Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, conspiracy to overthrow democracy, giving aid and comfort to the Queen’s enemies, aiding and abetting them, causing actual bodily harm and conspiracy to wash someone down the drain (not sure what the legalese for that is) are generally regarded as pretty serious offences, at least by those with any serious concept of ‘crime’ as other than saying something someone else is offended by.   Especially if committed at the behest of the agent of a foreign  power.  Or in other words there is probably no aspect of these creatures that connects with the world of the mostly sane.  As previously stated, the law does not exist for these creatures other than as the servant of their sickness, the only crime they recognize being identification of precisely how vile they are.    I’m thinking here it must have taken some doing to get the connivance with them of all the security services and every government for the last 20 years. The less specific answer to that of course was given many moons ago: Treason ne’er doth prosper/What’s the reason?/If it prosper/None dare call it treason.   But I’m sure you’ll be wanting to know more about the Economic Liaison Officer to the Anile Throne, if you missed her the first time round.
 
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
 
 
I Kyse must intervene.  Stable, me? 
If I resign and return home or install myself in Azt what actually should I do?  Historical research.  I guffawed.  By the way, for whom should I be working?  Things get complicated when you think about them too much.  I guessed most of the people in the Imperial  saw themselves as good citizens of Vasucula or Ciletij carrying out the aims of Vasucula or Ciletij.  My new friend must have some views on this and in the sprawling apartment that was home in the City I mailed her.  The bit in the middle wasn’t a problem.  It was the end and the beginning.  Hi, Fal?  Dear Fal?  Dear, dear Fal?  Love, Kyse?
Lots of love?
Neither of us had said anything.  Make that Said Anything.
I clicked Save not Send and sat back and started to think about something difficult.
It must be said at this late date…One of the reasons I hadn’t cast aside my books and rushed off to the pulsating hub was that I had been in a relationship. It was a perfectly good relationship – I guess I mean imperfectly good.  We were very alike and that I saw with hindsight had been fatal.  On-lookers on life.  Chroniclers.  I understood that if I became involved with Fal I shouldn’t be able to sit back and watch.  Or want to.  But was it for me?  Mel had opened that door for me.  I’d looked inside, smiled approvingly, gosh, you do lead a varied life, and withdrawn.  I doodled the word ‘extremes’ with lots of curlicews on the ‘x’.  Surely there were normal people, people who found a happy medium.  I considered Fal and my mind and body wandered off into a rather enjoyable fantasy.  I reined them in and drew a vertical arrow down from the centre of the ‘x’.  Hmmm.  No-one who’d known her ten years ago would have dreamed she’d be living alone growing pettifer in Carlin.  Life is both, I wrote.  Congratulations on that vast glimpse of the obvious. Ah yes, the balance.  So my life was heavily out of kilter – and at the other extreme that of many others too obvious to name.  But there would be an election.  There would be respite.  It’d be Fal who’d be Senator, not me.  So she’d be in Azt.  So – my mind went blank a moment.  So she could be killed.  I felt a sort of fury that that was a possibility.  The Matter of Kadun stared at me and said do something. 
Oh.
What are they all in it for?  A society in which people were not assassinated.  The rule of law.  I do the rule of law.
They didn’t need me to write the laws.  Conceivably they needed me to write the history.
I wrote: the unknown and possibly the unbearable, then underlined ‘the unknown’ a lot.
I couldn’t in all honesty, I said to myself with a sort of leer, even if I wanted to, say ‘it wouldn’t work’ because I didn’t actually have the faintest conception what ‘it’ would be like. 
There was of course also the small detail of whether she’d want me.
Dear Fal.  Lots of love, Kyse x.
 
Dear Kyse.
It was a long answer and some of it was hilarious.  She spared herself no pains telling me about being handed over to Sarat.  People like us, she wrote, are so obviously Mel’s team that we shock ourselves when we find we aren’t.  I think the ground rules are some automatic assumptions.  I trust we all know our Constitution.  Let’s say we’re functioning solely in the context of Dabida a minute.  We assume the whole thing isn’t going to go pear-shaped, which is to say we assume the interests, values etc of Crown, State and People are identical.  It doesn’t occur to us that by being ‘Mel’s team’ we’re being in any way divisive.  Mel had to take the other two-thirds with him and he did.  In the context solely of Kadun, there’s Mitch, absolutely ‘Sarat’s team’  and the same applies.  There the assumption is a bit bigger and its roots are more complicated because pro tem anyhow the State and the People are all represented by ‘Sarat’s team’.  But really it’s not a question of that three-pronged animal ‘the nation’ it’s a question of the interests and values and, as I said to you, what you do to further those values, so there is no conflict.  Only that there might be.  In the long run that ‘might be’ is real, but I don’t think it is in our lifetimes.  In other words Kadun is not going to declare war on Dabida!  What could happen, though I don’t think it will, is I could find myself in a Senate with an anti-democratic (and nationalist) majority.  So who would ‘the People’ be then, the people who’d elected me or the people who’d elected them?  If Mel, Sarat, Tar, Vanya, took a pronounced anti-democratic turn, I’d oppose them.  It’s so easy for the little hierarchical brain to say ‘Mel’s team’ but I’m not, you’re not.  We’re irretrievably committed to certain values, we’re not on anyone’s side, except the side of those values.  Consequently, theoretically, I could yet find myself a resistance fighter holed up in the Lausanine.  It is – fortunate the power bases of the continent are equally committed to those values, but that’s all it is, true for now, not true-true, a law of the universe. That’s what I mean, it’s a shock.  Shock to find I’m something apart from a loyal little Dabidan.  But that’s what they mean when they say PANTHER works for no-one, not Kadun, not Fidub, not the Emperor.  We mean, I mean to say, of course, yes….It gets embedded, doesn’t it.  It doesn’t really matter unless the chips are down.
 
There was a bellowing in my brain: soul-mate.
I realized that I wasn’t really all that interested in chairing a seminar for the planet’s brightest on exchange rates and the Mosai Wars. 
Oh dear.
But honing the minds of the leaders of tomorrow is so rewarding. 
I took that one on in 3D.  They’d been honed.  If the Matter of Kadun still went pear-shaped, it would take more or rather less than finely honed minds to straighten it out.  Sub-machine guns sprang to mind.  Was I not then a leader of today?  Oh yikes.  No, whatever I might become I was not leadership material.  I grinned to myself.  If Fal was leading the resistance from the Lausanine I’d be in the back room organizing the communications.
You’re in a program, Kyse, I told myself and many are the cunning snares programs lay to trap the unwary because you think – thought – you made a free choice. 
Highly successful academic career.  Moderately successful human being.  Help old ladies across the road.  All the right instincts.  So why aren’t I acting on them?
Fal and I continued to correspond.  How dry that sounds.  I think we had an understanding that I was winding up my life in the City when suddenly the chips came down.
 
MAYA DEAD
MAYA ASSASSINATED
SHE DIED IN HIS ARMS
 
Can you be numb with fury?  Or maybe stripped?  All I can really say about that moment is all the intellectualization and introspection fell away and all that was left apart from the pain and fury was WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE?
 
Oh and a little insanity.  I resigned.  I walked out.  Instantly.  No notice.  Sorry about the classes and the timetable and the committees and the rest of the crap.  You’ll manage. You’re bright enough.
Where I’m going I shan’t need a reference. 
Calm down, said Qartly.  You knew her of course.
Not really, I said.  That’s not the point.
Give my love to Mel.
I am behaving abominably. 
About time, said Qartly.
I wasn’t about to go into that one.
Thank you, I said.
 
The buzzer had gone off on the hill, the alarm, the one that never went off, the one that meant fire,  invasion, flood, freak wave warning, catastrophe.  Someone was screaming.  Mel had been talking peaceably to some minor politician.  She started.  He jumped up. 
“Fire, flood…”
She picked up her papers.
Mel was at the door cannoning into Por.
“Maya,” said Por. [Unspeakable image.]   He picked up the remote. Maya died in Sarat’s arms in front of them.  It was the third re-run of the day.  
All the minor politician would say afterwards is I should not have seen that.  I should not have seen Mel see that.  She vanishes from our story.
“Auto-pilot,” said Mel.  Por clasped his shoulder. “Somewhere I’m screaming.”  He reached for the intercom.  “Turn the alarm off now.”. He walked slowly out.  The worst has happened.  We should try – he said afterwards, words a moment failed him.  Why should we try to keep calm?   Bomb the City.  How calm I feel.  The worst has happened, he said again.  Now we must grieve.  We do no good to ourselves or others, to the living or the dead,  by being deranged, no matter how we feel.
The ‘phones started to ring, incessantly, mindlessly, thought Mel, were abruptly silenced.
“Pietri,” said Mel.
“Fal,” said Por.
“I must ring…” said Mel.  He meant Sarat.
“I should imagine,” said Por, “at this point Sarat is beyond words.”
Cantilip had been in the studios of Zur Live admiring their new technology. There was a flurry, then a sudden silence then people who’d been calling her babe two minutes earlier were on their feet, tears running down their faces, and  looking at her and saying gently,  my lady, and her heart turned over..  I see, she said. Then everyone stood up and they played the national anthem and then the imperial anthem, over the air, because it sort of seemed the right thing to do, but as Cantilip told Mel with that devastating honesty for which he loves her so the truth was no-one had the faintest idea what to do.  Least of all me.  Seize the mike. It gave me time to think.   Cantilip will speak. It – it perhaps not for me to speak for Kadun nor even for Dabida on this terrible day. All of us involved in – in this Matter of Kadun have long lived with dread and now it has happened.  Mel and I send all our love to Sarat, to Pietri and Caluna, Vij,and all those who share our devastation, in Dabida, in Kadun.  This shared loss of our beautiful, our entrancing, our wonderful Maya – I nearly stalled, she said after.  What about our shared loss?  Some piece of sickly nonsense about how it may bring us still closer?  There are few who did not, who do not love her.  I salute Maya Talal ban-essa, Anile Empress, our darling Maya.
 Mel was trying Fal’s mobile.  It went on ringing.  Hallo? she said eventually, sounding perfectly cheerful.  You’ve heard?  Heard what?  Oh no, thought Mel, it gets worse.  He put all the love and support into his voice that it’s possible to send down a telephone line.  Fal, my dearest, my darling – Maya’s dead.  No, she said.  Mel, you didn’t say that. I can’t leave Zur, he said.  Of course you can’t bloody leave Zur! she said.  Someone needs to be with you.  I’ll call As, she said.. Oh Mel.  Love, love, love, love, love, he said. 
Por looked at him.
“At least Sarat knows.”
“I cannot tell Pietri over the ‘phone.”
There are worse ways of finding out.  Caluna had been in the Mall.  Like most places, Zuri electronics shops have TVs on in the window.  We interrupt this broadcast.  She stared sightlessly at the screen. Her legs gave way. 
“Normal work is clearly over for the day,” Mel was saying, “perhaps for many days.”  This is my culmination?  To bury my cousin?  “Hot sweet tea I think is in order. Let’s go,” he said to Por.
Por committed what is usually Zur’s greatest crime, driving through the walking-streets.  No-one noticed.  A small crowd had already gathered at Pietri’s.  Pietri came out of the kitchen, shaking his head, looking suddenly old.
“I am going to Azt. The heli is waiting.”
“Pietri – “ began Mel.
“Say nothing,” said Pietri, “nothing is best.”
Mel kissed him.  Pietri briefly clasped Mel’s back.
“Where’s Caluna?”
“Vij has gone to her,” said Sarshi.  “She collapsed in the street.”
“You have many calls on your time,” said Pietri.
“Blame me,” said Mel
“No, Mel.”
“It is only unbearable?” asked Mel.
Pietri laid a hand on his nephew’s shoulder.
“You have spoken to Sarat?”
“Not yet.  Let me try….”
Baz’ mobile was off too.  He seemed to have deleted the number of Paw’s. 
“I imagine,” said Pietri, “the problem is it keeps ringing.”
 “Try Faun…”
“Faun.”
“Mel. I want Sarat.”
“Turn your television on.  He’s gone back.”
“TV,” said Mel.  Sarshi ran to put it on. “What’s Paw’s number?” he asked down the ‘phone.
Scenes of devastation from Azt.  His Imperial Majesty has returned to the scene of the blast that so tragically.
Pietri sat down suddenly.
Sarat talking to rescue-workers, Sarat talking to the rescued. Sarat still bloody. 
“You go out there,” said Mel, “and you damned well do it.  You do it when your heart is broken, you do it when you’re screaming, you do it when you’re bleeding to death from internal wounds.  You just bloody do it.”
Pietri shook his head.
“I have no animosity towards Sarat.”
“The dread,” said Mel.
“That is the same for all.”
His Imperial Majesty will speak
Someone had a radio outside.  It was turned up suddenly, hurting the silence.
Sarat finished.  Someone outside began to sing the imperial anthem.  A few voices joined in, then faltered and stopped. 
Pietri looked suddenly resolute, turned and walked to the front door.  He opened it and walked out to the crowd.
“On Sarat’s behalf, on behalf of my beautiful Maya, I thank you.  Please continue.”
He turned on his heel and returned to the house.
Mel hugged him.
Mel’s ‘phone rang.
“Mel.  Papa!  I’m at Pietri’s.” 
Pietri looked up sharply.
Mel thought: don’t talk to me like this.  Don’t talk to me the way you did when I was six and my puppy was run over, because I’m liable to cry like I did when I was six.
“I’ll give you Pietri,” he said at length.  “I’ll get a glass of water.” 
Sarshi followed him into the kitchen.
“You loved Sorg.  You loved Maya.”
“I don’t think I ever knew,” said Mel, “exactly what people meant by a living nightmare.”
“It must end!”
“It must not,” said Mel, “each time become a little harder.  No faltering in our resolution.  How to recapture - ?”
“I think it changes,” said Sarshi.  “Hardens.  I – I never thought of myself as having – resolution. After Sorg – this will not fail and that’s that. If I have to fight for Carlin, I’ll do it.”
“Oh Sarsh.”
Pietri came in.
“Your mother.”
Mel drove back with his mobile off. A queue had begun to form, snaking up the hill.  He got out and walked, shaking hands, touching shoulders, hugging. 
“The following people want to talk to you and your bloody mobile is either engaged or off.  That’s without the ones who are actually here.”
“This is hell,” said Mel.
“Worse than that,” said Por.  “There is a – contingent who want the funeral in Zur.”
“No,” said Mel.
“Vanya’s in The Room.”
He walked in.
Our deepest regrets, our sincerest condolences.  The funeral…
“It is not,” said Mel, “and cannot be my decision.  Pietri’s gone to Azt.”
Eventually he escaped.
“I must ring Baya.”
“They may not be there.”
“That’s not the contingency plan.”
Por’s face showed what he thought of contingency plans.
Mel made one more ‘phone call.
“Now I ride,” said Mel.
He made it back to his office once more.
Julin and Maitlan sat watching the scenes from Azt.
Julin turned and smiled
“Reporting for duty, sir!”
“Am I glad to see you,” said Mel.
“Our deepest regrets,” said Maitlan.  “Our sincerest condolences.  All the rest of the helpless, useless crap.  My poor Mel.  Our love.”
“Poor everyone,” said Mel.
Maitlan looked at him questioningly.
“Am I sufficiently detached?” 
“Oh yes,” said Mel.  “I just hadn’t got around to it.”
“That was Julin’s reasoning,” acknowledged Maitlan.  “He rang me.”  Julin looked innocent.  “What Mel needs  now is people to help him do what he has to do without  - “
“Wounds of their own,” said Mel.
“Reakoed,” suggested Maitlan.
“Reakoed is too important where he is.”
Maitlan laughed.
“If Dabida turns,” said Julin.
Mel closed his eyes.
“Fortunately that seems unlikely.”
“The nationalists will use it.”
“No-one pays them any attention,” said Maitlan.
“It’s as though,” said Mel, “everything we’ve done was a preparation for now.”
“Real people,” said Julin, “people you know, people who love each other.”
“People who suffer,” said Mel.
“How can we be of use?” asked Julin.
“Go down into Zur.   Make sure there are loos, water.  Tell them the funeral is for Pietri and Sarat to decide and no-one else.”
“Shit,” said Maitlan.
 
By the time I ran into Kai at the airport I was a bit saner.  Fake sane, the way one is.  Good at giving tissues to the Economic Liason Officer to the Anile Throne.  When I’d seen Kai off in a cab to the Imperial, my brain started to work.  I was just about to hire a car and mutter, Carlin, fast, out of the corner of my mouth, like they do in the movies, when it occurred to me that she probably wasn’t there.  I knew she and Maya had been close.  I couldn’t imagine how she was coping or not with double devastation.  Wouldn’t she go to Pietri’s?  But wouldn’t Pietri and Caluna go to Azt?  Would she be with Mel?  With Sarat?  Clearly darling I wanted to surprise you wasn’t on even if it was altogether appropriate.  I got out my mobile. 
No answer.  I didn’t know if that was good or bad. 
This you will of course understand is totally unlike me. Hating crowds isn’t unlike me, especially unhappy and therefore bad-tempered crowds.  I retreated back into the concourse and spied a giant sunshine yellow steaming mug with a toothy grin.  I knew the franchise from the City.  At least the coffee would be good.  I shrank into a corner, making mountains and valleys in the froth with a sunshine yellow plastic stirrer.  Then I realized the television was on.  Our heroic rescue-workers.  Wreckage.  Sarat, silent and unsmiling, leaving the Jumesit. People crying.  People angry.  People with flowers.  We turn now to.  Here is.  We move now to Zur.  I looked at the queue circling the hill.  This conveyed  to me that wherever the hell I should be it wasn’t at an outlet of Rise ‘n’ Shine.   I examined my other self and the barricade around it which said Dabidan which had just been breached, the remarkable human faculty for saying something is over there and not really anything with which I was personally involved. Oh, and the basic response to violent death which is to wrap one’s arms around someone.  I really had no reason to think Fal was remotely romantically interested in me or anyone else alive.  Did I really want to compete with a ghost?  Did I really want to get involved with someone so psychologically complicated and possibly insane?  Did I think these things?  Only at one remove, through a mist.  They were as naught compared to a sort of agonising empathy generally known as love, which told me she was all alone and needed me. This particular derangement of love appeared to have some basis in reality.  Somewhere it seemed to me that the breaching of my defences mirrored a wound to Dabida and I couldn’t readily see how any of the Six could rush off to Carlin to hold Fal’s hand.  Except of course for.  Mental squeal of brakes. 
 
She hadn’t talked about Tet. Why should she?  Tet had never found anyone else.  My mind only too readily constructed a touching scenario of shared pain, shared grief bringing them once more together. 
I hadn’t even spoken to Mel!  I’d told Kai that what I had to say to Mel was not (puh-lease!) for the telephone.  I was going to Zur, I said.  Right on cue, the Tannoy had boomed and a military-sounding voice authoritatively told us that Flight Delta Foxtrot Zero-Niner-Seven to Zur was boarding at Gate 15.  I expect it’s full, she said.  I felt a moment’s boundless certainty that DF-097 was half-empty, but she didn’t ask why I was therefore about to take flight to Azt, which was just as well because I didn’t have an answer.  Why did I assume Fal was sitting at home consumed in grief?  She might have gone straight to Azt – to Zur, to the House, any bloody place. 
Wherever she was it was intimately bound up with the loss of Maya.  Now, Kyse, you moron, is not the time. 
I tried Fal’s mobile again.  Off.  Why not off?  With Pietri, with Caluna, with Sarshi, with Vij, with Mel, with Sarat.  Who the hell wants it on.
She must be in Zur. 
Her landline probably had a nice explanatory little message on the voicemail.  I didn’t know her landline.
I had to get among people I knew who’d know what was going on, probably the most un-me thought I have ever had in my life.  That meant the Imperial.
I took a cab to the Imperial, or at least to the Colonnade.  Can’t go no further, mate.  There are things I am incapable of saying to Azt cabbies.  One of them is, I’m a friend of Mel’s.  Pull the other one, mate.  Hundreds of people can vouch for me, I thought irritably.  All it needs is a routine check.  I paid up and got out, armed only with my intellect, integrity and the increasingly strong feeling I should be in Zur.  My intellect started to ask me what the crowds thought they were doing there.  How could it help?  My integrity told me I am an upright citizen of Dabida, not a bloody journalist, because of course what the cordon was about was bloody journalists, bereft at no longer being flavour of the month.  My increasingly strong feeling I should be in Zur looked around rather helplessly seeing no immediate means to get the hell out.
I turned to the nearest person who happened to be a middle-aged woman.
“Excuse me, can you tell me where the bus-station is, please?”
“Oh, you’re way out, love.  Right over in Gizzan.”
“I can’t walk it, then?”
“Well, you could.  Take about an hour.  Where do you want to go?”
“Zur!  I’m Dabidan.  I need to get home.”
“Oh love.  Tell them we’re sorry, we’re ever ever so sorry.”
“I will.”
“That poor young man.”
“Yes,” I said
“Train’s best…”
I realized she was wondering how poor I was.
“That’d do!” I said brightly.
She gave me directions to the train-station and I started walking.
After about a quarter of an hour a metal pole embedded in the pavement near the kerb loomed before me.  Attached to its top was a board reading COACH-STOP.
Hey, long-distance buses actually stop on their way out of this hell-hole!  Sorry, Sarat.
Carlin Village.  You mean I’ve done something right in this mess?  The next one wasn’t due for 40 minutes.  I can wait!
That is how I came to be sitting on the bench by the Memorial in a village that was apparently totally deserted. Curtains were drawn.  A lonely flag flew at half-mast. What did they do at a time like this, go to the House?  A noise behind me made me turn.  The everything shop was opening up. 
“Loife gotta go ahn.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Gahn to un shroine.”
Kyse, you really are a moron.
“I’m a friend of Falita’s.”
“First the Major.”  Distinctly more friendly tone.  Do I look like a journalist?
“Yes,” I said.
“Int it gohn end.”
“It will end!” She was lugging one of those things you find outside shops into position and it looked heavy.  “Can I help?”
Yes, Kyse, it’s just the word escapes you.   Roughly thigh-height, hinge at the top, four legs, two boards.
That is how I came to assist with the opening of the everything shop. 
People began to trickle back in twos and threes, Fal not among them.  By this time – all that fresh country air – my brain was beginning to resume normal functioning and I’d realized that here among those who’d lost terribly twice was probably, my beating heart notwithstanding, also not the best place for me to be.  If Fal was at the House, I could only be an intrusion.
As the new counter-assistant in the everything shop, I attracted attention.
“Friend of Fal’s.”
“I was hoping to see her,” I said.
“She’m gahn ‘ome.”
“Zur, you mean?”
Foot right in it.
“Bark to un cahtage.”
“How do I get there?”
“You’m roide a boike?” asked my new employer.
In other circumstances pedalling through country lanes would have been idyllic.
Oh look, it’s a field of flowers.  Lots I didn’t know.
 
I arrived at a gathering.  I can’t think of a better word.  Maybe wake?  There were people in the front yard, perched on the fence. I dismounted, feeling very conspicuous.
“I’m a friend of Fal’s,” I said.  “From Zur.”
Fortunately at that moment she came out into the yard.
I hugged her with considerable enthusiasm. 
“Thank you,” she said, “thank you.”
She stood back, holding both my hands in hers.  Ecstasy!  Holding me at arms’-length as you prefer.  She smiled.
“He’m uzz’n.”
 I guessed Asdinan smiled and came forward and introduced himself and we all went inside.  Around the kitchen table sat two youngsters looking as I supposed you might look if your parents had been slowly disembowelled in front of your eyes.  Assorted country people leaned against the dresser or sat on the stairs.  It was really rather strange, like a cocktail party with no sound, but it was right. Is there a collective noun for a gathering of the bereft? I wondered. A communion of mourners.  I guessed these were the twice bereft sharing something they didn’t even have to mention. 
Thus I was wholly superfluous to requirements, other than as a chronicler, an onlooker to life.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re all right,” I mumbled.
I put the kettle on and smiled sympathetically at the kids, not knowing what to say.  I am absolutely starving! didn’t seem quite the thing.  I looked around hopefully.   There were some plates out on the dresser, a couple of broken biscuits, the end of a cake.  Clearly others had ravened before me.
“Is Mel all right?” asked Smudge.
“As much as he can be. “
“You must live in Zur.”
“I’m Zuri,” I said,  “but I lived in the City.  That’s where we became friends.  At the Schools.”
“You’m come ‘ome now?” asked Zulan.
“Yes,” I said.
Asdinan came in.
“Rackon it’s toime we was arf neow.”  Zulan gave me a long appraising stare. “Zuri.  Gaht ‘n lots to tark about.”
“Zo long as we bain’t leaving ‘er,” said Zulan.
Smudge said: “It’s funny – “ then stopped. 
Asdinan put a hand on his shoulder. 
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
Like a big sheepdog, I thought.  The sheepdog very gently shepherded the gathering to a close.
At last we were alone! 
“I’m frankly ravenous,” I said.  Great romantic openings of the age!
“There isn’t much,” she said. 
I made myself a great mound of toast, not because I have simple tastes, but because that was about all there was,.bar the end of cake and the broken biscuits.
“You need someone to shop for you,” I said firmly.  “I have contacts!”  I told her about the everything shop.
“Sooty’s a darling.  Her real name’s Sootic.”
There are two big armchairs, one on each side of the hearth.  We sipped cocoa, goat-milk cocoa.  It’s an acquired taste, but it was hot and wet.
“How did you hear?”
“Radio.  I then went mad.  Got sane.  You choose!  I just had this one over-riding thought: what the hell am I doing here?  I picked up my toothbrush and headed for the airport, pausing only to quit my job. I felt – some brake had been taken off and I was going to jump in.  It’s touched Dabida.  It’s touched me, as a Dabidan. Is that – not an awful thing to say.  Inappropriate?”
“All the stuff endlessly threshed over,” said Fal.
“Making nonsense of.”
“I don’t know,” said Fal.
Fal is not a small woman and I don’t suppose she was feeling all that lost, either, but the L-word had no difficulty seeing her as small and lost.
“Would it be – inappropriate if I put my arms round you?”
She looked at me over the top of her mug, mercifully not sunshine yellow.
“I’d like that.”
I went over to her. 
“Ia there room for two?” 
They are really big chairs, huge.  I mean I wasn’t suggesting she sat on my lap. 
“I’ll hudge up,” she said.
It took a few minutes to get comfortable, but when we did comfortable was clearly where it’s at, the apex of delight, or would have been if the phone hadn’t rung from time to time, tweaking my conscience.  I hadn’t realized Fal had quite a large family.  I have quite a small family.  I do actually have a mum and dad.  I ought at least to acknowledge their existence.
“I ought to see my mum,” I said.
“I’ll come,” said Fal. 
“Shall we put the box on?”
Channel Five burst into life, or death, as you prefer.   It’s like the whole city is wearing armbands.  Is it really?  Dabida does not share the sensitivity of the imperial family towards black as the colour of mourning but out of deference to irtubi sensitivities these armbands have a silver stripe.  Some folk are wearing pure silver.
“Sher-it,” I said.
This is for the Anile Empress, the commentator was babbling, perhaps unwisely.  Someone walked in front of camera and said loudly.  This is for our Maya.  For everyone’s Maya, said someone else. 
“Start a bloody riot,” muttered Fal.
Including Sarat’s Maya.  This is about people, man.  Right!
You knew Sarat when he was in Zur?  asked the commentator.
“Oh yeah, bosom buddies!  Sarat was like part of the scenery.”
“I bet,” said Fal, “he comes from the west.”
I grinned.
“Ah yes, the Two Nations Theory.”
“Bah!” said Fal.
When Sarat had walked into Carlin, and they’d run out of anyone else to talk to, our wonderful media had remembered there was a rest of Dabida and interviewed some folks in Jansi,  A Small Town in the Middle of Dabida.  On the somewhat tenuous grounds that some folks in Jansi were not going ape like Zur, the Two Nations Theory had been born.  If you remember your geography, you will recall that west of where the Great Divide peters out, our border is no longer with Kadun but with Vasucula.  The not-so-friendly naturally fell on this like eagles on rabbits to say we can only wait and see if Dabida splits between the east, which is frankly, historically as currently, obsessed equally with Kadun and with Fidub, which, historically as currently, is indeed the meat in the sandwich there and the west, the overwhelming links of which are with Vasucula, a border that has always been open, accents that are almost indistinguishable. 
Once it was voiced, Dabida – the whole of Dabida – mostly said bollocks!  This didn’t of course stop there being a grain of truth, that being that some folks had no clue about the peculiar and exceptional circumstances of recent history.  What the hell they were doing employed by Channel Five was another matter.  You only had to have been a student to see Sarat and Maya cluttering up the union caff.  Even I knew that.
 
A queue of people snaked first down the hill then round it.  H-W kept the road clear.  We slowed.  It’s me, said Fal.  It must have spread through the crowd.  Someone shouted, “It’s Fal!”  She froze, then got slowly out.  Fal, love!  We’re so sorry.  I remember the two of you skipping about.  I realized we were going to have to walk up the hill.  There were actually people who knew me too.   Had I not made my name (nailed my colours to the wall) at Sarat’s Pad! Mel’s mate, aren’t you.  Kyse, by all that’s!  I’d been at school with Holan.  We shared commiserations while my ears wagged.  We called him our pet spy!  ‘Course afterwards, everyone knew who he’d been spying for, the Army, that’s who!  Brave, brave lad.   I’d come home in the vacations.  I knew vaguely that Sorg had been regarded as one of the sights of Zur, sort of tourist attraction.  The vultures had been clustered at the arch but now sniffed prey.  Of course you were friends from an early age. Remembering the two of you skipping about got an airing too, except it wasn’t skipping it was splashing around in the toddlers’ pool on the quay.  Twice now the Cult has stripped you of those you loved most.  Yup, said Fal.  As an introduction to public life, it was pretty harrowing.  It got worse.  That sort of day.     
For the first time in either of our lives we weren’t instantly received.  Mel, said Por, was with family.  There’s an awful lot of family after 600 years.  I remembered vaguely that Mel had  once said Maya’s parents hadn’t been entirely keen.  I wondered how many people held Mel responsible for Maya’s death and if they included Pietri and Caluna.  Don’t give Mel a hard time! I thought. Fal looked at me wanly. 
“Lisping six-year-olds.  Leggy teens.”
I put my arms around her.  What was there to say?  So there we were, a vignette of pure misery, when another vignette of pure misery finally emerged to greet us,
“Oh Mel,” said Fal.
“Darling girl.”
We all hugged. 
“Everyone must be devastated,” I said after a while.  It was really just the small talk I’m no good at – I wasn’t fishing - but Mel briefly recounted his ordeal by relations. 
“The words ‘bloody Sarat’ were heard.  I am so angry.  Most of them barely knew Maya, let alone Sarat.  Oh, family parties.  They didn’t know her. Fortunately Pietri went straight to Azt, where the funeral will duly, correctly and totally in line with my wishes be held.”
“I know,” said Fal.  “He rang me.”
There was a single copper on guard at Pietri, but she really wasn’t necessary.  The crowd was practically silent.  We were shown in.
“Falita, my dear,” said Pietri.  Sarshi ran to Fal and they both burst into tears.  That was grim.  Fal’s mum was conceivably worse.  She was such a good friend to you, love. My parents at least hadn’t been attached to either Sorg or Maya by bonds of steel.  Coming back down Yan-sitian, we ran into Hass talking quietly to people and he held Fal as though he’d never let her go, then we came across another silent queue and for a moment I couldn’t think why, then remembered the Kadun Rep Centre was round the corner.  The flag was at half-mast.  On impulse, Fal, who really wasn’t dressed for saluting a toy soldier, walked forward, came to attention, saluted and said – proclaimed: “Her Imperial Majesty! Maya-ban-essa, Mistress of Kadun.  My best friend.”  She turned sharply on her heel and walked back to me, mouthed, “Let’s get out of here.”
Click, click, bloody click.  I don’t know whether it was a surge of adrenalin caused by fury at the ever-present camera or what, but I suddenly grinned and grabbed her hand. 
“Run!”
There’s an opening, a few strides-worth of paving, a couple of steps, at the end of Sumesit.  We ducked down there and out into the Gilyan Road.  She knew what I was doing now and realized I wasn’t entirely insane.  I do love a woman who can really run.  We flung ourselves onto the trolley-bus stopped at the lights.  The conductor began to expostulate.  See that, it says Danger!  He pointed to a red triangle asking people not to alight at the lights.
“Are you a 35 or a 12?” asked Fal.
“12,” he grumbled.  “Some people use bus-stops.”
“We could go all the way to the Lido,” I said.
“Turning round at Kanavil.”
That was one of the commuter stations where the slow trains stop
“Dabida lies before us!”
“You’re Fal, aren’t you.”
“Yes,” said Fal.  “This is a friend of Mel’s,” she added, doubtless feeling some explanation in order.
“We were escaping the Press,” I said, definitely feeling some explanation in order.
“Those farts!”
“Poor little bastard,” opined someone.  “Brought it all on himself, didn’t he.”
“Holdan!” reproached someone else.
“These things have to be said.”
“Maybe so, maybe no.  Now is not the flipping time to say them!”
“I think we’ve thrown them off the scent,” said Fal, slightly too loudly.  “If we get off at the next stop -
“Now look what you’ve done!”
“No, really,” I said, “we were just going.”  Ly-ing, Kyse, the word is ly-ing.
“You give Mel our love, now.”
“Don’t want him getting the wrong idea because some people have no tact.”
Thank you, thank you….
The next stop was Tabin’s Merchant-Builders, No Order Too Small or Too Large.   Except today, when it appeared deserted. 
“Cross over and get the bus back,” said Fal in an ever-so-sensible voice.
“Maybe we can avoid paying twice running.”
We caught each other’s eye.
“We could plead extenuating circumstances.”
She was patting her pockets.
“Have you got your ‘phone?”
I checked.
“Yes.”
“I think I left mine at mum’s.”
Opposite were some large freshly painted green sheds.  The word may be warehouses.  We were on an industrial estate, which would have been fine had there been any industry.  IMPORT-EXPORT.  We reach the four corners of the world!  A lorryman embraced the globe.
“Oh look, there’s Toy Mania.”
“Maybe we could steal a scooter.”
“A whole new meaning,” I said dreamily. “Fal scooted into Zur.”
“I have to get back to Carlin,” she said, but not crushingly, or even decisively, almost questioningly, as though it were a sudden realization of which she was unsure, then more certainly, “That is my – duty to Maya.”
“Then we’d better steal a helicopter. Fal – “  Oh please Kyse, not on the pavement in a particularly unromantic backwater of Zur.  “I care about you a lot.”  Oh, the hell with it.  “I love you.  I understand if you’re not ready to even think about it, but I hope you will think about it.”
“Kyse.”  She kissed my cheek and smiled.  “I’d like to think about that.”
“I know I choose my moments.  I know now is the -  I wanted to say it anyway.”  She squeezed my hand tightly and didn’t let go.  “I’ll be in Zur.”
“Let me get the funeral over.  Sarat has asked me to ride in the procession.  People who’ve lost to the Cult.”
“Oh my darling girl.”  The hell with sensitivity and delicacy. I wrapped my arms round her, about which there is to say that I enjoyed it immensely and she showed no signs whatever of not enjoying it.  “I like this,” I said at length.
“I like it too,” she said, leaving me to have the brains to work out that liking it didn’t necessarily mean it was the blueprint for the rest of her life.
The bus back was a 23, confounding us both.  How dare it?  Been away too long.  As such,. it stopped just round the corner from mum and dad’s. 
“I’ll have to go back to the City,” I said.  I patted my rucksack. “All I’ve got is a toothbrush and a change of underwear!”
“I’ll mail you,” said Fal.
 
It was not of course the most harrowing day of my life ever.  That day was the day of funeral while I waited for her to be blown up.  Nonetheless, I had previously had a pretty feeble notion of what it is to be emotionally drained.  Only later did it fully penetrate that every day of my life would be waiting for her to be blown up.  But that, I said to myself, would be true whether I was with her or not.
 
I wondered what her mum and dad did.  They didn’t seem posh people but it was a decidedly posh flat.  Oh, of course.  I had somewhere absorbed that Falita San-yaega-baht had probably inherited rather a lot of money.  How much?  Certainly enough to set Mum and Dad up.  The last thing I am is a guy who'll object to his partner earning more than he does.  Having the bucks running out of her ears was different – not necessarily worse, just different.  Entailed? Property?  Hers was hardly a life of conspicuous consumption.  I supposed that in Kadun the newly transparent the details of the estate must be available but felt it would be shoddy to look them up, almost prurient, unless it were my business and if it were my business she’d tell me.
 
“I answered them all, dear. It’s so good you’ve got all these people who care.  I told them all you’d gone off with that nice young man who’s Mel’s friend.  Then of course they all saw you on the news.  Sarat rang himself.  I told him, I loved her like she was my own.”
Tears ran down Mum’s cheeks.
I thought: if I can’t cry like a baby in front of mum and dad, there really is something wrong with me.  I cried.
After a while, I sniffed, wiped my nose and looked at the list of callers.
I must –  I thought.  Go to Azt.  Karci, Vrin, they’d all rung.
“Do you like Kyse?” I asked.
“Seems a decent young man,” said Dad.  “Not pushy.”
That’s right,” I said , rather enthusiastically.
Mum and Dad exchanged glances I pretended not to see.
I am allowed to sleep.  I went to bed.  Different.  Emotional turmoil total, good and bad.
 
When Mel rang, my first thought was there is nothing more death can do to me. Then I felt – when I shattered,  when people talk about people shattering, breaking apart – they mean all the bits they’ve pretended were joined and glued together – it wasn’t like that.  All my bits were the same, like  breaking a plate.  That’s why it was so intense.  Unified collapse, no being pulled in different directions.  It was – like I had to get down on the kitchen-floor with a brush, find the fragments that had rolled under the dresser, sweep myself into a little heap.  When Mel told me about Maya, I felt I should have been there, looking after her, it’s my job.  I felt a tremor, like – like the plate was wondering whether to fragment.  Then two things.  I said no and no to that particular piece of self-indulgence, whipping myself, but was it.  Wasn’t my whole life since Sorg a self-indulgence, when everyone else – it’s my life!  If  we talk about making Maya’s death, Sorg’s death in any way – meaningful, maybe in a sense avenging – fighting for a free Kadun.  I have made my life in Carlin, my life. This is how I do it.  My commitment, my conscience, my soul demands it.  It – oh, all right, they, they don’t demand I fight for Kadun in a particular way.  Reakoed understands.  Kyse will never ever interfere with my life. Kyse sees that, you see.  You think you’re making a free choice, striking a blow for your autonomy!  It’s reactive.  It’s not you.
 
And a fat lot of use I should have been to anyone in little bits on the kitchen-floor.  That should not have happened. 
 
I had never, until I found myself in a bad dream on the kitchen-floor, lived alone.  I knew to stabilize myself I had to hack this on my own.  You’ll have realized I don’t have a 100% positive press. Ice-maiden, nympho, don’t touch with barge-pole, and these are my friends, those I’d trust with my life, my death and even to buy the right brand of shampoo.  What I’d been doing when not milking goats and harvesting briony is of course thinking about me, my future, my past, where I’d gone wrong, where I’d gone right.  Then Kyse appeared, clearly ready to sweep me up into a life of paired bliss, which I appreciated, and equally clearly, which I appreciated even more, with the freaking sensitivity and intelligence to realize that he was not the solution to Maya’s death. 
 
I hadn’t thought I was going to stay single for ever.  What I had in mind was a mature future, a peaceful old age.  An assumption therefore, that the Matter of Kadun would be positively resolved, assuming I survived to see that resolution.
 
Reakoed rang me.  Kyse, said Reakoed, is the first one that’s good for you. He has a quiet and well-founded confidence in his abilities.  He is not the slightest bit fundamentally insecure.  He is, however, modest and a little shy.  He has no flair for the stage.  He has neither a talent for nor an interest in holding a roomful of people in thrall to his words.  I had to laugh.  He’s a lecturer! I protested, but meekly.  You know perfectly well what I mean, said Reakoed. I knew. Why is that good for me?  It means you go on writing your own script, said Reakoed. I have wondered, I admitted, Tet and I.  Don’t do it! said Reakoed.  I was surprised, make that shocked, at the vehemence.  We’re both grown-up now, I said.  What have we just said? he asked.  I sighed.
 
Among the endless jittering mountain of  words brought forth by Maya’s murder was the notion that there is nothing more they can do to Dabida.  Oh really.  And who is the other Zur-chick who has thrown in her lot with Kadun? I saw clearly that once I emerged from my rural hide-away there was no guarantee I had a future. It didn’t take long for some bright little spark to twitter of course Falita,  San-yaega-baht’s widow, you know…List of things to be discussed: of course they might kill me.  Put it on the to-do pad.  Why not?  Everyone else had. 
 
The other thing they blathered on about endlessly was the wound to Kadun’s heart.  Do they never shut up?  Of course sometimes it was the wound to Dabida’s heart. Whatever.  Naturally we did not think the metaphorical wound was fatal and equally naturally we wanted to stitch it up, fast. 
 
It’s very easy to love someone who bundles you onto a trolley-bus to escape the bloody Press.
 
Really, what was I babbling about, my duty to Maya.  I was desperate to explain something in ten words that could have taken ten days about feeling there was no longer a space for this cog in the Zur wheel or the Azt one.  My space was in Carlin.  My purpose was in Carlin.  To – to lead or if not to lead to represent the new Kadun.  To bloody do something.  I don’t know that when I finally got back to Carlin via Azt I did anything more than I should have done in Zur.  Perhaps it was simply being there that was important.  I got to see Sarat.  He looked more awful than I have ever seen him look in the whole of his life, which I told him.  It is my duty to Sorg to hold Carlin.  What kind of mad crap is that? True mad crap. 
 
Let me start with the Six, who were sometimes the Eight, occasionally the Ten, more rarely the Thirteen and in some ways the Three. I am going to tell you the Six is a media myth. Mel’s set, Mel’s gang, it’s all horse-manure.  Actually, if you’ve been following the narrative really closely, you’ll have worked that out.  And they spent all their holidays together.  Simper, simper.   Mel and Hass spent every summer with Baya and Essa, you know that.  It’s all nonsense.  We’re Mel’s family.  I suppose I have to expand?  We are those with whom Mel formed bonds that simply were.  I knew you wouldn’t like it.  If your sister moves to Ciletij and you don’t see her for ten years, she’s still your sister. I hear you beginning to argue.  It did all become rather incestuous, didn’t it, in all senses.
 
Actually I’m a victim of Mum’s theory of child-bearing, which is you space them out.  My brother’s eight years older and runs a fast-food joint on the coast.  My baby sister is no longer a baby and just off to college and views my oh so public life like a soap.    
 
The S Factor runs through it all like a knife.  If you ask yourself who we weren’t, we weren’t the plotters.  Of course in the end we all got immersed in one way or another but the key to Tet, Reakoed, Maitlan and I was we weren’t obsessed with the Matter of Kadun.
 
Reakoed, Maitlan and I were the Three. 
 
In the mythology, we all spent our teens lounging in the Saa’nda Senta, and ‘we’ have become confused with Sarat and Maya, even with Mitch and Karula.  The Six has become a synonym for plotters.  That is the S Factor and it irks. The S Factor changed everything.  The S Factor was politics and so Mel in his official role.  I am actually finding this quite hard to explain. 
 
It’s not coincidental that Tet and Maitlan took themselves off to the furthest corners of the world.  As Maitlan put it, one can immerse oneself in the Matter of Kadun or one can get a life.  Is the Matter of Kadun interested in me? asked Tet.  Of course we understood the politics.  We understood Mel didn’t want a hostile Kadun on the doorstep.  We understood the Cult had to be stopped.  It was too big for us, outside our range.  I think there’s an intermediate step there.  We understood Mel would one day be King but that too was outside the terms of the contract, the range of the radar.  What marks us is that we don’t give a hoot who Mel is.  Or didn’t.  Or don’t.  I guess what we’re really talking about is the point at which you couldn’t separate the little boy twiddling his toes in a rock-pool from the shaper of the world, where – where you couldn’t have one without the other, and that in a sense ended the Six.  The heyday of the Six was when we were about 8.  It was over by the time we were 13.
 
What we’re talking about is before and after puberty.  The Six was a childhood construct.  Doesn’t that sound good?  Afterwards it was something else. 
 
That doesn’t make any sense, does it.  Maybe it will later.
 
To invoke the S Factor is to evoke another myth.  Sarat then was the worm in the apple?  Sarat politicized things.  That too is tripe.  I made one friend early, Maya.  Mel made two friends early, Maitlan and Reakoed. Hass made one friend early, Sarat.  They really did play with alphabet-bricks on the floor of the Room.
 
That’s the same thing, isn’t it, it becoming impossible to separate the little boy who turned the white house in the dunes into a zoo and was more concerned about his hamsters than about his homework, separating the little child of nature from the Anile Emperor.  NoZone of course marked the transition. 
 
I think really, not sure, but let’s go with it, the key to us all was Sarat and Hass.  Mel was obviously born camera-food, so there were pictures of Mel twiddling his toes in a rock-pool but when Mel discovered politics it was – what it wasn’t was proselytizing to the masses.  Mel started to become what parents call difficult at around 12.  He argued at home, he argued at school, he argued, yea verily, in the Saa’nda Senta.  Kids have fave dives in which they hang out.  In Mel’s case it was Sorito’s.  My little point is that, while most certainly he lounged in the Saa’nda Senta, it was a Mel thing, rather than a Six thing.  If Mel wanted a private talk, he had a private talk, many private talks indeed, usually with Reakoed, who is the deepest of us, apart from Hass, usually on the hill, in our homes, on the beach.  There’s a point where people stretch their legs, let’s go into town and have a soda, then they’d go on talking but there was tacit recognition this was no longer a private talk and anyone could join in. What’s usually described as Mel holding court outside Sorito’s usually meant  he’d gone for a soda- ice and Zur took it from there.  The point is none of this was standing on a soap-box, handing out leaflets or manning a stall selling fetching little woolly toys. . Sarat used NoZone, of that there is no doubt, but equally of course NoZone used Sarat and Hass. Sarat and the petition you know about.  There were those who asked if Hass’s involvement was wholly appropriate.  Healthy criticism, said Tar briskly.  He wasn’t the Anile heir.   As Hass became involved in Zeph’s lot and GASH, Tar became still brisker.  WYSIWYG. 
 
…
 
“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. 
  ....
“Here we go,” said.Cho.
Amida looked up
“Good gracious!”
“She really is quite shattering.”said Cho.
“One can see,” said Amida.
“Everything,” said Cho.
The competition at Blatni is pretty stiff, but in a million-buck silver sheath Falita San-yaega-baht still turns heads and leaves men breathless in her wake.  Who is that?  Just so long as the whole dining-hall knows.
 
I Fal, a vulnerable woman, a woman on her own, an easy target.  And Sar-fenan did it all for me, which was delicious.
 
“Ah, the  prostitute again.  Looking for more custom, no doubt.”
Just loud enough to be heard.  Various expostulations.  Really, I hardly think – this the Stone Age?  Kadun has moved on!
 
I Falita who am vulnerable and inviolate, sitting at my table gazing into the candle-flame.  They’re talking about me.  How quaint.  I get up and walk over to Sar-fenan’s table, briskly.  The posh frock is just long enough to mostly conceal very sensible shoes – pumps – just in case I had to move fast. 
“Good evening, gentlemen.  I hope all is well.”
“The whore has joined the staff?  Anything you can do for us, my dear?”
“It’s not quite like that,” I said.
How much does it charge?”
“But think of where it’s been.”
“As I said, better a whore than a murderer.”  I gave a theatrical sigh.  “Sarat hasn’t got everything yet, of course.  After all, you wouldn’t be here if he had.”  I seem to have the knack of capturing an audience.  Perhaps I should go into politics after all. 
 
Murmurings is this quite the place – she’s not going to make an arrest is she
 
Cho to Amida: She’s not going to make an arrest, is she!
Amida to Cho:  If anyone does it should be Falita.
 
“We’ve got the guys who received the payments,” I said. “The movement of money is so interesting, isn’t it.  It’s a question of where the money came from.  Tracing it back and back, you know.  We haven’t quite nailed you, but we’ll get there.”
That was actually true.  I left out the bit about apparent dead end, money that appeared to have dropped from the skies.  Sarat didn’t want to have the little – or at any rate littler – guys tried  until he’d reached the end of the piece of string.
The woman is mad!  What on earth is she talking about?  Serious accusations, are there no laws of libel?  Etc.
“No, actually,” I said.  Sarat hadn’t thought the purpose of the debate he wanted going on all over Kadun the enriching of lawyers.  “Anyway, most places people can say what they please on their own property.  What I came over for was to ask you to pack.  You are no longer welcome here.  Carlin has just bought Blatni.”
Sound of pins dropping?  That really doesn’t get close.
The woman is mad!  Impossible!  Etc.
“You killed my partner.  You killed my best friend.  This, for the moment, is my answer.  There will be more.  If you do not leave now, PANTHER video will be screened in every room.”
 
Pussy-cats duly appeared to encourage the departure.  I knew I had shattered the veneer, made them furious beyond anything and, from the perspective of our viewers and remember there will a hundred million tuned in worldwide (that’s apart from all the people frantically filming on their phones), shattered something else which went this piece of turd is extremely rich so we must not treat him like a piece of turd.  Everybody knows and nobody says.   We all hoped that they wouldn’t try to kill me in the dining-hall at Blatni, especially surrounded by half of PANTHER.  What actually happened was hilarious really, though quite exciting at the time.  Total melodrama.  Two of the younger ones started a scuffle, proclaiming loudly that they’d been man-handled.  I could see from Sar-fenan’s face that, no matter what scheme he was rapidly hatching for my slow painful death, he thought this as much idiocy as I did, but he had barely rasped Cease! when a pallid and unprepossessing youth made a grab at me brandishing a steak knife.  Nobody move or the girl gets it, I said in some disbelief.  I sent him flying across the room to land most satisfactorily at Cho’s feet.  I read thrillers too, I said.  I shook my head sadly.  Young people, so headstrong.  We shall leave, said Sar-fenan.  There will be repercussions. We tremble in terror, I said.  Damn it, I’m enjoying this.  I twirled and dropped a curtsey to Cho and Amida.  There is one other thing.
Mitch had entered the hall but in all the kerfuffle few had noticed.  Now he purred to my side. 
“It would seem to me,” he began thoughtfully.  I grinned to myself.  Mitch was going to prolong the pain.  “ – that the train of events set in motion by the murder of Her Imperial Majesty has conclusions unforeseen by those who planned and carried out that murder.  For instance, the delay in elections means the nation remains under imperial law.  But the five kingdoms which comprised and comprise the empire retained in certain key aspects of their administration autonomy   I have found nothing to indicate that Var-sega’ ever ceded that autonomy.  As a mountain of evidence held by PANTHER proves, you are adepts of the Cult.  Under the laws of Var-sega’ that would appear to give me a power over you of which I believe in other circumstances you are fond – the power of life and death.”  I choked and smothered it.  “You are, however, regretfully, foreign nationals.  To exercise that power in the modern world may prove problematic.”  He sounded very sorry about it.  “ I can surely kick you out of Var-sega’ and this I surely do and you will not find a warmer welcome in Carlin, in Van-senok, in Azt.   This is the end of the road, Sar-fenan.  Kadun has lost all patience.  You will go and you will not return.  The number of people itching to arrest you is quite phenomenal.”  Pause.  “Nor will you find Van-sandos eager to lobby on your behalf.  He has seen the movies.  He wishes he could kick you out himself.  I do not think you wish our videos of your practices in open court but you must do what you must do. I am entirely sure you have an army of lawyers but then so do I, and so does Sarat, and the case would seem to me hinge on whether being barred from Kadun infringes your right under international law to conduct your lawful purposes.without hindrance. You will claim you do not conduct those practices in Kadun.  We shall argue that what you are in the circumstances that currently pertain in Kadun suffices.”
 
 I got a standing ovation.  Cho swept me under his wing and I said, a girl has to do what a girl has to do.
 
And so I landed back in Zur and fell into Tet’s arms, who was of course yelling at me.
“You bloody screaming lunatic!  So help me I adore you!”
Pietri smiling from ear to ear.  A fine night’s hunting.
Mel just slightly bewildered, but Hass told him he’d fill him in later.
Hass who just took my hands and grinned.
It all came together, I said.  I came together.  It was so obvious, wasn’t it.  I was still in pieces.