Prince, peer, priest, you could be anything.  I can see it’s a shock to you to be told you’re shit.  I don’t think your life is full of people saying that.   A filthy shit-filled animal.

So a large number of people have no religion at all and when they did they did not believe in God the psycho sexually disturbed baboon but more the King of Love my Shepherd Is and lots of healing streams.  Remember I’m talking about Anglican and now post-Anglican England, not some Catholic freak-nest.  When you have quite finished your nutter-monkey drivel about my being Jew, recall a) that I’m not and b) that I grew up in Anglican England.

The way we were: Anglican England
So there was this God chap whom you praised, not because he demanded it or would punish you if you didn't, but because you wanted to, it welled up out of you, especially if you were a river, mountain or other geological formation. After 12 years of a sort of wholly orthodox(1) animism presided over by a wholly benevolent Creator, you left school. You might have gone to church. Unless you were totally thick, you'd picked up the gist at school. You didn't necessarily go to church in 1851(2) and you didn't necessarily go to church in 1951.You'd been given the view that God and Jesus love you unconditionally, no matter, whatever, that they were there for you. So intense in popular hymns is the sense of the personal relationship that it's almost surprising anyone went to church at all. This probably didn't mean overmuch to you unless your life hit a rocky patch. Anglicanism may have struck noisier denominations and faiths as shallow, having been outwardly manifest as a few predictable remarks by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Christmas and Easter and on occasions of national joy or sorrow but popular Christianity contained an immovable layer of hymns which, whatever their failings from a Marxist and more broadly a social justice perspective in making the poor content with their lot, are utterly non-aggressive, non-vicious, dealing as they do with sheep and a Shepherd, healing streams and other pastoral elements (pastoral verging on pantheist - pastoral verging on pagan: 'The hornèd moon that shines by night/Mid her spangled sisters bright'), a babe in a manger, green hills far away and of course divine love (3). Of course we all became hippies, we were educated to become hippies.From all this the Old Testament was markedly lacking. It might as well not have existed, for all it had anything to do with religion.  Certainly we learned Bible stories, Moses in the bullrushes, Daniel in the lions' den, good stories but nothing to do with anything that mattered.  Prominent among the modern tedium is the insistence on 'Abrahamic faiths'.  I grew up in a Christian country, not one following in the footsteps of the patriarchs.

Consequently, whatever people's personal beliefs, the nation as a whole was benignly disposed towards the Church of England.  One might have marked intellectual objections to the Christian myth, but since no-one would dream of doing anything as crude as demand one believed it it was not cause for hostility.  It is hard to muster hostility towards divine love,  healing streams and vocal rock formations, however drivelling one might have thought them, and of course Jesus was evidently a good bloke, though possibly mad.

Most of the public face of religion today is crude and ugly, if not evidently evil.  It is repellent.  People are repelled.  The various clerics who respond to this revusion as though it were that of evil persons revolted by divine love, healing streams and vocal rock formations will quite possibly destroy Christianity in England.

If you did go to church, the vicar pointed out to you that you had sinned and would be forgiven if you admitted it in the standard Order of Morning Prayer

DEARLY beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us, in sundry places, to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness; and that we should not dissemble nor cloak them before the face of Almighty God our heavenly Father; but confess them with an humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart; to the end that we may obtain forgiveness of the same, by his infinite goodness and mercy. And although we ought, at all times, humbly to acknowledge our sins before God; yet ought we chiefly so to do, when we assemble and meet together to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at his hands, to set forth his most worthy praise, to hear his most holy Word, and to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul. Wherefore I pray and beseech you, as many as are here present, to accompany me with a pure heart, and humble voice, unto the throne of the heavenly grace, saying after me;

You weren't just there to wallow in how ghastly you were.

The Church of England was the church of anyone who wanted one. From Low to High it catered to most interpretations of Christianity. If you wanted to be difficult, which I suppose basically meant if theological niceties were an issue for you, you could go and be a Catholic or a Non-Conformist.

You could have a generally positive view of religion whether you believed or not. You could even think religion was pretty. You were not afraid and should not be because the Lord your shepherd was with you.

They did of course foul their nests most spectacularly over the ordination of women. Gender was absent from Anglican education.  We really had no idea of the festering nests of worms in the heads of some of the most avowedly devout.  .

1974: Three bishops of the Episcopal Church, USA irregularly ordained eleven women. Massive outrage surfaced in the Church and throughout the rest of the Communion.
1975: The Anglican Church of Canada authorized female ordination.
1976: The Episcopal Church, USA passed a resolution declaring that "no one shall be denied access" to ordination into the three orders of ministry: as deacons, priests or bishops, on the basis of their sex.
1978 Lambeth Conference: The situation had degenerated into a crisis. Some wondered if the Communion could survive intact.

That's 1978 not 1878. Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister the following year. If the Anglican Communion was going to fall apart, the Anglican Communion clearly had the sort of problems normal people couldn't solve.
 
1. The 'animism' is wholly orthodox, not just enthusiastic hymn-writers.  From the Book of Common Prayer:

Benedicite, omnia opera.
ALL ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Angels of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Heavens, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Waters that be above the firmament, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O all ye Powers of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Sun and Moon, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Stars of heaven, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Showers and Dew, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Winds of God, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Fire and Heat, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Winter and Summer, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Dews and Frosts, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Frost and Cold, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Ice and Snow, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Nights and Days, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Light and Darkness, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Lightnings and Clouds, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O let the Earth bless the Lord : yea, let it praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Mountains and Hills, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O all ye Green Things upon the earth, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Wells, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Seas and Floods, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Whales, and all that move in the waters, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O all ye Fowls of the air, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O all ye Beasts and Cattle, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Children of Men, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O let Israel bless the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Priests of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Servants of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Spirits and Souls of the Righteous, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye holy and humble Men of heart, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son : and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be : world without end. Amen.

Got that, all ye Green Things?

​Historically, politically, intellectually, in the second half of the C20th God the psycho sexually disturbed baboon was a dead letter.  Some people for instance have an abstract and not necessarily Christian view of God as Love.

So why was anyone in this country ever allowed to be bothered by the adepts of God the psycho sexually disturbed baboon?

Ah, the Pol Pot nursey-wursies, what’s next, dragging professors of philosophy through the streets in dunce-caps in your collective worship of ignorance, irrationality and stupidity?  Shall I take a piece of arrant vermin like McGuckin and rip it apart, Plucinski, Boden, Saunders, show the bottomless well of malice, spite evil, ignorance, delusion, self-importance within – show the metal linings of their skulls, such that they are impenetrable, unreachable by human means.  Why bother when there’s you to play with.  They only mirror you, echo you, a heap of infected shit, dribbling filth and sickness and lies.  Most certainly I do not love you, nor strive to do so.  I cultivate detachment, but not that of Gautama.  It is the detachment of reality.  I recognize you are a vicious snarling animal with poisoned fangs and claws you lust to sink into others to make them in your image and likeness, I recognize you are to be caged and contained.  I recognize the dyke has collapsed and you are flooding over everything; I recognize that every check and balance the free and democratic world has created to cage and contain animals such as you has been abandoned by the evil of those who govern; I recognize there should be no problem, you should just be slobbering to yourself in your padded cell, a threat to no-one. 

​I understand this:
So: you can infuriate and indeed distress me beyond belief; you can create an infrastructure composed of gross lies; you have of course, being the beyond pathetic filthy animals you are, wrought physical changes to my body – indeed your method of fighting shows beyond doubt what trash you are, mindless vermin who think they convince me of anything by assaulting me.  But you cannot change a single external verifiable fact.
Yea, the Moving Finger writes and having writ…Nor all your  Piety not your wit because you have none can cancel out a word of it.
You cannot counter me with argument because your logic is flawed and your so-called facts are lies.  Therefore you conduct yourselves as the mad ape has conducted itself throughout history.  But you have not changed and cannot change a single external verifiable fact.
History has overthrown you and it is of course grotesque, evil, treason, beyond obscene, etc, etc, etc, that you should have been given free rein to break my body and derail my life.  And you caper in triumph but you have not changed and cannot change a single external verifiable fact.  You alter nothing, neither the solstice gatherings at Stonehenge, nor the success of Led Zep, nor the numerous pagan, secularist and humanist gatherings held in Brighton.  You do not for that matter alter that when my mum was 7, which was 1927, she was given a book called Gods and Heroes full of Greek and  Roman myths (cleaned up) as a prize for something or other; you do not alter that anyone not wholly at ease with the gods and goddesses of the classical world, part of the mental furniture, is a total loon.  You could start with the C17th French playwrights Racine and Corneille, who made their living rendering classical stories in alexandrins.  You do not for that matter  eliminate Cream’s Tales of Brave Ulysses or The Herd’s From the Underworld.You do not make cease to exist the Brighton Buddhist Centre or the weekly Tai Chi in the Park session or the Brighton Naturist Beach.  You do not eradicate millions of people who happily have sexual relations without the need of marriage and do not possess your grotesque primitive neuroses about virginity and millions more who do not possess your  grotesque primitive neuroses concerning the human body.  Yup, it’s where ‘I’ lives.  I used to be quite proud of it, but it’s a bit ravaged now.  The stuff on the outside is called skin.  Everyone has it.  There are three reasons for covering it up: skin cancer in summer, frostbite in winter and it’s reached the stage where it’s not pretty.  Think I’ll give that naturist beach a miss.  .

I understand that you are mad, completely mad, belong in a padded cell.  You are outside me.  I remain undevoured.  You are something that civilized humanity has to deal with if it is to survive.  You are something to be exposed that it may know you to deal with, for you skulk, with many layers of adoring slaves around you. 

So we are alike: both impenetrable, but you, who are a pitiful snarling animal instead of a human being have been left free to maul me, maim, wreck my body and my life, so I cannot say I am untouched. 

Bon.  Je suis allee voir dans la tete.  Je n’y ai trouve nyet.  Je suis allee voir dans la boue.  Je n’y ai trouve qu’un grand trou.
I went looking in their heads and found nothing.  I went scrabbling around in the mud.  I just found a great void.

A bottomless pit of filth and wordless violence where there is neither love nor mind, androids, zombies, the walking-dead, like the golems in Discworld, with a piece of paper in their heads which programs them and what it commands is Obey!  Creatures to whom nothing exists except the commands in their heads, to whom all learning, reason, intellect, fact is meaningless

How Stuff Works assures us zombies are physically impossible.  No, they’re not!  They don’t have to be physically dead, they can be warm and breathing, but their hearts and minds work mechanically, cut off from their humanity.  Mr Pullman got it right: severed.  A little snip is all that’s needed, and then I think a rewiring.  Instead of being connected to life, they’re rewired so they connect only to a single book, or a single person they regard as the source of all, all truth, all wisdom, all good.  Consequently they think they’re alive and demand everyone else regard the book or person as the source of all.

Frightened of being alive, naturally they worship death.  Death is the only thing they can’t control.  Power is everything and death is the one power they cannot overthrow.  They can control realms, principalities, powers, have banks on every finger, a finger in every country, all the countries ruled by them, they can control millions of people by terror, whether physical or mental, convince people of damnation; Stalin of course had to make do with the Gulag Archipelago. Any wriggle of life is suspect, to be stamped on. but life is a wriggle of glee, ‘the force that through the green fuse druves the flower’.   Thus Voldemort, flight from death.  If you think the Harry Potter books are shallow tales for kids, you haven’t understood them – or maybe you don’t know enough French and Latin.  There’s probably something pretty gooey there about their being cancer doctors.  Frightened of other minds, other thoughts threatening the false self, the really very shaky mechanically constructed fake human being that has no apparatus for dealing with ideas it doesn’t like or people who don’t like it.  People have to grasp their perfection, grasp they are without flaw, no intellectual or emotional apparatus for dealing with criticism, particularly evident of course with the ludicrous and vile nurses, who cannot be ignorant, stupid, illiterate or of course evil.  Self is all, the only evil recognized posing an intellectual or emotional threat to the zombie, while further up the ladder of death other corpses bay that they’re good people, the little people of simple faith, they must be protected from all reality, meaning everyone else is to crawl to the fantasy and accept the perfection of the walking dead.

Creatures like Saunders and Plucinski are not human beings.  They’re man-made constructs, wind-up toys, mad little dolls on music-boxes wound up by a key.  People can and do change.  If ever there was an education dedicated to zombie production it was that of Communist East Germany but its products tore down the Berlin Wall.  Indeed, one of them is generally regarded as the leader of the free world.  In the middle of London in the C21st century they all chose evil, where you cannot so much as travel on the Tube without seeing other stimuli, theatre, books, ballet, days out to interesting places.  If you believe you are commanded to, nay, empowered to, destroy a woman and the governing-system of her country, you are very sick little puppies indeed and that of course they all are. 

Because you told them to, Bobbles, my pet.  The Great I Am.  You are outside me, over there somewhere.  I have other problems right now, such as walking across the room.  There has been a Buddhist Centre in Brighton for 40 years.  I’d rather like to visit it.  It’s not so much the getting there, though too many taxis mount up; it’s what position I could assume if I attended a meditation class, for instance.  With no rotation in my left hip and my left leg twisted, any normal meditation position is out.  I expect I could make it up as I went along, whatever was comfortable.

The French have a word for them.
lèche-cul  (nom masculin)
Sens De manière vulgaire, désigne une personne extrêmement servile envers des responsables ou supérieurs hiérarchique, dans le but de se faire bien voir ou accorder certaines faveurs.
Arse-lickers
Liberty is a function of love. Control is a function of self-will.
You are not self-forgetting by definition if you are forcing others to obey you, placing to the fore the seedy clamourings of your self. Similarly 'God's mercy' is an exercise in self-stroking, whether attributed to God or  claimed by the religious, a sitting there stroking yourself at how virtuous you are being because you are 'showing mercy'. If you love other people, you don't want to do that from which you are 'mercifully' refraining in the first place. Self-forgetting is graciousness,   as in beauty of manner. Grace is paramountly not forcing oneself on others other than to restrain them from forcing themselves on others.

Absolutely filth, aren’t you, Bobbles, delectably filthy, a pile of worm-infested infected shit.  And they all kneel at your feet and take you seriously. 

Where the Wind Blows, that’s another good one, and you need to read Taking Leave of God by Don Cupitt and Honest to God by John Robinson.  Then there’s the book I’m writing, The Anile Heir, you could really learn from that, at least if you weren’t delirious sick monkeys, incapable of learning anything

​Extract from The Anile Heir © 2006.I, Ysabel Jehan Howard, hereby assert and give notice of my right under s.77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act1988 to be identified as the author of this book.
“Of course they’re always ready to listen in the south.  Isn’t that sweet.”
Challin came in.
“We were planning a little intolerable insolence,” said Ritawa
“Entirely insufferable behaviour,” suggested Munzi
“An experiment,” murmured Challin
“We do not entirely understand.”
“Clarification,” murmured Challin. “I imagine execution will be swift.”
“I know how I should respond,” said Ritawa.
Challin pondered that a moment.
“Would it not be less painful to ask Mitch?”
 
So here is long trellis table.  It is not an exciting table, slatted and of a dirty brown.  There are many of its kind around.  Sarat and Maya are sitting at it, along with several other people of various species.  Behind them there is a hot-water dispenser, a basket of tea-bags, powdered milk, sugar and a box of polystyrene cups.  Other guys mill around. 
Ritawa and Munzi sprawled themselves nearly opposite, waiting for a good opening.
Maya turned, cup in hand and half-rose to make herself another cup of tea.  Some nice person took the cup from her, and she sat down again.  Gripping this, isn’t it.
“Ah,” said Ritawa.  “The Dabidan whore.”
Heads jerked up, people half-moved, started to speak, fulminate, as people do in situations in which an electric current has passed through them.
Sarat raised his hand signalling my call.  Ritawa’s eyes met his, quizzical, mocking.
One duels, sir?
And of course journos routinely trailing Sarat around broke into sweats.
             “Not the Azt Star again!” said Sarat.  “Do they never give up!”
“Be saying I am The Star next,” said Maya.  Jaizal’s favourite tart, you will recall.
“Haven’t they done that yet?”
One chance to say just quoting the papers?  Fuck, they’re good!
             “Did someone speak?”
“Hearing loss?” asked Maya.
             “Guess he should be invalided out,” said Sarat.
             “It seems we have a Fidubi homosexual and a slut from Zur Master and Mistress of Kadun.”
             Maya bit her lip.
             “I think he doesn’t like us!”
             “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
             “There was this guy Narulis.”
              “How slut?” asked Maya
             “Clearly you were sold to gain power in Kadun.”
             “Clearly,” said Maya, in a voice that -  clearly – said loon!
             “You can scarcely claim to hide it!  All too plainly the only coup here is one by AMI.”
             “You have the absolute insolence to bring half your bloody family and you expect us not to notice?”
             “Mel and Hass have been coming to Carlin since they were 10.  AMI has been trading with Carlin since practically ever.”
             “AMI hasn’t been around for practically ever,” pointed out Sarat.
             “I was being diplomatic!”
             “If I were gay, I’d say so.  I’m not, so I don’t say so.  It’s called logic.”
             “Naturally this farce could not have begun had you said so!”
             “You call me a liar?”
             “Suppose I say yes.”
             “Oh shock, oh horror.”
             “Are you from Glitz?” asked Maya. “All a bit chaotic, thought you might be a press-fiend who’s stolen a uniform. Trying to goad us into revealing the secrets of the imperial bed!”
             “After all,” said Sarat, looking extremely innocent, “we have promised transparency.”
             “Not that transparent,” said Maya briskly. “I can sincerely assure you Sarat isn’t gay.”
             What do you do with it!  Raw unforgivable insolence, I think
             “You are of course too scared to command, take refuge in puerile repartee, a pansy who defends neither his lady’s honour nor his own.”
             Sarat burst out laughing.
             “What commands d’you think I should give?”
             “Oh for -  get on my feet! Apologize, retract, crawl at my lady Maya’s feet.”
             “But you want to be a fuckwit,” said Sarat. “Why should I get in the way?”
             I do?
             “You are the bloody Anile emperor!  Supposedly.”
             “Prove I’m the boss?  I know I’m the boss,” said Sarat.
             “Hardly if no-one obey.”
             “Define ‘obey’,” said Sarat.
             “You did go to school?”
             “It is a transitive verb meaning do what one is told.”
             “Try again.”
             “Fidub speaks a different language?”
             “If I command you behave like a fuckwit, undoubtedly you obey.”
             “Implicit is doing something you don’t want to do.”
             “You’re all here because you’ve been made to do something you don’t want to do?”
             “Of course not!”
             “You want to be made to do something you don’t want to do?”
             “Of course not!”
             “Why should I want guys to do something they don’t want to do, something which has no purpose other than to prove I can make them do it, prove I’m more powerful and important than they are.  Prove I can jerk people around like puppets.  That’s what the other guys do.”
             “Surely authority has to be established in the face of gross insubordination.”
             “But it’s phoney,” said Maya. “Either everyone here wants broadly the same thing and so wants to work together to achieve it or they don’t and we pack.”
             “Alternatively of course,” said Sarat, “you pack.”
             “You would say we are – surplus to requirements.”
             “Suppose I enter into your dumbfuck game, order you to get on your feet. You refuse.  If I accept that, I’m weak, scaredy-cat, in your view.  I play your game. What then? PANTHER drag you to your feet?  Oh the drama! What has been achieved that is of the remotest use, help or interest to you, me, Kadun?”
             Of course we want it! There is the small detail that we do not understand what ‘it’ is.  Let us continue.
             “Our job is to listen,” said Maya.  “Doesn’t mean we have to like what we hear.  Doesn’t mean we have to coo over it.  Doesn’t mean we accept having our time wasted if it’s garbage.”
             “We need to listen,” said Sarat.  “See if there’s any non-garbage.  You decide how you behave.  If it’s gross, you’re pulled up and you go on with it, then you’re a waste of oxygen.  That has nothing to do with military discipline.  That’s true in the Sa’aanda Senta, in the student caff.”
“Student caff, guys just walk away,” said Maya.
             “Bo-o-o-ring,” said Sarat.  “Hey, it’s an offensive little shit.  Leave it drivelling to itself. But if I walk away you say I’m scared, yes?”
             “Yes.”
             “Why?”
             “You have noticed you are Anile emperor?”
             “It has crossed my mind.  So?”
             “Leader of the pack, was it not.  People in senior positions do not tolerate – drivel from people in junior positions.  Nor get displaced!  I should have thought that was pretty universal, even in Fidub!”
             “And here we are at a board meeting of Sohenoil.”
             “What would happen?”
             “The fuckwit would be asked to wait until it was over, when he or she could scream at Cho all he/she liked.  I prefer here and now.”
             “Why!”
             “If someone’s at the screaming stage, s/he has a problem or thinks s/he does.  It needs hearing.  Maybe it’s garbage, maybe not.”
“The tolerating,” said Maya.  “What does it indicate?”
             “If we get away with it, then everyone will think they can get away with it.”
             “That,” said Sarat, “presupposes that ‘everyone’ wants to, that it’s only being crushed from above that maintains order.”
             “That is rather what we’re against,” said Maya.
             “And a loss of face, I am -  we are supposed to be lessened by your crap? Is that what you think?”
             “No.  It is a – an element in some people’s thinking.”
             “So ‘scared’ is – scared to do that which maintains an order which is essentially corrupt – why should I want to do that!  Suppose I tore your balls off verbally while you stood rigid, forbidden to speak.”
             “I’d have asked for it.”
“It’s still a grotesque  abuse of power,” said Sarat, “to insult, anger, distress a man who cannot answer back.  Like hitting a man who’s tied up. Do you have a partner?”
“Yes.”
“Suppose for instance I amused myself abusing her, with the pathetic excuse that it was just tit for tat.  Wouldn’t that be pretty filthy?”
             “Yes.  I really can’t say I should like you very much after that.”
“And  you would have no means of redress, no means of making it entirely apparent I was a total – consider the third letter changed! And of course you would have to continue obeying me.  Isn’t that a pretty filthy way to run a country?”
             “Of course.  The answer to -  unconstructive conduct not equally unconstructive conduct, then?  That is interesting.  It may even be correct!  Nonetheless - let us list our offences!  We have called your lady a slut and a whore, your lady who is by the way Anile Empress, Mistress of Kadun, to whom our loyalty is pledged.  We are therefore probably guilty of high treason. Additionally we have accused her and with her the Crown of Dabida of – actually I’m not sure what of, fraud, theft? General venality.  Called you a pervert, a liar and a coward.  Denied and mocked your authority.  How can we possibly be permitted to get away with it?”
             “Don’t forget wasting my time. Yea, mine honour is besmirched.  And of course Maya’s. Why should your drivel be of the slightest importance to either of us?”
             “Does it come out in the wash?” asked Maya.  “Smirch.” She began to examine her sleeve for stains. 
“I think it’ll wash out with new improved PANTHER,” said Sarat.
“You have just said people have to be heard.  Now you say – drivel has no importance.  Would it be at all possible to clarify?”
“Emotionally,” said Sarat, “to us personally.  Ravings no importance.  Do we strike you as having hissy fits?”
Whew!  Many things strike me.  Not that.
“Truly,” asked Maya, “you expect me to be stung?”
“You have said you want to know what people actually think.”
             “Yes.”
             “I am telling you what people actually think.”  This in the tone of one addressing someone of limited mental endowment.
             “You are telling me what some people think.  If it were the view of everyone I shouldn’t be here.”
 “Let us say it is a segment of public opinion.  May I not introduce to you something called reason?  On the one hand you say you wish to know what all people actually think.  On the other when presented with what some people actually think you mock it, dismiss it.  Is that entirely logical?  Further, you have said that you recognize that persons of socially conservative opinion are not necessarily, what was it, creatures from the pit of desecration – “
             “That was Mitch.”
             “But you concur.”
             “I concur.”
             “But you treat their opinions with complete contempt.”
             “I find them contemptible.”
“So you will ride roughshod - ?”
“Basic human rights are non-negotiable. Women and gays are about 60% of a population. How can a country be fairly governed by 40% of its population? Nobody knows exactly what All-Kadun thinks.  Until everyone is equal in rights, free to speak and in the polling booths no-one will know. You appear to be saying my conduct should be shaped by the Azt Star.”
             “You seem to be saying  lack of courtesy is frowned upon – “
             “My lord Cile, do you have to be totally moronic?”
             “Among other bons mots…”
             Morons, I think, are decidedly non grata.
             “How else would you describe what is probably the only course of action anyone anywhere on this continent right now can pursue which ensures that lots and lots of guys with partners and kids get dead?”
             “Let an insult be only true!”
             “Broadly based in fact! Or rational argument.  I’m also saying, fine, you’re concerned about Dabidan and Fidubi influence in Kadun.  You get a few facts and figures together. You present me with arguments. It’s all on the Grid, AMI, Sohenoil.” Pause.  “There are two – can’t think of the word, must be my limited education – “
“Realms,” suggested Maya innocently.
“There is the world of the mostly sane based on fact and reason and there is the world
of the out of it.  Insult falls into one or other category.”
             “Insult is then – merely a joke if grounded in nonsense and directed at the mostly sane.”
             “And a weapon against the out of it!”
             “The Cult owns approximately half Kadun.  It is just a little kooky to rave about me rather than  Madam Minister.”
             “Perhaps there are concerns about exchanging one set of masters for another.”
             “A valid point.”
             They looked at each other and started laughing.
             “We appear to be having a civilized conversation. But of course those in the world of the out of it think themselves in the world of fact and reason. It would  be fair to say you don’t like idiots?”
             “Don’t do idiots,” said Sarat.
             “It would seem to me,” said Maya, “that the basic – perception is that most people are idiots and require their idiocy controlling.”
             “Except,” said Sarat, “the people who want to control other people generally are the idiots.”
             “Freedom,” said Maya, “sort of idiot control mechanism basically.”
             “But it has to work both ways?”
             “But it has to work both ways.”
              Maya said: “Someone tells us we’re out of it, nuts, we can’t possibly take Azt.  No, we’re not going to explain how we can, we don’t know whom the person might sing to.  But we need to know that people are worried and need some reassurance and we need to hear why.  They might know something we don’t.”
             “There is nobody,” said Sarat, “who can’t be wrong, misinformed, flawed in his or her reasoning.”
             “And obedience is the opposite of that?”
             “Deference is the opposite of that.”
             Oh, right, lad, thought Varulin, so that’s why I want to fall at your bloody feet.
             “So here are Sarat and I in the lush green fields of Carlin,” said Maya, “a couple of screaming loons who think they’re going to take Azt and establish democracy in Kadun.  Who are these nutters?  Where are they coming from?”’
             “Obedience is switching off one’s brain?”
             “There isn’t an insult in the world that isn’t coming from a point of view.  Next question is whether that point of view has any basis in fact and reason.”
             “Could we possibly behave intelligently!”
             “Pretty-please,” said Sarat.
             “I think – among some – there is a – perception that the mere act of questioning shows a lack of respect.”
             “For what?  Omniscience? Psychosis?”
             “Who,” asked Maya, “is actually being treated with a total lack of respect in that scenario?  The only serious offence is to think people are your property, your tools, creatures of your will.”
             “We have of course observed the extreme deference of Zuri”  He stood.  “My lord, my lady, we have been moronic.  Our abject apologies.”
             In days of yore, thought Baz.  Will he do it?
“Accepted,” said Sarat. “Kilana siy tan.”
“Kilana siy tan.” said Maya.
             “Spring has the to-do list,” said Sarat, “if you want to hang around.”
            
LIVE FROM KADUN
 
Gee, Bal, he’s just bonding with his officers.
 
Karmen (Harn State Security) rang Faun: “Purr, purr, purr, such a cutesy little pair of cubs, I deem!  I may invite myself along?”
“Wondered what was keeping you,” said Faun.
“You have a fairly international gathering, I hear.”
“Nobody wants to miss this party.”
 
What was that about!
“It is an ancient formulation,” said Mitch, “as old as Narulis.  It is generally translated as ‘there is no harm’.
“And the modern formulation would be ‘everything’s cool’!”
“Forgotten, over.”
“That is mind-bending.”
“We are mind-bending.”
 
“Pair of drivelling morons,” observed Challin cheerfully.
“Of course you want to be a fuckwit,” enthused Fanos.
“I flushed, didn’t I.”
             “Just a little.”
             “Psychologically, it’s really interesting.  Why is it worse?”
             “Obviously because it puts the buck back where it belongs.”
             “Course you can say anything you like.”
             “Only you just might not like what you get back!”
             “I didn’t expect to like it,” said Ritawa plaintively. “I don’t even know how to explain. Of course I expected a strip torn.  A different strip!”
             “Never met anything quite like them,” said Munzi.
             “As in them.”
“A decidedly plural them..”
             “Naturally my lady Maya burst into tears and asked you how you could possibly, how you could bring yourself, what kind of monster are you,  to say such  awful, awful things about a poor helpless little girl like her.”
“It wasn’t like that!  She ran to Sarat and he said that.”       
“I did not expect that!”
“That she’d speak or that she’d cry?”
             “That’s quite a double-act.”
             “Now touring the empire to rapturous reception!”
             “I do fear we have to courageously confront what bloody little oinkers we are.”
             “It didn’t occur to us, did it.”
             “An active role in the proceedings?  Inconceivable.”
             They caught sight of Mitch who had strolled in and was now half-choking with silent laughter.
             “Just wondering if you’re still alive.  What did you think, guys.  Zur, well, that’s Zur, but this is Kadun, this is war, this is command, this is men’s business.”
             “Ow!”
             “Witty, is she not.”
             “I think perhaps I need to know her better before pressing her on the subject of transparency.”
             “The other place I nearly cracked wasn’t even addressed to me.  Smirch.”
             “What did you expect?”
 “Not that!  Does he know, Mitch?”
             “I should not think so.  I at least have not told him.  He will of course have absorbed your demeanour, that you are a very upper-class young drivelling moron.”  Many splutters of laughter.  “It will of course be my delight to tell him.  Truly, what did you expect to happen?”
             “I honestly don’t know.  Something more – formal. I assumed he’d be civilized, of course.  Mitch, we don’t have the vocabulary for this.”
“A limited education.”
“Assumed what?  He’d be tougher, harder…Does that not then imply?”
“What, you did not find him weak and soft!”
“There was no way to get into it,” said Ritawa.
“What?”
“The backchat.”
“Ah, the puerile repartee.”
“I thought that was rather good.”
“Except of course by joining in.”
“Oh yes, I recognized the invitation to the party.”
“I think they would say that once you laughed and turned into natural normal human being game over.”
“I sort of recognized that. That I was under full-scale attack!”
“Of a kind unknown in military history.  Except maybe in Kadun.”
 “It had to be done, Mitch.  We had to know.”
             “If I did not understand that, I am frankly not sure I should be honouring your freedom of expression.  I found the list of offences truly impressive.”
             “Mitch – if I have this correctly, just observe the normal rules of behaviour, and everything’s cool.”
             “And?”
             “Behave in the same way – behave as you would among your peers – to everyone.”
             “I do not think Sarat said anything to you that one young man would not say to another who was being an offensive little shit.  It was you who kept dragging in the emperor crap.”
 really learn from that.
…
The party is an elevated plane of consciousness.  Nor is this all.  It is a place where nothing matters and everything matters.  The usual lucidity and directness of speech that attends our new continuum appeared markedly absent.   I must have looked pitifully woebegone for my puss relented.  We agreed to meet later. 
Kilana siy tan.  There is no harm to the ego, the self, because it is illusory.  It does not get antsy, threatened, because it isn’t there, or if there is not dominant, does not automatically, as one does, assume itself of greater importance.  Thus ‘you cannot talk to me like that because I am the emperor’ has no place in the construct; nor of course does ‘you cannot talk to me like that because I am an officer’.  I have received a certain amount of straight talking from what used to be called the other ranks though equally many have understood what I was trying to do; I think Challin possibly had a discreet hand in that. In any case the general consensus is that I bit off a great deal more than I could chew and got delicately, courteously, possibly the biggest bollocking it has ever been my misfortune to receive, an outcome with which they are of course content.   No harm done….No, I am not digressing!   Sure, you can talk to me like that, because I am a human being.  As such, however,  I am not required to like what you say.  I think I noticed.      The physical body, however, is very much there.  Harm lies in physical injury, physical duress, because any such damage, any physical constraint upon volition is not illusory.  I did just wonder when he mentioned PANTHER dragging me to my feet.  Never in a million years.  I should have to have become violent first.  That is the principle of the initiation of force.  Everything’s cool, so long as both parties are free to walk away. I’m not sure it’s quite that simple, but it seems a more than adequate base.  The everything that matters therefore included me.  This guy is upset.  That matters. What is he upset about?  However, also, I am adult and fully in possession of my faculties.  I can be expected to communicate in an adult fashion and I can expect to be told how moronic I am, whether I have an ego or not! Also a lot of other things are mattering too so do not waste my time, puh-lease!  I have learned another one for the dictionary: ‘my stuff’.  But Ritawa, this is all your stuff, man, nothing to do with us.  True-untrue? Certainly nothing prompted by the immediate situation, as for instance a remark about AMI with which I took issue. 
Everything not tainted by harm has a gurgle of laughter in it.  I just think about that.  I saw it.  I think that must be serious harm.  Obviously they don’t find the Cult funny but I don’t think it would much have spoiled the party if I had made to hit him or something grotesque like that. I think I may be flushing even as I write this but I think overall they would have found that – not unfunny.  I took a deep breath and asked: had I made to hit her?  Should I not instantly have been clapped in irons!  Er, no.  My lady Maya is Hadin-Wadud.  I should probably have found myself on the floor with my arms twisted behind my back.  Let me say that increases the number of counts on which I am remarkably glad I did nothing so vile!  
All of it, all of them, the Anile throne, Alzani-Meta, PANTHER, VILE, the Hadin-Wadud, are the outward and exoteric aspects of the party, its interface with the normal world. You simply do not push other people around, smear your self over them and they are not to be terrorized into submission because they have redress.
…
 
Nothing from Spetzi
Two days later: nothing from Spetzi.
Ritawa to Spetzi: I yearn for the sight of your name. I lust after the movements of your fingertips. 
We shan’t bother with the rest of that one.
Spetzi to Ritawa: I went back to Mel’s Place and read all of it.  What I am thinking is blowing my mind.  Just trying to put it all together.
 
1.      Cantilip and Mel both had succinct things to say about earthpower, about the – psychology of the Cult.  If anything what was wrong with that was it was NOT couched in the language of modern human rights: student philosophizing, no great connection with the normal world.  In any case, it was before the arrival of Mitch, the real box-office draw, I believe you put it! I am going to sit very tightly on my fingers and not say a word about how few would have concerned themselves with critical delineation of the nature of earthpower from my lady Van-senok in comparison to the many gripped by the orations of my lord Var-sega’.  Evil grin.  
2.     Neither Sarat nor Maya was actually heard until Ground Zero – except of course for the excursion to Van-senok which ran through us like a forest fire.  About which we were of course free to make whatever the hell we liked. True-untrue, can we accept this.  Can our itsy-bitsy little egos take it.  Let us be exact.  Let me be exact.  The rule of the Cult is to sustained because no-one is going to call me ‘Miss’ any more?
3.     There was of course what Sarat looks like.  From the perspective of female people and one must assume gay male ones also! No, one does not choose the future leader of one’s country because he will look awfully good on a postagestamp.  It is a question of tone, of body-language, of course of class.  We concluded in demeanour sufficiently imperial, but did not dwell on precisely what that word means to Kadun – rather more than opening a hospital in a constitutional monarchy.
4.     Language versus body-language….You said it!  If a man have the appearance of – of a damn’ panther padding about the place, the language of Harn is not inappropriate, though can scarcely be said to be fitting at any formal occasion.  But then why should the emperor not pad around Azt, have we not already concluded he looks the part  – it tied us in knots.  From their side, I’d guess an absolute determination to make clear – forewarn – of what the offer was and what was entailed in acceptance.  Totally obscuring what was actually on offer?  One is a brash Fidubi brat, one will make waves that will shake Kadun to our foundations, but oh, what is the nature of the waves.  And so some of us, being less stupid than others, took a closer look at those foundations.  Interesting, certainly, fascinating, startling, amazing – but rather long ago, in a pre-industrial setting.  To bridge a mere 1500 years we have of course the Dabidan model – but then again is that not merely a quirk of Zur.
5.     The panther will not be caged, tamed, contained, that the clear message.  But of course – even indulgently – one is young, one will mature, come to understand one cannot possibly behave like this!
6.     Ah, six is the killer.  Are we not now, as from the moment he crossed the border, living in a democracy?  Isn’t that what democracy is supposed to be, power given by the people and which can be retracted by the people?
Here I get into 6a and 6b, oh and 6c.
6a) of course is, its being the case that our noble Army was probably deigning to support him, some thought they would be able to cage, tame, contain, do deals.  That above all in 5, I think.  Guys, guys, we’re doing this my way or not at all.  Naturally we played the less delectable scenarios, amongst which working-class revolt.  I told you, Daddy said it: to fight the licit heir is treason against the idea of Kadun.  A milder version of which of course: to fight the licit heir to postpone change we know inevitable merely silly. 
6b) of course is Sarat’s mere existence as a focus for what I shall I call it total democracy completely changed our frame of reference; many had thought reasonable a limited democracy; the name Ban-varna was heard, often.  That CBV would accept some role more akin to, if not a mere figurehead…The cub clearly intends total overhaul.  Nothing if not refreshing.
6c) of course is the damned ratters are out of the barn.  All of us who are sentient – even female ones – have grasped the real war is against the Cult. That PANTHER are at war against the Cult, waging total war.   Which impinged on practically everything.  6c)i therefore, no I’m not going to do this, like some ghastly piece of bureaucracy.
     7!    Sarat/Cho co-terminous with PANTHER?
             Dropped straight into the other matter. 
Where we went from there entirely determined not by gender politics or ego or nationalism but by what we knew of the other matter
Or didn’t know.
What is behind him? Sohenoil!  What is behind him? Conceivably AMI!  What is behind him? Fidub?
What is not behind us?  Fidub.  To have the Fidubi scam plainly expounded of course a delight and a pleasure unlooked-for.  The only problem with some wistful hope that Mitch would keep them in line being of course that Mitch was worse.  This then coming from Mitch? Somewhat unlikely that Sohenoil would be manipulated by Var-sega’ but if we get to Azt, the shots called from the Sohenisle?
Just trying to summarize our permanent state of confusion. 
Some pooh-poohed it but largely it is and was given that only PANTHER have the necessary skills to defeat the Cult. Van-senok and Sardun excluded here because they are not part of the pairing that so sadly fell apart.  What those skills are – perhaps I should say were since I understand amplifiers!  Hypnosis, mind-control and of course wilder stories. I am actually getting to the point!  PANTHER are waging total war.
Why?
Obvious, surely.
Of course we all loathe the Cult.
Of course they are the most repulsive and contemptible of animals
Naturally concern for the most elementary human rights, the most basic civilized behaviour.
The  ethos, the ethic, the drive, the motivation thought too obvious to ask.
There was something so absolutely critical said at Mel’s Place by Cantilip that of course everyone missed it.
Certainly earthpower is non-aggressive: we do not seek war.  Certainly it is not pacifist.  What one may call the vulnerability lies in the doctrine of being.  In earthpower, people simply are, at one with the universe.  This loss of self is perverted by the Cult into submission to its will, deemed co-terminous with the reality of the universe. 
We’re all bloody tree-huggers, Ritawa, do you understand, everyone clean, all you cold hard men of steel! Of course we’re not passive!  But nor are we active.  We just are, in a field of flowers.  Some filthy creature in a black robe comes along with a – with a mowing-machine! Then we fight. 
Of course we adore!
And so we have been – accepting.  Not of starvation.  I don’t know anyone who would not help the desperate.  I should not want to know anyone who would not help the desperate.  But at the level of the individual.  What is to be done about the cities?  Something has to be done.  The difference is you don’t just say something has to be done, you do something?
But then you might say, but we understand that, Carlin understood, Var-sega’ understood, Van-senok understood.  Most of all you might say, that’s crazy: Van-senok, heart of earthpower, is the worst of the lot!  Though I might just investigate dark-green hair!  Radical earthpower? 
I think the core of this is action.   I don’t exactly see how.  They live life in the active voice.
What do you see when you see another human being?  Anyone, Sarat, Challin, me, well possibly that’s an exception! The squaddies who bollocksed you.  A stranger in the street. There’s something in the idea that we see something stationary and they see something in motion, though I don’t know what.  I suspect it has a lot to do with hierarchy deforming.  They see something the motion of which isn’t impeded by its place in the pecking-order. 
Sarat refuses to be dammed, two m’s, as a river is dammed, by the triviality of being Anile emperor.  It has no place, no meaning, in that other level of reality and the existence of modern human rights gives him, all of them a gloss, a place in the normal world. 
So my grand conclusion is that when we look at people we see them as they are in the normal world, which means we take in - accoutrements of position or lack of, even if we disapprove of at least some of them.  They see a person as he or she is at that other level, without any of the crap.  A being being in a field of flowers?  An active being in a field of flowers?
Do-be-do-be-do.  Can that be set to the tune of the anthem?
The problem is/was it’s not all the things the south said about us, that they are egalitarian and we are really hierarchical (though of course for some it is/has been), it’s that it’s so nearly the same.  But different.  That came out at Mel’s Place.  When there were still empty seats.  Carlin shocked Mel.  He had assumed how the good guys in Kadun do things is how they’re done in Dabida and Fidub, but that was at the level of Va the Silver Homeland or would you prefer a field of flowers. I suppose we call that the exoteric level.  I think we’ve returned the favour, assumed how Dabida and Fidub do things is how we do them, with modern human rights as distinct.  ‘Modern human rights’, give or take a head of sheep, are how Fidub has always done things.  Would that by any chance be at the esoteric level, that we have assumed a shared metaphysics?  Assumed we’re all talking about the same thing when we’re just not.
I know some of this is st-range! Not only have I probably not put it correctly, I’ve probably not put correctly exactly what I’m trying to think might be correctly putting it. Add to that that I know very little about metaphysics!  But Mel actually said it for all the world to see: To some irturbi at least the Fidubi belief-system was simply a particular kind of earth-power.   The whole history of recent years, all our confusions, all bound up in the relationship between earthpower and the Tradition.  When we’ve thought we were talking the same language we were talking different ones.  When we’ve thought we were talking different languages we were talking the same one. I just can’t work out what that relationship is.  Maybe a bulb, a plant-bulb, I mean, not a lightbulb!  Two separate shoots.  Or – like conjoined twins, you separate them and they die?  No, die can’t be exact.  Become something different?
 
May I show this to Challin, typed Ritawa, deleting of course the last paragraph.  Evil grin.
My fame spreads!  Of course.  He’s senoki, isn’t he.
He indeed is.
 
“Have you got five minutes sometime?” asked Ritawa.
“Of course.”
“There’s something I should like – I should be grateful if you would read.  I could mail it but I’d also like to be present when you read it.”
“Indeed?”
“Spetzi has been thinking about the relationship between earthpower and the Tradition.  No, more: its relevance to everything that has happened.”
“Ah,” said Challin.
“I realized I was invited to the party,” sighed Ritawa.  “Our conversations have taken an unusual bent.”
“After dinner, about 9?”
“I thank you.”
“I shall come and find you.”
 
Challin held out his hand for the phone.
And smiled.
And smiled more.
“You are a very fortunate young man.”
“I know,” said Ritawa.
“Are you aware of an incident at Carlin?  You are probably too young.  It must have been 15 years ago.”
“No…”
“Marula’s partner was a drunk.  There are no excuses.  On a visit to Carlin he tried to put out the Flame.  San-yaega-baht of course threw him out.  Shortly afterwards Marula threw him out.  It was probably the worst rift for 600 years. Publicly, at least.”
“Six – “
“Van-senok was livid that Zani would not take the Anile throne.”
“I have never entirely understood – “
“Nor I.  Nonetheless, he founded Dabida instead.”
“And so here we all are!  But why?  Why put out the Flame?”
“It burns,” said Challin.
“Burns wood?  That’s a bit – “
Challin was laughing softly.
“Primitive?  Oh it is, it is.  There is more to it than that. I too am no metaphysician – physicist?  Let us consider the natural world.  Are we not all tree-huggers?”
“Fire equally devastates a field of flowers?”
“And what is left?”
“I suppose ash!  I’m really very lost.  No, actually I’m totally drowned.  If Van-senok wanted Zani to crown himself emperor, surely Van-senok approved the Flame.”
“You have to think in metaphor.  These fields, suppose they are seared by fire, what then?  I believe some farmers do just that.”
“For a time nothing and then regrowth?”
“Make a senoki of you yet.  And what regrows is different, the constitution of the soil has been changed.  It is not Marula’s thinking, nor I think that of most senoki who consider these things, but there are branches – little more than twigs -  of earthpower where the Flame is perceived as a threat, an intrusion, a disturbance of the balance.  No, not  the green-haired brigade.  Kuran’s cronies, however.  The green hairs are at least superficially a far simpler proposition.  I should imagine Sarat’s views on the planet are identical to theirs.”
“Love at first sight.  But if that is not mainstream – “
“Why am I wasting your time with it?  Because it embodies the difference.  Union in earthpower means union with the physical world.  I do not know what that means, though there are of course others here who do. The Flame is an interloper from the non-physical world. You have considered talking to Cantilip?”
“No!”
“It would be somewhat indelicate,”  agreed Challin.
“What – oh no!”
“What Spetzi strives to establish is the relationship between fire and earth.  It is of course the practical.  It sent waves through Van-senok of many kinds.”
“Hostility?”
“On the whole no. An acute curiosity.”
“And union in the Tradition means union with the non-physical world. Oh I see!  I think.”  Challin waited.  “Provided one accept there actually is a non-physical world, these are the two halves of the Whole.”
“I have never doubted your considerable intelligence.”
“Having previously considered myself if not quite a cold hard man of steel  I find myself strangely ready to flush these days.  Then earthpower denies a non-physical world?  I may still be lost.”
“That,” said Challin, “is what it does, one goes through a door only to find another one.”
“Do I know you well enough to ask - ?”
“Frankly, no,” said Challin, “but this much I say: my  refusal to enter the maze was the root of my difference with Marula.”
“May I call that a refusal to join the party?”
“An invitation I am reconsidering.”
“We are all being changed.”
“Fire burns,” said Challin.  “What regrows is different.”
“Put like that, it is a little.”
“Frankly petrifying?”
“May I ask.”  Ritawa stopped, as one does when three questions at once occur to one and none of them makes sense.  “The last 600 years!  In your view.”
“An avoidance of the party?  Many social and economic factors of course.  The apparently independent development of human rights.  Must we not join the modern world, the party an inevitable if somewhat disruptive piece of baggage in the train. But then of course, as Spetzi identifies, the party was already here, cats at every base.  I do not think we should be here now had we not learned to swim in the shallows.  The less fortunate rescued from bottomless filth.  Perhaps above all why cats at every base.  Leaving us free to choose.  Tell Spetzi to remember that all she describes was atop a fundamental appreciation of cathood. Unless of course, as she says, there was no comprehension of the feline.”
        Ritawa was frowning.
        “That is perhaps the opposite of – “
        “What you have frequently heard me say?  No.  What was it, total democracy.  The party demands it.  You think older people could successfully have explained the party to you? Given that we fail to understand it ourselves.”
        “And the cats were – are – irtubi.  I am contemplating – too mild a word – another layer of what I understand is called my sexist conditioning!”
        “Oh yes,” said Challin.  “Perhaps unwise to think too hard.”
        “The cats in uniform had necessarily to be male.  The cats fighting with Sardun must therefore have been overwhelmingly female.”
        “I imagine our refusal to accept women was the cause of some irritation.”
        “Since we didn’t see them or saw them less.  The other matter.  Is it – would you say – an element of – we little tree-huggers in our field of flowers – no, that makes no sense!  If I may start again!  Anything from deny to shun the non-physical world.  But presumably Sardun must – embrace it.”
        “I understand Sardun harness the power of the physical world.  I have of course no idea how, though I understand the reasoning is that all life is part of the physical world.”
        “If there is a non-physical world.”
        “There is the question also of what in their terms is the non-physical world, which I have never remotely understood.  If the Flame represent light, is light not energy?  Non-material possibly a better term, but then – what is matter, never mind!  There are always more questions.”
        “Would you regard that as a warning or just guidance?” 
        Challin laughed.
        “Let us say intellectual curiosity can lead in unforeseen directions.”
 
        Challin pondered then dropped a line to Cioulis.  He’s really getting awfully good at doing good by stealth.  Several lines, in fact.  Very bright. Possibly a purely intellectual curiosity but not sure.  Possibly still a little shaken.  I know there is what in other circles would be called an aptitude test.  He would pass.  Would you meet him?
        Cioulis mailed back: Sure, but isn’t this PANTHER’s bag?
        I think not, replied Challin, and explained about Spetzi.
        Aren’t we sweet, aren’t we cute? Is it not wonderful to just be!  I see a slight embarrassment here.
        Of course
        Thank you!
       
        “Well, didn’t I just get the turkey,” remarked Cioulis to no-one in particular.
        Karmen looked up.
        “How so?”
        “The young guy who was so very entertaining, department Dabidan whore, Challin thinks he’s interested and thinks he’d jump the hurdles.”
        Saban said: “He is senoki?”
        “Segani.  So’s his partner.  It seems it struck her in a moment of illumination – we’re all bloody tree-huggers, just being in a field of flowers.”
        Saban truly does have a sense of humour.
        So of course does my beloved.  He arranged to meet Ritawa in ‘Opshar’s Glade. In the interim he digested the world according to Spetzi.
       
        Cioulis settled himself comfortably into the leaf mould, his back against a handy bush.  Ritawa squatted on a small fallen log.
        “Now,” said Cioulis, “where are we?”
        “A little late in the season perhaps,” growled Ritawa.  “A field of flowers?”
        “Aren’t we!” said Cioulis enthusiastically.  “Are we being or doing?”
        Waa!
        “I suppose if we were motionless, without speech.”
        “Without heartbeat,” added Cioulis.
        “Life is movement?  I have to see that.”
        “And non-life? The physical world?”
        “Glaciers?” suggested Ritawa.  “Rivers.”
        “Thus the Great Divide.”
        “Everything is in motion, just a slower pace…
        “Even corpses,” said Cioulis.  “A dead rat, does it stay fixed, like an exhibit in a natural history museum?”
        “You are telling me something about the Cult?”  Ritawa had gone rather rapidly back to Mel’s Place.  “Everything is in some sense dead.”
        “It’s a question of control,” said Cioulis.  “There isn’t any, so they try to make some.”
        “The final control to murder.” 
        “Movement versus inertia.”
        “Then there is no – being, no stillness?”
        “Everything is itself,” said Cioulis, “that is its being. Sarat.”
        “Sarat is being Sarat.”
        “The unique lovable individual he is.  He will not be the Anile emperor.  The Anile emperor is whatever Sarat is. So?”
        “Being is doing?” sighed Ritawa.  “You are – recruiting officer?”
        “Take your time,” said Cioulis.  “Just at the moment we’re not training.”
        “What does it entail?”
        “First there are – you could call them aptitude tests.  In the first half we completely screw your surrounding reality and see how well you hang onto it.  Look around, drink it all in, imprint it.  See that lissome frond.  You are in a clearing in a small copse in Carlin. Strictly not your mind, that’s way down.  You are Ritawa.  You have a  really rather bright partner called Spetzi.  For reasons that possibly just at the moment escape you you are in a clearing in a small copse in Carlin talking to a loon from Sardun, whose preferred attire appears to be pirate. Thus the earrings, which appear to be in the form of a knot.  You are sitting on a small log.  The sun is sinking slowly into the west, which is thataway. A squirrel is watching us from that tree, wondering if we’re tree-huggers.  You are sitting on a log.  The path out of the clearing lies over there.  It veers sharply left at its start.  You are sitting on a log, aren’t you. And the ground is firm beneath your feet.”
        “Then what?”
        “Sure?”
        “Yes.”
        No! yelled Ritawa’s mind. The pirate-craft rocked gently under him.  The sea stretched to the horizon.  The sun was in the wrong place. I am not even bloody well standing up! He found it is quite hard to rise from a sitting position when one is already standing.  Squirrel – detail.  The squirrel was a small fat puffin perched on one of the masts.  What does reason tell me!  I put one foot in front of the other.  I walk out of the clearing.  Into the sea.  Sharks milled below him.  You bastard!  Not sharks  not sharks what sharks. Vegetation?   Not bloody fucking there, not real not sharks. What should I like to be there?
        Cioulis grinned to himself. A trio of sharks rose out of the water, performed graceful porpoise spins and sank slowly below the waves.  Land appeared, apparently a rocky outcrop on which was a lighthouse.
        What! Swim. Land.  Raft.  You’re not even bloody porpoises, you’re a raft!  The sharks manfully resisted and remained sharks. Not sharks, wrong shape sharks.  Not going to be able to do this but I can try.  He walked into the sea and tried to clamber aboard a raft.  It was still a shark, but what the hell.
        Normality.
        “Excellent start,” said Cioulis.  “Not of course maximum intensity. What happened there?”
        “You tell me!”
        “Think back to your conversation with Sarat.”
        “What!  I – I was in two places and my mind told me with – nearly equal fervency both were real.  What did you mean – yes, one might have been more – not sure what the word is.  Fragile.  Thinner than the other.  But I wasn’t sure. A bit, maybe, coming in and out of focus?”
        “Ever used a graphics program?”
        “Sometimes.”
        “Reducing the transparency of a superimposed image.”
        “Yes, that’s the word.  Real reality isn’t transparent!”
        “And you chose the real one.  That is good.  But?”
        “It didn’t bloody well work.  Was I right the sharks were less transparent!”
        “Ah, no.  That was the survival instinct kicking in.  Every neuron in your subconscious mind is telling you not to commit suicide.  Every neuron is focused on one small part of the whole.  The ship doesn’t matter, even the sea. So what did you do next?”
        “I tried to turn it.  I mean I couldn’t but.”
        “Focus on the essential, that is good.”
        “But wasn’t my focus split?  Isn’t that a bad thing?”
        “You could not have jumped if you were not fundamentally sure none of it was real.  If you had turned it, some things are sometimes best done incrementally, to climb back to – claw one’s way back to – reality.  The raft become an island, the island land known to you, etc.”
        “That is startling.  I thought you said every neuron of my subconscious mind!”
        “Beneath that.”
        “Hmm. My conversation with Sarat?”
        “You mean he didn’t enter the dumbfuck game and turn it?”
        “Aargh may be my response.  You said there were two halves.”                                           
        “Evil grin. Worse.  I increasingly bring to bear the full weight of my forceful personality on you, giving you orders you resist with every cell, every atom of your being.  Gold stars for retaining a reasonably relaxed posture and telling me to go fuck myself.”
        “I really know how to draw attention to myself,” said Ritawa. “I am thinking there must have been people around Sarat.”
        “Never in a million years,” said Cioulis.  “1) There is a large number of progressively more searing hurdles.  We have to be sure.  2) That is precisely why we hate them.”
        “And it’s all the same party?”
        “Is a party not a varied place?”
        “Obviously you didn’t – mess with my mind.  I felt – all my wits about me, in full possession of my faculties.  What did you mess with?”
        “Pixels,” said Cioulis.  “I think one may call them pixels.”
        “I don’t understand.”
        “One to think about,” said Cioulis.
        “May I tell Spetzi?”
        “She might like to join too.”
 
It was then, typed Ritawa, I felt angry. At myself of course.  Having had my reality smashed fazed not your cold hard man of steel.  Much!  Why do I keep doing it!  Obviously I can rationalize.  Ingrained, not as a man but as a soldier.  Need to know. 
Spetzi took pity.  Poor darling, kiss better.  Etc.
 
After a while, Ritawa wrote.  We don’t just see with our eyes.  Locate ourselves, I mean. We only see with our eyes.  I was of course too thrown to think all that through.  Does the air smell of salt? Does my face sting?  Can I feel the log?  Should I have registered that subconsciously?
I think that might depend on the density of the pixels!  Suppose – not that I understand or anything.  An illusory reality put in front of your eyes.  You can’t not react.  As far as your field of vision stretches, you are on that bloody ship! Or suppose you were simply cocooned in an illusion, so everywhere you interface with the external world was cut off from it?
Hmm-hmm! What really puzzles me – did I just write that – Cioulis himself was nowhere to be seen.
Invisible man!
Not that too!
Time I went back to school.  The biology of vision.  I really want to know exactly how we see.
That would be brilliant.  Cornea, rods.  Remember bits but if you asked me to describe exactly how I am seeing the screen in front of me, I get about as far as light hits the eyes and signals are sent to the brain.
We don’t actually see with our eyes at all, do we.  They’re just the interface.  Obviously they’re critical, of all the awful things that can happen to people I’ve always thought being blind was worst.  But – technically, eyes are just a piece of machinery.  But – when all this is over, shall I write science fiction!  If a piece of machinery could be devised that registered, imaged, the external world and communicated it to the brain, then a blind person could see. Sight actually is all that matters, in the context of this.  So long as you could see the clearing it wouldn’t matter that you couldn’t feel it or smell it.
I’m wondering – this is weird.  So if I had simply shut my eyes, proceeded like some poor blind person by feel.  Maybe!  That depends on your cocoon. Isn’t it called a camera?  The machine!  Small matter of connecting it to the brain.
Doctors must have thought of this.  Have you ever heard of artificial eyes?
No.  That is hair-raising.  The surgery required to connect to the brain. 
I’m actually thinking  about what we’ve been saying, without turning a hair.  A illusory reality has been created.  What of?  Literally out of thin air?
There are about 90 naturally occurring elements, remember that bit!
That does somewhat simplify the whole thing!  So if you have all of them you can make anything that exists?  And presumably – what’s a rare metal?  Inessential to – most things I guess?
Actually not.  Vital to phones!
Why has Sarat not banned them entirely! But the natural world.  Presumably there are no rare metals in a fallen log.  The natural world is chemically fairly simple? What’s air made up of? Mostly oxygen?
Mostly nitrogen. 
What chemically is an image.  That seems to be the question.
Physically? I’m not saying there was a deck under my feet, only a good imitation?  A sensation, if we casually affirm we have dealt with vision.  What actually is a pixel?  Let me look….Oh great.  It is a ‘logical  - rather than a physical unit’.  That is clarifying! The ‘smallest addressable unit’.
O great pixel, impart to me your secrets. But that of course is in the context of a screen.  You can’t have a pixel in the open, all on its own. What I was starting by going to say is that in terms of sheer hair-raisingness – a surgeon is only human, his or her hand can slip, remember anyone can be wrong! Even if it were possible I’m really not sure a scalpel being wielded in my brain isn’t more hairy than this.  Except of course.
Except of course there would be a clear logical progression. 
There has to be, doesn’t there.
I’m wondering two things.  The first is – what you said about a different level of reality when looking at people.  Why just people?  Why not a blade of grass?  No idea what that means of course. Even if it’s true.  The second is – the Whole.  If everything is whole, it must follow that any part of it can be reached from any part of it.  No idea what that means, of course, even if true.  The third is saner and possibly madly more interesting.  We don’t just see what’s there like a camera.  Suppose you despise poor people or are terrified of dogs.  If you see a poor person or a dog, your brain adds a generous dollop of ‘your stuff’ to the image.  Doesn’t it.  I don’t just mean you have an emotional response.  Your brain edits the image.  So you only really see ragged clothes or dirt or teeth.
You don’t see a person and you don’t see the dog is really rather small! Were they big sharks?
ROTFL.
Tush, I was being serious…Imagine a shark the size of a goldfish.
Think that might be called a piranha. Well, smaller.  Not entirely sure that’s better.
All of this, all of it is about seeing. 
All of this is about what Sarat saw when he looked right back at me!  My life seems to have got quite exciting since then.  I couldn’t read what he was thinking.  I think now it might have been something like, OK, you want to play? I play.
 
And Spetzi wrote.
I kept thinking about those 94 it is actually elements.  Like a fully-stocked kitchen.  Only you can’t put them together any way you like because they won’t go -  but there must still be a mind-numbing number of combinations, with or without human aid.    So then I found a site for kids on chemical bonding and reminded myself – honestly, this girl was taught science! So then I wondered can something that doesn’t exist come into existence or is everything that can exist in existence.  Has life diverged as much as it can and if it can’t diverge more what stops it.  At which point I more or less decided that I needed a chat with Cioulis because the alternative was ten years at the Schools! But I remembered, when we were staying at Tamal-va, there was a mutant in a litter, a poor little two-headed puppy.  It was put down of course but it wasn’t viable, that’s the point.  Back to ten years at the Schools, no idea why, maybe because two brains. So then I started to think a couple of strange things, if an insect can manage on six legs, why shouldn’t a puppy if unfortunate enough. Why would it be unfortunate?  An insect is lighter. Wouldn’t a dog benefit from six legs to carry it?  Why shouldn’t a dog have two tails!  We have of course been asking ourselves for many years now why are things as they are and can they be different!  Not, however, on the cosmic scale.  Crazy questions, why isn’t a shark the size of a goldfish? How dare a panther be bigger than a house-cat!  They’re the same design, can’t be a basic design-flaw that stopped goldfish from growing!  Can a shark grow more? How fixed is reality, Ritawa?  There are giant things like planets and minute things like bacteria and it all seems immutable, but if it’s all made of the same stuff is it? Two things.
People have always imagined things that don’t exist, though whether they can’t is something else, from the five-headed monster to unicorns.  There is nothing beyond the capacity of the human mind to imagine, which is a commonplace enough idea except that in the current context it is just a little nerve-wracking. 
Fundamental particles.  I was actually quite good at physics but it wasn’t that kind of physics.  Back to the Grid.  Everything indeed is the same stuff. Jolly little tidbit with which to wow your friends: only 5% of the universe is actually visible.  Isn’t that completely mind-bending?  What it seems to mean is so far as we can calculate only 5% of what is calculated to be the mass of the entire universe is made up of normal matter that we can quantify.   Most of what I seem to be currently reading I feel as though I understand about one word in ten – yes, I can cope with ‘the’ and ‘a’ – but I do seem to be able to grasp the essential: the universe is out of this world!  It’s defined as literally everything, did you know that, not just everything that is, everything that ever was and everything that ever will be.
 
Normal people have conversations.  Normal people have ideas.  Normal people speak.

The Catholic ape is of course about as Christian as one might expect from a dedicated SS officer.  Ain't that the case, 'Your Eminence'.