'Oh.  Well, that is a fairly respectable army.  Or militia.'

He looked dubious. 'That how many guns.  Men not supposed to sell them or use them for other thing, like for plumb in house, but some have.' He looked glum.

'Sorry state of affairs,' I said.

'Sorry state of affairs,' he agreed, then brightened. 'But Prince always is saying he happy to have me most unemploymented man in Thulahn.' He looked around, then leaned closer and dropped his voice.  I bent to hear. 'I get performance-relate bonus every year there no war.'

'Do you?' I laughed. 'How splendid!  Well done.'

The militia commander offered to refresh my glass, which didn't need refreshing, then wandered off in the general direction of the drinks table, looking pleased both with himself and the financially agreeable absence of war.

I did some more circulating and found myself talking to one of the teachers, a young Welsh woman called Cerys Williams.

'Oh, Cerys, like the girl in Catatonia?'

'That's it.  Same spelling.'

'I'm sure you get asked all the time, but what's it like, teaching here?'

Cerys thought the Thulahnese children were great.  The schools had very little equipment and the parents were inclined to keep children away from lessons if there was anything that had to be done on the farm, but generally they seemed very bright and willing to learn.

'How long do they get in school?  How many years?'

'Just primary, really.  There is secondary education, but you have to pay for that.  It isn't a lot, but it's more than most of the families can afford.  Usually they educate the oldest boy up to third or fourth year, but the rest tend to leave when they're eleven or twelve.'

'Always the boy, even if there's an older girl?'

She gave a rueful grin. 'Oh, well, almost always.  I'm trying — well, we're all trying, really, but I think I'm trying hardest — to change that, but you're up against an awful lot of generations of tradition, see?'

'I'll bet.'

'But they're not stupid.  They're coming round to the idea that girls might benefit from higher education; we've had a few successes.  It still usually means only one child per household goes to secondary, mind you.'

'I imagine there might be a few eldest boys who feel resentful because of that.'

She smiled. 'Oh, I don't know.  They're happy enough to leave school when the time comes.  I think most of them would much rather it was their sisters who had to stay on.'

More circulating.  The Prime Minister himself filled me in on the workings of the Thulahnese governmental system.  There was a form of democracy at the most local level, where people in each village and town elected a head man or mayor, who then chose town constables to uphold the law (or didn't bother: there was very little crime and certainly I hadn't seen any sort of police presence in Thuhn so far).  The chief of each noble family and the head men and mayors formed a parliament of sorts, which met irregularly and could advise the monarch, but after that it was down to appointees of the monarch, and appointees of appointees.  Anyone in the kingdom could appeal to the throne if he thought he'd been hard done by in the courts or elsewhere.  Suvinder took this part of the job seriously, though Jungeatai Rhumde thought people were inclined to take advantage of the Prince's good nature.  He'd suggested a sort of supreme court set-up instead, but Suvinder preferred the old system.

'Aw, shit, no, they're great people.  You wouldn't want to confuse them with anybody who gives a fuck, mind you.' Rich was an Ozzie civil engineer.  He laughed. 'Some of the fellas disagree, but I think they've got a great attitude to life, but then they think they're going to be reincarnated or something like that, you know?'

I smiled, nodded.

'Who needs crash barriers if God's looking after you and you might come back as something better next time anyway, you know?  Fucking hard little workers, though.  Don't know when to stop.'

And more circulating.  Michel was a French doctor, moodily good-looking but one of those people who makes no effort to be attractive or even interesting beyond keeping their good looks kempt.  He was a bit dour, as we say, but provided an overview of medicine in Thulahn, which was pretty basic.  High infant mortality, poor ante- and post-natal care in the outlying villages, whole population prone to influenza epidemics which killed a few thousand each winter, some malnutrition, a lot of preventable and/or easily treatable blindness.  Goitres and other deficiency conditions a problem in some of the valleys where they didn't get a full spectrum of minerals and vitamins in their diet.  No sign of gender-biased infanticide.  AIDS known but not common.

On which negative but happy note, the good doctor propositioned me in a bored sort of way that left it open whether he was so used to women falling into his arms that he'd got out of the way of putting much effort into it, or was so frightened of rejection he thought it wise not to invest the suggestion with too much significance.

I did my impression of the Roman Empire, and declined.

Blue pine and chir pine, prickly leaved oak, Himalayan hemlocks and silver firs, juniper and scrub juniper filled the crannied spaces where any soil had gathered, the last — stunted, blasted by the wind, burned by frost but still just growing — only finally petering out at five kilometres above sea level.

'This is a pluralist society.  We respect the beliefs of our Hindu brothers and sisters.  Buddhists tend not to see themselves as being in competition with others.  The Hindu faith is like Judaism, providing an ancient set of rules by which one may live one's life and order one's thoughts.  Ours is a younger religion, a different generation of thought, if you like, grafted upon a set of much older traditions, but having drawn lessons from them, and respectful of them.  Westerners often see it as more like a philosophy.  Or so they tell us.'

'Yes, I know a few Buddhists in California.'

'You do?  So do I!  Do you know—?'

I smiled.  We swapped a few names but, predictably, came up with no matches.

Sahair Beies was Rinpoche, or head lama of Bhaiwair monastery, the biggest in the country.  I had already seen it, albeit from a distance, strung across the rock faces above the old palace a few kilometres out of Thuhn.  He was slight, indeterminately old, shaved bald and wore very deeply saffron robes and little wireframe glasses behind which intelligent-looking eyes twinkled.

'You are a Christian, Ms Telman?'

'Nope.'

'Jewish, then?  I have noticed that many people whose names end in "-man" are Jewish.'

I shook my head. 'Evangelical atheist.'

He nodded thoughtfully. 'A demanding path, I suspect.  I asked one of your compatriots what he was, once, and he replied, "Devout Capitalist."' The Rinpoche laughed.

'We have a lot of those.  Most are less open about it.  Life as acquisition.  Whoever dies with the most toys wins.  It's a boy thing.'

'He gave me a lecture on the dynamic nature of the West and the United States of America in particular.  It was most illuminating.'

'But it didn't persuade you to move to New York City and become a venture capitalist or a stockbroker?'

'No!' He laughed.

'What about other faiths?' I asked. 'Do you, for instance, get Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses turning up here?' I had a sudden comical image of two guys in sober suits and shiny shoes (covered in snow) shivering outside the giant doors of a remote monastery.

'Very rarely.' The Rinpoche looked thoughtful. 'Usually by the time we see them they are…changed,' he said.  His eyes bulged. 'Oh, I find physicists much more interesting.  There have been some famous American professors and Indian Nobel Prize winners I have talked to, and it struck me that we were — as one says — on the same wavelength in many ways.'