In those days of this other older dream of mine, there were few people on the earth. These people who did live here knew what their lives were for. Because we don't, we have no idea at all. They existed to keep life flowing into this planet. It was they who regulated the cosmic forces, powers, currents, so many, and so different, and all with their patterns and flows and rhythms. The lives of these people were regulated, every minute, by their knowledge. But this did not mean a clockwork regularity, which is how we have to think and feel, but a moving with, and through, these always changing flows of the currents.

When a man and a woman married, it was not "to have children" or "to make a family," not necessarily, though of course children had to be born and when they were, it was exact and chosen. No, these two would be chosen, or choose each other, for they were born with the knowledge of how to do this - because they were complementary, and this was judged always by how they stood in relations to stars, planets, the dance of the heavens, the forces of the earth, the moon, our sun. It was not even that they chose each other, rather that they were chosen by what they were, where they were. When they "married" - and we cannot even begin to guess how that seemed to them - their being together was a sacrament, in the sense that everything contributed to the harmony. And when they mated, this was a sacrament, in the true and real sense, used consciously and exactly to adjust, fuel, add to, lessen, powers and currents. And what they ate was the same. And what they wore. There could not be disharmony, because they were harmony. Everything, their thoughts and movements... they were suspended, on this earth, between earth and heaven, and through them flowed the lives of stars, and through them flowed the substance of the earth to the stars...

That was how marriage was then, Sharma. I can see your face as you read this.

I must end now. My personal life has been sad recently. My father and mother died. They were wonderful people. There are family problems.

I will see you soon.

RACHEL SHERBAN'S JOURNAL

A lot of refugees have arrived from the new war, and we have had twenty of them in this flat. Fitting in somehow. Now they have gone on to a camp. Survivors. Surviving. I can't understand why they try so hard. Each one, a story of amazing escapes.

A million people died last week. Why then should it matter if Rachel Sherban stays alive? That is my question. I don't know who to ask it of. There must be a reply to it. If George was here, what he did would be the answer. He is always at it, rescuing people. One way or another. Mind you, I wonder if some of the people he rescues would be pleased if they knew they have genetic value. Genetically useful, said George once when I asked about someone.

A million people. I try to take it in. The people that were milling around in this flat are alive. But the unlucky ones are dead. Why one alive and one dead? It makes no sense to me at all. Out in the streets at night, all the rioting and shooting and then someone dead on the pavement. It might just as well be me. I went out last night. Curfew or no curfew, I walked about the city. All night. Soldiers. Trucks. Shooting. I did not even cover my face. No one saw me. I walked back into this flat this morning quite alive thank you. Well, answer that, whoever you are. Suzannah was out of her mind. Do you want to kill yourself, she shrieks.

I have seen something. I wonder how it was I didn't before. Who is it needs this killing, this agony, this suffering, the death, death, death, death. The blood and the blood. The reek of blood going up from this planet must be in somebody's nostrils. Somebody needs it. Something. There isn't anything that doesn't have a function. What happens always fits in with everything. What happens is needed by something. It happens because it is drawn out of a situation by need. There isn't anything that happens that is extraneous. There is somebody or something that needs this savagery and the blood.

The Devil, I expect.

I feel as if I have suddenly found a key in my hand.

I read that the cleverest trick of the Devil is that nobody believes in him. It. Her. Well, we have been very stupid.

I feel very odd. As if I am not here at all. Don't exist. A wind is blowing through me. I can feel it, blowing through my cracks and crannies. I am always cold.

I walk about this flat and I keep feeling myself float off into unreality. That is a word. I look at that word and it isn't anything. Once again there isn't a word for it. Yesterday I felt so gone, that I looked back into my room to see if I could see me sitting at the window. Because I couldn't feel myself where I stood at the door.

When this place was full of the refugees it was all right because I spent every minute getting things for them and doing things. But even then I felt very light. Porous.

Suzannah is worried. She keeps exclaiming and looking at me.

Suzannah is so strong. When I sit near her I can feel heat beating out of her. No, not heat, strength. I feel actually burnt by it. It envelops me. But when I go and sit near her on purpose to feel this, because I think it may warm me, then it is as if I was being crushed, or fanned away like dead grass. She put her arms around me last night and hugged me. She rocked me. This was exactly the way a mother cat gives a kitten that has got cold or upset about something are really rough licking, so hard the kitten can only just stand up or even gets knocked over. It is to make the blood flow. To shock the kitten into its senses. Those words, into its senses, are exact. Alive. They tingle. I can feel them. As I write this some words are alive and I can feel them pulse, but others are quite dead. Like Reality. Suzannah held me roughly and shook me, from the same instinct as a mother cat's.

But I was just nothing. A little bit of stick or cold shadow inside those great arms of hers.

I did put my head on her shoulder. Partly because it would please her. I even went to sleep. I am not here at all.

The night before last I woke up and saw Olga sitting on my bed. She was smiling. At once I could see it wasn't Olga, it was the moonlight, and the curtains moving. But what I felt for that second I thought it was Olga, was a sweetness and a longing. That made me afraid, because I never felt anything like that for Olga when she was alive.

I feel as if something very strong is pulling at me, a sort of sucking and dragging, and I want to let go into it. There is a strong sweetness somewhere close to me, tugging at me.

Suzannah follows me around and looks at me. She loves me. Because I am George's sister.

I look at her, so strong. And so ugly. She was washing her hair. I thought, she is going to shape it into those awful ridges and curls again, making herself so thick and ugly. When her hair was wet I went to her, and took the comb and parted her hair and made it straight and flat. She knew what I was doing. She had a little smile. Patient. She is so nice, Suzannah. I looked at her when I was finished, and there was a plain middle-aged woman. More like a servant. She knew what I was seeing. She had tears in her eyes. She was thinking, Rachel is beautiful. Suzannah does not envy me. She is not jealous or malicious or nasty in her feelings, like me.

I gave her back the comb, and she turned to the mirror and carefully did her hair as usual, fluffing it out and crimping it. Then the kohl and the lipstick. So she was back to normal. She did not look at me when she had finished. She had a stubborn air. Holding on to what she has. We had supper, Suzannah and me and the children. I was looking at her and wondering where she gets her strength. I put my hand into hers and she rubbed it and rubbed it. She knew why I had wanted her to fold my hand inside hers. She knows this kind of thing. She says to me, Poor little one, poor Rachel.