The Business

Indefinite. They'd like some sort of provisional idea in the next couple of weeks, but I could probably stall into '99 if I wanted.

You're in Karachi. Close to Thulahn. Worth taking a few days there.

Well, about 2000 km, but yes, wasn't that convenient? Ah, well. You're right. I probably will. Only the Prince could be a problem.

Oh yes. He greatly admires and respects you, doesn't he?

Has the hots for me. yes.

Oh. Kate; you dismiss any and all professions of love as just lust. Maybe one of these guys is genuinely head over heels for you. Maybe they all are. It's a subtle form of self-denigration you're indulging in here, Kate.

Oh, suddenly I'm on line to Dr Frasier Crane. You're listening. I'd no idea.

So defensive, Kate.

Well, maybe in the words of the immortal Whitney Houston, I'm saving all my love for somebody else.

Anyway. I'm sure you can handle the Prince. Ahem.

I'm sure too, but seriously, it's a consideration.

Take that holiday, or whatever you want to call it. You're still on sabbatical, aren't you?

Doesn't feel like it, but yes.

So go.

Good idea. Hey, I'd get to choose staff. You wouldn't want to move to Thulahn, would you? I mean not now but if all this happens? (Just kidding, really.)

Kind of got commitments here. Schools, you know. Plus Emma not too keen on any incline beyond one in twenty. Probably a girl thing. High heels and stuff.

Yeah, commitments. Like I said, just kidding. You could always visit though, yeah, yeah, huh, huh?

Surely.

Don't call me...actually you can call me anything/time you want. Ah, dear. I think tiredness is catching up on me. Bed beckons. I shall to my sheets. Thinking of you. Have a nice day. and from this end, good night.

You are a rascal. Sweet dreams.

Sweet dreams indeed.  I put a finger to my lips and kissed it, then touched the tip to the screen on the words 'Sweet dreams'.  Then I laughed at myself and shook my head.  I closed the lap-top's lid.  The machine beeped at me and the glow of light from the screen cut out just before it came down to meet the keyboard.  Only the TV's screen was left on now, tuned to Bloomberg, sound off.  I looked out at the lights of the city, and then up at the cornice of the room, between wall and ceiling.  Everything was built in.  Nowhere to just plonk a camcorder.  Come to think of it, it had probably been something more sophisticated that had spied on Mrs B and her lover: you could put a camcorder lens into a pair of glasses these days so maybe the camera had been concealed in a smoke alarm or something and the rest of the mechanism housed somewhere its bulk didn't matter.

I lifted the lap-top's lid up again; the screen flicked back on.  I looked at the last few lines we'd exchanged.  Commitments.

'Oh, Stephen,' I whispered, 'what am I to do?'

The DVD player was still in its box:  I hadn't had the time or the inclination to try co

I didn't save our exchange to the lap-top's hard drive; I just powered down.  First the machine, then, after a shower, me.

Well, now, here was an interesting little treat: that nice Mr Cholongai had loaned me his company Lear.  It was a good one, too; actually had facilities.  The first time I was offered a lift on a private jet I was appalled to be told it might be an idea to visit the airport loo before we left as the plane didn't have a toilet.  Finding that your ultimate corporate status symbol has less in the way of amenities than a modern express coach can take the gloss off the experience.

I should be old enough not to want to do this sort of thing, but, well.  I discovered my ordinary mobile phone would work and attempted to call my pal Luce back in California.  Voicemail.  I tried another of my girlfriends in the Valley.  She was on an exercise bike in the gym and was suitably impressed when I told her where I was, but too breathless to be able to talk much.  Still in a telephonic mood, I drew various blanks, machines and more voicemails, then got through to Uncle Freddy.

'Guess where I am, Frederick.'

'No idea, dear girl.'

'In a Lear jet, all by myself, flying across India.'

'Good heavens.  I'd no idea you knew how to fly.'

'You know what I mean, Uncle Freddy.'

'Oh, you're a passenger?'

'I am the passenger.  I am outnumbered two to one by the crew.'

'Well, good for you.  I suppose there are times when it's good to be in the minority.'

'Oh, really?  Name one other.'

'Umm…Troilism?'

Given that only a few months earlier both India and Pakistan had been trading underground nuclear tests, it was probably a sign of how good our relations were with both states that the Lear was cleared straight through across both air spaces to a small airport at Siliguri, situated in the little bit of co

I looked through my discs and decided I didn't have any music suitable for this view.  Instead I fired up the DVD at last and put it through the lap-top, glancing at the film of Mrs B and her lover (like Emma, it did come with sound — the volume just hadn't been turned up before), then clicking through the documentary and photo files on the rest of the disc.  Depressing.  Soon enough we dipped towards the ambiguous landscape that was neither plains nor foothills around Siliguri.

I had to change planes here.  The Lear couldn't land at Thuhn: it needed about four times the length of runway there and it also wasn't really happy landing on anything other than smooth tarmac.  As Thuhn's airstrip was composed of the sort of uneven gravelly earth that was pretty crap as a football park, let alone an airfield, this meant that the very nice young Norwegian co-pilot had to lug my bags across to the scruffy Twin Otter I recognised from the last time I'd made this trip.

This two-engined Portacabin was the pride and joy of Air Thulahn, and indeed the only aircraft it actually possessed.  There was a little socket just outside the pilot's sliding window; jamming a stick in there with the Thulahnese royal flag attached instantly converted the plane into the Royal Flight.  The plane was wittily nicknamed Otto.  It didn't really look all that primitive — well, apart from the props and the fixed undercarriage and the odd dent or two in the fuselage — until the ground staff opened up the nose (which I'd fondly assumed might contain radar, direction finders, instrument landing gear, that sort of thing) and dumped my luggage in the empty space revealed.

The last time I'd climbed aboard Otto, at Dacca airport in Bangladesh, fresh off a PIA DC10 (terrible flight, perfect landing), I'd had to share the cabin with a gaggle of drunken Thulahnese bureaucrats (there were six of them; I later discovered this constituted about half of the entire Thulahnese civil service), two saffron-robed priests with fu