It is unusual to think of a meal as a device, especially one that was so
differently classified by the various participants. For me it was supper,
for I had been told it was so. For Her it was breakfast, and She was
undoubtedly correct in that as it was her first meal as the wearer of
the MarkVI and as an animate being - as far as I knew. As usual I
hadn't eaten for what seemed liked aeons. Perhaps just a dab of fast-
melting durian ice-cream back in Balmoral, but really nothing
substantial since my gin and tonic, not even a chia seed, though I
may have been fortunate enough to have ingested a scrap or two of
Muscletone's salmon fillet murder weapon. I thought of the half-tasted
smoked capercailley with longing. Oh for a pantry to raid! Oh for a
surviving packet of sandwiches! And I patted my pockets in the hopes
that some generously thick wads of smoked salmon had been
included in my new outfit, for the moorland walker is always in need
of sustenance. But there was nothing, just a briar pipe and a pouch of
chocolate flavoured tobacco. Ho hum! I thought, are they trying to kill
two birds with one stone? An odd inclusion for the benefit of a suit
wearer who never smoked. What if they were simply trying to think of
everything and included whatever they thought might hit the spot,
then my suit could well be bulging at every seam with unexpected
profferings. But this was no suit to lightly pat, barbed as it was at so
many tender prominences. And who were 'they'? I had come to
accept the presence of my engineer-handler as a mentor, much as I
accepted my publicist or literary agent, and a trip to Europa could be
taken in the same vein as one of those visits to Central Asia and-
write-all-about-it that had become such an essential chore in my pre-
Royal stalking days. Despite my presence on a space ship that was
masquerading as a duchesse brisŽe I felt that I had still not come up
with the definitive answers needed to justify exiting the mission. The
ambient environment may be curious relative to one's own
necessarily restricted experience, but that in no way means that it
cannot become yet more curious. I decided the best course would be
to go with the flow and one day I might just hit upon the secret of
Balmoral.
Pestit led the way. Her solution to the helmet-shield-trident problem
was to place the helmet on the shield, exactly centred, and then to
rotate the ensemble on the point of the trident. There was much of the
circus act in this feat which required a musculature far beyond my
own. The weight of the shield alone had taxed my strength, but Pestit
