The putative I Am God's Daughter had alighted and was sweeping
her horizon with a pair of powerful binoculars. For a moment I thought
we had simply failed our too-loud-to-be-heard test - though I had an
increasingly uncomfortable feeling that Louise did not care whether
she was seen or heard or not. She was rapidly becoming an elk
without a caution, a giant moose with moods and and a life of her
own, capable not only of passing Turing tests but of setting them.
From the steady fix of I Am God's Daughter's lenses I realised that
we had been spied. She was alone, perhaps at the very centre of the
estate, and I could not help but admire her air of confidence and ease
in the face of the unexpected. I was also delighted to observe that her
clothing matched my discarded Shona skirt and hacking jacket down
to the last stitch, only the headscarf varied from my more subdued
choice, now a bedraggled ruin under the dome, of love-in-the-mist,
forget-me-nots and grass snakes, astonishingly her wellies were
modestly studded with the omnipresent swarovsky crystals, a touch
which at the time I had adopted it was thought to be pushing the
envelope but, in this celebrity ridden universe of ours, it appears no
such concept exists. While I was congratulating myself on this
remarkable coincidence, Louise was focusing her attention on details
of the body work of the royal vehicle. There was a remarkable lack of
insignia, she must have taken one of the regular estate machines as
there were no detectable escutcheons or panel emblazonings until
suddenly there flashed up on my screen the image of a pharaonic
cartouche stencil-sprayed in gold just below the petrol cap which
itself bore a finely stencilled cartouche followed by three delicate
hieroglyphs that on analysis turned out to refer to Pepi II's pyramid
complex - Neferkare is Established and Living - which I interpreted
as carrying a hint of menace or challenge, but which was a certain
indicator of how far Muscletone had penetrated the private sphere of
the monarch. This was a comfort to me. If a lumbering, ill equipped
incompetent whose disguise made him look like a bag lady on
steroids could succeed in marking a royal vehicle, I assumed he had
accomplished this feat in the Balmoral stables, then what could not I
achieve with my staggering technological support, my access to
Ancient Pictish dialects, my ability to read cartouches at 2000 ells,
and my partnership with the bafflingly intelligent Louise? And where
else had he managed to spray the provocative cartouche - the royal
