“That was a thousand years ago. And you aren't any threat to his reputation; he can be nice to you.”

“How was the Bridge saved from its fate?”

“There was a small palace revolution among Terran's senior engineering staff. Dr. Morgan, of course, was in no way involved.”

“So that's why he's keeping his cards close to his chest! I'm beginning to admire him more and more. But now he's come up against an obstacle he doesn't know how to handle. He only discovered it a few days ago, and it's stopped him dead in his tracks.”

“Let me go on guessing,” said Maxine. “It's good practice – helps me to keep ahead of the pack. I can see why he's here. The earth-end of the system has to be on the equator, otherwise it can't be vertical. It would be like that tower they used to have in Pisa, before it fell over.”

“I don't see…” said Professor Sarath, waving his arms vaguely up and down. “Oh, of course…” His voice trailed away into a thoughtful silence.

“Now,” continued Maxine, “there are only a limited number of possible sites on the equator – it's mostly ocean, isn't it? – and Taprobane's obviously one of them. Though I don't see what particular advantages it has over Africa or South America. Or is Morgan covering all his bets?”

“As usual, my dear Maxine, your powers of deduction are phenomenal. You're on the right line – but you won't get any further. Though Morgan's done his best to explain the problem to me, I don't pretend to understand all the scientific details. Anyway, it turns out that Africa and South America are not suitable for the space elevator. It's something to do with unstable points in the earth's gravitational field. Only Taprobane will do – worse still, only one spot in Taprobane. And that, Paul, is where you come into the picture.”

“Mamada?” yelped Professor Sarath, indignantly reverting to Taprobani in his surprise.

“Yes, you. To his great annoyance, Dr. Morgan has just discovered that the one site he must have is already occupied – to put it mildly. He wants my advice on dislodging your good friend Buddy.”

Now it was Maxine's turn to be baffled. “Who?” she queried.

Sarath answered at once. “The Venerable Anandatissa Bodhidharma Mahanayake Thero, incumbent of the Sri Kanda temple,” he intoned, almost as if chanting a litany. “So that's what it's all about.”

There was silence for a moment; then a look of pure mischievous delight appeared on the face of Paul Sarath, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology of the University of Taprobane.

“I've always wanted,” he said dreamily, “to know exactly what would happen when an irresistible force meets an immovable object.”

When his visitors had left, in a very thoughtful mood Rajasinghe depolarised the library windows and sat for a long time staring out at the trees around the villa, and the rock walls of Yakkagala looming beyond. He had not moved when, precisely on the stroke of four, the arrival of his afternoon tea jolted him out of his reverie.

“Rani,” he said, “ask Dravindra to get out my heavy shoes, if he can find them. I'm going up the Rock.”

Rani pretended to drop the tray in astonishment.

“Ayo, Mahathaya!” she keened in mock distress. “You must be mad! Remember what Doctor McPherson told you -”

“That Scots quack always reads my cardiogram backwards. Anyway, my dear, what have I got to live for, when you and Dravindra leave me?”

He spoke not entirely in jest, and was instantly ashamed of his self-pity. For Rani detected it, and the tears started in her eyes.

She turned away, so that he could not see her emotion, and said in English: “I did offer to stay – at least for Dravindra's first year…”

“I know you did, and I wouldn't dream of it. Unless Berkeley's changed since I last saw it, he'll need you there. (Yet no more than I, though in different ways, he added silently to himself.) And whether you take your own degree or not, you can't start training too early to be a college president's wife.”

Rani smiled. “I'm not sure that's a fate I'd welcome, from some of the horrid examples I've seen.” She switched back to Taprobani. “You aren't really serious, are you?”

“Quite serious. Not to the top, of course only the frescoes. It's five years since I visited them. If I leave it much longer…” There was no need to complete the sentence.

Rani studied him in silence for a few moments, then decided that argument was futile.

“I'll tell Dravindra,” she said. “And Jaya – in case they have to carry you back.”

“Very well-though I'm sure Dravindra could manage that by himself.”

Rani gave him a delighted smile, mingling pride and pleasure. This couple, he thought fondly, had been his luckiest draw in the state lottery, and he hoped that their two years of social service had been as enjoyable to them as it had been to him. In this age, personal servants were the rarest of luxuries, awarded only to men of outstanding merit, Rajasinghe knew of no other private citizen who had three.

To conserve his strength, he rode a sun-powered trike through the Pleasure Gardens; Dravindra and Jaya preferred to walk, claiming that it was quicker. (They were right; but they were able to take shortcuts.) He climbed very slowly, pausing several times for breath, until he had reached the long corridor of the Lower Gallery, where the Mirror Wall ran parallel to the face of the Rock.

Watched by the usual inquisitive tourists, a young archaeologist from one of the African countries was searching the wall for inscriptions, with the aid of a powerful oblique light. Rajasinghe felt like warning her that the chance of making a new discovery was virtually zero. Paul Sarath had spent twenty years going over every square millimetre of the surface, and the three-volume Takkagala Graffiti was a monumental work of scholarship which would never be superseded – if only because no other man would ever again be so skilled at reading archaic Taprobani inscriptions. They had both been young men when Paul had begun his life's work. Rajasinghe could remember standing at this very spot while the then Deputy Assistant Epigrapher of the Department of Archaeology had traced out the almost indecipherable marks on the yellow plaster, and translated the poems addressed to the beauties on the rock above. After all these centuries, the lines could still strike echoes in the human heart:

I am Tissa, Captain of the Guard.

I came fifty leagues to see the doe-eyed ones,

but they would not speak to me.

Is this kind?

May you remain here for a thousand years, like the hare which the King of the Gods

painted on the Moon. I am the priest Mahinda

from the vihara of Tuparama.

That hope had been partly fulfilled, partly denied. The ladies of the rock had been standing here for twice the time that the cleric had imagined, and had survived into an age beyond his uttermost dreams. But how few of them were left! Some of the inscriptions referred to “five hundred golden-skinned maidens”; even allowing for considerable poetic licence, it was clear that not one-tenth of the original frescoes had escaped the ravages of time or the malevolence of man. But the twenty that remained were now safe forever, their beauty stored in countless films and tapes and crystals.

Certainly they had outlasted one proud scribe, who had thought it quite unnecessary to give his name:

I ordered the road to be cleared, so that

pilgrims could see the fair maidens standing

on the mountainside.

I am the King.

Over the years Rajasinghe – himself the bearer of a royal name, and doubtless host to many regal genes – had often thought of those words; they demonstrated so perfectly the ephemeral nature of power, and the futility of ambition. “I am the King.” Ah, but which King? The monarch who had stood on these granite flag-stones – scarcely worn then, eighteen hundred years ago – was probably an able and intelligent man; but he failed to conceive that the time could ever come when he would fade into an anonymity as deep as that of his humblest subjects.