Sarat's Pad, Home of PANTHER (just call me Schroedinger's cat)

I'm not going to tell you the ending, but I am going to tell you that it is going to end in physics and geology, not in the discovery of God, though of course if you could read you'd have probably worked that out. That those who can read have figured I think the concept of 'God' with volition and personality, whether loving Father or alpha baboon, unnecessary to and indeed inimical to transcendence, that love is all you need, which is probably why I walk with a stick nowadays.  The real Labour Party confronted and sought to destroy the demon of ignorance, the supreme exercise in confronting 'social exclusion', to make so far as possible all a part of the society, the world in which they live, impart some knowledge of the ideas and discoveries that have shaped it, some idea of where it was coming from and where it might be going to. Today's Left sanctifies ignorance or more glorifies the teaching of skills as confronting it.  Thus i find myself among the wholly ignorant, to whom any concept, any fact, unfamiliar to them is dismissed as silly, something I've made up.  Gosh, I have made up a lot, haven't I.

Cho arrived uninvited and unexpected in Var-segan and found Sarat in the library surrounded by open books, books with bookmarks peeping out of them, books piled on the floor next to his chair.
“Return to study?  That is what you want?”
“Sort of,” said Sarat.
Cho examined the nearest hefty tome.
“Principles of Geology?”
“Tectonic plates!  The earth moves. The most rationalist geologist will admit to that one.  It’s why the Isles sing, you know.  One day, Fidub will sink without trace into the Straits.  That’s one theory.  It does just occur to me the field effect is intermittent.”
“Why?”
“Because suddenly they needed an emperor!”
Cho laughed.
“There are – there may be – many reasons for that.”
“Indeed there may,” said Sarat.
“All this – “ Cho gestured.  “ – is the Matter of Kadun?”
“Am I not known to be thorough?”

Sarat: Sarat, Dill and the Matter of Kadun

“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 good-tempered 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.
Sarat: Sarat, Dill and the Matter of Kadun (2)

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 Casin-ruhn? 

Sarat: Sarat, Dill and the Matter of Kadun (3)

Somewhere people were screaming and shouting but Sarat stood still as stone.
So cold. Hurts
Together they passed through the pain.
CLICK CLICK CLICK
I we grieve at parting.
NO and yes. You cannot follow.
Varulin was by his side.
“That’s it, lad. You hold on to her….” His voice trailed off. Oh fuck, no! “Get a fucking car here!”
The light was very strong now.
Leave? How can I leave you?
“You just hold her, sir,” said Varulin gently. “That’s it. No-one can hurt her now.”
I will follow.
NO and yes.
Baz zoomed up.
They cannot part us.
We travel now.
Everyone is screaming but Sarat stands still as stone. Baz understood.
NO.
Sarat tried to throw Baz out of his their mind.
Baz forced them apart.
CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK
“Fuck off!” said Baz. “Just fuck bloody off!”
“It’s like bloody rape!” said Varulin.
“Is she - ?”
“Dead,” said Baz. “Got it?”
Sarat came to with Maya’s lifeless body in his arms in sudden silence.
He looked at Baz almost in puzzlement.
“She’s not here any more.”
Sarat: 'this most terrible of days'

Mel had got hold of a graphics program.  He sat back from the monitor.
“There!  I thought I’d externalize it.”
Cantilip looked at the eight of them walking hand in hand into the Light and began to cry.
“I did that,” admitted Mel.  “Then I thought – supposing – “ 
He opened another image.
“Oh Mel!”  She laughed and cried at the same time.
“First I put silver blur round each of us, which I found rather cheering.  No change of state.  Then of course the blur all joined up and the blur is what joins us.  So in the end I had the beginning of a solid block of silver blur and then I thought paint out the people, because the people are the blur.  But in the middle of the people.”
In the middle of a shimmering radiant block of silver were eight tiny rabbits.
“What is it that our little brains are screaming at us that we cannot begin to accept because it’s so sick, so crazy?”
“There is no difference between life and death.  But we know that or we shouldn’t be as we are.”
“Poor little rabbits.  Then I thought something else.  I thought we’re going through the Light.”
“That’s a bit scary,” said Cantilip.  “But it’s still a flashback.”
“How do I know what time does?  Does it ask me?  Except maybe it’s something we’ve done.  We are at the interface.”
She looked around Mel’s old bedroom and began to giggle.
“Cosmic, man!”
“I know, I know!  But mentally we’ve taken ourselves over the top and that’s what we don’t know.”
“Because it’s we who are calling the shots.  Our little brains are squealing that there’s something we need to let hang out here…”
“Life is death.  It only sounds so repulsive because time programmes us to see it linearly.”
“When my grandfather died, I knew he just wasn’t there.  He was somewhere, but not there.  A dead person is sort of conclusive.”
Mel thought of his dead.
“Yes.”  Then, “It’s what Mitch said. But not linear.  Every moment in life is the opportunity to come out of the dark into Light.” But then he frowned.  “I can’t believe the Anile court didn’t know that.”
“Anile Throne Excursions,” said Cantilip.  “Suppose – there’s the Interface, capital I.  What all the trips are about is interfaces.  No barriers.  What is being screamed at us is everything is whole.”
He was summoned to the telephone.
 “Make up your mind!”  he said with some acerbity.
“Your mood has not improved?”
“Somewhere,” said Mel, “I’m a happy bunny.  I just haven’t got there yet.”
Cantilip began to bunny-hop around him.  He smothered a laugh and agreed to return to Azt.  Then he began to bunny-hop too.  They were in love and under a lot of strain.
Mel scowled at the throne.
 “It’s not very big.  Suppose I sit on the back and Cantilip sits on the seat.” 
Tar looked at him.  He sat on the seat.  Cantilip sat on his lap and leant back against him.
Oh-oh-oh!
We are in total darkness then sunlight streams in through a gap ahead.  We seem to be rabbits.  Yes, but we’re magic rabbits.  Hippity-hop out into the open but the glare of the sun apparently is so strong that we see no grass, no lettuce but only light.  We go crazed, begin to bite and scratch at ourselves.  We stop as suddenly as we started, look at each other in shock.  We don’t know what to do.  A fox is coming towards us.  Remember we’re magic rabbits.  We jump forward, over the fox’s head, soar.  It seems we shall never land.  Flying rabbits frightened of falling.   But the air – light – air thickens beneath us and we are human again, Mel and Cantilip standing on air.  The light stretches all around us.  We jump, land in (sigh) a field of flowers, stumble to our feet, laugh, run hand in hand through the flowers.  Asyrion and Kaminua are running to meet us.  They’re trying to tell us something, but we can’t hear.  We meet, fuse.  Now I Mel who am also Kaminua call the hadin home to Azt, but they stop, rear, refuse to go further.  There is something scary about Azt.  I Cantilip who was also Asyrion and am also Kaminua and Mel stand in the centre of the people-space and the Palace crumbles around me, tendrils shoot around the pillars as the earth takes over.  But the earth herself is crumbling beneath our feet and we again are falling into the light.
And Cantilip-talal-za-fenan, who has been also Asyrion, ran from the throne whispering, “No, no, it’s impossible!”
Mel rose shakily.
“I think.  Not.  I don’t think.  Thinking is a very bad thing to do in this situation.”
He and Cantilip held each other as though they’d never let go.
Mel turned finally.
“We’ve all been pushed over the edge.”  Nobody, least of all he, was sure which edge.
“That bloody field with flowers,” said Hass, who never swore.
“Mel,” said Saski.
He hugged her.  Time lurched and he was six, where does it hurt, darling, let Mummy kiss it better. And you can damned well behave yourself too, he said to time.  Time crept obediently back into its corner.
“There would appear,” he said, “in some kind of way, to be a sense in which, although perhaps the choice of words isn’t terribly good, the throne is alive.”
Of course, of course, of course, of course.  Sarat ran to the chair and sat.
“I am Anile emperor, Master of Kadun, Doom of Death.  I command – myself.”
The throne yodelled, as one of those present was later to put it.  No-one was in  a particularly good mood.
That’s all you did the first time, thought Sarat.  Time upsets you, doesn’t it.  Sorry, no.  we did not understand.  It’s being so near the fault, the wound, but it’s all right.  You’ve got me now. I’m your partner.  You can tell me everything. (Keep searching now, searching for the mind, intelligence, liveness.)  What is this, bigamy?  Let me just keep busking it, keep my little mind babbling away and not dragged off to cloud-cuckoo land.  Until something happens.  If something happens.  Something will happen.  You’re desperate for us to understand.  I can see that.  You must think we deserve prizes  for stupidity,  We’re only human.  Still, let me try and stretch my little mind.  After all I am Fidubi.  Singing Isles, right. (Just keep feeling.  It won’t have any shape or form known to me.  It can’t have.  It?  Sorry!  She.)  And what keeps them singing, the union, the partnership.  Singing Isles sounds better than Orgasmic Isles!  How about we take you to Fidub!  Would that be better, calm you down a bit?  So we can do this the long way or the short way, right.  Healing, I mean.  If life in Azt is in partnership, doesn’t that heal the wound?  He yawned suddenly.  You know, I’m pretty tired.  I really need that break.  Maybe I should just take a nap.  Molecules, we’re all just molecules, you and me.  It seemed to him (oh come on, that’s crazy!) that the chair was less hard beneath him.  All is One, isn’t it.  So how about we just shape ourselves to each other.  Cuddles.  Everything in the universe needs love.  The chair was definitely softer.  Oh how can I be this thick.  Look I don’t begin to remember how to do this, the theory, never mind the practice.  Can you help me?
And
A panther snoozed in the middle of a decidedly curvaceous but much enlarged throne.  Its – its?  His thought was lost to the on-lookers.  I think I’ve stopped breathing, thought Mel.  Where is he?
It seemed to him that Sarat answered sleepily: You know.
The interface?
Silence.
No-one moved.
Maya looked helplessly at Tar.
No, he said.
I must.   Must or I shall never in a thousand lifetimes forgive you, must or I shall die, an over-riding, compelling, irresistible, unified must.
He showed her how to do it.
A panther stalked up to the chair, jumped onto the seat and began to lick the ears of her sleeping partner.  He rolled over. 
At least he’s alive.  How is he alive?
Maya-panther curled up beside him.  I – no, that is what I don’t do. 
Sarat-panther began to show unmistakable signs of wanting to make love to or have sex with as panthers put it Maya-panther.
“Perhaps we should leave them to it,” said Mel.
Undoubtedly alive.
He’s responding to our thoughts?  The only way he can?
 Pantherish croons emanated from the throne.
This is really rather embarrassing, thought Karula.  Of course I’m hysterical!
Something has to make him jump down, thought Venga.

He laughed suddenly
And became
A mouse. 
Venga-mouse scurried up to the chair and squeaked vociferously.  Hey, big boy, notice me!
“Not hungry, I guess,” murmured Mitch.  Or not worth the effort. “Wouldn’t a gazelle - ?”
Oh.
“The period of gestation appears somewhat foreshortened,” murmured Mitch.
It seemed that the room was filling with  panther-cubs.  Venga returned rapidly to human form. 
The illusion to end all illusions, he thought.
He strode towards a cub and scooped it up in his arms. 
An unmistakable growl came from the throne.
Venga felt hurt.  Hey, Sarat, it’s me, your best buddy, as if I could harm –
He doesn’t know who we are.   
Idiot me!
“Chase the cubs away!” he ordered.  “Shoo, kitty, come on, out of here!”
They began to understand.
Sarat and Maya bounded down.
And stood stock still.
Returned to human shape.
Fainted.
Strong arms cradled them.  Venga felt for Sarat’s mind, Cantilip for Maya’s.
Sarat…
Who is Sarat?
You are!
It’s…, said Maya.
Slowly she came back.
Sarat’s memories returned, past, present and future.
My time is now!  But his mind continued to protest.  All times are now.
I am – everywhere.  But Sarat.  All places Sarat has been, there am I.
“I think,” said Tar, “this is perhaps not the best place.  Let’s get them out of here.”
Walk?  Fly, prowl, crawl, creep, hop.  Walk!
I am the rivers and the seas.  I flow.
I am the earth and the sky.
“Get him outside,” snapped Venga.  “On the grass.”
“Genius,” murmured Hass, but Baz looked at him thoughtfully.
Venga, my son, exactly what do you know about this particular trip?
Venga smiled: I didn’t go all the way.
I am the planets and the stars.
I am the universe. 
Not.
All universes.
Not.
Sarat felt for the wet grass around him.
Where am I!
What am I?
Sarat?
It’s what I have to do, Dad.
Slowly his head was clearing.  Slowly.
“Sarat, my dear,” asked Saski, “do you know me?”
Sort of.
“You know me,” said Maya firmly.
There…
“Could I ever leave you!”
Sarat touched the grass again.
Not-I.
Affirm separation! commanded Venga.
You not-I.
Sarat blinked.
Me.
He ran his fingers down his forearm, the border of his self.
He blinked again.
No words.
“You have to speak,” said Venga.
I – I – “I – “
“Yes, darling?” said Saski, much as though she were coaxing first words out of a tot.
He reached out and touched her cheek.
“Saski?”
And everyone started breathing again.
“Saski, darling.”
“Where – ?”  Sarat looked slowly around.  “You’re all here!”
“Of course,” said Maya.
“What happened?” 
“You,” said Mel with some asperity, “tell us!”
“Perhaps not at this moment, darling,” murmured Saski.
“Puh-lease,” said Mel, “don’t do that again in a hurry.  My little nerves can’t stand it.”
Sarat began to laugh then tried to stand up.
“Weak as a kitten.”
“Cub,” said Venga firmly, “new-born cub.”
He staggered – they all staggered – to the cars.
Now he is Anile emperor, thought Mel.  What on earth does that mean?  The total Anile throne experience!  I think I’ll give that one a miss, said Zani.  Of course, said Mel.  How relentlessly thick we all are.   How we complexify things.  Is there such a word?  You mean this is simple?   I know what I mean, said Mel.
 Sarat: The Matter of Kadun (inner and eso): life, death, eternity and Gaia (2)

They return to the PANTHER site, sift through the dreary but necessary stuff about lines of accountability. So this Faun guy reports directly to Airoch. And the rest? History of PANTHER Ah-hah. Huh?
PANTHER was founded by Narulis and spread to Fidub, not as is commonly believed the other way around….After the collapse of the empire, PANTHER came from Fidub to assist our comrades in Kadun…
For a history of PANTHER in Kadun, click here.
"There are two PANTHERs?"
Oh dear.
PANTHER were left up a well-known creek without a paddle, betrayed by everyone in sight – the Houses, the Aniles, the people, everyone let us down! We do not forget that. The fact remains we are Narulis’ cub. We stand for Narulis’ values. Narulis founded PANTHER. Narulis was a sprog of the House of Fire. The House of Fire ran Fidub. PANTHER spread to Fidub. Not, note, the other way round. Some 1500 years later, a handful of limping cats, scarred mentally and physically, arrived back in Fidub. The House of Fire did not want to know that Narulis’ little venture had gone pear-shaped. PANTHER understood, Fidubi PANTHER, that is. They paid not the slightest attention to the House of Fire or of course to the cavortings in Azt. PANTHER obey no-one, never have and never will, especially after the Kadun cock-up.
In the midst of all this a guy called Zani had a personal quibble with the Anile throne. PANTHER was re-established in Kadun as watch-cats. As some tell it, we ran off with Zani. But we weren’t going to travel the same road twice: we could have but did not put Zani on the Anile throne. Jaizal was defeated in front of his court, in front of what counted as his world. Jaizal went over the edge and was assassinated, as were his successors, his elder sons. The collapse of the empire began. Jaizal’s empress fled to Fidub with her daughter. In context I suppose I should say his daughter. A direct succession is a direct succession, regardless of gender."
A slow smile spread over Mitch’s face.
"Now that I know about!"
So far as our relationship with the Aniles went, Shehela, Jaizal’s Mrs, and daughter of Var-segan, who (poor girl) had spent her every second in Azt being scared out of her wits, felt she had a duty to us moggies and we had a duty to Kadun. We argued about it. We came back to where we started. We’re Narulis’ and this is what we’re supposed to do. In between we had to rethink the universe. We say the Anile Court turned rotten. They didn't see it like that. Metaphysically they arrived at a sort of amoral detachment. This they called the doctrine of essence. From it, it was easy to go either way so they did. Consider Kaminua’s Court. They discuss UnMaking. Do they not look as though they discuss the weather! Hunger, weariness. urination, menstruation, the messy parts of being human, these they do not care for. The doctrine of essence leads them to wish not to be human. Comes now the Master of Kadun. Enough! My lord Heba. shall I command my servants strip the clothes from your body and the flesh from your bones that you become this essence of which you prattle! Is not all One! he mimics, pain an illusion, life and death but one continuum? The Anile Court believed – arrived at affecting to believe – the Creator separate and detached. Nothing human had any reality. They were mad. Consequently they became indifferent to human suffering. Human suffering no longer evoked human responses. A man viciously beating a screaming child. PANTHER could not and cannot be everywhere. After Casin-ruhn we felt a Creator concerned with its Creation would have intervened. PANTHER arrived at its current metaphysic. ‘Can Light fill Light/The One become more whole?’ The Creator is co-terminous with the created.
"There are things we learn," said Mitch a little drily. "You get dirty. You get sweaty. You roll up your sleeves. One had not previously endowed them with metaphysical significance."
The Anile Heir

“Kaduna-gar-jaht,” he said mildly.  “It would have helped if someone had told me what this matter of Kadun is.”
Before returning to Azt, they went again to see Cho and Sarat said, I shall do this, this, this, and Cho smiled.  Then he said: “You must tell PANTHER in case it goes pear-shaped.”
Sarat sighed and agreed he must tell PANTHER in case it went pear-shaped.
“It’s all nonsense, isn’t it,” he said.  “The throne doesn’t understand genetics.  Any of us, Mel, Hass.  Tar.”
“It’s all nonsense,” admitted Cho.
In Azt he gathered Mel, Cantilip, Hass and Venga.
“By loving each other we get that bastard off the chair,” he said. Slay a five-headed ogre.  Which I guess is death.
He asked them if they minded letting Mitch and Karula into the gang and of course they didn’t mind at all, though no-one was particularly volunteering.
Venga looked at him a long time then said, “There is no other way.”
“That,” said Sarat with a dryness that surprised himself, “would appear to depend on what is the destination. As much garbage as the rest of it,” suggested Sarat.  “Where is the wolverine now?”
“We’re going to have to go back,” said Hass.
“You mean you’ll mind?” asked Sarat.
And so Mitch and Karula were let in on the joys of sex and Mitch cackled and said, “Well, you know, I did wonder.  Sarat and Hass at least.”
“I am a naïve little girl from the ‘burbs,” said Karula.
So then they were eight.  Sarat handed them each a scrap of paper and a pen. 
“It’s a little game they play in the best asylums.  I want you to each write down what you think the matter of Kadun actually is.  My little world,” he added, “just went ack over.  Fill you in after.”
“His writing’s terrible,” said Cantilip, “won’t be able to get more than five words on.”
“Please, sir, may we use the other side?” asked Mel.
But Hass smiled.
“Do we have limitless time?  Because now you come to mention it.”
“Ex-actly,” said Sarat.
Done.
Hass: It doesn’t just play in real time.
Mel: High Harn.
Cantilip: The desecration of the earth and all that lives.
Venga: Illusion taken for reality.
Mitch: Power
Karula: The conviction love is effeminate
“OK,” said Sarat.  “There’s one more thing I want you each to do for me and that’s sit on the Anile throne.”  And while Mitch, Karula, Mel and Hass squawked, he smiled at Cantilip and Venga.   “It’s OK, I guessed.”
At which Mitch nearly dropped his glass.
“There is no harm,” said Venga.
“It’ll love Zani’s heirs.”
Mel looked pleading.
“Could we possibly have a little detail here?”
“The Anile throne,” said Sarat, “is freaky, is very, very freaky, far freakier than previously advised.”
“Freaky,” said Mel.
“Refreshes the parts other attempts at channelling do not reach.  It may blow your mind but it won’t hurt you.”  I hope.
They arrived at the Jumesit Palace.  The bronzes laughed at them.  Sarat laughed back. 
“I may be a little out of my depth here frankly,” said Karula.
“I think we may be getting used to each other,” said Sarat. 
Mel sat.  The throne began to hum but Mel seemed oblivious.  Narulis takes Nautschka in his arms.  Our first-born shall be Anile Emperor, Narulis is saying, our second my lord of Van-senok.  Then Mel is clearly engaged in a dialogue or a duel.  No, that is not the case.  I stain my honour to save your own?  You cannot win.
Hass is pale.
“He – “
“He is Zani,” said Sarat.
Mel stumbled down and walked over to the window.
“OK…” said Mitch.  If he is Zani who in hell am I?
He sat.  The music roared.   For a moment nothing seemed to be happening and he was disappointed.  Then sword in hand he is fighting for his life but the enemy has no face or form.  The shadows clear and Sarat is leading him into the middle of the people-space.  My lord of Var-segan! proclaims Sarat but when Mitch turns to bow in acknowledgement there is only Narulis.  Just as Maya had, he says very gently, we are dead, we died centuries ago.  No, says Narulis.  Heela touches Mitch’s shoulder.  Papa!  They embrace.  I have so much to tell you, oh I so wish you had lived to see it.  Heela smiles.  I have my grand-daughter. Baria is running towards them.  Mitch  picks her up in his arms, honey, honey.  Daddy, oh Daddy, says Baria, then, it’s nice here, Daddy.  Why didn’t you bring me to visit before? 
Mitch rises, tears streaming down his face, enfolds Karula in his arms.
“Venga,” said Sarat.
“Again?”
“Again.”
Light streams from me.  I am enfolded, I who am the universe.  I fade.  For a moment his outline blurred.  My lord Kaminua!  His Imperial Majesty commands.  The universe cannot obey.  I must find form.  A wolverine appeared curled up on the throne.  He is Sarat-ban-essa, Anile emperor, Master of Kadun.  Behna laughed.  But it is long over. 
Now that was interesting, thought Sarat.
Hass a star, impeccable, but then there is the noise of battle and the pounding of hooves.  Come the hadin and of course the horse.  A black star falls from the sky and sears the earth, which moves.  Flowers cover the scar, spread north, south, east, west,  and again there is Asyrion.  She turns, smiles, but the Ciletij are screaming and the fires sweep over the flowers and there is only ash and bone.  Never again! said Kaminua. A young officer walks the field of desecration and is Sorg.  His face turns to a skull, his flesh withers, he crumbles to dust.  Asyrion who is also Fal is screaming.
“Cantilip.”
 I move through the forest.  I am in and of the trees.  Marula appears.  You are not my mother.  The earth is my mother. It was a mistake, Marula said earnestly but she is Nautschka lying in Narulis’ arms.   I laugh.  Then must I not be Mistress of Kadun!  In the beginning were the trees, says Marula.  Now let there be an ending.
“Karula.”
Baria is rushing towards her across – yes, you’ve got it, a field of flowers.but suddenly she stops.  I can’t go any further, Mom, it’s like there’s a tape in the way.  She begins to cry. Never mind, honey, Mom has magic scissors.  Karula brandishes them.  Karula feels in front of her.  I can’t find the tape, honey!  It’s there, Mom, it’s there. Just give me your hand, honey, I’ll help you over.  I can’t reach you, Mom.  Death wearing a silver coronet and sitting on a silver chair is quietly laughing.  Hey now, you bastard, says Karula, these are magic scissors.  Suddenly Narulis is by her side.  He whispers to her.  That’s crazy! says Karula.  She stands back from the invisible barrier, begins her approach, leaps, soars.  Sarat catches her.  She looks at him in horror.  You’re – Sarat smiles.  We’re all here.   But where is here?
“Right,” said Sarat.
“Not Maya?”
“Been there, done that,” said Maya.
Mel turned.
“I think perhaps light, coffee, explanation.”
He sounds exactly like Tar, thought Sarat.
They repaired to the Eyrie and Maya related her story.
“I’m an outer and exo kind of guy,” said Sarat, mocking them, mocking his younger self, mocking the universe, “and after all I’m just a kid.  I ran back to Daddy, or rather Grandaddy.  Very, very fast.”
“To tear a strip,” said Maya.
Venga smiled
“Why was I not told the facts of life!”
And Sarat laughed because it was so very exact.
“Sent to reduce the number of single parents without any knowledge of biology.  We’re going to have to plot, guys.  Start over from scratch.  Only this time we know what we’re fighting.  Sort of.”
“That would seem advantageous,” murmured Mel.
I have never seen Mel so shaken, thought Sarat.  Perhaps I have never seen Mel shaken.
“Sarat, dearest,” said Hass.
Sarat sighed and told them about the fault.
“Single lady,” said Maya, “seeks devoted partners to make music with.”
“I trust this is all metaphor,” said Mitch.
“I’m standing back from that one,” said Sarat. 
Hass grinned.
“No line of dancing bears high-kicked across the floor of the Ciletij Senate.”
“How do we know?” demanded Sarat.  “We are going to act as though it’s metaphor.  How I summarize it is we have been killed by Azt because we didn’t know.  We go about our daily business thinking we have achieved something but we might as well be dead for all we have really achieved.”
“And equally our – unnatural lives,” said Mitch.  “In purely basic physical terms.  We shall all be dead if we do not slow down.”
“Sleep deprivation as a path to altered states of consciousness,” said Karula. “Where did I read that?”
“True enough,” said Mel, “the protective layer most people have wears thin.”
“The field of flowers,” said Hass, “are they the endless dead?”
“I don’t think so,” said Sarat.  “I think they’re the love, the children of the earth and her partner.”
But Karula said: “It is a standard image among the ordinary people.  When they ‘cross over’, those waiting for them on ‘the other side’ run towards them through flowers.”
“I suppose in Van-senok it’s a wood in spring time,” laughed Mitch.
“Actually,” said Cantilip, “it is.”
“Sorry,” said Mitch.
Mel said: “With us it’s a coming out of darkness into Light, capital L.”
“That does not say  much,” said Mitch after a moment, “for living on this earth.”
“All is illusion,” said Venga.  “My lords, my ladies, let us not go the way of the Anile court.”
Sarat looked at him sharply.
“Why they thought that,” said Mel.
“They got too close to death,” said Sarat.  “It seemed to them death is better than life.”
“Different,” said Venga, “just different.”
Maya looked taut.
“Is that what we have to do?  Eyeball death.”
“Do we ever do anything else?” asked Sarat.
Karula gave a little squeal.
“Do you realize what we have just said?”
“So many appalling things – “ began Sarat.
“No, no.  Surely Mel, as an anthropologist, must appreciate…”
It clicked.
“Beliefs concerning the hereafter,” said Mel, “are a pretty surefire guide to the dominant belief-systems in a society.”
“And the dominant belief-system in this society – “
“Is earthpower.”
“In Var-segan, anyway.”
“In Van-senok.”
“In Carlin!  Can you really see the rabbiters not - ?”
Sarat began to laugh.
“Thousands, millions of hours talking to ordinary folks.  My lords, my ladies, we are lax, remiss.  We never thought of asking them what they think happens when they die.”
“However simple, however sophisticated, however down to earth, however numinous, it’s always you, you the – “  Mel stopped suddenly.  “I was going to say, you, the corpse, who shapes the trip.”
“But that is not at all what we are talking about,” protested Mitch.  “We are talking about the beliefs of the living as to what will happen.”
“NDEs.”
“The whole point of NDEs is they are not dying.”
“We have no idea what being dead is like,” said Maya. “Cho was really quite sharp.”
“We know there is a continuum.”
“Shaped by us.”
“I don’t think,” said Hass, “this is particularly getting us anywhere.  Exactly what is happening when we sit?”
“Cho said it was a conduit.  I think we’re finding stuff we already know but don’t know that we know and we’re very bad at understanding what we’re telling ourselves.”
“We’re shaping the trip.”
“Certainly.  And a pretty restricted trip it is too, confined solely to a rather limited social circle.”
“It would seem to me,” said Mitch  “the universe should return to school for it surely has a problem with making itself plain to folks.”
“Why are we all obsessed with Asyrion!”
“I’m not,” said Mitch virtuously.
“You didn’t – “
“We never told him,” said Hass.
“This is not my first – interlude with the chair,” said Sarat. “Somehow there was so much else going on.”
Mitch listened.
At length, he said: “If there is a problem with Asyrion, clearly the solution is to ask her.”
“Common sense is a terrible thing.”
But Karula cried out: “Then how can you say you have no idea about dying!”
“Oh.  No,” said Sarat.
“I suppose,” said Mel.
“Our understanding,” said Hass.
“Do we have one?” asked Sarat.  “How we understood that particular excitement was as a worm-hole in time.  It’s not that they were dead and gee, here they are large as life chatting away to us.  They had – had stopped their time and we were able to go there.”
“Is that better?” growled Mitch.
“Normal!” said Maya.  “Darling, you only have to spend a night in the Palace to understand the walls of time can be very thin indeed.”
“Especially,” said Sarat, ”anywhere near the throne?  I am really not sure I totally suss that particular home furnishing.”
“We are decided?” asked Hass.  “Sorg is Fal’s projection?”
“I don’t know,” said Sarat.  “I simply don’t know.”
“In a sense and heretofore,” murmured Mel,  “if you have continued, you are by definition not dead.”
“That,” said Mitch, “would appear to depend on what you mean by ‘dead’.”
“Which sounds like a student argument about semantics!”
“I think, two things,” said Sarat.  “One is what everyone in the world including us means by dead, corpse, funeral, something we do not want to be.   The other – we don’t know what being dead is like, we can’t know, because that by definition is what dead is, loss of self-awareness.  Some think it happens when the doc pronounces brain-death.  Some think – other things.  But that’s what it is.”
“Kaminua was a tree-hugger, wasn’t he,” said Maya,  “and Asyrion was earthpower.”
“Deep,” said Mel approvingly, “while the rest of us prattle about unknowables, Maya thinks.”  I prattle on, he thought, evading….He looked at Cantilip. “I think perhaps we might clarify.”  He gave a small smile. “Two near-misses.”
Cantilip sighed.
“Nautschka was the second child of the Master of Van-senok.  Her elder sister, the heir, was killed in the – the battle for Kadun.  Nautschka was already pregnant by Narulis.” 
“Then Sarat is Master of Van-senok!”
“It’s more complicated than that.  There are always three lines, d’you see.  The female, the male and the first-born.”  Has anyone got – “  She held up her summation of the matter of Kadun. “ – a decent-sized piece of paper?”
“You’re not the eldest?” asked Sarat.
“Now he’s getting it!”
“Shavli was Anile heir.”
“Except  of course not because you four are dependent on the x million preceding generations,” pointed out Mitch.
My head is swimming, thought Mel.  I never knew what it meant before.
“So each of us, each title, has three holders.  At some level.”
Amidst all this talk of dying, thought Karula, could it not be construed as symbolic that (if anything happens to us and of course it will not) Shavli a woman will succeed Sarat and Hass a gay man Mel.  I think I shall not say that because I have no idea what I am talking about.  But then by the looks of them nor do they.
“Narulis did first-born, gender irrelevant,” said Cantilip.  “Nautschka bore him a son, the Anile heir.  It wasn’t an issue.  Nautschka then had a daughter, who became my future lady of Van-senok.  We continued down the female line.”
So the successors of Narulis’ eldest daughter, if you’re doing things by the female line. 
“Who’s the third?” asked Sarat.
“We honestly don’t know,” said Venga. 
Honestly, thought Mitch, a word injected into speech to indicate one is lying.  He tutted at himself.
“Oh come on,” he said, with some asperity.  “For us in Var-segan it has not been a question that the line that returned to Fidub – “
 “Surely it must be clearly signposted,” insisted Karula.  “The first Anile empress in her own right.  Who had a younger brother.  That must be when the divergence.”
“But we are not talking yesterday,” allowed Mitch.  “Once the divergence took place, there would be no genealogists lovingly documenting it.  Only – “ the words screamed in his brain.  “ – adepts of the male line.”
“Krarlik?” suggested Sarat.
“Probably,” said Venga.
“Exactly what,” said Sarat, and people had the sense he was choosing his words with extreme care (if they didn’t have that at the start they sure had it when he’d finished), “have certain elements in Kadun expected of me?”
“We think you’re doing brilliantly so far,” said Cantilip.
“We, my sweet lady of the trees, we?”  Not Sarat but Mitch.
Karula gave up keeping her face straight.
“Unswerving in your loyalty to the Anile throne, honey?”
“You sat on it,” said Mitch, “knowing you were Mistress of Kadun in the female line.  But he?”
Venga shrugged.  I am the universe.   
“Why has Van-senok never - ?” began Karula, then realized the complete impossibility.
Cantilip smiled.  Cantilip became a slim dryad, tendrils of vine in her hair, clad in leaves and not many of those. 
Thus we storm the Great Gates!
“So?” asked Sarat.
“We understood only we had to make it happen.”
“So you - ?”
Venga smiled.
“Made advances?”
I think I have pressing business elsewhere, thought Mitch.
But Cantilip just laughed.
“The abandoning of Van-senok to be Queen of Dabida was not expected of me.”  She looked calmly at Mitch.  “Or I am a power-crazed hag.  If not Mistress of Kadun then Queen of Dabida, a runner-up prize?”
He looked calmly back.
“I do not believe that, honey.  But I do not understand.”
Mel took her hand and raised it to his lips.
“My lady is my completion and my resolution, my other half and my culmination.”  Then he grinned.  “Metaphorically speaking.”
“Yes,” said Cantilip, “Neither of us had ever met anything like them.  Head-over, darling, absolutely head-over.”
It came to Karula: sometimes they talk as though they’re separate species.  “I do not think,” she said, “at the most fundamental level anyone has ever explained to me the difference between earthpower and – “ She clapped her hand over her mouth and whistled.
“We, humans,” said Mel, “are finite and infinite.  You can’t have a one-sided piece of paper.  The separation is illusion.  Earthpower is the approach from one side.  We are the other.  Each contains the other.”
“Together,” said Mitch drily, “you represent ultimate reality.”
“The interface,” said Mel. “Where one side of the paper joins the other.”
“Of course one knew that theoretically,” said Cantilip briskly.
Karula spluttered.
“Then it – then neither is the end of the trip.”
“It’s the beginning of the trip,” admitted Mel.  “It is advised not to go further.”
“But you do!”
“That’s quite different,” said Mel.
“Physical,” said Hass helpfully.
“Cuddles,” said Venga.
“We have to be human,” said Mel.  “To know we are love.  Anyone who doesn’t at some level acknowledge that is intolerable to himself and all around him. “
“Most of the messes people get into are because they think they can extinguish human,” said Hass.  “Go around intoning, ‘I do not need’.  Fine.  Starve to death.”
“’Nothing matters.’  Watch other people starve to death.  We seem to have somewhat digressed.”
“They do not understand which part of them is saying these things…What were we talking about!”
“What fills our days. Does it matter?  How and to whom does it matter?”
“In other words,” said Mitch, “what the hell are we doing here?”
“Literally,” said Sarat.  “OK, there’s a fault in the earth.  Why is that down to little us to resolve?”  He stopped, not sure what he meant, then continued.  “Because it’s all one continuum.   What Hass said. There is no here without there and no there without here.  No socio-political change without disposing of the Cult and no disposing of the Cult without socio-political change.”

Sarat: The Matter of Kadun (inner and eso): life, death, eternity and Gaia (1)

The universe is really a very cool place.  You should try living in it sometime. 

"This new concept [multiverse theory] is, potentially, as drastic an enlargement of our cosmic perspective as the shift from pre-Copernican ideas to the realization that the Earth is orbiting a typical star on the edge of the Milky Way." 
Sir Martin Rees, 1998,  current Astronomer Royal of Britain

Multiverse (1)

Multiverse (2)

Multiverse (3)

Would God know we exist?

The affliction of purpose, the L-word in non-human animals and the polar bear theory of evolution

WE DO NOT KNOW

Every -ism is an an attempt to make aspects of reality, transient realities, temporary realities into absolutes, metaphors for reality into literal truths.

Every -ism is undermined by and eventually crashes on reality, the reality of the physical universe, the reality of individual humans in all their variety, insistent on being what they are not what they're told to be, the reality of the existence of a multiplicity of other ways of looking at the world.  This is what happened to Christianity. This is what happened to Marxism.

The vehicle is mistaken for the destination. The shape, size, colour or velocity of the vehicle does not matter. What determines the destination is the driver.

If it is imprinted on your consciousness that Jesus is Lord or there is no God but Allah, you must arrive somewhere where Jesus is Lord or there is no god but Allah, unless of couse somewhere along the road something clicks and you have learned to let go of all your preconceptions.

If other things are indelibly imprinted on your consciousness, then you must arrive where these others things are so, because you are shaping the road, unless of course etc, in other words if you stop shaping the road.

The key to totalitarianism is the supposed helplessness of individual human beings. There is nothing inside.  Either they are helpless without the assistance of whatever version of the divine multi-vitamin in the sky happens to be current or they are individually helpless and only collectively capable, whether as the proletariat or as the Volk. On no account must any individual think he or she is significant or empowered.

Rejection of the notion human consciousness shapes the trip lies behind acceptance of 'revelation'.

There is the question of whether everything that occurs to persons is self-generated or whether it may be a connection with other times, other places, other dimensions and the further question of whether such a connection ever is or can be pure or whether it must be refracted through what the human mind thinks (both consciously and unconsciously) must be.

There is the impossibility of the primate brain believing such a connection, should it exist, being a result of human capacity and consequently its convictions that some higher entity is revealing something to it.

There is the incapacity of the primate brain to deal with its own personal 'big bang', consciousness, and to believe itself capable - that that which sustains, that which reveals, that which is everything, is within, 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower'.

I explore the universe

There is one perfectly good sense in which humans are puny and insignificant, and that is as a part of the universe, which as we know is like big.  We are not required to find a hill-top to stand on to daily tell the universe how small and meaningless we are, what crap we are or others are,  how we hope the universe will forgive us for existing, how much we beg it to let us do its will.

There is and has been for as long as humans started to think about these things, an area of human thought in which belief and unbelief meet. The orthodox of course both know about it and strive with all their might to enforce division.  That is pantheism, the proposition everything is in essence god, you, me, the fly buzzing against the window, the lilies of the field.  'Are ye not better than they?'  Different: ye have the capacity called consciousness to know what ye are.

To write of goodness, truth, beauty and love, of 'avatars of living grace', is to demonstrate the evil, falsity, ugliness and hate of orthodox religion, which is of course something the free world has long been aware of, but that is apparently unknown to our Beloved Leaders.

To deny any requirement for a divine mediator, to indicate the matter is one of human consciousness and we are what we choose to be, we command ourselves, we are not required to beseech or thank a deity, we are not as a deity chooses we be, the buck stops here, is well, yes of course to cause hysteria, but also to move the world on, which of course causes even more hysteria on a number of grounds, among which are that that supposedly is something women do not do and head-on collision with the Hollow Gourd Theory:

While other languages struggle towards precision, Newtspeak strives to confound. If there exist excellent, honest, industrious, innovative, then those who fall short of such descriptions are in some way flawed and that is not acceptable, for all are without fault (or at any rate that sub-section of all dear to the Great Lizard). Underlying this is the Hollow Gourd Theory, the Doctrine of the Empty Vessel. Criticism is meaningless because it is pointless: people can do nothing about how they are. They have no control. Obviously you can't expect much of a hollow gourd. Dynamism, innovation, moving and shaking are outside its capacity. Criticism can only traumatize it. Not surprisingly, tadpoles are notable for their passivity, what the unreconstructed call their uselessness, and there are none more hated than those who are not gourd-fearing and so bounce in with evil nonsense such as the suggestion that there is something wrong with you that you have the capacity to put right.

'Avatars of living grace'

I do not expect the appreciation of those for whom the world was fixed in the Stone Age.  I do not expect them to be familiar with theories of the multiverse or consider the working of the human mind.  I expect them to keep their filthy hands off me and if necessary to be made to do so.  I do not expect the political classes and the so-called scientists of medicine to be complicit in permitting animals to burn me at the stake.  Science indeed is threatened by these vermin, it being the case that science does not come on their radar, but I did.

I explore the universe

There is a particular culture notorious for making liberal bourgeois intellectuals do heavy manual work and indeed parading aged and venerable professors through the streets in dunce-caps.  It happens ancestrally to be my culture. 

It is so pathetically easy to hang them that to do so would seem in rather bad taste. Hanging them by their balls or tits as appropriate on prime-time TV is as ever another matter.

Clear, Blair?  Clear, Brown?  Clear, Mandelson, Clarke, Blunkett, Milburn?

No pasaréis, i think, to be exact.  Remember my degree subjects are French and Italian.  I can make with Spanish verbs. You willl not pass.

Either they don't believe there's anything wrong with my back because Authority told them there is nothing wrong with my back or they think  it normal that any woman who offends be physically abused.

An interesting assemblage, therefore, of the mentally defective and the mentally ill.

Clearly I, as someone from  a Left-wing family going way back who is wholly committed to public provision, am exactly what the public sector needs. Besides, there is a debt: the NHS fixed my spine.  True, it then did its best to break it.  I think if Mr Manning (my surgeon) had still been alive I should have gone to him, I think I should have trusted him to support his patient not side with a corrupt medical establishment, but of course he is long dead.

So we have this situation. Houston Control, grand-daughter of Labour public servants on both sides wanders into public sector sewer and gets beaten up and left for dead.

Being who I am I am of course completely impervious to the howls of the fascist hyenas.

You know such people as our wonderful health professionals.  Indeed they are very special people, bred for treachery, trained for treachery, taught to live on their knees. They despise freedom and democracy.   The only thing they coulf be trusted to do in the event of civil disorder is administer lethal injections to wounded soldiers. The commitment to a fascist society is unswerving.  It is unthinkable to these people that speech be free, as it is unthinkable that they be publicly accountable.  It is given that they have rights over others who must do and be what they are told to do and be.

What they expect is something along the lines of:

O Master, I shall erase all false consciousness, bourgeois conditioning, satanic sendings, self-willed disobedience to law of God (strike out where not applicable), and know only you as the source of my being.  I am so sorry I have offended you, I prostrate myself, lick your feet, I shall never ever again think of myself as a free independent human being, do with me what you will, o Master, fill my mind with your thoughts, anything you say, o Master, only please don't hurt me (grovels, trembling with terror)

What they get is something along the lines of:

What the fuck is the matter with you, you stupid cunt?  I say what I think not what you fucking well tell me I may say.  Who the fuck do you think you are, you bloody fucktard?  My mind is my property.  My body is my property. Hey, can't you speak, nutter.  I suppose reason is too much to expect, but words, you could do words.  You are a human being, aren't you?  Actually you're a fucking baboon.  Just can't cope with words, can you.  You are such a loser, such a  fucking inadequate, intellectually, emotionally, you're garbage.  Bloody retard, aren't you, a dirty, sick little animal that can't keep its filthy paws off others.  Guess they'll have to be shot off, then, won't they. You really need to keep that ego of yours under control.  Ooh, ooh, master of the fucking universe, are you,  whole fucking world revolves around you.  Oh, you speak for 'God', do you.  So God's a sexually diseased baboon?  Yikes, you're so distressed, you're so angry, you're few-urious. So no-one else can have a point of view. How you get off, is it, thinking of my spine cracking,  sit there rubbing yourself, do you, oh, you're such a big monkey.  Put it in your pants, fucktard.

Nor do I hide my repugnance at the snivelling, sniggering slave-sluts who suck Master's cock, who have instantly abandoned every check and balance a free, democratic and civilized society has erected to stop the sort of thing that has happened to me from happening. 

They find all this rather confusing.

It must be considered a treasonous act all on its own to consider an Englishwoman subject to the Church of Rome and of course we must all instantly accept it is reasonable to examine 16-year-olds by asking them what is 8 x 6.

Truly, the earth is not bloody well flat.  We are being fed an imaginary history in which all religion and spiritual belief is regarded as synonymous with the drool memorably described by Lenin as 'mediaeval mildew', 'spiritual booze',  in which there was no Enlightenment, no Marxism, and it unheard of to deride the view of the universe and the people in current in the Middle Ages, in which, disgracefully, the world of a mentally intricate few untouched by science as by other fact, for instance the evident fact that apart from the delicate matter of hulking 100 lb bergens across the Brecons the capacities of the female of the species cover the same gamut as those of the male, is supposed to be superior to the world of the majority, religious or not, in which the lunatic is supposed to possess something the rest of us woefully lack.  In which the priest who makes a screaming idiot of himself by evoking 'scriptural authority' for his own deranged sexuality and ignoring the numerous other prohibitions of the Old Testament is regarded as someone to be taken seriously.   See God hates shrimp (it says so in Leviticus) and Jesuslovesferrets.com

Puh-lease, we are rational people.

Well, some of us: Marxism of course does not lack flat-earthers, those for whom the revelation is fixed, inalterable.  See Being a C21st Muslim must be like this.  Though sundry of its adherents behave as though it is a religion, it is not.  There is nothing in the  canon to say the 'high-priests' were not men as other men, fallible, capable on occasion of talking out of their arses.  

Labour unswervingly upholds the passage to a totalitarian state founded on lies, where fact is criminal, reason is criminal, where truth is whatever power says is true and the good is whatever power says is the good. So this is how it is to be, all art, all literature, all philosophy, all thought, all reason, all decency abandoned in the face of the howling of power-crazed animals.

It is all resolved by setting speech free and insisting upon democracy, by demanding everyone has a right to be heard and everyone a right to tell a speaker he or she is talking out of his or her arse.  It was never any other way.  This, however, is resolutely and unswervingly rejected.    I have no problem with the continued existence of the Polytechnic of Trot Crap, so long as people are free to deride its products and state that they find it ludicrous to claim the illiterate and intellectually incapable have degrees. If you are a self-important little petty bourgeois monstrosity who thinks a shard of status makes you master of the universe, people will say so.  Certainly public sector management may choose to be purely criminal in its conduct, but that conduct will appear all over the newspapers.  I do not think I shall fail to be entertained by the lies about me that have been disseminated without challenge.  I might even learn what I have done.  I think there is a 50:50 chance of its being something I have actually done as opposed to something made up and propagated as gospel truth.

There will be no more dirty little 'Guidelines' threatening employees who exercise free speech.

It was no big deal that these people were criminals. That they have allowed to cripple me is a very big deal.  That a Cabinet Minister coldly and deliberately left me to be physically abused is a very big deal.  (Tonge of course has self-defined as filth long since.) That slum-animals faced with a computer-literate graduate of the University of London with 11 years' senior administrative experience were free to vent their spite by turning me into a porter is a very big deal.   Similarly that the uneducated and now demonstrably ineducable had hissy fits at my views is no big deal.  That I, who have read a very great deal, should be expected to forget everything I have read that makes my views differ from those of the uneducated and ineducable, is a very big deal.

But that is how things are now to be, the insistence, reinforced by violence, that we must all operate on the level of the most ignorant, the most stupid, the most disgusting. 

Raw treason is a very big deal indeed, the deliberate replacement of the norms of democracy with those of a totalitarian state.

I posed a threat, as an educated woman, to the Blairite dream of a country in the hands of the sexually sick baboon-men he calls priests governing according to the unchallengeable, unaccountable laws of God, according to which of course it is just silly for a woman to claim to have intelligence, education, learning, to consider herself the intellectual equal of a deformed ape.

I still of course do pose such a threat.  As the grand-daughter of Labour pioneers with a multi-racial, multi-national family,  I am perfectly capable intellectually of leading an alliance of most of the country, of people of all backgrounds, all creeds or none, who want to live in the C21st. 

I have waited ten years for the vermin who govern this country to demand it function as a free and democratic nation.  Clearly they have no intention of doing so; no argument sways them. A silly little woman is readily ignored, after all, no intelligence or education compensates for female anatomy.  

Entrenched power shifts only with revolution.  The destruction of England is not an option.

I should prefer to deal with the Queen's enemies by exposure, by satire, by argument, by the simple process of setting people free to ignore them, that there be no question of anyone being required to pay attention to the various psychotics who currently dominate the national stage.

I am not in a physical state capable of womanning the barricades, which I do not doubt was the point of attacking my spinal fusion.

Should the intransigence, fascism, stupidity, arrogance and evil of those who govern lead to actual civil war, I am hardly likely to be running the show.  Rather it will be run by those who may be less measured in their responses than I. 

I do not for the moment feel photogenic.  When I do, YouTube awaits.

Anyone who thinks I am or should be prepared to tolerate this level of corruption is even madder than I have previously suggested and of course completely disgusting and degraded. 

Even longer ago than the Gulag Archipelago something happened which is also pertinent here.  As Marx put it, a carpenter was killed by the rich men.  Here in the C21st, where most of us live, the separation of the figure of Jesus - Sufi Master, realizer of his Buddha nature, Kabbalist, basic good bloke, whatever - from the churches called Christian is very real, very meaningful phenomenon, totally ignored by clergy, who appear united in the view that, since we rather evidently fail to attend their services, we all want to stand at the altar and invoke Satan.

To begin with veritable arch-devils:

Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practised was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years before; by the Quakers since; and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason,1794

[42] " You therefore contributed in no way by your speeches, badly reported, badly interpreted, to these frightful piles of bones which I saw on my road in coming to consult you? "

[43] "It is with horror only that I have seen those who have made themselves guilty of these murders."

[44] " And these monuments of power and wealth, of pride and avarice, these treasures, these ornaments, these signs of grandeur, which I have seen piled up on the road while I was seeking wisdom, do they come from you? "

[45] "That is impossible; I and my people lived in poverty and meanness: my grandeur was in virtue only."

Voltaire and Jesus

It is (ought to be?) a vast glimpse of the freaking obvious, too obvious to require stating, that a people whose religious formation lay largely in trilling 'The King of Love my Shepherd is' in Morning Assembly, whatever they make of the whole thing in adulthood, is averse to, negative towards, the dogmatic, dictatorial, judgmental, unloving and ugly manifestations of religion that today appear to make up the totality of the pronouncements of the religious.

As of course it is a vast glimpse etc that Jesus' choosing to die rather than force himself on others is the exemplar of self-forgetting. 

Truth nailed upon the cross compels nobody, oppresses no one; it must be accepted and confessed freely; its appeal is addressed to free spirits...A divine Truth panoplied in power, triumphant over the world and conquering souls, would not be consonant with the freedom of man's spirit, and in the mystery of Golgotha is the mystery of liberty….Every time in history that man has tried to turn crucified Truth into coercive truth he has betrayed the fundamental principle of Christ.
Nicholas Berdyaev

How Brits viewed religion is perhaps summed up in 'The Lord is my Shepherd, I'll not want/He makes me down to lie/In pastures green he leadeth me/The quiet waters by./My soul he doth restore again/And me to walk doth make/In the paths of righteous/E'en for His own name's sake'.   Above all it was personal.  It might be true, might be rubbish, but it was a pretty and gentle thing.

The  dishonesty of the average religious spokesman lies not in beliefs not susceptible of proof - you can't lie about things that can't be shown to be true, though you can of course lie that they are demonstrably true - but in statements about the here and now that are - demonstrably - false.

1.   Believing in God makes you a better person than someone who does not believe in God, regardless of what you believe about God or humans. Religious people must therefore always be considered superior to unbelievers, who are supposedly flawed.  How we are flawed is explained below. 

2.   Religion is a homogenous entity opposed to unbelief. Religion is two directly opposing concepts. One is a flight from reality to a fantasy physical universe populated by fantasy human beings. It is not necessary in this universe to discover, let alone accept, the individuality of others. They come clearly labelled. You know what they are and if they refuse to be it they must be made to conform or die. The other is the path (love) towards discover of the reality of the physical universe and the individuality of the people in it.

3.   The way to be a good human is to deny one's humanity, reject the capacity for independent thought and feeling, and so leave it undeveloped, and obey what men (almost always men) say God said. This produces the necessary emotionally and intellectually inadequate masses who can be relied upon to have hysterics faced with anything they find disagreeable.

4.   Self-will lies in rejection of obedience to the suppurating egos of the men (almost always men) who claim they know what God wants. Theirs is the self-will, the contempt for the individuality, separateness of others, the need to control, have others subordinate. This, however, is the source of 1). The theory is that the believer focuses on something outside his or her self. That what the believer has decided God wants may be a comprehensive exercise in stroking the believer's ego, satisfying his or her wanton emotional needs and justifying his or her inadequacy is elided.

There is no logical correlation between belief in supernatural fancy and having a moral compass based on love; the capacity to love is not held to be innate, but a reward for believing in the divinity of Jesus:

1709 He who believes in Christ becomes a son of God. This filial adoption transforms him by giving him the ability to follow the example of Christ. It makes him capable of acting rightly and doing good.  Catechism of the Catholic Church

If that were the case, no non-Christian would be 'capable of acting rightly and doing good'. which is of course the basic proposition voiced in 1), disguised but inadequately and not less vile for being so: if you do not accept the hooey of orthodoxy, you cannot love your fellow-humans.

5.   It is normal, reasonable and sane to have hysterics when faced with and call for the elimination of what one finds disagreeable, to be incapable (to have made oneself incapable) of accepting the existence of opposing views. Actually it is an index of self-obsession, complete indifference to the individuality, separateness and of course rights of others and most of us get on just fine knowing other folks think differently and recognizing that people who strongly adhere to one view reckon those who think the opposite are talking nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that. Here no-one matters apart from the self-obsessed one around whom the thought of the rest of humanity is supposed to revolve and this we are supposed to revere and consider laudable.

6.   Believing in some sort of supernatural fantasy world endows a person with rights over those who do not so believe and entitles him or her to elicit their silence. Again there is no logical correlation, no way it can be argued that believing  an unprovable, untenable fantasy gives Person A rights over Person B.

7.   Derision of religion is a recent aberration. As such it will be readily quelled and we shall return to business as usual or in other words subordination to the irrational and emotionally disturbed. Go away and read history.

8.   The godless Enlightenment led to Hitler and Stalin.
a) the philosophes were largely deist
b) the values of Hitler and Stalin were those of the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church - authoritarianism, the prizing of mindless obedience, contempt for reason, liberty and the individual. There is no logical correlation between belief in democracy and individual liberty and the Gulag Archipelago and Auschwitz.

9. Religion stands for absolute morality. To the religious, good is whatever they say God says is good and that covers the entire gamut of human behaviour from the justification of to the abolition of slavery, from supporting Hitler to helping Jews escape.

10. Subjective illusory hurt to the ego because you think you are all that matters is all-important (you get terribly upset about books and cartoons) and objective real hurt to bodies is irrelevant (you don't get terribly upset about women being stoned to death), particularly of course when you think the hurt is deserved.

It should not be necessary to place statues of Liberty on the altars of Westminster Abbey to terminate the distasteful nonsense perpetuated by a 'Labour Party' which thinks the country a province of the Vatican and a 'socialist Left' in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood