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Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
6 November, 1936 to 10 November, 1936



Wednesday 6th November, 1936

No opportunity to write these days – we have not set paw in our dorms for two days and the only time we have to “relax” it is out in the cold and damp of the rocks. Though I have waterproof notebooks, the inside of a sleeping sack is rather cramped to use them. Having tried holding the diary in one paw, the pen in another and the flashlight in my teeth, I prefer to wait till daylight. It was rather odd last night, seeing fireworks rising from over Meeting Island in a rather fine display; one hardly expects the British November 5th to be celebrated out here. I have joined in with Helen and Molly on their July 4th, which initially rather puzzled them. I gently broke it to Molly that otherwise, Chicago would be a British responsibility. Her ears dipped, but she conceded the point.

    Our Tutors gave us the instructions at the outset that we could not put up any structures there we could not carry away with us; after a few windy nights half the dorm have started to “interpret” that in their own ways. I am sticking to the letter of the law and improving my waterproof sleeping bag, but others have entrenching tools and are digging in away from the wind. As Beryl points out from the bottom of her four foot mousehole, she is not putting up any sort of structure, as a hole goes down. Most of us have fathers or family members who had four years experience at such things (or one and a half, for Molly and Helen and their countryfurs) and the idea naturally springs to mind.

    Molly and Maria have built a very neat little wood-shored dugout, and ask why I am not joining them. After all, Father being a General in the Royal Engineers, my earliest kittenhood had a background of scribbling in crayon on the backs of obsolete fortification plans, logistic draft orders for duckboards and drainage pumps and such. On the other paw, there is a fine line between stretching the spirit of one’s orders, and cheating. Miss Devinski has enough to look at me down her muzzle for as it is, and (from her point of view) good reason. Besides, I am learning a lot about outdoor shelter my way, and anyone can dig a hole. It would be an interesting study to an anthropomorphologist to see who has gone underground; mice like Beryl one might expect, but Susan de Ruiz has not and is a Pyrenean Desman, and her remotest ancestors lived in holes in banks. Likewise, both Maria and Irma Bundt are well dug in, and one never sees Hollywood films about cave bovines. They need such a big hole, for one thing.

    It is rather like tales of the Royal Flying Corps, where on some forward bases pilots had to sleep underground and still look after their aircraft in banked-up earth shelters. We are expected to be showered and presentable (soaking wet is acceptable) at Songmark for breakfast at half past seven every weekday, and out on the runway in flying kit an hour later. This takes a lot of organisation, and it is amazing to see how well it all comes together. Then, we have been two years at Songmark, and are (I suppose) no more of a motley crew than other years before or junior to us.
 
    I think some of the first-years are looking definitely worried. Knowing that those of us on gate guard might have to get up at two in the morning, spend five hours patrolling Songmark’s perimeter vigilantly, then jump into fairly high performance aircraft for a taxing morning lesson and spend the rest of the day at sports – well, there is no denying it is gruelling. The Prospectus is at least honest, and anyone who expects an easy ride has only themselves to blame. The second-years can at least look back and note how far they have progressed already, and for most of them (not just Red Dorm) they are never going to admit to us being inherently more capable than they are. “Anything you can do, we WILL do better”, as Liberty Morgenstern paraphrases it.

    Maria reminisces sometimes about her home life before she came here, of parties till dawn, sleeping till noon then madcap adventures in fast cars and faster aircraft. She admits she would probably not be in one piece by now if even still alive, had she kept that up. A few times a year she hears sad news from Italy of friends who have cut a mountain road corner in their Bugatti Type 59 just a little too tight, and similar tragedies. Songmark has saved her life in more ways than one, she says – she might have been a somewhat pampered playgirl when she first arrived here, but no longer. Of course her journalism rather suffered awhile from our move outdoors; though our dorms were Spartan they were at least dry and had tables to work on and light at night. She has got around that by hiring one of the young pups living near Songmark to look after the waterproof suitcase with her papers and folding typewriter in the day, pick it up first thing in the morning and drop it off at her dugout at dusk so she can work by lantern light. It is making her appreciate short, tightly worded articles, she says.

    Not surprisingly, some of us are taking to outdoor life less well than others. Li Han is definitely struggling; she is the smallest of us and comes from a very warm climate. Jasbir is holding up well considering her warm homeland of Utterly Pradesh, and so is Carmen from Mixteca. Poor Adele almost suffocated when the side of her hole caved in on top of her in the middle of the night, which nobody else has had problems with in this hard soil. The big surprise is Madeleine X, who one might think would be “euro” enough to have fairly warm blood. Mrs. Oelabe always checks her extremely carefully, and (Madeleine says) is undignified with a core temperature thermometer. Three times now Madeleine has been ordered to soak in a hot bath for half an hour before rejoining us. I could wish for that prescription, without the shivering fits and the thermometer.

    All in all, a busy existence. We are the first year our Tutors have done this with, as before they have put set limits of a week or so on trips with hard living. Lucky us, as Helen growls ironically. I can see the advantages this way round; anyone given a set date can just keep counting the days and not make long-term plans. We are more or less told this is our future, and we should get ready for it. It would be like sending troops out on a year’s fixed tour as the losing side did in the Grand Chaco War in South America. The British Army tradition always was that folk sent out knew they would not be returning till wounded or victorious, which gives an incentive. (Carmen says the trouble was the “modern” side employed fashionably qualified psychologists to draft up the drafting plans, instead of folk of common sense who know how people think.)

    One of the advantages is we are left substantially on our own, with very light supervision. By now our Tutors know that we can look after ourselves and each other, and what they are marking us on is how well. Any fool can be uncomfortable, as Father often told me. Nobody is likely to freeze to death on Spontoon, even if laid out unconscious on a wet and windy night. At least, none of us are, though none of us are reptile or amphibian folk. For whatever reason, none of the folk accepted for Songmark are cold-blooded and there are surprisingly few birds considering we are an aeronautical school. None in my year anyway, just two in the second year and one graceful swan maid in the first. It might be that really high-speed flight damages feathers; they are breakable while however windblown our fur gets it can always be brushed smooth again.

    Just to really rub in the contrast between our former lives and this outdoor part of the course, Molly and me are still attending Madame Maxine’s. The difference is almost painful, going from scented steam baths and fur cosmetic lessons to a muddy hillside in the wet darkness an hour later. It is all useful stuff; though Molly would either be thrown out of a regular finishing school or leave of her own accord by the nearest escape route, she happily takes to these lessons and says she is looking forwards to putting them to good use. It is still a mystery who is paying for them; I imagine Mr. Sapohatan but that hardly explains why Molly and not Helen gets the experience, or why our Tutors gravely disapprove though do not stop us. Helen with a hair perm. Hmm. Still, it is no more unlikely than Molly submitting to such primping.

    That was Monday night, and it is six thirty on Wednesday now. Back to the North Coast! Ten minutes to write after tea is about all I get these days, happily Lexarc shorthand is speedy and I do not have to lock my diary away the way Maria does. Folk like Beryl would be liable to teach themselves my old teacher’s patent shorthand just to crack my diary; she is certainly a hard worker on her own projects such as learning that exquisite copperplate writing one sees on legal documents and bank notes. Happily, I have taken care never to mention just what system I write in, and Beryl would have to find a second-paw out of print Lexarc guide somewhere to even recognise it, let alone start to translate it.

    Still – it does not do to put temptation in fur’s way. I can just about trust Beryl with the traditional burned-out match. Only, of course, until the day I see there is a market for them.


Friday 8th November, 1936

A hard, chilly week where we seem to have spent half our time in the cockpit for advanced classes (plenty of aerobatics, only about two years later than we hoped on our first arrival.) After a long day of flying and maintenance work, it would be so good to relax with a warm bath and tuck into bed with a flight manual or such while the rain hammers down on the window. Oh well, there’s always next term to look forward to, assuming our dear tutors have not come up with something even worse for us by then. If we do not get to Neu Suden Thule on our own account I can believe we will probably be sent there as part of the course. From what Professor Schiller let slip, there are archaeological surprises to be found down there that any museum would be staggered to see.

    As with last week, Molly and me finished up with our anti-hypnosis course with Mr. Sabass over at Song Sodas. He has been rather baffled with us, but seems to have gone away and done some homework since last time. At least, he was asking us if we had been involved with any religious customs apart from the Spontoonie ones recently. What he is seeing is not exactly hypnosis in the usual sense, but something of a rather different flavour. I would have thought Saimmi would have been the one to spot that sort of thing, to be honest. Mind you, she did say last time there was “a shadow over me” and could not approve of Jirry and me getting Tailfast.
 
    This Sunday I will have to summon up my courage and ask about that again. Helen has already pencilled it into her diary, and Mrs H says both Marti and Jirry will be there on Sacred Island for us even if they have to fly full-fare from Hawaii to get there on time. All rather assuming I still qualify, that is. Once I wear that shell locket around my neck once more I will surely be able to turn away temptation. The trouble is, these situations are never predictable enough for me to spot in time to avoid. They just Happen – which is nothing that should happen to a third-year Songmark girl, let alone someone getting the training Saimmi is providing us. Molly reassures me I am becoming more and more qualified as an Adventuress, but that is not the sort I am aiming for. She thinks of it rather as one has to be ”trained on type” to fly a new aircraft model – and certainly we have both added to our qualifications in this past year.

    Actually Molly did quite well tonight, having beaten Beryl to it for once in some friendly racketeering. Our Tutors look us over for contraband as we leave the Songmark compound every night and we are forbidden from leaving the general area, in which there are no shops; the only commercial premises are the sawmill, the bicycle factory and the fish tanning sheds, none of which are very inviting. Having seen how Maria arranges to have her papers and typewriter delivered every day, Molly forwarded some cash to have three bottles of local pineapple brandy dropped off in a cache she then “discovered” and proceeded to offer us for only ten percent over Mahanish’s prices. I could see Beryl’s ears droop; our enterprising mousie would have charged us at least double and she has no chance to do that now with equally unscrupulous competition having jumped in ahead of her. Molly says all’s fair in love, war and commerce. Li Han stuck her tongue out at that and retorted with a few choice remarks about the last century’s commercial Opium Wars (not our finest hour) but still bought a glassful herself.

    Well, we have tried most Spontoonie delicacies and I could hardly object to supporting the local economy. Madeleine X sampled some and pronounced it as far inferior to the famously rough French farm “marc” made out of used grape skins, but that did not stop her buying a second tumbler of it. Just as we determinedly swallow three-finger poi these days knowing we will need the calories when the wind gets up at three in the morning, I dutifully handed over fifty cowries of my allowance to Molly for a generous double tot of  “cask strength Eau de ananna, special reserve 1936” before bedtime. It warms the ears and tail, at least long enough to get to sleep. Though I hardly like to write home and tell Father what some of my allowance is being spent on I am sure he would understand if I told him we were out in trenches in the winter with no fires and no spirit ration.

    Actually, I have drunk worse. Unfortunately that was only slightly worse; the bootleg bathtub gin I bought in the Gilbert and Sullivan Islands, and put to far better use removing fur dye. If this “Goddard Club” the S.I.T.H.S. are forming need a volatile fuel sourced locally, I know what I can recommend they use! The international gourmet community will not miss it, and anyone who drinks a brew that rough and prefers it, has probably had far too much already.


Saturday 9th November, 1936

Dear Diary. Our Tutors have told us so many times that the most dangerous part of an adventure is just when you are congratulating yourself for having got clean away with it. I thought I had brushed the muck of Krupmark off my shoes in August, and especially so by the time I came back from the Albanian East Indies. I had a rather worried two weeks looking at my calendar, indeed. When I read in the newspaper last month about Lord Leon and Lady Susan Allworthy having been brought to justice, a Crown Colony and Justice (in that order) I was sure that whatever happened back on Krupmark was all over and I could forget it as rapidly as possible. Except of course to not merely triple but quadruple-check any hard-luck stories in future. How could I guess that both Allworthies and their maid Judy had carefully rehearsed to tell me the same story of Leon being an almost imprisoned invalid, from convincingly different viewpoints? I should have done, as our dear Tutors would have doubtless told me if I had burdened them with the details.

    I passed the post room on the way to breakfast and spotted the tastefully muted tones of an Empire series stamp in my pigeonhole. The return address on the back was a solicitors in Singapore, which is a respectable place and is surrounded by the famous Malay Straights, as upright and fastidious a people as the planet holds. I was all eagerness to open it as I waited for the breadfruit mash to be served – but by the time I had finished the first few lines, despite all our privations and deprivations I no longer felt hungry.

    I remember all too well signing that document with Leon Allworthy, a genteel and gentlemanly wolf of excellent family (as I thought at the time) where he had honestly acknowledged any possible half-wolven kittens as his own, and that he would make provision for them. It looked like a good and prudent idea at the time, and I was so grateful he was being so considerate that I signed it on the spot. I had worried later on about that document being used to blackmail me, especially after I heard about the Allworthies’ demise. Molly says on Krupmark Island the news of a death or long-term imprisonment throws the locals into a shark-like feeding frenzy, with armed raids and their former property violently changing ownership several times. Someone presumably had all Lord Leon’s papers – but the letter from Singapore is not blackmail, more an embarrassment of riches I do not want to recall earning.

    (Editor’s note: letter carefully pasted on the facing page of the diary.)
 
45 Kao Hsung Street, Singapore
 
Dear Miss Bourne-Phipps,

You may have heard through the press of the untimely
demise of Leonard, Viscount Allworthy last month.  I
and my firm represent the estate of the late Lord
Leonard, and I am taking the liberty of contacting you
regarding the disposition of said estate.

Lord Leonard made a noncupative will in my presence
with other witnesses present at his home nearly two
months ago.  Lord Leonard was in the habit of
establishing such a bequest periodically, owing to the
precarious nature of his health.  In this case, Lord
Leonard acquainted me with a contract signed by him
and yourself.

Based upon his noncupative will and the spirit of the
agreement signed by both of you, and acting as the
attorney-in-fact for Lord Leonard, I declare that you
are the sole heiress to Lord Leonard's title, estate and
business ventures.  Lord Leonard was the de facto
head of Ironclad Millworks, a major supplier to His
Britannic Majesty's military forces, and was in regular
contact with the board of directors.

I await your word as to any future action regarding
the disposition of the estate and the firm, but permit
me to be the first to greet you as Viscountess
Allworthy of Barrow-in-Furryness and in closing,
I remain,

Your obedient servant.
 Nathan Gulph, Esquire
Senior Partner, N. Gulph and D. Vower, Solicitors

 
    Oh my. It is as bad as if I was trying to clear my name with Home and suddenly Iosif Starling publicly announced I had won the Order of Lenin for services rendered to the Communist Party. There goes my reputation! There are “gold-diggers” around who by repute would do anything to get hold of a Title, even more so if it could be got without the inconvenience of having the benefactor about as husband or anything else. By the date, this is not something Lord Leon thought up at the last minute in prison in the Gilbert and Sullivan Islands – it was made the week after I left, when the original document I signed might have been needed. Being an international exile, he could do nothing profitable with his title – except pass it on as an act of dark humour. I know enough about inheritance to be sure I cannot just send it back, such things are registered! And at the exact date it was registered, I could not go before a Priestess or a court with a star-nosed mole and swear Leon had no cause to think I just might be providing an Allworthy heir.

    Ow, in a word. Ow with knobs on, as Prudence says in her interesting Lancashire dialect. What on earth am I going to do about this? An actual gold-digger would take comfort in the fact that the title itself is stainless, and indeed although there have been many rather blood-soaked Earls of Barsetshire in centuries past there have been no shortage of claimants and indeed pretenders eager to be the next one.

    Just ignoring it is not a good idea. There are too few such titles to go unnoticed, and reporters do love a good story. I could pass it on to someone distantly related to the Allworthy line could I find them, but doing so would mean acknowledging it was mine to give. The last time anyone refused a seat in the House of Lords, it took an act of Parliament to confer the title on someone else – hardly inconspicuous. From everything that came out in the newspapers, one can quite understand why Lord Leon chose to live on Krupmark. Despite all its dangers, it was the safest place in the world to hide from extradition or even bounty-hunters, considering murder was one of the least of his crimes.

    I had already told everything to Jirry and Saimmi, which is a comfort; it is not the sort of surprise I would want to spring on them. Unfortunately they do not have the background to advise on this sort of problem. My ears went up a notch as I thought of someone who has, and who I can trust to the hilt. Maria, of course! Though her own family is as Proletarian as Liberty or Tatiana could wish for (a fact that causes them much grinding of teeth) she has been brought up in high society with a traditional grounding in Italian culture steeped in the public squabbles of nobility. She has a rich fund of stories with precedents and pitfalls to learn from, I know. Her Uncle may be Leader, but Italy still has a perfectly good (theoretically) ruling King and many of the better families are perfectly happy to pledge support to Il Puce even if he is a blacksmith’s son.

    Actually, Helen and Maria had been watching my expression as I read and were not surprised when I asked them for some quiet advice. What Helen may miss in terms of old-world social qualifications she more than makes up for in rugged common-sense, and three heads are better than one (an unwise thing to say on Cranium Island, to be sure.)

    Maria has already heard one half of the story from me, and knows me well enough not to suggest “take the money and run.” If only this had happened to Beryl, how happy she would be! Beryl would liquidate all the family assts (to a legally blameless heir the frozen bank accounts and such would be open again), sell off  everything, throw everyone off their land, close all the factories and sell the title as a piece of empty paper to whatever munitions magnate or retired brewer wanted to buy it. This has happened before, and is part of what gives gold-diggers a bad name.

    As Maria promised to think it over, I had another nagging doubt about the whole business. Whatever Lord Leon’s crimes, he just might have been trying to do the right thing by me; I can never know. It had been Lars who pointed out I was probably the only Good Girl on Krupmark Island – which I have to argue with these days in all honesty, but I know what he means at least relatively speaking. I doubt there were many girls in the Krupmark area with the background and pedigree Leon had been raised to expect to someday marry – and if there had been any I can hardly imagine them wanting anything to do with him had they known the facts. It is a rather uncomfortable feeling. Even though I was totally deceived about the situation, I have to admit everything I did there was absolutely of my own free choice and not for a penny of profit. I doubt that happened much to Lord Leon in recent years.

    Helen asked bluntly if I had still been carrying an Allworthy cub/kitten right now I would want to get rid of the title. She had guessed that answer, no – but not for myself. One is brought up with a sense of duties, after all, and tries to do the right thing. Lord Leon was presumably raised the same, whatever crimes he may have committed later on.

    It was a hard problem to put aside even for a morning, but we had more immediate things to do and the world does not stop for my troubles. Out to Casino Island and our dance classes, escorting some of the first-years who have earned Passes. The rest have to sit and work, read or rest up: at Songmark one may well be exhausted, terrified or shocked, but never bored. Even at weekends there are never enough hours in the day and our Tutors firmly believe the Devil finds work for idle paws. Not that they say it in so many words, of course.

    Svetlana was complaining about the early starts even at weekends; it seems she had a rather similar life on Vostok to Maria’s old Italian one in terms of living “actor’s hours.” Still, someone with as much ballet training as she claims to have should be used to hard work.  Madeleine X has done some of that herself and told us about the tendon-stretching hours a day practicing on the bar; it certainly has helped matters in self-defence classes. One who can do the splits without a twinge can almost redefine “high kick.”

    Maria whispered that if Svetlana does the splits in a grass skirt as traditionally worn, both she and the audience may get more than they bargained for. We have advised the first-years to wear bathing costumes underneath, as home-produced attempts at Spontoonie costume may look right but be prone to “in-flight structural failure” like my poor Flying Flea #6 when it hit that pocket of turbulence over the vicar’s ornamental carp pond.

    Still, we had a fine dance all morning, and I had almost pushed my predicament to the back of my mind pending Maria or myself thinking of a neat solution. Even with airmail, it is four days round trip to Singapore and I was telling myself I had at least that much grace before any new developments could happen.

    As our Tutors say, the dangerous bit is when you think the danger is over. When I got back to Songmark I saw Miss Devinski and Mrs. Oelabe standing in the guard room with a soberly dressed bloodhound gentleman carrying a briefcase. Miss Devinski said not a word. She pointed at me, then in the direction of Song Sodas – when Molly, Helen and Maria moved to join us she gave them a look that needed no amplification.
 
    I felt definitely alone as I walked the hundred and sixty paces to Song Sodas, feeling my friends’ gaze on my back and three sets of paws tramping in measured paces behind me. I have asked Mrs. Hoele’toemi about Song Sodas, but though she remembers it being a company headquarters and counting-house when she was a kitten, just how it became part of the Songmark estates she never knew.

    Everything seemed to have been arranged for me, which was disturbing in its own right. The side door was open, and one small room had the door wedged open awaiting me. My tail was drooping somewhat as the three walked in behind me and closed the door – and it was not improved when the bloodhound introduced himself as Mr. Van der Valk, a Meeting Island lawyer acting on commission – and bowed as he addressed me as Viscountess Allworthy. My ears and tail drooped like wet dishrags.

    Things went definitely downhill from there. I protested that I had no idea or ambition to carry that title – at which he pulled out a memorandum book and Miss Devinski asked Mrs. Oelabe to examine my tail. I rather regretted having the gold loop reattached at Madame Maxine’s after taking it off at Saimmi’s “investiture” – after all, I was still hoping that at least part of what I had heard about it was true. There is very little that can be done about “insurance” on Krupmark, but in some respect that was how it had been billed.

    Oh dear. This Mr. Van der Valk had been apprised of certain things by telegram; airmail may take four days for a round trip but the wire services do not. He had some more documents that had been appended to the front of the one I signed – and in the same handwriting and ink, with the single page I signed now being numbered as Page four.  It is just the sort of thing we are expressly told to look out for. The pages I never saw have phrases such as “due to the lack of legitimate legal and religious facilities on the island I perforce inhabit” and “knowing that Miss Bourne-Phipps is not legally free” – which is true enough, as our Songmark tutors have legal guardianship and can veto any major decisions. They never stopped or disapproved of Helen and me getting Tailfast to the Hoele’toemi brothers, or even Prudence with Tahni.

    Oh dear, squared, cubed and to the fourth power, as Susan de Ruiz would say. The documents more or less say I accepted an inconspicuous “engagement ring” since anything more would have drawn unwelcome attention (true enough) and he could not risk leaving Krupmark which has nowhere legally recognised at doing better. Which also seems to be true enough; they have a Church but I doubt any services held there bear much relation to the usual rituals. Miss Devinski just asked one question; was all this of my own free will. A yes or no answer, she added, was required, and “but” would not be part of it. Well, the Allworthies might have lied, but I refused to, and the reply had to be “yes.”

    Having seen the wire ring and gold bead around my tail-root for himself, Mr. Van der Valk bowed again and took his leave, promising his firm and his clients would be in touch. That left me with Miss Devinski and Mrs. Oelabe listening in somewhat icy silence. Very quietly, Miss Devinski “suggested” I tell them the whole story.

    I think my ears are still blushing. It had helped to have already confessed to Jirry and Saimmi, but they are Spontoonies and see things rather differently. At the end of it, Miss Devinski gave a rather theatrical sigh. After a few minutes’ silence she leaned forward and congratulated me on my ennoblement, and asked when I would be leaving Songmark to see to my Estates.

    I tried my best to explain, but Miss Devinski can be very single-minded at times. Most times, actually. I think she would have been far happier if I really had planned all this as a daring coup; as it happens I do seem to have picked up some advantages – and at no real cost. Beryl would have thought of it as a major triumph, I am sure. Our dear Tutor turned to Mrs. Oelabe with a mischievous smile and asked if she thought it worthwhile to amend my Songmark details to Mrs. Amelia Allworthy. Although nobody claims we have any sort of marriage license, the same is true of millions of people who are acknowledged as being mates.

    Pleasantries aside, Miss Devinski shook her head and asked for the second time this year if I thought it was any use with my carrying on at Songmark, as I seem incapable of learning the important lessons. Well, I can see what she means. There is little point, she carried on, in me being excellent at my technical studies if I use them to blunder into this sort of situation. Her ears dipped as she indicated just what certain people would pay for a Songmark graduate, and she has no intention of signing my certificate just to have me captured the week after.
 
    Considering some of the things I willingly did to conceal my presence with her brother from Lady Susan, I can quite understand what she means. Their maid Judy always had a good and sensible reason ready for anything, be it gloves I could not scratch through or the rather extreme measures I had to take not to yowl the place down. It was jolly uncomfortable to wear, but so is an oxygen mask and I could quite see the point. Had the Allworthies decided to show their true colours at such a time, I could have hardly put up much of a fight. (Memo to myself; never again wear anything I can’t take off by myself. And beware of places where they just happen to have such things on the shelf, for however plausible a reason.)

    I confess I came near to losing my temper, but kept calm as I replied that I had little to be sorry for. The last time I was threatened with being thrown out it was for supporting Molly against those pirates attacking the Parsifal – and though she can have me expelled Miss Devinski cannot and will not persuade me to ever abandon a friend. This time round – I had presented the facts on Krupmark as they had appeared to me. I am not Tailfast right now, by no choice of my own, and anything that happened between me and an apparently persecuted invalid was sympathy and a hatred of injustice. Miss Devinski can kick me out but will not change my mind about that, and I had nothing to lose by telling her so to her snout. I admitted I was deceived, but defended my reasons. I felt like asking if I would make a better or worse Viscountess Allworthy than Lady Susan, but felt that might be pushing my luck rather too far.

    Miss Devinski shook her head, and looked at me hard for another minute. It was bad enough, she declared, having to consider failing Adele for her misadventures on Krupmark as well as me; Adele has the dice permanently loaded against her and things happen to her regardless of how good her planning and preparation. I have no such excuse, she says. She named two conditions for me staying in Songmark – that I never remove that tail wire again till I graduate (to remind me the next time I fall into a situation) and to cure Adele’s problem. That had been a request before, but now it is an order.  With that, she dismissed me.

    It could have been worse. I could be packing my bags right now, but having nowhere to go except South Island – until my name is cleared back in England I have no more chance to get there without being arrested than the previous holder of the title.  Being innocent unlike Lord Leon does not change matters. It was a nasty hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach to think that in far-off Barrow-in-Furryness * people might have heard and be celebrating having me come back and put things to rights. Whatever might be wrong I hardly know, but if I have to accept the title I will have to take responsibility. As if I did not have enough to worry about!
       
   * Editor’s note: A medium sized industrial town on the edge of the Lake District, Northern England. The scenery is considered most attractive – if you prefer dry docks and foundries to hills and woods.


Sunday 10th November, 1936

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I had discussed everything with Helen, Maria (who says I should take the title and the duties) and Molly (who says I should take the money and run, or rather stay right here.) Helen is rarely judgemental about my adventures but says I got off lightly considering, both with Krupmark and with Miss Devinski. Then, she has been Tailfast for well over a year and never gets into the sort of situation I fall into.

    One thing she was positive about is trying to help Adele. We dropped in on her dorm after breakfast, and made no secret of the fact that Adele and I are in danger of being thrown out – me because of the particular Adventures I keep finding myself in, and Adele due to the consequences of her incredible bad luck. Susan de Ruiz brought out a thick notebook she has been compiling since Adele joined her dorm, and announced that it was NOT luck, in the usual sense of the word. She has mathematical proof, she says, that Adele’s problem cannot be explained by any possible set of coincidences. If someone throws a string of six unlucky “snake-eyes” with dice then wins and loses normally the rest of the day, that would be an unlucky coincidence but well within the limits of probability. If the dice always throw nothing but ones, one knows there is something seriously amiss with the dice (generally because Beryl sold you them.)

    I had asked Adele before if she had objected to telling the others about her family really being treasure-hunters, and about that burial mound in Alaska they “investigated” on the grounds that the tribe responsible were extinct. Cause and effect seem quite clear here; she has been suffering (rather unjustly) ever since. On the other paw, she says she will live with it rather that risk anything being re-targeted on her parents. I had not noticed any curse obviously attached to her as I did with my friend Angelica and her aircraft, but that had been a Spontoonie traditional curse and I am probably more attuned to that than an Amerindian model.

    Anyway, instead of taking Eva with us to see Saimmi, today we brought Adele along. She usually goes to Casino Island on Sundays (there is no Absolute Anabaptist church on Spontoon) and was keen to see just what we actually do in the Native religion. Considering her own religion does not accept the existence of curses, not surprisingly they have not been able to do much about hers. Madeleine tells me colonial medical doctors on Madagascar had a similar problem; according to the Natives nobody ever died of disease or old age there. All deaths were regarded as being due to enemies employing witch-doctors, which made practicing medicine rather difficult.

    Saimmi was in a good mood, having apparently added a new holy site to the island. I had no idea how such things were done. She showed us – a most surprising sight, at an even more surprising site. I had not been past Maria’s old church since the congregation dismantled it intending to build a Calvary there – although I had heard folk had put those plans on hold, I had not heard exactly why.

    Bamboo grows fast and well on Spontoon, but I had never seen anything like this before. Where the Chapel of the Sacred Heart had been there was now a grove that looked as if it had been there for a century, with solid stalks fifteen feet high and as thick as my wrist even at waist level. More of a sacred grove than Sacred Heart, as I could detect without even touching it. Saimmi mentioned that various folk had tried to clear it, but without success – and when the villagers refused to let them try and burn it down due to the risk of fire spreading, an impasse had been reached. Saimmi admitted it was none of her doing, and that she had learned much by studying one of her own newer Priestesses.

    Saimmi is certainly the most open-minded religious leader I have ever heard of, except possibly Archbishop Crowley and he bluffed his way to the top. Not many such would admit there is much they do not know, and call in specialists from outside as required (I hardly count Eva’s government and all the mystical research and artefact hunting they get up to.) She demonstrated the ritual of seeking attached spirits, which covers curses as well. Trying it on Adele, I could certainly see that something was there, if not what. The different styles have a particular “flavour” to them, which is very hard to describe but easy to recognise when you see them. It is like trying to describe the scent of hot engine oil to someone who has lived their whole life in the middle of the Albert Island jungles.

    Well! Our Tutors always say the first step in beating a problem is seeing just what you are up against. Saimmi confirmed what we expected; this is more a Northern shore of Main Island thing, with totem poles rather than Tikis in the culture. She promised to make enquiry for us.

    We dropped Adele off on Haio Beach while Saimmi took us through our classes and exercises. Next week this Warrior Priestess arrives on the boat from Ponape. It seems she is one of the types who originally settled the Spontoon group (till the disaster that we know of) and her folk retain many strange secrets. It should be jolly interesting, I am sure. Saimmi has already taught us all the defensive rituals she used on Cranium Island; should anything happen to her we will be able to pass them on. They will definitely be needed when the main Fragment from the bottom of Sacred Lake is brought up, she tells us. Indeed, there is a contingency plan filed at the Althing for a “Civil Defence Exercise” that will involve totally evacuating the villages nearby and clearing the area completely of all but those involved.
 
    Raising the main fragment is a job hopefully for next year; it will be a risky enterprise but not nearly as bad as risking having someone else bring it up first. Once it ceases to be “buried in water” as the old carvings on Casino Island put it, all sorts of things are liable to happen. Just look at the fate of Cranium Island, after their very minor fragment ceased to be “buried in fire” as soon as the volcano became dormant! From what information survives, it seems the Cranium Island piece was the smallest, then the Krupmark one, and the main piece is still far under Sacred Lake but within the reach of a modern deep-sea diver. We have seen those final carvings hidden under the pathways in “The Tub” – they are a frightening thing to read, all the more so for their hasty incompleteness. Nobody who carved them lived to get off the islands, Saimmi says – they were inscribed  by apprentices in the hours after the disaster while the senior Priestesses gave their lives getting the three Fragments separated and out of range of each other. Without those apprentices we would know even less about what really happened to Spontoon five hundred years ago – the fact that the sacred coconut trees still will not grow here, is the very least of it.

    I can quite understand why the Euros sometimes think the Spontoonies an ungrateful bunch; on the face of it the original Plantation owners should be thanked for bringing these islands back to life – and all the workers who came here from all across the Pacific were volunteers, besides. To anyone who knows the facts Saimmi has revealed, things are rather different. The islands had been in quarantine for reasons the Plantation owners could not understand, and indeed in a few more centuries might have been safe to inhabit. Suddenly there were people arriving that the Polynesians could not stop, bringing themselves and their families unprotected into the equivalent of a plague spot or a battlefield drenched in mustard gas. The surrounding Polynesians admitted their responsibility and steeled themselves for sacrifice – it cost the lives of a generation of their holiest just to make the islands minimally safe, and that was for strangers. A very few furs had been living on South Island in areas that had been less affected or better protected by still-functioning Tiki rings, but the islands had been almost empty and for very good reason. Even the pirates had never stayed onshore for long.

    Back to pick up Adele and luncheon at the Hoele’toemi household! This is always a treat, and Mrs. H was pleased to welcome Adele especially when I hinted that I would be doing my best to help her. Exactly how, I will have to find out when we get to the North Coast and talk to the Priestesses who wear bark cloth rather than grass skirts.
 
    It was rather odd to sit around the Hoele’toemi fire pit talking in English again. Helen and I speak Spontoonie quite well, though with our accents no Native will be fooled for long. But with Adele there it was only common courtesy, and the Polynesians are greatly concerned with such.

    My ears drooped considerably as I left, thinking about all my new troubles. I had almost reconciled myself to not seeing Barsetshire again – if I could never go back, my family could understand my having to stay out here and becoming Mrs. Hoele’toemi. This will not mix with being Viscountess Allworthy, with responsibilities and duties back in England. At Spontoon, we are told and taught to shape our lives the way we want them, not the way others impose circumstances. Right now I could use a hint of how to do that!

    Back to Eastern Island, looking slightly enviously at the brightly lit windows of Songmark’s junior dorms as we checked in with Miss Blande at the gatehouse. As Maria has said, two years ago when she was complaining about the beds and the food she had no idea how well-off she really was. One sees charities raising funds for holidays and such for the underprivileged young in cities; Songmark works more like a foundation to cure the over-privileged. At least, anyone who can afford to come here soon learns the joys of a simple life. Liberty Morgenstern says the same about Communism with its “re-education work cadres” for the bourgeoisie, with the difference that we volunteered for this. I think by now she has stopped calling the rest of us “pampered tools and parvenu parasites of the bourgeois” as she realises how hard all the beds are and that our Tutors do not really sneak off and feast on caviar and lobster as we tuck into our Poi, the chorus of “It’s good for you!” ringing out in commiseration to the junior years.

    Actually, some of Maria’s newspaper articles are attracting a lot of furious attention from Red Dorm. Liberty and Tatiana have come prepared to tackle most things and denounce official propaganda, but Maria has a rather stealthy line in just announcing inconvenient facts. Her Uncle actually did publish a distinctly Socialist magazine, “Avanti!” until barely ten years ago, which Liberty finds hard to stomach. He does keep stealing their thunder, with calls for “national social unity against parasites and criminals.”  That is exactly the sort of thing Liberty says too; having Il Puce beating New Haven to the punch must be hard to bear.
 
    Back up to the northern coast, for another chilly evening. The one advantage is that we get plenty of time to sleep, always supposing we are not on gate duty. Our Tutors are probably having us observed inconspicuously, so we are keeping to the rules and making sure nobody breaks them too fragrantly. Missy K is well padded enough to stay warm, but grumbles she would stay a lot warmer with her fiancé in her burrow. Technically she is a Spontoonie off Songmark property, and would not be breaking any Songmark rules by bringing him over – but if one of us can, we all would want to.
 
    The nights are definitely long, and there is not a lot to see on this side of the island. Radio LONO is above us on the hill, and with a good pair of binoculars one can see Superior Engineering brightly lit up and working late on a Pan-Nimitz flying boat that seems to have engine trouble. The odd thing here is the bicycle factory, an Althing-owned business that makes both sturdy models for going to market and finely-tuned racing frames from Vostok magnesium alloy. What is odd is they are working night shift, and the night shift are all very recognisably Spontoonies by their dress and fur style. Every evening they come in and we can see them wheeling the jigs and such out of storage, then before dawn swapping production again. I mentioned it to Helen, who suggests we quietly ignore whatever they are building when they are definitely not assembling bicycles from the light alloy stocks.

    All in all, an interesting day. One thing we have noticed is that those of us who change coats with the seasons have started to grow our Winter patterns a month earlier than last year. My own is getting rather thicker, and with oiled fur I can imagine getting used to a grass skirt all year round. The Spontoonies on Main Island grow up that way, and are of course quite used to it. One thing tourists remark on is the locals’ wonderful fur, and make not-so-quiet enquiries about what they use to get it that way. Though the Spontoonies are happy to sell them bottles of “Traditional Native herbal fur treatment” the real secret is fresh air and sun on uncovered pelts. We are certainly getting plenty of that!



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