuff about floating away on little pink balloons. 
I am so terribly afraid of letting go.
It’s not – it’s not a fear I can find.  It’s a fear somewhere in the maze.  A fear I have only pretended to confront, that I shall not want Tet?
But no, it was there when I thought I’d lost Tet.
Controlled by my strange notions of the eso?  I shall be someone I do not know?  I suppose I could say that is increasingly unlikely.  Only I am convinced of it.  What I need is someone, who sigh can only be me, to take the two halves and drag them together.  That’s you, you moron!  Now get on with it…
No software.
Forced to do it myself whether externally or internally.
I need a clean sheet of paper.  I turned over one of the mazes.
I drew – some things on half the sheet.  Not sure they looked like what they were meant to be but I knew exactly what they were.  A mobile, a goat, a fence, a plate, anything that came to mind to represent my exo world.  Then on the other side lots of clouds and balloons and starburst. 
They’re not separate, idiot. 
Of how to – infuse mobile, goat, fence, plate with starburst graphically or any other way I had not a clue, I felt, except they’re infused already. 
In my mind, in my mind, in my mind…
At least if I make a bridge between them, that’s a start! 
It was a rather good bridge, actually, one of my better efforts. 
It ran across my mind that maybe it could be over a river and that I could swim across, but my mind told me instantly that the current was too strong.  Thanks, mind.  I am really going to have to have a little talk with you. 
I accept.  I reject.
This is my mind I’m talking about and it really does not want me to do this.
Gee, well, no-one ever said this was easy.
Moron!  Idiot!  You’re still doing it.  Whatever you say, you still do it!  Deny the other half.  Start there, idiot. 
That half is not a maze.  Well, it is.  Not in my sense.  That half is open.  A curve with no boundary.  But no entrance except at the Great Divide.  Just pick up the rubber and make a way in. 
Feel.
It will not surprise you to learn that I didn’t want me to do this but I thought-experimented my way – in would be an exaggeration: to the threshhold.
Feel.
What?
 Lost?  There are no directions.  I had to giggle.  What?  I don’t have to run for the Senate or plough a furrow?  Whaddya mean, I can do banking?
Blind?  I am going to walk into a little pink cloud that loves me.
Like wrapping myself in a warm fluffy blanket.
Look for things.  Things infused with starburst.
Such as me?  THAT AM I.  This am I?  What am I?
I am somewhere.
I am?
Who is me?
This doesn’t feel real.  No, well, it wouldn’t.  Discuss.
It felt real in the shrine.  It doesn’t feel real now.
Dive.  That’s a good image.  I am paddling, not even paddling, more like you’re heating some milk and you dip a finger in to test the temperature. 
Let go, Fal, let go!
Even if you do hold your nose.
Mental climb to top board.  Look at all that sparkling blue water I mean pink cloud.  What’s on the other side of it?
At which point I had the clear feeling I was asking myself to be the cup falling from the first floor window which can’t stop itself.  I found myself saying to Hass.  I know perfectly well what you want me to do.  It just happens that I can’t.  Course you can, he said.  Let me show you.  Nice dive.  Very nice dive.  Only he didn’t come up. 
Senta!  He-elp!  Alas, it was 3 in the morning.  I was perfectly sure she was instantly available if I’d been about to cut my wrists or something.  Since that was just about the opposite…
Guess I’d better go to bed, then. 
OK, that’s clear enough.  I have this figured as suicide.  Death of the self, sigh.  The end of me as I know me.  But it’s not! 
What the freaking hell do I not want to lose?
It’s too late to have another go at infusing my mobile, plate, goat with starburst.  I really do think I shall just – I flopped on the bed and fell instantly asleep, without even cleaning my teeth.  Oh shock, oh horror.

Or perhaps you hate Maya's death most of all.  How bitterly you hate love, hate courage, hate honesty, hate anything clean, and of course how you hate women.  How irrevocably you etch in stone what you are, Cult, Death-Eaters, who would have murdered her. 

How brutally stupid you are.

Somewhere people were screaming and shouting but Sarat stood still as stone. 
So cold.  Hurts
Together they passed through the pain.
CLICK CLICK CLICK
I we grieve at parting.
NO and yes.  You cannot follow.
Varulin was by his side. 
“That’s it, lad.  You hold on to her….”  His voice trailed off.  Oh fuck, no!  “Get a fucking car here!”
The light was very strong now.
Leave? How can I leave you?
“You just hold her, sir,” said Varulin gently.  “That’s it.  No-one can hurt her now.”
I will follow.
NO and yes.
Baz zoomed up.
They cannot part us.
We travel now.
Everyone is screaming but Sarat stands still as stone.  Baz understood.
NO.
Sarat tried to throw Baz out of his their mind.
Baz forced them apart. 
CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK
“Fuck off!” said Baz.  “Just fuck bloody off!”
 “It’s like bloody rape!” shouted Varulin.
“Is she - ?”
“Dead,” said Baz.  “Got it?”
Sarat came to with Maya’s lifeless body in his arms in sudden silence.
He looked at Baz almost in puzzlement.
“She’s not here any more.”
CLICK CLICK CLICK
They stood waiting for transport to bulldoze its way through the wreckage.
CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK. CLICK
 
We interrupt this broadcast.
MAYA DEAD
MAYA ASSASSINATED
MAYA  MURDERED
SHE DIED IN HIS ARMS
 
Contingency Plan (M) not Contingency Plan (S).  Essa and Cho would stay out of Kadun. He’ll need help. What else are sisters for?
 
Essa tried to get Sarat on his mobile.  No reply.
“It has happened,” said Baya.  Toss a coin.  Pray.  The music will stop.  Which one will it be?
I have four children, she thought, I still have four children.  Why do I not cry for shame?
 
Essa got Baz.  Baz handed over the mobile.
“Sarat.”
“Oh dad.”
“Love,” said Essa, “love, love, love, love.”
“Love,” said Sarat.
“Oh my darling,” said Baya. “Love, love, love.”
 
Mel rode down the hill and into the Saa’nda Senta.
“It has happened,” he said.
Mel, we’re so sorry.  Mel, all our love.
 
Mitch  would have grown wings, but Karula said no.  We offer our love, we offer ourselves but we do not go to Azt, Mitch, because we are not family. Mitch rang and Sarat said please come.
 
Scenes of devastation in Azt!  Ten dead, including Her Imperial Majesty, Maya-ban-essa.  Forty, fifty, sixty wounded. 
 
Sarat stood up.
“You do not have to go back!” shouted Paw.
“What do you suggest?  I sit here and scream?”
CLICK, CLICK, CLICK. 
 
“I’m sorry, sir, you can’t go through there.”
“I am Maya’s father.”
“Sir!  I am so sorry, so sorry.  Sarat’s gone back to the – scene.”
Pietri closed his eyes.
“Where is Maya?”
Pietri sat talking quietly to his daughter.
 
Three beautiful young women ran up and threw themselves on Sarat.  Oh Sarat, my poor darling! Love, love, love, love, love!  He hugged them heedless of bemused spectators.
“My sisters,” said Sarat.
“Sarat, this is a terrible day for you, for all of us – “
“It was a pretty bad day for Maya.”
“Sure, sure, I did not mean – “
“Just shut it,” said Sarat.  “Just for once, shut it.”
“Vultures,” said Zik.
“Try feeding on us,” said Shavli.
“I don’t think we’ll ever forgive you today,” said Ven,  “How could you!”
“What d’ you think Pietri and Caluna felt like?” asked Zik.
“Maya’s mum and dad,” supplemented Ven.
Many people who have often thought that Sarat, his family and friends let the press off too easily too often have gained enormous satisfaction from this simple expression of family outrage…
 
We interrupt this broadcast.
His Imperial Majesty will speak from the scene of the blast.  .
Sarat-ban-essa-eban-Narulis, Master of Kadun.
 
I think you’d better come, sir.  Sarat’s going to speak.
Bal looked on in horror.
He is still….
Covered in her blood.
 
There is a time to mourn, a time to scream, a time to weep.  All these things I owe my darling Maya.  Most of all I owe the refusal of defeat.  They have changed nothing.  They have won nothing.   Death does not sit on the Anile throne!  To the offal responsible for today’s devastation, to the vermin in the City who back them, to the snivelling animals who cower before them, I say, you can create nothing, but only destroy.  Today you leave a trail of wrecked and broken lives.  That you call a victory.  Thus you show the world your impotence. You cannot win.  You will never win.  This I pledge to Kadun.  This I pledge to Maya.
 
Mitch caught at the airport by the meedjah raised his hand in salute.
“We do not do cowering.”
“You yourself have suffered terrible loss.  How is Sarat feeling?”
It’s like robots, thought Karula.  They are not bad people.  They have no self-awareness. 
 
Sarat arrived back and stared at the  flowers carpeting the people-space,   
“I thank you,” he said shakily.  “On Maya’s behalf, on my own.  Thank you.”
“Pietri,” said Faun.  He pointed to the bedroom.
Pietri looked up.
“Everyone needs to go home.”
Sarat blinked back tears.
“They’ve brought you flowers, my love.  A whole field of flowers.”
Pietri stood.
“We’ll leave you to sleep now.”
“I am so sorry,” said Sarat.  “I am so sorry.  I was with her.  I was going with her.   Baz forced us apart.”  Pietri opened his arms.  “She was hurting and I wanted to stop her hurting but we were already through the pain.  I just wanted to stop her hurting.   We didn’t see how we could part.”
“Oh my dear boy,” said Pietri. 
“Somewhere – somewhere else people were shouting and screaming.  It didn’t have anything to do with us.  I hurt Baz,” said Sarat with horror.  “Oh I don’t mean.  He was trying to separate us.”
Pietri went to the door and asked for strong coffee.
“The funeral,”  he said finally.
“The funeral,” said Sarat.
They talked for a long time.  After a while, Faun was summoned.
No, Sarat, said Faun, knowing it was useless.
I pledge victory, I pledge courage to  skulk in a covered car?
Sarat rang Marula and Saryulin .  Of course, they said.
You can’t be buried twice, thought Faun.  Perhaps all of it is impossible, a nightmare from which we wake when we are all dead.
Faun rang Cho.
“Or of course he simply doesn’t care.”
“I am aware of that interpretation,” said Cho.
“I’ve said my bit,” said Faun.
 
Pietri mailed Mel and told him the  unphotographed trauma of Maya’s final moments.
Mel thought of him and Cantilip and hundreds of meaningless words on the subject of death.
I think, he mailed back, not of course know, but think, it wasn’t exactly – when she finally ‘crossed over’ he’d have been left behind.  Was he going with her or keeping her here?
If they were communicating, he thought, she wasn’t ‘dead’, whatever that is.  There must be a state beyond biological – leave it, Mel, leave it.  Or you become obsessed by death.  But Papa, he won’t leave us alone. 
 
Baz looked up.
“Oh Baz.”
“Love, love, love,” said Baz.
“Love, love, love.”
“What does a man expect when he tries to come between a guy and his girl?”
“Was I keeping her here?”  
“Sarat…In that situation – not that I  know anything about ‘that situation’ – what  I think is – for a moment I couldn’t tell which was you and which was Maya.  I don’t think you can look at it like that.  You both wanted to go in both directions.”
“Yes,” said Sarat. “And no.  She – there’s a point,”  She wanted to go, thought Baz. It’s not how to put it.  You go back.  What do I know?  “When – will fades,” Sarat was saying. 
“You just are,” said Baz, “in a field of flowers.”
 
 The terror and the loss.  I’ll come back with Pietri, be in Zur in the morning.  Love, love, love, love, love.
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, typed back Mel. 
 
Small, tubby and balding glared at the screen.
“We have VILE, we have PANTHER, we have the Hadin-Wadud. What does this mean?”
“Don’t follow you, sir.”
“Try harder.  How many more damn’ deaths?”
“Protection.  A line of steel.”
“You have entered a Cult-free Zone.  And the very considerable resources of our three great nations were used to ensure it stayed that way.  Meaning Kadun was a contaminant.”
“The border’s open now, sir.”
“Well done, that man.  Meaning we have a vested interest in decontamination.”
“You cannot say Vasucula sat on the fence!”
“I surely can.  I surely do.  We tighten up any on the money-men?”
“We are a capitalist economy.  There are no lengths to which we shall not go to foster global investment, maximum prosperity for all and the brutal murder of a beautiful young woman.”
“That’s what I just said.  Get the bastards.”
 
“The Anile Emperor does not plead,” said the Ciletij Finance Minister.
“In his state,” said Varchulan darling, “he doesn’t have to.”
 
Sarat spoke to Mitch and Karula.  Of course, said Mitch.  Karula hid her disarray.  Only in the safety of their bedroom did she say to her beloved: Mitch, I know this is trivial in the great scheme of things, but if I am not to make a total fool of myself and of Var-segan on what is probably the most solemn occasion of my entire life – you know I never got the hang of horses.
 
“Now we’re going to the House of Silence,” said Baz, “and we would really appreciate it if you didn’t come.”
“You here to make arrangements for the funeral, Sarat?”
“I despair,” said Mitch.  “I am not talking to human beings.  If I may quote Baz – “ Long pause.  Mitch gave his sweetest smile.  “Remove yourselves from Sarat’s path.”
“That’s it,” said Baz, oozing charm. “Go away.”
“The sensitivity of oysters,” said Mitch.
“Is that a compliment, Mitch?”
“Real fine rugs,” said Mitch.
Sarat made his way relatively unimpeded to the House of Silence.
“Bloody walking-streets,” muttered Varulin.
“If I bring the car round, we can get away after,” said Baz.
Sarat stood in front of the flame.  Where you are, there am I.  Where I go, you are with me.  We shall win, my sweet lady, my love.  They do not part us.
He lit a candle, then took out a pen and wrote on a card.
My darling Maya, I love you.  Sarat xxxxxxxx. 
“OK, let’s head for the hill.”
As they turned, they heard someone say, “Fetch a fortune at auction.”
Sarat span round.
“Who said that?”
If you remember, Mel once remarked that Sarat can emit the aura that causing him the slightest discontent will result in instant demise.
“I think you may have upset him,” drawled Mitch.
“You will not remove the card,” said Sarat.
Order? thought Varulin, that’s no order, that’s an irresistible physical force. 
“Is that clear?” asked Sarat.
Sure, Sarat, sure.  Just a joke, Sarat.  Honest, Sarat, it was a joke.  Mel’d break our necks!
“No, he wouldn’t,” said Sarat.  “I’d have got there first.”
“There sure is some fine carving here,” said Mitch.
They made it to the car and zoomed off up to the hill.
“Shit, man,” said the idiot.
“He’s bound to be a little tense.”
“Is that what you call it!  I just found out what it’s like to be on the wrong side of the Anile Emperor!”
“We’ll talk to the H-W,” said Mitch.
Sarat made his way to the Room
 “I have brought this devastation.”
“My darling,” said Saski, “no.”
They hugged..
At length Sarat sat.
What are the expressions, thought Venga.  You look like hell. You look like death warmed up. 
“This is what we’re going to do,” said Sarat.
The state occasion, thought Mel, the pound of screaming flesh.  Give them that.
“I can do that,” said Sarat.  “I can do that with my heart torn in two.  I cannot afterwards make polite conversation.  I cannot leave Kadun to indulge  my grief.  It’s desertion.”
Hass got up and put his arm around Sarat.
“I think the guy needs to talk.”
“I have a right to claim a greater grief?” asked Sarat.  “After all, I killed her.”
“Balls,” said Venga briskly.
“It is natural, darling,” said Saski, “that should be an emotion you experience, but really it is the most awful nonsense.”
Sarat shrugged: no Anile throne, no funeral.
“We have our own demons,” said Mel.  “We were told to run for cover and we ran.” Tar looked up sharply. “If I do not say that in front of Sarat, I do not say it.”
 
Seani looked at the candle and the message.
“He wouldn’t have done that if it’s Zur.”
“How can they bury her in Zur!  Bets are on Carlin.”
“Sorg all over again.”
“Won’t get near.”
“Poor bastards.”
“Plural?”
“Plural.  We watched them grow up!”
“If I just close my eyes, they’re in the Saa’nda Senta.”
“Beneath these cold heartless exteriors, we all feel that.”
“How do we convince the Aniles!”
 
It is well known Pietri has his differences with Sarat.  He must surely hold Sarat responsible for his daughter’s terrible death.
Zuri, used enough to all shades of broadcaster shooting mouth off in the Saa’nda Senta, turned on this one.
Shut it, arsehole!
Surely that is merely a truth too terrible to bear.  Does not Zur hold Sarat responsible for the death of its princess?
Ask him.  Come on, say, hi Pietri, everyone knows you blame Sarat.
Yeah, man!  You go to the hill and fucking ask him!
Do we sound as if we blame Sarat?
Maya was a person.  And a fucking brave one. 
Bloody Ciletij still trying it on!
 
The Representative of Harn at Azt presents his condolences to His Imperial Majesty. 
On behalf of the whole of Harn – Sarat’s face stopped him.  Sarat….I have to say these things.
Come back to me when I’ve got Searc.
You have proof?
Not yet.  Would you give a message to Bal?
Of course.
Tell him we’re turning the screws.
Oh dear.  Must I?
 
Aztians talking about the funeral, live on Channel One
“I’m sure it’ll all be perfect.  Can’t tell us, can they!”
Most people had quietly figured that the rate of attrition hadn’t been greater only because Sarat never ever issued a schedule.
“Thing we have to think about is what Maya would have wanted.”
“Everyone look after him, that’s what she’d’ve wanted.”
“Right!”
“Hope it’s not in Zur.”
“You gotta think of her mum and dad.”
“Maybe she’d have wanted to go home.”
“Support Sarat.  Whatever he wants, it’s all right by us.”
“Right!”
No nay-sayers? they asked in the studio.  Nobody asking to be lynched, no.
 
No, honey, said Mitch with the reserves of patience that made him such a good father.  Not like that. 
Varulin looking out of the window couldn’t quite keep his face straight. 
My lord of Var-segan is instructing my lady of Var-segan in the finer points of horsemanship. 
Ride?  They’re going to ride?
 
The Cabinet of the Republic of Harn choked.
After, counselled Bal, I shall talk to the young man after the funeral.
Shouldn’t the message be passed around?
An excellent notion, said Bal.
 
“The whole of the people-space,” said Shav.  “It has to become a meadow.”
“So much for designing for posterity.”
“Eternity,” said Shav.  “Different.”
“Sis,” said Sarat.
“Bro?”
“Shav – “
She put a finger to his lips. 
“My choice.”
“Or it is a fairground game,” continued Sarat remorseless.  “Knock down the five dollies, another five take their place, until none is left.”
“There are a lot of us, aren’t there,” said Shav.
“Don’t joke.”
“Then laugh,” said Shavli.  “People are saying – they’re edging round it, Sarat.  They love each other, don’t they.  That’s all that matters.”
“Kadun is shy,” said Sarat.  “We saw it when we cleaned out the House of Silence. There was a sort of hum of love, but no-one actually said anything.  Now I must say it.” 
“Darling, there is a time for all things.  You said it!   How many times since arriving in Azt have you used the word ‘Cult’ in public?”
 “Do you think I haven’t thought of that?”
“There were people dying of hunger.  You set out to change everything.  You have changed everything.”
“Oh yes,” said Sarat.
 
Bal pondered as he undressed.
Does this man like me?  If I were Sarat, I should hate me, but I do not – perhaps that is did not – think Sarat exactly hates anyone.  A question of the kind of guys they are.  The other matter!  Now I do not bow to the like or dislike of any man, be he prince or porter, but if I ask myself in all honesty if I do not value the good opinion of Sarat or Mel over that of Searc I have to answer myself that I should be a screaming lunatic if I did not.  Kids to feed, road-repairpersons to pay.  I really did not think they would fight dirty.  What in hell am I going to do?
Why did I not think they would fight dirty?
 
“There’s this crazy rumour going round, he’s going to ride behind her coffin.”
“Oh Sarat.  It’s too far.”
“Not from the House at Carlin.”
 
A trio of Zuri sat talking.
We could call it Maya’s song.
I think we ought to ask. 
OK, there’ll be some won’t like it.
If Pietri don’t like it, we ditch it, all right. Absolute last thing we want to do is upset Alzani-Meta.
Get our necks broken.
The story was all over Zur.
They climbed the hill.
We don’t want to intrude.  It’s about remembering Maya.
Pietri was found and faced three young men whose basic state appeared to be excruciating embarrassment. 
Support Sarat. We think it’s what Maya would have wanted.
We’ve written a song.
Well, not written exactly.
Look, if you don’t like it, it’s in the bin.
I thank you…May I see it?
We’ve got it typed out.
Finally the words were prised out of them.
Pietri stared at the page, not sure whether to laugh or cry.
I see, he said.  Maya would love it.  I thank you.  I do think you should mention it to Mel.
Thank you!  Thank you!
 
“Supposing you’re a soprano,” said Shavli. Sarat looked a bit surprised but did his best.  “You hit all the top notes.  That’s fine.  That’s cool.  Your voice dominates the stage.  But what you need to do is go higher, beyond the range of the human voice.”
“Now, Sarat, if you will just tell our viewers, and remember, there must be a hundred million tuned in worldwide, exactly what you think about death. Shall I tell them about the throne too?”
“Now you come to mention it…” said Shav. 
 
Kadun did not go pear-shaped, said Mel. The Harni pretended not to understand.  Bal said he had to protect his own in case Kadun went bottoms up.
We cannot consider Kadun stable until there is a democratically elected government in place.
Kadun cannot be stable until the Cult is annihilated.  The Cult cannot be annihilated until the City stops feeding it.
It’s natural you should be feeling a little over-wrought at this time, Mel.
Sohenoil, retorted Mel, is feeling very over-wrought indeed.  I am trying to help you guys.  I am trying to explain the bottom is about to fall out of your world.  Find a lifeboat!
You just want us to invest in AMI!  No-one can do anything, Mel.
Mel gave up.
Watch this space.
 
Her Imperial Majesty will be buried the day after tomorrow in the presence of her family and friends.  This will be followed by services simultaneously in Azt, Zur and Maona-pri to which the chief mourners will return.  His Imperial Majesty will speak the requiem.
Most breath-taking statement I’ve seen in my life, even from Sarat.  Where, Sarat, pretty please?
Ask The Girls.  Soft touch, easily swayed.
 
I need to know what time, said Bal. OK, that’s 8 in the morning with us.  People’ll be up all night watching the funeral.  Guess we just got a new public holiday. 
 
There will be services also in Gula-Toon, Wintawa and the City.
 
A smear campaign began in the City.  The Sisterhood announced a candlelit vigil the night of the funeral.  The idea quickly spread across the water. Maya’s death became a feminist issue. 
 
Shavli addressed the cameras.  .
“OK, people, you’re going to spend the night out and that is just incredibly sweet of you.  I think it’s beautiful, in fact.  If it’s actually going to be beautiful, we think you need a bit of help.  Loos, hot drinks, shelters for people who get chilled or get sick, first aid in case of accidents.  After all, this is the whole city we’re talking about.”
If it wasn’t before, it is now.
“Fortunately the family caterers are more than willing to provide anything you might need free of charge.  After all, she was their Maya.”
It took Kadun a moment to realize she meant AMI.
“Above all, of course, I want to thank you for your flowers, for your cards, for your messages, for your outpouring of  love which has lightened the load of these past few terrible days, for Sarat, for me, for all of us.  We know that Maya did not die in vain because Azt loves her, Kadun loves her. 
 
“I thank you.”
 
She blew Kadun a kiss. 
 
Kadun blushed furiously and looked in the mirror to check it had combed its hair.
 
Getting in some practice in case she has to do the job. Even vultures shut out some thoughts as unbearable and unprintable, at any rate 48 hours before the funeral. Everybody who thought thought it.  It is a measure of how far we have travelled that  Anile Empress in her own right…Voices trailed off. 
 
“We recorded  Just Some Girls Talking over Lunch,” said Jaizi.  “I really think you’d better see this.”
Yes, of course they killed her because she was Her Imperial Majesty, but why would that have mattered if she’d been some cipher?
It was the guys everyone focused on, right.  I mean, this is Kadun! 
We knew Karula had a track-record as a radical and Cantilip, well, Cantilip is Cantilip.  Mess with earthpower and you die!  The debt women in Kadun owe to Van-senok is just about immeasurable.  They never surrendered.  But we didn’t know anything about Maya.  Obviously we didn’t think Sarat’d be paired with some dumb-bun, but she didn’t seem political.
For that matter, we didn’t think Alzani-Meta produced dumb-buns, but they did seem rather political!   Maya-ban-essa, rest her soul, embodied just about everything every woman wants to be. [Laughter] OK, OK, including Sarat’s partner, or is that in bad taste!  She was just totally her own person.  She made her own decisions and she darned well died for them.  I mean, excuse me, Maya, would you like to be Anile Empress.  Thank you, no, Sarat, I have a  nice safe life here in Zur..  She risked everything, gave up everything.
She was so damn’ brave – do you remember the blast at the consecration.?
[Pause]
Well, they all are.
There is no question in my mind – of course they killed her to hurt Sarat but basically they killed her because of what she was, a tough, free lady, symbol of our aspirations, focus of our hopes.  Sarat must know that.  I mean, I don’t think anyone actually -  you kind of assumed he’d get support from Cho.  No, no!  Oh dear, I mean I’m sure Cho loves him to pieces. Sarat’s answer is Shavli, Zika and Ven and let me tell you we are rooting for those ladies!  Women will not be put down by the bastards, not ever again, and that is Maya’s legacy.
Mitch tried to read Sarat’s expression and failed.
“It’s a funeral,” said Zik, “not another round in the sex war.”
“You’re not coming from where they’re coming from,” said Karula.
“That’s rather obvious,” said Zika.
“It’s a candlelit vigil,” said Shavli.  “It’s not going to turn into a riot.”
“There is absolutely no-one in Azt who harbours or ever has harboured a single negative thought about Sarat or Maya.”
“That’s a different ball-park,” said Shav.
“How?” demanded Zika.
Sarat spoke at last.
“Let’s just say it’s a volatile situation.”
There were things Sarat thought about the Cult striking duringthe funeral shared with no-one but Cho and Faun.  Contingency Plan (F) was to be carried out to the letter, whether he remained alive or not. I can tell you now that they didn’t strike during the funeral and even that no-one expected that they would.  We didn’t rule out loose cannons. 
“It is not in us,” said Zika drily,  “to ask them to remember to be quiet and respectful in the presence of the Great Master.”
Mitch flexed his eyebrows.
“Here I go again,” decided Shavli
 
Shavli shook back her hair and settled into the settee to die for.
I’m not going to take up much of your time, but what I do have to say matters.  Hearken, therefore.
Maya in the short time she was here came to mean a very great deal to a very many people, especially women.  When we lose someone we love dearly, tempers run short. When that loss is as politically charged as is Maya’s death, there is the possibility tempers may be lost.  On the day of the funeral, two things will be paramount to me, and I want them to be paramount throughout Kadun.  One is Sarat’s well-being and the other is what Maya would have wanted.  We are all of course acutely aware that many political questions remain to be fully resolved.  They will be fully resolved.  That is Sarat’s pledge and the pledge of all of us, his family.  We are told that the whole of Kadun will be out on the streets to show its love – your love – for Maya.  That is as it should be, a day of love, a day of remembrance, a day of peace. That is what Maya would have wanted.  That is what Sarat wants.  Politics can wait until the day after. Thank you again.  Thank you for all your flowers.  Thank you for all your love. 
 
She blew Kadun another kiss.
 
That, folks, is the Anile heir.
Almost worth doing in Sarat – he clapped his hand over his mouth.  I didn’t think.
Serious offence, that, son.
We’re vultures.  We’re supposed to make tasteless jokes.
 
Eek, typed Mel.  What brought that on?
Sarat mailed him the transcript
!  I love it.
I shall love it in two days’ time. 
 
Her Imperial Majesty will be buried at the shrine attached to the Summer Palace.  Hey, but that’s private property!  Can’t no-one visit – During opening-hours, said Zulagan with bitter fury.  If you can’t reach her grave you can’t dig her up again, can you.
 
It’s like a pall has fallen on the whole of Azt as the sun sets and the vigil begins.  There must be the whole city out on the streets.  I do not think anything like this has been seen ever.  Here and there in the crowds are braziers to warm them and stalls dispensing hot drinks, but mostly there is just the flicker of candles on worn faces, the distant mournful hoot of ships on the river, and the sound of people crying.  
 
Duvi, Saryulin and Marula arrived at the Jumesit, sat with Sarat, Mitch, Karula and B and P watching the camera pan over Azt’s candles. 
This is Azt, thought Duvi, and so this is impossible.
“We should get a little sleep,” said Saryulin at last, really meaning Sarat should.
Baz went with them to find their rooms. 
Mitch suddenly remembered something, muttered excuse me, and sprinted after them.
He caught up with them, was suddenly at a loss for words.
“This place is a little weird,” he said lamely.  Baz grinned unhelpfully. He remembered.  “You have ghosts in Carlin.” Saryulin raised his eyebrows sky-high. “They say the walls of time are very thin here.  Just don’t be surprised at anything.” 
Marula shook with laughter.
“If we meet Narulis, I trust we shall know how to behave.”
“Sarat does,” said Baz.
“We could talk or read,” said Duvi after a moment.  “Darling, I am agog.”
“The stories concerning the Jumesit,” said Marula, “are extraordinary.”
“Sarat – and indeed Maya – did, do not find it a little disturbing?”
“Sarat,” said Baz, then stopped, not wanting to enter into a dissertation.  “Sarat is not – is no longer a fresh-faced youth wholly concerned with the exoteric.”
They digested that in silence and retired.
 
The singing began just before dawn, clearly a lament.  Duvi stirred, thnking it first light, but the glow was coming from a far corner of the room.  She touched Saryulin’s shoulder.  He grunted, then sat up, he too thinking it was dawn.  The girl wore a cloak of forest green.  I know you, said Duvi, despite herself.  The girl smiled.  I am Brig.  I mourn my lord.   My lady, said Saryulin.  You are welcome always at Carlin.  She smiled again and faded.   I am really rather shaken, observed Duvi after a moment.
 
Now dawn is breaking over Azt, and this most terrible of days begins.  People who have fallen asleep in the arms of their loved ones are stirring, sleeping-bags are unzipped.  The unsung heroes of this day will surely prove to be the charity workers making sure everyone gets something hot inside him.  Or of course her.  With such crowds calculation of numbers is practically impossible but most people think every female who can walk unaided is out here and some who can’t.  An old lady in a wheelchair has been reported  in the Colonnade!
 
Marula was almost entirely silent at breakfast, throughout their preparations.  Cantilip got out of her what had happened later.
 
Finally we move to the Palace from where Her Imperial Majesty will begin her final journey.  From behind the Palace appears – no, no, it’s not a car, it’s a carriage, a silver gun-carriage pulled by six silver horses – we have learned of course that the imperial family does not do black as the colour of mourning.   Now the coffin has been placed on the carriagee and the Imperial Guard line up for the final salute.  The carriage is preparing to draw away.   From both sides of the Palace come the procession, all in silver, all on silver horses.  His Imperial Majesty leads a riderless horse!   This is grace, that is style.  Would we expect any less?  He is wearing a sword!  Is that traditional?  Behind him come Pietri and Caluna Talal – everyone is wearing a sword, the ladies and the gentlemen alike!  I guess that’s one way of confronting the security issue!  Vij and Sarshi Talal, Mel and Cantilip Talal,  Hasiyata and Venga Talal.  Behind them are my lord and lady of Var-segan and my lord and lady of Carlin.  My lady of van-senok follows them.  Behind Marula Za-fenan, oh my heaven, it’s PANTHER and the Hadin-Wadud, but not, I swear, as you have previously seen our gallant defenders.  Did you know PANTHER had a dress uniform?  Baz and Paw, of course, they must have known Maya as long as Sarat did!  Little Jaizi.  As we know, Jaizi was born in Tjulsit…   .   
                Plotters Central, thought the less romantic.
                A day of peace, sir?  Challin collapsed.  This is all-out war!  Let me re-interpret Her Imperial Highness’ touching words.   The only politics will be displayed by us.
                Anyone start anything, thought Karci, and we cut your head off.  I do like that thought.
                Now the cortege is passing through the gates of the Palace into the streets of Azt.  The crowds are absolutely silent except – something is happening in that crowd.  People are starting to hold up placards: We love you.  As the coffin passes, as Sarat passes, people are bowing, curtseying, saluting.
This crowd is not silent!  It is like a susurration.  As the procession passes, most especially of course as Sarat passes, they murmur.  My lords, my ladies.  Imperial Majesty.  What is going on here is like a pact, an oath of allegiance, a vow.  It’s like an electric current.  It’s like Narulis riding by!  Is that the point?  Sure, tomorrow it’ll be Sarat, that’s crap.  Mel, you’re talking garbage…
 
Now they’ve nearly reached the Summer Palace and joining them are six cars.  Who do we think are in those six cars?  Obviously Sarat’s mother and father….The cortege is passing through the gates of the Summer Palace and the gates swing shut behind…
 
A journo crept along the wall. 
Interrupt this, said a squaddy cheerfully, and you die.
See that, added his corporal enthusiastically, that’s a safety-catch.  Now, supposing I put it off.
All righty, all righty! 
Why don’t you blokes get it?
 
Some reactions now from the crowd…
 Nobody’d have minded, lad!  I just shook me head.  Nobody’d have minded if he’d drove.
Int never seen anything so flaming brave in me life.
In yer face, you – well, never mind.
 
Now the gates have opened to allow the cars to leave and slammed tight shut again.  It looks like they’re heading straight for the airport…There is some precision timing going on here….No, no, some are clearly going into Azt…
Indeed Sarat who had felt an almost palpable relief when even his nearest and dearest and closest had gone and he didn’t have to speak to anyone and who was now kneeling by the grave reciting something (Mitch couldn’t catch the words) showed no particular sign of wishing to leave.
Mitch looked quickly at his watch.
All the time in the world.
Time passed.
Once more the Gates are opening and Sarat rides out. Following him – but this is a different set of riders.  Mitch and Karula var-segan, Falita Em- I mean Falita San-yaega-baht, but I do not recognize – I am told the other lady and gentleman are Sorg’s mother and father and here too are PANTHER and the H-W.  I am being handed an official statement.  This is for everyone who has suffered grievous loss at the hands of the Cult.  This is our answer. Oh my.  I guess PANTHER is finding this a very long war.  What PANTHER has suffered, the corruption of the throne, the flight back to Fidub…They’re going to ride all the way to the House of Silence, right? 
Right.
 
Now they’re arriving at the House of Silence and you could hear a feather drop, never mind a pin.  Really, you could not think so many people could be so still.  Sarat is – they are all dismounting and removing their swords.  They’re going in now…
 
Sarat walked through the House of Silence and took the stand.  Mel took the stand in Zur, Cho in Maona-pri.  Sarat will speak for us all.
 
Star turn.  Culmination.
 
Dear people, I thank you.  I shall not say in my worst dreams I never imagined but of course the reality.  Some have called us heedless, foolhardy.  We pay then for our folly?  We do not skulk, cringe before Death the Great Master – “ The contempt in his voice was palpable.   “And so some will say is this devastation we experience, is this ceremonial we conduct, not in obedience, obeisance to Death.”  Oh Sarat, breathed Mitch.  “We are human.  To be human is to love.  We grieve because we love, but love must conquer our grief, our fear.  We feel the pain and pass through it into love.  We are here today in love to love, to affirm the triumph of love.  Love endures.  We are here because we love Maya, not because we loved her, an ephemeral state, soon forgotten.  This flame symbolizes that love.  It is no feeble thing, readily extinguished.  It is Light.  It is power.  It is all power.  Death has no power over us.  And so there is not an ending but a change, as every atom in the flame changes from moment to moment.  Once more things are different but also they are the same.  There is no faltering in our resolution, no dent in our love.
 
“‘They came, the skull-faces, but we laughed.’  This Narulis wrote in his Journal – “  When a very large number of people gasp, it makes a noise, however quietly they try to do it.  Sarat continued.  This I say to you today.  They cannot destroy laughter.  Today we feel far from it, I perhaps most of all, but all sorrow must pass. 
 
I am here because I love Maya.  My lady is my grace and my truth.  My lady is my resolution and my culmination. To my lady I say, they cannot destroy our love.
 
I thank you all for being here.  I thank you all, on Maya’s behalf, on my own, for your love.
 
He bowed and walked slowly out.  A single flute played the Requiem.
It wasn’t quiet any more.  Too many people crying.
After a moment, Saryulin, Duvi, Mitch, Karula and Marula followed him out.  They got into the waiting cars.  It was over.
 
As Sarat drives away through a silent Azt, we move to Zur, where Alzani-Meta leaves the House of Silence.
The first crashing chords hit the screens. 
Sarat frowned.
All of us of course know Dabida’s unofficial anthem.  They’ve changed the words!  They’re calling it the ‘It’s what Maya would have wanted song’!
The words flashed on the screen. .
Does Sarat fail?  Does Sarat quail?  No, he does not, our brave Sarat!  Come hadin, come.
A roar went up from the crowd in Azt as they took up the words.
Sarat seemed in shock.
“I don’t think I’m going to escape,” he said after a moment. .
“If we go down Sertal we can get to the Colonnade.”
“Mel hasn’t,” said Sarat.
“I thank you,” Mel was saying.
“Sir.”
“We just think we have never seen anything so fucking brave in our lives.”
Pietri smiled.
“I am relieved we can rely upon Zuri to be formal and sober on all occasions.”
“Sir.  It’s the you looked death in the face and told him to go – to get stuffed day.”
Sarat has turned off.  Yes, he’s heading for the Colonnade.  Such an outpouring of affection, of, use the word , love must be a very  real support to him – he’s stopped outside the Imperial, he’s getting out.  The crowd has stopped in mid-chorus.  They’re starting to sing the imperial anthem.  I really don’t know about this, must it not to Sarat be a tragic reminder of that first jubilant night in Azt, but this is no heavy metal rendition but almost stately and every soldier present – let’s face it now our hearts are no longer in our mouths there are very many soldiers present and the security arrangements of this day – every soldier is rigidly at attention.  But what is good, what is great, what too is a measure of how far Kadun has travelled, is every soldier of every army and Sarat is I think thanking them.  Now he has turned to the crowd.  He’s saluting them and I guess he’ll stay at the salute until they’ve finished singing…OK, they’ve finished.  What now? 
Sarat said once again: I thank you all for being here.  I thank you all, on Maya’s behalf, on my own, for your love.  He got back into the car. 
Now I guess he’s really going home.  If we cut now to Maona-pri…
On this most terrible of days the ‘It’s what Maya would have wanted song’ lifts up hearts the world over, and I would hope it is not presumptuous, Cho, to think yours is among them.
I thank Dabida, I thank Kadun..  At the start of such a day it is hard to think it may end on so firm an affirmation of love and hope.  For that of course I thank  Sarat who found the words to articulate that affirmation.”
“That was some – address.”
“I am so proud of him,” said Cho.  “I am so proud of him it hurts.”
“People are saying – he just said everything.”
“Everything that matters,” said Cho.
 
“Every damn’ paper in Harn.”
Bal groaned.
“Every damn’ paper in the world.”
There is only one headline,  Seani had said.  Most of the world’s press agreed.
WE DO NOT DO COWERING.  The Azt Star made it into a graphic, a red circle with the word ‘cowering’ in the middle and a red line through it. 
 
They arrived at the Palace and vanished off the world’s radar.
“Now I collapse,” said Sarat.  “My lords, my ladies, I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you.”
“Imperial Majesty! Think nothing of it.”
Pots of coffee were brought. 
Sarat smiled.
“I think tea for my lady of Carlin.”
“Darling,” said Duvi, “so long as it’s hot and wet.”
At length Saryulin said: “You wish to talk?  You wish to be alone?”
“At this moment,” said Sarat, “I may be beyond knowing.”
“I’ll stay,” said Mitch.
The rest wandered off to try to sleep.
“I have an idea,” muttered Mitch.  He disappeared into the kitchen, emerged to raid the drinks cabinet and disappeared again to surface with two glasses of something pale green.. 
“Get this down you.”
Sarat examined the glass.
“Poison?”
“An old family recipe.  We call it the reviver.”
Sarat downed the lot, then threw the glass across the room.
“Yeah,” said Mitch.
“I think maybe I just want to sit,” said Sarat.  “Let the screaming pass through me.”
“Just yell if you need me,” said Mitch.
Some hours later Mitch surfaced.
“Food is good.  You need to eat, Sarat.”
“I’ve been thinking,” said Sarat.  “I really don’t know how to be without her.  Have to start from scratch.”
They were 15, thought Mitch, damn and blast everything to hell, they were 15!  It’s almost like he has had no life without her.
 
“I really don’t think it matters any more,” said Cho.
“Agreed,” said Faun. “There’s just one thing you need to know before you come.”
“Sarat?”
“Sarat, I hope,  is managing to get some sleep.  The crowds are still on the streets, Cho.  Not so many,  Sure, some people have gone home.  They say they should see the day out, it’s not right to go home until midnight, a new day.  We tried to look that one up.  Can’t find anything.  I think they’re making it up as they go along. “
“What could be nicer.”
 “They got it so wrong.”
“A day behind bullet-proof glass.”
“A day behind bullet-proof glass could not have ended quite like this.”
“I really don’t want,” said Cho, “to – “ He smiled.  “Intrude.  I think this is strictly doting grandfather.”

Cho slunk into the back of the Imperial.   . 
They showed him into Sarat’s office.  Shav looked up, looking tired.
“Just running the joint.  Talk about a wing and a prayer!  His Imperial Majesty is not receiving tonight.  Everyone has just about grasped that but the world does not stop turning. . I rang Mitch.  He says Sarat’s doing just fine working his way through it.  The strain of today.  I don’t think I could have done that.”
“I don’t think he could have done it without Mitch.  Where’re Zik and Ven?”
“Selflessly I toil while my sisters sleep!  No way.  Zika was last seen in a really rather heavy-duty discussion about metaphysics.  Really Sarat, if you will say these things,” she added innocently.   “Ven said she was off to the canteen and hasn’t been seen since.”
“Tell her she’ll get fat.”
He slunk away again and headed for the Palace.
 
“I told him he had to eat.  He said he didn’t know how to be without her.”
“Where is he?”
“Sitting.”
“Sitting where?”
“If you want to be literal,” said Mitch, “he’s sitting on the step leading from the sitting-room to the bedroom.  I don’t think it matters where he’s sitting.”  He sighed.  “He’s – talking to people.  Sometimes.  This place!”
“My lord of Var-segan,” said Cho with mock severity, “your rationalism is inappropriate.”
Mitch sighed again.
“Duvi had a little chat to Brig.”
Cho laughed out loud and made his way to the sitting-room,
“Sarat?  Narulis?  How does one put the lights on?”
Sarat picked up the remote and became visible.
“My dear boy.”
“The show went on, my most intimate feelings on display to what, a hundred million worldwide.  I have never in my life felt so alone.”
“That is not the word?” suggested Cho.
“That is not the word,” agreed Sarat gravely.  “Naked.  Flayed.  I did it my way.” 
“Where is the kitchen?” asked Cho.
Sarat got up slowly.
“Shall I feel better with a good strong cup of coffee inside me?”
“I shall,” said Cho.
“There is an exquisitely concealed sink in the corner.  Like in The Room.”  He fiddled with the remote again and sat on the settee while Cho put the kettle on.  “The weight of being Anile Emperor.”
“Sarat…”  If you put on a show that tears people’s hearts open, that flays the world. . “This also – devastates?”
“Where is the next beginning?”
“This you – contemplate?”  Cho found the biscuit tin. “Eat!”
“I sit here in the dark,” said Sarat, “Not because I am devastated, although I am devastated, but because I do not yet know the start of the next continuum.”
“You know,” said Cho.
“Now I am Kadun,” said Sarat.  “There can be no errors of judgement because the poor boy is bereft.”
“You do not do badly thus far.  Coffee.”
 “My lady,” continued Sarat, “was my privacy.  Does that make sense?  A part of me shielded from the world.”
 
The airwaves continued babbling into the night.
You could say it was a statement of – of emotional unity between Kadun and Dabida, and if that seems strange because it also seemed it was never any other way. 
It is almost unbearably poignant because Sarat and Maya symbolized that unity but only by her death did it become fully real.
I wouldn’t disagree with that, but I’d say it’s also – also a change in perception of Sarat.  Who today thought Sarat some Fidubi guy!  He is Kadun, man!
It’s like all the mental barriers, the labels, just dissolved.
I think that’s the opposite of what I just said!
Maybe.
Of course no-one has doubted a deep-seated set of convictions underpinned the entire enterprise.
He’s killed Jaizal!
Dabida will not tolerate an emperor in Azt! It was another world!
I thnk it’ll take us a little time to truly get the hang of what has happened here today. 
If we turn to one of the most famous choruses in the world, ‘Come hadin come, come not alone’, and just contemplate the symbolism of Kadun singing that to the rest of the continent, which is nearly as bad as Dabida singing it to the rest of the continent, don’t you think it astonishing that those words remained unchanged?
No-one ever censored Zuri.
You mean Zur is singing that demanding some action around here?
Wouldn’t you be?
I think it’s only – only when you really understand they don’t give that – he snapped his fingers – about dying – haven’t we asked, why weren’t these kids too scared to get out of bed in the morning?
Challin abruptly turned the radio off and continued his internal dialogue with Sarat.  We are human, meaning we are animal.  Our drive is to survive.  We don’t like it at the time.  What else are we, sir?  I operate on a need to know basis.  If I am to die for you, I need to know.
 
Sarat expressed a desire to sleep and stretched out on the settee.  Cho covered him with a blanket and slipped away.
“The flowers keep coming,” said Mitch.   “As people go home, they drop them off!”
Cho said: “Asyrion in a field with flowers.”  Then: “He will be different.”
“He is different,” said Mitch.
Sarat woke just before dawn. 
“I love you,” he said sleepy but cognisant. He got up and walked over to the window.  The flowers were waist-high.  He almost refound his sense of humour.  How can I cope!  He heard Maya giggle.
 
Time for the real world.  Nothing realler, honey.  We’re dead and we don’t even know it.  Or you were, my love. and you knew it.  You couldn’t convince us we were dead because we weren’t.  What is being screamed at us is everything is whole.  Oh how does it work?  Not now, he told himself, but he went outside and  waded into the flowers to read the cards.
CLICK CLICK CLICK
“Vultures,” said Jaizi affectionately.
Sarat looked up.
“Watch it,” he said.  “She has a sword.”
There was a tremor of shock.
“You got a sword, Sarat?”
“I have a sword,” said Sarat. 
He went inside and dressed, then made a few phone calls.
 
“We understood,” observed Challin, “nothing.”
“Zilch,” said Karci, “the Big O.”
“You look shaken.”
“Isn’t everyone?”
Challin smiled.
 
“Them flowers, said Varulin.  “A word in your shell-like.”  He grinned at As. “Sir.  Think this is a ‘sir’ sort of conversation, you having been through it and all.”  Asdinan knew Varulin had lost a daughter from meningitis.  “Being also better educated, socially elevated and spiritually more advanced, as you are.”
“Me?” said As..  “Come on, I’m an infant!’
“Well, maybe I’m an embryo,” said Varulin.  “Maybe I can’t take it from the folks who hear the wheels of the universe.”
“You want to talk about death?” hazarded As.
“Yes and no,” said Varulin.  “I want – you could say I want to report to the CinC only I don’t think at this minute. There’s lots of things I want to say and I’m buggered if I know where to start.  It’s like – advice for a start.  Folk don’t want to be cool any more.  They want to sort of pledge their swords.  Then there’s the flowers.  It’s love or hate now, and if it’s love blokes want to show it only we don’t know how.  It’s like formality isn’t empty after all. People are talking about death,” he ended in a rush.  “First time in my life, like it was – that’s not what I mean.  Like it was natural, even when it ain’t.  You know folks say you go to a field of flowers.  Do you believe in an after-life?”
“I don’t know,” said Asdinan.  “I don’t know what I believe.  What I have heard, what I have learned. Even the – folks who hear the wheels,  They – can’t make out all the words.  If – if you ask me if I think Maya is in a field with flowers in some other – dimension, no, no, I don’t, I think I don’t.  I think it’s a beautiful idea and she may be – in some form of beautfiul state.  How d’you give yourself if not through obedience?”
“That’s it,” said Varulin.  Sorg’s answer hung between them.  “I think,” said Varulin, “we’re all ready to do that.”
“It will not come to that,” said Asdinan with some force.
But Varulin said: “Perhaps it should.”
As nodded. 
“Was that the first mistake, not to force an open war?”
“I really don’t know,” said Varulin.
“Were they too nice?”
“Don’t reckon they’re going to be quite so nice now..”
“But that is not the answer.”
“Now it is.  We all know what they said.  Fresh start.  Can’t prosecute everyone who’s compromised.  There’s not many compromised now.  No-one’s going to bleed if he hangs them.”
 It’s not how they do things in Fidub, thought Asdinan.  They don’t have the fucking Cult in Fidub.
“Kadun’s been going a long time,” continued Varulin.  “Lots of stories.”
“Sure,” said As.
“When she died.  I was there.”
“Yes,” said As.
“I been thinking about that a lot.  I think he was with her, if you know what I mean.  I can’t explain. I don’t know nothing.  That man was not in this world.”
 “I know they – join minds,” said As.
“So if one’s going – other’s going too.”
“Unless they’re forced apart,” said As with a sort of dawning horror.
“Baz,” said Varulin.  “I have never ever seen him lose it like that.”
“I think perhaps,” said As, “the exact stresses of that particular moment may be something we’ll never know or should know.”
Varulin grinned suddenly.
“But we should be very very nice to him.”
“Very very nice,” said As.
 
 
And so finally we’re back to me, me who was in a meeting with bloody bankers when some slimy lackey entered and whispered the news.  The lead rat stood and announced he regretted Maya-ban-essa had been assassinated.  Perhaps the meeting should be adjourned?  I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction.  I didn’t even ask casually if Sarat was OK. 
Laters, I said, and ran.
They were already erecting screens in the Plaza to show the footage from Azt.  I looked at Sarat with Maya in his arms and threw up.
Lot of people feel like that, love.
So there am I standing by a little heap of my own puke.  Now was not the time for good citizenship  I started to walk away but I didn’t really know where I was going.  Among the wounded is Colonel Cioulis – NO!   I tried to get Cioulis on his mobile.  Off. He’s in hospital, I told myself firmly.  I hailed a cab and tried to get Sarat on his mobile.  Off.  I tried Mel.  Off.  This is crazy I muttered.  They must be taking calls from each other!  I remembered I had the direct line to the Room cunningly disguised in my diary and hoped I could remember what it was cunningly disguised as.  Found it!  A man answered.  I didn’t recognize his voice.  I just heard, I said.  Is Mel there, please?  May I ask who wants him.  I’m Kai, Sarat’s Economic Liaison Person in the City, which is where I am, half-mad with horror.  I tried to get Sarat.  Is he all right?  My dear, a moment.  Mel came on the line.  Oh Mel.  Mel, I am so sorry.  Is Cioulis OK? He hadn’t known.  He told me to get to the Rep Centre.  Which one?  My one!  I redirected my cabby.  There was already a line of people outside to sign a book of condolences.  My stomach lurched again.  I fell inside.  All was muted. 
Twenty minutes later Cioulis rang me, very apologetic, scratches.  He hadn’t wanted to call me and break the news knowing where I was.  We had a darling I understand I love you conversation but that didn’t stop Maya being dead.
 
His Imperial Majesty, Sarat-ban-essa, Master of Kadun, will speak from the scene of the blast.
 
At the airport I mailed one line to Bal: Now will you do something!
 
To my surprise I got an almost instant answer: Or it will be done for me?
 
Bal…I am but a humble cog who knows – I stopped typing suddenly and nosedived into what I knew, which came out as something like, everything about the Cult and less than everything about banking but why I’m here, why I’m part of the madness,d ‘you see, is it’s not about banking, you have to see that, Bal.  You won’t damned see it.  You have to take your head out of the sand, Bal, I screamed at him, mentally. OK, I was stressed.  I put my fingers back on the keyboard.  I do not make the fiscal policy of the Anile Empire! Not that that matters, because this is not a question of the fiscal policy of the Anile Empire.  So why did I bring it up in the first place.  Don’t ask me what Sohenoil will do.  Don’t ask me what AMI will do.  I don’t know.  But he hadn’t asked me.  I deleted the whole lot and typed: My guess is…yes.  With knobs on.
 
I am in shock. 
 
Kyse walked up to me.  He looked as dreadful as I did.  We hugged.  He’d been giving a lecture.  Something in the back of my mind buzzed, at least that was normal, what they do is wreck normal, what I’d been doing was abnormal, what the hell was I doing  ‘liaising’ with those fucks - ?
“Once upon a time,” I said, “there was a little Harni radical who found herself in a seminar with Mel Talal.”  I shook myself.  “Don’t know why I said that.  Thrown, Kyse, I feel – “
“As in kidded ourselves we were winning?”
“Oh Kyse.”  I managed a grin.  “This is not the time for musing on determinism. I ‘should have been’ giving a lecture, d’you see.  But I couldn’t have been.  Even if I’d never met Mel I could no more have kept out of the Matter of Kadun.  I’m babbling.”
“You are very, very distressed.”
“I am very, very distressed. Because I ought to have been doing something that would make a difference.”
He frowned.
“1.  That wouldn’t have prevented 2.  Sarat asked you to do it.”
“Sarat thought I could – I might get a sniff of their back-up position.  There has to be one.  I’m being distressed again.  From Bal, I mean, yeah, Searc’s really going to let the rat out of the bag to me. He thinks Bal knows the – the contingency plan. 
He considered.
“Sheer arrogance?” 
“What?  Maybe.”
“When you’ve been going as long as the Cult.  We are not talking about Maya.”
“I’m sorry!” It came out squeaky.”
He looked surprised.
“I didn’t mean….”
“Maybe I did!  What – I don’t think either of us is quite sane, right now.”
“That’s only half of it.”
“I am so glad it was you I walked into.  Bleeding from associated causes.”
Then our flight was called and any remaining shreds of sanity vanished.  They were searching under your toenails, they were searching inside your mouths.  OK, they weren’t searching under my toenails because I produced my PANTHER ID and switched on to auto-pilot.  I vouched for Kyse who suddenly became Mel’s oldest friend but what the hell were they looking for?  Auto-pilot told me that as PANTHER I should be supposed to know and so not to ask. Since it was clearly my duty to return with all speed to Azt, we settled ourselves on a half-empty plane and got some bad but strong coffee inside us.
“This Great Enterprise of Ours,” said Kyse softly, “has been hurt somewhere we can’t even begin to articulate, holed below the water-line.  Will you say it or shall I?”
“We don’t need to,” I said.  His expression said oh for fuck’s sake, Kai.  “At least it wasn’t Sarat.”
“Feminist hackles.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I?  Terrible to be left widowed in charge of a country that isn’t even yours!”
“Are we all mad?”
“Yes.  Is the simple answer.  About those bankers of yours.”
“The simple answer is a load of high-explosive.  Give me a mo, I’m trying to find my brain.” A shred of that vital organ waved frantically at me.  “Bunch of radical kids.  Not a hope, therefore.  BUT.  But 1.  One is the Anle heir But 2.  One has friends where the ult can never reach.  But 3 Sohenoil.  But 4.  AMI.  Quesch, therefore.  What is it we have to do that they think we won’t do?  Is it something besides high explosive?  I might even suspect that at this point the world would forgive Sarat assassination but that is not what we’re about, man."

...
 The buzzer had gone off on the hill, the alarm, the one that never went off, the one that meant fire,  invasion, flood, freak wave warning, catastrophe.  Someone was screaming.  Mel had been talking peaceably to some minor politician.  She started.  He jumped up. 
“Fire, flood…”
She picked up her papers.
Mel was at the door cannoning into Por.
“Maya,” said Por. [Unspeakable image.]   He picked up the remote. Maya died in Sarat’s arms in front of them.  It was the third re-run of the day.  
All the minor politician would say afterwards is I should not have seen that.  I should not have seen Mel see that.  She vanishes from our story.
“Auto-pilot,” said Mel.  Por clasped his shoulder. “Somewhere I’m screaming.”  He reached for the intercom.  “Turn the alarm off now.”. He walked slowly out.  The worst has happened.  We should try – he said afterwards, words a moment failed him.  Why should we try to keep calm?   Bomb the City.  How calm I feel.  The worst has happened, he said again.  Now we must grieve.  We do no good to ourselves or others, to the living or the dead,  by being deranged, no matter how we feel.
The ‘phones started to ring, incessantly, mindlessly, thought Mel, were abruptly silenced.
“Pietri,” said Mel.
“Fal,” said Por.
“I must ring…” said Mel.  He meant Sarat.
“I should imagine,” said Por, “at this point Sarat is beyond words.”
Cantilip had been in the studios of Zur Live admiring their new technology. There was a flurry, then a sudden silence then people who’d been calling her babe two minutes earlier were on their feet, tears running down their faces, and  looking at her and saying gently,  my lady, and her heart turned over..  I see, she said. Then everyone stood up and they played the national anthem and then the imperial anthem, over the air, because it sort of seemed the right thing to do, but as Cantilip told Mel with that devastating honesty for which he loves her so the truth was no-one had the faintest idea what to do.  Least of all me.  Seize the mike. It gave me time to think.   Cantilip will speak. It – it perhaps not for me to speak for Kadun nor even for Dabida on this terrible day. All of us involved in – in this Matter of Kadun have long lived with dread and now it has happened.  Mel and I send all our love to Sarat, to Pietri and Caluna, Vij,and all those who share our devastation, in Dabida, in Kadun.  This shared loss of our beautiful, our entrancing, our wonderful Maya – I nearly stalled, she said after.  What about our shared loss?  Some piece of sickly nonsense about how it may bring us still closer?  There are few who did not, who do not love her.  I salute Maya Talal ban-essa, Anile Empress, our darling Maya.
 Mel was trying Fal’s mobile.  It went on ringing.  Hallo? she said eventually, sounding perfectly cheerful.  You’ve heard?  Heard what?  Oh no, thought Mel, it gets worse.  He put all the love and support into his voice that it’s possible to send down a telephone line.  Fal, my dearest, my darling – Maya’s dead.  No, she said.  Mel, you didn’t say that. I can’t leave Zur, he said.  Of course you can’t bloody leave Zur! she said.  Someone needs to be with you.  I’ll call As, she said.. Oh Mel.  Love, love, love, love, love, he said. 
Por looked at him.
“At least Sarat knows.”
“I cannot tell Pietri over the ‘phone.”
There are worse ways of finding out.  Caluna had been in the Mall.  Like most places, Zuri electronics shops have TVs on in the window.  We interrupt this broadcast.  She stared sightlessly at the screen. Her legs gave way. 
“Normal work is clearly over for the day,” Mel was saying, “perhaps for many days.”  This is my culmination?  To bury my cousin?  “Hot sweet tea I think is in order. Let’s go,” he said to Por.
Por committed what is usually Zur’s greatest crime, driving through the walking-streets.  No-one noticed.  A small crowd had already gathered at Pietri’s.  Pietri came out of the kitchen, shaking his head, looking suddenly old.
“I am going to Azt. The heli is waiting.”
“Pietri – “ began Mel.
“Say nothing,” said Pietri, “nothing is best.”
Mel kissed him.  Pietri briefly clasped Mel’s back.
“Where’s Caluna?”
“Vij has gone to her,” said Sarshi.  “She collapsed in the street.”
“You have many calls on your time,” said Pietri.
“Blame me,” said Mel
“No, Mel.”
“It is only unbearable?” asked Mel.
Pietri laid a hand on his nephew’s shoulder.
“You have spoken to Sarat?”
“Not yet.  Let me try….”
Baz’ mobile was off too.  He seemed to have deleted the number of Paw’s. 
“I imagine,” said Pietri, “the problem is it keeps ringing.”
 “Try Faun…”
“Faun.”
“Mel. I want Sarat.”
“Turn your television on.  He’s gone back.”
“TV,” said Mel.  Sarshi ran to put it on. “What’s Paw’s number?” he asked down the ‘phone.
Scenes of devastation from Azt.  His Imperial Majesty has returned to the scene of the blast that so tragically.
Pietri sat down suddenly.
Sarat talking to rescue-workers, Sarat talking to the rescued. Sarat still bloody. 
“You go out there,” said Mel, “and you damned well do it.  You do it when your heart is broken, you do it when you’re screaming, you do it when you’re bleeding to death from internal wounds.  You just bloody do it.”
Pietri shook his head.
“I have no animosity towards Sarat.”
“The dread,” said Mel.
“That is the same for all.”
His Imperial Majesty will speak
Someone had a radio outside.  It was turned up suddenly, hurting the silence.
Sarat finished.  Someone outside began to sing the imperial anthem.  A few voices joined in, then faltered and stopped. 
Pietri looked suddenly resolute, turned and walked to the front door.  He opened it and walked out to the crowd.
“On Sarat’s behalf, on behalf of my beautiful Maya, I thank you.  Please continue.”
He turned on his heel and returned to the house.
Mel hugged him.
Mel’s ‘phone rang.
“Mel.  Papa!  I’m at Pietri’s.” 
Pietri looked up sharply.
Mel thought: don’t talk to me like this.  Don’t talk to me the way you did when I was six and my puppy was run over, because I’m liable to cry like I did when I was six.
“I’ll give you Pietri,” he said at length.  “I’ll get a glass of water.” 
Sarshi followed him into the kitchen.
“You loved Sorg.  You loved Maya.”
“I don’t think I ever knew,” said Mel, “exactly what people meant by a living nightmare.”
“It must end!”
“It must not,” said Mel, “each time become a little harder.  No faltering in our resolution.  How to recapture - ?”
“I think it changes,” said Sarshi.  “Hardens.  I – I never thought of myself as having – resolution. After Sorg – this will not fail and that’s that. If I have to fight for Carlin, I’ll do it.”
“Oh Sarsh.”
Pietri came in.
“Your mother.”
Mel drove back with his mobile off. A queue had begun to form, snaking up the hill.  He got out and walked, shaking hands, touching shoulders, hugging. 
“The following people want to talk to you and your bloody mobile is either engaged or off.  That’s without the ones who are actually here.”
“This is hell,” said Mel.
“Worse than that,” said Por.  “There is a – contingent who want the funeral in Zur.”
“No,” said Mel.
“Vanya’s in The Room.”
He walked in.
Our deepest regrets, our sincerest condolences.  The funeral…
“It is not,” said Mel, “and cannot be my decision.  Pietri’s gone to Azt.”
Eventually he escaped.
“I must ring Baya.”
“They may not be there.”
“That’s not the contingency plan.”
Por’s face showed what he thought of contingency plans.
Mel made one more ‘phone call.
“Now I ride,” said Mel.
He made it back to his office once more.
Julin and Maitlan sat watching the scenes from Azt.
Julin turned and smiled
“Reporting for duty, sir!”
“Am I glad to see you,” said Mel.
“Our deepest regrets,” said Maitlan.  “Our sincerest condolences.  All the rest of the helpless, useless crap.  My poor Mel.  Our love.”
“Poor everyone,” said Mel.
Maitlan looked at him questioningly.
“Am I sufficiently detached?” 
“Oh yes,” said Mel.  “I just hadn’t got around to it.”
“That was Julin’s reasoning,” acknowledged Maitlan.  “He rang me.”  Julin looked innocent.  “What Mel needs  now is people to help him do what he has to do without  - “
“Wounds of their own,” said Mel.
“Reakoed,” suggested Maitlan.
“Reakoed is too important where he is.”
Maitlan laughed.
“If Dabida turns,” said Julin.
Mel closed his eyes.
“Fortunately that seems unlikely.”
“The nationalists will use it.”
“No-one pays them any attention,” said Maitlan.
“It’s as though,” said Mel, “everything we’ve done was a preparation for now.”
“Real people,” said Julin, “people you know, people who love each other.”
“People who suffer,” said Mel.
“How can we be of use?” asked Julin.
“Go down into Zur.   Make sure there are loos, water.  Tell them the funeral is for Pietri and Sarat to decide and no-one else.”
“Shit,” said Maitlan.
 
By the time I ran into Kai at the airport I was a bit saner.  Fake sane, the way one is.  Good at giving tissues to the Economic Liason Officer to the Anile Throne.  When I’d seen Kai off in a cab to the Imperial, my brain started to work.  I was just about to hire a car and mutter, Carlin, fast, out of the corner of my mouth, like they do in the movies, when it occurred to me that she probably wasn’t there.  I knew she and Maya had been close.  I couldn’t imagine how she was coping or not with double devastation.  Wouldn’t she go to Pietri’s?  But wouldn’t Pietri and Caluna go to Azt?  Would she be with Mel?  With Sarat?  Clearly darling I wanted to surprise you wasn’t on even if it was altogether appropriate.  I got out my mobile. 
No answer.  I didn’t know if that was good or bad. 
This you will of course understand is totally unlike me. Hating crowds isn’t unlike me, especially unhappy and therefore bad-tempered crowds.  I retreated back into the concourse and spied a giant sunshine yellow steaming mug with a toothy grin.  I knew the franchise from the City.  At least the coffee would be good.  I shrank into a corner, making mountains and valleys in the froth with a sunshine yellow plastic stirrer.  Then I realized the television was on.  Our heroic rescue-workers.  Wreckage.  Sarat, silent and unsmiling, leaving the Jumesit. People crying.  People angry.  People with flowers.  We turn now to.  Here is.  We move now to Zur.  I looked at the queue circling the hill.  This conveyed  to me that wherever the hell I should be it wasn’t at an outlet of Rise ‘n’ Shine.   I examined my other self and the barricade around it which said Dabidan which had just been breached, the remarkable human faculty for saying something is over there and not really anything with which I was personally involved. Oh, and the basic response to violent death which is to wrap one’s arms around someone.  I really had no reason to think Fal was remotely romantically interested in me or anyone else alive.  Did I really want to compete with a ghost?  Did I really want to get involved with someone so psychologically complicated and possibly insane?  Did I think these things?  Only at one remove, through a mist.  They were as naught compared to a sort of agonising empathy generally known as love, which told me she was all alone and needed me. This particular derangement of love appeared to have some basis in reality.  Somewhere it seemed to me that the breaching of my defences mirrored a wound to Dabida and I couldn’t readily see how any of the Six could rush off to Carlin to hold Fal’s hand.  Except of course for.  Mental squeal of brakes. 
 
She hadn’t talked about Tet. Why should she?  Tet had never found anyone else.  My mind only too readily constructed a touching scenario of shared pain, shared grief bringing them once more together. 
I hadn’t even spoken to Mel!  I’d told Kai that what I had to say to Mel was not (puh-lease!) for the telephone.  I was going to Zur, I said.  Right on cue, the Tannoy had boomed and a military-sounding voice authoritatively told us that Flight Delta Foxtrot Zero-Niner-Seven to Zur was boarding at Gate 15.  I expect it’s full, she said.  I felt a moment’s boundless certainty that DF-097 was half-empty, but she didn’t ask why I was therefore about to take flight to Azt, which was just as well because I didn’t have an answer.  Why did I assume Fal was sitting at home consumed in grief?  She might have gone straight to Azt – to Zur, to the House, any bloody place. 
Wherever she was it was intimately bound up with the loss of Maya.  Now, Kyse, you moron, is not the time. 
I tried Fal’s mobile again.  Off.  Why not off?  With Pietri, with Caluna, with Sarshi, with Vij, with Mel, with Sarat.  Who the hell wants it on.
She must be in Zur. 
Her landline probably had a nice explanatory little message on the voicemail.  I didn’t know her landline.
I had to get among people I knew who’d know what was going on, probably the most un-me thought I have ever had in my life.  That meant the Imperial.
I took a cab to the Imperial, or at least to the Colonnade.  Can’t go no further, mate.  There are things I am incapable of saying to Azt cabbies.  One of them is, I’m a friend of Mel’s.  Pull the other one, mate.  Hundreds of people can vouch for me, I thought irritably.  All it needs is a routine check.  I paid up and got out, armed only with my intellect, integrity and the increasingly strong feeling I should be in Zur.  My intellect started to ask me what the crowds thought they were doing there.  How could it help?  My integrity told me I am an upright citizen of Dabida, not a bloody journalist, because of course what the cordon was about was bloody journalists, bereft at no longer being flavour of the month.  My increasingly strong feeling I should be in Zur looked around rather helplessly seeing no immediate means to get the hell out.
I turned to the nearest person who happened to be a middle-aged woman.
“Excuse me, can you tell me where the bus-station is, please?”
“Oh, you’re way out, love.  Right over in Gizzan.”
“I can’t walk it, then?”
“Well, you could.  Take about an hour.  Where do you want to go?”
“Zur!  I’m Dabidan.  I need to get home.”
“Oh love.  Tell them we’re sorry, we’re ever ever so sorry.”
“I will.”
“That poor young man.”
“Yes,” I said
“Train’s best…”
I realized she was wondering how poor I was.
“That’d do!” I said brightly.
She gave me directions to the train-station and I started walking.
After about a quarter of an hour a metal pole embedded in the pavement near the kerb loomed before me.  Attached to its top was a board reading COACH-STOP.
Hey, long-distance buses actually stop on their way out of this hell-hole!  Sorry, Sarat.
Carlin Village.  You mean I’ve done something right in this mess?  The next one wasn’t due for 40 minutes.  I can wait!
That is how I came to be sitting on the bench by the Memorial in a village that was apparently totally deserted. Curtains were drawn.  A lonely flag flew at half-mast. What did they do at a time like this, go to the House?  A noise behind me made me turn.  The everything shop was opening up. 
“Loife gotta go ahn.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Gahn to un shroine.”
Kyse, you really are a moron.
“I’m a friend of Falita’s.”
“First the Major.”  Distinctly more friendly tone.  Do I look like a journalist?
“Yes,” I said.
“Int it gohn end.”
“It will end!” She was lugging one of those things you find outside shops into position and it looked heavy.  “Can I help?”
Yes, Kyse, it’s just the word escapes you.   Roughly thigh-height, hinge at the top, four legs, two boards.
That is how I came to assist with the opening of the everything shop. 
People began to trickle back in twos and threes, Fal not among them.  By this time – all that fresh country air – my brain was beginning to resume normal functioning and I’d realized that here among those who’d lost terribly twice was probably, my beating heart notwithstanding, also not the best place for me to be.  If Fal was at the House, I could only be an intrusion.
As the new counter-assistant in the everything shop, I attracted attention.
“Friend of Fal’s.”
“I was hoping to see her,” I said.
“She’m gahn ‘ome.”
“Zur, you mean?”
Foot right in it.
“Bark to un cahtage.”
“How do I get there?”
“You’m roide a boike?” asked my new employer.
In other circumstances pedalling through country lanes would have been idyllic.
Oh look, it’s a field of flowers.  Lots I didn’t know.
 
I arrived at a gathering.  I can’t think of a better word.  Maybe wake?  There were people in the front yard, perched on the fence. I dismounted, feeling very conspicuous.
“I’m a friend of Fal’s,” I said.  “From Zur.”
Fortunately at that moment she came out into the yard.
I hugged her with considerable enthusiasm. 
“Thank you,” she said, “thank you.”
She stood back, holding both my hands in hers.  Ecstasy!  Holding me at arms’-length as you prefer.  She smiled.
“He’m uzz’n.”
 I guessed Asdinan smiled and came forward and introduced himself and we all went inside.  Around the kitchen table sat two youngsters looking as I supposed you might look if your parents had been slowly disembowelled in front of your eyes.  Assorted country people leaned against the dresser or sat on the stairs.  It was really rather strange, like a cocktail party with no sound, but it was right. Is there a collective noun for a gathering of the bereft? I wondered. A communion of mourners.  I guessed these were the twice bereft sharing something they didn’t even have to mention. 
Thus I was wholly superfluous to requirements, other than as a chronicler, an onlooker to life.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re all right,” I mumbled.
I put the kettle on and smiled sympathetically at the kids, not knowing what to say.  I am absolutely starving! didn’t seem quite the thing.  I looked around hopefully.   There were some plates out on the dresser, a couple of broken biscuits, the end of a cake.  Clearly others had ravened before me.
“Is Mel all right?” asked Smudge.
“As much as he can be. “
“You must live in Zur.”
“I’m Zuri,” I said,  “but I lived in the City.  That’s where we became friends.  At the Schools.”
“You’m come ‘ome now?” asked Zulan.
“Yes,” I said.
Asdinan came in.
“Rackon it’s toime we was arf neow.”  Zulan gave me a long appraising stare. “Zuri.  Gaht ‘n lots to tark about.”
“Zo long as we bain’t leaving ‘er,” said Zulan.
Smudge said: “It’s funny – “ then stopped. 
Asdinan put a hand on his shoulder. 
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
Like a big sheepdog, I thought.  The sheepdog very gently shepherded the gathering to a close.
At last we were alone! 
“I’m frankly ravenous,” I said.  Great romantic openings of the age!
“There isn’t much,” she said. 
I made myself a great mound of toast, not because I have simple tastes, but because that was about all there was,.bar the end of cake and the broken biscuits.
“You need someone to shop for you,” I said firmly.  “I have contacts!”  I told her about the everything shop.
“Sooty’s a darling.  Her real name’s Sootic.”
There are two big armchairs, one on each side of the hearth.  We sipped cocoa, goat-milk cocoa.  It’s an acquired taste, but it was hot and wet.
“How did you hear?”
“Radio.  I then went mad.  Got sane.  You choose!  I just had this one over-riding thought: what the hell am I doing here?  I picked up my toothbrush and headed for the airport, pausing only to quit my job. I felt – some brake had been taken off and I was going to jump in.  It’s touched Dabida.  It’s touched me, as a Dabidan. Is that – not an awful thing to say.  Inappropriate?”
“All the stuff endlessly threshed over,” said Fal.
“Making nonsense of.”
“I don’t know,” said Fal.
Fal is not a small woman and I don’t suppose she was feeling all that lost, either, but the L-word had no difficulty seeing her as small and lost.
“Would it be – inappropriate if I put my arms round you?”
She looked at me over the top of her mug, mercifully not sunshine yellow.
“I’d like that.”
I went over to her. 
“Ia there room for two?” 
They are really big chairs, huge.  I mean I wasn’t suggesting she sat on my lap. 
“I’ll hudge up,” she said.
It took a few minutes to get comfortable, but when we did comfortable was clearly where it’s at, the apex of delight, or would have been if the phone hadn’t rung from time to time, tweaking my conscience.  I hadn’t realized Fal had quite a large family.  I have quite a small family.  I do actually have a mum and dad.  I ought at least to acknowledge their existence.
“I ought to see my mum,” I said.
“I’ll come,” said Fal. 
“Shall we put the box on?”
Channel Five burst into life, or death, as you prefer.   It’s like the whole city is wearing armbands.  Is it really?  Dabida does not share the sensitivity of the imperial family towards black as the colour of mourning but out of deference to irtubi sensitivities these armbands have a silver stripe.  Some folk are wearing pure silver.
“Sher-it,” I said.
This is for the Anile Empress, the commentator was babbling, perhaps unwisely.  Someone walked in front of camera and said loudly.  This is for our Maya.  For everyone’s Maya, said someone else. 
“Start a bloody riot,” muttered Fal.
Including Sarat’s Maya.  This is about people, man.  Right!
You knew Sarat when he was in Zur?  asked the commentator.
“Oh yeah, bosom buddies!  Sarat was like part of the scenery.”
“I bet,” said Fal, “he comes from the west.”
I grinned.
“Ah yes, the Two Nations Theory.”
“Bah!” said Fal.
When Sarat had walked into Carlin, and they’d run out of anyone else to talk to, our wonderful media had remembered there was a rest of Dabida and interviewed some folks in Jansi,  A Small Town in the Middle of Dabida.  On the somewhat tenuous grounds that some folks in Jansi were not going ape like Zur, the Two Nations Theory had been born.  If you remember your geography, you will recall that west of where the Great Divide peters out, our border is no longer with Kadun but with Vasucula.  The not-so-friendly naturally fell on this like eagles on rabbits to say we can only wait and see if Dabida splits between the east, which is frankly, historically as currently, obsessed equally with Kadun and with Fidub, which, historically as currently, is indeed the meat in the sandwich there and the west, the overwhelming links of which are with Vasucula, a border that has always been open, accents that are almost indistinguishable. 
Once it was voiced, Dabida – the whole of Dabida – mostly said bollocks!  This didn’t of course stop there being a grain of truth, that being that some folks had no clue about the peculiar and exceptional circumstances of recent history.  What the hell they were doing employed by Channel Five was another matter.  You only had to have been a student to see Sarat and Maya cluttering up the union caff.  Even I knew that.
 
A queue of people snaked first down the hill then round it.  H-W kept the road clear.  We slowed.  It’s me, said Fal.  It must have spread through the crowd.  Someone shouted, “It’s Fal!”  She froze, then got slowly out.  Fal, love!  We’re so sorry.  I remember the two of you skipping about.  I realized we were going to have to walk up the hill.  There were actually people who knew me too.   Had I not made my name (nailed my colours to the wall) at Sarat’s Pad! Mel’s mate, aren’t you.  Kyse, by all that’s!  I’d been at school with Holan.  We shared commiserations while my ears wagged.  We called him our pet spy!  ‘Course afterwards, everyone knew who he’d been spying for, the Army, that’s who!  Brave, brave lad.   I’d come home in the vacations.  I knew vaguely that Sorg had been regarded as one of the sights of Zur, sort of tourist attraction.  The vultures had been clustered at the arch but now sniffed prey.  Of course you were friends from an early age. Remembering the two of you skipping about got an airing too, except it wasn’t skipping it was splashing around in the toddlers’ pool on the quay.  Twice now the Cult has stripped you of those you loved most.  Yup, said Fal.  As an introduction to public life, it was pretty harrowing.  It got worse.  That sort of day.     
For the first time in either of our lives we weren’t instantly received.  Mel, said Por, was with family.  There’s an awful lot of family after 600 years.  I remembered vaguely that Mel had  once said Maya’s parents hadn’t been entirely keen.  I wondered how many people held Mel responsible for Maya’s death and if they included Pietri and Caluna.  Don’t give Mel a hard time! I thought. Fal looked at me wanly. 
“Lisping six-year-olds.  Leggy teens.”
I put my arms around her.  What was there to say?  So there we were, a vignette of pure misery, when another vignette of pure misery finally emerged to greet us,
“Oh Mel,” said Fal.
“Darling girl.”
We all hugged. 
“Everyone must be devastated,” I said after a while.  It was really just the small talk I’m no good at – I wasn’t fishing - but Mel briefly recounted his ordeal by relations. 
“The words ‘bloody Sarat’ were heard.  I am so angry.  Most of them barely knew Maya, let alone Sarat.  Oh, family parties.  They didn’t know her. Fortunately Pietri went straight to Azt, where the funeral will duly, correctly and totally in line with my wishes be held.”
“I know,” said Fal.  “He rang me.”
There was a single copper on guard at Pietri, but she really wasn’t necessary.  The crowd was practically silent.  We were shown in.
“Falita, my dear,” said Pietri.  Sarshi ran to Fal and they both burst into tears.  That was grim.  Fal’s mum was conceivably worse.  She was such a good friend to you, love. My parents at least hadn’t been attached to either Sorg or Maya by bonds of steel.  Coming back down Yan-sitian, we ran into Hass talking quietly to people and he held Fal as though he’d never let her go, then we came across another silent queue and for a moment I couldn’t think why, then remembered the Kadun Rep Centre was round the corner.  The flag was at half-mast.  On impulse, Fal, who really wasn’t dressed for saluting a toy soldier, walked forward, came to attention, saluted and said – proclaimed: “Her Imperial Majesty! Maya-ban-essa, Mistress of Kadun.  My best friend.”  She turned sharply on her heel and walked back to me, mouthed, “Let’s get out of here.”
Click, click, bloody click.  I don’t know whether it was a surge of adrenalin caused by fury at the ever-present camera or what, but I suddenly grinned and grabbed her hand. 
“Run!”
There’s an opening, a few strides-worth of paving, a couple of steps, at the end of Sumesit.  We ducked down there and out into the Gilyan Road.  She knew what I was doing now and realized I wasn’t entirely insane.  I do love a woman who can really run.  We flung ourselves onto the trolley-bus stopped at the lights.  The conductor began to expostulate.  See that, it says Danger!  He pointed to a red triangle asking people not to alight at the lights.
“Are you a 35 or a 12?” asked Fal.
“12,” he grumbled.  “Some people use bus-stops.”
“We could go all the way to the Lido,” I said.
“Turning round at Kanavil.”
That was one of the commuter stations where the slow trains stop
“Dabida lies before us!”
“You’re Fal, aren’t you.”
“Yes,” said Fal.  “This is a friend of Mel’s,” she added, doubtless feeling some explanation in order.
“We were escaping the Press,” I said, definitely feeling some explanation in order.
“Those farts!”
“Poor little bastard,” opined someone.  “Brought it all on himself, didn’t he.”
“Holdan!” reproached someone else.
“These things have to be said.”
“Maybe so, maybe no.  Now is not the flipping time to say them!”
“I think we’ve thrown them off the scent,” said Fal, slightly too loudly.  “If we get off at the next stop -
“Now look what you’ve done!”
“No, really,” I said, “we were just going.”  Ly-ing, Kyse, the word is ly-ing.
“You give Mel our love, now.”
“Don’t want him getting the wrong idea because some people have no tact.”
Thank you, thank you….
The next stop was Tabin’s Merchant-Builders, No Order Too Small or Too Large.   Except today, when it appeared deserted. 
“Cross over and get the bus back,” said Fal in an ever-so-sensible voice.
“Maybe we can avoid paying twice running.”
We caught each other’s eye.
“We could plead extenuating circumstances.”
She was patting her pockets.
“Have you got your ‘phone?”
I checked.
“Yes.”
“I think I left mine at mum’s.”
Opposite were some large freshly painted green sheds.  The word may be warehouses.  We were on an industrial estate, which would have been fine had there been any industry.  IMPORT-EXPORT.  We reach the four corners of the world!  A lorryman embraced the globe.
“Oh look, there’s Toy Mania.”
“Maybe we could steal a scooter.”
“A whole new meaning,” I said dreamily. “Fal scooted into Zur.”
“I have to get back to Carlin,” she said, but not crushingly, or even decisively, almost questioningly, as though it were a sudden realization of which she was unsure, then more certainly, “That is my – duty to Maya.”
“Then we’d better steal a helicopter. Fal – “  Oh please Kyse, not on the pavement in a particularly unromantic backwater of Zur.  “I care about you a lot.”  Oh, the hell with it.  “I love you.  I understand if you’re not ready to even think about it, but I hope you will think about it.”
“Kyse.”  She kissed my cheek and smiled.  “I’d like to think about that.”
“I know I choose my moments.  I know now is the -  I wanted to say it anyway.”  She squeezed my hand tightly and didn’t let go.  “I’ll be in Zur.”
“Let me get the funeral over.  Sarat has asked me to ride in the procession.  People who’ve lost to the Cult.”
“Oh my darling girl.”  The hell with sensitivity and delicacy. I wrapped my arms round her, about which there is to say that I enjoyed it immensely and she showed no signs whatever of not enjoying it.  “I like this,” I said at length.
“I like it too,” she said, leaving me to have the brains to work out that liking it didn’t necessarily mean it was the blueprint for the rest of her life.
The bus back was a 23, confounding us both.  How dare it?  Been away too long.  As such,. it stopped just round the corner from mum and dad’s.  
“I’ll have to go back to the City,” I said.  I patted my rucksack. “All I’ve got is a toothbrush and a change of underwear!”
“I’ll mail you,” said Fal.
 
It was not of course the most harrowing day of my life ever.  That day was the day of funeral while I waited for her to be blown up.  Nonetheless, I had previously had a pretty feeble notion of what it is to be emotionally drained.  Only later did it fully penetrate that every day of my life would be waiting for her to be blown up.  But that, I said to myself, would be true whether I was with her or not.
 
I wondered what her mum and dad did.  They didn’t seem posh people but it was a decidedly posh flat.  Oh, of course.  I had somewhere absorbed that Falita San-yaega-baht had probably inherited rather a lot of money.  How much?  Certainly enough to set Mum and Dad up.  The last thing I am is a guy who'll object to his partner earning more than he does.  Having the bucks running out of her ears was different – not necessarily worse, just different.  Entailed? Property?  Hers was hardly a life of conspicuous consumption.  I supposed that in Kadun the newly transparent the details of the estate must be available but felt it would be shoddy to look them up, almost prurient, unless it were my business and if it were my business she’d tell me.
 
“I answered them all, dear. It’s so good you’ve got all these people who care.  I told them all you’d gone off with that nice young man who’s Mel’s friend.  Then of course they all saw you on the news.  Sarat rang himself.  I told him, I loved her like she was my own.”
Tears ran down Mum’s cheeks.
I thought: if I can’t cry like a baby in front of mum and dad, there really is something wrong with me.  I cried.
After a while, I sniffed, wiped my nose and looked at the list of callers.
I must –  I thought.  Go to Azt.  Karci, Vrin, they’d all rung.
“Do you like Kyse?” I asked.
“Seems a decent young man,” said Dad.  “Not pushy.”
That’s right,” I said , rather enthusiastically.
Mum and Dad exchanged glances I pretended not to see.
I am allowed to sleep.  I went to bed.  Different.  Emotional turmoil total, good and bad.

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

As opposed to being ashamed of being able to both write and think.