'Oh,' I said. 'That sort of dream.  I thought you meant dreams when one is asleep.'

'Those as well, dear child,' Uncle Mo said, sitting wearily back in his seat.  We had a four-person table to ourselves, on the eastern side of the train.  I was on my Sitting Board, of course, still wearing the leather trousers which I was growing to like, and the jacket that Grandma Yolanda had bought me.  Uncle Mo was dapper in a three-piece suit and flamboyant tie, his camel-hair coat carefully folded and placed lining-outwards on the luggage rack overhead.  He did not use a Sitting Board, claiming that he had a medical condition and in any event was a Moslem now and had quite enough to worry about what with remembering his prayer mat.  I had pointed out that Muslims were not supposed to drink.

'That is different,' he had said defensively. 'I was a Luskentyrian, then an alcoholic, then a Moslem, you see?' I'd said I'd seen, but bit my lip on a remark about which of his three faiths he seemed most devout in serving. 'But I shall beat the demon drink,' he insisted, 'be in no doubt.  I drink, and drink and drink and then-' he made a sweeping, cutting motion with the flat of his hand. 'I stop.  You will see.'

I said I saw.

'All dreams can destroy a man,' he said, staring with heavy, deeply lidded eyes at the calm vistas of sea and shore unreeling beyond our window.  I was glad I'd chosen this flank of the train; I had not travelled on the line before, but I knew from maps and the tales of other travellers that this was the best side for the view.

'Just men are destroyed by dreams?'

'Yes.  And I say that as a man who is not a chauvinist, no; I am aware of the equalness of women in most matters, and celebrate and sanctify their ability to bring forth life.  In this much I am in advance of many of my co-religionists, I dare to admit, though… well, the West is not the end all of being.' He leaned over the table again, wagging the same finger and staring intently at me. 'What good is equality if it is just the equality of being disrespected just as much as men, and violence… done violence against?'

I nodded noncommittally. 'You may have a point there.'

'I have indeed.' He looked up, as though checking his camel-hair coat was still there.  Then he looked back at me. 'What was I saying?'

'Dreams.  Doing terrible things.  To men, mostly.'

'Exactly!' he cried, waving his finger in the air. 'Because men are the obsessivists, Isis!  Men are the driven half of our kind; they are the dreamers, the creatives who have brains in recompensation for not being the creationists with their wombs!  We are even you might say the slightly mad half of the human races, because we are tormented with our visions, our ambitions, our ideas!' He slapped the table with his hand.

I was trying to think where I'd heard this sort of stuff before.  Recently.  Oh yes; Grandma Yolanda.

'It is men who are afflicted the worst by dreams,' he told me. 'That is our curse just as women have theirs.' He looked hurt, and touched his forehead with one set of fingers, closing his eyes, then held out one hand to me. 'I am sorry.  I did not mean to be indelicate.  Your pardon, Isis.'

'That is quite all right, Uncle.'

He held up the plastic tumbler with its almost-melted ice and its cargo of liquid. 'Perhaps I am drinking a little too much,' he said, smiling through the plastic at me.

'We're just enjoying ourselves,' I said. 'Nothing wrong with that.  It passes the journey.' I raised my own tumbler, which was half full of beer. 'Cheers.'

'Cheers,' he said, swallowing.  I sipped.

Uncle Mo had started drinking at the buffet bar in Stirling station after we'd been dropped there by the bus.

I had returned to my own room after my phone call to Morag from the Woodbeans'; I had already decided I would be departing for somewhere in the morning and, tempted though I was to stay again with Sophi, I felt it appropriate and fitting to spend a night - at last - in my own old hammock in my own room in the Community, after so long away from it.

It had taken a good hour for my feverish thoughts to subside sufficiently to let me sleep, but I awoke at my usual time, dressed, packed and went down to the kitchen, where I informed a bleary-eyed Uncle Mo that I would be coming with him to Spayedthwaite.  The atmosphere in the kitchen became glacial the moment I entered; much worse than the day before.  When I made my announcement to Uncle Mo in the sudden silence, there was a muttered 'Good riddance' from somebody at the far end of the table, and no voice raised in my support.

I knew then that all my politicking yesterday had been in vain, and the scurrilous lie about the attempted seduction of Grandfather had already been disseminated.

I made to leave, but stopped at the door and looked back in at them.

'You have been deceived in this,' I told them. 'Wickedly deceived.' I was able to keep my voice low; the kitchen had probably never held such numbers and such silence at the same time.  I was unable to keep the sadness and the hurt from my voice. 'With God's help I will prove this to you one day and reclaim your good regard.' I hesitated, unsure what more to say, and aware that the longer I stood there the greater became the possibility that somebody - perhaps the one who had wished me good riddance - would rob me of my chance to say my piece. '… I love all of you,' I blurted, and closed the door and walked quickly away across the courtyard, a strange high keening ringing in my ears, my fists clenched painfully, nails digging into my palms and my teeth clenched together so hard my nose hurt.  It seemed to work; no tears came.

I ascended to the office to tell Allan I was leaving.  I was given five pounds spending money; Uncle Mo would get my ticket for me.  I found it surprisingly easy to look Allan in the face, though I suspect he found me cold and oddly unconcerned at leaving the Community again so soon.  I should perhaps have made a show of regret or even distress, but could not bring myself to do so.

He assured me again that he would be doing all he could to help restore my reputation and my standing in the Community while I was away, and would both keep in touch and be ready to call me back on the instant that the situation improved and Grandfather's humour ameliorated.  Please God that would not be long.

I just nodded and said I agreed.

Polite, restrained, dissembling, I stood there with an aspect outwardly quite banal, but in my heart, in my deepest soul, it was as though great cold stones slid grinding and grating across each other into some dreadful new configuration, like a vast lock fit to secure one continent to another, but now undoing, freeing its great ladings to the demands of their different influences, different courses, different velocities, and to the catastrophes incumbent upon their now opposed and antagonistic movements.

Within me there was now set in place a cruel desire; a will, a determination to seek the lode of truth amongst this flinty wilderness of lies and follow its path and its consequences wherever they might lead.  I would seek to do no more than lay bare the truth, to mine the gold from this mountain of leaden falseness, but I would expose that vein of truth utterly and without fear, favour or qualification, and if the result of its revelation meant the destruction of my brother's reputation and his place within our Order, even if it meant the humbling of my Grandfather, then I would not shrink from it, nor hesitate to pursue this course to the very limit of my abilities, no matter what balances my actions shook or what structures my excavations threatened.

And, I decided - there and then, in the Community office in the mansion house, at the epicentre of my hours-old astonishment and wrath, with that key still hanging round my brother's neck, that locked drawer with its treacherous cargo not more than a few feet away - I would embark upon my mission sooner rather than later, before the trail or the dish grew cold, and before the results of these most recent infamies became too set in stone to suffer amendment.