I'd been introduced to the officials and dignitaries I hadn't met before and they'd all been very polite and cordial before we clambered into the back of the car, but I sincerely hoped I wasn't inadvertently treading on as many metaphorical toes as I had physical ones.
At least they all seemed happy enough, sitting or squatting hunched in their thick clothes with big smiles on their round, hairless faces, nodding at me and making appreciative noises. I put it down to the understandable euphoria of at last having their. chunky Thulahnese asses only half a metre above the ground in a vehicle travelling at little more than a fast walk which, if it broke down, would just sit at the roadside decorously wisping steam rather than plummeting abruptly towards the nearest patch of icy rock.
'You have seen my mother,' Suvinder went on. 'She is well?'
'Yes, I think so.'
'How did you get on?'
I thought carefully. 'We had a full and frank discussion.'
'Oh, very good!' Suvinder looked delighted. I glanced round the others. The cream of the Thulahnese hierarchy looked appreciatively on, nodding their approval.
The Prince's suite was in the same recently modernised section of the palace as my room, though a floor higher. The whole royal complex was suddenly full of people dashing about, slamming doors, waving bits of paper, carrying boxes and clattering open shutters. I stood with B. K. Bousande in the lounge of the Prince's private suite, watching servants I'd never seen before rushing round the room distributing bits of luggage and straightening pictures.
The lounge was relatively modest, even restrained. Plain walls held a few gauzy watercolours; a polished wood floor was scattered with intricately patterned carpets, a couple of big cream-coloured settees and a few pieces of what looked very old and elaborately carved wooden furniture including a low central table.
A servant carrying a bunch of fresh flowers appeared through the door and set them in a vase on a sideboard. I straightened the little wire and silk flower I'd worn the day before and had transferred to my red quilted jacket, then noticed again the muddy grey marks Dulsung's boots had left by my lapels. I brushed them off as best I could and dusted my hands.
'You must tell me all you have done since you arrived!' the Prince called out from somewhere beyond the bedroom door. Judging from the echo, from the bathroom.
'Oh, just sightseeing.'
'You will not be rushing away, I hope? I would like to show you more of Thulahn.'
'I can stay a few more days, I guess. But I wouldn't want to interfere with your duties, sir.'
There was a pause, then the Prince stuck his head round the door from the bedroom, frowning. 'You do not call me "sir", Kathryn. To you I am Suvinder.' He shook his head and disappeared again. 'BK, deliver my invitation, would you?'
B. K. Bousande bowed to me and said, 'We are holding a reception to celebrate His Highness's return this evening. Would you be his guest?'
'Certainly. I'd be honoured.'
'Oh, good!' the Prince called out.
The high valleys were torn ribbons of scrappy green rammed between the force of mountains pitched tumultuously against the sky. In them was a whole raised world of tenaciously adapted bushes, trees, birds and animals somehow able to grow and multiply in this winded sweep of gust-eroded ice, naked rock and barren gravel.
The reception was held in the palace's main hall, a relatively modest space not much larger than the throne room in the old palace, but much less bizarre in its decoration, with a stalactitically carved wooden ceiling and walls covered by what looked like crosses between Afghan rugs and tapestries.
After consulting with Langtuhn Hemblu on the propriety of the little blue-black Versace — regretfully deemed too short — I'd chosen a long green silk sleeveless number with a high Chinese collar. This is the sort of dress that makes me look long and hard at myself; however, I passed the inspection of my own in-built body-fascist program and, happily, people did later compliment me on the dress in that way that means they think you look good in it, and not in the way that means they're astonished how tolerable a job it's doing of making mutton look like lamb.
There were perhaps two hundred people present at the reception. The majority were Thulahnese but there were a couple of dozen Indians and Pakistanis and a smattering of Chinese, Malays, other Oriental people whose nationalities I wasn't so sure of and some Japanese. A lot of Westerners seemed to have crawled out of the woodwork, too; I hadn't known there were so many in Thulahn, let alone Thuhn.
I was introduced to the Indian High Commissioner, the Pakistani and Chinese ambassadors, and various consuls, honorary and otherwise, including Josh Levitsen, who looked awkward in a three-piece suit that had probably last been fashionable about the time of his senior prom. Perhaps to take his mind off this he was already quite drunk when we shook hands.
The Prince guided me round his ministers, advisers and family members. This last category included his rather subdued brother and sister-in-law whose son was the heir to the throne if Suvinder didn't have any children and who was at a Business-run school in Switzerland. I also met representatives of the other noble families, of which there were about a dozen all told, a swathe of subtly varied saffron-clad lamas, a couple of Hindu priests clad in borderline-garish, and I was introduced to the remainder of the Thulahnese Civil Service that I hadn't met in either the Twin Otter four years earlier or the Foreign Ministry the day before.
I made a point of bowing and smiling a lot. A gift I've always been very grateful for is never forgetting a name, so I was able to greet people like Senior Immigration Officer Shlahm Thivelu, Home Secretary Hokla Niniphe and Prime Minister Jungeatai Rhumde without having to be prompted. They all seemed pleased. I spotted a female face I knew I'd seen before but couldn't place until I realised it was one of the old Queen's ladies-in-waiting.
The remaining foreigners included a clutch of VSO Brits and Peace Corps Americans — all appropriately young, enthusiastic, naive and full of energy — a few teachers, mostly English and French, a couple of Ozzie doctors and one Indian surgeon, some Canadian rough-diamond-type engineers and contractors engaged on relatively small-scale infrastructure work, a handful of sweaty mixed-European businessmen hoping to land contracts with the various Thulahnese ministries, and a physically attractive but corrosively smug Milanese geology professor with his own little entourage of students, all female.
Only when you started to look, only once you'd had your fill of gazing at the dazzling white peaks above and refocused your sight to what was really around you did you see the variety of forms displayed.
'They are very bad workers.'
'Are they?'
'Impossible. Quite useless. They cannot keep time. I think sometimes they cannot tell time.' The speaker was a tall, bulky Austrian businessman with a tight grip on his cocktail glass.