'What happens happens,' continued the Resiler, 'and cannot be made to unhappen. We are the equation; we cannot deny the algebra of the universe or the result it brings us. Die peacefully or in hysterics, with grace or with despair; it matters not. Prepare or ignore; it matters not. Very little matters very much and almost nothing matters greatly. Shanti.'
'I find myself half drawn to that last statement,' Pieter told Asura as the Resiler sat down. Nearby there was a group of people who had been laughing and joking among themselves during the course of her speech; a highly dressed woman rose from among them and went over and placed some sweetmeats in the plain wooden bowl at the Resiler's side. The Resiler thanked her and ate with awkward grace. She smiled thinly at Asura as the other woman sashayed back to her friends, laughing.
'Come, my dear,' Pieter said pleasantly, rising and taking the girl's elbow. 'We'll take the air on the lower viewing deck, shall we?' They rose. 'Ma'am,' he said, nodding to the Resiler as they passed.
'Don't worry,' Asura said to the Resiler as Pieter led her to the stairs. 'It's going to be all right.' She winked at her.
The woman looked briefly baffled, then shook her head and continued to eat, her movements made strange by the iron rod linking her wrists.
Asura's smooth brow furrowed into a frown as she and Pieter descended to the main lounge. 'She eats,' she said, glancing back up. 'How does she clean herself after toilet?'
Pieter laughed lightly. 'You know, I never thought of that. The alternatives are all unpleasant, aren't they?'
Below, from the promenade deck, they saw the forested hills stretching out around them and, from the tiers of seats facing the lower section of the round transparent nose, the first hazy hints of the towers and battlements of Serehfa.
Asura clapped her hands.
That morning, over breakfast, she had told them something of her dreams and Pieter had looked at first alarmed and then resigned. She had not told them all the details; just that she had seen the tunnel of light and been in an enchanted carriage journeying across the dusty plain towards the great castle beyond the hills.
'Lucky you,' Lucia Chimbers had told her. 'Most of us have to concentrate quite hard to have dreams that interesting.'
'Sounds like she might have implants after all,' Gil said, helping himself to more ortanique juice.
Pieter shook his head. 'I think not.' He frowned. 'And I do wish people would stop calling them implants; they're not, if you're born with them and they're part of your genetic inheritance, reversible or not.'
Gil and Lucia smiled at him with practised indulgence.
Pieter dabbed a napkin at his lips and sat back, surveying their young guest, who sat very upright with her hands in her lap and her eyes sparkling.
'Do I take it then that you wish to leave, young lady?'
'Please call me Asura,' she said. She nodded vigorously. 'I think I go to castle.'
'Bit touristy, going so soon,' Lucia said. Pieter glanced wearily at her.
'Everyone should see Serehfa,' Gil said, drinking noisily.
'Do you wish to go today?' Pieter asked.
'As soon as possible, please,' the girl said.
'Well,' Pieter said, 'I suppose one of us ought to go with you, really.'
'Don't look at me —' Lucia began.
'I merely wondered if we might prevail upon you to lend the young lady —'
'Asura!' she said, happily.
'— to lend Asura,' Pieter said with a sigh, 'your clothes on a rather longer term —'
'Take them.' Lucia waved one hand, then took Gil's in hers.
'I shall want to be back in time for the others returning,' Pieter told Asura. 'I may have to dump you at the gates, even assuming we can find a flight in time.'
'As soon as possible, please,' Asura repeated.
'Book her into a sisters' hostel in the place or something,' Gil said. 'Or get a clan member to look after her.'
'I may do both,' Pieter said, then sat back and closed his eyes. 'Excuse me,' he murmured.
Lucia Chimbers and Gil poured each other coffee. Asura looked intently at the older man, who presently opened his eyes again and said, 'Yes, we're booked on a flight from SF del Apure, leaving at noon. I can be back on the return service a little after midnight. The jalop claims to be charged up, so I'll drive us to the rail station. I've left a message for Cousin Ucubulaire in Serehfa. I dare say you two will manage to keep yourselves occupied without me?' he said to Gil and Lucia, who both smiled.
'Between you and me, my dear,' Pieter shouted an hour later as he drove the whirring battery car along the dusty road from the house to Cazoria, the nearest town, 'I put you in the blue room on purpose last night; the bed's headboard is fitted with a receptor system.' He smiled over at her.
They had the sunlight-powered car's top off; the wind whistled round their ears. ('Ruins the efficiency,' Pieter had told her, 'but it's much more fun.' He wore goggles and a tie-down hat, and had given her similar equipment. She wore loose trousers, a blouse and a light jacket.) 'I thought you might be able to avail yourself of the facilities. If you hadn't, well then, no harm done.'
Asura held onto her hat and smiled broadly at him. Then she frowned, and said, 'The bed made me dream?'
'Not exactly, but it let you dream… in concert, shall we say? Though you must have a remarkable gift to adapt so quickly and so easily.'
They drove on through the morning, between wild fruit-forests of banana and orange. Asura was enjoying the drive.
'Ah, Asura?' Pieter said.
'Yes?'
'That is not regarded as acceptable in polite society. Or, come to think of it, in almost any society, normally.'
'What? This?'
'Yes. That.'
'No? But it feels good. It is beginning with car shaking.'
'I don't doubt. Nevertheless. One does that sort of thing in private, I think you'll find.'
'Oh, all right.' Asura looked mildly puzzled, then adjusted her hands and sat with them clasped demurely in her lap.
'There's the town,' Pieter said, nodding ahead to where a collection of white spires and towers were rising above the greenery. He glanced at his young passenger and shook his head. 'Serehfa. Good grief. I hope I'm doing the right thing…'
2
Chief Scientist Gadfium sat in the whirlbath with the High Sortileger Xemetrio; the pumps hummed, water frothed and bubbled, steam hissed from wall pipes and wrapped them in its hot, dense fog, and music played loudly.
They sat side by side facing each other, each whispering into the other's ear.
'They sound half mad, or it sounds half mad,' Xemetrio said, snorting. 'What is all this nonsense about "Love is god" and the "Hallowed centre"?'
'It sounds formalised,' Gadfium whispered. 'I don't think it really means anything.'
Xemetrio drew back a little in the swirling steam; it was so thick Gadfium could not see the walls of the bathroom. 'My dear,' Xemetrio whispered urbanely once his mouth was alongside her ear again. 'I am the High Sortileger; everything means something.'
'You see; that is your faith, even though you wouldn't call it such; theirs is expressed in this quasi-religious —'
'It isn't quasi-religious, it's completely religious.'
'Even so.'
'And Sortilegy boils down to a matter of statistics,' Xemetrio said, sounding genuinely offended. 'Anything less spiritual is difficult to —'
'We're moving off the point. If we ignore the religious trappings and concentrate on the information itself —'
'Context matters,' the Sortileger insisted.
'Let us assume the rest of the signal is true.'