​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.
Hass stretched out his legs.
“First, I should apologize for having been 16.  Being 16 is a design-flaw, which should undoubtedly be corrected in subsequent models.”
“Oh Hass,” I said.
“Second – guy-stuff.” 
“The direct approach,” I said.
“Isn’t this my fault?  Darling girl, why the hell have you never said anything to me?”
I could see Reakoed and Maitlan were as taken aback as I was.
“The very direct approach?” suggested Reakoed.
“The bloody Matter of bloody Kadun!” I said.
“Ah yes,” said Hass, “the bloody Matter of bloody Kadun.”
“Busy, busy, busy!  What the hell are you doing in Azt?”
“Er,” said Reakoed .  I didn’t know where that came from, either.
“Looking after Sarat because he’s my friend,” said Hass.
“Owww!” said Reakoed.
“You are also my friend.  You, however, took yourself out of the loop.”
“Maya was my friend!”  I said. “Don’t you see!  It was the two things at once.”
“Maya and Kyse?”
“I have not spent the past 10 years worrying about what happened when we were sixteen!”
“Good.”
“It’s not that – that I  thought we weren’t friends any more.  See above about bloody Matter of Kadun.  She was your cousin!  Amida – “
“Sssh.  Amida pushed you onto Sarat.  She’s very sorry and she promises not to do it again.  At least the second bit. Maybe.”
I couldn’t help laughing. 
“I turned to you fast enough after Sorg.  I do not believe, it is not in you, it is not possible you are piqued!  I’m not piqued, either!  I’m not running Kadun. Nor was I – that must have been unbearable.”
Hass shook back his hair and laughed outright.
“When did you last see Sarshi?”
“Hang on there!” I said.  “What on earth has Sarsh - ?”
You can’t say I didn’t jump right in, feet first.
“Some people,” said Reakoed, “going years back, when he was – “ He stopped suddenly.  “ – when he was spending so much time in Zur, some people thought Sorg was gay.”
“About that I can be definite!”
“Why, Fal, why?”
“Now that is a personal question.”
“I didn’t think so,” said Hass. “ Clearly, the only woman he was interested in was his twin, his other half, paired of course with Vij.”
“More coffee, Falita?” suggested Maitlan solicitously.
“Falita!” .
“It may help your brain,” said Hass.  “Who is Vij, Fal?”
“Maya’s brother!”
“Who am I?”
 “Am I completely mad!  Don’t answer that.  It’s practically too embarrassing to say.”
“Try,” said Hass.
“You are my family.  Literally.”
“Blood out of a stone,” said Hass.  “And why, darling one, am I your family?”
“Because I ran off with an officer of the Imperial Army.  It’s all mad, Hass!”
“Then we progress.  Very good.  You will remember, of course, that Maya wanted you to be real.  Entirely absent from your performance – your delicious performance that day – “
I batted a cushion at him.  He fielded it.
“Hi, guys, I seem to have joined the family.”
“Evidently it is something of a shock to you to discern that marriage relates you to both Alzani-Meta and the House of Fire.  The context in which you see Vij, Pietri, Caluna – you have been in and out of their house since you were five – it is not in itself so strange.  I have thought how I, how Mel and I see Baya and Essa.  The context in which you see me, Sarat and Mel does not appear to be in-laws.”
“We’re still trying to work out what it’s called,” said Reakoed. 
Hass grinned and continued.
“As I understand things so far, impressionistically but overwhelmingly, you see your link with us as being your friendship with Maya.  From which – impressionistically but overwhelmingly – it follows that your enthusiasm for talking to anyone but us derives from Maya now being dead and thus the tie less binding.”
“Invisible lines crossing lives! At least I got that bit.”
“Further and heretofore, as I understand things so far.  Exoterically, this is about Falita-san-yaega-baht’s duty to Kadun, should she have one.  Yes?  No?  Maybe?”
“Sort of?  I mean, labelled as Falita Syb, of course I’ve got one.  But is she – she isn’t all I am.  Oh gulp.”
“Gulp, indeed,” said Maitlan. 
“And the name for my relationship to Sarat is what?”
“Don’t you think we can bend your ear for a month or so on this?”
“Sarat’s abandoned being Fidubi,” objected Reakoed.
“Nonsense,” said Hass.
“Don’t be ridiculous, how can he be!”
“Did you ever read the history of the Anile empire?  Kadun is Fidub.”
“OK, there’s a sense in which that.  Kadun is Dabida?  That’s more than crazy, that’s gross.”
“Are we or are we not an irtubi colony that grew up?”
“Fidubi colony,” murmured Maitlan.  “Could you possibly be digressing?”
“No,” said Hass.  “Fal’s ideas about her countries are one of  the roots of this.”
“Plural,” said Maitlan.
“Most people have just one,” I said.  “Hass, how can you talk like this?”
“Venga knows he’s irtubi and is effectively also Dabida’s heir.”
 “Sarat was born two things, free-born citizen of Fidub and Anile heir.”
“The buzz-word,” I sighed,  “is organic.”
“Ex-actly,” mimicked Hass.  “You didn’t want to be Queen of Dabida and my guess is you don’t want to bear the weight of Carlin.”
Somewhere in the middle of that I made a squealy noise which turned into, “It’s not as though it were As.”
“Ex-actly,” said Hass again.  “As is thoroughly capable of bringing Carlin into the modern world.  You do not have to do it for him.  If you choose to stand for election, you will do it on behalf of  the values you uphold which are common to Kadun and Dabida.  So where’s the border?”
“I’m not sure I have an answer to that. Yes, I do.  Then it’s the same as standing for election in Dabida.  That’s got to be garbage.”
“Think about the guy-stuff.”
“OK, you all, you who plotted.  You started from somewhere where – all three countries are one.”
“Meaning we were nuts and worse we want you to share our lunacy?”
I giggled
“Could it be!  You argued it as shared values.  Where does earthpower fit in?”
“Metaphysically, pragmatically or historically?”
“You tell me!”
“Two sides of a piece of paper,” said Hass.  “Earthpower is the fertile soil enabling Narulis’ values to root.  Alternatively Narulis’ values enabled earthpower to flourish.”
“Male and female!  You’re saying – you’re pointing me towards – the border is a barrier in my head I need to get past.  Apart from the obvious -  for one thing, I’m PANTHER!  Been there, done that.  I am a subject of the Anile emperor, you know!”
“It appears to be doing your head in,” said Hass.
“No!” I said. “I’ve been over all that with Kyse, for a start.  It’s one of the things that bonds us.  Of course the loyalty is to the values.”  I sighed. “ So where’s the border!”
“Thought experiment,” said Maitlan.  “Dabida is taken over by the nationalists.  Alzani-Meta take refuge in Kadun.  Sarat invades Dabida.”
“It has,” I said, “to be A-M goes rotten, like the Anile court, then Sarat invades Dabida to restore Narulis’ values.” 
“Fidub could invade!” said Reakoed enthusiastically.
“That might be less sensitive,” agreed Hass.  “The Anile empress of course was Zur-bred.”
I glared at him.
“Could you possibly be suggesting that I never threw in my lot with Kadun at all, I threw in my lot with Maya.  That does happen to leave out Sorg.”
“Does it?  I am not suggesting you regard monogamy as trivial.  I understand you found it deeply traumatic to leave Tet – also known as abandoning the Six and throwing in your lot with Kadun. I also understand these things happen, have happened, to many people.  Maya was there to bridge the gap.  Now you behave as though the gap cannot be bridged.  That, Fal, is garbage.”
“Also known as what?  I have rather cut myself off, haven’t I.”  I looked at Reakoed. “Maybe I didn’t find it traumatic enough.   Maya made it all right?”
Hass looked at Reakoed and grinned. 
“I hear things, Fal-girl, I hear things.  Such as certain persons being the Three.”
“I am – dividing myself on the Matter of Kadun?  At the point – the exact point where my – my safety-net went, a very Zuri Zuri – “
“I don’t know,” said Reakoed, “I haven’t asked him, perhaps you have, but I’d make a pretty good guess Kyse never for one second thought of himself as anything other than a Dabidan working in Harn.” 
“No,” I said, “no, I didn’t.  Maybe it was too obvious!  I mean that’s why he hared back to – to me.  WTF am I doing here!  He did ask himself about working for Sarat.  If we were together and I was in Azt.”
“I bet he did!” said Reakoed
“There can be no question,” said Maitlan, “of a repeat performance.  You in Azt leaving dear old Kyse doing his thing in Zur.”
“Is that what’s terrifying me?”
“You tell me.”
Hass said:  “You asked me what the hell I was doing in Azt.”
“Providing a safety-net for stray Dabidans? Minus one.”
He laughed.
“Until Kadun has a democratically elected government, there can be no question, no suggestion, that the – union is any less binding, that Sarat is in any way isolated.”
“Could that be a bit over-sensitive?  Sarat is embedded in Kadun.”
“Isn’t that rather the point?”
“Still?”  I said.  “They can’t be still – well, of course the Cult stirs things.” 
“Are his intentions honourable?” asked Hass.
“Nobody sane can believe Sarat’s long-term aim is to – invade Ciletij!”
“Perhaps not physically.” 
I grinned.
“I thought the other had happened already.”
“Exactly,” said Hass. 
“I’m not sure I see the diff.  Kadun would be just as large, influential and dynamic.”
“Worst possible scenarios,” said Reakoed.  “One, Sarat has the entire Army behind him.  Is he really going to transfer power?  Two, Sarat has the entire Army behind him.  What happens if the democratically elected government proves to be thoroughly undemocratic?”
“After everyone else withdraws.  Kyse has got safely back to base.”
“Lad’s been on ‘is travels,” said Hass.  “Now ‘e’s come ‘ome again.”.
“Aaaaargh!”
“BPC time,” said Reakoed.  “Home is where your heart is.” 
“Home,” said Hass, “is where you want it to be.”
“Your heart,” I said.  “Before – you might have thought Sarat’s heart was in Fidub.  Home is where your heart was broken.”
“Is it, Fal?”
“Could that be what you’re here to find out.  I suppose – no, I did not ask him, it was obviously a no-no, Sarat has let go of Maya.  In some sense.  I think somewhere I feel – I realize I need – in some sense – to let go of Sorg, then I can make a free choice.  I can’t.  I decided that when I turned Kyse down.  I think I can’t.  I’m not ready.  Would it be a really bad idea if I told myself I can?”
“If you hadn’t realized it, it’d be a lousy idea.”
“Are you keeping Kyse safe?” asked Reakoed.
“From my death?   I can’t ask you how Sarat has let go.”
“You know he hasn’t.  If he had, it wouldn’t be a no-no.”
“He’s functional. He’s not pale and thin.”
“He’s in his right place, isn’t he.”
“I think I shall scream,” I said.  “Just for the sheer pleasure of it.”  But I was giggling.
“Let’s take that one on,” said Maitlan.  “You sit surrounded by goat-shit.  To some, a rural idyll, to others an acquired taste.”
“Obsessed by the notion I ought to be somewhere else!  Except of course equally obsessed by the notion I ought to be there.”
“Metaphor,” said Hass.
“It was only when you decided to relax and go with the flow,” said Maitlan, “that you realized you didn’t know where the flow was.”
“It was only when I decided to relax I started to have these interesting time-slips!  That ought to tell you something about where I’m at!”
“Apart from Sorg.”
“Sorg wasn’t a time-slip.”
“Why not?  For the rest of time he’s dead.”
“Wait a minute,” I said.  “If it’s metaphor, why – no, OK, you can be in the right place physically or the right place mentally. Lose both and you're up shit creek!”
“Let me be annoying,” said Reakoed.
“Do please,” said Maitlan, “he’s frightfully good at it.”
“You have no human domestic ties.  You have friends of both nationalities on both sides of the border.  You have plenty of money.  What do you want to do?”
I looked at him cynically.
“Me, you mean, not the heroic young widow of the dashing young officer.  Or possibly the dashing young widow of the heroic young officer.”
“Something else happened when you were 15,” said Hass.  “Apart from me!  It interests me that you focus on me.  Flattering, of course.”
I had no idea what he was talking about.  That’s rather shocking, isn’t it.
“Give me a clue!”
“Maya.”
“Maya?”
“Left you for Sarat.”
“What!  I was not in love with Maya and I am not gay!”
“You are not gay.  I don’t think that stopped you being in love with Maya.  For exactly the same reason.”
“Same reason as what!  Oh.”
“It was masked,” accepted Hass, “by Sarat’s being in Fidub.” 
“I find that OTT.  At 15?  People go out with people.  Oh.  I was going to say for maybe three weeks.”
“Sarat at 17 deciding upon his career!  Terrified of losing her.  Nobody understood because of the separate lives.” 
“You’re saying – you’re suggesting – I kidded myself it wasn’t real, I hadn’t really lost her.  It’s OTT, Hass.  The – the argument is I lost Maya at 15 and then I really lost her.  So why aren’t I furious with Sarat?”
“That’s interesting too,” said Hass.  “Was I not happy to make love to Sarat but not to you?  What do you feel about Sarat?”
“Sarat personally - he’s a real sweet guy!  We’ve always got along fine.  I suppose he does embody the bloody Matter of bloody Kadun.”
“Which has repeatedly ripped your life open,” said Reakoed, with a rather unnecessary enthusiasm.
“Best friends,” said Hass.  “The word ‘inseparable’ usually slips in somewhere.  Since the age of 5, indeed.  Through Maya you met us.  You then ran off with us to make mud-pies.  What was Maya doing while the three, four, six, 75.9 of us were messing around on the foreshore?” 
“She was there sometimes.”
“A lot of the kids were there sometimes.  They weren’t the Sublime Six.”
“What was it with us?” asked Reakoed of no-one in particular. 
“That may be our quest of the hour!”
“This may sound incredibly simplistic,” I said, “but it’s what we wanted to do!  Why does any seven-year-old want to clamber among the rock-pools?  What we most wanted to do.  The other kids had more varied interests.”
“There was a definite gang thing,” said Reakoed.
Maitlan snorted.
“History shall tell the banks we robbed.”
“I thought,” said Hass, “you are so alike, and then I thought, idiot, no, of course it’s the opposite.”
“I really do not have the faintest idea what you are talking about.” 
He smiled
“I think actually perhaps you do, you just don’t know that you do.  You, Fal, you are the eso one.”
“Sorry?”
“I have a theory about your mushroom.” 
“Are you sure you haven’t been nibbling it?”
“Nearly-you,” said Hass.  “May one not say this is not a false self, this is your exo side uppermost, when it should be in balance.”
 “Sarat,” I said.
“Born politician, of course.  Perhaps he should have stood for the Senate.  Of Fidub, of course.”
“You’re teasing me again.”
“Sarat is or was primarily exo.  He found his eso with me and Maya.”
“And you thought - ?”
“You were looking for the eso, but it’s inside you all the time, hiding.  Busy, busy, busy, woman of action, doing.   Something propelled you to think you had to be running about all the time. It might have been the Six.  I’m easy on that one.”
“I’m digesting that.  Sorg,  beneath the carefully constructed witty debonair exterior, was very, very eso.”
“Kyse,” said Hass.  “The only person who knows him very well is Mel, and I have not discussed this with Mel.”
“Solid,” I said.  “Which may kind of be the same?  Private.” 
“All we have to go on is he didn’t want either aspect of the MofK.  Tet.”
“Tet is deep, which may kind of not be the same.   Hass, during our – my and Tet’s time in Zur, I think I was concentrating quite hard on having in some sense a normal relationship.  Life with Tet – shall we go for a midnight swim?  I’m understanding there’s a party.  Why don’t we drive along the coast?   I guess I felt pretty bruised by the other matter.  Not looking at the inside.  Put it all down to adolescence.  Now we’re grown up.  If we haven’t exactly gone our separate ways.”
“But it wasn’t and couldn’t have been exactly like that.  The H-W linked you to the hill.  Maya linked you to Sarat.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of not wanting to know!  Tet now – if something – someone – someone distresses him – does the whole of Azt not know.  He makes his feelings known and that’s that.  He’s not an agonizer, a brooder.  Sometimes I think – being forced to think about himself, his feelings after he was shot almost pissed him off more than being shot!”
“Do you still love him?  I know what Reakoed thinks.  What do you think?”
“He was very sweet after Sorg died.  That’s a long way from.  Life with Tet is also intermittent shouting-matches.  We didn’t have anything bad to throw at each other, Hass.  They were rather fun.”
“I see,” said Hass.
“I don’t see it as a closed door.  Maybe he does.  I know he could hurt me.”
“Exactly,” said Reakoed.
 “I think we were walking around with our eyes shut, as though we couldn’t handle what was about to happen to our fixed world!”
Hass said:  “For  98% of my young life, it was inconceivable I visit Azt, let alone live there.  Everything has shattered, do you see, good, bad, indifferent.  Everything.  For 98% of my life, Zur was my life. Here and there, alive and dead, Azt and Zur, Zur and Van-senok, why is nothing whole?  Mel. Why do you think everyone else has skated it?”
“I don’t think that.  I saw Mel after Tar got them out.”
“Don’t you?”
“Who else has cracked up, dropped out and taken up freaking goat-farming!”
“What’s wrong with goat-farming?  What  have I been saying?”
I closed my eyes.
“What you have been saying,” I said slowly, “is, and I’m joining the dots as I go along here, so yell if I get it wrong – Maitlan cut the cord.”
Maitlan looked innocently at the ceiling..
“Oh yes.  You were saying?”
“Maya was the cord that couldn’t be cut?  I was saying…You were saying!  Was I not a happy little Zuri?  Who should have left school and studied agriculture (optional!) and lived happily ever after with Tet on a small-holding, or at least until such a time as we both, emphasis on both, felt we wanted to be in on the happening.  Or maybe I should have studied chemistry or become a photographer or or or.” 
“The label,” he said calmly, “‘Mel’s friend’ was not binding.  The label ‘Maya’s friend’ possibly was.”
“I felt I should have been there.  It’s my job.  I should have been protecting her.”
“Meaning?”
“Everyone thinks – including me – this is just a break from my ‘real life’.  Self-indulgence.”
“You – half-think everyone else is skating it.  You half-think you have a limited number of friends! Or indeed relations.  Who told you you were walking wounded?  Why do you think everyone is so pissed off with Mel?”
“That’s very sweet of you.  The fact remains I had duties, commitments, responsibilities.  Everyone else is getting on with the job, even if bleeding from internal wounds.” 
“And if something inside you is screaming this is not my job, this is not what I wanted to do?  Your term ‘everyone’ encompasses an extremely limited number of people – in fact maybe only two!”
“Sarat didn’t step down so I’m a failure. I’m wincing.  There’s more truth in that than.  After all, I am Falita san-yaega-baht!”
“They start us on a path.  They don’t – laminate us!  Make us untouchable.  We have to do that.  All of us, I should say, including you, skate normal life.  Normal life has evaded us for some time now.”
“That’s exactly it!  We’re at war.  What kind of a drongo goes goat-farming in the middle of a war!”  “Now it is Dabida’s war.”
“It’s my war!  It’s taken two of the people I care about most and what am I bloody doing, harvesting pettifer?  What kind of dumbfuck am I!  That does not need Mel’s input.”
“It’s not that kind of war.”
“That’s part of the problem, isn’t it.  If it were, I’d join up.  End of story.”
“I gather you do good by stealth.  Education and so on.”
“Why isn’t it enough?”
“Why does it seem to you without value?”
“That’s a bit obvious, isn’t it.  It doesn’t risk my neck.”
“It is hardly cowering.”
“Isn’t the next step running home to Dabida?”
“Does the BPC not say that the bonds forged between individuals are beyond price?  Fal, you do not need me to tell you what is going on all over Imperial Kadun.  It is not speeches by princes or indeed senators that ensure Kadun’s future.   If it become a shooting-war, you join up.  Very good.  This is now.  You asked me a question.  We got side-tracked.”
“That seems probable!”
“You have answered it.”
“Fine?”
“If you wish to represent Carlin, represent her.  Perhaps you may do more good in the Senate of Dabida.”
“All right, all right!”
“Needing to risk assassination is not a solid foundation for action.  We had to, have to do it..  And so we have gained everything and lost everything.  There was never any other way to win.  And so Sarat came to Zur and told us he killed Maya.  Venga said that was balls.  No Anile throne, no funeral.  And Mel said, we were told to run for cover and we ran.  Have we not too our demons?”
“You’re saying no-one else has to do it? No-one who didn’t start it?”
“Actually no.  I may be saying everyone has to do it!”   He considered. “I am saying – Mitch, Karula, Zulagan, Qine, Karci, Vrin, Baz, Saryulin – the list is long, no?  Anyone who engineered the revolution, anyone who openly upholds it, is a target, but of course there is a pecking-order. We all knew to what we were committing ourselves.” 
“Are you sure you’re not saying it’s their country!  There is a select group of people with irtubi partners whom I have joined.  Mel and you!  Can you – can either of you truly say your commitment isn’t determined?”
“Kadun preceded Cantilip.  If I say our primary commitment was to Sarat?”
“Not to Maya? Oh!”
“Who notably did not have an irtubi partner,” chipped in Reakoed.
“If you – if we start with something basic, simplistic.  No-one wanted an increasingly vile Kadun on the doorstep.  Most people couldn’t see what to do about it!  Sarat won’t find himself with his back to the wall.  If he did, at what level is Dabida committed?  What about our government?”
“Our?”
“Don’t grin like that. OK, suppose we elected nationalists.  Suppose – you can’t say this is impossible – suppose the whole of the old  Quadrant – “
“It won’t, not in the foreseeable future.  That is what we have slaved to achieve and that is what we have achieved.  Too many with irtubi ties, irtubi friends.”
“The happening.  Everyone involved.  OK.  I was there!  All the same – is moving to Azt really politically – wise!”
Hass and Reakoed looked at each other.
“How shall I break this to you gently?” asked Reakoed.
I got it.
“All right, all right, some people are more mobile than others.”  I sighed.  “It’s all fluid, isn’t it.  Day in Batna-kri, evening in Wintawa, night in Azt.  If anyone has a dual commitment, you do.”
“I knew you’d understand.”
“Grr.”  I turned to Reakoed.  “Are you – irrevocably committed?”
“To A-M?  Of course.”
“That,” I confessed, “is not an angle.”
Hass pretended to look shocked.
“To join a defence organization,” said Reakoed,  “is to accept a risk.   To leave one is not, I’d say, in this situation, to lose it.”
“A thought-experiment,” said Hass.  “ I go to Sarat.  I say I need you.  PANTHER return you then to the H-W.  You work with me in Azt.  You burst into tears at strange moments?  You lose your temper over nothing?  And so on.” 
“Fiend.  Of course I hack it.  But I might feel like bursting into tears at strange moments and I might come to you and say, OK, I’ll do this job, but long-term this is not what I any longer want to do.”
He grinned.
“That question has been asked.”
“Maybe I should,” I said.  “Clear some of the crap away.” 
“Such as they only let you go because you were Her Imperial Majesty’s best mate?”
“Hass!”
“You called?  Have you run that one past Faun?”
“Of course I bloody haven’t!”
“Why of course?”
“The measure of risk,” continued Reakoed, “may in some circumstances be extreme, for instance if you had attempted to throw Maya out of the range of the blast, which would undoubtedly have been your duty, had you been there.” 
“It’s not the same, is it.”
“It’s not the same.”
“On the other hand you have made damned sure I grasp the opposite! What’s the game, Hass? 
“That’s what we’re going to find out.   The meaning you give to the word ‘functional’ seems to me unusual, perhaps unique.  I understand auto-pilot.  One day, which is not yet, get Mel on the subject of auto-pilot.  I understand also, of course, you were in a state of acute distress.  You seem to think you had a breakdown.  Did you?” 
“Oh come on!  When people feel their plates have shattered and spend ten hours sobbing?  What else d’you call it?”
“I don’t know.  Exhaustion may be one word.  All of us, all, understand that sustained sleep deprivation heightened our responses.  The goats did not starve.  You did not starve.  Someone found you your  cottage, purchased the goats, tilled the field?” 
“No!”
“Breakdown is just that. The car doesn’t start.   You feel you can’t do what?  What you don’t want to do, only you feel you must?  Result, stasis.  Being you, I suspect you did the one thing that could force you not to break down, self-sufficiency, cutting yourself off from those who’d hold you up.”
I blinked.
“That is an incredibly positive perspective on the Matter of Fal.  I like it!”
“But it had its downside.  You weren’t there to die in Maya’s place.”
“I just stopped liking it.”
“But then of course if you’d broken down instead – there’s a gap in the narrative, Fal, a huge gaping hole.” 
I glared at him.
“Maya again?”
“Correct.”
“Tell me the worst.”
“What did Maya think of you?”
I sighed and relaxed again.
“She didn’t think anything of me.  She loved me.”
“Oh my dear girl. Why oh why could we guys not do the same!  That, I think.  Not sure now, Fal-girl, not sure.  She was a she.  Her love had nothing to do with sex.”  He laughed suddenly.  “Ye Most Sorrowfulle Tragedie of Mel and Fal!  You were both entirely right. But fi!  Mel, her beloved cousin, is yammering about this damned crack of yours.  My lady Maya – the profoundly eso Maya - contributes nothing to the argument?”
“She didn’t think it mattered.”
“And who else didn’t think it mattered?”
“Bandi.” I sighed.  “Another woman.  This is getting to look awfully like the stereotype – “
“Oh no,” said Hass.  “Not at all.  The opposite if anything. Sex doesn’t matter anything like as much as teenage males think it matters!”
“I suppose you’ve talked to Bandi.”
“No.  I don’t call for the H-W reports on my family.  Why d’you think I got here so fast!  Exactly, Fal, what did she say to you?”
“But it did matter!” I said.  “But only – “ I shook my head.  “Extreme stress, I mean, really, what extreme stress was I going to be under?  It would never have been an issue, would it, for the whole of the rest of my life. She really didn’t say much, ‘cept what I’ve said, a network of fine cracks.  She didn’t think it mattered.  When I think about it – that’s the opposite of what Mel said, what I’ve been saying?  Except the plate shattered!  Shattered into hundreds of bits.” 
Hass reached across and squeezed my hand.
“I think there are two separate things going on here.  I just don’t yet know what they are!  Not sure, sweetheart, really not sure.”
“Sex doesn’t matter?  I trust we can all see the where it doesn’t matter!  Maya did not share, but nothing, nothing, leads me to think “
“Sarat is good in bed, yes, very good, possibly perfect.”
I chortled. 
“One might ask, weren’t you jealous of a part of Maya becoming closed to you, but of course love has nothing to do with sex!”
I started.
“Saski!” 
After a while he stopped laughing. 
“That was not part of the Grand Plan.”
“Saski really couldn’t get the hang of why Maya was cool about it – but of course love has nothing to do with sex!  But it had everything.”
“That, my sweet, is because we were but poor young males, while you and Maya floated far above us, only Maya knew it and you didn’t.”
“I think I begin dimly to grasp Vax’s responses.” 
“Slow strangulation,” suggested Hass.  “Both of us.”
“You did apologize.   One might ask – but isn’t that the opposite of your I lost Maya theory?”
“Depends on the level?”
Another thought struck me.
“That says so much about what you said earlier about how no-one could understand the relationship.  Sarat and Maya, I mean!  You told Tar.  Maya had a field-day with that, and that was before Saski.”
“It was a little breath-taking,” acknowledged Hass.  “Mel, you know.”
“Yessss.  I did rather gather.  Hi, Daddy. We’ve come back from the City especially to tell you all about our sex lives. Aren’t you pleased?  Aren’t you grateful we care enough to share?”
“Not far off.  Of course it was because of Cantilip.”
“Hass – acknowledging this may be crossing the line, but we are talking about Sarat and Maya at 17, not –  Maya’s death - what does all this say about Sarat?”
“Then we talk of Maya’s death.  She was the part of him the world never saw.  Perhaps one may say finally you left Maya.  For an eso relationship with an adult male. The constant – perhaps – is the need for the eso.  After Sorg was killed, with everything – in pieces.”  I knew he’d been about to say blown away. “You were stripped and so you could understand  you couldn’t find it in another people, you had to stand alone.  But you were so – flayed, reduced to everything, a spark of light that you could see Sorg.  That is all of course very much perhaps!”
“But Maya was still there.”
“Yes.  Time forecloses.  Don’t get Mel on that one, either!  Not unless you have several years to spare.”
“That’s not the Mel I know and love.”
“No.  One day you will have a long talk with Mel.”
“Why not this day?”
Hass grinned.
“I was always the practical one, you know.” 
But I turned and considered him seriously.
“There’s a certain amount of truth in that.  Sensible!  I like the image of my hard drive.  ‘Cept when it’s insanely whirring.  I think there’s something there.  It seems vulnerable to being over-written – the programs!  Faulty connection to the source.  Always telling me I have to do?”
“Try thinking of representing Carlin independently of Sorg.  You have made a life there.  You know and love the people.  They know and love you. And?”
I closed my eyes a moment.
“Barrier in my head.  Zur-chick.  WTF.  And of course.” 
“Falita san-yaega-baht cannot return to Zur.  Maya’s best friend.”
“What a mess!  May I ask you a stupid, ridiculous and personal question?”
“What else am I here for?”
“You and Mel have always been incredibly close.  Negative on sibling rivalry.”
“At no time did I offer to enable him to run off to Van-senok.  It wasn’t an option.”
“Therefore Zur must love Cantilip.”
“Therefore Zur must love Mel.  You weren’t on Sarat’s Pad.  You must have read it.”
“Sovereignty.” 
“You have an even more personal question?”
“I’m not sure it’s my business.”
“What Maya said to Pietri and Caluna, perhaps Tar knows.  What Maya said to Tar and Saski – they do not share.  What Maya said to us – OK, chaps, over the top.” 
“She knew she wasn’t coming back.  In any sense.  Hass – how can it be that I never asked her how she could?”
“Cut the cord?  It didn’t occur to you as relevant.  Am I not sensible?  Maya knew the moment she crossed the border she did something irrevocable.  What of it?  She made that choice when she was 17.  There was never any return.”
“She – she stopped being Tar’s niece.”
“Or we became the emperor’s cousins.”
“Relational.  Relative.  There’s something there.  I don’t mean relations!”
“What you are depends on where you are.  Or not, of course.”
“Let me play with that one.  In Kadun I am, can only be, Sorg’s widow.  The rest of my complex life is irrelevant.  In Dabida I’m – whatever people know about the rest of my complex life!  My – Kadun interlude is/would be irrelevant.” 
Hass said: “Shall we talk about the crushing weight of expectation? Do you not perfectly represent both the old order and the new? With Tar’s consent, Mel and I crossed the border.”
“Pietri.”
“Pietri and it was of course discussed did not want to be Dabida’s heir in contingency plan (H)
“Then Vij.”
“Then Vij.  Then?”
“M-m-m-aya.”
“Indeed M-m-m-aya.  Thus Tar, Pietri, Vij stayed in Dabida!  In parenthesis I may add that while Pietri is in his own way rather fond of Sarat and certainly a great deal fonder than is generally held to be the case, he is not so fond that he would wish Sarat to be both Anile emperor and King of Dabida!  Nor of course while in its own way fond of Sarat, would Dabida. I have no idea what would have happened.”
“Meanwhile Falita No-one In Particular is screaming under the sheer weight of Carlin.”
“Why are you  pretending to be in a state of breakdown?”
I didn’t erupt, or at any rate not instantly.
“Why – I – am – what?”
“I saw you after Sorg died.  We all did.  Collapse is something people sometimes need to do before they can get fully upright again and so not in itself particularly significant.  It becomes significant only if they do not rise from the ashes.”
“OK,” I said, “I get it.” 
There was a rather awful silence while they waited for me to say it.  
“I’ll put the kettle on,” said Reakoed.
“No…” I said.  “You’re saying – I suppose I have kind of said – invisible lines crossing lives.”
“The usual expression,” said Maitlan, “is fit for active service.”
“When Maya was murdered.”
Reakoed squeezed my hand.
“Another useful expression may be sick leave.”
“Try hunky-dory,” suggested Hass.
“Found a new direction.  Everything was.  I cannot forgive myself for not going back to work.  That is what you’re saying.  I cannot find myself acceptable to myself.”
“And the rest,” said Reakoed.
 “Time forecloses,” I said through gritted teeth. 
“Sarshi,” said Hass again.
“What about bloody Sarsh!”
“You really don’t have a clue, do you,” said Hass.
“Oh thank you!”
“What the San-yaega-bahts think of you.”
“And you have asked them!”
“I said they’d shout at each other,” said Maitlan.
“Families,” tutted Reakoed.
“Vij is my cousin, yes.  I talk to him.  Vij is Mel’s cousin.  Vij and Mel are in Zur.  Vij and Sarshi spend a lot of time on the hill.  Mel is my brother.  Mel talks to me.  Need I go on?”
I scowled.
“Sarshi is Duvi’s niece.  Sarshi is Asdinan’s cousin.  I spend a lot of time at the House.  I am honorary female parent to Smudge.  What the hell are you laughing at?”
“So where is the border.”
“Carlin the bubble,” said Reakoed. 
And so I echoed Mel, as they had always known I should: “Why is nothing whole!”
“Mostly because both internally and externally you have seceded.”
“The way you make it sound I’ve dropped out of the human race.”
“Ah-ah.  The way you make it sound.”
“Somewhere I understand that I am Falita san-yaega-baht, sort of sister-in-law to Her Late Imperial Majesty, and I’m really not at all sure I can handle it?”
“I should have thought it – vexing,” said Maitlan. He smiled.  “To have in considerable part dedicated one’s life to evading the Matter of Kadun and find one is in some sense the Matter of Kadun.”
“Mel,” said Hass.
“What about him?”
“One might think – this of course is conjecture – “
“You don’t say!” I muttered.
“A sort of terror – horror at the prospect of becoming Queen of Dabida might be enough to freeze the sexual response?  In conjunction with – the other aspects of the occasion.”
“I’m trying to find an enormous problem with that.  The trouble is.  Mel was never frantically in love with me, the way – do I experience a sort of terror, horror!  Was he?”
“It is my – estimation,” said Hass, “Mel was quite sufficiently in love with you for that to have been it, had you shown the slightest enthusiasm for the enterprise.”
“And they all lived happily ever after, she said with a sort of terror, horror.  This eso side of me screaming in protest.  What do I want to do, run off with the Morag-Fahdi!”
“Possibly,” said Hass.
“Isn’t that what you did?” asked Reakoed.
I turned to Hass.  “You, Venga, Cantilip.  Maya.”
He grinned.
“Eso as hell.”
“Shavli.  You don’t have to know anything.  You don’t even have to think about it to appreciate.”
“What,” said Hass, almost to himself, “actually is the Matter of Kadun.”
“What,” asked Reakoed, “don’t you even have to think about?”
“If anything happened to Sarat – she couldn’t be Anile empress in – in exactly that mode!”
“Appropriate to the time,” murmured Hass.  “Undoubtedly, however, she could be Anile empress.”  He gave a particularly wild grin.  “Negative on the sibling rivalry.  She, however, has offered.  Or at least. Shav would not do anything so crude as to offer.  Shav merely conveys if, then.  The flow, you know.”
“Rather clearly I don’t!  Maya wasn’t like that. As Anile empress.”
 “Don’t you think so?”
“In – in a sense I was always, repeatedly, leaving Maya?”
“In a sense, Maya was your centre, from whence you felt it safe to branch out?”
“I loved the outdoors.”
Reakoed and Maitlan looked at each other.
“Now you may be flowing,” acknowledged Hass.
“Next you’ll be joining NoZone,” said Reakoed.  “Are you a member?”
“No.  No, I’m not.”
“Do we understand,” asked Hass, “that in Maya’s absence Kadun needs a female icon?”
I stared.
“Terror!  Horror!”
“But of course you’re Zuri,” teased Reakoed.
“Perhaps we should approach the question differently.  What is it you do not want to do?”
 “Try,” said Maitlan, “being the person you’ve made yourself.”
Hass laughed.
“Time is running out.  Maya’s death gave you time unlooked-for.”
“You’re in the loop.  When are the elections?”
“When Sarat chooses.”
I couldn’t help laughing.
“How democratic can you get.”
“When, when, when,” said Reakoed.
“When Sarat has adequately indicated he is unswayed – I understand of course the converse.”
“That goes back to what we first said,” said Reakoed. 
“Everyone needs time to recover,” I said.  “What did we first say!”
“Sarat and the army.  Nobody, except the obvious of course, believes Sarat wants to or intends to govern Kadun as an absolute monarchy for the rest of his life, least of all CLIK, who are effectively running Kadun for him!  Power in the hands of the people!  It’s quite complicated.  In some sense, Sarat is – fulfilling the role he would have had there been the damned elections!  Except.  Except he remains where the buck stops.  Except he has oversight.  Except the officer-class has not implicit trust in CLIK.”
“In short everyone is happy,” said Maitlan.  “They have democratic governance and civil liberty.  They merely side-stepped the detail of voting for it, an – oversight which eventually they’ll get around to correcting.”
“The election,” I said slowly, “won’t actually change anything.”
“I do hope not!”
“That’s just it, isn’t it.  A particular way of doing things has been established.  Were there subsequent marked deviation – “
“He’d have to step in.  So – the people most in favour of the revolution are also the people least concerned about the elections it promised because the elections represent a possible threat to the revolution which is otherwise assured.”
“You got it. I said it was complicated.”
“Strange may be a better word.”
“Everyone happy,” said Hass.  “Except perhaps Sarat.”
Reakoed grinned unexpectedly.
“Of course he’s bound to be a bit tense.”
“Sarat would fight for Kadun in the same way Mitch or Varulin or or or would.  Because it’s his country.  Conclusion: one may change countries.”
“One may!”
“Shall we have another go at values?”
“And?”
“A long time ago, so it seems, Sarat pointed out values do not have nationalities.  They do not carry passports.  Then there’s Mitch.  It is held that the values brought from Fidub were alien but that is nonsense or why did so many follow Narulis?  Then there’s you, Fal-girl, in one breath declaiming that you are not Sarat’s team, not Mel’s team and in the next impaled on the border.  What do these things mean?”
“On no account forget PANTHER serve no-one, and especially not Fidub!”
“May one ask,” said Maitlan, “what is wrong with being Mel’s team?”
“Sarat’s team?” suggested Hass. “I really don’t think there’s much wrong with being Mel’s team.”
I eyed him cautiously.
“Was that the subtle wit for which you are renowned or something else?”
“Maya’s team,” said Reakoed.  “I think we should talk about the it’s what Maya would have wanted song.”
“When was the last time you saw Maya?” asked Hass.
“About a month before she died. They came to Carlin.”
“Nothing crass, I trust, no harsh words never withdrawn.”
“Oh Hass, no, we had a whole day together, it was great.”
Reakoed looked up suddenly.
“She didn’t, by any chance, because they all do when they get thirty seconds to themselves, say she was skiving off?”
“I just laughed.  I knew what she meant.”
“What did you talk about?” asked Hass.
“It wasn’t really a skive.  We went into the village, into the Rabbiters’.”
“Yes, darling-girl, but what did you talk about?”
“Nothing.  Everything.  None of this junk.”
Reakoed sighed.
“Work!  They talked about work.”
“Goss,” I amended.  “She told me about a visit from a factory-owner who wanted CLIK off his back over equal pay.  Can’t afford it and that’s a fact.  I told her – ironically, of course, though I didn’t see the irony at the time – about broadening the horizons of the kids in the village – “
Hass grinned.
“What our viewers want to know is how you  were you feeling.”
“Fine.”  I had a rather strong feeling Reakoed and Maitlan were biting back a ‘did you hear what she said?  I don’t believe she said that!’ routine. “OK,” I continued, only slightly defensively, honestly, “that does support a number of the ideas batted around here, including I might add some of my own.”
“No PANTHER?”
Hass looked at me and smiled gently.
“Jaiz and Mellow.  One in front, one behind.  They only joined in in company.  If you mean did we have the opportunity to talk privately, yes, we did – and no, we didn’t!  When we came back home, PANTHER went to talk to the goats.  I could have said anything to Maya, if it had occurred to me.  In any case, it’s for absolute certain I could have said something like I need to run something past you sometime.  If it had occurred to me.  Apart from the fact that I could have emailed her or rung her any time.  I had it hacked.  I thought. What you said about pretending to be having a breakdown.  If you mean now, I am not ‘pretending to have a breakdown’, I am candidly admitting I was in a state of total delusion!”
“Were you?
“Oh for – that’s why you’ve devoted yourself to showing me all the things I was deluded about.  Of course Maya is pivotal and of course you’re my – whatever you are, second cousin-in-law!”
“Didn’t someone tell Amida, the terrible thing is you weren’t wrong in the first place!  Isn’t it – pivotal you did what was right for you?  And essentially that Maya’s death had trapped you into doing what you wanted to, as it trapped Sarat..  Just clearing away some of the crap…Then was then, now is now.  Distinguish, puh-lease between what is relative and what is absolute.”
“What is relative appears to be – “  I felt my eyes water.  “ – shit, I thought at least I was getting over being watery.”  Reakoed reached for the tissues.  “I don’t know how to be without her.  Thanks…OK, what Maya would have wanted.  Not.  Bloody appalled.  Would not have cared if I’d chosen to – choose to take myself off into the middle of the sands.  Isn’t that exactly it?  I don’t know how to be – eso and active.”
“Do I not recall,” leered Reakoed, “she just wanted you to be you.”
“So you cut yourself off,” said Hass, “and so are surrounded by people who though they know and love you neither know you so well nor love you as much, and I do not think – I have not asked them  – it occurs to them for a moment that standing for election is an issue to you. Nor of course for a moment is the life you lead an issue to them.  They are proud of Sorg, they are proud of Carlin and they are proud of you.  Therefore somewhere inside you squeal this person they know and love, of whom they are proud is not you, though she was you until Maya died.  You feel they do not take account of – the part of you that is Zur, that ‘you’ is being over-written, but I do not think that the case.”
“That they don’t take account of or that me is being over-written?”
“Both.  Especially the first one.  Did it occur to you to go back to Zur after Sorg died?”
“No.  Basically.”
“They noticed.  As of course they noticed you did not in any normal sense break down.  Distress they understand..  I can’t cope.  I need people to help me.  These they do not understand.  They aren’t stupid.  Nor like the rest of us do they have any time for bureaucracy.  They understand perfectly well  you could have remained at the Imperial held up by your friends not doing very much at all.  I think probably they understand that you understand this and chose to make an issue of your independence, of which of course they approve.”
“But that’s what – my ‘independence’ turned out to be Maya-dependent.”
“Did and didn’t.  So too Sarat.  It’s not exactly unusual when someone dies to find a gap in one’s life.”
“We’re not talking about a gap, OK, in either case.  One – one of the supports, foundations of one’s life.”
Reakoed said: “Right, you didn’t go back to PANTHER when you were completely fit to do so, having changed direction, not uncommon in fluid, dynamic Imperial Kadun.  You appear therefore to have convinced yourself that you would have been able to save Maya.  Fal, my love, why do you think you would have even been there?”
I said: “They waited politely while she gazed fixedly at the ceiling..  No answer, guys.  I just assume.”
“You could have been,” said Hass, “you might well have been.  There is no reason whatever to think you would have been.”
“There are several places to go from there,” said Reakoed.  “One of course is do you blame PANTHER?”
“One,” said Hass softly, “is how is Sarat feeling.”
“One,” I said, “is wouldn’t PANTHER be responsible for protecting the senators.”
“That too,” said Hass, “runs through the whole thing.  Are you protector or protectee?”
“No-one or someone.  Class.  You wouldn’t be trying to tell me I don’t believe Carlin loves me because my family hasn’t wielded power and influence for 1500 years.”
“600 will do,” cooed Hass.
Maitlan laughed.
“These are the sort of people who found out exactly what you are and are not the moment you fell into Sorg’s arms.  It is precisely why they love you.”
“Why I – represent modern Kadun.  I’d forgotten how good you are at arguing both sides.”
 “How are PANTHER feeling?”
“Furious, I guess.  I note the assembled company are resolutely Dabidan.”
“Cho,  Airoch.  Let us look at both sides.  It would have been naïve –more than naïve, absurd – absurd to have ever believed we could change the world with no casualties.  Worst possible scenarios of course included not only civil war but the continent at war.  We did everything to annul those threats and succeeded.  Thousands of squaddies are alive and well.  Sorg and Maya are dead.  Better of course that Sorg and Maya were not dead.  We personally have footed the bill, not – cannon-fodder – “
“Which is one of the reasons why anti-democratic government almost certainly will not be elected,” said Reakoed.
“We all knew that getting out there was the only way.  Thus our parents – our grand-parents – have sweated blood. I do not think anything prepared us, could have prepared us for the people we have become.”
“Sarat seemed different to me.  You don’t.”
“There may be reasons for that.”
Reakoed laughed.
“Hang on,” I said.  “No, OK.”
“PANTHER,” continued Hass, “are one might say absurd.  These deaths should not have happened.  We cannot find the breach.   Even in your rural fastness, you will have observed there have been no arrests.  One might have thought that Maya’s death would lead you not to dwell on how you should have saved her but to –  ?“
 “I thought of it.  The Cult killed her.  To find the particular baboons – “  I stopped suddenly.  “It is you know possible to hold two opposing ideas at once!”
“Anyone can hunt baboons but only you can represent Carlin?”
“Attack the source, at least. Contribute to – to making Kadun somewhere they have nowhere to hide.  I assume the hunt goes on.  It wouldn’t be limpid genius to spread its details over the press, now would it.”
“It does and it doesn’t.  Sarat wants Searc.  He wants him finally and irrevocably. That’s what Kai does – “
My jaw dropped.  Didn’t think jaws really did that.  .
“The Economic Liaison Officer told me to forget any crap I’d heard about her pivotal role – “
“Maybe not pivotal.  Certainly crucial!”
Reakoed grinned.
“Maybe she can’t see just how important winding them up is.
“Kai is no financial nitwit,” said Hass. “She knows enough to carry off the job.  But she’s not a financial genius, either, by which I mean she sees that figures can be made to dance, somersault, mysteriously turn up on the side of the world, but she doesn’t see how it’s done.  Look, no hands!  She is not, therefore, in this respect the best Sarat can come up with.  That alone infuriates them!  The best he can come up with are of course those to whom she rabbits when she gets back to Kadun.”
“Probably think it’s positive discrimination,” I muttered.
Reakoed laughed.
“That suits her just fine.”
“She waits for them to make a mistake?”
 “Another mistake,” said Hass.  “They made a mistake when they killed Maya.  They of course know exactly who Kai is, everything they loathe and despise.  They are forced to listen to her.  She enjoys it enormously.  Meanwhile Sohenoil amuses itself sabre-rattling.  Sarat has a lot of time for Bal.  He really doesn’t want to bring him down in flames, not to mention the human cost in unemployment, bankruptcy.  They are not fools enough to think Sohenoil impotent but of course in their terms care for the human cost is a sign of weakness.  Should they think Sohenoil too weak, Sohenoil has swallowed up – causing a certain amount of amusement in certain quarters – Livewire, Harn’s largest manufacturer of digital electrics, including  of course the phone subsidiary, and Vivalia Publishing, whose titles include Glitz.  People have taken to calling Sohenoil the Python, some flatteringly, others not.  The Python Effect also stabilizes  Bal to some extent.  The message is succinct.  We do not buy from Harn unless we happen to own the Harn company in question.  By owning the Harn company in question, and thus enabling it to continue to sell to Kadun, we avoid down-sizing, lay-offs. 
“I thought we were against monopolies!”
“Laters, laters.  That is the war.  In part, that is the war.”
“So – it’s a reversal – instead of the City owing half Kadun, Kadun owns half the City!”
“That’s the general idea, yes.”
“They tell her things? No, of course, light dawns, they expect her to tell them things!”
“I gather they can barely bear to talk to her at all.  She’s all Sarat is prepared to give them, and I mean all – the commercial side of the Rep Centre has been shut down.  Kai babbles – her word, like a little dancing brook.  They hope she will let slip something she shouldn’t.”
“My brain has had better days but how does that – close the net?”
“Directly, not at all.  Not all bankers in the City are pro-Cult. All bankers in the City find it prudent to pretend to be pro-Cult.  She comes direct from Sarat.  They know they can trust her.  No-one is going to say anything of the slightest interest in a meeting where the Cult are present.  She picks stuff up anyway.”
“Such as sorrowful murmurs that we are regrettably willing to deliver ourselves into the hands of Sohenoil!”
“The point, then,” said Maitlan, “is she is not a banker.  She therefore does not have her own agenda.”
“Well spotted, that man!” said Reakoed.
Maitlan inclined his head.
“Speaking as a financial nitwit,” I said, “I think even I can see none of this stops financiers talking to each other all day every day.- there may be some in Kadun just as desperate to know exactly where Sarat’s going - ?”
“Sarat says nothing.  Cho says nothing.  Both occasionally yawn and swallow.  Kadun has gone where Sarat wanted.  People have money in their pockets and equally production has soared.  The City is being ruthlessly excised from the equation and everyone with half an ear to the ground knows it.”
“I am the total  financial nit-wit.  When I inherited, I asked Faun to ask the accountants to look at the paperwork and check it was OK and left it to breed.”
 “Complete breakdown,” murmured Maitlan.
“If anything, I was hyper, the whole time, hyper sobbing, hyper sowing – seeds, I mean, not needles!”
“One way of getting it out of you,” said Hass.
“May I suggest something,” said Maitlan.  “Because you see your life in Carlin as escapism, you see representing Carlin as an extension of that flight from ‘the real world’, a theory alas more than adequately holed by the reality that it dumps you at the hub of ‘the real world’.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” I said after a moment.  “I’d quite like to have a problem with that.  But I also know there’s a job to be done there.  It may be slightly impossible.  You can’t say it’s not challenging.  Town and country, capital and labour, farmers and greenies.   There are tensions in my rural idyll.  It’s not so much they’ve been smothered.  A balance has been found which is – is not exactly the balance.  A balance that worked in the frame of reference in which they found themselves.  Some kids from NoZone turned up and started to lecture Carlin on land management.  That didn’t go down too well.  Then there’s development.  There are plans to build a new village down the coast from Car-sandis.  Give people the chance to live in the country.  It’s being sold as a large new village.  You could call it a small new town.  Some people are reacting as though it’s a steel mill.  There are wider prejudices – townies leaving gates open, starting fires.  There are simple things.  Townies and tourists think rabbits are cute.  Frome thinks they’re dinner!  Then of course there’s open war.  Here guns are loaded, cocked and aimed!  Dogs chasing sheep.  You do not bring a freaking gaze-hound to farmland!  All hell broke loose.  Come to think of it, I probably prevented a war – the owner of the extremely valuable, extremely dead pedigree pooch was Ciletij!  What’s so funny?”
“We think,” said Hass, “they will say you represent not Carlin but Alzani-Meta.  I don’t think it will get them very far but I think they will say it.”
“Have to think about that one.  There are other topics for debate besides land use and conservation.  I don’t think – if relations with Dabida were some kind of issue, I shouldn’t abstain.  Who would be better placed to tell them about Dabida!”
“Do you want Carlin to change?”
“It is changing, hourly.  Everyone knows it is changing and must change but the extent of the – no, the physical extent of the change, that’s the key issue.  The mental change is total.”
“Uzz’n still tarks Carlin.”
“Cars uzz’n still tark Carlin!  More so!  It’s a sign of identity, a nearly secret language.”
“In people who feel just very slightly threatened?”
“Cars.  Baint ‘ostoil, now.  You have to have some kind of a feel for the country, for nature.  That goes beyond whether you’re a farmer or a greeny.  Basically what they had against the NoZone folks was they doubted they’d so much as planted a window-box.  I rang NoZone in Car-sandis and asked them WTF.  They tried to bluff it out.  I detected the scent of sexism.  I started to talk about nitrates and soil bacteria.  I didn’t know I knew quite so much about nitrates.  I actually surprised myself.  End of sexism.  They said they’d investigate and get back to me.  At which point I had to give my full name.”
“I am enjoying this,” said Reakoed. “At which point?”
“You could hear the gulping.”
“I imagine they got back to you rather fast.”
“Unfortunate oversight, kids still wet behind the ears, needs to start with simple stuff, not a mature and sophisticated eco-system like Carlin.  I was feeling frivolous. I suggested Duvi’s herb-garden.  Really, I said, it’s a perfect miniature eco-system.  He could count the species of butterfly.  I supposed I’d better fly the flag.  I tried to be reasonably sensitive about it.  As a general principle, our revolution runs on ask not tell.  1.  Plenty of folks in Carlin have studied agriculture.  2.  The basic point about the folks who haven’t is that by trial and error, without benefit of science courses, their distant ancestors pretty well worked out how things grow best. The folks who have studied agriculture actually talk to the folks who haven’t.  See if they can offer bells and whistles. They actually dug up a lepidopterist, a serious academic lady.  Duvi adored.”
“But of course you want to go back to Zur,” teased Reakoed.
“Whatever,” said Hass, “are you going to do with all that money?”
“It frightens me?  No, I don’t think it does. I just happen to be on a back to nature trip which OK is slightly unreal.”
“Your life in the prototype stage?”
I laughed suddenly.
“Where is my life!  There’s a lot in that.  Hey guys, everything’s fine, I’ve just lost track of my life a minute.”
“The question then would seem to be,” said Maitlan, “to be senator in Azt, that is your life or Maya’s life?”
“Bearing in mind,” added Hass, “that Maya loved you and thus would have wanted you to do what you want to do.”
“I guess I don’t think I can really believe that.  Believe that certain – options wouldn’t have disappointed her.”
“Did goat-farming disappoint her? Nobut you were going to stand for election.  Or convinced yourself you were, to justify goat-farming?”
“Maya is dead. You no longer have to convince her.”
“It looks to me like you’re heading – I don’t want to do anything!  That has to be garbage.”
“I wonder.”
“Oh do you!”
“What happens if you stop.  Proto-breakdown didn’t stop you!  You opted – perhaps – for pretend-stopping, but of course you do not stop.  Choosing to stop is not breakdown.”
“No-one can completely stop!  Oh, OK.”
“OK what?”
“Can you really say,” I challenged Hass, “that you are not in a damn’ program!”
“Meaning?”
“Stop being driven.  Let it all go on around me.  Engage when I and as much as I choose.  Do you? OK, you haven’t moved to Azt.  Would you if you could?”
“I permit certain constraints,” said Hass.
“Meaning!”
“An uncrushing weight of expectation?”
“Suppose I say we’re all trapped!  I’m not, not, not saying that is my deepest and most fervent conviction – I think! Those invisible lines have criss-crossed us so thoroughly – “
“I do not think Sarat can’t cope without me!  I do understand that the time he has to – consider his inner life, shall we say, is limited and generally around 1 o’clock in the morning.    If he wants to talk, I talk.  Love is not a constraint.  It would not, could not work were we not in the same building.  Remove love and one could say I mould my life to fit in with Sarat.  Now, suppose the situation were reversed, it was Sarat who died – “
I’d just started to open my mouth, when Reakoed said, “But it wouldn’t be, that’s the point, exo, eso.  Fal would not have the same role.”
“Does that matter?” asked Hass.
“No,” I said, “it doesn’t matter.  Oh!  Oh, umm.  If Maya had been left on her own, I’d do anything to help make her exo life as easy as possible and – none of this would matter a hoot.”
“We  go to Zur a lot,” said Hass.  “We rather like the place.”
“Leave myself behind,” I said.
“You take your self with you,” said Hass, “wherever you think to go.”
“Not least, of course,” pointed out Maitlan, “because its cause was alive and well.”
“I was just settling down to a really good, really deep conversation about Hass.  I take it you’re not doing nothing until 1 in the morning?”
“Day in Batna-kri,” murmured Maitlan.
“If I skip the bit about programs – that is love of what? Who?  Sarat?”
“Certainly Sarat.  Certainly also Mel – A-M has not come so far and lost so much to back down now.  Perhaps just love of it.  I like people.  So of course do you.”
“I wonder!  It occurs to me – the thing about no diary!  No being firmly committed to an event three months away so that a nice little trap can be laid.  That can’t still hold.  Sarat – you – you must know what you’re doing!”
“That is the uncrushing weight of expectation.”
“Azt,” said Reakoed, “has learned not to expect them to behave normally.”
Hass laughed.
“The invitations are constant and gracefully acknowledged if not accepted.  It is really not a good reason for attending a function that one happens to be free on the day.  Happening to be free on the day does not mean one has nothing better to do.”
“There is another side to that, I think?” said Maitlan.  “You are not trophies, status symbols?”
“That is not a road,” said Hass, “we wish to travel.”
“Look who’ll be there!” gushed Reakoed.  “If anyone wants to meet them, the door is open.  Everyone knows which causes are supported.  Sarat doesn’t think he supports the environment by attending a fund-raising gala ball, though of course he may attend if he feels like partying, which on the whole he doesn’t.”
“I have a horrible vision,” I said, “of your diary as a list of alternatives.”
“What is ‘diary’?”
“Oh Hass!  List?  Notebook?  Palm-top?  I’m going to get to the bottom of this!  Who knows, it may shape my life in Azt.  Colts open the post and read the email, yes?”
“Agreed.”
“And direct you to anything personal, which to most people would include invitations, but to you don’t – and they must keep a ‘diary’, a note of that to which you have been invited – “
“Alas, not.  I mean I see the invitations. Otherwise a week later I run into the guy who says, I hope you got our invitation…”
“It’s much more complicated than that,” said Reakoed.  “You’re forgetting the invitations from Dabida, or for that matter Ciletij and consequent commitments.”
“Representing Mel?”
“Or representing myself.”
“So – the only imperatives you recognize come from being Dabida’s heir.  Similarly the only imperative Sarat recognizes comes from being Anile emperor!  But that can’t be really true because in both cases.  You choose what matters.  What matters?”
“We don’t like being bored.  Sarat has no interest in committees, even informally elected ones, a lot of interest in whether the people who dissent from the view of the committee have a point, and minus interest in giving committees a taste for power.”
“We have the ear of the emperor, you know,” murmured Maitlan.
“Gee, guys,” said Reakoed, “a lot of people have that.”
“So?”
“I get off lightly?” suggested Hass.  “Sarat does not necessarily attend such meetings as one might consider vital.”  He looked at me.  “Have we strayed from the point here?”
“Well, now, guys, that depends!”
“So what’s the imperative?”
“I think you might have missed the point,” said Reakoed. “A point, anyway.”
“Do tell!”
“The point is being.  The doing comes from the being.  Being seen to be probably puts it better.”
I groaned.
“So you’re telling me it doesn’t matter what Sarat does!”
“I’m suggesting it doesn’t matter a hoot what Sarat does, so long as it comes from what Sarat is.”
I appealed to Hass.
“Couldn’t that be just the slightest bit completely deranged?”
“What, actually, does Mel do?”
“Not take decisions determining the future of the entire nation.  We have a government for that.” They laughed.  “All right, all right!  You know what I mean.  What I think you want me to say is wander about being Mel.  That’s what Tar and Saski seemed to do – not be Mel!  Why am I finding this confusing?”
“Possibly because you think Sarat is constantly taking decisions determining the future of the entire nation.  All the fundamental decisions were taken in Zur ten years ago.”
“Non-negotiable standards,” sighed Reakoed.
“I sort of see what you mean.  I lived at the Imperial too!  But it was  a constant, hey, what shall we do about this!”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Reakoed.  “We figured it.  Where were you born!”
“I think I can correctly answer that one.”
“What do we say in Zur?”
“Er.”
“About drains!”
“The government deals with the drains!”
“And does the government mind people saying that, does it infringe on our sacred Constitution, does it hint that democracy is about to be abandoned?  So what does it mean, Fal?”
But I burst out laughing.
“I remember a pretty heated discussion about drains.  Well, sewage, raw sewage, to be exact.  Sarat has clear views on  raw sewage in reservoirs. Some guy from Ciletij turned on a tap.  Serious error!”
 “And then what?”
“OK, it would be dealt with.  By people who also had distinctive opinions!  But Sarat wasn’t going to tell them how to deal with it.”
“So what’s the bottom line?”
“It can’t be done isn’t an option. The whole world knows that! I still don’t agree.  Decisions, decisions!”
“Economic ones,” suggested Hass.  “There were things that could not sensibly be decided until we had all the facts.”
“Not being an idiot,” said Reakoed, “I’m not disagreeing with that!  But I’m talking about now.  Try again.  When people say CLIK are running the joint, what do they mean?”
“CLIK are running the joint?  Knowing that if they transgress against those basic values we all hold dear a lot of people are going to say so, because there are a lot of people watching.”
“So too the Senate of Dabida!”
“I s’pose…I certainly see why – oh yes.  Why no-one’s in a hurry for elections.”
“OK…”
“We do not,” said Hass, “go around making speeches about those basic values etc, we merely exhibit them. Does that help?”
I sighed.
“Being is doing?”
“I am reminded,” said Hass.  “Duvi and her herb-garden.”
“She was brilliant when I was a hyper-non-broken-down wreck!  I just don’t think herb-garden psychotherapy cracks this one.”
“Surely,” said Maitlan, “that is  precisely what you practise.”
“My herbs bleat?”
“You told me she said something,” said Hass.  “About your being so like Sorg.”
“Why must it always be a struggle!   Oh shit.  That’s letting go, isn’t it.”
“And?”
“It goes – it goes something like, let go, Fal, let go. What of?  They’ve taken all I had.  That’s why I have to let go?”  It began as a statement and ended a question.  “That’s what I have to let go of?”
“You have only yourself,” said Maitlan.
Hass said: “You said you knew the basics.”
“I s’pose – is that all letting go is.  Think that’s ‘all’ in inverted commas!”
“’Kicking out’ is brisker!”
“Just the determining factors of my life.  What – and I am phrasing this very carefully!  You’ve obviously talked to each other.  Just talk among yourselves!  What do you think would be good things for me to do?”
“How about Blatni?”
“Blatni!”
Blatni is a sort of play-pen for the startlingly rich. 
“Always Stress-Breakers.”
“Walk away physically?  Leave it all, everything?  Kyse has money, doesn’t he!  I trust Kyse has money!”
Hass laughed out loud. 
“Kyse has a steady income from Stress-Breakers.”
“It’s generally called a vacation,” said Reakoed.  “People have them, you know.”
“You, of course,” said Maitlan, “consider your current existence a vacation.”
“So when did you last have one? I may be a bit cross.”
“Poor Fal, etc, etc?”
“I told you it wouldn’t work,” said Reakoed.
Hass shrugged.
“You sit here tying the knots tighter.  If you will not walk away mentally – “
“I do what!”
“You have just said.  The determining factors of your life are two people who are dead.  Not only are they dead, neither of them would wish you continuing – distress.”
“We’ve been there!”
“We have! I do not suggest you spend the rest of your life as a dilettante!”
“Stop.”
“Stop.”
“Aka skive off.”
“Aka skive off.”
“From your perspective,” said Reakoed, “you’re locked in a permanent half-skive.  Why not do the thing properly?”
“Go hiking.  Have absolutely nothing to do.  Any other suggestions?”
 “As I see it,” said Hass, “you stop or you start.  Plunge back into the fray.  You don’t just sit on the fence, you impale yourself on it.”
“Stopping is better? Maybe I should ring Sarat and ask him to call the elections!  You seem to have spent an awful lot of time arguing convincingly that my life in Carlin is – valid, important.”
“Were you convinced!”
“The gap,” sighed Reakoed, “of course, is between how things are and how you see them.”
“I know that!  Do I!”
“Where’s the barrier?”
“Isn’t that obvious?  Sorg and Maya were murdered.  Aren’t you telling me that doesn’t matter?  Dismiss it.”
“No.  No, that is not what I am telling you.  I may be saying it is not the totality of what you are.  It is not the essence of what you are.  You exist apart from these things.  You choose your response.  At the moment you are driven.”
“I know all that!”
“Well, then!”
“You’re not angry,” said Reakoed.  “I wondered.”
“What about?”
He looked at me in total disbelief.
“Sorg, Maya, nothing that matters. I thought maybe it’d come out.”
“Of course I’m angry!  Isn’t everyone?”
“Yes,” said Hass with a grin.
“And everyone else isn’t red in the face with rage either.  Don’t get it.”
“The solution is to do something about the problem, attack its root.  Only you seem to have a bit of difficulty over doing.  See multiple above!  What you’re doing matters.  It probably matters more in the long term than what we’re doing.  But we touched on –  Fal, if anyone’d asked me, I’d have said you’d have wanted to be in on the chase.  That does not seem to be one of the alternatives tying you up.”
“That, of course,” said Maitlan, “was before she discovered her eso side.”
“It’s paralysing you,” said Hass. 
“Just stop.”
“The usual excuse for not stopping is that you’ll find out what you actually think.  I don’t think that applies.  Which you actually think!”
“Are there direct flights to this Blatni place?”
“Only for private jets.”
“Aaargh.   A horrible suspicion dawns.  You wouldn’t be thinking of coming too, would you?”
“That will give them something to talk about.”
“I’m sure it’s tebbly discreet,” said Maitlan.
 “I did think of my sister-in-law’s place in the north,“ said Hass
“The thing about you is no-one’s ever quite sure when you’re teasing.”
“If you’re going to be in Azt, you’ll have to get used to the cold.”
“It can be pretty nippy in Carlin!  Maybe I will settle for Blatni.  What’s the reasonable alternative!”
“Anywhere,” said Hass with suspicious meekness. 
“Except of course,” pointed out Maitlan, “there has to be service.”
“Ref!  You mentioned Stress-Breakers!”
“Oiling the wheels?  If the idea were to absorb yourself in how to catch and skin dinner, that would be another ball-park.”
“Is Stress-Breakers that bad?” asked Maitlan innocently.
“Exactly what is this supposed to achieve?”
“Whatever it does achieve.”
“I take it I’m allowed to walk in the foothills of the Calsides!”
“It’s not quite as bad as he’s making out,” said Reakoed.  “The natives are friendly.”
“I take vacations,” admitted Hass.  “Short ones.  Sar-fenan goes there a lot.”
“S- “
“I don’t say he’ll be there when you are.  Don’t you want to meet Maya’s murderers?”
“What the hell - !  Angry! Oh gee, Fal, you have to stop, Fal – and you – !”
“Calm down.  No-one is forcing you to Blatni.  I have a theory it would clear your head.  I wondered if you might want to go to the City with Kai but you wouldn’t take the bait.”
 “Of course you’re not angry,” said Reakoed.
“You think I have an anger problem!” I said, no, OK, I yelled.
“Not really, no.  Only in this respect.  You nearly cut his throat, Fal.”
Mental squeal of brakes.  Oh.
“Oh.  The rule of law.”
“How much did you want to?”
“A very great deal.  What was the point? 
“It was recognized – does that sound objective enough?  It was recognized.that not only might there be casualties but that we might have to kill,”
“Of course it was bloody recognized.  He was effectively my prisoner.  That is not in the manual.  No-one would have minded?  I should have minded.”
“Self-doubt. The bad kind.  Exactly how badly did you frighten yourself?”
“It wasn’t an issue.  I didn’t.”
“Bollocks.”
“Maybe.”
“Is there not – “ began Maitlan.  “Not a parallel, a mirror-image?”
“It’s all interwoven,” said Reakoed.
For a moment I just looked at them.
“Bloody right it is!”
“You did not save Sorg.”
“Thank you for that tactful enunciation.”
“Therefore both deaths are your fault?”
“I know that’s crap.”
“You think Sarat – had he turned a minute sooner, had they not moved to that part of the dais - ?”
“Amida is no fool, is she.  There’s just one thing.”
“I know,” said Hass.
“Not with you, not with anyone.  There’s no point.”
“I think Sar-fenan will be there.  ”
“Your definition of ‘vacation’ is perhaps not.”
“But it’s fun,” said Hass. 
“Do I or do I not ‘have to stop’?
“Of course you have to stop. Unless you’d rather go on.” I don’t kid myself he wilted under my glare, but he did add, “As you are.”
“And how is meeting that piece of infected shit supposed to stop me?”
“Jolt the hell out of you?”
“May it not be the case,” mused Maitlan, “that the idea is enough?”
I don’t suppose he wilted either.
“Things will fall into place!  Have we been taking part in the same conversation?  How can they!”
“I am not sure how much of this matters.  It is true.  It is false.  It is part-true.  It is true on a fine day when the sun is shining and irrelevant when the snow begins to fall.  What I should like to think will crystallize is what matters.”
“None of it matters with a  capital M.”
“So?”
But Maitlan said, “When did you last have some fun?”
“Oh come on!” I said. “A long weekend is one thing.”
“Somewhere else, then,” said Hass in tones of sweet reasonableness.  “I said: anywhere.”
“Do you think Vij and Sarsh would come?  When the bastard is definitely there.”
Reakoed laughed quietly while I did more glaring.
“Sarat would complete the set,” said Hass.
“I like it,” I said.  “Maybe not tomorrow.  I want to be sorted before, not –by.  You go there.  You – talk to it.”
“Only when spoken to,” said Hass demurely.
“Waste of oxygen,” muttered Reakoed.
“I’m surprised they – don’t the ghouls have private  haunts?”
“They really don’t want to – I hesitate to say can’t afford to.  Yet.  Desert the field.”
“Our charm,” said Hass, “our intelligence, our grace, our warm, vibrant personalities.  Our appalling clothes.”
Reakoed guffawed.
“You never had appalling clothes in your life!”
“Depends on who’s looking.  They really do not like my GASH Ts.”  I chortled.  “Zik has a wonderful – I  don’t actually know what you call it, sort of fine silk tent, pull it over your head and it falls gracefully over your shoulders as you lounge by the pool, its being vital  to keeping the weak northern sun from burning your brown Fidubi skin.  It has ‘PANTHER protects’ on the back  and a certain silver chair on the front..”
“Just another front in the war,” I said.
“Exactly!” said Reakoed enthusiastically.  “Everything is a front in the war.”
I scowled.
“Remind me to tell my goats that.”
 
Eventually we wandered off to bed.  I wriggled in my sleeping-bag and  thought about guilt and fake-guilt and I should have been with Maya guilt.  It didn’t take me long to get to really the only thing I’d ever done to feel guilty about was Tet and I didn’t seem to have much enthusiasm for that one. Do you know what you did to Tet?  Shit.  Possibly not.  Far too busy being in – in a fantasy – in a what?  That’s what my agonizingly brief time with Sorg suddenly seemed to have been, a dream, a game.  But we were at the cutting-edge!  Or something.  So there I was in my dream and everyone was far too kind, or maybe just far too busy, to tell me Tet was bleeding to death.  Or was that just another fantasy?  But I had a truly awful, heart-wrenching moment of longing.  We – Tet and I – were sitting on a breakwater and were happy.  Tet was real.  I knew then somewhere I’d filed Tet and me in a box called extension of childhood.  That’s exactly what we were, kids together.  Like my adult life didn’t begin until I got to Kadun.  What was wrong with being kids together?  Obsessed with Sorg and Maya who were conveniently dead.  The living will conveniently still be there when I get around to bothering with him.  If I’d learned anything, wasn’t it that they’re not.  But that too was fantasy.  Tet was safe in Zur.  Nothing would happen to Tet.  And here was I nearly in Zur and nearly getting up and walking to the door.  I have to make things right with Tet!  Even if he does turn me into jam.  Probably got a girlfriend with him.  This, Fal-girl, is not the most sensible – then I remembered he’d been in Azt.  OK, so he’d been in Azt.  Doesn’t mean he’s bloody living there!  I nearly went downstairs to Hass but suddenly I began to laugh. Stop, he says!  What do I do but conceive some other mad plan for doing?  It can wait.  Everything can wait.  I forced myself to focus on that knowing that I  was yammering it can’t, it can’t, time forecloses.  So?  So what?   What does it matter?  To whom?  On which occasion!  I hurt Tet.  I really, really hurt Tet.  I can’t undo that.  I can, however, face it. 
 
I woke up with tears streaming down my face consumed by a single thought: I hurt Mel.  Not Tet, Mel.  It was as though everything Hass had said about Mel, about the guy-stuff, was a huge red arrow, this way, Fal, this way, but I’d refused to see – no!  Then Sarat was lying!  No, Sarat hadn’t lied, Sarat had told me how it seemed to him.  But he must know.   Why must he?  Then I suppose you could say I stopped because I didn’t know what to do, didn’t want to leave the room, see anyone, not just for a moment.  Eventually I picked up my ‘phone and asked Hass to come up a minute. 
 
The door opened.  I looked up.  Rueful smile time.
“I don’t know how to say it.  I only know it’s true.”
“Oh dear, that sounds bad.”
“Hass….”
“Darling-girl, what has happened!”
“You didn’t reject me because of the bloody Whole.  You rejected me because it would have devastated Mel.”
“Ah.”
I found a shred of defiance.
“If he was mad about me, why the bloody hell didn’t he say so!”
“Rather obviously.”
“Are you willing to talk about Mel?”
“Yes.  Mel assumed certain things which turned out to be far from the truth.  The hill your second home, Maya your bosom buddy.  It never occurred to him -.”
“Everyone else assumed – I even understood that.  The only girl in the gang was Mel’s girl. Why didn’t he – no, I can see that.  Ask me out.  The Press.  Then I – holed both of you below the water-line.  I can’t do it, Hass!” I realized what I was saying  “Not, I mean, that there’s the faintest chance.”  I stopped.  “I want to say something.  I don’t know how to say it right, so it’s going to sound wrong and awful.  Please understand I don’t mean it wrong and awful!”
“Sssh, sweetheart, sssh.”
“OK!  I thought – I thought Sorg and I, it was like a dream, a fantasy, but it was a real dream.  It was real. And Mel and Cantilip, that’s like a dream too.”
“Oh my dear girl, of course.”
“Of course!”
“Relax!  Let me get you something – anything, coffee, fruit.”
“Coffee would be fantastic.  Are there any apples?”
“Your diet was always – it keeps you well!”
“Unless I’m suffering from chronic food poisoning!”
“One has to consider all the alternatives.  Do just relax.  If you won’t relax, think about what you just said.”
“My whole life has been based on a fantasy and I’m supposed to relax?”
“No better time.  Eso, babe, eso!”
He vanished.
No wonder I – I feel I’m falling apart. 
Ye Sorrowfulle Tragedie of Mel and Fal.  Exactly how thick am I?
Why did I, do I, could I, can I not see!
Relationships that are totally eso seem – strike me as – unreal, dreams, even my own.
I had a strong feeling I was about to high-dive into very unfamiliar waters.
Mel – Mel what?  Understood, something, nothing, everything, but he couldn’t explain it properly because he didn’t know what it was.  Six-freaking-teen. 
Let me sidle up to the bottom of the diving-board.
I am was shall be so freaking petrified by what I want that I’ll do anything to avoid it. 
What the hell does that mean?
Oh no!  It might just, not totally inconceivably, mean that I want (think I want) exactly what I wanted (thought I wanted) at six-freaking-teen, namely Hass to – transform me.
A yearning so desperate for the eso.
Not sure that I can say that.  Does Hass understand all this?  Nudging me towards working it out for myself.  He said he wasn’t sure.  I think I believe that. 
What is tying me down?
There was really only question I had to ask Hass when he came back, which he seemed to take a long time doing, with a flask and two cups. 
“Chocolate!  I understand it’s good for shock.”
“Why am I so freaking petrified of going there on my own?”
“Keep going.”
He continued to unscrew the lid of the flask.
“That’s my only line!  OK, what – what you said about the perhapses.  Did that scare the shit out of me, that I wasn’t – wasn’t in the – normal, everyday world any more?  Is that what I know about myself, Hass?  If I let go I’ll go somewhere so – so – “
“Different?”
“Different!”
“Then where is the balance?”
“That’s the next step?”
“Here and there.  It’s very hot.  Sip cautiously.”
“Then you don’t think Sorg was a time-slip.”
“Think about that.”
“I just did.  Oh.  Both?”
“In the Jumesit, we have an unparalleled opportunity to – apparently – discourse with a number of leading figures in Kadun’s history, but never in her future.  We don’t know what to make of this.  Your experience with Sorg would seem to indicate there is somewhere the dead have consciousness.  I should imagine you never asked him how long he’d been dead.”
“Of course I didn’t!  Our conversations seemed to – to follow on.”
“And then one day he wasn’t there any more. Sarat told him it would devastate you. He said it was right for both of you.  Were you – any more devastated?”
“No.  No, it was awful, but – but  I understood it was something that had to happen.  Whether it was all my imagination or not.  It – wasn’t how a living person could go living.”
“Being normally alive.”
“I had to ask myself terrible questions.  About being alive.  I wanted to be alive and have – physicality, sensation, heat, light.”
“And so it couldn’t continue, whatever it was.”
“Was it my imagination?  How could it be? Sarat talked to him.”
“It is perhaps possible you created a hologram.  That bloody field is a more likely explanation.  We don’t begin to understand. “
“Field?”
“The bloody Matter of bloody Kadun is in effect a number of phenomena which transgress the Fidubi model.”
“It’s a what!”
“You’re not the only one who’s had an interesting time. I suggest for the mo we stick to the point.  We may not know what the point is, but our intentions are honourable.”
“It’s not – could it be – perhaps!  Let me get to the beginning of this.”
“May I help?”
“I’m hanging on your every word!”
“What is my every word?”
I sighed.
“Stop?  Let me try again.  I have – had an experience not many other people have!  People you love dying is universal, people you love being horribly murdered – it’s in the range of normality.  I – I think I think Sorg was my imagination.  That – therefore – obviously – he ‘went’ when I somewhere inside knew I could bear it.  The trouble with this is a) how could Sarat have talked to a product of my imagination and b) what does it say to me about me?  As in a) holding on so desperately – b) it makes me – does it make me – frightened of  - a part of me – to say I can’t control it is boring and mundane.  It’s out of my reach.  It’s controlling me. OH SHIT.”
“Certainly,” said Hass.  “Piles of it.”
“Oh shut up!”
“Not a chance.  I am not sure if Sorg was your imagination.  I thought so at the time.  I am of course the sensible one.  Now I don’t know. The rest is spot on..”
“Stop saying that!  OK….So that’s the famous crack and all – all this, doesn’t make a damn’ bit of difference because it doesn’t reach it, it doesn’t get near.”
“A minus.  Keep – “
“Going!  I know, I know.  I thought you wanted me to stop!  So I’m wasting your time and everyone else’s – “
“Bollocks.  Your time, possibly.”
“Huh?  So – I’m looking at the symptoms not the cause.”
“Is it out of your reach or do you refuse to go there?”
“As in stop.  This could get repetitive! But I don’t know how to!  On my own.”
“Of course you do.  Try looking at things differently.”
“I thought we did that.”
“Suppose instead of whether you want to be a senator in Azt the question – the barrier – is that you don’t know how to be a senator in Azt.”
“Does anyone!  Or just – just I don’t know how to be, so whatever I do it feels wrong?  That is not comforting.”
“Talk me through a few days in your life.”
I grinned.
“I do relax sometimes.  I went out to dinner last week!  I spend lots of time at the kitchen table going round in circles.”
“I ask suspiciously what else are you doing?  Preparing food, bottling fruit?”
“I’m not thinking about chopping veggies.  I don’t see that it matters - ?”
“I do.  I see that your  idea of dropping-out means there are always calls on your time.”
 “Wellofcourse, she gabbled.  OK, OK, guilty.  My goats need me!  I talk to Benji.  To my relief she doesn’t answer back.  I talk to them while I milk them.  I talk to them – swear at them when I’m putting them to bed.  I shut the door with a contented sigh.  Emails to be answered.  I do wander the Grid.  Isn’t that reactive? I hear you cry.”
“What you hear me cry is is there a second in your life when there isn’t something you ought to be doing?”
“Yes, so there!  I read.  I watch the television.  I even paint my nails sometimes.”
“What are you reading?”
“You really want to know?   It’s called The Barunin Heist.  I picked it up in a second-hand shop.  It’s a detective story about a bank-robbery.”
“That tells me everything.”
“I knew it!  I have revealed all.”
“Possibly.  Gee, I’m just trying to get the full picture here.  Something between a maelstrom of unresolved conflicts and an avatar of serenity?  Your mood fluctuates?”
“Hmm.  I’m thinking about that one.  I’m a serene maelstrom of unresolved conflicts?  OK, this stuff is going round in my head when I’m painting my nails.  Maybe.  It isn’t – seriously upsetting me.  I mean you can drop a few tears while painting your nails but you can’t sob your guts out.  Voice of experience!”
“What happened to the sobbing?  Did you try to stop it or did it stop on its own?”
“It stopped when – when in some sense it didn’t matter Sorg was dead.  I think that’s what I was trying to teach myself.  When the wound healed.  Grief is me, me, me, poor me, I know that much. I love him.  That’s what matters.”
“In your case, me, me, me and a few other things!  Into this tripped poor Kyse.  That of course profoundly unsettled you.”
I looked at him a moment.
“I had not thought of it like that but that of course profoundly unsettled me.  Which just might lead to a certain irony!  Here you are pointing out that Maya is pivotal – until she was killed when – do you think that’s true?”
“Serene in your love for Sorg you would have absorbed Maya’s death had Kyse not - ?”
“Had reality not!  That’s back to what I said.  Whatever Sorg was, it wasn’t part of – normal living.”
“As circles go,” said Hass, “that’s a good one.  In fact it’s spectacular.”
 I frowned.
“I think I see it as progression.”
“Back to where you started.”
“How negative you are!”
 “I just want you to love your eso.”
“That’s what I said, progress!  But I wasn’t – confident enough?  No, it – yes!  It wasn’t balance because it rejected a normal relationship with a live human being.”
“I take it you love Kyse.”
“Yes.  Yes, I do.  Think I do.  I get a nice warm feeling thinking of him.  I think I definitely do, it’s just not – dramatic. There has been rather a lot of drama in my previous attachments!  I don’t think in my current state I should – inflict myself on anyone.  Too much unfinished business.”
“And Tet?”
I was caught unawares having managed to rapidly dismiss my last night’s Tet moment.
“Last night – it really stabbed me how I’d hurt Tet.  Then I woke up thinking how I’d hurt Mel and that – I was in a deep state of unreality, half rushing into Zur to make myself feel good by telling him I knew how awful I’d been.”
“Oh dear.”
“I’m not even going to look at you beseechingly.”
“Of course he still cares.  How this – how that strikes me is somewhat  that you’re seeing Tet as a closed chapter in your life because if he isn’t what is already complicated becomes apparently insoluble.”
“I don’t see a life with Tet,” I admitted.  “I just don’t see what I’d do, which is of course totally Reakoed’s thesis.  Writing my own script.  It has occurred to me.  That I’ve cut out the possibility of going to see him because if he didn’t tell me to piss off – dot, dot, dot.”
“You might end up in bed together?”
“We might both terribly regret ending up in bed together.” 
“You might live happily ever after.”
I frowned.
“I don’t want to read too much – make that anything.  I don’t want to read anything into that!  You don’t see it as a closed door.”
“Read nothing into that.  This is a system message, I repeat, this is a system message.  Do not foreclose!”
“I think I don’t really understand.  I might meet Tet in town.  He might want my company.  We might have a coffee.  We might go out to dinner.”
“All that is so in any case.”
“That’s what’s stupid about it!  It is, isn’t it.  As though I need a blue-print.”
“You rather had one.  Then you fell for Sorg.”
“Owwww!   M-M-Mel is a closed door.  Read nothing into that!  It’s just a remark on how things are.”
“Someone you have yet to meet.  Someone you know already.”
“No-one.  Do not foreclose!  I repeat.  Do not foreclose!”
“You might convince yourself.”
“I do know – I might even understand – my whole life is foreclosure!  There are only three places in the entire world I can be.  It’s ludicrous!”
“And similarly.”
“And similarly there are only two – no, make that three – things I can do.”
“Goat-farming was a rather vivid change of direction.”
I stared.
“I think that means something!  Whenever I try to escape the snare!  I - incorporate the escape – “
“Into the strait-jacket?  Oh yes.”
“Do not be reassuring!  That is forbidden!
“Then stop.”
“Could it be I don’t know how to?  Because – I’m desperate to be – to be with someone – not for himself – that sounds so awful – no, yes!  Because being with someone was torn from me – at least I understood that I had to be on my own, even though – even then – I’m saying such awful things about me!  Do you think they’re true!”
“Had you stayed in Azt, there would have been a queue to wrap arms round you.  It is nonsense to say you would have jumped into another physical relationship. An emotional support network – a most unserviceable substitute.”
“Hmm.”
“May I ask something?”
“You may!”
“Reakoed and Maitlan.”
“My brothers.”
“Never ever - ?”
“Never ever on either side.  Now you’re going to ask why!”
“I think that’s fairly obvious.  Never a moment when you were not emotionally entangled elsewhere.”
“Or they weren’t.  As you have said, at 16 to ask someone out is not to make a lifetime’s commitment.”
“Leading me by the nose back to the universal minus one assumption I was Mel’s girl!”
“That is clearly not currently the case.  They’ve separated, you know.”
“Wha – “
“Maitlan and Sula.  The Fleet, alas, came between them.”
“Apart from in my distinctly raw state I’m so self-obsessed I don’t even know – he’s obviously not interested.”
“Are you?”
“Hass!  I do not believe you have brought me here to play match-maker!”
“Lured, I have lured you here.  What have we been saying?”
“Do not foreclose! Has he said anything?”
“We are talking about Maitlan?  Try it this way, why wouldn’t he be interested?”
“Perhaps because he knows me too well.”
“Fair enough.”
“He’s on the hill –  don’t grin like that!”
“This is Maitlan we’re talking about.  They haven’t fallen into each other’s arms.  That much I know.”
“Let me try something. If – my eso – like a balloon  bobbing out of reach!  Except this balloon is determining me.  What, she demanded, are you doing exactly to get it back in place?”
He jumped up and made stretching, grasping, patting, gestures.
“Have you got a stick?”
“Idiot!”
He made a final grab.
“Got it!”
He walked towards me, his hands cupped round my balloon.
“There!  Stroke it.  Scratch behind its ears.  Love it.”
I stroked.
“Coochie-coo, is oo a little darling?” I said in tones of raw cynicism.
“Do put some enthusiasm into it!  Take it.”
I sighed and held out my cupped hands.
“Could this be crazy?”
“But it’s fun!”
I tenderly grasped – nothing.
“Talk to it,” coaxed Hass.
I looked at him, looked between my hands, looked back at him, bent my head over my hands.
“Why don’t you love me?”
Then I looked up at Hass in shock.
“I didn’t mean!”
He said “Inside, outside.”
“Running away from me, rejecting me.  Do you feel rejected?  Why can’t we live together!  This is totally crazy!”
“Interesting, isn’t it.”
“Keep going?”
“How did you guess?”
“You’re  part of me!  I can’t be whole without you!  How’s that?”
“Don’t forget I need you.”
“I need you!”
“Really feel it.”
I looked at him rather helplessly.
“Because it’s true, isn’t it.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.  No.  Maybe!  I’m not making much sense, am I.”
“That’s what’s interesting.”
“Grr.  OK, attack! I am absolutely sick of your controlling me.  I’m in charge of me!  Don’t tell me you are me, I know you’re me!  Why can’t I know you!  Why can’t I be you!” 
“Lost to the stage,” murmured Hass.  “Keep – “
“Throw this cushion at you!”
“You’ll drop it.”
“Why can’t I get through to you!”
“You are in charge of you.”
“Why won’t I let you get through to me?  Why – why am I frightened of you?  I’ve answered that!”
“Oh yes,” said Hass.  Something about how he was looking at me made me suspicious.  “Now try it another way.  You have caught your balloon.  You are hugging it close because you need it.  Now you put your hands on the control panels and it begins to rise, to float away, taking you with it.”
“AAAARGH.  Apart from taking my hands off the control panels, you mean?”
“Not necessarily.  They might be the wrong place to hold it.”
“Balance?  If I hold it too close, I’m controlling, it can’t float?”
“Shall we go for a walk?”
“How can I go for a walk!  I’m - !”
I collapsed with laughter and of course let go of the balloon.
“So where is it now?”
“Hass, this is doing things to my little brain – tell you what, “ I teased. “Let’s go into town, buy a pack of balloons.  This is practical Fal you’re dealing with!”
But he repeated: “Where is it now?”
“There!” I said, still giggling, “Just behind you, floating towards the window, which is fortunately closed.”
“Suppose I open it?”
“Disaster!  Catastrophe!” I frowned suddenly.  “I plunge through the open window and shatter.”
“If you don’t get hold of it before it goes out of reach.”
“That – that’s a bit eerie.  Sorg?  Damned if I do, damned if I don’t…The balance, I take it – I plunge through the window, catch it, not, puh-lease, by the control panels!  And it’s like a parachute? Instead of shattering,  I float gently down until my feet touch solid ground.  But I have to have thrown myself through the window!  Not to mention be very good at catching balloons.  Oh no!  Have you never heard of a mixed metaphor?” I scolded.  He just grinned.  “No, that does not make sense.  If my – my ballast, is inside me all the time and I trust that such that I throw myself through the window, why should I throw myself through the window?  Answer me that, sir!
“Because you do and don’t know it?”
“Does that compute? I ask myself with the sinking feeling that it does.  Couldn’t have gone chasing without something inside propelling – compelling – me to chase it but.  It does not make sense.  I crash-landed.”
“Who’s in charge around here?”
I grinned suddenly.
“Ever heard of gravity?  I don’t have a problem with – theoretically I could have stopped myself crashing.  I take it all back!  It’s not a mixed metaphor, it’s a brilliant metaphor!  When you fall from a height – “ I held up my cup.  “If I walk over to the bloody window, open it and drop this cup, it doesn’t have time to think before it smashes!”
“But you threw yourself out of the window.  Because it was the only possible thing to do?”
“Let me sit back from this a minute.  Exactly when are we talking about?”
“When do you think?”
“Gravity is quick.  This is slow.  We’re – we’re talking about chasing a fake balloon?”
“Why?”
“Sorg –it did feel like that, throwing myself out of the window, my – my delicious performance.  I don’t know, Hass. I don’t know if I really believed no-one would speak to me again!  Does that sound completely mad?  I think it was sort of  - processing, projecting – what happened last night.  I couldn’t let myself directly feel it?  You’re saying I lunged after – and I had it by the control panels?  So – I mean, are you suggesting, is it even possible – I went – went as far to where Sorg is as – one can – but that doesn’t make sense, either!  The order’s wrong!  Oh damn!”
Wipe away tears streaming down cheeks time.
“Sssh, sssh, ssh!”
Hass with his arms round me while I gulped and sniffled.  I looked up and managed a smile.
“We’ve been here before.  I like to think I’ve moved on!”
Then I felt as though that was going to cause me to weep too.
“Frightened the wits out of yourself.”
“The order’s still wrong!”
“Is it?  Put together what you just said.”
I stepped back from him suddenly.
“No!”
“No?”
“Thrown away everything.  Lost everything.  For nothing.”
“And?”
“Don’t make this easy.  There was no balloon, you see, inside me, nothing to keep me together, but – “ I was shaking my head, rather violently.
“Give yourself a headache.”
“I have you for that!”
“I aim to please.”
“I am totally cut off from – it’s not a crack, it’s the Great Divide! I can’t access it!  But it – “
“Oh yes, it,” said Hass.
“What the fuck is wrong with me!”
“Hunger?”
“The sensible one!  Not really.  The guys must be wondering – I doubt it!  This was always going to be you and me, wasn’t it, you and Sarat.  I think I mean why.”
“I don’t know.  Perhaps something to do with seeing yourself as the opposite of Maya?”
“Why do I hate it when you’re sensible!  I don’t see how it could have – traumatized me, but there’s a lot of truth in that.  Do you really think – the balloon game – “ I cupped my hands.  “ – does anything?”
“It focuses you.”
“Half of me’s thinking how daft it is.”
“Focused.”
“I’m never quite sure when you’re teasing.. In other words I bloody well stop.”
“In other words you bloody well stop.”
“But I can’t walk around – “
“Muttering to yourself I love my eso? You could try.”
“Aw.  I do have times when everything – feels all right.  I don’t believe in it?  I don’t trust it?”
 “Love is shorter.”
“I’m feeling rather basic here.  Because it’s not real.  Reality is – unresolved conflicts.”
“You won’t trust it to show the way ahead.”
“That’s not exactly surprising.  OK, we seem to have reached base.  I’d love to say I don’t want a magic wand.”
“I think it’s time we went touring.  Anywhere, everywhere!”
“You are breathtaking.  Jansi,” I said.  “I’ve never been.”
He grinned.
“Certainly we must visit Jansi.”
“The number of places I haven’t been to is rather large.  I think it might depress me to dwell on it.”
“How negative!  How defeatist!  Cross a few off the list.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you.”  Then: “It’s so ridiculous.  Whatever everyone else thinks of me, I’m sure it’s not I’m in a rut!”
“Fal-girl, there are so many things you could be.”
“Ah, but are they organic!”
“Try listening to the organ.”
“Thought-experiment.  I’m on a diving-board above the spinning world.  It’s spinning quite fast so I have no idea where I’ll land – no, that doesn’t work, skip the ocean.  Its spinning is usefully adjusted so that wherever I land it’ll be on land!  That doesn’t overwhelm me.  Decide? You have to be kidding!  It’d be all right if I was happy where I am.”
“Maybe you are.”
“Guilty as hell about it.  Suppose I say I have a rather fixed idea of  residing in Carlin in harmony with
my eso.”
“Would leaning on gates chewing grass come into it?”
“That would come into it lots.  Stretching out in the grass watching the insects. Nurse the occasional sick goat, not of course that my goats are ever sick, far too well cared-for.”
“Maybe you could be the family vet.”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe!  I think on the whole not.  Farmyard smells are OK.  Sick farmyard smells – I told Kai, about Mel and the cowshed.”
“What cowshed?”
“Bin-liner socks!”
“But it was fun!”
“It all is, isn’t it.  That’s your appalling secret.”
“What else d’you read?”
“Have I an interest? Soil biology!  I don’t find it boring but necessary but it doesn’t strike me as cosmic, either.  Plants.  I get enthusiastic over a flower I don’t seem to have seen before, though maybe it was there all the time.  Lose myself not.”
“Ever?”
“Cast-iron boots.  Mostly.”
“Music?”
“Varies.  I love  Saluvian. Sometimes I’m not in the mood.  It’s as though – it speaks to a part of me which sometimes isn’t there.  Experience did a gig in Car-sandis.  I thought great but I didn’t go.  Felt too old!  The kids told me all about it.”
“What now?”
“Oh thanks!”
He grinned suddenly.
“What does float your boat?  Consider this as a perfectly normal question any one person might ask another.  What shall we do next?”
“I know they won’t expect explanations, won’t even ask.”
“You feel trapped up here?”
“A bit.  Too stupid for words.”
“Suppose I say – but maybe not here.  You try floating.  I’m here to catch you if you fall.  Drag you back to earth if you don’t.”
“Where then?”
“Anywhere.  I thought we were going touring.”
“This could be interesting!  Nerve-wracking, but interesting.”
“I shouldn’t have thought your nerves could be any more wracked.”
“Think of the new flowers there are to meet.”
“Do you remember learning to swim?”
“Actually no.  Born with fins.”
“Oh you were!”
“Are we getting to something like, some people naturally – you.  But gee I had every opportunity.  That’s a bit like someone whose mother was Preceptor of Veterinary Studies lamenting he never had a chance to be a vet! I found Maya instead, didn’t I.”
 
 

 
The town is called Garsit.  It is one of the many small towns in the middle of Dabida to which I had never previously been and it is interesting, or maybe strange is a better word. There is a main street which starts as long low stone buildings with almost flat roofs and moved on to three-storeys stone buildings with almost flat roofs before progressing to coloured brick and then glass and mirror-glass., history of architecture in a brisk walk.  Obviously as Garsit grew they’d lengthened the high street.  There is no apparent reason for Garsit, no river or confluence of rivers, no protective mountains looming above.  People long ago crossing ?not-yet Dabida had decided to settle, not go any further, to just stop.  How weird was that?  It can’t have been like that.  They left somewhere that had grown too big for their liking or maybe just didn’t like them and found an empty space to live wild, live free.  No, you don’t do that, if there isn’t even any water.  But there were trees in Garsit.  Careful irrigation?  Perhaps it had been a trade-route?  Not east-west, but north-south?   I had a burst of inspiration.  If you are going to the coast, it’s too far for one day’s march, so it’s a stop-over, a camp-site that grew.
 
Somewhere in another dream I had seen us as setting out incognito to explore managing to divorce myself  entirely from the detail that people would recognize Hass. The Mayor of Garsit  was a willowy lady of about 40 who introduced us to the head of the school who showed us the kids’ IT lab, which I found frankly startling for somewhere I’d never heard of, my knowledge of course being the measure of all things.  It turned out that lab was indeed the word: Garsit earns its keep as the home of Communigate!  inventors of innovative educational software, much in demand in Kadun, and with many enthusiastic young testers around me.  I sat myself next to a teen engrossed in an interactive nitrogen cycle and shortly afterwards gained the strong feeling she knew more than I did.   We explored the program together and like wow!  You could model the effects of various different nutrients and even branded fertilizers on your various crops.  I asked her if she grew anything and she blossomed so to speak and began to tell me about the abacanth and sarndria in her rockery.  It appears Garsit is lubricated by an underground river fed from the GD which forms a sort of underground flood plain.  Thus two sorts of vegetation flourish, that with deep roots and that which needs little water.  You live and learn! 
 
Where were we going to stay!  We weren’t, just passing through.  We passed. 
 
“We drive all night?” asked Maitlan, just smothering a yawn.
“Why not!” declared Reakoed.
“There isn’t much scenery,” I said.  “Let’s go along the coast.”
“The interior of our fair land does not excite?”
“Spoiled!” I said.
“I’ll drive,” said Reakoed.
“Are you awake?”  I asked Hass.
“No,” he said.
 
The sea appeared. 
“Wanna swim!” said Reakoed
Maitlan gazed intently at the waters.
“Can’t make out if they’re sharks or dolphins.”
“I can dream!” said Reakoed.  “Wanna wash!”
“Washing would be good,” I said.
We snaked along the coast until we came to habitation, a  hotel, set in its own wild garden, with the pool like coming across a lagoon in wilderness, and we swam and swam and swam and ate and ate and ate and went to bed just as our the majority of our fellow-guests were in the middle of breakfast and slept and slept and slept. 
 
Where am I!  I surfaced and wondered where are we?  The accent almost indistinguishable, quite so, yes, we must be in the west somewhere.  Where was everyone?  I showered and dressed and mooched out into wherever, giggling to myself as I observed somewhere a long way down the dashing young widow of the heroic young officer was just the itsiest-bitsiest – no, it wasn’t that I was disturbed more that I just took note of, took note of being in an absolutely strange place where what I did next wasn’t predetermined.  And by the way it was 1 o’clock in the afternoon.  And a special round of applause for Hass for having smashed up my routine… I supposed I ought to link up with my gang before having my hair done.  Phone again: where are you!  Lounging in the gardens.  See you at dinner, I said, or are we moving on.  This place is cool, said Reakoed.  OK!  Dinner at 9.  OK! I wandered off to the cool hair-dresser who tutted over my split ends and washed and trimmed and conditioned and piled the mop on the top of my head for dinner, at which point I mostly looked ludicrous, being dressed for camping.  I was going to have to venture into the boutique next door.  I hadn’t been able to miss it.  There was a crimson garment in the window.  The top half was OK (apart from the colour and the fabric), loose folds, but the skirt was magnificently awful. The fabric was shiny and the skirt many sharp pointed pleats.  The general effect, I thought, was crimson corrugated iron.  I went in and said firmly that I was looking for something in a neutral tone and ended up with black.  The Leotard Look lives again!  Hmm.  Lipstick from the pharmacist and all I lacked was earrings but of course there was jeweller’s.  Again, flash seemed to be the mode.  I do not do earrings that dangle as far as my waist. but I picked up  a  pair of discreet studs then stashed my booty in my room and went to find the guys, who were of course talking.  It pierced me suddenly, who asks Hass how he’s hacking it, but of course Venga did, and doubtless Tar and Saski too.  I just let it all flow over me and should frankly assess my contribution intellectual or emotional as zero.  Time passed and people began to move away, thinking of going out for the evening, no doubt and I grinned like a fiend at Reakoed and said if you will excuse me, I have to change for dinner.  I have had the foresight to purchase something to change into!  He cast a glance at Hass and said Non-stick.  You, however, I said.  I however, he said, packed for all eventualities. 
 
And so I made my grand entrance and heads turned as they were meant to.  The guys jumped up and Maitlan gravely saw me to my seat, though I knew all of them were pissing with laughter inside. 
I think we’d forgotten, said Reakoed.
Maitlan shook his head.  You do not make the effort, Falita!
If you make a sort of puree of peach and cream, then stiffen it like meringue, then decorate it with chocolate chips, that’s masali and I love it. 
 
At last we were alone!
“Allow yourself to love him,” said Hass.
“How can I?  If you really love someone you don’t – one or the other has to be delusion, and it would be unbearable.  Don’t you see how desperately – of course you see!”
“Your need to believe Sorg was the real thing transcends death.  I see.”
“You see.”
“I don’t like this conversation,” said Reakoed.  “To be – pragmatic, it excludes Tet’s perspective.”
“I know!” I said. “Let’s all pile into the car and zip back to Zur and ask him!  Or is he in Azt!”
“You are petrified,” said Hass.
“Me, Fearless Fal, the dashing etc?  I do not need being lacerated.  I have no defence.”  He waited.  “If I felt I had to – if there were some external need to.”
“I meant petrified, not frightened.  Frozen, paralysed by.”
“I think that’s – garbage, crazy.  Excessive!”
“I am thinking,” said Maitlan,  “when two women – or indeed two men – when two people of the same gender!  When they are best friends and each finds a partner, is it not usual that foursomes socialize?  Sarat must know Tet well, I think?”
I don’t blush readily, fortunate since I’d spend a lot of time a delicate shade of scarlet.  At any rate externally. I ended up saying, “No wonder I cut myself off!”  Rightly or wrongly I felt my further contribution was expected.  “We did, yes, quite a lot.  Tet is of  course very entertaining and one of the things he was very entertaining about was the Matter of Kadun.  Mostly we – he and I – just talked about Zur, Zuri, the extension to the Lido, the new bookshop, the idiot on the bus.  This is getting complicated.”
“It does,” said Hass, “when you open the closed doors.”
“OK,” I said.  “Mel is a closed door.  Sorg is a door I refuse to close.  Kyse is an open door.  Tet is – “ I giggled in spite of myself.  “Tet is just a door!”
“A jar?” suggested Reakoed.  “Can of worms!”
“Don’t forget the hotel corridor,” murmured Hass.
“The what?  Oh, all the doors that might lead somewhere else.  Are we going to go all BPC, gee Fal, you need to find resolution here?”
“No,” said Hass, “because Tet is nuts about you, always has been and always will be.”
Ah well, if Tet talked to Sarat – or for that matter to Hass.
“I don’t think I wanted to hear that.”
“I spy another delusion,” said Reakoed.  “You and Tet lived your happy child-like life far distant from the bloody Matter of bloody Kadun.”
“I don’t think I wanted to hear that, either. I am moving on,” I said.  “Question 973, can I without clearing up the wreckage?”
“It will get in the way,” said Hass, “unless you do something about it.  Whether that is internal or external is irrelevant.”
“Is it really!”
“Are you absolutely sure your horror of staging a repeat performance has Kyse as the victim?”
”Oh come on!”
“I deal in possibilities.”
“Some more unlikely that others.  I was about to say, how about I leave the country!  The continent!  I wasn’t being entirely sarcastic.  Suppose I – I really took myself off.  To the Schools.  Studied.  Eventually met someone.  Lived happily ever after in Harn.  What you’re saying is whether I could, can do that depends entirely on how I feel about, what I do about, my unfinished business.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“I can’t do it.  See paragraph 40(b) above.  Nothing binds me to Kadun except me?  What about Dabida!”  Pause.  “I am feeling quite angry and why I am feeling quite angry is because I am not someone who passes the buck but I still don’t like the whole complete and entire buck being landed back in my lap!”
“Of course Kyse might well follow you back to Harn.”
I found I was shaking my head quite violently.
“No, no, it’s another fantasy.  Neither of us would be, could be, happy, single, together – it’s a much worse betrayal!”
“Sorg’s death really messed things up,” said Hass.
Reakoed and Maitlan looked puzzled.  I wished I did.
“If you mean that in due course while living happily ever with Sorg I should have made my peace with Tet.”
“That’s what I mean.  Have you said sorry?”
“I wasn’t sorry at the time. In any meaningful sense.  What does it mean now?”
“What does it sound like now?”
“Oh yes,” I said.  I took a very deep breath.  “IF I were sure Tet was what I wanted, THEN.  How about “Sorry I’ve made a complete cock-up of my life and dragged you into the mess that is me.”  But that’s not.  And why say it?  Not that I’m trying to get out of this conversation or anything.  Are you sure this isn’t more only matters in months with an S in them.”
“No.  No, I’m not sure.  You are.”
“I – I take on board, this happened to lots of people.  Well, part of it.  I then take on board that some of them quite possibly returned shame-faced to their former partners in Ciletij/Vasucula/Dabida/strike out where not applicable, and it maybe even worked.  I do not take on board that is necessarily my situation.”
“Your situation is different,” acknowledged Hass.
Reakoed put his arm round my shoulders.
“He just wants you to think about what cracked you.”
I looked up at him.
“That bad, huh?”
“Try your delicious performance on That Fateful Day.”
“It was all my guilt, wasn’t it.”
“Yup,” said Reakoed.
Somewhere I’m screaming.  “Somewhere I’m screaming.  You’re saying my guilt cracked me?”
“Yup,” said Reakoed.
“I was carrying it for nothing.  I’d wrecked things for nothing. I love Sorg!”
“You have to,” said Reakoed.
“Fuck this!”
“You think Sarat has no guilt?”
“It’s different!”
“Of course.”
“Tet didn’t argue, did he.  Don’t forget we were all there, grandstand performance.”
Maitlan shook his head sadly.
“I have always regretted….”
“Grr.  I’m too confused to be aggressive!  No, he didn’t. “  I stopped being confused and turned on Reakoed. “So what the hell is all this Tet will write my script, just the what the, he never - !  No, he did not seize me by my hair, literally or metaphorically, and drag me back to Zur.”
“Perhaps he never quite believed it could last, Fal-girl.”
“Perhaps he was too bloody revolted by me to care!”
“Did you think he didn’t care?”
“Sorry, chaps, have to run…For the first time I acutely want to be somewhere else.”
“Missile detonated on target.”
“What I think is what I have said I think about my relationship with Tet, at which I’m cringing.  We were kids together, etc.  It’s all true.  It’s all false.  It’s – true when there’s an S in the month.  Building mud-pies doesn’t last seven years.  We were happy.  We were not.  Of course we were!  I wanted, thought I wanted – “ I turned to Hass in appeal suddenly.  “Leave me out of this a minute!  There’s a parallel no-one sees.  I know Sorg played the piss-artist!  You knew him.  I knew him.  Sorg was 24-carat, agreed.?”
“Agreed.”
“And Tet.”
“Agreed.”
My anger had evaporated.
“What are you talking about?” I asked Reakoed.  “What are you talking about?”  I almost sounded desperate.  “I know what you mean, but why!  There’s one thing I can explain.  I think. “ But then I shook my head.  “No, I can’t.”
“What shape is it?”
“I asked you a question,” said Hass.
“Maybe I don’t want to answer it!  Let me ask you one.  What is the desired outcome of all this?”
“We just want you to be real?”
 “Think of it as a fact-finding mission,” said Reakoed.   “What do you want to do?”
“You asked me that, “ I muttered.
“I did?  What do you want from your life?  It’s not organic, Fal.”
“Been through that.  How can it be?  Just you and me,” I said to Hass.  “And the balloon game.  Because it’s the only thing that makes any sense right now.”
 
“I thought – who listens to you, Hass.  Then I thought Venga of course and Tar and Saski.  And Mel and Sarat.”
“It happened,” said Hass.  “There are some things you close because they cannot be changed.”
“That sounds awfully brutal.”
“Yes.”
“And here am I bleating and bleating and bleating.  You nearly said it.  Two people who are dead, neither of whom would wish my distress.  And even if they did!  That’s silly, isn’t it.  If these two people malignly wished me to suffer I’d be the last person to pay any attention to it. Have I achieved anything at all today except reminding myself it’s fun to put some make-up on occasionally?”
“Not really.”
“What really is the bottom line here?”
“Believe that it can – not that it will but that it can – work out without your pushing it?”
“Hmm.  That’s a long way of saying stop.”
He just grinned.
“What’s crazy is I don’t know what I want.  I mean it is, isn’t.  It’d be one thing to be desperately trying to make something I wanted happen.  I know, I know!”
He said it anyway.
“When you stop you’ll know what you want.”
“I actually don’t have any aims.  I did think that.  My life went wrong when I left Tet.  It didn’t seem real enough.  It’s not – that’s what I couldn’t explain.  It wasn’t that Sorg was more glam or more intelligent. He wasn’t even wittier.  Less acid!”
“Did it?”
“Didn’t it!  One of the few things I’m perfectly sure of is that when I was with Tet I didn’t give two seconds’ thought to our interesting adolescence.”
“There are four people in this – triangle!  Two of them are dead.  The living can talk to each other.”
“Four?”
“I think it.”
“You personally, without any wish to be prescriptive or anything ghastly like that, do you think I should talk to Tet?”
“I think he’ll talk to you.  You think  - shoot on sight.”
”Yes,” I admitted finally, “that’s what I think.  Look - there are two reasons for my intruding on Tet .  I may be delusional but I’m not dishonest!  One is to make myself feel good, nothing for him, all for me. Really I’m not the complete shit he thinks I am.   The other would be – because I’d decided, which I haven’t.  Neither is on the agenda.”
“That is how it would look,” agreed Hass.  “On the other hand.”
He picked up his phone.
“Oh no!” I said, but I didn’t actually wrest it from his grasp.
“Tet?  Hass”
My face made silent meah sounds.
“Are you on your own?”
Perhaps fortunately I couldn’t hear Tet’s responses.
“OK, I’m over in the west with Fal, Reakoed and Maitlan.  May we join you for breakfast?”
I did hear an explosion of laughter.  Laughter?
“Think of it as a reunion.”
“See you.”  He cut the call, and turned to me.  “You tried to avoid me.  You avoid Mel.  You avoid Zur like the plague.  You can’t spend the rest of your life avoiding us all.  You’re not going to tear each apart with us there.”
“But I’ll have a pretty good idea of the vibe.”
“You’ll have a pretty good idea of the vibe.  Shall I now invite Mel?”  Tears were pouring down my cheeks. “Fal, Fal, Fal-girl, if it’s that bad.”
I shook my head.  “I’ve only seen him once and he was so sweet and I didn’t deserve it.  I thought he was in Azt.”
“So he is now, Fal-girl, when the mood takes him.”
“Where’s he living now?”
“Same place.”
 “Are you crazy?  You expect me to walk into my own home and  - and - ?”
“And what?”
“Not freak!”
“Yes,” said Hass.
“I’m not going!”
“You prefer the hill?”
“Sorito’s!”
“Drop you off at the train-station?  You think he’d leave that studio?”
“Oh, how much I matter!”
“You matter.”
“You know that.”
“I know that.  Of course he might hide it rather well.”
“You are so comforting.”
 
“Hi,” I said, then “This is hard for me.”  I pretty well collapsed onto the sofa I’d bloody well bought.  “I feel such an idiot.”
“Then we’ll leave you to it,” said Hass.
“You bastard!”
Tet, you’ll have gathered, is not one of your expressionless types.  He looked at Hass, at Reakoed, at Maitlan, at me. And said: “What the fuck is this now!”
“It’s a very long story,” said Hass.
“And you’re thinking we need to talk each other?”
“I’m thinking Fal needs to talk to you not about you.”
“And I am needing to talk to Fal?  Have I no telephone?”
“I’d better go,” I said.
“It’s Hass I have an issue with here.”
“I rang you.”
“I do not care to be set up!”
“ I think Hass got tired of going over the same stuff with me.”
“And what stuff would that be?”
“The total screaming cock-up I have made of my life.  I shouldn’t have left you. I shouldn’t have left Zur.  I am so sorry!”  Well, no, that hadn’t been scripted.   No place like home.  “I’m sorry,” I said again.  “I’d better  go.  I didn’t mean to – “
“Hass, you’ll go, please.”
The door closed behind them.
Was I just real?  Oh shit!
We looked at each other. 
“Umm,” I said.
“No good us both going ape.”
“We always did!”
“Fal-girl, what the fuck?”
“Hass says I just tie the knots tighter.”
“That is not good news.  Do I not hear you farm?”
“Oh, I farm.  And do good works.  Up with the lark, toiling from dawn to dust.  Just so long as I don’t think.  In the end I couldn’t stop myself thinking.”
“So you turned to Hass.”
“Having bent the ear of everyone else in sight.”
“I don’t like to think of you unhappy.”
“It’s not exactly unhappy.  What was it?  A serene maelstrom of unresolved conflicts.  Not that there was much serene. It was Maya’s murder.  I kept your card.”
“I thought to come to you and then…I’ll make us breakfast and then you will talk.”
I didn’t miss the pronoun.
 
I told him everything, which I’d always known I should if I told him anything, though I don’t suppose it was absolutely everything – there is rather a lot of it, isn’t there – but everything about the pair of us and me and come to think of it it might have been everything because there’s so much repetition. He said practically nothing, - this is Tet we’re talking about, you have to factor in the intermittent ‘oh for fuck’s sake’ and ‘now that is screaming garbage’ but he didn’t pursue these telling points and  I watched the dark eyes darken, the slight tilt of the head, the tightening of the mouth, the half-grin, the raised eyebrows – and the barely suppressed laughter.
 
“If I understand now,” he said at length,  “and I want to understand.     This business of the – mushroom – “ The laughter was not suppressed.  “You lived my life.  You lived Sorg’s life.  Where is your life in this? That is the question.  If I had understood how vulnerable you are, might I not have looked after you better?  But then you found in Azt a life that was not mine and thought it your own?”
“Something like that.”
“Let me show you something.”
He disappeared into the bedroom and came back with a small silver stallion running like the wind.  It’s actually a copy of the Pika, but neither of us knew that when I gave it him.  My heart lurched.  Tet placed it gently on the table. 
“A witness, I think!  Now Fal-girl, you are by no means sure you want me back and I – I am by no means sure I want you back, but I am not wholly averse to the idea and nor I think are you.” Oh.   “I am also thinking it’s Hass you need right now to lay your ghosts.  There would be a question, would there not, should I be trusting you if the Senate sat all night.”  I felt duly knifed.   Do not cut the crap, Tet, do not on any account beat about the bush. “I am thinking if I could not you would not be in pieces on our sofa.  But there are bigger questions.  My life, Fal, my life.  Would I not be a target.  That life you could not lead without – infringing mine and perhaps Kyse himself – a grand man, I may say – he does not wish to die for Kadun.  I do not think either of us is of a kind to stay safe in Zur.”  I promptly felt like walking death, which of course was what I was.  “I do not think I know you as well as I thought I know you.   I thought – I thought perhaps that was where you belonged after all, on the wider stage, and oh Fal, what do you do but take up goats. But there is still the wider stage and it is tearing you apart.  You do not have to risk death for Kadun.  Who would think less of you?  Who are your friends?   Is it not basic, Fal?  Whatever the issue.  You do not live the life others have chosen for you.  This is my life.  I’d like to share it.  So says one to another.  But sometimes it is not so simple.”
I managed a wry grin.
“This is my life. I’d like to go on having it.”
“The exemplar is not Maya!”
 “Kadun,” I said, “is not an abstract.  It’s millions of people who need it to work.”
“Then they must make it work! If they decide it cannot work, the choice does not lie with a stray Zuri.”
“A stray Fidubi?”
He hooted.
“Did I not say things are not always simple!  And  I am  a foreigner in Zur, and that too is different.  I would fight for Mel. Not for Sarat.  The border is in your head!  The border is the border and long may cordial relations between our two great nations prevail!  Kadun must stand on her own two feet or we have one great nation and I may say many is the argument I have fought for Mel against the claim that such is his aim!  If you wish to become irtubi, become it.  Impaled on the border now, that much is true.  From my perspective, it is not your home.  It is where you – crash-landed and if I continue that metaphor, when one crash-lands one makes, does one not – “ I felt the laughter.  “ – an impact crater, and it seems perhaps perhaps one’s roots are deep.”
Eeek.
“Tet – would you say – could you say – is that how Zur mostly sees it?”
“Ah, my role as oracle – yes.”
“You, Reakoed, Maitlan.”
“One can immerse oneself in the Matter of Kadun or one can get a life!  A man after my own heart.”
“Perhaps a trifle harsh.  That’s when it started, isn’t it.  I feel as though I’m having a dizzying realization here, though you probably think it’s obvious.  Maya divided me on the border.  Sarat was never part of the sizzling 7.53 recurring.  Sarat was Sarat and separate.  She never felt it.”  That came out a bit squealy. 
“Your life is a wreck, a ruin because you are not Maya?”
“Owwwww.  Can we just sit and look at that one a mo?  Because I have the terrible feeling it’s true.”
“I’m thinking she must have felt it.  It’s what she did with the feeling.”
“Over the top, chaps.  Hass said she said to them.  The list of people I may yet importune does not include Pietri and Caluna.”
“And so you want that pink cloud where it doesn’t matter.  I ask you, Fal, is it that it doesn’t matter or how you feel about the mattering?”
At least I could be brave about this.
“How do you feel about the mattering?”
“You ripped my guts out.”
I just shook my head dejectedly.
“I am not dancing on a little pink cloud, Fal.  Saying I love everything and nothing matters.  I may be saying I love you so it doesn’t matter.  I am not of a mind to be a victim, even if I was the innocent party.  Have I not wondered, did I fail you?  Nor am I blind for is it not a story as old as humanity, the men and now the women go off to war – though nor am I inclined to pour sugar for – perhaps – it would not have been so bad, had it been a war.  The men and women went off to a party!  But then there is the other side.  I could have gone with you. “  Pause.  “Nor will I pour sugar because of what followed.   I trusted you so utterly I didn’t think of it as trust.  It did not occur to me it was possible.   Were we not a team?  The decision was yours.  Why?”
“Not – not everyone was exactly impressed.  Some people – I took it, Tet, that’s not an excuse, it’s just how it was, I took it though it wasn’t true.  More glam, more money.  What I said to Hass was more real.” I dried up.  I could see that he didn’t think that a satisfactory response.
“ I understand the happening, the cutting edge – Fal, I  understand that to be at the centre of a revolution is perhaps not to be entirely sane though I do not let you off on the grounds of insanity!  But these are descriptions of the situation, not the man. More real?”
“Tet – I’m not going to say you’re the least fake person I know because there’s strong competition.  You are very very unfake! He – he met a need in me for – “ Oh Sorg.  “He was different.”
“Different.”
“And the same.  But different.  He was as wild as you, as witty as you, as creative as you.  Slightly less acid.”
“I shall keep the litmus paper to hand!  Fal-girl.”  He gave into laughter. “I am not laughing at you.  Promise.  You’re telling me I lost you to a clone because I had the misfortune not to be born a scion of Carlin?  And so be – different?”
“I don’t think I can explain.”  I had a burst of inspiration.  “What you said about it isn’t  that it doesn’t matter but how you feel about it mattering.  He was – all the things you are, but he made them something – different.”
“Mel will not hear a word against, you know that.  All the games he played with Challin.  Perhaps now you can only lead a double life if you are very unfake at core.  My problem is not with Sorg who snaffled the most beautiful woman on the continent.”
“Litmus paper!”
He grinned.
“And staying in Zur, that was tame.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Touche.  But then this madness of a handful of upper-class kids who changed the world stopped being fun.   I have been shot once.”
“I didn’t understand.  Now I do.”
“What?”
“The greatest fantasy of all.  That no-one would die.  I did not understand that you had no wish to enter a battle-zone for what was not your country.  I also understand – Amida says they sweat blood, did and do – the – courage to leave people you love to do what they have to do.  And – that is the betrayal?”
“The betrayal is your making love to another man.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m hesitant to say this, Fal. There’s not been anyone else, even – casually.  I am not saying it to guilt-trip you.  That is how I feel.  About you.”  He managed a wry grin.  “I’m not certain I’m wanting you but I am certain I’m not wanting anyone else.  When I told Mel my thinking, he said, no, that is not Fal.  What do you say?”
Problem: I wasn’t at all sure what he meant.
“What did you say to Mel?” I asked cautiously.
“That you wanted a hero, someone you could admire – “
“Tet!  No, no, no, no, no!”
“When I felt I hated you, it was because you knew where I’d bleed and that’s where you put the knife.  I asked, what have I done to the stupid bitch to make her hate me like that?  Everyone told me I was being a moron.  I never really hated you but stupid bitch now – how thick are you , Fal?”
“I never thought of it like that!  I love you!”  It hung there a moment.
“It showed.”
“Oh shit!” Well, this was never going to be a make Fal feel good session.  “When – you didn’t chase me – it wasn’t that I half-wanted you to to save me from myself – I noticed that you didn’t, OK.  I thought you were too bloody repelled to care.”
“I just gave in?  The revulsion – the context was not good, Fal-girl.”
“I thought - you didn’t care – that much, you had your art, you were happy in Zur without me.”
“I was happy in Zur,” he said affectionately,  “you stupid bitch, knowing  I had you!  Oh Fal, Fal, Fal!  And then I have thought. You want to know how I felt?  Suppose you and Mel had made a go of it, then in the whirlpool he’d run off with the very bewitching Cantilip za-fenan.  How would you have felt?”
“Yes,” I said. 
“I ran that past him “
“Don’t touch with barge-pole.”
“That was a very long time ago.”
“Does that matter?”
“When it turned out to be true?”
“I’m crying quite easily at the moment.  So far by a super-human effort of will I’ve stopped myself.  Because.”
“You came here, Fal.  I will not tone it down because you have suffered so much.  At the time of which we talk you hadn’t suffered at all.  I’m asking you candidly, if Sorg had lived, would you be here now?”
“Maybe,” I said.  “Don’t you see, that’s one of the – we didn’t have time for me to find out – it wasn’t what I wanted, after all.  Tet – I turned it down already.”
“Oh, I see that!  I’m thinking coping with what has been is hard enough without what might have been.  Let us see now.  You could have had Mel.  You could have had anyone.  You chose me.  Now, I know you or think I do.  I do believe how lucky I am.  You, me, us, we click, we rock.  You love me, what more could I want?  Fast forward – skip that frame.  Fast forward more.  You’re telling me we’re cases of arrested development, kids who didn’t understand – what was it, what was going to happen to our little world.  Fal, nothing has happened to my little world except being smashed up by you.   Nothing – seismic!  The change is in Kadun.  Life in Zur, if you cared to live it, has not – materially – lousy word, materially it has altered, more trade, more irtubi.  Lifestyle in Zur has not changed.  And oh this story has a punch-line.  What then happened finally to Falita who thinks – thinks – she grew up, grew out of me, is she a renowned international  figure? She’s bloody goat-farming!  Fal, what do you want?  Can I give it you?  Can anyone?  You must find it.”
“Excuse me,” I muttered.  At least I knew where the bathroom was.
When I came back there were two glasses and a bottle of brandy on the table.  Tet poured.
“Just down it.”
I did and spluttered.  I managed a grin.  “Not only a goat-farmer but an abstemious one.  It feels like you’re about the 17th person to ask me that.  The same people ask me 17 times! They tear their hair out.  Reakoed may be bald soon.  What do I bloody want!”
“Something happened in Kadun?  I am not meaning the obvious.  Any of the obvious.  I know it was not the glam, the international stage.  Did you not spend half your childhood on the hill! And the other half – you think your bad behaviour has cut you off from Pietri?”
I glared at him.  Another one immune to my glares.
“Yes.  In a word.  Now you come to mention it….It somehow being totally irrelevant that Sorg’s twin is his daughter-in-law.  Not that I’m confused, or anything.”  Just gazing in horror at what I just said.  “Just gazing in horror at what I just said. Oh Tet. I loved him.  But if you ask me – if I ask me the – reality level of – be sensible, Fal, be coherent.  Do not bury your head in your hands.  The reality level of a – peacetime life with Sorg.”   I couldn’t continue for a minute.  “That is me?”
“The hair-tearing.  It was all that was real.  It was not real at all.  You let Maya down.”
“I what!  Oh for – “
“You were not perfect.  You were not real.  You let everyone down.”
“Tet!”
“And no-one else has cracked up, dropped out and taken up goat-farming.”
“All right, all right!  No-one else has deserted his/her partner!”
“If we are not all perfect, then at least we are all real.”
I picked up my glass and put it down again.
“You’re – you would seem to me to saying that – my sense of my own unreality was so acute – “
“I will not put words into your mouth, Fal.”
“I seem to me to be saying!”
“I’m asking again something happened in Kadun?”
“We take it all for granted,” I said.  “I’d never seen people who were really poor.”
“I have and I take nothing for granted.”
“I hadn’t and – it became necessary to fight. I thought. I felt.  Only I guess it’s not really what I want to do.  I didn’t really mean – I meant – what I said, to my total amazement!  Only not like it sounds.” 
“Fal has discovered the world is a bad place!”  He was laughing, but kindly.  “Just don’t be telling me I’m not political!”
“I still remember the campaign to extend the Lido!”
“A triumph for people-power!  But is that not exactly – if I understand that is the current level of your involvement in Carlin? And it’s not enough.  Discuss!  So what are you chasing, Fal?”
“Risk?”
“A better answer than death.”
“Oh come on!”
“I too didn’t mean that as it sounds.  What are you frightened of?”
“Me. It’s like I make choices without my consent!”
“That man,” he said, and grinned suddenly.  “I’m meaning Hasiyata Talal, not the gallant major!”
“Maya, Sorg,” I said.
“Let me put it to you, as we have said – Maya is a hard act to follow.  You want to be something you are not.  But then you are not frightened of not measuring up, though is that not how it seems.  You are frightened of how easy it is to be someone else, perhaps how much you feel you want to be someone else.  Someone not somewhere.”
“Hass knows.”
“Of course!”
“Ought to be, ought to be.  Or of course ought not to be.”
“Now I will not say that in a moment of crisis it welled up out of your deepest being that what you really wanted was to live in the country and keep goats.  There are survival tactics, do I not know it.  But I would say.”  He broke off.  “I would say there is this question of mattering.  I would say it broke on you like a new dawn that the Matter of Kadun mattered, that that was reality and – your life to date had been kids’ stuff.   And – you ran off with – the hero, because he was real, meaning the bloody Matter of bloody Kadun was clearly the – that for which he’d risked everything. But it was his country.  You overlooked that because it wasn’t Maya’s.
“That is a very succinct way of putting it.”
“I am still saying to you, Fal, the bloody Matter of bloody Kadun doesn’t matter a flying fuck to me. If you tell me that makes me less real, less aware of human suffering, even less aware of what’s at stake.  Less aware of pain.  You are not the only person who has suffered.  Have you thought of what Mel went through?”
“The consequences of our choices,” I said.
“Sarat assumed responsibility for Maya’s death and they told him bollocks and rightly so.  There are unanswerable questions of wider responsibility, of - having brought about the situation in which.  You may say – did Hass not say, squaddies are still alive who might be dead, kiddies would be dying of curable diseases.  It is not an equation that can balance.  Once I saw some animals taunting an old man and waded in.  If I learned anything it was that one person wading in – but still I’m telling you I’d do it again!  But endemic poverty, you do not wade in.   You change the whole structure.”  He laughed.  “Even you understand that!”
“Oh shut up!”
“Was I not invited to speak?   There are two sides to politics, yes?  There is the structure in which – in which anyone can wade in.  And the wading.  Now I will wade in, you know this and count myself fortunate that no-one in Dabida thinks to shoot me for rejecting the extension to the bloody Lido, and if I am right it is your thinking that it is important only to work for the structure but that is not how it works, Fal, and indeed I strike at the root of the Matter of Kadun about which I do not give a flying fuck!  Why Fal, have they risked, do they risk their very lives?  Why the talk, talk, talk – I should have made a grand plotter had I the inclination!”:
I sighed.
“Because it matters as much if not more than people talk back!”
“Because all the resolutions in the Senate and the speeches and the constitutions do not matter a flying fuck if people like me do not wade in.  It is that which maintains Dabida and – that is why I say one stray Zuri in the Senate is not going to make the difference.  Are there not enough people fighting for the structure?”
I sighed again.
“Hass tried to make me see that.  Why did I think what I do doesn’t matter.  But there are still a lot of angles.”
“And they’re still all what a little voice in your head tells you you ought to be doing!   I’m thinking when you understand Maya you’ll understand yourself better.”
“That’s my pretty pink balloon.”
“You love your eso, Fal, it can do you nothing but good.”
“It’s getting late.  If I’m to get back to Carlin.”
“I can sleep on the sofa.  So I like having you around.  That doesn’t.”
“Would you like to meet my goats?  Sleep on my sofa.”
“Then maybe I’ll understand what all the fuss is about!”
Oh.
“I haven’t actually got a sofa!  Armchairs do?  It’s a cottage.  It’s not large.”
“This I have to see.”
“But preferably not die of starvation.”
“See what I’ve got in the freezer.”
 
So Tet.  Oh it’s a fine night.  Let us take a drive to Carlin.  There was something mildly terrifying about the ease with which we worked together in the kitchen and I concentrated on being extremely practical. 
“I’ve got rice,” I said.
“How do you know the weevils haven’t got at it!”
He slung into the rations bag a couple of those packets of perfect rice in 0.5 seconds.
 
So here I am in the back of Tet’s roadster, same old roadster, Tet is not new wheels every year, and he has the stereo on, gentle but not smoochy – smooch would be too much – and it’s not too loud to talk, but both of us seem to have dried up on the Matter of Fal, or should that be the Matter of Fal and Tet, though I don’t think this is a moment of ‘let’s pretend’ but more emotional exhaustion.  Although we are rapidly leaving Zur behind, Gosh, it’s quite busy, isn’t it, and I feel him grinning at how I can be at the same time part of the pulsating hub and so totally – out of it.  Er yes, I could put that better.  Something stirs inside me about the impossible – impossible 24 hours ago that Tet and I could be on our way to Carlin – but all I say is, or was about to be before | realized how dense it sounded and kicked my brain into life.  “Art is life,” I said.  Oh yikes.  “I mean, as usual I had the wrong end of the stick. They said you went to Azt from time to time, but you still don’t give a flying fuck “
“I had an exhibition.”
Foot right in it, Fal-girl.
“Nobody told me, she said lamely.”
I could see him grinning in the mirror.
“You’d’ve come?”
It gave me a rather left out feeling, thinking of  Sarat and Hass and Venga and doubtless even Reakoed (drat him!) visiting doubtless the preview, but that I did not say.
“You drew what you saw.  It’s a good job you know me and know I’ve got a brain somewhere!”
“I do?  But if I am reading that brain what you think to express is by my pictures I show the world something the camera loses and so fight the war.”
“You make me feel silly.  You can’t not draw it because it helps Sarat!”
”Now you are being silly!  You are saying I am averse to helping Sarat!”
“Of course you’re not.  Where are they?”
“That would be telling!”
“You’re teasing.”
“Some were not for sale.”
“Should I visit the Jumesit more often?”
“Perhaps!  Three were bought by the City Gallery.  There were six drawings of poor kiddies I gave to CLIK.  Cho bought a cartoon of Sarat with six faces and twenty arms. “
“Wanna see!”
There was a lump in my throat which was not emotion but the choking urge to ask him to do something for me, draw Carlin, some of it will vanish, some of it has vanished, catch it before it goes.  I suddenly remembered.
“Years ago.”  I began to giggle.  “Before we were all famous!  You drew us all.”
“Oh yes,” he said.  “Before there was a scar.   Is there anywhere off the main drag?”
“Nearly at the Tap.”
“OK.”
We snaked around the car-park looking for a space.
“What is this, social centre of the known world!”
We parked.  He made no move to get out, but turned to me. 
“Those drawings.  I took them and then I drew the scar.  For Mel.  For all of us.  That is strictly private viewing.  I heard you were on the hill with Kyse, and I have to say I thought exactly nothing of it, for you are both Mel’s friends.  You’ll ask Mel to show you when you’re next in Zur.  One day perhaps when we are all dead of a good ripe old age.”
Oh Tet.  So what kind of a one-dimensional goon am I that I don’t think Tet understands pain.
“I will,” I said solemnly. 
“What crap can we purchase here that is not a patch on my cooking!”  He flung open the door and got out.  I can still read Basic Tet, I thought.  That wasn’t let’s move on, that was let’s enjoy some crap.
Clutching polystyrene cups of chocolate, we immersed ourselves in souvenirs of Dabida.  Couple of giggling kids.  Tet was spreading out for inspection a particularly awful tea-cloth when he suddenly said, “Hist!”
“Hist?”
“We are observed!  It’ll be all over Zur in the morning!”  The idea didn’t seem to worry him. He pointed to the fountain-shaped object in what was supposed to be the Saa’anda Senta.  “You can’t draw this badly.  There’s a law against it.  That water is falling upwards.”
“I have always wanted,” I said, “a black biro and a yellow highlighter all in one.”
“Get you either way,” said Tet, “when you put it in your top pocket.”
We  moved on.   H-W scan IDs at the border.  It’ll be all over Zur in the morning.  The idea didn’t seem to worry me.
“Now we turn off.”
Now it wasn’t busy
 
He looked around.  Well, it was cosy, it was neat.
“Material possessions are not uppermost in your mind.”
Not very warm.  I put the fire on.
“You do not fell the trees and saw the logs.”  He saw my face.  “Just bewildered, Fal-girl, just bewildered. I know you are not penniless aside from your other troubles. You don’t want to touch the money?  Oh, I see.  As if enough were not besetting you.  You sit down and rest and let me do the cooking.”
I was just as bewildered.
“Tet – what are you talking about?”
“The garbage in your head, Fal-girl!  Remember me, I lived with you.  You like nice things.  You like beauty.  If you do not fulfil what you think are Carlin’s expectations you have no right to enjoy the money.  I never had a heart-to-heart with Sorg but I have no doubt he would tell you that is screaming garbage.  Which Hass of course also told you.  When are you going to stop beating yourself up?  I tell you frankly I do not want you until you do.”
“I feel as though I got it by mistake!”  Pause.  “Until.”
“Until.  Get some food into us.”
The stew was scrumptious.  He always was a good cook.  We watched TV and didn’t even argue about current affairs.  Think I could have put that better.  I guess we were both completely drained.   I dozed off, half-awoke as I heard him get up, just going to the loo now, woke up somewhere in the middle of night, looked at watch (two), remembered, looked out of window, saw car still there, took rain-cheque on walking into my bedroom where he was doubtless comatose on bed, laughed to myself with or at the general craziness and resumed my usual position at the kitchen table while the kettle boiled and I played with the string of a tea-bag.  Before we go one step further, I thought, even if we’re not going anywhere.  It’s like everything else, completely true and completely not.  The kettle boiled, I prodded my (herbal) tea-bag a few times, dropped it in the bin and took my mug back to my sitting-room – oh, all right, my all-purpose daylight hours living-room – and settled down in my armchair, just in time to hear the front-door go and go into over-drive.  Of course Lattic had a key, probably thought the light meant a burglar.
“Lattic?” I called out.
“Who the fuck is Lattic?”
“The neighbour minding the joint!”
“You left the keys on the table.  I thought to see Carlin By Night!”
“I thought Lattic had seen the lights and thought I was being burgled. “  I giggled. “And by the way he’s gay.  And Zuri.”
“It’s a colony you have here?”
“Lattic has had his own problems.”
“That name rings a bell.  He’s not the Jaizal porn guy?”
“The very same.”
“Could I have thought life in Carlin bucolic and narrow?”
“Actually he’s probably sleeping the sleep of the reformed and rather sweet safe in the arms of Narak. Fidubi lover.”
“Hub of the known world.  Tell me truly now, if you wanted to take in a late-night movie, you’re lost!” “Have to drive to Car-sandis.  I think!  I never have.”
“Doesn’t sound the worst fate in the world.”   Hmm.   “Water!  What have you there?”
“Lemonflower and nettle.  Glasses are above your head.”
“What is not…”
He turned the tap on, put his head under it to get a few mouthfuls, let it splosh on the back of his neck a minute, then shot me a look of pure mischief.
“Cold shower!”  I grinned, and he grinned back.  “I think I’ll not stay, Fal.  It’s been good.  We’ll do it again.”  Pause.  “You’ll note I have not so much as placed a chaste kiss on your brow.  I would not wish – it is not I do not wish to  – with or without barge-pole.”
“Understood,” I said.
 
I was still sitting dazed when I noticed it was starting to get light and so I’d have to do things.  You’ll have noticed I hadn’t had a lot of sleep in the last 48 hours and I did not feel like a day’s work, but nor did I want to flop.  I wanted to drive.  I was just wondering what to do next in what I thought a vague sort of way, when I had a little moment of truth.  This is what they mean!  Hass wants to take me away from all this, that’s fine, I’ll fix it.  I want to take me away from all this, that’s shirking my responsibilities.  I would just check… I hoped Lattic hadn’t killed my sevania. 
The sevania was flourishing.  I stroked its leaves. 
Lattic came up behind me.
“I saw a car come.  Gone this morning, wasn’t sure you were back.”
“Just passing through.”
He grinned and looked at the sevania.
“I’m good with plants, you know that.”
“Can I leave you to it?  Is that OK?”
“Course it is.”
 
Tet rang Hass.
“You did the right thing, you bastard, you!”
“Good.”
“Have you gone back to Azt?  There’s something I want to share, when you have a mo”
“I’m on the hill.  See you shortly?”
“Fine.”
.
You’ll recall my toothbrush and a spare pair of knickers are in a rucksack in Hass’s boot.  Fortunately Miss Efficiency has a spare charger for her phone.
 
I went into the kitchen to make myself a flask of something at least, and Tet had brought a whole loaf, so I stuck some honey in a butterless sandwich.  Back at the kitchen table. I was shaking my head as I had when I woke in the early hours.  Everything everyone said was completely right and completely wrong at the same time. They had to understand that.  You’ll be wanting me to explain that, no doubt.  Of course he wasn’t wondering if he could live in Carlin, just curious.   Take this business of writing my bloody script.  Reakoed  is exactly right and exactly wrong and I’d never argued or more exactly said it was gross slander of Tet because I knew exactly what he meant.  Oh is it 2 in the morning, shall we walk into Car-sandis?  I enjoyed it, I told myself rather urgently, and equally I hadn’t always gone along with it, if I preferred sleep, for instance, but I saw or rather I saw that Reakoed saw that there was somehow no room for me in it.  But it was bollocks!  I worked late.  I  socialized on my own, yes, without running off with – I am was am mad.  I loved him.  I loved Sorg and my dawning realization that he was indeed a virtual clone was not soothing me, nor Tet’s analysis thereof.  I didn’t think it’d been scientifically proven that one can’t love two people equally and that I had to beat myself up with if one was real the other was phoney, toss a coin, because I can’t tell.  There hadn’t been a framework to my life.  Of course there had though I saw my friends were Tet’s friends but Tet’s friends were a separate crowd.  I looked at myself sternly and demanded I consider whether it wasn’t just another delusion that there had been no flaws in Tet’s and my relationship.  No cracks.  Not in the relationship, no.  I stopped in my tracks on That Fateful Day.  Did they see it as some kind of assertion of independence?  Was it?  Hardly.  Maybe if I’d run off with a Ciletij nationalist.  So I had to assert my independence, did I – was else was all this break out, see the world stuff.  A statement of fact.  It was plain ludicrous that I could only conceive of myself in three places.  At the same time.  At the same time would really satisfy me. Metaphor, metaphor.  That’s what I mean!  That’s what Reakoed means.  My life had been at the same time wholly circumscribed and wholly not.  At (virtually) any time I could have done anything.  So the question of the day is…Was it I who just didn’t want to? He had his art, Fal, you stupid bitch you.  And it wasn’t true that I didn’t have my thing.  I had the H-W.  OK, it wasn’t my thesis on soil biology.   You don’t explain when something works.  I mean it just did. And Kyse has his history.  I don’t think that will work the same.  I just didn’t know I was doing what I liked.   Tet and I were happy.  No quesch dear old Tet being boring.  I suddenly burst out laughing.  Oh Fal can’t be normally unfaithful, not Fal, she has to make it complicated.  Anyone else, virtually anyhow, open and shut, seduced by the wider stage and blah.  Poor Kyse.  Not that he’d seemed to mind. Kyse, I decided, represented Zur in my complicated little psycho-drama.  Home and normality.
 
I knew it had not once occurred to me I should make Tet or Kyse a target but much worse than knowing that was knowing why. Amida must have thought I was a total nutter.  Pushing me to see these were two separate stories. 
 
I must have some kind of other shoulder-bag, holdall, back-pack.  Under the stairs was a back-pack you could climb a mountain with, but all it had to do was have three sides.  I shoved in it a change of clothes, flask, sandwiches, a couple of bottles of water, a pen and a notepad, hauled it onto the back seat and took off for the main road with the vague intention of driving west.  Until I reached the ocean?  It’s a possibility.
 
Tet opened the door, unshaven and unironed but distinctly happy.
“Been working since I got back from Carlin.”
“Where?” asked Maitlan.
“Tis a place over the border.  I think I’ll not tell you what we said. This hovel she lives in – “
“It’s no good,” said Reakoed.  “I’m going to howl with laughter.”
“We of course,” said Maitlan, “do not know her so well and so politely refrain.”
“Bollocks!” said Tet.  “To resume my tale.  We are decided, neither of us being entirely insane, that I shall sleep on a chair.  We are watching television and having a drink and – and it is terrifyingly perfect.  She dozed off.  Not much sleep of late, I’m thinking, but I am touched anyway because it means she is relaxed.  But there are not many people, male or female, who look perfect when they doze off in an old armchair and it happens that Fal is one of them. And I have a little – moment there.  My little heart goes pitter-pat and I know that I am unreservedly nuts about the woman.  Comes the dawn, maybe we can’t work it out but that does not mar the moment. I came home and I drew her.  I’ll not give it to her instantly but I wanted you to see.  Come into the studio.”
Sharp intakes of breath.
“Oh Tet.”
“And now I have bones to pick.  I’m thinking someone should have told me she was in acute distress and apparently living a life of penitential self-sacrifice. Tying the knots tighter! She’s nailing herself to the wall.  You’ll not tell me you thought I didn’t care?”
“Did you ask?” enquired Maitlan.
Tet considered him.
“I’ll not get into a row with you, Maitlan, I have too much care for you that and I grant you have a point.  But are we the fucking Six or are we not?”
Maitlan laughed.
“You too have a point.”
“A farm, I heard.  I did not think a palace.  She’s taken over an old farm-house. I thought a pet goat a joke, not her – supposed livelihood.  The way – the way people say Tet’s a painter as if it’s whitewashing the garden wall.”
“Do they?” asked Reakoed with interest.  “I know what you mean!”
“And further – there is also the Matter of Kadun.”
“Should that not be the bloody Matter of bloody Kadun?” asked Maitlan.
“That is given!  It is possible I have convinced her that she does not have to be Maya, though I doubt it.  That is deep-seated, I think.  If she would just be Fal, that would be enough for all of us.  Third –Reakoed, you have uttered a consummate amount of screaming garbage concerning my relationship.  Not only did I not – over-write her hard drive!  I enjoyed her independence.  I will say to you – she said – she said I gave no chase.  I had my art, I had been happy in Zur without her.  Did I care that much?  I said I was happy in Zur with my art because I had you.  We have had misunderstandings. But that problem of the hard drive is in Fal, not in me, is in who she is and who she wants to be.  I said that too. And I said the opposite to your thinking, Reakoed, I said if I’d understood her better I’d have looked after her better.”
“Owww,” said Reakoed.  “Sorry.”
“And this business that I am not good for her.  Perhaps there is an element of truth in that but I do not think the person I am bad for is the person she is but perhaps the person I thought her.  I do not think I know her anything like so well as I thought I knew her.”   He turned to Hass. “As you yourself said, it is better Fal talks to Tet than about Tet.  And now I thank you for calling but in truth what I want most now is my bed!  Shall we catch up on other matters over dinner some time?”
 
I kept going until I hit the signs for Varl, A Medium-Sized And In Fact Quite Big Town In The Middle of Kadun.  City-centre, I decided.  I probably shouldn’t get the best out of my visit to Varl until I’d had some sleep.  Old Town.  That had possibilities.  Oh wow!  Some ruins loomed atop a small hill.  Where there are ruins there are tourists and where there are tourists there are hotels, though in any case the bed and board trade in Kadun had gone through the stratosphere.  Sure enough there was a turning and a forecourt lined with some rather spavined bushes, not at all like my savania.  The Castle Inn.  Oh, is that what it was?  Had been.  I booked a room, got only a twitched eyebrow at my name, and fell asleep.  Exciting this, isn’t it.  Fal’s Adventure.  What, no bandits, no dragons?  I don’t remember even having an interesting dream.  I awoke around 7.  Oh double wow.  The ruined castle was flood-lit.  Clearly the Castle of Varl was something I as a good citizen of Kadun should know about.  I went downstairs and gulped.  The place was buzzing.   Dinner, I thought, will be served elsewhere.  I walked around the Old Town and it was really pretty picturesque, with slats and cobbles and interesting alleys. I found a bistro and ate like a horse, while designing a kind of mantra, not that it takes the length of a good meal to design I am not going to think.  If I was not therefore to die of boredom I needed something external to think about.   I am going to centre myself in the here and now.  Truly there is a limit to the depth with which one can consider carefully shaded strip lighting or the carpet.  That’s only, I said to myself, because I know absolutely nothing about either.  I mean, if I knew how carpet was manufactured I might find that particular carpet totally riveting.   I remained unriveted.  I walked slowly back to the Castle Inn writing myself a memo to buy a really gripping book in the morning but the shop was still open so I bought a weird variety of magazines instead: 
 
I was bored shitless what on earth was I doing here?  I am bored shitless the whole time, bar scratching behind Benji’s ears.  All my doing is just a disguise for that.   All my vibrant inner life is just a disguise for that or maybe a consequence.  This bit of me wants to do that and that bit wants something else
 
An aim.  I need an aim, one that engages not just my brain but all of me Because I have no aims at all or none that take all of me with them.
 
In the morning I immersed myself in the history of Varl and did some more I am not going to think. 
 
I  found a good  bookshop and picked up an analysis of the Kadun revolution.  Ohohoh.  Ciletij communard, Bonsadil Girat combines a first-hand account of the activities of CLIK following the Kadun revolution with an in-depth study of the role of capital in the modern world.  I think I’m going to like this….I browsed.  A couple of thrillers.  Police-colonel Gensanit’s latest mystery takes him from the vice-dens of the City to an ancient mansion on the Delta where the mysterious and sinister Cult...  Oh  indeed? Oh really?  How wonderfully inevitable the novelists of Kadun.  I supposed it was comforting that everyone was equally obsessed.   I found myself facing a stand of the You Can Do It! series, elementary guides to everything and picked up the one on finance.  Encouraged by having understood the first page, I shoved it in my basket.  Oh look there’s one on banking.  And one on simplifying your life.  I suspected I’d enjoy that.  I was saddened to see there wasn’t one on keeping goats and wondered if I should write it.  Coping with bereavement.  I thought I’d give that one a miss then picked it up anyway.  Enough!  I staggered to the check-out
 
The howls of laughter from Room 24?  That’s Fal reading an analysis of the Kadun revolution. I could do better!  But that too was not what I wanted to do. 
 
It was a perfectly decent hotel.  The rooms were warm and comfortable.  The public rooms were – pleasant.  The food and water were palatable.  But it wasn’t somewhere to come to rest.  Where, I wondered, was the nearest Stress-Breakers!  Or should I be on the catch and skin dinner trip?  Wasn’t that a rather good idea, engage all of me?  The thought came to me the only dinner I want to catch is Sar-fenan.  Is it really?  Isn’t that an interesting thought?  Then WTF am I doing here…reading an elementary guide to banking.    Yes, I decided, I do want to at least see the bastard.  I don’t have a thing to wear!  How true. 
 
I put that in the folder matters matters, not just when S in the month.  Unfinished business. I have unfinished business in Kadun.  Draw a line under it and go home.  How obvious is that.  I couldn’t see how.  But that, Fal, you stupid bitch, you, is because you didn’t stop.  Stop and think
 
I see, I said to myself.  I just can’t do this at home.  Too many commitments making the most demanding of partners seem a cipher.  I had to laugh.
 
Stop and think about a need for the real that was so overwhelming, so compelling – did I really believe no-one would speak to me again!  Finding it in other people.  
 
But Varl still didn’t do it for me.  My heavily encrypted  netbook was also  in Hass’s boot.  This is what happens if you don’t plan!  There was nothing to encrypt about what I wanted to do next – I know what I want to do?  I bought a netbook in a rather scary shade of green, with a matching wireless dongle.  I wondered if I should get some nail-varnish to go with them and in fact did.  So I retired to Room 24, set myself up on line and started to paint my nails. 
 
OK, Stress-Breakers.  Our world-renowned facilities cater for the weary traveller along the road of life – er, Sarat, do you know this stuff is up there?  Stress-Breakers can hardly be a hands-on operation right now….Hey, maybe they need a manageress!   Still, it sounded good and the Lausanine is spectacular.  Been there, been there!  Though not to nestling in the foothills beside Lake Cava.  Am I allowed to hike  I think I’m allowed to hike.  Would I be allowed to pay!  Oh to be Falita Emery.  Hmm.  Even if trendy Kadun one had to show something to register and everything of course was Syb.  I guessed I was feeling a bit fragile but I’d met it before and I didn’t feel like dining out on it, guess I owe you some money Sarat.   OK, not Stress-breakers, but I was definitely hooked on Lake Cava.  I sighed, somewhere super-posh then, where one paid to have one’s stress broken. 
 
I spent another afternoon exploring historic Varl.  Kadun is so old.  Fidub is so old.  And there I am the jam in the sandwich squeezed between the pair of them.  This jam has pizzazz!
 
I moved on.  I have all the time in the world.  Here I am in a really not very picturesque village but it’s alive.   Political meetings and music groups and indeed a book-lovers’ circle, gardeners and tree-huggers.  The hidden Kadun no-one sees untouched by the revolution.  I wondered.  Even the Circle for the Advancement of Women could have pre-dated the happening, and even been open about its activities, for men and women had been nominally equal.  They could both vote, obviously equal pay was a different matter, can’t expect equal work, can yer, anyhow it’s pin money, woman’s place is with her kiddies….Did I want any?  Oh definitely.  When I grow up.  Meanwhile  I assumed I needed something to love and Benji  filled that role.  Plenty of time for that too.  Some women just want to have them, without there being a father around, I mean.  While I didn’t doubt my practice run as goat-herd meant I was amply capable of doing that it wasn’t what I wanted.  I knew Tet wanted them – sometime – and I knew he’d be a fantastic father though I had no doubt our children would learn to swear early, and if our tottering tot caused havoc in the studio not just Zur but the whole continent would know it.  The caring parent’s version of a electric fence topped with poisoned  barbed wire, I thought..   I suspected Tet’s response to tots and a 2 in the morning walk on the beach would be to tuck them up in a buggy and take them along too.  Being raised by Tet could be interesting. 
 
I continued my tour of Kadun proceeding more or less in the direction of Lake Cava.  The terrain began to change, so much so that it was worth stopping from time to time to gape in awe.  In the midst of a particularly soulful moment I thought oh shit.  Fal has vanished!  I texted Hass.  Alive, well and finding myself.   Reading up on banking!!!  Let you know more later.
 
I arrived at the Hotel Cava.  Nothing flashy, just the gentle ooze of old money from the very wall-paper.  That’s so me, isn’t it.  Still, I cased the joint and decided I could deign to be happy there.  I sipped excellent coffee from the finest porcelain in a delectable hide armchair and began to compose a brief report back to base.
Dearest Hass, This is a recce, open-ended.  What I do next depends on what I do first.  Yes, I’m feeling cryptic and frivolous.  Also contemplating Tet in the role of father.  I don’t think he’d have any objection, do you (giggle).  Few bridges to cross first.  Thank you for everything.  All my love, Fal xxxxx
 
Fwd Maitlan and Reakoed.  She said she was reading up on banking.
Maitlan to Hass and Reakoed.  This is Fal.  When the act is together, it’s a hard one to follow.
Reakoed to Maitlan and Hass: She’s going to bloody Blatni, isn’t she!
Maitlan to Hass and Reakoed: Presumably she does not intend murder – unless Tet is to raise the infant single-handed.
Reakoed to Hass and Maitlan: Oh well, we can relax then.
Maitlan to Hass and Reakoed:  Remind me to renew my subscription to Glitz.
Reakoed to Hass and Maitlan:  What the hell did he say to her?
Maitlan to Hass and Reakoed: More, I should have thought, what he didn’t say.
 
I continued with You Can Do Banking!  The shred of an idea came to me.  It was obviously crazy, impossible.  Sarat and Cho would have done it, if it were possible.  Or maybe it was possible, but just happened to destroy the financial base of the entire planet.   But the other idea, that just might be not only possible but practicable.  I began surfiing.  No, I had to sort home out first.  Where was the nearest airport?  I made a flying-visit (sorry) to Carlin and explained to the rabbiters that I was on PANTHER business, which I most certainly was, even if PANTHER didn’t yet know it, and it really wasn’t fair on Lattic…They loved it and set up a goats, savania and miscellaneous fruits, vegetables, flowers and shrubs rota.
 
I rejected brooding about how efficiently I’d chained myself to Carlin
 
Back at my post in the bay-window, I had a brain-wave: there are sites for schools, sites for kids who don’t even know what a bank is yet.  So I could skip Lesson One and maybe even Lessons Two and Three.   Then I remembered Lattic and his courses in natural history.  Yes, yes, yes!   I found the Schools.  The next actual course started in five weeks’ time.  No crash courses?  PANTHER run crash courses, but that would mean confiding my PANTHER mission to PANTHER and that I was not yet ready to do.  Later I should need information not publicly available.  This was getting me into a condition in which I could understand that information.   I wondered if Hass had told Mel anything.  Everything?   Leaving a trail the width of a house wasn’t a problem.  It didn’t lead to the right place. 
 
I mailed Mel.  I need a crash course in finance.  I think I might want to do something with Sorg’s money – all right, my money!   Can you rig something up with Fugitry.  You know those courses dear old Lattic went on.  There’s one starting in five weeks but it’s two hours a week.  I want eight hours a day!  Someone retired looking for light relief maybe?  If at all humanly poss. 
 
Mel to me: Of course, he replied smoothly, while blinking like an owl at noon.
 
And then, curled up in the delectable hide armchair in the bay-window looking out over the lake something began to click.  I put my book down cautiously, discovered the coffee-pot was empty, waved at the waiter and ordered fresh, all cautiously.  I mean, if you sustain an injury you move cautiously in case you upset it.  I really felt that, felt that if I moved with normal abandon I’d disturb the delicate and vulnerable fusion in my brain.   Oh Fal, what do you want?  What do you really want?    This or that.  Here or there.  Idiot, idiot, idiot!  What is the aim of each of these avowed purposes?    Because they’re not bloody well opposites, they all point to one end., one unifying purpose.  They do?  They do!  I think they do.  A single root.  Call it me.  Work backwards from the idea I just had.  Eeeuh.  Yes.  Maybe.  Do it first, then see what my world looks like.  If of course it can be done, but then if it can’t something similar can be.  That at least is not a question. 
 
Mel got back to me giving me the addy of a lady with more letters after her name than there are in the alphabet.  She does know this is finance for five-year-olds? I asked anxiously.  Oh yes, he replied.
 
I arrived with a bump in the horrible City.  Ah well, I was barely going to look up from my books. Denzine Mistress A-Z  turned out to be in the Airoch mode, meaning she looked a slightly distracted elderly lady, draped in silk shawls in various pastels, and had a mind like a steel trap.  I’m sure she guessed but she didn’t ask – I asked some rather specific questions.
 
After six weeks of an eleven-hour day – three hours’ homework – I mailed Kai. 
 
Yes, she was in the City.  You bet!  Rather nervously I told her my idea.  I had to share it with someone who knew about money.  Do you think it’s possible? I finished.
 
“It’s all possible.  The second bit I love.  Only it has to have an impact and the one you’ve chosen.  It just happens to be exactly the sort of thing Sarat wants but not necessarily when he wants it. There’s a lot you don’t know.”
“I’ve been out of the loop…”
“It’s a bit more than that.  There is a need to know and not many people have one.  I’m making an executive decision here..  Sarat’s eyes only, OK!”
“OK….I’m agog!”
“You will be.”
“It’s not,” I said sounding wide-eyed and innocent, “it’s not a plot, is it.”
She grinned. 
“It is potentially the plot of plots!  Where to start?  Go figure this business of the Cult using Blatni for R+R raises eyebrows in all the best circles.  Some people think it’s just a prolonged taunt.  Free movement of peoples about their lawful purposes, what can he do?    I mean really, why don’t they go to Meela and get a proper tan?”  Meela is another playground for the filthy rich, an island at high tide joined by an isthmus to the mainland of Ocogro.  “Maybe they’ll get bored when Sarat doesn’t rise to the bait.  Others look thoughtful and say they suspect if Sarat rose to the bait we’d have public executions back.  The general gist is pushing him to abandon all our wonderful democratic principles. More others point out that it’s a hell of a lot easier to arrest people reclining by the pool at Blatni than to get them extradited.  When PANTHER are ready, we’ll pounce.  Game of chicken, and another kind of taunt.  Obviously if (they thought) in brackets we were anywhere near nailing them they’d stay their side of the water.  Public display of our failure.
“Yea, many are the views of the phenomenon. The key to all this is that Sarat doesn’t care where they are.  He doesn’t want to arrest them, he doesn’t want to hang them, he certainly doesn’t want to keep them behind bars at public expense.  He just wants to destroy them utterly and finally, preferably reducing them to begging in the streets. You’ll say no can do,  greenbacks in every corner of the planet.”
“You’re actually taking my breath away but I might have said something like that!”
“You will further say – “ Mitch to the life.  “ – that it is irrelevant that should criminality be proven a court can demand disclosure of assets because they will simply lie.  They have made an art-form out of covering their tracks and that which cannot be traced back to one need not be revealed.  On the other hand one may say that if no connection can be established there is no proof of ownership and so no reason why those nominally in possession of the funds in question should not retain them.  Nor any reason why they should not sing like canaries.  Bar of course raw terror.  The role of raw terror in this should not be forgotten.  To an extent which cannot readily be quantified, this is a psychological battle.   We maintain, nonetheless, that any connection must have physical manifestations and physical manifestations can be identified.  We are not looking for the end of a piece of string, we are looking for the piece of string itself.  Cho believes it is possible to unravel their operations.  We have of course trusted contacts in Ciletij and Vasucula, but we don’t think the governments are clean.  Fidub, Kadun and Dabida  make a formidable entity on the world-stage and  Bal will do anything to help bar bankrupt Harn. 
“Meanwhile Sarat is happy for the world to think he is engaged on a ‘mere’ murder-hunt and
Mitch prowls like a caged panther, because of course Blatni is in Var-segan.  Believe me, he does not like the pure soil of Var-segan soiled by Sar-fenan’s hooves!”
My eyes widened.
“Sarat is in a peculiar position as dynamic young leaders of revolutions go.  It may be - unusual but no-one questions its legitimacy.  Bal’s people regard his position as head of state with about as much consternation as they would a couple who’d broken up and decided to get together again.  Of course if he were trampling over the masses. 
“Now, suppose you commit a nice simple little crime in our glorious empire, bash someone over the head and run off with his wallet.  The cops catch you and you are tried.  Under what law?  The answer effectively is imperial law, dating back to Guess-Who. It’s really interesting, actually. There are very few of what we should call the basic laws of a normal civilized nation that Kadun didn’t already have.  It’s just no-one paid the faintest attention to them.  Meaning the theory upheld equality before the law and the practice was determined by your gender, your class, your orientation, your bank balance and your politics.  If you were very principled or very stupid, strike out where not applicable, you pushed it.  Interestingly, sometimes you  succeeded, depends on the time, the place and the – disposition of the Senate, which acted as a sort of supreme court.  Of course whether you pushed it probably depended on the disposition of the Senate at the time, whether you had a cat’s chance in hell of a fair hearing.”
“Tut,” I said, ‘we do not have a Senate!  But then – in context we do not need - ?”
She grinned.
“In context, we have equality before the law, a free Press, and a bunch of hell-raisers.  Obviously a lot of crap law got passed in the many moons since himself. Sarat’s solution to a legal nightmare was to ditch the crap and enforce the rest.
“There had previously been sort of local governing bodies called Moots with property qualifications for election.  Not real estate.  You had to have sort of – “: She grinned again.  “At least two goats, a head of sheep, whatever that is.  Narulis drew from these those who could be elected to the Senate.  There was just one other thing.  You had to be able to read and write.  History of education in Kadun is several books in itself.  To this end – there were schools in the big and bigger towns, there’s the whole thing about a small farm being literally a family enterprise, even the kids had work to do, and there’s Kadun being rich and fertile and its being a matter of pure self-interest to be literate and numerate in order to get richer if not more fertile, the supreme carrot of course being able to take part in running the joint.  So there were classes set up just a couple of hours a week and the end-product was if not a literate population then a population a hell of lot more literate than it had been.  Remember that though – screen goes whooshy – the Emperor was far-distant, my lord Var-segan, my lady Van-senok were not, so – centres of enterprise were evenly spread out.  And all this, you will say, is completely fascinating but the what the hell has it got to do with?
“The true empire inedibly imprinted Kadun, whatever happened next.  Narulis established national law, which was essentially Fidubi law.  Subsequent laws were passed by the Senate and ratified by the emperor. National law was imperial law.  People talk glibly  – I can’t imagine why - of the break-up of the empire, at least in part because there’s a perfectly good sense in which it didn’t.  From the perspective of the rest of the continent, here was never any question that there wasn’t an entity called Kadun, with a capital, a single currency, apart from of course the minor detail that the rest of the continent dealt rarely if at all with Azt – Dabida dealt with Carlin, Vasucula with Var-segan, and so on. Hell, Harn dealt with Var-segan.  Again there’s this weird gulf between the theory and the practice.   
Certainly, certainly a central government, it’s just that it didn’t actually matter.  When it insisted on mattering etc etc, which is as much as to say that the Houses were content to have some guys swanning around in Azt pretending to govern the joint so long as they didn’t actually interfere with anything – and of course we may note… If there are any two basic facts emergent from this crazy gig, they’re the Houses thought they could maintain imperial law better than the emperor, or at least they couldn’t do worse, so long as it wasn’t inconvenient, and the idea of basic rights – you could appeal all the way to the Supreme Court or the Senate in Azt, as the case may be.  So long as you lived that long.  The third essential is that the Houses retained a great deal of autonomy under imperial law and that after the empire this was if anything increased. 
“Ballots can be rigged, guys can be suborned or even fall for specious arguments.  The encroachment of central government on the autonomy of the Houses together with the nature of that government is probably the single most pressing reason for the We Want Sarat campaign.  Bearing in mind that the Houses thought and presumably think they can uphold imperial law better than the emperor or the elected government of Kadun.
For this reason it may yet go pear-shaped, except it won’t because the ‘national army’ are senoki, etc.”
“They’re taking a hell of a gamble?”
“Backs against the wall.  We shall all live happily ever after under Fidubi law.”
“It’s interesting.  The myth of the national army! Which is of course why when they were sent to crush Zani they settled in Dabida instead.” 
“You recall your glorious Constitution.”
“I do?”
“Bestial and barbaric practices.”
“There’s some ancient law - ?”
“Verily, there are ancient laws.  Going so far back your mind reels, the penalty for being an adept of the fifth circle, or in other words the sort of bag of shit that can blow minds at radius of 20 nani without even raising a sweat was death.  The only people who could withstand didn’t want to waste the rest of their lives guarding.  You could – hence the may not must – also be executed if you were a demonstrable lesser bag of shit.  That was Fidubi law, that was imperial law, and that became Dabidan law.  The Cult knows it.  Even Sar-fenan isn’t so insolent as to misbehave in Kadun, so far as anyone has been able to discern, and believe me, there are plenty of people watching. Even the free movement of peoples clause says you can be booted out if you put a toenail wrong. It all gets quite juicy at this point.  If we proceed from the relatively known to the unknown, to shine is to be inviolate – ‘they came, the skull-faces, but we laughed’.  – but reading between the lines Narulis and his gang were on a sharp learning curve because they knew how to laugh but not to fight back, mentally, I mean, doubtless they drew their broad-swords while laughing.  Apparently fighting back was a particularly esoteric branch of a particularly esoteric branch and a very few in Fidub did know because Fidub has travelled the oceans for ever and had met the Cult in strange far-away places.  Emphasis on far-away.  Apparently there was a certain amount of you haven’t had the bastards trying to fuck over your country, especially from Van-senok.  Imperial law limited itself to evidence of – foul play – is there a better expression!  Over in the west where they took the brunt of the assault they said something like whereas we take the point generally that an offence has to be committed – no matter how sinisterly and suspiciously you’re prowling around that bag of gold, you’re not a thief until you’ve stolen it – in this case we deal with what these bastards are.  The Houses demanded and got the right to deal with members of Cult as they thought fit, without what you might call physical evidence, witnesses to the barbaric and/or bestial. Of course they didn’t have videos then…There is physical evidence collected by PANTHER.  Mitch argues shamelessly that the country is governed by imperial law and that autonomy therein and heretofore granted to the Houses is thereby retained.  Thus he can do what he likes with them.  Alas, they are foreign nationals.    In short, he can kick them out of Var-segan and there isn’t a damn thing Sarat can do about it – except piss with laughter, of course. 
“By roundabout routes I get to the nub. 
“From their point of view, I’m a piece of shit, the scrapings from the wall of a sewer.   The usual epithet is camp-follower.  Sarat and I both know that.  That’s the joy of it.  But the insult is bottomless, immeasurable.  They matter!    Sarat is playing with them. The precise expression was ‘adolescent jape’.  Naturally they wished to know the identity of the imperial envoy.  Sar-fenan told Beejay to communicate to his master that the time for adolescent japes was past.  Everything that Sarat, Cho, Mel, Sohenoil, AMI does is a slap in the face – something a bit more painful than that.  It is an independent act.  Sarat has in a very real, very literal sense declared war, invaded.  It’s as though there are two teams. This crap is going on all over the world and most places it’s just bat and ball .  Impregnable fortresses, that’s the expression I’m looking for.  One was Dabida and Fidub and the other was Harn.  And then to continue the analogy, there were outposts, three in particular, Carlin, Van-senok and Var-segan. Broadly speaking.  Not that individuals never fell from the path of righteousness.   Call it the Lattic syndrome.”
“Poor Lattic!  He’s really rather sweet.”
“Sw – oh, of course you’re neighbours.”
“He’s really reformed.  Got a Fidubi boyfriend who I’m sure can handle any urge that bubbles up to relapse.”  I took a deep breath.  “Sorg’s money.  My money!”
“Virgin sturgeon.”
“I didn’t really think it wasn’t.  Apart from the sweat of the masses.”
“The sweat of the masses is a whole different ball-park.  Except when it isn’t, if you see what I mean!”
“I did think of giving it to CLIK but I wasn’t sure where it would end up.”
“Entumbi!”  I looked blank.  “There’s a civil war been going on there for 20 years and probably set to go on for another 20.  For people who are anti-capital, they’re terribly good at making it really work for them.  I think CLIK would use it for Kadun.”
“So do I.  Think.”
“Anything that kicks Sar-fenan in the balls strikes a blow for the masses.”
“I definitely think that.”
“So these guys with whose names you may be familiar have been running their own economy, if you like.  I find it useful to think of the Fidub bank having branches in all major towns throughout the world.  And then those other guys, with whose names you may be familiar, have been running a parallel economy, also with branches in all major towns throughout the world.  There isn’t actually a global economy except in the sense it’s the interaction of around forty parallel economies, each of which may be summed up as the guys at the top deal with their own and the guys at the bottom on the whole haven’t a clue with whom they’re actually dealing, hence interaction.”  That’s not what my economics teacher taught me a parallel economy is!  “OK.  Now this game has, as we know, been played over the prone body of Kadun for a long, long time.  Bad enough that Sarat has taken Kadun, they did think he’d dashed well be a gentleman and play by the rules and NOT INTERFERE IN HARN.  Caps.  And of course they thought he’d be severely handicapped by Bal, but we’ve found ways round that.”
“You murder someone’s partner and you expect him to play by the rules?”
“They’re weird like that. Sarat’s – and others’, Sarat’s for short – financial activity in Harn is as brutal as an invading army, with about as much time for the conquered as your average brutal invading army.
“It gets worse.  Yes, financial acumen, yes, financial probity.  Nobody wants to work with a loser.  A guy is top of the heap – he’s on the side of the angels, that’s a bonus, not compulsory.  You remember when Sarat and Maya came networking.  Of course who one is counted with those who care who one is, but these are cold, hard-headed and experienced players.  Try what one is worth.  Try Grandpappy.  Why, that sure is a fine upstanding young man.  The word was watch him.  Nobody thought he could do it.  He did it.  That night – incredible scenes from Azt.  You should have been in the City!  Nothing obvious, just a kind of – glee.  Oh the metaphor!  It snowed, touching everything and making it sparkle.  WATCH HIM.  Caps.  Many a slip, still a whole continent armed and dangerous, maybe Kadun implodes, politically, economically.  Watch, watch, watch, they must have gone cross-eyed.  But it started, even before Maya’s murder.  Deliberate cutting, deliberate snubbing, Gee, no, I can’t stop, have to meet the flight from Maona-pri.   And then.  Most people don’t figure murder as sound business practice.  And then.  The whole damn’ Stock Exchange started singing the ‘It’s What Maya Would Have Wanted Song’.  In my view, what he’s done to them already is worse than having them queuing for welfare, even if that were possible.  The whole non-aligned, ever so ever so neutral City reckons they’re losers.
“And so by winding and circuitous paths we come back to little me.  The world is moving on – what was previously their world is moving on without them – and they’re thrown an old bone with no meat on it in a game with mirrors.  Let’s pretend you matter though how I am pretending you matter makes it entirely clear you do not.  Let’s pretend the economic future of Kadun or Harn or both hinges on these ridiculous little meetings.  Let’s pretend these ridiculous little meetings are about finance at all, not about the status of women or a murder-hunt.  Where I make good is of course everywhere but.  You’ve no idea how ‘Economic Liaison Officer to the Anile Throne’ opens doors.  Everyone else wants to see me.  I liaise like for crazy.  I liaise with secretaries, I liaise with tellers, I liaise with chairmen – usually – of multi-nationals.  And so I pursue my secret mission, which is open up a whole new world to professional women.  I’m Honorary President of Women in Banking.  And I drive the bastards up the wall. I babble stuff they could find and probably have found on the Grid, which naturally bores them shitless, only they daren’t actually fall asleep because I drop apparent nuggets just as they’re about to drop off.  I share conversations with Sarat and Mel, only I tweak them a bit.  Sometimes I make it up as  I go along and we see what happens next to see if I’ve touched a nerve. I am such a waste of oxygen.  Obviously there are dozen, a hundred, a thousand, a million, financial communications a day but I alone speak for Sarat and everyone knows it, though they can’t think why!”
“I can,” I said.  “You hate them as much as I do.”
“For everything they have done to Harn, for everything they have done to women.  For the raw terror.  For shackling good people.  For the terror, for people who want to talk to me, for people who ask frankly, can I be protected? I have kids…And the only answer I can give is only if you move to Fidub.  Or Dabida, or probably Kadun, because they have bigger fish to fry there.”
You’re fighting for Harn, I thought.  It’s your country.  I didn’t want to start that one up again.
“What all this means to your plots is that Sarat might decide now is the perfect time to start Phase Two.   Or he might not.  They are playing a waiting-game.  What they hope is that they might be able to suborn the duly elected government of Kadun, drive a wedge, make out Sarat and Cho are acting against the interests of  Kadun and the wishes of her people and lining their own pockets into the bargain.  You may laugh but there are die-hard communalists in Harn and further afield who are not wholly impressed by CLIK’s performance.  The answer is always the same, of course, get off your arse and come and look.  Pause while I write an ode to transparency, it’s really very effective, thus the Great Disclosure – “
“The what?”
“Fal……”
She didn’t quite shake her head sadly.
“I suspect I’ve just confessed to living in a cave!”
“Wearing skins – not of course goat-skins.  Sarat and Cho put the whole shebang on the Grid and further invited any associates who did not wish to disclose - about those sweat-shops in Esran -  to quit.”
“They what!”
“It can’t be everything.  Settled on, isn’t that the phrase.  Settled on Essa, settled on Shav, settled on some great-great-great-aunt who invested wisely.  Then there’s the property in Kadun. The lawyers are having a ball over that.  He’s still living rent-free. Vasucula and Ciletij aren’t in it for love, but they’re not in it for money, either.  First-rate service at cut-price rates.  Nobody wanted a Cult-infested Kadun looming over them..  The economic returns are, shall we say, considerable.
“Even the gloom-mongers don’t think the Great Enterprise will fail.  It can enter rocky seas and as I say the City doesn’t love losers.  It can get nervous.  If the boat begins to rock, it is thought, Sarat will send someone sensible to negotiate with them.  In hostile circles I’m regarded as Sarat’s little joke.   Come to think of it, I’m regarded affectionately as  Sarat’s little joke, because if there’s one thing that is abundantly clear to both sides.   Now I think we should go and  see Bal.”  She grinned.  “Your idea is delicious but possibly not legal.”
 
 “I am as susceptible,” said Bal,  “as the next man to two attractive young women intent on causing total havoc.  There is no question that what you propose is legal and I will assure you that I shall not rapidly initiate such legislation as would be required to outlaw it.  It is the damn craziest thing I have ever heard in my life – and as you are well aware I have heard some crazy propositions from your side of the water.  I swear Mel himself could not have come up with this one.”
I preened quietly to myself.
“A fresh pair of eyes,” cooed Kai.  “Even Sarat can think in tramlines.”  Bal looked disbelieving. 
“Ignorance,” I said cheerfully.  “When you don’t know anything about something you can play with it mentally  – something like that!”
 
I told her other stuff too.  She laughed softly.  I was remembering, about Tet not just being a short fuse.  The question was, whether he thought you were worth thinking about?   Oh yes, I said.
 
Hass wondered if I’d like to eyeball the beasts, I said.  I was thinking of putting on my posh frock and going to Blatni!  He thought I might join you.  Some piece of crap, maybe, sitting in on behalf of AMI.  If they’re willing to so sully themselves of course!”
“One is bad enough,” agreed Kai.  “I’d go for Blatni.” 
 
Neither of us really thought Sar-fenan would receive me.
 
Enter ancient panelled room, ancient walnut table the size of a double-bed, good afternoon gentlemen and blah. 
Sar-fenan looked up.
“Ah, the whore.”
Oh.
I smiled cheerfully.
“It’s delightful to be here.”
He smiled back. 
“Your partner was disabled, I understand.”
“He was.” I said.  “He got better.” 
“It must have been tiresome for a healthy young woman to be tied to an invalid.  San-yaega-baht, one feels, must have been a more virile proposition.”
OK, buster, you started this.
“The voice of envy?”
“Talal is reduced to employing prostitutes?  She does not deny the charge.”
“Oh no,” I said, “I shouldn’t give you the satisfaction of sneering at love.”
Lips duly curled.
“The Tensin Memo,” said Kai.
 The what?
“We shall not discuss that.”
“Fine,” said Kai.
“Talal has sent you?”  Note of total disbelief on the ‘you’.
“He wants to bargain, then.”
“Fact-finding mission,” I said.
They laughed.
“She is a goat-herd!”
Why do they know anything about me?  The money.
I shook my head sorrowfully.
“You do not seem able to conduct a civil conversation.”
“Not with an animal, no.”
Kai picked up her briefcase.
“Congratulations, gentlemen, you have just severed your last link with the Anile empire.”
Absolute silence.  Well, negative decibels.  A silence heavy with loathing, fury, and yes, just a little consternation.  We turned smartly on our heels and made to leave.
“That is nonsense,” said Sar-fenan.
“He has to deal with us.”
“We shall see,” said Kai, without bothering to turn her head.
We made our way out of the building the eyes in the backs of our heads wide open and fell into each other’s arms in the street.
“Put it there, partner!”
“We’re a team!”
“All recorded, said Kai. “
“What!”
“Always is.”  She sighed.  “I think I just.”
“I think you just too!  What the – I mean, I’ve had snide comments, but – “
“Any excuse will do,” she said.  “How interesting.  They’re getting tired of waiting. They really believe Sarat needs the link.  I think.”
“But the link is – was a joke!  I may be getting quite confused here.”
“Nobody else knows that.  It’s all mirrors.  To the outside world Sarat maintains a fiction that he has anything to say to them.  To the outside world he equally makes a statement about the nature of that ‘anything’ by sending little me to communicate it.  Which is real?  If Sarat actually had anything to say to Sar-fenan, he’d pick up the phone.  He can do that! They think they merit the organ-grinder not the monkey.  They think I’m a bluff and he will eventually – grow up may be the expression.  Start to behave like a proper person.”
“They murdered – “ I started to say again.  “She was only a woman?”
“Now you’re getting it,” said Kai.
 
We flew to Azt.   Kai rang Sarat and told him that whatever he was doing he needed to stop doing it and see us instead because this is like big, man.  He said he was just about to go to bed and it’d better be.
 
 “Two things,” said Kai.  “One, I have just severed relations with our little friends.”  She made huge eyes.  “They were rude.  This rude.”  She played the tape.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Sarat, “not to formal representatives of the Empire.”
“Oh am I!  I love it when you take things the right way,” I said.
“Worry about that in a minute,” said Kai.
“Worry is not the word I should choose,” said Sarat.
“The second things, things, actually.  They’re Fal’s ideas.  We went to see Bal.  He said it was legal and he wouldn’t make it unlegal.  I think Fal should outline the plot.”
“I’ll fill you in later on how on earth I even came to be thinking about money.  I did think and this is what I thunk.”
It was really very satisfying to make Sarat grin like that
 
Now Carlin.  I went home and invited myself to dinner at the House.
 
“My idea of standing for the Senate, it was because I want, I need, I have to do something, for Sorg, for Maya, but I’m Zuri and I – I want to go home.  But not with my tail between my legs, not without hitting them somewhere where it hurts , for Sorg,  Maya, you, for everyone who.- who’s cared.. I took a vacation to calm myself down, to think.  And I thought.  I ended up in the City studying finance.  The other strand is Sorg’s money.  It would just seem so wrong to be in Zur with it.  I don’t think Sorg would want me to have nothing.  I thought if I could buy something, invest it somehow in a way that hurts them, for Carlin, for Kadun, then that would be – right.”
“We love you,” said As.
“Oh As.  I love you all.  I thought I can’t leave.  It’s one of the things I had to think about.  My feeling that – I had to be here.  Or I had to be in Zur.  There’s no transport? “
“Zur is your home,” said Saryulin. 
“I think so,” I said.  “So, I studied and – it still didn’t seem to me that it was totally crazy.  I needed to run it past someone who knows about money and I talked to Kai – I don’t think you’ve ever met her.  People call her the City-chick.  She liaises between Sarat and the City.“  I grinned. “Economic Liaison Officer to the Anile Throne.”  I grinned more.  “Or at least she was until relations were sadly severed.   I’d talked to her before about my situation.”  I don’t know why I felt this was relevant, but I did.  “It’s the same and it’s different.  Kai’s Harni.  Her mother is a kind of earthpower – guru.   Carlin isn’t the only place they’ve been fighting since pre-history.  Kai hates them so much.  She’s brilliant and before she met Mel she was going to go into politics, electoral politics, I mean, become President of Harn!  But she saw that she could really do something here and now by joining Sarat’s gang.  But it’s all different now.  Kadun is Sarat’s gang.”  I dried up on that one.  I thought I’d got it pat before I arrived, but I was having other thoughts and I sure didn’t think I needed to say so she’s living with a senoki officer. 
“Anyway, Kai and I talked.  And she said it was possible.  Not easy, but possible.  She took me to see Bal and he said he wouldn’t make it illegal.   But the other idea I had, that was doable.  That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
I finally got to the point.  Saryulin smiled.  It was, I thought, the sort of smile a former Master of Carlin might have given when ordering the execution of members of the Cult. 
 
The clans were summoned, Pilo, Sarshi and Vij, Mardis and his partner.  You’d forgotten Mardis, hadn’t you.  Mardis hasn’t forgotten you.  His story’s a long one.  Laters.   Pietri, Caluna and Sarat.   Time for the tape. 
 
“I left out a bit.  Hass had suggested I might want to eyeball the shit.  He wondered if I might do PA to the Economic Liaison Officer, given my – then – total ignorance of all things economic. Sneak into one of their meetings.  She took me along.  I honestly didn’t know at the time that she recorded all her interactions.  This is the tape.  After I’ve done my stuff, I want the transcription in the Press.” 
 
“Ape!” breathed Mardis.
“This will be answered,” said Saryulin.
“Wish I’d been there,” said Sarsh.
 
We plotted.  It was going to take time, but that was OK.  Karula volunteered for the post of Economic Liaison Officer to the Anile Throne but Sarat informed her the position would remain unfilled for the moment. 
 
OK Fal, start using the brain you have somewhere.
This is premature.  Even goat-less, I am not at all certain I should move back in with Tet I am sure I want to go back to Zur. Tet (probably) would be happy anywhere he had perfect light. I want Benji.  Not everyone will understand that ??Tet, but anyone who’s had a pet would/should.  You don’t ditch pooch just because you’re moving back in with your ex or not as the case may be. Among the very many things I know nothing about is the probably wide range of desirable properties to be found in the surrounds of Zur. On the coast for instance where the light is doubtless fantastic. Is driving into Zur for a late night movie any worse than driving into Car-sandis?!?!!! This is my life.  I’d like to share it.  What an admirably sensible remark.  Only sometimes it is not so simple. Oh it is, it is it is!  Don’t know where that welled up from.  I have – settled my account in Carlin. What I want to do is live in Zur with my goats. What will be, will be. Is that kidding myself? Because the only acceptable properties are those with scope for a studio!  
I started to think very hard about being together for ever with Tet only for the moment in separate properties.  See everything is true and everything is false above.  He is – complete without me. And me, so desperate for completion – what I had to understand, I informed myself sternly, was that my independence had been irrelevant.  It simply didn’t matter that when Tet had been painting I’d been out living my own life and I looked very carefully at how I put that and decided it didn’t mean that being out living my own life had been determined by when Tet was painting.  I’d gone out leaving him reading in the garden and come back to find him vanished into the studio.