She dropped in on many more sessions, and this impression of people's endless struggle and effort, endless experimentation, of humans thrashing about trying to find a way to live together, only deepened in her. An imitation Potala built outside Beijing at two thirds full size; an ancient temple complex, perhaps Greek in origin, lost in the jungles of Amazonia; another in the jungles of Siam; an Inka capital set high in the mountains; skeletons of people in Firanja who were not quite like modern humans in their skull shape; roundhouses made of mammoth bones; the calendrical purposes of the stone rings of Britain; the intact tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh; the nearly untouched remains of a French medieval village; a shipwreck on the peninsula of Ta Shu, the ice continent surrounding the south pole; early Inkan pottery painted with patterns from the south of Japan; Mayan legends of a 'great arrival' from the west by a god Itzamna, which was the name of the Shinto mother goddess of the same era; megalithic monuments in Inka's great river basin that resembled megaliths in the Maghrib; old Greek ruins in Anatolia that seemed to be the Troy of Homer's epic poem 'The Iliad', huge lined figures on the Inkan plains that could be seen properly only from the sky; the beach village in the Orkneys that Budur had visited with Idelba; a very complete Greek and Roman city at Ephesus, on the Anatolian coast; these and many, many more such finds were described. Each day was a rush of talk, Budur all the while scribbling notes in her notebook, and asking for reprints of articles, if they were in Arabic or Persian. She took a particular interest in the sessions on dating methods, and the scientists working on this matter often told her how much they owed to her aunt's pioneering work. They were now investigating other methods of dating, such as the matching up of successive tree rings to create a 'dendrochronology', proceeding fairly well, and also the measurement of a particular kind of qileak luminescence that was fixed into pottery that had been fired at high enough temperatures. But there was much work to be done on these methods, and no one was happy with the current state of their abilities to date what they found of the past in the earth.

One day a group of the archaeologists who had used Idelba's work on dating joined Budur, and they crossed the campus of the madressa to attend a memorial session for Idelba put on by the physicists who had known her. This session was to consist of a number of eulogies, a presentation on the various aspects of her work, some presentations of recent work that referred back to hers, and then a short party or wake in celebration of ber life.

Budur wandered the rooms of this memorial session accepting praise for her aunt, and condolences on ber passing. The men in the room (for they were mostly men) were very solicitous of her and, for the most par', quite cheerful. Even the memory of Idelba brought smiles to their faces. Budur was filled with amazement and pride by this outpouring of affection, though often it made her ache as well; they had lost a valued colleague, but she had lost the only family that mattered to her, and could not always keep her focus on her aunt's work alone.

At one point she was asked to speak to the assemblage and so she struggled to pull herself together as she went up to the lectern, thinking as she walked of her blind soldiers, who existed in her mind as a kind of bulwark or anchor, a benchmark of what was truly sad. In contrast to that this was indeed a celebration, and she smiled to see all these people congregated to honour her aunt. It only remained to work out what to say, and as she went up the stairs it occurred to her that she needed only to try to imagine what Idelba herself would say, and then paraphrase that. That was reincarnation in a sense she could believe in.

So she looked down at the crowd of physicists, feeling calm and anchored inside, and thanked them for coming, and added, 'You all know how concerned Idelba was for the work that you are doing in atomic physics at this time. That it should be used for the good of humanity and not for anything else. I think the best memorial you could make to her would be some kind of organization of scientists devoted to the proper dissemination and use of your knowledge. Perhaps we can talk about that later. It would be very appropriate if such an organization came to be as a result of thinking about her wishes, because of a belief that she held, as you know, that scientists, among all people, could be counted on to do what was right, because it would be the scientific thing to do.'

She felt a stilling in the audience. The looks on their faces were all of a sudden very much like those on the faces of her blind soldiers: pain, longing, desperate hope; regret and resolve. Many of the people in this room had no doubt been involved in the war effort of their respective countries – at the end, too, when the race in military technologies had speeded up, and things had become particularly ferocious and dire. The inventors of the gas shells that had blinded her soldiers could very well be in this room.

'Now,' Budur continued cautiously, 'obviously this has not always been the case, so far. Scientists have not always done the right thing.

But Idelba's vision of science had it as being progressively improvable, just as a matter of making it more scientific. That aspect is one of the ways you define science, as against many other human activities or institutions. So to me this makes it a kind of prayer, or worship of the world. It is a devotional labour. This aspect should be kept in mind, whenever we remember Idelba, and whenever we consider the uses of our work. Thank you.'

After that more people than ever came up to her to speak their thanks and appreciation, displaced though it was from its absent object. And then, as the memorial hour wound down, some of them moved on to a meal in a nearby restaurant, and when it was over, an even smaller group of them lingered afterwards over coffee and baklava. It was as if they were in one of the rain lashed cafes of Nsara.

And finally, very late in the night, when no more than a dozen of them remained, and the waiters of the restaurant looked as if they wanted to close down, Piali looked around the room, and got a nod from Abdol Zoroush, and said to Budur, 'Dr Chen here,' indicating a white haired Chinese man at the far end of the table, who nodded, 'has brought work from his team on the matter of alactin. This was one of the things Idelba was working on, as you know. He wanted to share this work with all of us here. They have made the same determinations we have, concerning the splitting of the alactin atoms, and how this might be exploited to make an explosive. But they have done further calculations, which the rest of us have checked during the conference, including Master Ananda here,' and another old man seated next to Chen nodded, 'that make it clear that the particular form of alactin that would be necessary for any explosive chain reaction, is so rare in nature that it could not be gath ered in sufficient quantities. A natural form would have to be gathered first, and then processed in factories, in a process that right now is hypothetical only; and even if made practicable, it would be so difficult that it would take the entire industrial capacity of a state to produce enough material to make even a single bomb.'

'Really?' Budur said.

They all nodded, looking quietly relieved, even happy. Dr Chen's translator spoke to him in Chinese and he nodded and said something back.

The translator said in Persian, 'Dr Chen would like to add, that from his observations it seems very unlikely any country will be able to create these materials for many years, even if they should want to. So we are safe. Safe from that, anyway.'

'I see,' Budur said, and nodded at the elderly Chinese. 'As you know, Idelba would be very pleased to have heard these results! She was quite worried, as no doubt you know. But she would also press again for some kind of international scientific organization, of atomic physicists perhaps. Or a more general scientific group, that would take steps to make sure humanity is never threatened by these possibilities. After what the world has just been through in the war, I don't think it could take the introduction of some super bomb. It would lead to madness.'