The Business

'They have water.  No one dies of thirst.  They have all the education they need.  Do you need a degree to walk behind a plough?  No.  And health?  It will always be hard to live here.  It's no place for the weak.  We all have to die, young woman.  Better to work hard, accept the consolation of one's faith and then go quickly.  All this hanging around's just vulgar.  People are so greedy these days.  Accept your lot and don't insist on extending the misery of those who'd be better off dead.  There.  That's what I believe.  Oh, and you needn't try to hide your feelings.  I know what you're thinking.  Well, for your information, I have not seen a doctor since I took to my bed, and I will not in the future, no matter what.  I've been waiting to die for a quarter of a century, Miss Telman.  I believe the good Lord is keeping me alive for his own good reasons and so I shan't hasten the process of dying, but I shan't do anything to delay it, either, once it begins.'

I nodded. 'That's very stoic of you, ma'am.  I hope anybody would respect your choice.'

'Yes?' she said slowly, suspiciously. 'But?'

'I…think it would only be right to offer the Thulahnese people a choice as well.'

'A choice of what?  Will they want television?  Burger bars?  Jobs in factories and supermarkets?  Salaries in offices?  Motor cars?  They will doubtless choose all that, if they're offered it.  And before you know it we will be just the same as everywhere else and we'll have homosexuals, AIDS, socialists, drug-dealers, prostitutes and muggers.  That will be progress, won't it, Miss Telman?'

By now even I was beginning to suspect that there was no point in continuing this argument.  I said, 'I'm sorry you feel that way, Your Highness.'

'Are you?  Are you really?  Try telling the truth.'

'I am.  Truly.'

The Queen looked down at me for a while.  Then she nodded.  She leaned fractionally towards me. 'It is a hateful thing to grow old, Miss Telman.  It is not an enjoyable process, and it will come to you one day.  I don't doubt you think me an appalling old reactionary, but there is this consolation for me that there may not be for you:  I will be glad to leave this stupid, hurtful, degrading world.' She straightened again. 'Thank you for coming to see me.  I am tired now.  Goodbye.  Mihu?'

I turned round to see the big Chinese man silently opening the doors for me.  I looked back to say goodbye to the Queen, but she had closed her eyes and her head had drooped, as though she had been a marionette in a fairground booth all the time and now my money had run out.  I took a last look round the strange room with its glittering, whispering walls of flaking leaf over black wooden flesh, then turned and left.

Langtuhn Hemblu almost had to run to keep up with me as I strode back to the car.

'My, you had quite a long time with the Queen Mother!'

'Did I?'

'Yes!  You are very privileged.  Isn't she a treasure?'

'Oh, yes, a treasure,' I said.  Pity she's not buried, I thought.

When I got back to my room in the palace at Thuhn, all my stuff had gone.

I stood in the doorway and looked around.  The little cot bed in the alcove had been made up.  The cupboard where I'd hung my suit carrier and clothes was open and empty.  The satellite phone, my computer, my toiletries; all gone.  The little table by the bed had been cleared too; my netsuke monkey had disappeared with everything else.

A swimmy sort of feeling came over me.  No phone, no contact.  Just what I stood up in.  In my pockets, a billfold and two shiny discs.

Had I been robbed?  I'd assumed this was one of those places where you didn't need to lock anything, and that was why there was no way of securing the room door.  But, then, how much were the satellite phone and the ThinkPad worth, compared to what the average person here made in a year?  Maybe somebody had been just too tempted, and I too careless.

Or had I made that bad an impression on the Queen Mother?  Was this some sort of instant revenge of hers for speaking back to her?  I turned to try and find somebody to help, and heard a voice in the distance coming closer.  The little quilted lady who didn't stop talking appeared at the end of the corridor.  She came up, took my hand and, still talking, led me off to another part of the palace.

The door had a lock.  The floor was carpeted.  My suit carrier hung in a wardrobe that could have come out of a Holiday Inn.  The window was a triple-glazed sealed unit.  Under the window was a radiator, plumbed into pipes which disappeared discreetly through the carpet.  The bed was a standard double with ordinary pillows.  The netsuke monkey had been placed alongside my flashlight on the bedside table.  The computer and satellite phone sat on a little writing table with a mirror over it.  Through an open door I could see a tiled bathroom with a shower and — glory be — a bidet.  Still no TV , mind you.

The little quilted lady bowed and left, talking.

There was a business card on the writing table beside the sat. phone.  Joshua Levitsen, honorary US consul, would like to meet me tomorrow; he suggested breakfasting at the Heavenly Luck Tea House at eight.

I went to the window.  Same view, a storey higher.  The room was warm; a faint thermal was drifting up from the radiator.  I turned it off and tilted the heavy window open.

My e-mail included a plaintive note from Dwight Litton reminding me that I was missing the première of his Broadway play.  I didn't bother to reply.

How you doin?

That line work on all the girls?

So they say. I wouldn't know.

No, of course not, Stephen.

So how is Shangri-La?

Cool.

Think you might want to stay?

Too early to tell yet. Saw the Queen today; a character. I'll tell you about it later; you won't believe. I've been moved within the palace from a rather spartan but characterful room to something that looks like it's been filched wholesale from the nearest Ramada. How's things with you?

Fine. Working on a big restructuring exercise for two of the biochemical multis. Also taking part in (mostly e-mail) discussions about MAI fall-out. Domestically, looking after bambinos while Emma visits old girlfriend in Boston...Hello? Kate? You still there?

Sorry. Sorry for the hiatus. Some sort of glitch at this end. Had to reconnect.

I awoke, breathless again.

Where was I?  Where had I been?

I couldn't even remember what the original problem had been, what slight or remark, what insult or minor injury had occasioned the incident.  All I remembered was that I had gone to Mrs Telman for comfort, and received a strange sort of it.

She held me.  I sobbed into her bosom.  It was probably a very expensive blouse I was soaking with my tears, but at least I was too young to be allowed to wear mascara; the marks of my fury and despair would soon dry and leave no mark.

We were in the hotel in Vevey where Mrs Telman stayed whenever she came to visit me at the International School.  Lac Léman was a dark presence in the night, its white-flecked surface visible by moonlight between the wintry showers that fell upon the waters from the mountains.  I was fourteen or fifteen.  Young enough still to need to be held sometimes, old enough to be troubled by, even ashamed of such a need.  She smelled of the exotic perfumes I remembered from her car, six years earlier.

'But it's not fair!'

'Life is not, Kathryn.'

'You're always saying that.'

'When it stops being true, I'll stop saying it.'

'But it should be fair!'

'Of course it should.'

'Well, then, why can't it be?'

'Why can't we all live in palaces and never have to work?  Why can't we all be happy and never have to cry?'

'I don't know,' I said defiantly (I'd begun to get used to this sort of rhetorical defence). 'Why can't we?'

Mrs Telman smiled and offered me her handkerchief. 'There are two schools of thought.'