"Do save the crackling for His Eminence."  From left to right, Goldstone, Plucinski, Saunders, Linch and Whelan on the ground.  

The curse of the killer zombies

So eventually I wind my way back to where everything is very funny, so grotesque, absurd, evil, obvious, that it’s funny.  Obvious no democracy, obvious the total intellectual and moral squalor of capering brutes, jabbering and whining and babbling to each other behind closed doors, obvious what was happening to my body. Ah, the filthy rabble of the mad and bad who run the NHS, who now govern England with no dissenting voices.  Left in the hands of killer zombies, automata, bestially ignorant and merely bestial, wholly ineducable, contemptuous of democracy.

Left of course at the mercy of a criminal underclass, no, no, they’re not morally void, sly, squalid, degraded, vindictive, depraved, cowardly, irrational, ignorant, ineducable, violent butchers.  No, no, they’re religious.  They’re good people.  They’ve even got joke degrees and of course they’re just as bright, just as educated, just as literate, just as rational as I.  And if you say anything different, they’ll kill you, cos they’re brilliant gifted IQ5 animal vermin.

And there’s a howling gale and ‘my tree’ is waving its branches furiously at me, here on my mini-wuthering heights, a small but steep elevation that manages to produce excellent sound effects, made possible for me by the flat road that runs parallel to the bottom of the hill.  Good things in life: sitting at my desk in my bay-window looking out at a most excellent tree.
I haven’t been swimming for several weeks because my legs have been trembly (emotional rather than physical) and I do have to do some walking on sticks to negotiate the enterprise, dismantling and loading ye rollator into a cab, re-assembling, repeating performance in reverse being too much like hard work.  Shall certainly start again.  Maybe that just means I need a second lightweight easy-carry rollator

And I laugh because clearly I am meant to die prematurely in poverty, cold and misery, grossly disabled – nix on just go for a quick run round the block, dearie, that’ll warm you up – and I have of course no intention whatever of so doing if I can conceivably help it.  It’s not really that no-one will do anything now, it’s that no-one did anything 20 years ago, other than subject me to their cold ruthless bestial evil, other than leave me to be crippled, other than smear their filth and their dirt and their obscenity all over me, their absolute intellectual and moral corruption, their refusal to establish the facts publicly, their rejection of accountability and transparency, their rejection of all democratic norms.  No-one got me out of there, no-one demanded their filthy infected claws be instantly removed from my body.   No-one dreamed of demanding they adhere to fact, reason and morality.  No-one had a problem with the physical abuse of a woman who has had major spinal surgery, even when I became oh so visibly crippled, no-one thought this anything anyone need do anything about.  Inconceivable any filthy animal of a doctor or nurse be required to give public rational justification for its criminal conduct, grotesques, psychopaths, the lot of them, convinced of their own right to dictate, to command, they know best, impervious to all fact, reason, ethics.  Apes, animals, all these things.  Mad. Belong in cages in the Zoo, or merely in cages, in prison. Animals of doctors who are convinced they are superior life-forms, set above all others.

Sexually diseased, male and female, I forever a nasty naughty disobedient little slave-girl rightfully beaten for my evil and whom it is kindest to ignore or I should have to be beaten again, a beating that alas failed to beat the ‘evil’ out of me, destroy my ‘insolence’, ‘arrogance’, ‘self-will’, the right to my own mind and body.

Now universally treated with contempt. Taken from me by brute beasts.  Nobody cares. 

No, I do not deny my mind, my being, erase from my mind all displeasing to a hysterical ape that belongs in the Zoo, all I have learned, all I have thought, all I have felt, to sate its psychosis, its delusional conviction I am subject to it, part of it, under its control, to do and be and think and say and read and write only what does not ‘offend’ its hysterical filthy brain full of venom and drivel and lies.

No-one sane would think I should.  Therefore there is no longer anyone sane. 

Why was this allowed to happen?  Why were these obscene vile filthy animals left to make free with my body?  Why did no-one howl in outrage, outrage at the assault on my spinal fusion, outrage when I became crippled, outrage at the dismissal of democracy.  They’re all filthy animals, why bother asking.  We are now governed solely by filthy animals, no voice of sanity and reason and civilization heeded, sly deviant cowardly vermin who crawl around behind closed doors.  Ain’t yer fucking illitrit, Nursey, ain’t yer really.  Never expect fact to intrude when an ape is having hysterics, beating its hollow chest, beating with blind fury and hysteria at the source of the offence to its perfection, an impotent, incontinent animal, who should have been thrown in the gutter.  Instead I am thrown in the gutter, left to drown in an open boat by the over-riding hatred of intelligence, of reason, of learning, of ethics, of civilization, of decency, fairness, justice, anything that stands in the way of the sick slobbering mad animal, the piece of filth who merits a bullet in the brain if it refuse – and it refuse – point blank to behave like a civilized rational decent human being.  Look at them grovelling to sickness and evil.

Capering in triumph are you, Blair  Milburn, Clarke, Brown, Mandelson…Corbyn, Abbott, McDonnell,  a most successful outcome to 50 years of assiduously teaching animals being animal is good, of dismissing any need for moral or intellectual education, of telling thugs and criminals they deserve respect and are free to hit anyone who fails to tug his or her forelock to criminal offal, the dregs, telling them that words may be met by violence against the person.

The culmination of 50 years of your frantic attempt to drag everyone down to the level of the gutter, your hatred of intellect, reason, morality, anything that makes some people better than animals, with of course particular reference to your loving creation of a fake professional class of illiterate ignorant ineducable, irrational tards.

An illiterate IQ5 arse-wiper boy at best sates his malice by making me into a porter, a labourer, a bloody bedpan-washing tard boy, with some stupid joke degree from the Polytechnic of IQ5 Trot Crap, and 20 years later I am by universal consent to be if at all possible destroyed as ‘unacceptable’, surplus to requirements for the evils of intelligence, reason, literacy, learning, morality, having to further sate the malice of apes been rendered grossly disabled, grossly deformed.

Free countries?  I lived in one of those once, not a country governed solely by the hysteria of dirty animals, An illiterate slum-criminal can’t be told it’s an illiterate slum-criminal?  Did you ever hear anything so ludicrous?  Or of course so obvious.  Only illiterate slum-criminals are required.  They are to be vaunted and upheld.  On no account should it be demanded animal vermin adhere to fact, reason, morality.  The wilful cultivation and upholding of animals who can’t deal with words, with language, who merely strike out, the intellectual joke that is medicine, animals who cannot analyse the ideas in their own heads, never mind anyone else’s, who truly believe the universities are a haven for intellectually damaged tool-wielders, contemptuous of language and reason, the essentially moronic such as O’Mahony and Whelan, and who naturally believe their precious nurses have wonderful degrees because their precious nurses are only slightly more stupid than and just as damaged as bloody doctors, creatures who reject all speech and reason and run to Authority to uphold them because they’re bloody incapable of speech and reason. 

Don’t expect any filthy animal, any piece of traitor vermin of a doctor to care.  Or of course anyone else.  The intellectually and morally perverted bag of rotting flesh that is the fascist, the ape creatures that rejects all fact, reason and morality,  merely bleats ‘you gotta do what you’re told’. 

Oh I’m supposed to be so bloody impressed, in such absolute awe.  ‘Tis Doctor!  ‘Tis Nurse!  Clearly in the sewers out of which they crawl, slummy Mummy wipes her raw red hands on her pinny and bobs a curtsey to Doctor and Nurse, the only forms of pseudo-educated life, thus accounting for their grotesque delusions of grandeur.  Ordure like Plucinski and Ardeshna particularly ooze it; I should imagine they grew up with servants. 

I really don’t think there’s any point in fighting for England any more, not with words; eventually there’ll be a civil war.  The treason of the political and religious classes is just all-pervading.  This is not the country I grew up in with a vein of decency and reason and fairness.  Animals are not to be upset, traitors, fascists, psychopaths, criminals, liars, thugs, creatures on whom it was open season, are now precious, protected, upheld, deemed superior to the decent, rational, non-violent, sane and honest.  Confront obvious pieces of shit and the whole filthy vile dirty animal mob descends on you, spear-headed and orchestrated by leading lights of politics and religion. That England has been systematically destroyed in the triumph of woman-hating butchers, deviant monkey-men whom no-one will challenge, ape-men who regard a woman’s body as a punch-bag and a woman’s mind as a joke.. 

Sit back and have another sip of buttermint.  A small success: having resolved to drink mint tea rather than coffee or for that matter tooth-rot fruit tea, I then had to find a mint tea I actually like. 

Fighting to do more than survive, exist gracefully, is of course another matter, that is worth fighting for, with every man’s hand against me as it always has been, every single animal concerned ganged up on me, committed to the rule of madness and evil, of creepy sordid sly squalid cowardly psychopaths such as they jabbering to each other behind closed doors, deciding for the serfs and slaves, decreeing from on high. 

Grotesques, so absolutely full of it, so absolutely assured of their perfection, their virtue, their veracity, head-cases so utterly convinced they cannot be wrong, misinformed, flawed in their reasoning or of course mad and bad that it is inconceivable there be any need to question their judgement.  Impenetrable, impervious to all fact, all reason, all morality.  Clinically mad.

It would be nice to know  precisely what I’m to be destroyed for.  I don’t imagine there’s much left of the truth by the time ape vermin monkey filth like Linch and Goldstone have filtered it, probably practically unrecognizable to me.  Of course they’re all lying through their filthy ape teeth.  Why d’you think they’re so desperate to have nothing said.  How cunt bitch ape animal Carol describes me is probably particularly hilarious  No-one even thinks to demand the facts, these joke academics, these pieces of slobbering ape-shit, vile and dirty and obscene. 

Similarly, they really don’t want everyone to know that they have treated with the utmost gravity the accusation of witchcraft and solemnly agreed that because an IQ5 Broadmoor case thinks I’m a witch and witches are to be destroyed, destroyed I must be.  People would laugh too loudly.  Gret goodness, no-one can possibly do anything about my being burned at the stake.  This is essentially the world of mediaeval peasants.

Why bother asking why the far Right gains support?  Just look around: creatures with names like Khwaja, Mohamedbhai, Rismani, Ardeshna, Whelan, McGuckin, Yong, D’Sa, who absolutely refuse to uphold a free, democratic and rational society, who commit numerous crimes in furtherance of the destruction of democracy, who crawl around behind closed doors jabbering and babbling and whining lies to each other.   Doubtless a pattern repeated all over England.   Scapegoats for the real evil, the evil of creatures like Blair, Straw, Cameron, McDonnell, who could have spent the last 30 years upholding a free, democratic and rational society and preferred not to, preferred to be the mouthpieces of fascism and corruption.

The Met Office promises sunny intervals and a 10% chance of precipitation, which doesn’t obviate the fact that the sun has vanished and it’s just gone several shades darker out there with an enormous black cloud.
And lo it hath started to precipitate. 

I do get the hang of this, I really do.  No-one will lift a finger to help me in any way or ever would.  Master wouldn’t like it and the filthy monkeys never do anything that would displease Master, dirty groveller ape creatures who cower and crawl and are doubtless well paid for it, monkeys making appeasement gestures, incapable of standing upright and free. What d’you do when every politician is in any case evidently to the whole country a joke, an object of contempt.  You stay at home or vote LibDem who might just be slightly less objects of contempt having not been engaged in mainstream politics.  My milkshakes are expensive and precious things, composed of organic low-fat yoghurt, organic strawberries, organic strawberry kefir and organic milk, so I shouldn’t waste one on Robinson.  But I could empty the washing-up bowl on him, should he pass my window. 

No-one in politics, no-one in MI5, never mind no-one in medicine and nursing, would uphold a free, democratic and rational society or turned a hair at a medically vulnerable woman being systematically physically abused. That cunt Milburn left me there.  That is another put of putting it.  I’m a woman.  It didn’t matter.  Not worth making a fuss about, what happens to a woman.  Should have kept my fucking marf shut if I knew what was good for me.  Of course no oversight, no-one giving a fuck what happened to me. Marked for destruction from the start, wasn’t I, Blair, a literate, educated, intelligent, free, democratic, rational, honest woman: get rid!  Dispose of, not wanted by you foetid monkey geoveller fascist death cult of fucking obedience, your filthy sexually perverted senile ape-men. And you expect me, an Englishwoman, to throw away everything I am and grovel to some dirty vile sexually diseased animal you call a priest, the agent of a hostile fascist foreign power.  Maybe Blair and Booth will one day tell me why on earth I should give a moment’s attention to a creature that sees me as property, and second-hand property at that, a creature incapable of acknowledging me as a highly intelligent, highly educated adult human being and retreats to clutching its wizened cock and beating me. 

All together now: religious people are good.  Religious people are holy and believe in the sacred, the numinous, the ineffable.  Religious people are grotesquely emotionally and intellectually damaged brute beasts who mindlessly obey, whose chief ‘god’ is themselves and how wonderful they are ad superior to everyone else, who believe they have rights over the minds and bodies of everyone else, who hate love and mind in equal measure and worship only power.  And what do you these fucked up ego-maniacs who despise women and worship power know about sex, about love between two people, or any other kind of love.  Imagining these sordid primitives pronouncing on me is bad enough.  Imagining supposedly civilized adults, who are actually mentally slave-children, vacant-eyed savages lapping it all up, is worse. Sick vile dirty animals who only ever listen to other sick vile dirty animals, freaks like you, psychos and sickos and dirt like you, cowards and whiners and liars like you. 
You couldn’t speak in the open, could you, any of you, you haven’t got the fucking balls, sly dirt vermin filth cowards who crawl around behind closed doors, any more than you pathetic vile jokes can check facts or even tolerate facts, animals hate facts, filthy sick little animals who live in a mental world that exists solely in their heads.  Cultivated, protected, upheld.  Wanted, as I am clearly not.  Nothing like a slimy dirty cowardly whining ape is there, May, anything that normal civilized people would recoil from, mock, revile, is precious.

Look everyone, look at the lovers of vermin, they’ll do anything for vermin, kill for vermin, precious, precious vermin, never to be upset, never to be confronted with the real world, never to be countered, never to be told to adhere to fact and reason, never to be told which fucking end is up. 
Why is that, May?  Your problem is what?  Do tell.

Hey look, dear world, the killer zombies have triumphantly achieved my intended destruction, the sly, the dirty, the cowardly, the liars, the cockroaches, the thugs, the butchers, the psychopaths, the traitors, the fascists are victorious.

There’s nothing to do but laugh.  Really, you expect me to take mentally diseased animals seriously, obvious screaming nutters, a yawning wind-up toy like Whelan, a wobbling bag of rancid jelly like Saunders actually think they're important?

And I laugh

And I laugh because all you have proved is that you are that slimy nefarious corrupt object called ‘the Establishment’ which meets in clubs and on race-courses and spends as much in an hour as would feed, clothe and house a family of four for a month, assumes it governs, unaccountable, cowardly, uncontrollable. 
Oh jolly old boating weather.  Do rather miss the Thames and Eton is awfully pretty.  Used to take the train to Windsor and Eton Riverside and walk upstream.  Oh, are all the little slave-sluts and sycophants and general issue cock-suckers and arse-lickers cheering for the best of schools.  Sure Cameron and Johnson can tell us more about that.  Just think, I used to be able to walk, walk miles.  Nonsense like that doesn’t matter when little penises are twitching.  Just don’t need the use of my legs, do I
Now, pet, I imagine that in  what passes for your mind England and the  English like everyone else and  everywhere else belong to God. It’s a possibility. There is, however,  something in between England and  God in your model, is there not. You, little  you. You represent God and  rule England on God’s behalf. 

There are a  few problems here, as those nice young men in their clean white coats I’m sure  would be glad to explain to you. 

1) there is not one shred of evidence  for your conviction you carry out God’s will
2) If you do carry out God’s  will, then God is clearly a grossly  mentally disturbed being to whom no sane  and civilized person would give two seconds’ attention 
3) There is not one  shred of evidence for  the existence of this God of yours. You believe he  exists. Others do  not. What is not demonstrable cannot be binding. You must see  that. Some people believe this God exists. Others do not. They can’t both be  right and it is impossible for any individual to be bound by both beliefs.
 
So we have a situation here, Houston Control, where this fucked-up  baboon 
thinks he carries out God’s will. The territory he inhabits may  be summarized 
as the supreme authority of the Church which I must be  made to accept. The 
fruits of the independent exercise of the hearts and minds of humans are the 
work of Satan. This is to what Blair and the  rest of the New Labour rabble 
consider me subject. It's perhaps not so  much a question of why haven't they 
been arrested as of why haven't they been sectioned.
 
That which makes you look stupid, ludicrous, ignorant, irrational.
 
There is somewhere in literature or oratory a superb put-down I cannot unfortunately recall and can’t be bothered to hunt for.  It may be classical, it may be Churchillian, but the gist is: your refutation of my argument would be greatly enhanced by your having understood it
 
THAT AM I

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

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

As I have previously remarked:

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

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

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

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

But then it is terribly obvious that the entire ‘New Labour’ project was dedicated to the destruction of England, the destruction of freedom, the destruction of reason.
There is of course another light blue here, that of Cambridge (specifically Gonville and Caius).

And I laugh because I have made no impact whatever, as well does a swimmer tell a shark you cannot behave like this, you cannot treat me like this. These creatures are not human, unreachable by human means, by love or mind.  As well to reason with a shark, indicate my inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

Religion has of course been destroying women for 3000 years, since the first Jew dribbled about that spare rib and the root of all evil.  They’re very good at it, a word in your ear, some ridiculous woman.

I read actually that Ancient Egyptian religion made remarkable strides towards gender equality, though no-one can say how true that was in practice.
A story on a papyrus dating from the 2nd century CE relates that the goddess Isis, bestowing gifts on humanity, gave as much power and honor to women as she did to men. This tale reflects the high status women enjoyed in ancient Egypt. Although they never had the same rights as males, an Egyptian woman could own property in her own name and hold professions that gave her economic freedom from male relatives (women could practice medicine, handle money and make real estate transactions). A wife was entitled to one third of any property that she owned jointly with her husband and, on her death, could will her property to anyone she wished, male or female. Egyptian women were equal in the court system and could act as witnesses, plaintiffs or defendants (as we would understand those terms today). Women were accountable for crimes they committed and would have to stand trial the same as any man.
 

The Goddess Isis
 
Married women were known by the title `Mistress of the House’ and most women’s time was spent caring for the home and children. Her responsibilities would include child rearing (unless she was wealthy enough to be able to afford a slave for the purpose) house cleaning, sewing, mending and making clothes, providing meals for the household and managing the accounts. Even so, there is ample evidence of women tending to chores outside of the home such as the care of livestock, the supervision of workers in the fields (even doing field work herself) the maintenance of tools, buying and selling slaves and real estate and taking part in the commerce of the market place (all of these rights and responsibilities, to this extent, the women of Sumeria and Greece never had).

The Egyptian Wisdom Texts admonish husbands to treat their wives well since the balance between the male and the female resulted in harmony (known as ma’at) which was valued by the gods and, especially, the great goddess Ma’at, she of the white feather of Truth. Marriage was considered a pact between a husband and wife for a lifelong commitment of equal partnership and companionship which could only be broken by death (which was the will of the gods, not of the individual marriage partners) although divorce was common in practice. Women were legally protected against abuse from their husbands and, in the documents from a 12th Dynasty lawsuit, a man had to “swear that he would henceforth refrain from beating his wife, on pain of one hundred blows with a cane and the loss of everything he had acquired together with her” (Nardo, 35).

And I laugh because some dribbling squirming heap of infected shit thinks I should be ashamed of my body, ashamed of being ‘soiled’, second-hand goods.  Because as an act of cold brutal deliberate evil these pervert freaks have once again been loosed in this country and it is universally hailed as good.

And I laugh because my not inconsiderable mind means absolutely nothing to them, I might as well never have written a word, and that too is universally hailed as good.

And I laugh because all  you have proved is as I repeatedly say you are filth and evil, haters of love and mind, haters of anything clean, anything upright, anything rational, filth and evil and lovers of filth and evil.  That filth and evil are to be unswervingly, unyieidingly and universally upheld and protected.  That filth and evil are not to be disturbed or upset by being named.

Of course I laugh.  Laugh in their vacant evil stupid faces.

And I laugh because the world is full of books to read and things to find out about, infinitely more than any one human being can manage in a lifetime, and they are so ludicrous that they think they have nothing to learn.  Nothing outside the garbled drivel in their heads, their fuck-up beliefs and their loony conviction of their own perfection exists.

And I laugh because there is one form of ‘medicine’ at which I am very good.  I should long since have bled to death from internal wounds but I staunch the flow, knit the tissues, heal the cuts, because I make me and that they can never understand.

And I laugh because these obscene filthy brutes who have pawed and mauled me, smeared their dirty animal selves indelibly over my body and my life are irrelevant to me.

And I laugh because my life is a huge mad joke.  All I ever wanted to do was write and go for excessively long walks in wild places but I had to earn a living and so fell through a black hole into a parallel universe of the raving mad who have broken my body, raped my mind and wrecked the remainder of my life, a world divorced from reality in which truth and good are the drivellings of the ape with the biggest club, in which everything independent of the dribblings of some authority figure with a club is dismissed out of hand, in which language is treated with contempt and force, power, violence are all, all fact, reason, decency, sanity are jeered at and regarded as a joke, where people regard themselves as slaves, owned, to do only what they are permitted by the mad, are damaged nutters who think it wrong to doubt and question the words of authority, independent thought is regarded as evil and independent action is inconceivable to them,  where a woman’s body is simply a punchbag for inadequates and a woman’s mind is a joke, and that there is universal agreement the world of the criminal and the psychopath, of the Broadmoor patient, be regarded as normality.

And I laugh because these perverted deformities really expect me to see myself as a slave, property, who has sinned, transgressed, said and done things Master does not permit, functioned independently of her lord, been self-willed, disobedient, and of course a freak who does not accept Master’s right to punish her.

Yeah, I have a mind of my own and know how to use it.

And I laugh because they think so very much of themselves and have not the smallest intellectual virtues, contemptuous of fact, unable to learn, unable to reason, to construct argument, to research fact.

And I laugh because like Dill I combine my father’s rationalism with a profound esotericism; unlike Gandalf I have not met a Balrog.  I have met so many fucking Balrogs that it’s funny, nearly as funny as the entire political class intoning, O great Balrogs, you alone we worship, you alone we adore, there is no truth beside you, there is no good beside you, you alone are our meaning and our source.  Sustain us, great Balrogs, fill us with your truth and might, that we may do your will.

Because they sure as fuck don’t do anything else.

And of course, great Balrogs, we thank you for the bounty you send.  It sees the kids through school and uni very nicely.

Has anyone checked out these folks' bank balances? Research funding? PFI? Living above their means? Come on, they can't all be dribbling religious loons. What's the going rate for selling out everything? Where there's muck there's brass.

Nobody wants to give Pussy squeaky rat-toys to play with. Could this be because they're rich rat-toys?

And I laugh because Medicine, the University, Government, politics, everything has become a sick joke. See them press themselves ever further into the ground, yearning to please, for the Balrogs have to be fed.  Feed them everything, all fact, all reason, all light, all life.  The Balrogs are not to be upset, disquieted, perturbed.  Of course no demands may be made of them.  That would be absurd, the slaves making demands of their masters. Since the Balrogs are without flaw and of course omniscient, the idea of correcting them or educating them is absurd and impossible.
So they threw the Balrogs my medically vulnerable body, without a qualm or backward glance.

And so I  hobble about covered in little homunculi, Abraham, O’Mahony,Wilson, Sturridge, Black, Linch, Blair, Goldstone, Milburn, Naylor, Plucinski, Saunders, Rowley, McGuckin, Ardeshna, Whelan wrapped around my torso and legs, forever with me forcing their filthy animal selves on me. 

And I laugh because they are so ludicrous.  Really, you think crawling over my body leaving nasty itchy red blotches convinces me of your veracity and probity?

And I laugh because I still don’t give a fuck.

And because I actually feel rather good about myself.  I have not betrayed my country, my University, my self, soul.  I have not become a squirming pile of infected shit for sale to the highest bidder, dismissing all fact, all reason, all morality in the face of mad animals with clubs and money, a dirty little animal who says yes, o master, whatever you say o master, in you lies all truth, all good, o master, india-rubber man who bends in the middle and falls on his face to evil and calls it good, filth, all the way through, rotting flesh.

Anything you said, o master, only please don’t hurt my back.  The apes really expected me to cower and crawl. 

Yup, it’s OK here up a lamp-post 

Of course historically the lamp-post was  seminal to the revolution, essential kit, one might say, bloated  capitalists, imperialist  running-dogs and fascist hyenas for the  stringing-up of, I think nowadays the  RSPCA would step in. What does the lamp-post mean to us today? Well, it's pretty  critical if you happen to be in Narnia and come to think of it who's to say I am  not, that I have not inadvertently walked through a wardrobe into the realm of  perpetual winter. Certainly I am in an alien dimension, one that runs on totally   different rules. Otherwise, an agile puss can shin up it PDQ with the   imperialist running-dogs and fascist hyenas on her trail and leave them  to  howl and yap and whine at its foot. Nor is this all! I'd think the  base of this  particular lamp-post was pretty smelly by now. The question of course arises as  to how close it is to the barrack-gate, in which  case to talk of being  underneath it is inexact. No, today's Lili Marlene must be curled up on top of  the lamp-post, where after all it's much  warmer than underneath it. The  imperialist running-dogs and fascist  hyenas must be really cold by now. Really,  should one not call the  RSPCA? How do those in the immediate neighbourhood feel about the smell? And the noise! Might they not call the council in? Surely feral  dogs  represent a public nuisance. They could call in the Sanity Inspector. Oh  no, wait, that's me.
 
How many times can you repeat the same basic facts before they penetrate

To the same people.  Teachers may think they recognize the problem but they have a different batch of students each year.

Oh look, look, aren’ they the most important of the importantest of the very very important ones, ooh, they’re so important, and they know everything.  Of course unlike the rest of us, they’ve never had to learn it first.  There are huge areas of the human experience about which I know exactly nothing or almost nothing bar O Level. how a fridge works, electronics, chemistry,  medicine.  This is of course distinct from the capacity to learn.  If I ever had the urge, I am quite sure I could learn how my fridge works.   I don’t think I know how to treat scleroderma, lymphoma or even tennis elbow.  There are no normal circumstances in which I should ever have to try to learn but I suppose in the aftermath of nuclear or other devastation in which all cities had been flattened, in the extremely unlikely event – an event so unlikely that it makes being picked up by the Heart of Gold probable – that there were just me, someone developing scleroderma and my copy of Systemic Sclerosis, a work I proof-read and edited, not wrote, and which is of course now very out of date, I could have a go.  I digress…

So you will gather correctly that I didn’t land in Medicine and start telling them how to practise it.  I did tell them they were bloody illiterate.  There does happen to be something about which I know a great deal: language. 
The Great University Education Scam
By the time there's no need to be literate, no need to be able to ratiocinate, no need to know anything at all outside narrow subject boundaries, no requirement to want to think, no need to be able to select and order data, no requirement to be able to construct arguments or analyse existing arguments, no need to be able to step outside a given frame of reference and question its foundations, no need for any intellectual skills at all, of course anyone can get a 'degree'. Honestly, I just want everyone to know I understand.

These etchings of mine have not come about due to the discovery of doctors and biologists who cannot write cogently about reality, rationality or Racine but by the discovery of doctors and biologists who cannot write cogently about medicine and biology. The biological sciences are really going to benefit from a generation of ’researchers’ so fur-brained they can’t describe their first researches. How can you identify unanswered questions if you cannot think? Welcome to the world of those from whom clarity of thought is absent.

What the educational establishment is going to explain is this: No more than half a dozen pages are required – what you did, why you did it, how you did it, what the results were and what those results might mean: Blendit’s syndrome is a rare disease of the connective tissue, causing severe debilitation, especially in women of child-bearing age (1). Laggie et al (2) have shown that some 80% of sufferers in this group have a defect in the ability to produce the growth factor chronine. Chronine reacts with the hormone condosit in the production of healthy tissue (3, 4). Condosit is produced by the ovaries during the luteal peak (5). Silofome Z has been shown to stimulate the production of chronine in vitro... It is really isn’t very difficult, especially if you’ve been doing the work for the last two years. Of course you do have to have something resembling a mind. She approached the keyboard cautiously. Intraduction (was that how you spelled it?) My name is Susan and I am a doctor. No, that wasn’t what she’d seen in the journals.

We are talking (repetitively) of the inability to select and order data, of the inability to question and analyse given propositions, to stand outside a given frame of reference and question its foundations. It does not matter here whether we are talking of oncology or Origen. We are talking specifically of how it does not take everyone six months to produce half a dozen pages. Some of us, indeed, in our spare time, can put together in a couple of years the material for some 20 or 30 reasonably original contributions to thought. We are talking about the marked absence of any intellect whatever. Cannot write simple descriptive essays. The short word for this is stupid. Any undergraduate in the Faculty of Arts of a real university could knock off such a paper in his or her sleep, but then of course arts undergraduates do deal with original material, are expected to be able to sift Kant or Chaucer, are not spoon-fed from potted versions and summaries, are expected to digest vast amounts of reading and select from their reading. Note also that this inability is not an inability to write the original research grant, of which some junior doctors and scientists are equally incapable. It is an inability to describe what they fuck they have been doing with the grant money for the last two or three years.

They weren’t fucking ‘aving it, right. Fatuous and absurd little killer zombies know everything without having to learn it first.  You know, just like the nutters know there's no such thing as democracy and they are divinely ordained to be set above others and dictate others' lives, our being, like they know nothing whatever about intellectual or political history.  The extermination committee of the killer zombies is a particularly large and brutal joke, ludicrous little capering monkeys who think they're Christ Almighty, incapable  of speech, incapable of reason, incapable of learning, devoid of ethics, of intellect, integrity, humour, expecting to be taken seriously as sentient life.  The only thing funnier is those who have left me in their hands, who actually do take flesh-eating zombies, walking corpses, the living dead, seriously.  Clockwork toys, wound up in the morning, jerking their way through the day, impervious to all fact, reason, morality.  I might just as well never have said anything, might just as well have been addressing chimpanzees in the Zoo, for all the impact the basic facts of intellectual and political history, the basic facts of me, have on flesh-eating zombies.  Why were they not summarily told to adhere to fact and reason?  Why were they not summarily told to publicly establish the facts?  Why were they not summarily told to take their filthy infected claws out of my medically vulnerable body?  Who is at the heart of the worship of evil, worship of sickness and psychosis and complete intelletual and moral corruption?  Who demands the abolition of democracy?  Who breaks out in hives at the thought of being questioned by ordinary people?  Who are morally degenerate, depraved, sly, squalid, dishonest, cowardly, vile, filthy, dirty, bestial, irrational drivellers?  Why it's those wonderful religious people.  Smelly ape vermin who will eventually have to be hanged, vile obscene traitors committed to the destruction of the free world, sordid foul obscenity demanding we all run at the level of IQ5 cunt-for brains peasants and savages.  It ain't gonna happen, Holy Farter, it just ain't going to happen that you will drag us all back to fucking Dark Ages, to your sick cunt sex freak pervert mediaeval world of masters and slaves, smelly corrupt old ape, tug your forelock, obey your superiors, women as property, women an intellectual joke, women to keep themselves 'pure' to be acceptable to prospective owners, all the little savages in awe of voodoo men in black dresses, in awe of ape-drivel in ancient books which is to be considered automatically superior to reason and mockery by the sane a capital offence, medicine a fucking monkey joke, but you will quite possibly have achieved murdering me so you caper in triumph.  Were it not for universal corruption, for vermin monkey traitor scum like Blair, you would not of course  have got first base, for all your perverted evil repulsive subhuman groveller slaves, smelly apes who abandon all fact, reason, morality for your smile.   Oh the foul monkeys think they're so fucking clever, the dirty animals, the depraved psychotic chimps who achieve their victory by lies, bestiality, corruption, pay-offs, crawling around behind closed doors in filth and squalor, creatures lower than vermin, beneath beneath contempt, the dregs of humanity to whom no civilized person would give five seconds' attention, but the repulsive corrupt groveller vermin fawn, prostrate themselves, anything for you, o Master, whatever you say, o Master, may I be an instrument of your will, o Master, the tool of your purpose, o Master, butcher a medically vulnerable woman, as you command, o Master, destroy intellect, reason, ethics, it shall be done, o Master, destroy her, of course, o Master, consider it done, o Master.  You cannot regard these automata as human because they're not, they're unreachable by human means, unreachable by love or mind, a mindless juggernaut that dismisses out of hand anything contrary to their ravings. 
Laugh at you, Linch, laugh at you, Goldstone, laugh at you, Naylor, laugh at you, Saunders, McGuckin, Plucinski, Ardeshna, Whelan, Rowley, von Barsewisch, laugh at all the sick animals, the pathetic inadequates who can only destroy, who scheme and manipulate and caper and lie and butcher and finally murder because that's all monkeys can do, monkeys who hate intelligence, hate reason, hate intellect, hate freedom, hate democracy, monkeys who want us all mindless apes falling on our faces at the threat of violence from a bigger monkey beating its hollow chest

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 Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this book.
 
And so they flew home and Dill was summoned to Mitch’s study.
“Sit down, honey.”
“I rack my brains.  I haven’t done anything more than usually bad for at least a month.” “We have to have a little talk about the future.” She frowned.
“Is that good or bad?”
“Good, honey, good.  I hope good.”  He walked over to her and picked up a soft emerald lock, let it fall gently through his fingers.  “I love it!”  He put his hands on her shoulders.  “You have always understood our lives – all our lives – were to some extent at risk.”
“Well – yes…”
“Your mother and I are returning to Azt to live. There are arguments on both sides concerning what I have to say to you.  You are Var-segan, honey, and your place is here, but – “ he grinned.  “Look who’s talking!  You may if you wish come with us.  Azt is not for the moment the safest place.  In order that your mother and I sleep at night, you will not be even mildly idiotic.  Nor will you if you stay!  Your mother thinks that if you are far from her eagle eye you may behave – inappropriately.  I do not mean taking calls on your mobile during dinner!  As I understand it, she does not wish to wake to pictures of you on a soap-box.  You may say – we do say – that is rich coming from the pair of us.  We do not wish you to make yourself more of a target while you are a minor.  We understand, as – as Baya and Essa understand, as Pietri and Caluna understood, when you are an adult you will do what you have to do.  Do you read me?”
She looked at him a moment, then gave a small, slightly puzzled smile and saluted.
“Yessir…Dad – is it going to get bad again?”
“There is infrastructure in place that should maintain Kadun’s stability.  The possibility of chaos, the risk of chaos, I calculate as lower than at any time during the past ten years.  The risk of individual casualties of course is something different.  Among them may be me.  You understand that. That is your worst-case scenario.  On the other hand Kadun will come out the other end of this and we shall too.”
“What we think – Qirl and I.  Now we’re older.  We didn’t understand what you were doing when we were home before.  They came for us. Now they want Sarat.”
“If I am elected, they will want me.”
“Oh!  I see that.”
“You would hack it.  You would have no choice.”
“You – you’re going back because you have no choice.  It’s – what Var-segan means.  I understand,
Dad.  Dad…If something happened, I mean if something really bad happened, if everything…”
“I should expect you to fight for the last stone and blade of grass.  It is not going to come to that.  It is something we have avoided to date.  By sheer gall, by raw cunning – and by accommodation. There is no longer space for accommodation.”
“It wasn’t a game, Dad!” “I do not understand.”
“The picture I’m getting – you and mom think I play at being a stoopid teen to – to pretend everything’s all right.” He was utterly taken aback.
“That is not what we think, honey.”
“You don’t trust me!”
“We know too well what we were at your age.  Perhaps that overly colours our judgement.”  He put his arms around her.  “I think I have not said anything of which you were not previously aware?” “It’s my way of being brave.”
“Understood.”
“OK, I’m a loud-mouthed brat!”
“We love you all the more for it, honey.” She suddenly went on the attack.
“And what you’re telling me – I can stay here and be Var-segan only I mustn’t actually open my mouth!”
He laughed..
“Did I say that?  Would you not acknowledge that you are a little young to be a leader of revolution?”
“Old enough to be Var-segan.”
“I can’t have it both ways?  I shall be frank.  Parental dread can have it all ways.”
“This is coming from mom – if you became President, you would not think it appropriate to retain the title, you’ve said that.”
“If.  That is not the immediate future.  A year is a long time at your age.”
“I can be useful here.  But you don’t want that. You are confusing me.  I’m not stupid.  I mean – that’s not the right word.  I guess I seem arrogant? That’s what worries you and mom.  But that’s confusing too.  It’s what you say.  You go out there and busk it.” He grinned.
“Here I think myself the model of rational parenthood and I do nothing but sow confusion.”
“I’d ask, Dad. There’d – there’d be someone to ask.  I mean it’s what you say.  I know it already.  I’m not saying I’m not a kid.  I’m not saying I can’t be an idiot.  I’m saying I – saying I know – knew – have known since I’ve been old enough to know something could happen to you and there’d just be me. I’m not claiming to be fit enough or old enough or responsible enough.  I’m stating a fact.  Just like you said.  I’d hack it.  I shouldn’t have a choice.” He cocked his eyebrows.
“So why shouldn’t you hack it when you do have a choice?  You are 16!  You are claiming you want to be Steward of Var-segan?”  The disbelief in his voice made her giggle.
“No! Not tomorrow, anyway! I’m – I’m trying to say  -  look at it this way.  Just about every kid in Kadun is having this conversation!  School!  Homework!  Exams! There’s a revolution going on and it’s our future.”
“I seem to remember a  well-known young man dropped out…”    He grinned again.  “Not of course until he had finished school.  Revolution?  What revolution?”
“It doesn’t matter who you are, parental dread’s the same.  Though broadly – this is still a very class-based society, you know!  Posh folks take the real risks and – non-posh folk make the revolution, are free to make the revolution because posh folks are taking the flak.  We talk about these things, Dad.  We kids want to make the revolution and you – parents – want to keep us safe.  If it’s not that they want things to be normal.  Want us to behave normally while you don’t.  It’s really unfair.”
“I am enjoying this,” said Mitch.
“You’ve always found time for us.  We think you’re miraculous!  When have you talked to our friends?”
“Would there be some measure of truth in saying be damned to the age of majority, you are adults, young adults, but adults nonetheless?”  She nodded vigorously.  “What exactly do you want, Dill?  Do you all want, for assuredly Var-segan should take a lead in these matters.”
“To be part of the action.”
“OK.  You’ll come to Azt,  at least for a while.  Accompany me.”  He grinned like a fiend.  “Mingle.
Suffer gross sleep deprivation.  Live on – and this is worst of all – the Hadin Wadud’s catering.  There’s qallie soup, qallie mousse, qallie stew… “
He walked in on Karula fresh from the shower.
“Remove that towel,” he suggested.  “It is unnecessary.”  He laughed suddenly and picked her up.
“Unhand me, sir!”
“Not a chance…Just asserting myself in the face of two of the damnedest females…”  He sat her on the bed.  “Our daughter…”  He laughed again.
“I gather it went well.”
“It went.  Our daughter is entirely prepared to be at least nominally Steward of Var-segan.  Like now, man.  How old was Sarat?  We are screaming idiots.”
“Hold on there!”
“You keep wriggling.”
“Sarat was not in Azt in his mid-teens!”
“Different scenario.”
“That is true.  You are not seriously – “
“If I become President, I should not consider it wholly appropriate – have I not said that.”
“A retentive memory,” said Karula drily.  “She is 16!”
“I am a miraculous parent.   I know my daughter’s age. She has taken a deep breath and geared herself up to it.  There is more!  Every kid in Kadun is screaming because parents are having all the fun.  It’s their future.  They’ll come back with us, school be damned.”
“I see.  I should prefer Steward of Var-segan.”
“That’s next week.” 
“Talk me through it.  Make it real good.”
After a bit, she said: “What happened to our young people’s revolution?”
“We never meant this young.  Suddenly we are an open society.  They are bombarded with news, events, change, innovation.  It must be as though a party’s going on to which we have forgotten to invite them.”
“One with an unwanted guest.”
Much later she said: “She did not mention - ?”
“No.”
“She never does.  I have been as inviting as it is possible to be without forcing it.” “I did not think I had to ask why my daughter will hack it because she has no choice.”
Mitch sat down to dinner.
“Shouldn’t the ladies be seated first, sir?” asked Qirl.  Karula choked and turned it into a cough. Qirl pulled out a chair for Dill, who sat and thanked him graciously, then turned wide eyes on her father.
“Like we thought we’d been giving out the wrong messages, man.”
“Do you realize,” said Qirl, “we’ve never been to Azt!  Talk about country cousins.”
The one with green fronds is the heir.  Then the Cult released its video and Mitch’s madness was forgotten.  Everyone with half a brain knew the exact taunt.  Are you still laughing, Sarat?  Sarat embracing Maya who turned into Death at his touch.  Sarat placing Death on the Anile Throne and kissing his hand.  Sarat making love to Death. 
Not completely surprisingly, no-one wanted to show it to him.
“They have produced something past obscene,” said Faun.  “We don’t think you should see it, but you must see it.”
Sarat watched it.  Sarat said absolutely nothing. 
At length, he said, “Thank you.”  It was rather clearly a dismissal.
If I have any sense, thought Faun, I take my leave.  I never had any sense.
“So?”  Bloody stupid thing to say. “Back to the cutting-room?”
Karula went up in smoke.
“Bring them to damn’ Azt!  Young adults!  There is more than one kind of safe, Mitch!” Mitch was unmoved.
“It is a video.  It is all over the Grid.  I prefer they see it holding tightly onto our hands.  Should they not face the enemy of their future?”
So much about him that was pure Fidubi.  Jaizal sat cross-legged among the flowers.
Cantilip tried to explain something to Mel.
“We were mad.  We were all mad.  We thought we should bounce into Azt and they would evaporate like shadows in the sun.  Is that what we thought, Mel?
“You are not leaving me,” said Mel.
She stared at him in horror.
“Mel…No!  No.”
“What then?  We cannot go back.”
“My duty is to fight.  Is that not also yours?”
“Were we mad?  Are we? Where does that lead, Cantilip?” She closed her eyes.
“It is nonsense to think we can win.”
A girl came running into the room in tears.  “They will hurt him!  You must help!”
Sarat sighed but tried to be polite.  He listened stunned.  “You are  Sheheela, my lady?”
The Star offered herself to him.  He  declined.  She said Jaizal had sent her.  He said Jaizal should have had more sense and thought fondly of the luxury flats over in Turnin.
He mailed Cho:
Aside from the more normal emotional and moral dimensions – what is the cosmic significance of sexual intercourse with someone from another time, pray?  Supposing she became pregnant.  At that point, I may say, I begin to titter madly.  Supposing all this were in fact the consequence of my sexual relations with Jaizal’s favourite. Or some similar – trans-temporal alliance.   To be here alone is…..Words fail me.  With Maya – perhaps it was mad optimism or just madness to think we should make it a cosy family home.  Together we were in charge.  I gloss it: ‘it is getting worse’.  The change (of course) is in me.  I alone am dwarfed, overwhelmed by history.  I have to overcome it. 
So let us can the crap.  There is no ‘rooted evil’.  There is this asylum I have made my home where time is a flexible concept.  The field of flowers has been planted. What does this mean?  What I think it means is probably impossible but nonetheless theoretically what I think it means is the ‘five-headed ogre’ comes through time.  The most obvious objection to this is why then has he not confronted me, doubtless dripping with gore.  You have observed that Jaizal has been absent from my guest-list.  His ladies, however, plural, have not.  I have met Sheheela.  She was petrified, but not of Jaizal. 
She said: they are hurting him, you must help!   She was very young, younger than I am.  Cho – ‘they’ hurt him and the rest is history?!!?  It is a little difficult to sustain a conversation when time keeps hiccuping.  I should not go so far as to say he was a much-misunderstood guy, but there is something here that we do not understand and have misunderstood. 
Jaizal must have the throne!  Because the throne would heal/rescue/save him???  I have therefore done something right, bringing her here. But if she could – take him to the source of the rot to ‘slay the ogre’.  Zani knew.  I feel that in my gut on no evidence whatever! 
Let us posit – the rot began with Kaminua, who tried to fight it, and ended with Jaizal, who also tried to fight it and was – overtaken.  Three things obviously rocket to the front of my mind.  One is the connection between the chair and the worm-hole(s). In which case she is ‘making it worse’.  One is that the Cult predates Narulis, never mind Kaminua.  Might we then say  - do we not say - that the Cult realizes, immanentizes – that from elsewhere we call death?   The third – there’s nothing about it in the records, but that might of course be because they didn’t know what it was, only what they thought it was.
Meanwhile there is gross national product and the cost of shoe-leather.  I have not come – I did not come here to – what has happened to ME?  Someone once told me I should remain Sarat.  I admit to the occasional urge to vandalism, flatten the place and build a glass palace, but I do not of course, other considerations aside, think that would make a scrap of difference.  Nor is it in some sense possible to move out.  Did I not say I wanted to sort Kadun? I have got myself where I have to be. What’s that they say about being careful what you wish for in case you get it? 
Oh dear, thought Cho.  He padded off to the archives and was gone a long time.
“The continuum changes,” said Hass, “but we do not change with it.  Is that not remiss?” “Very slow,” agreed Venga.  “Darling, stop that!  I try to think!”
“You will forgive me if I do not rise,” said Jaizal wrily.
“I think you are safe there,” acknowledged Sarat. 
Jaizal smiled and the sun rose, the sky became azure, the birds began to sing.
“You are Zani’s heir.”
“I hope not.  That would be too confusing.”
“Crossed wires.  Is that not what you say today?”  “I have wondered,” said Sarat. “What happened?” “Shit happened,” said Jaizal.
“If of course you have no objection,” said Venga, “we’ve decided to move in.”  There was something about Sarat’s laugh that made him raise his eyebrows.  “Was it something I said?” “There is someone I should like you to meet,” said Sarat.
He is gay, now sets up a menage a trois!  That one, gentlemen, we had seen coming.
His Imperial Majesty’s houseboys.  Alzani-Meta stands in the sun laughing.
A second video duly appeared.  The Anile throne shimmered in ethereal light.  Death approached it clearly wounded, repelled by the light, but nonetheless sat and crumbled to dust.  Sarat appeared with a small vacuum cleaner and sucked up the crumbs, grumbling to himself about having to clean up the mess other people leave behind them.  He sat and remarked, with a good deal of satisfaction, “This is my chair.”  But suddenly he was surrounded by a pack of Deaths, all leering and generally trying to be terrifying.  He settled back in the chair, yawned, and turned the vacuum cleaner on them.  Their black robes blew up over their skulls and they groped blindly and tried to pull them down over their bony knees.  Sarat laughed and adjusted the controls, sucked them all into oblivion.
Mel arrived in Azt like an arrow shot from a bow.
“My lord Jaizal, we must talk!”
The World This Week got itself in a mess over whether Sarat was top of its list of the world’s most eligible men.  Frankly are the looks, the title, the wealth and the disposition worth trading your life for.  People thought that could have been more tactfully put.  Nonetheless, they were clear that it was unlikely Sarat would spend the rest of his life single – if he had a rest of his life.
We had not quite realized how Maya’s mere existence had informed the whole enterprise.  Ah me, those gender dynamics.  Although a number of things, of which decorum was only one, prevented every woman under thirty from visibly lusting, the sexual tension was there. 
Ah well, if he did decide to give it all up, he could always become a rock-idol.
Consequently any woman identified as having been alone with Sarat became a target.
Including Karula.  Including me.
It was all a bit obvious.  He couldn’t have been consulting our lethal cutting intelligences, could he.
Droit de seigneur and all that.  A healthy young man has his needs.
Karula and I plotted.  Had we been single, we should have grinned and said, I should be so lucky!  Had we been single, we should have hammed it up.  Playthings of an idle hour (we should be so lucky).  A little old, suggested Karula.  Should I show them my stretch-marks?   We were not single.
My Cioulis was promoted.  Reward for services rendered.  I thought I was going to go up in smoke. 
“These people are such crap!” said Dill.
Mitch looked about to burst with fatherly pride.
But Jaizi said: “Consider it a diversion.”  That was true.  It was much better than people dwelling on exactly what had been Sarat’s mental state when Maya died.  It had all been very quick of course, faster than it takes to tell it, but not so fast that the word ‘shock’ hadn’t been bandied around. 
 
“We are going to send this up,” said Karula.  “They seem a little confused as to who is paired with whom.”  She explained our cunning ploy to the men.  None of them said anything.  “Do you think we’re making them nervous?” asked she in a stage-whisper.
“This lot?” I said.
Mitch gave a fairly undescribable smile somewhat like a hungry panther who has just been presented with a trio of fat calves someone has kindly caught, skinned, gutted, dressed and cooked for him.
Before we had the opportunity to put our poetry into motion, they targeted Dill.  She had been brought to Azt to be presented to Sarat, gift-wrapped with a little bow and pink ribbons. Dill, bless her little green fronds, said she preferred boys her own age – yes, of course he’s everyone’s pin-up but he’s a bit old, isn’t he.  That of course sent the slime-merchants off on how many boys has the little tart Known Carnally.  We are good at grading slime and on the whole thought max 5/10 for that one.
Dill: “Is this what’s called a propaganda war, Dad?”
Mitch: “No, I should not say that.  This is what’s called wiping excrement off the sole of one’s boot.”
“You could not call this young lady beautiful.  A strong, attractive face.  Her mother’s features.” Thanks a bunch, thought Karula. 
“Her father’s colouring.  Her father’s hair – we think.  A young woman who will surely turn heads.” “Is there a joke there?”
Cantilip flew in for a board meeting of something green and leafy, not NoZone, Trees R Us, I think it was.  Hass greeted her as his delicate and fragile long-awaited bride.  “Shall I swoon in your arms?” muttered Cantilip.  “That might be over-doing it,” conceded Hass.  He unwillingly released her hand.  “Beloved, we must part!” cried Cantilip.  Hass turned to the gulping assembled company. “There are people confused about who is paired with whom.  We thought we should send them up.”
“Soap-boxes are taboo,” said Dill.
“Nasty, dangerous things,” said Mitch.  “No child of mine would be so foolish as to be associated with them.”
“That does not mean I cannot have an idea.” “I accept that,” said Mitch.  “May I – dare I – ask?” “Not yet,” said Dill.
Mitch caressed Venga’s cheek.  Venga reached for his hand and clasped it.  “Darling,” said Mitch, “it has been too long!”  “A day without you!” said Venga.  “An eternity of longing!” proclaimed Mitch.    There was a great deal of gulping over that one.
At least His Imperial Majesty keeps himself aloof from these – amateur theatricals.  Just looking for the appropriate angle, guys.
Cioulis stomped up to Sarat. “I am not your partner!” “That is exact,” agreed Sarat.
 “How can you not be his partner?” demanded Karula. “I’m not his partner.” “I thought it was me,” I said.  “I’m definitely not your partner.” “This is confusing,” said Cioulis.
Inevitably we evoked: And these lunatics are running Kadun?  That wasn’t far below the surface anyway and Kadun was not suffering thereby.
Dill spent less time going around with Mitch and more time on the Grid.  Researching.  Karula groaned.
“I am sure you are investigating the formation of shale mindful that you will return to school.” “What’s shale?” asked Dill and meant it.
“Back to school instantly!”
Dill returned to her terminal and later treated them to a short tutorial on shale.
….
Does she have boyfriends? This is the question on everyone’s lips. Does she even party? The answer was a definite no. Dill did not appear to be having fun. Dill was apparently deeply studious.
When she visited the hill, she vanished into the Library, where Mel cornered her.
She gestured at a pile of books.
“I know you guys have been through all this before. It’s a question of alternative histories, what does and does not mesh with the – perspective of Var-segan.” “You mean we believed everything we read,” translated Mel.
“Maybe so, maybe not. Maybe how we in Var-segan have seen things is a load of hooey.”
“The journal,” said Mel. “He’s talked to them?”
“Oh yes,” said Dill. “It is but a fragment of Narulis’ life!” “How true,” said Mel.
“But a revealing one. Possibly.”
“Why hasn’t he come down on Cantilip?” Dill struggled to keep her face straight. “I could have put that better.”
“Puh-lease!” said Dill. “Is he not a gentleman!” Mel grinned.
“Harassing the pregnant and nursing-mothers – there was a time before Cantilip achieved the ultimate defence!”
“I don’t think he’d got there. It would seem to be because of something you said. You and she are two sides of a piece of paper. I think our understanding is that our business is with Narulis’ side of that sheet of paper. “
“The Matter of Kadun is – is the interface between the two sides?”
“The Matter of Kadun appears to be that earthpower could not heal the earth. Perhaps that should be earthpower alone. Regardless of what is in the journal, Kadun needed Narulis’ input.” “Tell me, are you ever going to live together?” “Oh sure,” said Dill.
“When you have resolved the Matter of Kadun?”
“When we have found the end of a ball of string.”
Mel picked up a book put it down again next to the pile and pretended not to notice the book now on top.
“You don’t, in the slightest, the tiniest bit, mind?” “We’re together all the time now,” said Dill.
“Ah,” said Mel.
“Did you know Van-senok stole the chair?”
Mel’s mouth opened slightly then closed, then twitched, then gave way to laughter.
“Yes.”
Mel lay on the bed.
“Urgent request. Piece of paper needs its other side. I actually said that.” Cantilip continued cooing over the cot..
“Little did you know…”
“Together all the time. How can we be this dense?”
“When one considers – “
“The whole of their lives together or should that be apart?”
“Naturally we watched like hawks.” She assumed television commentator voice. “It has become immediately apparent that Maya ban-essa is no mere appendage! She operates in her own right.” “The chair.”
“It is a little late to throw ourselves on the emperor’s mercy.” “I think it’s time to talk,” said Mel.
Mel arrived in Var-sega’ and showed he knew how to pronounce it properly.
“Is this a private party or can anyone join in?” He started to move the armchair round. “Love the hair.”
Sarat lying back in the chair opposite, arm slung over the back, looked at him with something between a rueful smile and a mad grin.
“Fronds are next week. How’s the daughter and heir?” Mel looked smug.
“A small round heap of black curls.”
“Not two of you!” said Sarat. “Can the world cope!”
“Can you?”
Sarat snorted. “How do I feel? This is crazy. What am I doing? There was a point at which I wanted to thank you for not joining the queue, then I thought I shouldn’t break the spell. Mel’s a sensible guy. He’ll talk when he’s ready.”
“And?”
“It doesn’t work,” mimicked Sarat. “It didn’t. It does now. That was my stuff.”
“May stuff.”
Sarat ignored that one.
“I told Venga I was looking for the end of a ball of string. Tear your hair out. You have enough to spare.”
“It would have been so unbearable, the derision? Perhaps that is largely leached?”
“7/10,” said Sarat. “It wasn’t really that at all.”
“You still love Maya.”
“Of course.”
“It is hard to love two women equally?”
“Not when one is dead.”
“Is she dead to you?”
“That’s an interesting question,” said Sarat.
Mel waited a moment.
“Not one you wish to answer?”
“Who said, you are holding my hand so why am I crying?”
“You are not – in some sense continuing to share your life with Maya.” “I am not,” said Sarat.
Mel grinned.
“I was ready to duck. I still am. Why not?”
“Dill is there.”
“Instead?”
“Is that a question?”
“Have I got it the wrong way round?”
“I think you will have to elaborate on that one.”
“Watch me choose my words with care – “ “One must always be exact,” murmured Sarat.
“Bah! That part of you which is in any case there rather than here. Was it there with Maya?” “Nonsense,” said Sarat.
“Then what are you talking about!”
“Cho’s fantasies, by the sound of it. Shav told me.”
“We did our best to be reasonable.”
“They were terribly worried about me. I, however, was not worried about me, merely – thoughtful.” “What did you think!”
“That I didn’t really want to talk about it, to anyone, because I didn’t, full stop. Also because they insisted on knowing what it’s about and they didn’t have a clue and I didn’t feel particularly goodtempered or lucid concerning a conversation I didn’t want to have in the first place.”
“What is it about?”
“It is not even mostly about Maya. Of course I am and have been bereaved and bereft. It is not the case – I too choose my words with care – that I am or have been abnormally bereaved and bereft. Both the exact nature of our relationship and the circumstances of her death make more acute a normal ailment. They do not change its nature. Unfortunately this takes places against the backdrop of the Matter of Kadun. As well to say it’s about Sorg. Or Kaminua. Jaizal. You!” “Where we no longer live wholly in linear time,” said Mel.
“But we never did. Did and didn’t. They brought us up, the beasts, to understand that we did not exist solely in linear time. But of course that had nothing to do with getting on with life!”
“What does being dead mean?”
“We have all noted that time hiccups only backwards and that perhaps is the Matter of Kadun, a burp where the future is closed. Which may also mean the whole thing is some monstrous game, though which monsters.” Mel laughed.
“It plays in real-time, whatever that is. Precognition - ?” “Dead wrong,” said Sarat. “Which was strange.” I think I’m beginning to get this, thought Mel.
“Or was it?”
“You – implied I was sitting here communing with Maya or at least - implied volition, I prefer sitting here thinking about Maya to being with Dill. Perhaps – definitely perhaps – a physical me and a physical Maya are together, somewhere, some alternative future, some parallel universe. I am here and now and the physical me and the physical Dill occupy my thoughts.” He grinned. “In all our aspects.”
“Some worm-hole! Kaminua and Asyrion.”
Sarat made theatrical gestures of astonishment.
“He has a brain! I don’t want that. My time and place and – duty, it is not the right word. Role – purpose – “ “But guilt?”
“If I loved her as much as I said I did and I love her as much as I say I do – I don’t think, you know, even the Denzines could set that up once someone was dead. I did not find it necessary to enquire.”
“Why are we all so obsessed with Asyrion! That was not – future tense?”
“Our limited social circle! Suppose what everyone ‘saw’ when they attempted to gaze penetratingly into the future of Sarat and Maya was Kaminua and Asyrion?”
“That’s crazy.”
“Tell me about it. Bring it down a few levels and you come to my parallel universe. Suppose the bloody Matter of Kadun is that somehow the whole place (or at least a certain field of flowers) is also in a parallel universe. I am not of course saying I believe that! Suppose also what I, me, myself, I want to do is live and love with Dill here and now and do worthy things contributory to improving the quality of life in Kadun.”
“Suppose,” said Mel slowly, “everything is a metaphor, except that.”
“Oh verily!” said Sarat. “Now, all that said, I am not totally sure I believe in the Casin-ruhn trip. My gut reaction was special effects. That said, a lot of finely tuned minds saw the same movie. All that said – “ He grinned. “ – I am not convinced that if you mooched off to Qartly and asked him to fix immortality for you and Cantilip he would be able to oblige. Knowledge can be lost. I’ll say that before you do. I shall also say that screwing perception is very much an earthpower gig. You know Van-senok stole the chair.”
“I know,” said Mel.
“Here lies whole the emperor’s peace!” intoned Sarat mockingly.
“They didn’t mean to cause the dissolution of the empire.”
“That’s as maybe.”
“There is an Anile throne,” sighed Mel, “regardless of whether there’s anyone sitting on it.” “The Anile throne,” intoned Sarat, “does not rust or tarnish. What it does do. Five kingdoms under the imperial crown. Only when they were finally threatened by the fiction of All-Kadun , together of course with the rise of the Cult, did it seem a jolly good idea to have the empire back, Mitch’s politics excepted, and a few hundred other things, such as the necessity of joining with the modern world.”
”Why, why, why, why, why, Mummy, why, Daddy,” said Mel. “Zani did not want the throne. How did he know? They did not want the empire. It had turned rotten. It was not the answer. What was the question?”
“Irtubi are governing Kadun, and everyone lives happily ever are. It also occurs to me – I must have been 17 at most – very bright in many ways, but apparently oblivious to the fact that a post to a Grid forum may be seen by anyone in the world – I really set the cat among the pigeons when I wrote, oy, that’s MY chair. All this crap fits together. Alternatively, all this crap doesn’t fit together. When I know what the question is I can judge if I want to answer it, if I can answer it, how much of my time I want to spend on answering it. An informed decision. Have I not insisted on informed decisions?” Mel chortled.
“Dill was reading up on hallucinogens.”
“Clearly drinks can be spiked,” said Sarat. “It’s an interesting question, whether one can ingest or inhale something that wholly alters perception without any other physical or mental effects. There are things we know. What happened to Mitch and Dill and others. It’s a continuum.”
“It is in your view a possibility that if you crack this you’ve cracked the Cult?”
“It is in my view a possibility I can send them packing with their tails between their legs never to return.”
“Without wrecking Harn.”
“They have never, you know, been decisively defeated. At the metaphysical level. I think I can wreck their brains.” “I’d like that,” said Mel.
“I think I walked into a trap,” said Sarat. “Certainly an unusual one, say herded, rather. Shepherded into a sheep-pen! Bit like a ram being herded into a pen of ewes to – ah, do something. Do his thing.
Since I was oblivious it hardly made any difference and the shepherds wanted nothing but the best for me and for Kadun, but nonetheless. I sort of realized. I said to Cho, it had to be a tree-hugger! I said to Cantilip and Venga, what did you expect of me. I dismissed them with a light laugh because clearly there was no malevolence, and because I was very, very, very busy. How it seems to me is that many people have puzzles. The game is that everyone thinks his – his or her – puzzle the puzzle. I think it probable all this crap fits together. On the other hand, the universe is truly not my responsibility. I reject that out of hand!”
“The ball of string.”
“The ball of string is how to be Anile emperor.” “Got it all wrong,” sighed Mel.
Sarat grinned.
“Does He Want To Give It All Up? I did think round that one. Not Shav. Why, I thought evilly, should I not dump it on Cho? Could he refuse! What I actually want is to enjoy it and get the universe off my back. The universe to know its place in my life. The MofK is my job. It has its place in my life. It should not swamp my life. If – if there is a place in which Maya and I are living out our lives together, I do not want to be there.” “Same old ball of string,” said Mel. “Staying Sarat.”
Sarat looked approving.
“You have talked,” went on Mel, “without pain or anguish. About that, then, I was right. I said – to Cho – I do not think you are hurting, at any rate more than – the pain of a – normal ailment diminishes with time. Why then have you driven your dear grey-haired old grandpappa up the wall!”
“I’d have thought that was obvious. What happened between Maya and me in those last moments is not his damned business.”
“I remembered,” said Mel. “Saski! It never was, was it. Anyone else’s damned business.” “I know Dill told you.” “It explains so much.”
“It explains,” said Sarat, “a jagged wound in my head much as if it had been cleaved open by an axe. About which no-one could do anything except me.”
“What did happen – “ It wasn’t a question. “You were both dead, weren’t you.” “Whatever the hell that means,” said Sarat.
“Which is not a million miles dissimilar from sitting on the Anile throne.”
“Let us say,” said Sarat, “that there is possibly some state, wherein one is if not dead in this dimension, then beyond return to life. That is identical to sitting on the Anile throne. One must be exact. One may be what we call alive in that state. Another may be what we call dead in that state. Not many people know that.”
“The shock of – congruity. Dying to self, dead to the world, that is old news.”
“They never got around to telling us what it means.”
“Probably,” said Mel, “because they don’t know.”
“If we may now move on,” said Sarat, then relaxed suddenly, “to one of my madder schemes. I want to take Dill to Casin-ruhn.”
“Meet the family? See what she makes of it!”
“Days out can be real special when you’re Anile empress.”
“ I am sure Ciletij would facilitate! But that’s the opposite.”
“Or heals the wound?”
“Or explains without the need for words. If we may return,” teased Mel, “to my initial question.” “Answer it,” suggested Sarat.
“You still need thinking time.”
“Somewhere you are Master of Kadun.”
“I don’t go on about it,” admitted Mel. “Fortunately my friends and family. Sheheela!”
“Ah yes, Sheheela. Did anyone tell you she was Var-segan’s heir?”
“That’s impossible! They would have claimed the throne – “ “It’s more complicated than that.” Mel sighed.
“Not in the female line! That makes no sense.”
“Her elder sister was the heir, m and f. Her sister had children, indeed, she had a partner. Children and partner died of the pox, leaving sister, who never remarried. Sister duly died. Sheheela was in her late seventies. They really didn’t want the Anile heir as Mistress of Var-segan.”
“There is a sort of voice,” said Mel, “people adopt when they want to totally mask what they are thinking about what they’re saying. So who?”
“Younger sister,” said Sarat in exactly the same tone. “This is a tale of three sisters.” “I’m sure you just love it,” said Mel. “Cho must know.” “He does,” said Sarat blandly.
“What else does Cho know?”
“I used to tell him everything. Now I tell him nothing.”
“Whom these days do you trust?”
“What does it mean?” asked Sarat. “To whom have I confided? Dill and Shav.” Mel closed his eyes.
“Cho’s an idiot!”
“To whom am I confiding? You. To whom shall I confide – what is this, a grammar lesson? Probably no-one else.”
“Not Hass?”
“I trust Hass to fight his way through a blazing inferno to rescue me. I trust Hass to cut his own throat rather than reveal a confidence. I trust Hass to risk his being to get me were I lost in time! All that goes equally for Cho and Venga. What then?” Mel smiled.
“Objectivity.”
“Ex-actly. Kyse! I’m not about to pour my heart out to him but I’d trust him absolutely to keep me on the straight and narrow. The same with Fal. Did you know my revered grandmother sent Fal to me for me to cry on her shoulder?”
“Oh for - !”
“There was a lot of other stuff. Fal and I have three things in common. One of course is Maya, the second is the rather large jump from a kid in the boatyards of Zur to Falita San-yaeaga-baht, heroic widow of the heroic young officer feeling the weight of the history of Carlin on her back. Tell me about it! The third is little adventures in time. She met Kaminua in The Field.” Mel’s eyes widened. “Before that she had an experience of her and Maya as kids in Zur. It rather made me want to cry but I am expert in not crying.”
“Oh Sarat.”
“I trust that no beady-eyed little Denzine lurked in the shadows to wreck her perception.” “Any more than Sorg was staged.”
“Ex-actly.”
“You can’t blame them for trying.”
“But I did,” said Sarat, with considerable satisfaction. “I was livid. Fal has enough stress without being set up by my bloody grandmother! She didn’t know I didn’t want to talk.”
“I’m not up to speed here. Does She Want To Give It All Up? Obviously she decided she didn’t. We all sat on the chair.”
“In the presence of each other. Except when Maya first sat.”
“Dill told me what you want to do. Sarat – what do you expect to happen?” Sarat grinned.
“Oh, the earth to crack and writhe and five-headed monsters to sprout from it. A chorus of dancing bears at minimum. Did you know the first allusion to the Matter of Kadun predates Narulis by four hundred years?”
“A pre-literate society?” “These scribes, get everywhere.” Mel cocked his head.
“You actually are caching up on your reading.”
“I love it when you’re sensible.”
“As soon as they knew how to, they wrote it down.”
“Kadun is not land-locked!”
“irtubi in Fidub? Or of course Harn. What is possible? irtubi shared earthpower with Harn. Might some bright little spark not have spilled the beans in Harn, where it was picked up by the Cult?” “You are coming to Zur! Your second cousin demands it!”
Sarat made wide eyes “Where shall I stay!”
“That,” said Mel callously, “is your problem. One other thing. Kai. This is so much her territory.”
“You’re blushing,” said Mel enthusiastically.
“Oh shut up!” said Cantilip.
“Oy, that’s my chair! I loved that bit.” “Yes, we all saw it,” said Cantilip.
“Yikes?” suggested Mel.
“Try tetraphonic 6D yikes.”
“And who is this fine youth! Blooming ‘ec, lad’s a tree-hugger!” “If we’d designed a blue-print,” sighed Cantilip.
“A tree-hugger with a mind of his own,” said Mel.
“I detect a note of reproof?”
“Not exactly. Why did it matter so much?”
“Now you’re being dense. Earthpower had to heal and has healed Kadun.”
“But that’s the exact opposite!”
“I know,” said Cantilip. “It’s still true. Both are true.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Hadn’t you noticed? Kadun is a bloody impossible place!” Mel howled with laughter.
“I almost believe in the parallel universes.”
“The chief problem with that is the sense it makes. Two opposing sets of physical laws.” Mel was still yowling with laughter. “Exactly what,” growled Cantilip, “is so funny?”
“Oh everything. Mostly – lemme try to be exact – I have this image of Sarat standing in his bedroom at home asking us very quietly and very distinctly – and you know he almost never swears – what the fuck does the Anile emperor look like? Then of course there’s the whole staying Sarat clause. No, Sarat, no, they don’t want you to look like a dashing young officer (not that you can help….) Just put on your oldest clothes and get out there to hug the trees and Kadun will fall at your feet.”
“You know that is not exact,” said Cantilip reprovingly. She broke into a smile. “Except of course it is. Haven’t I just said? Bloody impossible!”
“My lady leaf, the impossibility of storming the Great Gates.” “The impotence of earthpower,” said Cantilip.
Click! Whatever else Sarat is doing, he is certainly bonding with Zani Marula! Want one, Sarat? Oh yes, said Sarat. You’re staying with Dill, right, Sarat. One of the things I love about you guys – come to think of it, the only thing I love about you guys – is how you make a statement of commonplace fact sound like a scientific discovery that revolutionizes our perception of the universe. Of course I’m staying with Dill! Uh, yeah, Sarat. !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Life, wrote Seani, as all our former plotters know to their cost, their heavy cost, is a thing of impermanence. Might we all not move on here? Sarat and Dill are clearly in some sense sharing their lives in the knowledge those lives may be cruelly foreshortened. Who could possibly grudge them that? Who would wish to sully their time together?
It didn’t quite work. That doesn’t explain why he doesn’t declare her Anile empress! Will Dill’s child be Anile heir!
Doesn’t it? said Seani.
“Zani-hyphen-Marula,” said Cantilip. “Everyone calls her that. We didn’t bargain on that one!” “School,” suggested Sarat, “will shorten it.” “What to!”
“A not-too-flying visit,” said Mitch.
Mel considered.
“A not-too-obvious statement of faith in the government and people of Kadun.” Mitch smiled.
“My mind is running in strange directions,” said Mel. Cantilip gave a theatrical yawn. “Had Dill been first and Maya second…”
“Vastly more vulnerable,” said Cantilip.
“It really was an awful lot to ask,” said Mel after a while.
“So why is it significant now?”
“Keep your fingers crossed. It may be called normality.”
Karula said sleepily, “We talked, Mitch, and then we talked more.”
“I follow you closely.”
“Our last decision, if you recall, was that pregnancy and an election campaign did not mix. Since then our feet have not touched the ground.”
“They did before? Broody?”
“Damn broody!”
“Sleepless nights, no time, what’s new.”
Dill is a free autonomous individual. Dill has ideas of her own. Dill took herself off to Azt.
“Mel says you two were always the esoteric ones.”
“That is our fate!”
“So you love it here, but Sarat’s not so sure. If he loves it here.”
“Short talks with Narulis. Perhaps they pall.”
“With its history.”
“Maya is a part of its history,” acknowledged Hass.
“I have noticed,” said Dill, “or think I have. Naturally he comes often to Azt.” “But doesn’t hang around?” suggested Venga softly.
“That’s Sarat’s business,” said Dill firmly.
Hass touched her hand. “Not yours?”
“I think I do not have a problem talking to a – a hologram of Maya. It would not wrench my heart.” “Hologram.”
“I combine my father’s rationalism with a profound esotericsm. That makes me – “ “Adorable!” said Venga.
“Anile empress,” said Hass.
“All these things,” agreed Dill. “Sarat does not want me to sit on the chair without him.” “Ah,” said Hass.
“Do women obey their partners in the modern age?” asked Venga gazing intently at the ceiling. “Surely the root question is my safety. I’d be a real fool if I did it with no-one knowing.” “Hard to argue with that,” said Hass.
“I think Sarat might try!” said Venga.
“How I feel,” said Dill. “As you know, I have had an experience I should wish to have avoided. I should not be able to say categorically my mind is clear of that experience. It seems to me that the chair might not be a wholly comfortable trip. Some women want their partners with them when they give birth. I don't think I particularly want him around when I’m covered in goo. Does that make any kind of sense?”
“Unfortunately,” said Venga, “yes.” “No.” said Hass.
“Imperial Majesty,” suggested Venga. “I do not frankly see how we can stop you..” “That was not my meaning,” said Hass.
“The grapevine is good or you guessed?”
“I understand Sarat.”
“Not physically present,” amended Dill.
Venga looked sharply from one to the other.
“Let’s say I test a hypothesis,” said Dill.
“He’ll go ape!”
“We shall see.”
“What,” asked Hass, “does your father’s rationalism make of the Anile throne?” “That too is what I want to find out,” said Dill.
Formless bodies. How can bodies be formless? Bodies of shadowy shifting form. Disembodied fingers. Pawing, mauling, No. She screamed: Sarat! There was a shaft of light and a silver stallion appeared. They want me to leave the throne. Try harder. Then she was the silver stallion, repeat stallion. Hey! But the stallion dissolved into starburst. I am Dill, said a star. Who are you? The stars danced around her. I am Sheehela, I am Jaizal, I Santian, I Asyrion, I Galia, I, I, I…Which of you is Narulis? asked Dill. One star shone brighter than the rest. I am Maya, who am Dill, who am Sheheela, who am Asyrion. Formless bodies, said Dill. Why are you not also Heela, also Baria, also Sorg, also Qine, also Mom? Did we not say! laughed Asyrion. That may be the problem, said Dill.
Then she was under an alien sky and Jaizal was running to meet her. Oh no, said Dill. I am not
Sheheela. I am Dill. (Just don’t say, your pardon, I mistook you!) My lady Var-sega’! laughed Jaizal. You join the dance! Is that supposed to scare me? said Dill. One day we all die. You mistake me, said Jaizal. He took her in his arms. All times are now! This is your time, said Dill. He laughed again. Is it not also yours? My time is now, said Dill. Then where is Sarat? Here, sweetheart, said Sarat, no longer Jaizal. What is all this crap? Dill asked him. It’s a piece of metal! From another world, said Sarat. Meteorite! said Dill Radiation! said Sarat. My lord, said Asyrion, there is that Fidub cannot heal. Anyhow, objected Dill, why didn’t it spread south? Magnetism? suggested Sarat, sounding sleepy. Attracted to the north? Am I not? He buried his face in Dill’s hair. Who said it didn’t? said Zani, dead Zani, that is. Then she tottered on the floor of The Room, but no, she was watching the tot take a brick from our grandson, said Dill. The future! A future. Oh no! said Sarat. I am Master of Kadun, said Mel. Dabida, said Sarat, doesn’t know that. We can explain everything! said Cantilip. No you can’t, said Dill, you just damn’ think you can! Mitch laughed. If the meteorite, Mitch was saying, was radio-active they’d hardly have forged the damn’ chair – Half-life? said Sarat. Exactly how many aeons ago?
Sarat had one of those spooky dreams that are so real you can’t believe they haven’t happened.
Since he was in Var-segan, he knew it hadn’t happened.
“OK, sis,” said Sarat. He was talking to his throne. “There are some things we need to clear up here. Ground zero.” He sat.
She sang.
“Is that a positive note? I am Anile Emperor. My time is now.” He realized the music wasn’t coming just from the chair. “Interesting. What do you expect me to do?” Sheheela stood in front of him laughing.
“Marry her, my lord, marry her!”
That was not an expected answer, thought Sarat, to a possibly rhetorical question. “Of course,” he said.
Sheheela faded.
For a time nothing happened.
“I am Anile Emperor,” he repeated. “Master of Kadun. Doom of Death. That has meaning?” “You know it,” said Maya.
“Love,” said Sarat. He wrapped her in his arms. “Sweetheart,” she said. “Be happy.” She turned into Dill.
“I love you,” said Sarat. “Sit!” .
“And stay!”
There was mocking laughter. “Is Time your pet dog, my lord!” “Perhaps,” said Sarat.
Dill vanished.
Then all times were now. It was confusing. One scene faded into another. Sarat turned to the chair. It was occupied, by Narulis, by Kaminua, by Santian, by Sheheela, by Maya, by him, by Jaizal, by people even he couldn’t identify, by someone he knew to be his grandson, and still the slide-show, panorama went on and he began slowly to understand though he could not have said exactly what he understood.
“Move over,” he said to the current occupant, who was Asyrion. “My time is also now?” She laughed and kissed his cheek.
History abruptly disappeared and the outlines of the room with it.
“That would be awkward,” said Sarat. The sun sparkled on the window and he knew that wherever he was it was not his time. He woke up in a rush of realization. Dill! Seemingly immeasurably distant, she answered. I love you!
They didn’t have windows in pre-history.
Dill got off the chair as Hass’s mobile burst into life. Wordlessly he handed it to her.
“I’m fine,” said Dill.
She takes my breath away, thought Venga.
She actually momentarily took Sarat’s breath away.
“You sat.”
“Sure.”
Oh, er, well, it’s happened, thought Sarat.
“And you’re OK,”
“I’m cool with it. I just insisted on being Dill.”
“I’ll come.”
There is absolutely no point in being Anile emperor if one cannot instantly summon air transport. Hass looked at her.
“Do it again any time?”
“It’s what you guys said about shaping the trip. My time is now.”
`”And what, pray, dear chair, do I tell myself about now!”
“Interesting, wasn’t it,” said Dill. “What’s it like to watch?”
“Like a movie a long long way away.”
“Until he went beyond reach,” said Dill. “That is what I did not want to do!” Venga heard Maya: That is what I do not do.
Hass laughed to himself. The right man for the job! Or the right woman.
Venga thought: What did I realize because I’m a woman?. The arbitrary association of attributes to ‘male’ and ‘female’. Only a woman can heal Kadun, a woman with Narulis’ values, or of course a man who is earthpower.
Sarat rang Kyse. Then he rang Dill again. Then his pilot veered south-south-east for Zur.
Kyse listened.
“Let the dog see the rabbit.”
Sarat opened a Gridpage. Kyse burst out laughing.
“Has the imperium no experts!”
“One tends to think,” said Sarat, “we have seen – it is the integrity of the human sciences that suffered, medicine, psychology, biology. One tends to think the physical sciences can have no bearing on the bases of corrupt government and so went their merry way. I do not doubt the geologists and geographers of the Collegium – “
“And of course those from Fidub or Dabida would have their own preconceptions!” “I do not want to share,” said Sarat.
“Top secret, for your eyes only. I take it Mel is in on it.”
“He will be. All it needs is a brain.”
“My brain,” said Kyse, “points out to me that the integrity of the maps themselves.” “Exactly,” said Sarat.
“So let me be clear about this, you want me and Fal, who are neither professional geographers nor possessors of intimate knowledge of the surface – what’s the word – topography, that’s it – nor possessors of intimate knowledge of the topography of Kadun, to direct our searing gazes to telling which bits are forged, which bits are made up to conceal the reality of what I suppose I must call the earthscape.”
“To tell me where to look,” said Sarat without batting an eyelid.
“But you know where to look! Even I have heard of the field of flowers!”
“That’s good,” said Sarat, “you know where to look too. Look, let me show you.” He opened another page. The continent loomed before them. He touched a finger to the screen then held it up for inspection. “fraction of that dot in the middle is our field of flowers. If you zoom in normally, go too far, you lose the resolution – ” He zoomed in to blur. “ – which is why I found a program that doesn’t. Much, much, much magnified, a pinprick on the earth’s surface, who’s going to notice? If there’s one thing geology has, it’s scale, aeons of time, whole continents.” He clicked and zoomed
again. “Who is going to notice?” he asked again. “What is remarkable about it?” Kyse sighed.
“It doesn’t have any geology! It doesn’t have any geographical features! It’s as though someone’s taken an eraser to it.”
“And we know the stream is there,” said Sarat.
“OK, I’m hooked. It’ll probably take the rest of my life. What you actually want is us to cover the whole of Kadun at this scale to look for areas of blankness.”
“Then we join the dots,” said Sarat, “if there are any. You can start with Van-senok, Casin-ruhn, which is in Ciletij, and the site of the Jumesit. Myth tells us there’s a five-headed monster under Azt. Did you know that? Truth may be stranger than fiction.” “You want us to obtain the evidence,” said Kyse.
“Of compromise? Oh yes.”
“I doubt it will come to court!”
“No comment at this stage,” said Sarat.
“Truly no learned monographs, the geology of western Carlin?”
“How dare you suggest the Great Divide is anything other than a perfectly normal valley, millions like it?”
“It’s an estuary,” said Kyse.
“How true, how true,” said Sarat with seeming delight. “Two things, therefore. The sea comes in. The river goes out. Such as it is.” More rapid clicking. “Behold the Velun-sa at its source! It forces itself out of the ground, the whole thing is the most enormous effort. As rivers go, it’s a loser. It’d probably be still-born, if it didn’t have help from a distributary of the Fanil. Wonderful how one can model things.” Sarat’s kind of click, click, click. “Based on flow-rate, rainfall, gradient the Davin itself – the tributary – wouldn’t make it to the sea. It’s had a long journey. It’s tired. Help is at hand. A valley, into which it gratefully comes to rest, has been made for it, and so we think it flows to the sea, as any decent river should.”
“In another world,” said Kyse, “I attended a meeting of NoZone.”
“Nature,” said Sarat. ”Nothing quite like it.”
“So?”
“I have some – not theories. Notions that might be theories when they grow up. The mouth of the GD is a tectonic estuary, meaning movements of the earth created the rift that created a single valley. Now, all that is possibly nonsense on the grounds that we cannot possibly know the status of the Velun or the Davin millions of years ago; they might have been mighty torrents. I don’t think so.
If they’d had any get up and go they’d have meandered.” “The Fanil, of course,” said Kyse, “flows through Van-senok” “Isn’t that interesting?” said Sarat.
“What about the Horze?” The Horze is the river on which Azt stands.
“The Horze rises in the wilds of the northern forests. It’s a grown-up river. It has distributaries. One of them flows into the Fanil.” “I take it a distributary?”
“Tributaries feed. Distributaries branch out on their own. Start reading up on meteorites.” “What!”
“Standard form is that the GD is a rift valley, about which no big deal. I think it’s a crater. I think that whatever it was that came from wherever it came from somehow causes disturbance in the ether. I think this was millions of years ago. I note the effect of the field is startling but hardly negative or evil. I think when people appeared and – became aware of the situation they buried whatever under what is now Azt. I have absolutely no idea why! I mean, whether they thought they were removing it from circulation or whether they thought of it as some kind of guardian. I think whatever leaches into the water. I have been told whatever may be harnessed by the Cult for evil. I have been – somewhat melodramatically – been presented with a – parallel, a teaching-story. I think at some point it was discovered by the Cult and used for evil, hence the five-headed monster. I think all this is broadly science, though not necessarily our science. It has been - mused that the Matter of Kadun is the intrusion into our dull humdrum lives of a different set of physical laws. I think it - possible that whatever follows the same rules but the effect is – distorted by its being in terms of both time and space a long, long way from home.” “Astroshit!” said Kyse.
“I knew you’d love it,” said Sarat.
“You think the areas of blankness are going to map out against waterways?”
“Give you a definite maybe – there may be reasons to do with the nature of the rock and soil why the effect is stronger in some places than others.”
I think the Anile throne contains whatever, explaining or at any rate excusing her more interesting qualities. Intelligent metal? Intelligent life that looks like metal to us? What does she want to do? She wants to go home. She dissolves into space-time. The rest is us. Maybe. Truly I am not responsible for the welfare of the universe! Whatever cosmic cataclysm wrenched whatever from its home, I can never know. But I just might be able to resolve this Matter of Kadun.
Flying across the GD, he leered at it through the window. Memory stirred. I believe in possibilities. Are metaphysics immutable? Then ‘will’ survives, I said. It’s lousy metaphysics! All these dead people keep talking to us, he complained to himself. What then is my problem with Hass? My problem is he appears to take the Jumesit at face value. He doesn’t talk about it. He wouldn’t, would he, not if he has periodic chats with Maya. Sarat grinned to himself. Anyway, they’re in it over their heads now! It’s good to talk. Take at face value. Enter the dream. Oh, what did happen at Casinruhn?
Scene: Her Imperial Majesty sits sipping tea, not a hair out of place, while two elegant young men gaze at her in rapt adoration. If they weren’t gay, I might be jealous! He’s not bloody gay!
Somewhere there is a person in a female body. I got there first! Suppose everything is a metaphor.
Did something just fall into place?
“Move over!” he said to Asyrion, as time lurched. Or something. Oh pooch! he nearly said. Pooch, pooch, pooch! He pulled Dill close. “Grrrr! The warmth of our bodies,” he said.
Dill snuggled closer.
“Darling, is this quite the place!”
“On the chair. She responds – why does she – why can she not – stories about the Jumesit abound! But that’s because of the five-headed monster! Bring her here – she was ‘responsible’ for Casinruhn. But it’s all still there, so someone replaced her – “ His mind was working very fast now. He wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
“Is it something they put in the water?” wondered Venga.
“How are we?” asked Hass.
“Cold,” said Sarat. “It’s cold in Casin-ruhn.”
“Zur,” said Dill, “can be uncomfortably warm in summer.” “Suppose what screws it is magnetism,” said Sarat.
“Is this a private conversation?”
“How much have you told them?”asked Sarat.
“Would I dream of doing anything without you!”
He told them everything as he had always known that he would. Finally, he took a deep breath, held Dill so tightly that she muttered, “Oof, you’re squashing me!” and asked steadily, “Have you seen Maya recently?”
“No,” said Hass.
Another theory bites the dust.
“I didn’t – when I was here after. I wondered if I was – preventing myself.”
“Our social circle,” said Venga, “remains limited.”
“Perhaps,” said Sarat, “people who knew something.”
“Perhaps,” said Venga, “people who were something.”
“Who found out something, who – changed themselves. Wouldn’t they say so!” “Something in the water?” suggested Venga. “Perhaps they didn’t know.” “You talk as though these guys are real,” said Dill.
“It’s difficult, isn’t it,” said Sarat.
But Venga said, “You talk to Jaizal. You decide if he’s real.” “I suppose we’d better live here,” sighed Sarat.
Hass smiled.
“There Has Been No Announcement.” “That was yesterday,” said Sarat.
Later Hass caught him alone. “What will you say?” Sarat grinned.
“Sort of the truth.”
Sarat Comes Clean! We’re An Item Says Sarat. Sarat Names The Day.
The last time I stood here, I said things I now confirm. With all my heart, with all my mind, with all my being, I love Dill. Also I love Maya. Maya is dead. If we continue, we are in some place immeasurably distant. If we do not, there is an ending. We cannot, we should not live our lives in a place, a time of our imagining, in a world bounded by death. Our place is here and now, our meaning to be alive and to live to the fullest extent of our being. We should live our lives in reality. Some will say, that is the opposite of what I said. I say…..He laughed. Tough. I do not have today to be solemn. I do not feel the need to be formal. I do not have to explain my innermost feelings to the world.
I am here because I love Dill. Dill is my grace and my truth. Dill is my resolution and my culmination. To Dill I say, nothing can destroy our love. This I know.
Dill entered the House of Silence and walked down the aisle towards him in the little black dress. He wrapped his arms around her then kissed her cheek and left her to it.
Some people, they know who they are, will try to pour scorn on Sarat’s feelings. They will say, either he truly loved Maya or he truly loves me. I say, they are idiots, who understand nothing of the human heart.
Zulagan bit his lip so hard it nearly bled and stole a glance at Mitch. Mitch was sitting forward, his head in hands, thinking why do I feel the eyes of the world are upon me! My lady, thought Challin, why not call them morons and be done. Cho looked at Kile, poker-faced, save for her dancing eyes.
Of course he loves Maya. Of course he loves me, as much and as deeply as he loved Maya when she lived. If you cannot see the difference, then truly you are a lost cause. And I love Sarat, with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my being. I am here because I love Sarat. Sarat is my grace and my truth. Sarat is my resolution and my culmination. To Sarat I say, nothing can destroy our love. This I know.
He did not, observed Seani, get where he is today without a certain amount of raw nerve. Nor by the sound of it did she!
Dill hadn’t finished, not by a long chalk.
Love has no bounds. This I know. Love does not distinguish between life and death. It is we who do that, we who must do that. I do not live my life as though my sister were still with me, though she never leaves me. My father, my grandmother, do not live as though Heela were still present. Would it not be nonsense to say I am not Mistress of Var-segan because my grandfather is dead. Life is a process of change. Have we not said it? They cannot destroy our laughter, our joy, our delight in life, in each other. This we know.
They are bound in understanding, thought Cho, and that also is the message – and if you don’t get it, you’re a moron. I shall enjoy my grand-daughter-in-law.
You have to look at the father, sir.
Oh no, said small, tubby and balding, mother-panther in defence of her cubs. You have to look at the mother!
Of course the pain brought them together…Sweet, thought Challin. Perhaps even true.
And you never lose owt by being honest with folks. Appreciated. Some as thought it’d be like it never ‘appened. Not them as knows you, mind, but what could you say. Flat truth of it is, them as ‘as lost loved ones understand in their gut, their ‘earts. If them as ‘asn’t don’t – tough!
Of course the view from Var-segan is bound to be biased.
For some this day of rejoicing is overshadowed by personal tragedy….26-year-old Savla is today burying her beautiful young daughter, whose life was cut short by one of the now mercifully few cases of meningitis…Savla’s mother was kind enough to spare us a few words…It really helps to know those at the top have been through it….Challin only squirmed a little bit.
Sarat mailed me.
The rivers are poisoned, poisoned, I tell you! I need your help.
Some sort of code? asked Cioulis.
You sound just like my mother! Is that both of us? No, not Estanzia! Sorry, yes, def, Come to think of it, your mother!
!!!
I thought it was a joke.
“It is generally accepted,” said Dill, “that the walls of time fade and reform, that our guests are real.
That they are going about their business in their own time and not indeed visiting.” “Yes.”
“I understand, although I have yet to experience them, there are other manifestations of this in support of this theory, scenes that could not be taking place in the here and now.”
“Yes. The Bronzes. The Bronzes are a frieze which does – emphasis on does – not exist. There anyway!”
“We may and do – constantly – ask precisely why this temporal phenomenon should be so. We may indeed ask if it is so. I do not think we question that it could be so. Is the phenomenon of Kaminua and Asyrion of a different order? It is the proposition that one may choose to continue one’s terrestrial existence in – what shall we say? A time bubble, a space out of time where time does not exist. Again we may say this could so but clearly a more complex and so more questionable process would be involved, though we may adduce the fact that each of us is – “ She broke into a grin. “ – a part of the bloody Whole extant outside time. Nonetheless our physical, our corporeal beings are rooted in time and to – clothe our essence in a physicality rendered proof against time is to say, is it not, that the physical form must be generated, created by the essence. Or at any rate controlled, and this too is not outside the boundaries of what is known to us, or how could we heal? What else after all is shape-shifting? We may indeed posit that we choose mortality.” Sarat realized why she was in lecture mode. “That Kaminua and Asyrion reached a place where they were capable of making that choice is indeed not wholly outside the bounds of possibility. However, we have been told stories – fed a lot of hooey, as you prefer, that – deliberately? – counter that possibility. She died of that which Fidub could not heal and he grew old and grief-stricken.” “I love you,” said Sarat.
She smiled benignly.
“But it is not only to say that, not only to say that the physical form must be generated by the essence. It is to make profoundly – “ Again she grinned. “ – profoundly rather than mildly dubious statements about the nature of life and death and time. And will. What precisely is it to say? It is to say that the essence after they died was capable of choosing to generate a permanent non-changing physicality and health. Or is it? Is it perhaps to say that at some moment, say at the middle age they appear to chosen for eternity, they decided to exchange normal life for that eternity. I know little of the Denzines. I may be about to learn a whole lot more. Principally I refer you to the load of hooey. If Kaminua had knowledge that they would one day be together for ever, why was he grief-stricken. I would ask also how Asyrion at middle age could have made that choice when history – for what history is worth – records that she died young, whether or not of ‘that Fidub could not heal’. A further possibility is of course that they were not Kaminua and Asyrion but Denzine shape-shifters.” “Baz tried,” said Sarat. “Baz and Hass. The conclusion was that if they were not real then the falsity was impenetrable.”
“They’d have to be real good,” said Dill. “Lastly, and lastly is perhaps most interesting of all, because it applies to the Jumesit, the reality of the phenomena of which is least in doubt, it seems to me the walls of time do not fade when our ancestors were doing anything interesting. No window is opened onto Narulis’ councils of state. We do not see Susheela fleeing with her son. I accept of course that had they resolved the matter of Kadun we should not be having this conversation but one would have thought they had either perception or experience to impart. I do not know what to make of that.”
“It may be,” said Sarat. “No. Yes! Possibly. Can we possibly be shaping that trip? This is my experience and others may counter it. We’ve become so used to the – phenomenon we don’t instantly report Susheela brushing her hair! I have noted that Narulis does not drop in when I’m working. Oh of course! It’s only when we switch off our conscious minds that we can see – “ “Oh of course! It’s there all the time. All times are now.” “That is a little dizzying,”: said Sarat.
“A little. The other thing is that it would seem that of all the emperors only Narulis and Jaizal actually lived in the place.” “I can’t think why. Fortuitous.”
“Fortuitous also that you and Narulis should be taking a break at the same time. Nor do we apparently perceive the day to day work of the palace, the staff, the cooks, the soldiers, the servants.”
“Tell you in a minute,” said Sarat. “If we go back to the original – proposition – that their existence is their own time is tenable, then - they are trying to break through to our time. Is that conceivable? To the time when something happens which might not have happened yet which happens to be our time? We know party-tricks take a considerable amount of energy and that particular trick – maybe they never get down to the nitty-gritty because they can’t make the final leap.”
“I like it. I am not sure I believe a word of it, but I like it! And depart because it hasn’t happened yet?”
“They were literate!” said Sarat with some irritation. “If I were just capable of passing through time to convey something to my successors, should I not write it down beforehand and hand it over?” Dill pealed with laughter.
“Suppose two – phenomena are indeed the case. A frieze is not I trust making a frenzied effort to communicate with the future. People are.”
“The Bronzes are a bit more than a mere frieze. The Bronzes are a frieze which is alive. It’s a battle scene, warriors in chariots, chargers, and sometimes they laugh at us. If you wanted to communicate with another time, wouldn’t you make your push where the walls of time were known to be thin? There’s something else. In purely human terms. They may not know exactly what they’re doing any more than we do.”
“Or of course,” said Dill, “they might not want to be here at all but end up here because the walls of time etc.”
Sarat burst out laughing.
“At which point they exchange a few commonplaces to be polite and retire to their own time thinking, oh shit, failed again!”
Dill had wrinkled her brow.
“These Bronzes then parallel Kaminua and Asyrion? They are a moment frozen in time – presumably the battle never ends – and they do not accord with our physics? Have you assayed them?”
Sarat was still grinning.
“Risk a spear in the ribs…The Star tried to seduce me. I don’t think I told you that.”
“In novels concerning time-travel,” said Dill after a moment, “a big thing is generally made of not changing the past.”
“My point exactly!” said Sarat enthusiastically. He made wide eyes. “Suppose you got pregnant!”
“We must talk about that. She – accepted your argument?”
“She accept my polite decline!”
“I must confess I have never wholly been at one with that point about not changing the past. It always strikes me as somewhat deterministic – except of course in this case when it is crucial to my well-being! That is because if the past is co-existent, the past is also now and indeed do we not repeat that like some kind of mantra.
“As fixed points go,” said Sarat, “it’s a dodo.”
“That – I think – is my point. If we say they wish to communicate with a particular future, then equally that future – any particular future – our now – must be co-existent with their past. We can therefore drive ourselves mad thinking that possible futures also are co-existent: they arrive here but it is the wrong future! What is it you would like them to tell you?:”
“The chair. Where. When. How. You realize we have no proof she was ever here!”
“About that,” said Dill, “I have theories. The first emperor and the last (but one)! You know of course there are stories, Jaizal must have the throne!” Sarat nodded. “You know that when you arrived here there was a replica and not a modern one. And of course you know that Van-senok is implicated in a fashion we have yet to determine.” But it is long over, thought Sarat. What - ?
“When each of us sat – hang on. I’m thinking about five things at once. The uppermost is probably Mel knows. I don’t mean – he’s an anthropologist. He must have studied earthpower academically. Venga’s trip included Behna laughing and saying, but it is long over! The subject of which was apparently I in wolverine mode on the chair. Damn! There’s something there.” He closed his eyes. “Space-rock. Is rock. Cantilip. Kai. What’s in a word? Earthpower in Harn has nothing to do with earthpower in Kadun. The – creed of earthpower in VS derives from that damn’ meteorite.”
“That you do not know formed the lake!”
“That’s the one. And Cantilip knows that. Or guesses. They came from Sug. There hasn’t been time. People haven’t been around for long enough. Nor do or did I believe Fidub could not heal. Have you seen me glowing lately? OK, let’s count the ifs. If and only if there was indeed a meteorite and if the throne was made of rock from it, then its fall pre-dated Narulis. If it was something we might identify as radioactive, bearing in mind its physics might be different, then, nonetheless, that – those – emissions – oh. What you just said. Something Cho wondered. Narulis was given a kitten and found it grew into a sabre-tooth the size of a house so he regretfully gave it away to a good home.” “But look at her now, placid as a new-born kitten! Fidub was her home. Or if you prefer somewhere a few million light-years away.”
“Lending incredibly tenuous support to the meteorite at the bottom of the lake! Why C-R is a perfectly rational question to which no-one appears to have an answer. If you really wanted to hide her, you could go much deeper into the trees, not build her a little house. I’m trying to remember what I said in that casual way one says things apparently of purely academic interest! That we’d assumed peace reigned and Fidub made Narulis a present. Maybe chaos reigned and they made him a weapon.”
“The Singing Isles,” said Dill. “I am thinking something that blows my head off.” They looked at each other.
“The culture of Fidub is earthpower?”
“Now,” said Sarat brightly, “if we just explain how a chair made of incarnate earthpower constitutes a weapon against the Cult we’ve cracked it.”
“But she must do,” said Dill. “She is independent of time.”
“How,” repeated Sarat. Dill was shaking with laughter. “What’s so funny?” “I am thinking of Mitch and the Fidubi scam.”
“The Great Divide,” said Hass, “is for many reasons such an obvious name.” “One never thinks it may be symbolic of a greater truth!” “Did they have plumbing then?” asked Dill..
“Fidub had plumbing.”
“Ah, yes, Fidub,” said Sarat dreamily. “Theory – Notion – Notion 127 suggests the cataclysm threw
Fidub up from the ocean-bed.”
“Meaning the centre of the crater may be somewhere in the middle of the ocean.” “Which.”
“Which makes it a little hard,” said Dill, “for irtubi to have been scurrying around collecting pieces of space rock.”
“Shards,” said Hass and Sarat at virtually the same time.
“Bits broke off?” said Dill.
“Why shouldn’t they?” asked Sarat.
“If you’d come light-years through space-time, wouldn’t you be feeling fragile?”
“Earthpower. Rock-power! The power of this earth?” “The problem with that being Harn.” Dill giggled.
“This empire rocks! Suppose there is confusion, conflation, isn’t that a good word, of the two?” “Suppose it was more like a shower,” said Sarat.
“I like it,” said Dill after a minute. “Not that I’m sure it fits or anything!”
“Done for dumping,” muttered Sarat.
Sarat’s desire to test a hypothesis by putting the chair in the field of flowers was restrained by not wanting anyone to see him do it.
“There will be a prize,” suggested Dill, “for the most convoluted but plausible story anyone can come up with to seal off the field.”
“Why not sort of tell the truth?” suggested Venga. “A radioactive meteorite! A very, very old one,” he added hastily. “Mass panic! One cannot be too careful.” “He has led a sheltered life,” said Hass.
“Space rocks,” said Dill, “are like big bucks, man.”
“You mean there’s money in this?” asked Sarat. “I don’t see a connection.”
“When did you last monitor the meteorite market!”
“I really don’t see a connection! This is about concealment.”
“Unless it’s about possession,” said Hass. “If the Cult can use this whatever – and if it knows there are bits of it around – “
“It’s had 600 years to dig up Azt!”
“You remember the throne guards a deeper mystery.”
“How could we forget.”
“Suppose the five-headed monster is on our side! I mean, suppose it guards whatever. You know,” he added brightly, “like the werewolves.” “What happens to the bad guys?” asked Hass.
“Frightened to death,” said Sarat. He paused. “What I think is we’re going to go on with this until we prove ourselves wrong. If we prove ourselves wrong, we’ll have a lot more information to go on. Does that make sense?”
“We might,” said Dill, “even have some facts!”
“Optimism is a wonderful thing.”
“Why,” asked Sarat, “are the supposed tombs of Kaminua and Asyrion in an underground cavern in Ciletij?”
“Been there, done that,” said Venga. “I didn’t mean – I meant, it wasn’t Ciletij when they – “ “Didn’t die,” finished Hass.
“What,” asked Sarat, “does Cantilip know about the crowns?” Venga sighed.
“Meaning what do I know? Very little. What Van-senok knows…”
“Kai,” recalled Sarat, “is – satisfied whatever Cantilip and Mel are doing is to do with Zani.” “Somewhat surprising, therefore,” said Hass.
“Indeed.”
“There is of course no absolute binding reason why Zani should not have – could not have – “ “If you were Cantilip – or indeed if you were Mel – might you not describe having discovered Zani roamed around Van-senok as a piece of different puzzle?” “In your own time,” said Dill.
Sarat turned to her.
“I am truly sorry. “ He made it sound as though he was confessing to murder. Then he laughed.
“You didn’t grow up in Zur. Give us a minute on egg-shells.”
“Come, hadin, come, come not alone, come hadin, come?” asked Dill
“There are of course two versions,” sighed Hass. “School-books and the other.” “So is there a third?” asked Dill.
“Fourth, fifth, tenth? Zani became King of Dabida in the year the empire fell apart.”
Hass laughed suddenly
“But the shattering of the empire was not a single instant in time like dropping a cup from an upstairs window. In other words what chiefly reigned was chaos.” “But always Fidub,” objected Venga.
“Ah, the great chroniclers,” said Sarat.
“Suppose,” said Venga, “we start from the proposition that the only cats who know what went down are those who were there. We might then wonder what they told the folks back in Maona-pri. If ‘there’ was Van-senok, of course.
“We know – we think we know – we might know – Zani didn’t want the Anile throne. Literally.
Which suggests he sat on it. Where was it?:
“Or perhaps he didn’t want the crown?” suggested Venga half-jokingly.
“When someone reaches the top of the heap – unless he’s Anile Emperor, of course. In Dabida, in Fidub, to become Prime Minister – or King – one is informed of certain things. There are therefore persons who know these things already.” “When these things are,” said Sarat.
“Exactly,” said Hass. “When these things are contingency plans in the event of invasion or natural disaster. When they are other kinds of information, it may be that the passage of time has mangled them in transmission, even if the original version were correct.”
“Volunteer requested,” murmured Sarat grinning. “I wondered how many days’ hard riding from the
Great Gates to Van-senok and that at least we can determine.”
“My understanding,” said Dill, “is that as history measures these things, two weeks out of Zani’s life would not have appeared significant.”
“Before?” asked Hass. “This was before? We know – think we know – Jaizal was defeated and Zani withdrew to the south. Peculiar, certainly, and also very public. Zani therefore – agreed to defeating Jaizal and already knew he had no interest in the Anile throne. Jaizal’s grip on the empire was – I was going to say tenuous but I think in Var-sega’ in Van-senok non-existent. There was no empire, only a shell, an entity in people’s minds.”
“An agreement,” said Dill slowly, “an agreement with Var-sega’ with Van-senok that no attempt would be made to maintain the illusion.”
“The first plotter,” said Hass. “No wonder we’re so good at it.” “Then of course there’s Carlin,” said Venga.
“Most certainly there is Carlin,” said Sarat, “Carlin which so admirably failed to notice being crossed by an army of invasion.”
“Where have I heard that before?” murmured Venga.
“Oh no, no, no, no,” said Sarat. “The deal was that he’d save them the trouble. Of having to fight for their independence.”
“Certainly,” said Hass, “as far as the Houses were concerned, the empire had outlived its purpose.”
“I shall dwell on that,” said Sarat. “When I’m having a bad day, it will lift my spirits.”
“Where have I heard that before?” murmured Venga. “Save them the trouble of having to actually do something.”
“The national mythology,” said Venga. “A simple lad, our Zani, bright, certainly, brave, certainly, but not a – complex character.”
“Ah,” said Dill. “I wondered where the egg-shells were.”
“I might also observe,” continued Sarat, “that he was probably exceptionally well briefed. To put it another way, PANTHER knew what was really going down in Kadun.”
Dill said: “It really nagged at Mom and Dad. Why PANTHER allowed the empire to collapse. If
PANTHER were all they are cracked up to be and PANTHER are all they are cracked up to be.” “Were they?” asked Sarat suddenly, emphasizing the ‘were’. “Suppose there was something new, something PANTHER couldn’t handle and learned how to handle but by then history had taken over?”
“No Anile heir, no you,” said Dill.
“I hope!”
“That would be a turn-up.”
“He was a kid,” said Venga. “Probably thought he wouldn’t have a hope. I mean a real kid, about seven!”
“I think,” said Dill, “we may be – satisfied that the Houses were not hanging on for him to reach maturity.”
“We know that,” said Sarat, “as much as we know anything. Fidub brought the goodies to defeat the Cult. If Fidub could not – could and could not – defeat the Cult, then it was business as usual. Only when All-Kadun became a political entity was there any point.” “The same point,” said Hass.
:”Oh yes,” said Sarat. “Mitch and I are loose cannons.”
“I take that point,” said Dill, “but it is surely more complex than that. There was the pressing need for modernization, for dragging Kadun into line with the rest of the continent.”
“Vastly easier if someone else does all the work.”
“Someone or ones cleaned out Azt. Someone or ones killed Jaizal. Someone or ones for most of 600 years kept the Cult down. I think for the moment we shall leave it open who. An open mind!” “Let us start with what we know!” said Venga enthusiastically. “Who we know,” corrected Sarat. “Kai.” It took them a moment to catch on.
“Mel could not have known,” said Hass.
“Known what?”
“Let us take this slowly. Before he met Cantilip, Mel had a – liaison with Estanzia Morsen’s daughter and would-be Chief Minister of Harn whose – academic enthusiasm is the defeat of the Cult in Harn.”
“Who possibly knows everything there is to know about how Harn became a democracy and possibly has been fed an alternative history like the rest of us.”
“And – possibly – told Mel something neither of them thought remotely significant at the time?” “Eight years later – “
“Oh no, no, no, more like eight months.”
“And who else knows about the history of Harn? Why, Mel’s friend Kyse.”
“Whom we all adore.”
“We all adore Kai. It remains a – curiosity.”
Hass sighed.
“My sons have paired with irtubi! They wish to restore the Anile throne! I know Tar is super-cool. Couldn’t he have pretended to be surprised? I am remembering – when we thought Bal should urgently get to know and love us, we told him Fidub wants them screwed and we’re the screwdrivers. If Mel knew anything before he went to the City, Tar told him. I remember also – the – urgency with which he wished Tar to know about Cantilip.” “And things,” said Sarat. “Certainly things!”
“When we are children,” said Dill, “when we are young people, we go to school.” She smiled. “Occasionally. If we are good students, we learn history. I liked history. Only – “ The smile grew broader. “They have us over a barrel because we are just starting our journey into the other matter when we are just finishing our schooling and unless we investigate a particular aspect most extraordinarily thoroughly we not perceive that the two histories do not always tell the same story. In this case there are three histories.” She looked around. “You are listening intently. That is good.” Venga grinned.
“Dare I ask it!”
“Do I consciously imitate Mitch? Half and half. I enjoy imitating Mitch. We learn that the fall of High Harn was an on-going process. We learn that initially the extremity, the bestiality of the Cult sparked rebellion among its very adepts who nonetheless retained some spark of humanity and curtailed its more obscene practices. And those two histories mesh for assuredly only adepts of some kind could withstand. We learn further, hard though it is to believe, that the City is the core of an ancient civilization on the eastern seaboard, far from High Harn, and that when their more local practices had been reined in, High Harn sought not exactly empire but dominion and spread eastwards and there they were stopped. What does this spell?”
“D-E-N-Z – “
“You are correct.”
“PANTHER learned from the Denzines?” Dill giggled.
“You are probably correct. Mitch refers to my education as being carted about the continent. That should be continents, of course. Until the modern age, the Age of Communication, Var-segan was as remote from Azt as from the City, indeed as humans measure distance the City is closer, and we are sea-faring people. I do not know that a piece of water was endowed with any great significance. If you say it was possible to drown in storms, I do not know that there was any greater risk of that than of having one’s throat cut or worse riding to Azt. You will recall I ended up in Zur but by far the majority of my schooling was in the City or in Var-segan.
“One way traffic not,” suggested Sarat.
“Harni are not unfamiliar with Var-sega’. But do we not see something plain bizarre?” “Such as why you are approaching this in a roundabout fashion?” asked Venga.
“I merely assess the facts.”
“When are we talking about?” asked Sarat.
She looked at him approvingly.
“And what is missing from this history?”
“Earthpower. If this is Cantilip’s jig-saw, I can only empathize”
“The City, the City-state it governed, did not extend the length of the coast. The knowledge there was land on the other side of the water we may assume did.”
“So the Cult arrived in Kadun and again spread east, north and east. If we plot their course, we observe three things. 1) they stayed north of the Great Divide, 2) they stayed west of at least that part of Carlin in which a certain field is to be found, 3) there was a multitude of contact between Carlin and Fidub along that eastern seaboard, as at least one of us undoubtedly knows. Azt in those times was itself some kind of a city-state, ruling a surrounding territory the borders of which were ill-defined. It did not, however, represent any notable attempt at civilization and so we may imagine the Cult found it fertile soil.”
“Has anyone got a map?” asked Venga. “I try to visualize the ancient world. A few centres of trade, of arts and a great deal of almost nothing in between.” “In my bag,” said Dill. “Netbook not aged parchment!” “Quicker to draw it,” said Sarat. “It needs to be blank.” “Nearly blank,” said Hass.
Sarat reached into the drawer of the coffee-table and produced a piece of letterhead.
“How appropriate…:” He turned it over.
“OK. Spheres of influence.”
“Or we could just talk to Fugitry,” said Hass.
Sarat grinned.
“I want answers. Now. Has anyone ever tried that?”
“Anyone,” said Venga, “is not the Anile emperor.”
“Of course,” said Hass, “:if they wanted us to know, they could have told us.”
“Denzine involvement in Van-senok, that’s our theme?”
“The Denzines put her in Van-senok?”
“Let’s take this slowly. The convulsions in Kadun came to the attention of our little friends across the water.”
“Back a step. If earthpower defeated the Cult in the west, then there was no need for Narulis, therefore the Denzines defeated the Cult in the west. Discuss. Or of course there was no need for Narulis.”
“I strive,” said Sarat, “to be kind, to be generous. Kindness and generosity dictate that I believe that no-one knows the full story, only all the stories have not been put together. Oh yeah.”
“I have never seen a good moment to introduce this into the dialogue,” said Dill. ‘The meaning of ‘anile’.
Venga chortled.
“But it sounds so good! It was the name given Narulis by the Cult and it stuck.” “No smoke without fire?” suggested Hass.
“An insinuation the real work was done by the Denzines?”
“I should think more subtle,:” said Sarat. “Not flattering, but more subtle. Narulis did the spadework. The Denzines had the understanding.”
He ferreted in the drawer for a pen and to his surprise emerged clutching a fountain-pen. “So this is where I inscribe decrees?” He uncapped it and tried it out. It worked, so he sketched out a couple of continents.
“OK. Deel, the site of High Harn. Enbahaluk over there somewhere. Simaluk down below….” “Mel talked to Fugitry,” sighed Hass. “Fugitry told him to remember the Mossai Wars.” Dill smirked.
“Mom would be real proud of me. The Mossai Wars were a struggle between two cousins, whose names it will astonish you were Enbah and Sima for governance of a single territory, ending in the division we see today.” She stopped suddenly.
“Oh dear,” said Venga.
“I do not envisage war with Dabida,” said Sarat drily.
“You know they talk in metaphors,” said Hass. “Suppose the ‘single territory’, metaphorically speaking, is Van-senok.” He paused. “Are we avoiding saying we keep coming back to Mel?” “And the ‘governance’ is – that’s absurd! No-one wants to – eradicate earthpower. Even if that were possible.”
“Metaphor, metaphor, metaphor. The indigenous culture of Kadun. Suppose we’ve got a few things wrong. The Anile Court turned rotten. That wasn’t because – “ He burst out laughing. “Could have been something in the drinking-water, could indeed. But if you are earthpower watching the whole thing go down the tubes, you think the flaw is in Fidub But the culture of Fidub is earthpower.” The guys stared.
“Worked that out ages ago,” yawned Dill. “It is my thinking that we in Kadun should launch our own space programme, Earthpower I, Earthpower 2, Earthpower 3, in order to make certain people sweat a little, for assuredly there appear to be three distinct bodies of thought under the same name, and I should say also there is deliberate attempt to confuse the three. . I and 2 both originate in the idea of a creator or creatrice. Mark I holds that the power of the earth is limitless, being that which pushes up mountains and creates rivers and that that is the physical manifestation of the power of a creator distinct from the earth itself, which or whom assuredly no human can constrain. Mark 2 often appears in what is at least in appearance a trivialized, a castrated – a most inappropriate word! – form. In this version it is the earth that is the creatrice – the goddess – and the sentience of the earth gives life to that which we more normally consider as living. As I say, the trivialized form may appear as look at all the pretty flowers. In your Singing Isles – hence I may say Fidub’s insufferably high opinion of herself – “ Venga pretended to smother a grin and Hass murmured something about disassociating oneself. “ – the case is different. The story is, is it not, that Fidub has kept her people sufficiently elevated in consciousness not to produce a human smog that crushes the music from the singing earth – “
Sarat might have been heard to mutter something about nobody believes exactly that.
“I have been to Fidub! I cannot doubt the music. I can, however, as can everyone with half a brain, doubt the explanation. Or else this planet is even more extraordinary, Exhibit A of course being Jaaba Sen.. Concerning the emanations from the soil of Fidub I grant you and I have read widely on this matter that no-one else has a better explanation, not least of the phenomenon, grudgingly attested to throughout known history, that the bad guys do not feel comfortable in or perhaps on is a better word the Isles, their feet hurt. What might seem a simple medical condition vanishes when they catch the ferry. There are for the moment – I may think of more – two things to be said about this phenomenon. One is that this group of islands is surely geologically odd – yes, I am aware that geophysicists have failed to detect any oddity. The other is the take on the nature of the earth, which is here not all-powerful but subject to the life that inhabits it. Here the earth is vulnerable,but the vulnerability is not – NoZone notwithstanding – vulnerability to pollutants but vulnerability to the emanations of the human mind and this is the root of the concept of the Whole.. This is a fundamental difference and interesting! In Mark One and Mark Two the human consciousness aligns itself with the power of the earth If you ask what older adepts of earthpower could do to defend themselves against the Cult – that defence I gather that Cantilip side-steps by appearing in dryad form – you really do not want to know. If you do want to know, they entered their minds and conveyed the experience of being eaten alive, together with being severely mauled, usually by bears. – “
“Do look at all the pretty flowers,” murmured Hass.
“Among, therefore, the truckloads of hooey we are being fed is the concept earthpower could not defend Kadun – among, therefore, the histories we re-assess is precisely what Narulis achieved in Kadun.”
:”One feels quite faint,” said Venga.
“The power harnessed,: contributed Hass, “was – therefore – the power of the earth.”
“Just so and that power does not have a – morality attached. As we know non-human animals are not kind to their prey, they do not have a code of humane slaughter.”
“Into this tripped Fidub,” said Sarat. “So Fidub said the power of the universe is love – and earthpower laughed in her face?”
“We have to ask why this power is called love."