In a plain but capacious tent a man at a desk was interviewing pris oners, none of whom Ismail recognized. He was led to the front, and the interviewing officer looked at him curiously, and said in Persian, 'You are high on the list of people required to report to the Kerala of Travancore.'

'I am surprised to hear it.'

'You are to be congratulated. This appears to be at the request of Bhakta, abbess of the Travancori hospital.'

'A correspondent of many years' standing, yes.'

'All is explained. Please allow the captain here to lead you to the ship departing for Travancore. But first, one question; you are reported to be an intimate of the Sultan's. Is this true?'

'It was true.'

'Can you tell us where the Sultan has gone?'

'He and his bodyguard have absconded,' Ismail said. 'I believe they are headed for the Balkans, with the intention of re establishing the Sultanate in the West.'

'Do you know how they escaped the palace?'

'No. I was left behind, as you see.'

Their machine ships ran by the heat of fires, as Ismail had heard, burning in furnaces that boiled water, the steam then forced by pipes to push paddlewheels, encased by big wooden housings on each side of the bull. Valves controlled the amount of steam going to each wheel, and the ship could turn on a single spot. Into the wind it thumped along, bouncing awkwardly over and through waves, throwing spray high over the ship. When the winds came from behind, the crew raised small sails, and the ship was pushed forwards in the usual way, but with an extra impulse provided by the two wheels. They burned coal in the furnaces, and spoke of coal deposits in the mountains of Iran that would supply their ships till the end of time.

'Who made the ships?' Ismail asked.

'The Kerala of Travancore ordered them built. Ironmongers in Anatolia were taught to make the furnaces, boilers and paddlewheels. Shipbuilders in the ports at the east end of the Black Sea did the rest.'

They landed at a tiny harbour near old Trebizond, and Ismail was included in a group that rode south and east through Iran, over range after range of dry hills and snowy mountains, into India. Everywhere there were short dark skinned troops wearing white, on horseback, with many wheeled cannon prominently placed in every town and at every crossroads. All the towns looked undamaged, busy, prosperous. They changed horses at big fortified changing stations run by the army, and slept at these places as well. Many stations were placed under hills where bonfires burned through the night; blocking the light from these fires transmitted messages over great distances, all over the new empire. The Kerala was in Delhi, he would be back in Travancore in a few weeks; the abbess Bhakta was in Benares, but due back in Travancore in days. It was conveyed to Ismail that she was looking forward to meeting him.

Ismail, meanwhile, was finding out just how big the world was. And yet it was not infinite. Ten days of steady riding brought them across the Indus. On the green west coast of India, another surprise: they boarded iron carts like their iron ships, with iron wheels, and rode them on causeways that held two parallel iron rails, over which the carts rolled as smoothly as if they were flying, right through the old cities so long ruled by the Mughals. The causeway of the iron rails crossed the broken edge of the Deccan, south into a region of endless groves of coconut palms, and they rolled by the power of steam as fast as the wind, to Travancore, on the southwesternmost shore of India.

Many people had moved to this city following the recent imperial successes. After rolling slowly through a zone of orchards and fields filled with crops Ismail did not recognize, they came to the edges of the city. The outskirts were crowded with new buildings, encampments, lumber yards, holding facilities: indeed for many leagues in all directions it seemed nothing but construction sites.

Meanwhile the inner core of the city was also being transformed. Their train of linked iron carts stopped in a big yard of paired rails, and they walked out of a gate into the city centre. A white marble palace, very small by the standards of the Sublime Porte, had been erected there in the middle of a park which must have replaced much of the old city centre. The harbour this park overlooked was filled with all manner of ships. To the south could be seen a shipyard building new vessels; a mole was being extended out into the shallow green seas, and the enclosed water, in the shelter of a long low island, was as crowded with ships as the inner harbour, with many small boats sailing or being rowed between them. Compared to the dusty torpor of Konstantiniyye's harbours, it was a tumultuous scene.

Ismail was taken on horseback through the bustling city and down the coast farther, to a grove of palm trees behind a broad yellow beach. Here walls surrounded an extensive Buddhist monastery, and new buildings could be seen a long way through the grove. A pier extended out from the seaside buildings, and several fire powered ships were docked there. This was apparently the home of the famous hospital of Travancore.

Inside the monastery grounds it was windless and calm. Ismail was led to a dining room and given a meal, then invited to wash off the grime of his travel. The baths were tiled, the water either warm or cool, depending on which pool he preferred, and the last ones were under the sky.

Beyond the baths stood a small pavilion on a green lawn, surrounded by flowers. Ismail donned a clean brown robe he was offered, and padded barefoot across the cut grass to the pavilion, where an old woman was in conversation with a number of others.

She stopped when she saw them, and Ismail's guide introduced him.

'Ah. A great pleasure,' the woman said in Persian. 'I am Bhakta, the abbess here, and your humble correspondent.' She stood and bowed to Ismail, hands together. Her fingers were twisted, her walk stiff; it looked to Ismail like arthritis. 'Welcome to our home. Let me pour you some tea, or coffee if you prefer.'

'Tea will be fine,' Ismail said.

'Bodhisattva,' a messenger said to the abbess, 'we will be visited by the Kerala on the next new moon.'

'A great honour,' the abbess said. 'The moon will be in close conjunction with the morning star. Will we have time to complete the mandalas?'

'They think so.'

'Very good.'

The abbess continued to sip her tea.

'He called you bodhisattva?' Ismail ventured.

The abbess grinned like a girl. 'A sign of affection, with no basis in reality. I am simply a poor nun, given the honour of guiding this hospital for a time, by our Kerala.'

Ismail said, 'When we corresponded, you did not mention this. I thought you were simply a nun, in something like a madressa and hospital.'

'For a long time that was the case.'

'When did you become the abbess?'

'In your year, what would it be, 1194. The previous abbot was a Japanese lama. He practised a Japanese form of Buddhism, which was brought here by his predecessor, with many more monks and nuns, after the Chinese conquered Japan. The Chinese persecute even the Buddhists of their own country, and in Japan it was worse. So they came here, or first to Lanka, then here.'

'And they made studies in medicine, I take it.'

'Yes. My predecessor in particular had very clear sight, and a great curiosity. Generally we see as if it were night, but he stood in the light of morning, because he tested the truth of what we say we know, in regularized trials. He could sense the strengths of things, the force of movement, and devise tests of them in trials of various kinds. We are still walking through the doors he opened for us.'

'Yet I think you have been following him into new places.'

'Yes, more is always revealed, and we have been working hard since he left that body. The great increase in shipping has brought us many useful and remarkable documents, including some from Firanja. It's becoming clear to me that the island England was a sort of Japan about to happen, on the other side of the world. Now they have a forest uncut for centuries, regrown over the ruins, and so they have wood to trade, and they build ships themselves. They bring us books and manuscripts found in the ruins, and scholars here and all around Travancore have learned the languages and translated the books, and they are very interesting. People like the Master of Henley were more advanced than you might think. They advocated efficient organization, good accounting, auditing, the use of trial and record to determine yields – in general, to run their farms on a rational basis, as we do here. They had waterpowered bellows, and could get their furnaces white hot, or high yellow at least. They were even concerned with the loss of forest in their time. Henley calculated that one furnace could burn all the tress within a yoganda's radius, in only forty days.'