​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.

Nocturnalism affects most teenagers at one point or another, the fixation the way to live is to go to bed around four in the morning and lie in bed half the day. It is among other things a means of finding private space when no-one will call you down to supper or otherwise intrude.  It is for instance unlikely anyone will barge in and examine what is on your monitor.  Sarat now investigated this matter of Kadun, to see which part of it might concern him - disappeared into what he was later to call his heat-haze, convinced he could somehow play it straight down the line, do exactly what he wanted, save the ozone layer, say what he liked about Kadun, and nobody in this or any other world could get him onto the chair, though naturally he would be happy to throw what weight he had behind any intelligent plan for change.
Come on, this is the modern world!  Yes, Sarat, that’s the point.
He said as much, dismissive, to Maya.  Crazies, think because I have an opinion I'm going to end up on the Anile throne,.  The elders were, I think, slightly led astray by his interest in his heritage.  Of course it was interesting and of course it was in some strange sense, an accident of biology, his, but there remained a wall 600 years thick between it and him.
Who do they think I am!
And oh, who am I?
No adequate monitoring of carbon emissions.  Something will have to be done about that!  Somewhere (the heat-haze was really quite severe) he saw himself spear-heading environmental revolution in Kadun.  After all, the environment was a public health issue.  The smog levels were intolerable.  The would-be vet found himself reading about industrially-related respiratory disease and fleetingly considered switching to medicine, but was sufficiently political to realize that, however satisfying it was to stop someone dying of a curable disease, it was hardly a solution to this matter of Kadun.  He was still susceptible to being completely side-tracked by the mating-habits ofindavit's mole-rat (which must of course be distinguished from Sella's mole-rat, which occurs later in our story). The more Sarat read about conditions in Kadun, the more he realized the simple fact was he wanted to dive in head first. start kicking ass, walk into CLIK and say let’s rock! It’s a long long way from student revolutionary to Anile Emperor, unless you happen to be Anile heir, when you may just find yourself fast-tracked.
Anyway, the exams are coming up and no-one’s going to take me seriously without qualifications.  Not as a scientist. 
He went on surfing.  Take a look at the bastards. Still a thoughtless youth, it didn’t occur to him half the continent’s security forces track visits to certain sites and they made them choke on their tea and biscuits.
“You are Visitor No. 200047,” murmured Faun.
               Vax clicked.
               “Read that.”
A discussion forum.  A moderated discussion forum, however, to post on which one has to register and a valid email address to which one’s password is mailed. 
Suck it and see.
His registration was accepted.
That’s my chair.  Sarat-ban-essa-eban-Narulis
You know how it is.  You’re a happy little newbie. You post to a new list and expect a friendly welcome and what you get is silence.
After a couple of days someone typed back: Prove it.
Prove what?  thought Sarat.
It’s an interesting title, isn’t it, Doom of Death.
Krarlik posted under the name of TheMaster.  He supposed he'd better kill.
K:           The mystics confuse with an objectivist overlay the fundamental truths of existence.  Can one reject death?  One cannot.  Can one command death?  One cannot. 
S:            What are you actually Master of?  As a matter of history the titles of the Anile  Emperor include Master of Kadun and Doom of Death.
K:           The Aniles were never quick on the uptake.  It took 1600 years for Jaizal to receive enlightenment!
S:            Briefly.  What d'you think happened to Death the Great Master at the Great Gates and between the sands and sea?
K:           Death is invincible.  Only an imbecile claims otherwise.
S:            Death the superstition?  Death the biological fact?  Death the metaphysical change of form?  You haven't answered the question.
K:           In what way is death a 'superstition'?
S:            You should know!  The bony guy with the black cloak and the scythe.  The personification.
K:           A metaphor for a greater reality.  Better that than childish fantasy.
               S:            Yours is the fantasy.  I know I get repetitive.  How do you explain Jaizal's defeat?
K:           Even you cannot doubt the reality of a bullet in the head.
S:            That is a threat?
K:           We shall not be defeated.
S:            Narulis defeated you, Zani defeated you.  Why do you think I should fail?
K:           My lord emperor!
S:            Why not, indeed?  I am the licit heir.
K:           His Imperial Highness - aspires to the Anile Throne!
S:            Imperial Majesty.
K:           You acknowledge my title.  That is excellent.
S:            ROTFL.
 “Should one distinguish,” murmured Faun, “between the outer, practical Sarat and the more hidden inner Sarat.”
“This is the question,” said Vax, “because of course there are two distinct issues here.”
“There are, aren’t there,” said Faun.
“Too much in the world,” murmured Vax, “we have perhaps lost sight of…”
“Sarat as PANTHER,” said Faun.
 “In our inner and more esoteric form.  It’s an impossible trick.  He can’t pull it off.”
“Cho does!  He gets to look after the moo-cows.”
“Best of both worlds?”
Reakoed said, “It’s all just  winding them up.”
“A perfectly normal hobby for a lad of his age,” said Por.
Essa looked glum.
“He has just declared himself Anile emperor.  True he debated with Krarlik at the time.”
Baya dropped her cup.
Gorse grinned.
“I’ll clear it up.  You have a stiff drink.”
“What have we spawned!”
“He has to say something,” said Essa.
“May I read?”
She read.
“Now look at the rest of the site.”
She looked.
“It is vile!”
“We had not this omnipresence of information.  He cannot do nothing.  Cho thinks – if he speaks he makes it real.  He has no choice.  He may not like that.”
“This is not real?  Then he is unhappy.  Someone must speak.”
Baz cleared his throat.
“Imperial Highness!”
“Imperial Majesty,” corrected Paw.
“Oh, that,” said Sarat.
“That, my son, that,” said Baz.
“You have to talk to them,” said Paw.
“Your mum thinks you’re confused and unhappy.  Your dad thinks – “  Baz hesitated.
“He is capable of speech, is he not?  He has the gift of language,” suggested Sarat.
“Pretty much,” admitted Paw.  “Faun thinks you want to do the inner and esoteric bit.  Cho tells them all to back off.”
“I’m an outer and exoteric guy,” said Sarat.
“Yes,” said Baz.  “That’s what we think. “
“I will  talk to Cho  I promise.”
“When!”
“It’s not real!” snapped Sarat.  “That’s not what I mean.  It’s the other matter.  When I’ve sorted out what matters.  That’s not what I mean, either!”
“We understand,” said Baz quietly, “who sits on the chair, metaphorically speaking, it’s different from the drains.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Sarat. “How about you back off?”
“Until you can say what you mean!”
“It’s complicated,” said Sarat.
“You could say that!”
“It’s eso, it’s their sick loon fantasies.  But there’s nothing eso about being tortured bty the Cult.!
“Hich of course you want to do something about.”
“Which a lot of people want to do something about,” said Sarat.
“A lot of people aren’t Anile heir.”
 
This is real? Sardun asked PANTHER.
Oh yes, said PANTHER.
He is still at school!
That, it was generally agreed, did not diminish the sentiment.
 
“Done it myself,” said Rewn.  Taunt them on-line.
“I think we all have.”
Some Grid trolls are of course the good guys.  Depends on what’s being trolled.
“He is 18!”
“Not going to stay 18, is he”
“I do not think we need palpate over what the IoD means to Narulis’ heir.”
 
“Lot of stuff on the Grid about HIH.  Mind you, lot of it makes out he’s a tree-hugging poof.  It’s Ciletij.  He is greenie, likes trees not logs.  Deforestation.  But of course that’s not all of it, him being who he is.  Once more the Aniles rape the poor of Ciletij!  Make it up as you go along, really. What’s interesting is he comes out fighting, gives as good as he gets.  Says it didn’t happen and they’re wankers.  Well, not the precise word.”
            “I like him already.”
            “Says the PANTHER archives say it didn’t happen.  The Collegium in Maona-pri says it didn’t happen.  The Schools in Harn say it’s open.  Checks his bloody facts.  The argument is interesting.  Asyrion was in Azt.  Why on earth would she have crossed the entire continent to burn Ciletij?”
            “Best friends with Hasiyata Talal, which of course.  But paired with cousin Maya and by all accounts besotted.”
“Does he have to be so bloody good-looking!”
“Think this one’s particularly good.”
Sarat aboard a grey on the sun-soaked beach of Fidub/
“Oh for!  Could be bloody Narulis!”
“The public face of Kadun?”
“Clearly not averse to negative publicity.”
“Found some cartoons.  The first three are from Dabida, second three from Ciletij.  Rather clear who does not like him.”
Sarat and Hass armed to the teeth as before them cowered a range of scrawny sly-looking motor vehicles emitting noxious fumes.
Sarat and Hass as young ash-trees about to come into leaf.
Sarat and Hass valiantly barring the path of cross-eyed leering axe-men trying to grab the big bucks behind them..
Sarat and Hass gazing into each other’s eyes and holding hands while little pink hearts fluttered above them.
Sarat and Hass in thick furs, a chauffeur holding open the door of a limousine, while  axe-men thin to the point of starvation pointed piteously to their equally emaciated children.
Sarat and Hass wrapped in each other’s arms and laughing at Maya.
“I found this.”
Maya on the gay forum.  No need to shout, darling.
“Ah yes, the Dabidan model.  I do not think either of them shrinking violets!”
 
When Sarat was 18 too, Cho invited him for the weekend.
“An old book you need to read. Also some letters.  Facsimiles, of course, the originals are far too frail.   The garden, I think.  I shall not be far away.”
Sarat looked puzzled.
“Heritage?  Other matter?”
Cho just smiled and pottered off to wait for the explosion.
X-rays!  Blood samples!  This – is – not – possible.
 
“We think,” said Baz to Cho, “the dilemma is having cake and eating too.”
Cho laughed.
“Free-born citizen of Fidub, mate, free-born citizen of Fidub!”
“It’s perfectly simple,” said Paw.  “He wants to do all the things the emperor would do but not actually be the emperor.”
“He can’t see why he can’t be basically a republican politician.  We did point out republican politicians don’t mooch about the Grid saying that’s my chair.”
 
Sarat went off to live with Maya in Zur and at least pretend to be a student vet. Even if you don’t require a mortgage, finding the exact property of your dreams is time-consuming.  No, he did not want a prospective family house, time for that later, but there had to be privacy and there had to be space, of course the realtor assumed, lots of family to entertain.  That wasn’t what Sarat and Maya had in mind, more somewhere to plot.  None on that was a problem.  Having passed his exams with flying colours indeed (self-discipline, said Essa enthusiastically, suspecting those were the last exams he’d sit and thinking his baa-lamb had at least succeeded at something concrete) – I digress.  Having passed exams and secured place, he knew bloody well he was never going to be a vet, diseased though the livestock of Vaudos doubtless were.  Pathology, he thought, infection  control.  Is that what you study if your interests lie in water-borne parasites and industrially induced respiratory disease, how disease is spread? The daunting expression pure science occurred to him.  That’s the last thing.  He scrolled through the many modules with some irritation.  Public Health and Epidemiology.  That’s more like it.  All on its own.  Try and put this real-time.  I need to be able to talk to scientists who are not necessarily friendly, who are perhaps pooh-poohing my concerns.  Do I?  I’m not going to be an expert.  That’s what experts are for.  What are the parameters here?  I need a solid background in something and I don’t want to be bored shitless for four years.  Not bored exactly . If I had no other interests. Biological Sciences looks good, lot of options, ecology, infection.  If they’ll have me, of course, probably full, so maybe there’s a prospective bioscientist who has discovered a secret yearning to be a vet.
Dear Preceptor
I have passed in Maths, Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Achieving over 90% in all four, and been accepted for veterinary medicine, but that’s no longer what I want to do and I wondered if it would be at all possible to change to Biological Sciences.
Keep it simple, no explanation.  Shouldn’t he surrender the vet place first.  F2F is better but F2F gets into what are your main interests: social justice.   Have you not thought of politics?
How about a gap year where I sort out where I’m going?  Stinking rich youth mooching around Zur apparently doing exactly nothing is not the image I want to convey.
OK, voluntary work. But that was a waste of time.  His problem with starting a course, he realized, was he was fairly unlikely to finish it: a lot can happen in Kadun in four years.  Meanwhile the war grumbled on and he wasn’t about to parachute into Azt.  Get something useful done but the problem of course was what..  Oh I’m going to do so brilliantly if I can’t even fix the next six months.
He decided to go for Biological Sciences.  Get some good basic stuff in, can’t be wrong to have a solid foundation.  They were able to find room for him.  He and Maya set up house in Zur.  The work actually was interesting and there was a lot of it.  There was still NoZone, surely pertinent.  The war seemed to get more aggressive.  Air Commander Varna at Burunda in Carlin was everyone’s hero, especially in Zur, where no-one had any illusions about who’d be next if Carlin fell. 
They’re fucking up again!  Once again the vamps came for Varna and once again they lost, but not quite as badly as they should have.  They’ve got something new.  Analysts pored over little vampire corpses spread over the lush green pastures of Carlin.  What the hell are these little boxes?  The little boxes were removed for further scrutiny
Can’t make head or tail of it.
Ask the Dabs.
The Dabs said FAF are the genii.  We’ve sent it to Gyron Base on th eLeolisle.
Oh.  Cool.  Thanks for your help.
Emboldened the vamps rose once again from the pit and not just in Carlin.  
Skyhawk rang Varna
“Varna.”
“FAF.  Skyhawk. Your little problem.”
“Any luck?”
“We need to talk to you F2F.”
Headlines ranged from the factual (FAF in action over Carlin) to both extremes.  FAF launches unprovoked assault on Carlin.  FAF whopped the vamps! These effusions were the first both Sarat and Mitch knew of events.  WTF!
Baz sat at the kitchen table looking very amused.  Maya and Sarat came in yammering.
“Vamps got a new toy.  Varna’s guys didn’t lose, they just didn’t win as spectacularly as usual.  So they’re digging around in the wreckage wondering WTF and they find little boxes, sertrus we call ‘em, but they coldn’t make head or tail so they asked the Daffodils, who of course sent it off to FAF.  Next thing Skyhawk rings Varna and arranges a meet.  Explains a bit of education needed and meanwhile the vamps’ll keep coming, so he has a cunning plan.  Hands across the sea, our dear friends in Fidub, Varna’s going to invite a couple of sqadra to tea.  Up come the vamps, seething.  Well, FAF couldn’t stay on the ground, could they, and once they got up, well, I mean the vamps are attacking them, so they just had to retaliate.  All  blow over if they weren’t going to do it again in the Lausanine.”
“How the fuck,” asked Sarat, “can they do it in the Lausanine?”
“There my sources fail me, but they aren’t going to leave Nodsi and Carlutan in the lurch.”
...
It was the beginning of what was to become known as the Great Migration, a period of massive troop movements.  This Must Be Civil War in Kadun. 
Chaos in Kadun!  What is Happening in Kadun!  They’re shooting each other.  People do in wars.  The southern Press only really grasps big pictures.  First off, the action was in Vaudos, where they had pretended to be a single army.  Now the tactical decision had been taken to abandon Vaudos and align in Carlin, V-s and V-k, in preparation for the big squeeze, Hanif-Altan Mark Two, unless of course you were reasonably close to the borders of Carlin, V-s and V-k to start with, in which case those territories grew in the night. .  Quiet decisions had been taken by an army that no longer had a head, since the titular governance was in Azt, an army in open revolt that no-one dared quell, an army united against the Cult and hand in glove with PANTHER and Sardun.  Whole camps moved in the night towards Carlin, Var-sega or Van-senok but of course that motion was not unimpeded.   The good guys had decided to abandon Vaudos.  Not only units moved, but small groups of men joined the senior officers of their choice.  Thus Ritawa, Munzi and Varulin ended up wth Challin.  Most sentient life in Kadun understood what they were doing and few in the south, sentient or not:  they were setting the stage for Hanif-Altan Mark Two In order to get the hell out of Vaudos from a base where half your brothers-in-arms were Cult, you had to shoot them or something.  Massive explosions at Karva-su!  Renegades! Outlaws! Screamed Azt.  It is reported the hunt for Challin has reached epic proportions.  Kadun’s wild boys, though they wouldn’t have put it quite like that, the ones who said no when others said yes, the ones who told cock-suckers and prevaricators, arse-lickers to go fuck themselves, the ones who shot their senior officers when bad guys, became half the world’s heroes. Though they don’t know it yet (PANTHER do) they only want one thing from Sarat, something he has in boatloads, that he’s as bad as they are.  These are the men Sarat will have to convince.        
            Other clean-ups were on a smaller scale.  When the colonel returned to his car, he found his driver was Mardis, who shot him.
...
PANTHER set up a Grid-site, Free Kadun.  Since they had other things to do, initially it was simply the necessary to link Carlin with the west, an Announcements column on the landing page for anything deemed of nationwide importance, and a private forum in which cats, trees, military and civilians who were guaranteed good guys could talk to each other, freely.  A couple of invalided cats, Veena and Furrier, were roped in to, no, not moderate it, but oversee it.  As with any forum, there were vastly more readers than writers.  Everyone was expected to check the Announcements daily, in case there were any.  Decorating the page was dodgy.  It had the imperial flag in one corner and the flag of the old republic in the other.  Monarchists and republicans equally sighed but recognized Kadun had to choose and had not yet chosen.  A list of links began to appear, amongst which the A-M site, of which Mel’s Place was a part.  Mel had set up the forum when he’d taken himself off to the Schools in Harn.  Superficially it was somewhere for Dabidans to natter to him while he was away. 
 
Then there are  couple of hundred thousand others who are also going to matter: the military of All-Kadun.
 
One fateful day towards the end of the second year…Mooching through the Collegium, Sarat spied a poster asking for student volunteers.
We retain the old name ‘seaman’s refuge’ for what is today a thriving hub of emotional and social support for seafarers everywhere.  Not only do the Fleets of four nations, Dabida, Kadun, Fidub and Verin, put in at Halsta, but merchantmen from all over the world.
Obstacle: what will they make of B+P.  If it were Maya, they wouldn’t raise an eyebrow at the H-W in tow.  Suck it and see.
The three of them pitched up at Halsta.
“Know of you, of course.  Not a lot of trees in our work.”
“I thought I’d do something different.”
“Not much doubt of the social skills!  Any basic work experience?”
“I did a stint as dogsbody in the Senate.”
Welcome aboard.
 
Carlin was in stitches.  Got drunk and missed my ship.  Awfully nice young man sorted it for me.  Actually Sarat’s work was more carting around boxes of kitchen roll and printer paper  and making coffee for visitors, but the place was open plan, there were always a variety of different people around, people stopped and asked him things like where’s the loo and where the canteen, and it was fun.  They reckoned he was fit for the dizzying heights of occasionally answering the phones and yes the occasion dismissed as urban myth actually did happen.
It was late in the day, a 4 pm lull, a decidedly irate Kadun Fleet officer marched in with the intention of sorting out the situation of one of his lads who’d been arrested on shore, and the first thing he saw was Sarat’s profile.
“It’s bloody Narulis!”
“You must be Filintis,” said Sarat.  Narulis’ captain.
The guy howled with laughter.
“Nice one.  Take it you are. Who do I see about a lad currently languishing in Zut’s jails?”
Maitlan and Junin, Mel’s friends in the Dabidan Fleet, dined out on anecdotes of Sarat and our furred friends. Sarat got invited on board ships Dabidan and Fidubi.  There he met irturbi and ended up invited for dinner on ship of the Kadun Fleet  
 
“Severe enthusiasm for Fidub right now.  Wondered if you’d like to come aboard for dinner.”
 
“And of course you chaps are PANTHER.”
“Admit it!” said Baz.
“Kadun something of a family concern, one might say.”
Aw, bless, thought Paw, they’re shy.
A couple of drinks later they got there.
“Of course constitutional monsarchy – the Dabidan model is one of the alternatives open to Kadun.”
Sarat who wasn’t a drinker anyway, poured yet more mineral water into his apple-stock, aware anything notable he might say would be all over the Fleet. 
“Sure,” he said cheerfully.  “Cho’d be terribly good at it.  Not sure he’d like the weather in Azt.”
“You yourself are interested in Kadun, I think.”
OhIsee.  He grinned.
“Trolling gets you noticed?” 
They grinned back.
“Social conditions,” said SArat.  “I’m quite good on waterborne parasites and industrially induced lung disease. I’d like to take part in social change.  Not quite the moment to land in Azt and start a political party.”
“Wow!  Are you a medical student?”
“Biology.  Actually it’s called Biological Sciences.  It’s not all pure science.”
“Sounds absolutely fascinating to me,” said one of the younger guys.
“Not just a lot of hot air, like most politicos.”
 
“You spent the evening discussing the diseases of livestock,” said Cho in tones of acute disbelief.
“I was explaining how originally I was going to be a vet and a couple of them come from farms.  How parasites get into the human food chain.  We did talk about other things too.”
“I shudder to think.”
 
Nor was this the sole invitation.
The first time, Sarat was just curious, but he didn’t do a social life without Maya
“May I bring Maya?”
“Grief, yes, of course.  We’re in Dabida.”
Somewhere in the midst of pleasant waffle about Fidub’s relationship with the sea, wicked Baz said, “Tell ‘em about the time Mel nearly drowned the whole lot of you.”
“Not the Asmodia!” said Maya.
“The good ship Asmodia.  We all got it in the neck for that one.  Mel was supposed to understand simple things, winds, currents, sea-lanes, intelligence.  The Straits are not a kiddies’ paddling-pool.  Mel had this little boat.  Mostly they just mucked around on it in harbour, that’s Mel, Hass, Sarat, Mel’s mates Reakoed, Fal, Tet and Maitlan.  They painted it.  Repainted it.  Dived off it, lounged around on it, pootled round the harbour, but they were forbidden, is that absolutely clear, to go out to sea. So they decided to pop over to M-P, I mean come on, it’s not like going out into the ocean. Storm came out of nowhere, it began to
 
 
 
 pour, and they found themselves heading for Fonsni. They actually did pretty well to keep afloat.  Tar did not bother to tell them that.”
“Just slightly hairy,” said Sarat.  “Everything went wrong at once.  Maitlan efficiently pulled up charts.  He came out on deck to us and said Mel, it’s 130 nani!  We’d better go back.  We said bright things like what!  Can’t be!  Oh shit, said Mel, at which point a nasty cold gust hit us. I need to explain.  It’s half an hour on the hover, about three minutes in the air, so in the depths of our idiot brains we really thought it was a short distance.  It was just penetrating that it’d probably take us three hours when the weather really hit.  We tried to do sensible stuff like tie ourselves to the deck and didn’t have enough rope.  Hass practically threw Fal and Reakoed into the galley. Mel yelled I can’t hold her and we concentrating on staying vertical or do I mean horizontal. We knew to throw ourselves flat but you can’t actually bail out your hopefully not sinking ship if you’re flat. Visibility was zilch.  We thought we were still probably in sight of Dabida.  Flares, what do we need  flares for, all we do is poddle round the harbour.  At least we kept stuff in waterproof boxes.  We found a torch and started signalling SOS. The storm passed and we had no lights, no connectivity, and no clue where we were but one good thing about this continent, it’s big, so we thought if we went west – repharse that.    Land ho! At about the time the coastguard zoomed up.  The captain just looked at Mel. Tar would really like a word with you.  Do I get a last request? asked Mel.
We were delivered into The Room.   Everybody’s parents were there, mine, Maitlan’s, Fal’s. Nobody cooed over us, nobody said so glad you’re safe darlings. Tar said to Mel: I expect you to know what you have done.  Mel said, we could all have died.  Maitlan’s Dad said no great loss in your case.  Fal said: We didn’t realize! How far it is, said Maitlan.  We thought we were popping over to M-P like on the hover.  Tar looked at us in total disbelief.  Tet said it was my idea.  I said, why do we not go to M-P, I’ll not be having Mel take all the blame.  The captain is not responsible for the ship, asked Tar coolly. Ice is warmer.  He turned back to Mel.  You failed to check the weather. I sort of half-realized that was deliberate.  Tet snapped Am I not able to read the shipping forecast.  Clearly not, said Tar. I stuck my oar in.  It’s not like we thought we’d sail round the Isles. Maitlan said we all know Mel’s going to take the blame, we all know Mel’s not going to bleat it was all of us.  But that’s not fair because it was all of us.  Tar said: You miss the point.  I don’t said Mel. Not fit to be on the loose on my own. Mental age of five.  Tar turned to me: Sarat?  When I’m with Mel and Hass.  They assume the H-W.  When we’re on the boat, said Mel.  They assume I’m sentient.  There isn’t really room for all of us.  They know nothing’s going to happen or we’ll call if we need.    You are not witless, said Tar, or wholly so. A failure of trust.  Intention to deceive.  All of us, said Reakoed’s mum, assume that when you are with Mel you are supervised. Mel was scarlet.  Hang on, said Hass.  We go out on our own.  You know that.   Truly? asked Saski.  A 30-minute skive? You have called out the coastguard, you have petrified your parents for a 30-minute skive?  Caused an international incident…They didn’t actually tell us Carlin was on the case.  There was actually more more more.  We had to apologize to everyone in sight.  Then I had to face those two.  They weren’t kind.”
 
Kids!  What would you do with ‘em!  Sea-faring Kadun loved it.  It filtered into the vast hinterland.  Water, nasty dangerous stuff, wet, too.  Yes, but is he - ? Oh no, no question, good strong broad lad, 100% male.  Hass is also a good strong broad lad, 100% male, but stereotypes will be stereotypes.
 
“Darlings,” said Sarsh, “now you simply have to come to Carlin.”
Sarat hadn’t been to Carlin for the simple reason the vamps were bombing it.  The raids were now few and limited to bombing the living daylights out of buttercups and cow-pats, but it was thought if anything was likely to really encourage the vamps to try harder it was Sarat mooching around, so probably not the brightest idea.  Saryulin decreed the decision was Varna’s.
“I can think of no more superb an affront to them.”
 
“Just stand in front of the Window, all I ask,” said As.
CLICK.
Narulis’ heir in front of Narulis’ Window found its way a lot of places not immediately foreseen, first to Sorg at Caniba then all over the western Army.
And as for the politics!  Well, really, one feels quite faint.
Baz looked up from the monitor.
“They’re talking about you.”
 “What are they saying!”
“You’re cool.  Well, you know that.  The thought of you kicking well-heeled ass is delectable.  When all is said and done, you will hardly call for the abolition of capital!  An enthusiastic young scientist, social conscience, excellent young man.  Really, what he appears to propose is little short of revolution.  I’m sure Grandpapa will make him toe the line.  Well, some of you guys are well in fantasy-land, Narulis walking the streets of Azt!  How can it possibly work today?  Even the so called Dabidan model is surely a quirk of Zur.”
Paw looked at Sarat’s face.
“Light blue touchpaper?”
Sarat grinned.
“Sarat in indepth discussions with Kadun military!”
“PANTHER forum,” said Baz.  “It won’t leak.  Much.”
            Paw nodded.  It’ll trickle into Kadun.  No-one there is going to run to the Zur Gazette.
            “Rule One,” said Baz, “what’s in the forum stays in the forum.  Else half of them’d be on charges.”
            Sarat cocked his head.
            “Hairy?”
            “It can be.”
            Sarat had previously looked at the forum but there wasn’t much going on.  They hadn’t got their feet under the table yet.  Or he hadn’t.
 
SARAT:
Hi guys.
This is a PANTHER forum and I’m a cat.  Appreciate perhaps unexpected.  I’ve just been doing a bit of reading about myself.  Always happy to talk.
Maya is sitting beside me saying no, no, no, in response to the Dabidan model being a quirk of Zur.  She’ll post separately. PS, she’s a cat too, not, what was it one of the  ‘hooved wonders’.  Well, she’s that too.  This may get biologically complicated.
Sarat.
 
FURRIER: Welcome to our hearth! 
 
Should it have been caught for posterity?  How could it?  Guys the length and breadth of Kadun, in tents, in caves, in barracks, in well-appointed drawing-rooms and shabby kitchens, in immaculately pressed uniforms or torn and dirty fatigues, ordinary clothes for work in a bank or for work in a factory, RItawa, Munzi, Inyulat and Varulin, Challin’s Four, stretching their legs in the lair they had improvised behind the canteen, Varulin writing to his daughter, Ritawa and Munzi playing cards, Munz taking a deep drag on one of the few cigarettes he allowed himself and Ritawa coughing theatrically, Inyulat reading, over in Carlin little Sitsi looking at the stars on a clear night, see if I can make out the Bowman, so many guys who were going to matter to Sarat and whose lives he would irrevocably change, some guys who ended up dead. It was the vacation and midnight in Zur, 6 on the easternmost extremities of Var-sega’, mid-afternoon in Vaconik on the western tip of Van-senok.  It only takes one person in the corner, well guess who’s turned up at the forum!
Was there an overall reaction?  How could there be?  Mild curiosity is probably the closest.  You didn’t drop everything to see what Sarat had to say for himself, you probably didn’t even pause in raising your glass to your lips or flipping the screens on your phone, but at some point when you had a free minute you might have perused the forum when you wouldn’t otherwise have done.
 
Cats conferred.
“You’d have to be pretty thick not to grasp the dynamics here, and nothing I know about him tells me he’s that.”
“They weigh in on our side, what does that do to them?”
“Won’t it just be so jolly interesting to find out.”
“Think I’ll just stir it.”
 
VEENA (PANTHER, female): As you will have perceived, we are a wildly, even biologically, varied bunch of cats, trees, military, civs, united of course in a common cause.  Wide range of views on the future.  Think everyone knows the Dabidan model or the Fidubi model are the options reasonable people are considering but of course in both cases these are really different ways of doing certain things.
MAYA: Obviously I know there are different attitudes to some things today, but historically that’s just not true. Narulis’ gig, always was, always will be. There’s nothing established by Zani that wasn’t in imperial law.  But it had gone wrong.  I think I need to be exact here: there’s nothing established by Zani that wasn’t implicit in imperial law, but because it wasn’t explicit there were loopholes, which is part of the reason it went pear-shaped.  The Constitution of Dabida is an attempt to close the loopholes. 
VEENA:  Just testing…
FURRIER:  I love you, I love you, I love you!  Or is that frantically disrespectful?
SARAT: Fidubi law was pretty similar to IL.  Fidub developed her law with the same aim of closing the gaps.
FRENSAT:  Was Fidub a republic?
SARAT: In Narulis’ time there wasn’t even a  political entity Fidub. Each of the Isles was self-governing.  That said they all recognized the – moral authority of the shrine at M-P and the group of islands was of course known as Fidub. By Zani’s time yes, each of the Isle sent representatives to the Senate at M-P.  Taken directly from Kadun of course. 
FRENSAT: Scales fall from my eyes!  Yes, that makes a lot of sense, there have to be defences against infestation.  I’m thinking Dabida and Fidub must be pretty much the same legally and then I’m thinking – if you add monarchy, that has to be legally incorporated, can’t just sit there on its own.
MAYA: When they came to design Dabida they thought it worked as yet another check and balance.  Basically there are six pillars, Crown, H-W, State, People, Military, Law.  Nothing happens without the consent of five of the six, one of whom has to be People.  The first bits because of the Kadun cock-up, of course, PANTHER finding themselves in direct opposition to the emperor.  so  People are independent of the government they elect, the State, and so of course are Military and Law.  At its simplest if the government turned rotten, the people would be on the streets, the law wouldn’t carry out its decrees, the military wouldn’t be subordinate to it. Come to think of it, that comes from the Kadun cock-up too, when Jaizal’s army turned against him.
SARAT: There isn’t a Fidubi alive who thinks monarchy is necessary to being clean.  Trust me on that one!  Yes, including me.
CALUNIN: Exactly.  To some people republic is a dirty word because being a republic left us open to this mess but there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with being a republic, Fidub does just fine, and you can hardly say  empire was a lasting success. 
FRENSAT:  Think there’s a certain amount of yearning for ye ancient golden age but Sarat doesn’t live in the world of 1600 years ago and nor does anyone else.
 
 “I just think,” said Ritawa, “this is somehow so terribly important I can’t even get my head round how important it is!”
“From the actual horse’s mouth.  Blows away a few cobwebs, doesn’t it.”
“Rather suspect that’s why they’re here, actually.  Realization some people don’t live in the real world.”
 
SKYMAN: Not someone who knows what she’s talking about!  Nonetheless you can’t tell us certain – what some people think of as excesses of the south were enshrined in imperial law.
FRENSAT: Surely it’s a question of boundaries.  It’s not that imperial law said you could dance naked or something, it’s that it didn’t say you couldn’t.
FILI: They do that? Could you give me directions?
MAYA: Only on nudist beaches! 
FILI: Defo give me directions.  I guess you have to take the climate into account.  Nobody is going to dance naked in Azt.
CALUNIN: There is something called modesty.
FILI: Yes of course, but I’m thinking – if one person hasn’t got much on, that’s shocking, but if no-one’s wearing much, who’s noticing.  We are talking about the beach.
CALUNIN: You can’t make too much of that.  We’re not exactly short of countryside, places people go for a day out.
FILI: Yes, dear, but – can’t help thinking Sarat and Maya are howling – the beach is somewhere you go especially to take at least most of your clothes off to swim in something called the sea.
FRENSAT: Assumes particularly solemn air.  In that respect it is a unique phenomenon.
FURRIER: They say Fidubi have fins.
SARAT:  And gills.
MUNZI: We are somewhat land-locked.  Saw a river once.  Didn’t know quite what to make of it.
CALUNIN: So you’re saying beachwear is normal wear.
FILI: Don’t think I’m quite saying that.  Saying exposed skin is  normal.
MAYA: Yes and no.  People do not wander Zur in their bikinis and trunks.  Come in off the beach, they put something else on, but not a lot, a T, shorts.
SARAT: Pic of my dad at work.  He’s a beachcomber, you know.  Evil grin.  What he actually is is an expert in fossils, which the beach is littered with.  He doesn’t see any need to put on anything more formal because it’s work not play.  {Essa in shorts, sandals and a fine cotton shift.]  Just trying to think – he would dress up if he was going to teach at the Collegium, wouldn’t bother if it was something personal – popping into M-P to get Mum a birthday present or something.
 
Papa is an academic?  That is really quite superb.  Less friendly jokes about old fossils.

...
SHAVLI:  Hi guys, I’m Sarat’s sister, so I’m KP.  But I’m also FAF same as my partner Petrush.  Obviously we’re young and unelevated, but if you guys have questions,  we could answer at least some of them.  I was involved a bit with the Kadun side – receptionist! They wanted phone and mail (wo)manned 24/7 and asked for volunteers for the night-shift.  Who knows, I may have talked to you!
 
GLITIN: Well, I really don’t know about this!
FRIS:  We too are young and unelevated!  Yes, please.
HEDGEHOPPER: Always glad to see FAF.
SITSI: Well, what I think – Narulis would be quite cross with us if we didn’t say thank you!
CALUNIN: A lady officer.  At least no stripy socks.
KARULA: Mitch and I are intending to visit Fidub in the not too distant future.  I sure hope we can have the pleasure of meeting you.
 
VITI:  Did anyone take it upstairs?
CALUNIN: Probably dismissed out of hand.
 
CORIM:  ‘Cho’s family’, not ‘the men in Cho’s family.’
SHAVLI: I could get our mum here too.
PETRUSH: Or Amida (Cho’s other half).
 
VARNA:  By no means dismissed, merely more pressing concerns.  I think this may prove most interesting.
 
SHAVLI: We don’t have officers, as I suspect you well know.  Levels of seniority, like PANTHER and Sardun.
VANNINA:  Me, for instance.  This has been said before but I’ll repeat it for Shavli.  The Cult are over the hill, a Sardun commando starts commanding, they don’t even notice which sex she is.  Some of it is pure sham.
FALTARIN:  That has happened perhaps once.
VANNINA: Hell you know.  Desk-jockey based on the coast, that too.
 
FILI: Have to say no fit of the vapours.  80% of it’s class.
 
THEWALLFLOWERS:  Ma’am!   Evil grin.  An expression of adhesion, I think, gentlemen…In this case feminist solidarity.  They’ll awfully fond of defining ‘sir’ as an expression of adhesion too: means I disagree but I am still at your command or in this case that I’d love to fly. We are the partners of dashing young officers.  We have elsewhere posted under our own names, but we have cunningly achieved this login in order to  protect the innocent.  We have to say they are awfully sweet and treat us as (almost) completely equal; never once have our darlings intimated they think us intellectually inferior, which is just as well because we’re not.  However, as everyone knows, they draw the line at our fighting beside them.  We think there is a huge number of points here and our darlings, not to mention their revered superiors, probably haven’t got time to write an epic.  We, however, have.  We’ve almost finished our oeuvre and thought we’d just introduce ourselves first.
KARULA: ROTFLMAO.  Gentlemen, we are not all shy and retiring.
THE WALLFLOWERS:  Earthpower is of course both profoundly gynocentric and the indigenous culture of Kadun. It is a curiosity of certain male persons that they babble – it is not too strong a word – of the golden age while conveniently eliding what was golden about it.
KARULA: I too have undoubtedly observed that phenomenon.
CHALLIN:  But may it not be said that ‘the golden age’ is just a little mythologized.  It is hard to believe that 1500 years ago women enjoyed total equality, at least among the mass of the people.
FALTARIN: Truly, sir, you condone the presence here of foreign military?
OBAYA: Licky, licky.
FALTARIN: Shut up, damn you!
KARULA:  Honey, these are serious matters only men can debate.
OBAYA: Got to meet you one day.  Don’t get near the House much.
CHALLIN: Allies.
KARULA: I can travel.
GOTA: Can’t think why you’d go to Fidub!
DIBESIT: How much of this is going on?  This is their famous democracy, transparency?
THE WALLFLOWERS: I believe people are permitted to speak to each other.
KARULA: Most interesting to meet with old friends of the family.  Catch up on the news.  We go back a long way.
SEVERAL:  ROTFLMAO.  Deny it if you dare!
KOLA:  Start by establishing a couple of things which we all know but some of us try very hard not to know.  Some women are fighting for Kadun.  Why does this not penetrate? Cats, trees, silly little girls are wandering around with machine-pistols.  Silly little girls are being obscenely tortured and ending up dead, though only occasionally, because we are very, very good.  Other thing of course is there are women here, cats, trees, civs.  THIS IS NOT A MILITARY FORUM.
 
SARAT:  Put it there, sis!
SHAVLI: High five, bro. 
PETRUSH: Have you lectured them on instartas yet?
SARAT: Far too well brought up.  That’s next week.
MAYA: What guys have to understand is it all started with instartas.  Once upon a my beloved was going to be a vet.  Instartas is a  parasite commonly found in the faeces of sheep. Not a lot of people know that.  Now you know it too.  In imperfectly filtered drinking water, instartas causing severe swelling of the eyes, sometimes resulting in partial closure and consequent impaired vision, together with pain.  This may lead to blindness if it goes untreated. Something must be done!  Stop laughing like that. 
 
CARLUTAN: Do you by any chance have honeyed mellifluous tones? 
SHAVLI:  I remember that! 
CARLUTAN: Damned efficient young woman, this.
 
Yes, well, that silences a few hrrmphs.  For at least ten minutes.
 
VEENA:  All together now:  Chaps, you have to bloody talk about it!  Understand about not being shot down over Vaudos.  Actually capable of answering the telephone.
 
SONTAN:  I missed the announcement of alliance with Fidub.  I understand they have briefly been of assistance but surely an ally is a formal association.
 
DIBESIT: Has Sart indeed not said, the people affected by decisions must know how they are reached.
 
Is someone panicking?
 
MITCH:  Neither of us has been reticent about our politics or what we should hope to achieve.
DIBESIT: Why can you not have your conversation here at the forum?  Is that not ‘Narulis’ gig’?
MITCH: Actually no. Certainly I envisage in due course open conversation in front of the whole of Kadun.
KARULA: Partly because we have three kids.  Exigencies of security meant they had a somewhat curtailed life in the City.  The opportunity to have a real family holiday is not to be missed!
MITCH:  We shall duly sadly inform you if they are eaten by sharks.
SONTAN: Of course the real point of having Fidubi here is to instruct us on marine biology!  Are they big?
PETRUSH: Actually mostly not, no bigger than or little bigger than a dolphin. 
SONTAN: Not big enough to consume an adult but a child - ?  You swim in the sea?  I perceive another myth taking a tumble!  Fidubi striding into the surf.
PETRUSH:  Many of the smaller bays are shark-netted.  Additionally we have many ‘natural pools’ filled by the tide  in which children swim.
SHAVLI:  Dad used to take us out in his boat to swim with the dolphins.  That’s safe too.  There aren’t swarms of sharks, one peeking out of every wave! Hi, kids, look who’s here! If one does appear the dolphins just form a circle round the swimmer to protect him or her.  Of course we were never in the water without a cat in the dinghy in case of anything and we never strayed far from the ladder.
Mitch looked at Karula and laughed heartlessly.
“They are your children also.”
SONTAN: I have heard similar stories.  Quite fascinating.  Dolphins have a rapport with humans, you would say?
 
TIRO: Call me mean and callous, afraid I couldn’t resist.  [Graphic of choppy sea, leering sharks peeking out from behind every wave. Oy, mates, kids!]
 SHAVLI:  When I was 16 I decided to colour my hair.  Dark blue is quite noticeable on cream carpet.  What’s infuriating is it wasn’t noticeable on me.  Naturally black.  No-one’d hold me I had to bleach the natural colour out first.  I was quite shocked when I found that out.  But the carpet.  Indeed the carpet, absolutely.  The towls I fear were a wite-off, got relegated to the zoo. Essa thought blue spots were dealable with.    Of course I didn’t know how to get them out!  Mum and Dad sat me down at a monitor to find out.  It’s quite a long-winded process.  Not helped by Zik making wisecracks.  We learn!
 
MITCH: I freely admit my bed was made and my floor swept, indeed that my snail-trails mysteriously vanished as though by magic.  So far as being waited on goes, I could whistle for it. 
CHANGRI:  Too bloody right.  This House has no time for prissy-boys.
HEELA: Of course there is just the one of him and we only had to tolerate him in the holidays.  I may well suspect that in Essa’s position I should have reached the same conclusion.
MITCH: There you have it, tolerated, what a word for a father to use!  To my lasting regret, I did not attempt to colour my hair.
ASDINAN:  I think Duvi will.  Reach the conclusion, not colour her hair!  Maybe she’ll do that too.   I was brought up like Mitch but now there are four more.  At the moment they’re all under twelve but they grow larger and hungrier by the minute!
 
DIBESIT:  Only three of course pertain to my lady Duvi, the other is Asdinan’s bastard.
ASDINAN: All together now, further proof, were further proof required, the laxity of the south has corrupted Carlin.
PETRUSH: Who is this saddo?
DIBESIT:  And who is the ‘mother’ who has deserted her child, some whore, some village-girl considered unfit to be Mistress of Carlin.
MARDIS:  Uzz’n don’ ‘ole with no tark loike that.
DIBESIT: We have the yokels here now?
MARDIS:  You keep on like that, in absolute droves.  Suggest you don’t come to the Rabbiters’ any time soon.  San-yaega-baht, old boy.  Asdinan’s cousin.
 
MIDI:  Me, pig-shit, me, I’m the mother.  You listen hard, boy.  Asdinan is about the most decent upright guy you could hope to find in this country. He wanted to make a go of it.  I didn’t.  I did not and do not see myself as Mistress of Carlin!  Of course Carlin has our child, a much better life than being alone with me in the city. Turd like you are the bloody corruption, making everything normal and human dirty and sordid.  Actually what drew us together in the first place, shared loathing of shit like you.
KARULA: Kudos, honey, kudos.  I too had to choose between two very different lives. 
VEENA: Yes, gentlemen, where appropriate of course, women can bloody speak.  We are not talked about as though we are defective children with no hearts and minds of our own.
 
FILI: I shall attempt elevated discussion against immeasurable odds.  Women in command.  I fear I perceive that if a woman is not considered in charge of herself but in some sense ‘owned’, subordinate, she can hardly be in charge of anyone else.
KARULA:  I think that is a real acute observation.
 
MAYA: Mard, high five!
SARSHI: I hope everyone likes my H-W T.  [On the front doe-eyed hadin colts: Just because we don’t look dangerous…On the back four steel-shod hooves: …doesn’t mean we can’t kick!]  Where’s the slime-ball?
VEENA: I think it hath sunk back into the mire.
SARSHI: Damn!   Mitch, Vij says when the hell are you going to get your ass over here?  Molto kudos for the Sardun gig. Just been talking to Sable, that’s a women’s group in Carlin.  They’re going to hold a meeting on the world of make believe.  Because they live in a male world they fantasize that it is a male world.  Really hope some of you guys can come.
 
“My head hurts,” said Munzi.  “My lady of Carlin is a princess of Dabida.  My lady of Dabida is a princess of Kadun.
“Couldn’t we have a ceremonial swapping of Ts?”

VARULIN: Can we not cut to the chase here?  They don’t do it, the saluting, the sirring.  Some of us, if we admit which we don’t, don’t either.  Those of us who are close.  But the whole Army would collapse, right?
Predictable there has to be discipline etc.
PETRUSH:  We have no discipline?  We fly if we like, when we like, where we like?
FILI: Oh  I don’t know, you flip flap fly over Kadun readily enough.  Serious.  Of course you bloody don’t
PETRUSH: You do not let yourself down and you do not let other people down.  Anyone sentient knows there can be a good reason why a job has not been done but you give it 200% and you communicate, discuss with the team – find a solution. 
MUNZI: Where some of us are coming from essentially turns the sacred chain of command into jam.  Far from implicitly and scrupulously obeying our senior officers, we shot them.  Of course we saluted them and sirred them until we’d worked out precisely how to shoot them.
RITAWA: You always had the right to disobey an illegal order but of course you had to prove what was illegal about it, which in the circumstances…Following on from what Munz said, so those of us who’ve been in it do not have any time for those who haven’t drivelling about order and discipline and the rest.
VARULIN: Many evil grins, not that it was funny at the time.  .It was always dead straight, the Army, couldn’t call it kind, but if you were going to get a beating, which you only did for something serious, there had to be senior officers present see that it was all done proper. And if it was such a charge, you had to notify the Colonel it was being brought. Right from the start, straight down the line. They didn’t bother with any of that. Lads complained, course it was dismissed.  I complained, right little barrack room lawyer, good at it too, ever so formal, ever so polite, this paragraph here, sir…Course we knew our cards were marked.
PETRUSH: Molto molto kudos.  All of you.
 
MAYA: Just trying to work something out here.  The Army of All-Kadun has always had a reputation for being absolutely upright.  Sure there was stuff we couldn’t accept, but no-one ever said there was anything – slimy about you guys.  Sticking to the Army’s values got you out of the mess but – what Munzi said, only by completely over-turning the Army’s values?
MUNZI: Precisely, in a word.  Those away from the flames have the luxury of pretending nothing has changed.
RITAWA: That extends everywhere – class, gender.  Some here – I believe the expression is ‘in denial’.  What they’re denying is female cats who kill. 
VEENA: Either we don’t exist or there’s something wrong with us, pretend-men.
 
REWN: While I live and breathe, this army is a slime-free zone.
MUNZI: Sir!  That’s exactly what we mean by adhesion.  One  thing I know about CG Rewn is he would never ever surrender.  The other of course is that he engineered the execution of every rat in Consat and took command. 
VARULIN: I do absorb that.  Nonetheless my lady Shavli here is what I think we would call an officer and a lady, so where are me manners.  If we try to get the hang of this proper, you walk into a room of us with something of import to impart.  How would you expect us to behave?
SHAVLI:  Manners!  Reasonably. You wouldn’t stand or anything.  You would stop booking your holiday/doing the crossword/chatting with your mates, turn on your brains, look attentive to my pearls of wisdom.
VARULIN: I believe I can cope with that.  S’pose we didn’t.  I think I will be blunt here.  We are men.  You are a woman.  We want to wave our little – at you.  We do not take orders from women.  We freaking ignore you.  What then?
SHAVLI: Hmm!  I don’t think I know all the tricks of the trade yet – which would maybe be the point, a vulnerable young woman….Busking it.  Probable variations on exact context, whether I knew any of you.  Sound the hooter if there was one around.  That’s actually what we do to get immediate silence, brief and ear-splitting.  Make some kind of crack.  National half-day holiday’s been decreed – the bad news is that FAF are exempt.  If there was a group babbling, walk over to them. Say they were round a table.  Sit on the table and smile beatifically at them.  Say something like I’m the boss here. Look around and say who thinks he’s in charge here?  Probably be a ring-leader of two.  Try to identify and isolate him/them.  Essentially point out you’re here because you have a job to do.  If you don’t want to do it, you’re in the wrong place.  FAF does not do piss-artists, time-wasters. You have one minute by the clock, 60, 59, 58….How am I doing so far?
VARULIN: Listening most attentively, ma’am. Most of us are basically decent, reasonable blokes for obvious reasons..  Of course some have little bees in their bonnets or do I mean lower down.  Some right little fart pushes it, say he’s with a few of his mates, rest of us might tell him to shut it, or we might just want to see what happens next.
 
 
SHAVLI:  I guess I could get a bit abrupt.  Tell them to put their cocks in their pants now.  I don’t want to see them and nor does anyone else.  I’d imagine from what I’ve read here that may start a – dialogue, language no lady would use.  Ask what zoo they’ve escaped from.  There is no room in this service for ten-year-olds.  After that whoever are the most senior are catfood, which no-one actually wants to be.  The cops detain you until we’re ready.  It’s all perfectly relaxed and informal, after hours, relevant parties gathered round – that’s anyone else who was around, any witnesses, and anybody affected by your dumbfuck nonsense, say the guys who did the work instead, but you’re sitting down, you’ve got a coffee.  Only my immediate superior and I take you apart.  Mostly it’s the F word, which is functionality.  Why d’you think you can mess other people around, bloody waste of oxygen, what do you think you’re paid for, do you actually want to work here, but we’d  delve into your sexual politics, exactly why do you  think you can ignore a woman.  In the open to a backdrop of comment which would probably be something like  Aw, Shav, that was unkind!  Come on, dude, that’s garbage.  Anyone with a comment to make is free to make it.
VARULIN: I think I am diligent and well-bheaved.
MUNZI: Sounds like imperial justice to me!  Egg or chicken….I’m guessing that’s how it’s been done for a few dozen centuries or so.  So of course if you and your superior were in the wrong or you talked garbage others would say so?
SHAVLI: Others would say so.  And it’s recorded, becomes part of your record.  Two strikes and you’re out, like Dabida.  That’s one strike.
MUNZI: Among a great many other things – I am guessing being chucked out of FAF is not a good thing to have on one’s CV.  Other forms of offence?  Lovely pair of tits, darling.
SHAVLI: My brain is even bigger.  Yes, in times of yore ye scribes.
 
VARULIN: In my experience real posh blokes wouldn’t give them the time of day. Real eye-opener.
SORG:  That’s garbage.  Name you 20 posh rats off the top of my head.
MUNZI: Varulin’s theory of class isn’t exactly textbook.
SORG: ?
VARULIN: Well, since you ask….now, ladies and gentlemen, if it isn’t who Daddy is and it isn’t money, what is it.  Course it’s both those things but not on their own. To my mind you have to add the right kind of confidence which in my experience comes from the right kind of Daddy and the right kind of money.  Oh, they’re absolutely confident all right, the other kind.  What they’re confident of, you’ll worship Daddy, worship money, worship them. They don’t actually have to be human beings, make any effort to be human.   The ones underneath them who are basically jumped up snotty little pretending to be gentlemen, they despise them cos they haven’t got the Daddys, the money or the confidence but the way they behave is just the same, treat everyone like dirt, think it proves how superior they are, which of course is exactly what blokes like you and Sarat do not do.  A  good clean decent middle-class lad like young Inyulat, he would’t give them the time of day either.  Blokes like him, they’re happy being themselves, if you know what I mean.  How he was brought up.  It’s what you think matters.  He’s brave and he’s honest and he doesn’t give a  - monkey’s about social stuff.  But a lot of middle-class boys, they’re brought up all wrong.  Brought up to think you have to get on and way you do that is being cowards, cock-suckers, liars.  I actually know a bit about one or two of the blokes here.  Oh they mix with what they like to think are the best people.  Course the House wouldn’t give them the time of day.  They just don’t understand what crap they are.
 
DIBESIT:  How readily the posh boys despise the true backbone of Kadun.  What on earth is this filth?  An effete and corrupt upper-class sucking up to the dregs of the gutters, lectures by self-confessed pesants. Lady officers in stripy socks teetering onto the parade-ground, fetch my hairspray, Sergeant.  The whole thing is a mockery.
 
CHALLIN: Ritawa impersonated a senior Cult officer.  Inyulat and Munzi were his diligent aides, Varulin the driver.  Their courage, initiative and possibly madness retook Dovantin.  Unless you have done something similar, shut the fuck up.  You obey your superiors, don’t you.
 
VATYA: Not meaning to be licky, guv, but ROTFLMAO.
 
GOSA:  Bloody hell, Challin’s Four!  Didn’t quite know exactly your courage and daring.
 
SHAVLI: Oh come on, it’s a joke.  Which zoo?
CHALLIN: Except of course this time there is a lady officer reading your honeyed words.  I certainly have no objection to Maya’s suggestion.  None  of us does.  I have mailed Maya to say so.
 
“Let them take it up at the highest levels now,” said Munzi viciously.
“Could always try Azt.”
“That’s the bloody point, isn’t it.  Gender is a dividing line and we all know it.”
“We also know perfectly well that not wanting a female mess – could I have put that better – does not bloody well make you an adept.”
“That’s not the bloody point!”
“What is the bloody point!”
“I’m not sure.  You’re not sure.  I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be very unsure.  It’s how they talk about it, how they talk about women.”
“Oo, where are me hairgrips?”
“Ex-bloody-xactly.  Whether a woman can carry a pack is one thing.  To say a woman can’t be a intelligent competent adult is quite another.”
“Last bloody one to defend them,” said Varulin.  “It’s how they were brought up.  You know that.”
“IT’s all absolute crap, isn’t it.  Foreign military, chunder, chunder.  What they mean is they don’t want to face intelligent competent adult women.”
“Cats and trees have never been kind.”
“That’s an abstract.  THi is reall.  Poetentionally anyway.
“Relax,” said Ritawa.  “Look forward to the Dabidan Army being quizzed a out its heairpgips.”
“I’m going to stir it.”
“Everyone duck!” said Varulin.
 
QINE: Sardun, CLIK: There are folk here who are surely rolling, and I would like to ask them their views on capital. I would first say I’ve been up here with Sardun for many years now, segani by birth, and mixing with folk from different backgrounds broadens your views.  Then again like us all I’m only too aware of how capital can work for good or we wouldn’t flipping be here.  I have friends in CLIK in Zur and I am aware that AMI might as well be in a different world for all in resembles what the  average working-man in Kadun thinks is a factory and I know there are folk who’ve made a packet on the Grid though no labour but their own, so I do not want to be stupid about these things and I hope no-one else will be, either. It seems to me Kadun is somewhat divided between one lot of capital and another lot which for all the nice talk about democracy seems to me to mean that the power stays with the money.  I would like people’s views on that.
[Mitch PM to Qine: Where are you!]
Qine: I will catch up with you later, Comrade Var-sega’.]
 
MUNZI: I want to raise something even fewer will want to discuss.  There are two profoundly separate perspectives here and I don’t mean for or against.  I am unsure.  Many, many of us are unsure. But by far the majority of us undecided have no difficulty in regarding women as competent adult human beings not intellectually and emotionally incompetent children.  We feel no need to belittle and denigrate the feminine.  We’ve all heard it, ineffable stupidity about breaking fingernails and checking lipstick, fetching hairspray and of course simple crudity, 
 
CALUNIN: Somewhat licky.  Rather humourless.
 
MUNZI: I think we shall see who lacks a sense of humour.
 
CHALLIN: Munzi, an excellent post.  I concur.
 
OBAYA: Any time, guys, any time.
 
SARAT:  Shall we talk about basic human rights, as accepted by international law, not to mention imperial law, regarding everyone as an individual, guys to whom that’s a major issue, want a society in which everyone’s in a neat little box and the label on the box says what they can and can’t be, can and can’t do.  Of course not every woman can be a fighter pilot, but nor can every man.  Every man or woman who desperately wants to be a fighter pilot can’t qualify because he or she hasn’t got the necessary individual talents.  But if you say no man can be…no woman can be because of the chromosomes, it’s obvious garbage.  People are individuals, people are very different, some people are thick but have other qualities.  I want a society that takes the best in everyone, encourages people to be themselves not what some dumbfuck says they have to be.
CALUNIN: Do you have to be so bloody offensive?  Completely adolescent.
SARAT:  You have no idea, have you, how bloody offensive you are.
CALUNIN: I cannot accept a woman in the cockpit next to me.
SARAT:  Your problems aren’t my problems.  Let’s have it all in the open.  What’s eating you guys is the belief you have problems.  You’re brave and you’re bright and you’re furious at the idea anyone,  let alone some little prick of a Fidubi thinks there’s something wrong with you but I’m throwing it open to everyone, if you can’t see 60% of the human race as fellow human beings, as individuals with wants and rights and feelings like you, you mean there isn’t?  What d’you think women and gays feel like when you pronounce on who and what they are, tell them what they have to be?  Precisely how did you come by the omniscience that tells you you know.
MITCH: Excellent posts, Sarat.  I concur.  Damn it, I may be enjoying this.  Of course I’m just another posh boy. 
DIBESIT: Both of you, have you any connection with the real world at all, a pair of fantasists with no clue what ordinary decent people think, shrouded in a world of wealth and privilege.
SARAT: I went to school, for a start, the school attached to the Shrine at M-P.  It’s selective but free, takes the brightest kids not the richest.  Sorry, I actually have a brain.  That brain got me into the Collegium at Zur, where I’m a student of biology, mixing with students from the whole of Dabida and a good few other places besides.  I’ve been mixing it politically at public meetings since I was 17.  And you?
MITCH: Power is the capacity to commit evil and equally the capacity to stop or prevent evil. Power is neutral and so is capital. When I was 17 I wanted to give the whole lot away but really, what would that have achieved, other than to render me powerless and penniless.        I saw that power and capital can change things for the better.   As you know, in the City I moved in circles not wholly virtuous.  I should have had no chance of entering those sewers, were I not Var-sega’.  It is my view you fight fire with fire, not a leaky bucket. 
MAYA:  If you don’t spend it, it accumulates and we don’t spend it.  I shall pause for the screaming, what no gold taps.  Sorry, not one.  We are simply not interested in conspicuous consumption.  As a family we’re scattered all over place but no-one lives anywhere ginormous. The hill is sort of everyone’s private hotel, conference centre, formal party, informal party, we accommodate your needs!  It’s such a mad maze there’s room for half a dozen separate events at once.  The parents have four bedrooms and Vij and I have flown the nest, so of courses they can always put people up, but when Pilo and Sala come to see Sarsh they stay on the hill.  Just trying to think.  We put up personal friends.  If  friends of Sarat’s from M-P are in Zur for a few days, of course they stay with us but if Essa and Baya come over – family stay on the hill. 
 
FURRIER:  Tell you what’s an acid test, some fart dribbling women aren’t capable of being doctors.  See how he reacts when he’s wounded.  If he’d rather die than be treated by a woman, then clearly he’s a lost cause.  Just thinking really, war and medicine are quite similar, people’s lives depend on the right decision.  If you trust a woman to give the right dose of the right medicine, then you’re pretty weird if you think she can’t select the right bullet for the right gun.
Have to think fast too.
 
SORG: Always thought that one epitomizes our weirdness.  No women in uniform, even medics.   However, women doctors are ‘attached’ to the military – no jokes, please – reservists in case of need so plenty of chaps are familiar with the sight of and have been treated by – if they’ve ever been near any action, of course.
 
KALA:  ROTFLMAO.  Not-Army doctor.  The fastest cure for modestry is a gut-wound.  I have never had anyone refuse to be treated.  Been hugely entertained by all this.  Some of course will frown and say it really isn’t funny.  There is a very great deal of hot air.  My own take on it may amuse you more.  I don’t really think it’s about the military at all or only peripherally.  Not the word.  Women in uniform can only happen after a sea-change in the whole of society in which everyone, including them, comes out of those little boxes Sarat so accurately described.  This is a society in which too many people define themselves in terms of their status-relationship to others.  The military of course encapsulates two above/below relationships, one to women and one to one’s juniors or superiors.  Varulin I thought equally acute.  I shall strive not to embarrass Inyulat yet more, but yes, precisely, to be happy being oneself rather than what others think one should be is rare in certain sectors of society.
 
KARULA: I am sure you are real busy but I see you are in V-s and I can travel V-s. I wonder if we might meet at some point.