Alcohol is self-inflicted so I shouldn't complain. But that doesn't alter the fact that, in the best of all possible worlds, I would have preferred to postpone today until tomorrow.
        It's the day of the meeting, my first meeting ever with a live Merlercian: Thursday May 11th. It gets off to a very low-key start, which is very much an anticlimax. As arranged, I meet up with Kilsarda (call me Kitty) Jevonica Klemp in the lobby of her hotel.
        I'm dolled up in one of my best business suits, very formally presented for my power lunch with Ms. Klemp. As for Kitty, she's toting a sky blue Phrenic Armor laptop bag and is dressed in what looks like a man's suit, a lilac suit of good quality wool. The suit is momentarily disconcerting. Then I remember I've seen this new female fashion in one of the expensive international magazines that Valencia likes to indulge herself in, glossy tributes to the world of vogues and fads. Kitty's lipstick is exactly the same shade of lilac as her suit. A bad choice, surely. But I have to concede that I'm a fashion zero, not the kind of person who is qualified to judge.
        We shake hands and then proceed to the Volcano Room, where a table has been booked for us. Not that a booking is really necessary, since the restaurant is pretty much empty.
        The Volcano Room is low key, not the kind of overdone blast music cafe that I'd been expecting. It's silk embossed with perfume, to coin a phrase. We have low tinkling music, sculptural with harps, something classical and famous that I know I should recognize but don't.
        There is, unfortunately, one embarrassing thing about the restaurant. It's the huge high definition television screen which someone has tuned to Locust Revelations, which prides itself on being the cutting edge of "high impact" Merlercian TV.
        Right now, as Kitty and I get down to business, Locust Revelations is broadcasting live coverage of the slaughter on the road leading out of the city of Yamahut Thelta, the home town of Loki Bathogonot, the evil dictator of Rathnog Carta. On a flat and arid desertified plain, caught in the open and helpless to defend itself, a military force estimated to number twenty thousand people is being systematically slaughtered by the Merlercians.
        What's embarrassing about this is the patriotic joy that the Locust Revelations commentators are taking in what amounts, as far as I can see, to the gratuitous murder of a defeated and defenseless enemy. Cultural context, that's the problem: Locust Revelations is broadcasting to us from the heartland of Merlercia, with every commentator a Merlercian patriot for the day, and nobody's thinking about how this might play in Nizon, where it's generally thought that the invasion of Rathnog Carta was a lawless exercise in irrational violence, a form of self-indulgent brass knuckle therapy involving relieving your own feelings by mashing someone else's face into pulp.
        Fortunately, the sound is turned down low, and Kitty doesn't seem to have noticed that the TV exists. I've already decided that one thing we won't be discussing is the war.
        "So tomorrow," says Kitty, her attention divided between me and the menu, "I'd like to do the physical walk."
        "The physical walk," I say.
        "Yes," says Kitty. "As I think I made clear by e-mail, this time we'll skip Gryptacom and the Yaplama. There's only a small patch of land in either case. I want to focus on the land by the two thoroughfares, Jalsinkoola Lane and Trovo -- Travo -- "
        "Travahimamak Road."
        "Yes, that. And we mustn't forget Hengooli Park."
        "Hengooli?" I say, trying to conceal my consternation. "You mean Hargorli Park, don't you?"
        "Is there a difference?" says Kitty.
        "The names are almost the same," I say, "but we're talking about completely different pieces of land. Hargorli Park is Udamana real estate, a big block of land near the Tokugawa Nashamori. Hengooli Park, that's a public park on Ichatrak, near Chapati Youth."
        "Ah, yes," says Kitty. "The youth club. How convenient for Tanto."
        And she looks at me, smiling as if savoring cream.
        Since Chapati Youth is twenty minutes away by car, there is nothing convenient about either the youth club or Hengooli Park. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I get the disturbing impression that Kitty is hinting that she knows something about Tanto and Hengooli Park. She wouldn't be so crude as to try to blackmail us, would she? Well, no, I don't think so. Since Chobber failed to crack the mystery of what happened at Hengooli Park (at least at the level of proof admissible in a court of law), how could Kitty succeed?
        "Okay," I say. "Tomorrow, the main event is this mysterious physical walk."
        "Yes," says Kitty. "It means -- "
        "Checking the land really exists," I say. "Yes, I think I understand that much. But what I don't understand is the rationale. I mean, you're aware of the size of the land, how much land there is, I mean, and the legal constraints on development. That said, what else is there to know?"
        "Well," says Kitty, "sometimes you hike across some empty fields and you see the pretty yellow edges of pretty little steel drums sticking out from the grass between the pretty little flowers, and that's the stage at which you ask yourself what's inside those pretty steel drums, and how many decades it's been sitting there, and precisely who's legally liable for the leachate."
        "I see," I said.
        "Or the land may be flooded," says Kitty. "Or there may be protest signs up already, Merlercians go home, that kind of thing. Or, one place, it was a buffalo farm, I found, I'm not kidding you, tucked in between two valleys, a squatter camp with five thousand people in it, they'd been there for generations, and that's precisely where we'd been planning to put our own cache of pretty steel drums."
        "So what are you planning for the Udamana lands?" I say. "Nizon's first private enterprise nuclear waste dump?"
        "Not in the middle of the city of Yendo," says Kitty. "No. With time and money, political pressure, whatever it takes, we'll get the zoning stuff sorted out, then we'll sell it to the highest bidder and make a big profit."
        "Why don't I do that and make my own big profit?" I ask.
        "Good luck, Ken," says Kitty, making no attempt to hide the fact that she is faintly amused. "If you want, give it your best shot and see how it goes. When was the last time you bribed a cabinet minister?"
        She has me there. I wouldn't know how to start. I'd probably end up disgracing myself, getting myself arrested, losing a big bundle of money and getting slammed into jail for a few years.
        "But, anyway," says Kitty, "that's Plan B. Plan A is more interesting."
        "Plan A?" I say.
        Two plans? I don't like this notion. I'm looking for certainty, and I don't like the notion of reality being destabilized by fresh options. Plan B sounds like the only plan possible, as far as I can see. We Udamanas have only one asset, and that one asset is land, all of it inconveniently tied up by the restrictive legislation which limits development in the photogenic and historically important perturbed area.
        "We'll discuss Plan A when the whole team gets here," says Kitty complacently.
        "Why not now?" I say.
        "Which brings me to my timetable," says Kitty, ignoring me, as if she hasn't heard me. "I have to fly out tomorrow evening, after the physical walk."
        "Tomorrow evening?" I ask.
        "Sorry ... not tomorrow. On Sunday. The 14th. Forgive me, I've got a lot of balls in the air."
        She has produced a day planner, and it is competing for table space with her menu and with her folded broadsheet newspaper. Kitty seems organized and in charge, but she's doing too many things at once, and, in my hungover state, this gives me the feeling I'm being overloaded.
        "Today's the 11th," says Kitty. "The physical walk, tomorrow, the 12th. I'm scheduled to fly back to Merlercia on Sunday, as I said, on the 14th, which means any loose ends can be tied up on the 13th. Then I'm in Kangataroot on the 15th, we're looking at an investment in one of the new euthanasia institutions they've legalized. If you had some speculative money you might want to take a punt on Kangataroot Sweet Dreaming, let me write that down for you, there you go, but just remember I did say speculative, it's not a sure thing."
        "Thanks," I say.
        "Anyway," says Kitty, "the 15th, Kangataroot. I have to be at my sister's wedding on the 16th, she knows that's inconvenient, I really don't see why she won't reschedule. Then I have a meeting on the 17th, that's to go over things here with the negotiating team, and the whole team should get here on the 19th."
        "Get where?" I say. "Yendo or Bakufueki?"
        "We anticipate flying into Bakufueki International Airport at 09:10 on Friday on flight -- "
        "Friday?"
        "Friday May 19th. We'll arrive on flight ZZM 2609, that's a Zem Zara Delta flight, they operate out of the Republic of Oshipitoro, but they've got the latest planes, good crew, don't go on strike.
        "Anyway, then we have an internal flight with Nizon Airlines at 11:20 so we'll be here in Yendo in the afternoon. I think I put the details in an e-mail. We won't be staying at this hotel. We'll be at the Royal Transmutation, which I understand is a lot older and built to more generous proportions. They really micromanage your space in this place.
        "The 19th is a Friday, as I've said. If you've no objection to meeting on a Saturday, we could get down to work on the 19th, sorry, wrong, I mean the 20th, on the Saturday, my team, there'll be six of us, plus you and whoever you want to bring along, as many as you want."
        "Sounds good," I say. "But for one thing."
        "What's that, Ken?"
        "You're totally organized," I say, "but I'm not. Because you've planned for Plan A but I don't even have the first clue what it is."
        "It's simple, Ken," says Kitty. "Don't worry about it. It's a no brainer. Now, are you ready to order? South Zeast will be paying for this, naturally. And whatever alcohol we have to go with it. You do drink, don't you?"
        I'm tempted to say no, but something about the way in which Kitty puts the question makes me feel that her psychology is not altogether different from that displayed by Molo and Po. She wants me to join her in her world, and the way I do that is by climbing into the same glass of alcohol.
        Kitty goes for ostrich meat and I settle for the water buffalo steak. While we eat, I notice the confidence with which Kitty handles her scissors. She's evidently been practicing. This is one foreigner who isn't going to stab herself to death with her eating irons.
        During the meal we discuss the color of coffee, the health benefits of chocolate, recent developments in artificial intelligence, liquid metal, the possibility of an outbreak of red parrot fever in Nizon, and baseball (Kitty is a fan of the Nelgork Vultures).
        Right at the end of the meal, when there's nothing much left on our plates but smears of grease, Kitty brings us to business.
        "A million zen," she says. "That's what we agreed, wasn't it? For a ninety day option. Would it be intolerably crude for me to pay cash?"
        I had been expecting a bank draft but I'm not going to complain.
        "Anything which finds its way into my humble begging bowl will be most welcome," I say.
        Kitty unzips her Phrenic Armor laptop bag which, evidently, does not contain a laptop, and produces a fat white envelope, which she puts on the table. Since the currency bills inside are probably ten thousand zen notes, and since it only takes a hundred of them to make a million, there is probably way more than a million zen in the envelope. I'm accustomed to handling cash, and I know what a million looks like. Wrapped.
        Rightly or wrongly, I figure I'm being offered a bribe, and that's not the way we're going to do things. The worst case disaster would be for the Udamana family to fracture in a big fight over money, and I have to resist that.
        "Tomorrow," I say. "We'll do it at my lawyer's office tomorrow."
        "Do what?" says Kitty, not understanding.
        "Do the cash handover," I say, gesturing at the envelope. "We'll do it after looking at the property -- after the physical walk thing. He -- I mean my lawyer, Mitodarni -- has a standard options contract. I'd like things formal and documented, so you can run your eye over it then sign. Or you can substitute your own, your own options contract, I mean."
        "This sounds complicated," says Kitty. "It's not much money."
        "It's a matter of form rather than anything else," I say. "You can give the money to Mitodarni and it will be processed through his account. Oh, and, despite the big tradition of doing business by cash in Nizon, we'd prefer to get this done by electronic transfer. Or a credit card payment would be fine. Or we'd take a bank draft. It's got to look squeaky clean for the tax people."
        "I see," says Kitty.
        "I hope you do," I say. "We do understand each other, don't we?"
        "Yes," says Kitty. "So I'll be round at nine tomorrow. The convenience store, the ... Turtle?"
        "The Infinite Turtle," I say. "Very easy to find. I'll see you then and there."
        "Okay," says Kitty. "Now, how about we share a bottle of this Crocodile Wince?"