The crowds had gone, he and Estelle were now completely alone.

 They had to walk some distance around the inner edge of the middle raft before they came across one of the four bridges that joined it to the center one. It was considerably wider than the first bridge  they had encountered, and its decking was made up of wooden planks. Its two side rails were made of a supple kind of wood which Barkworth could not identify.

 “With any luck, we'll now find out who leads these people.” Barkworth suggested as they walked across. “With us humans, leaders always emerge in one form or another. It's always just been so.”

 “Barkworth?” her voice sounded worried. “When did you last have a meal? I haven't eaten since I arrived. I should feel ravenously hungry. But I don't.”

 “Heavens..! Neither have I, nor the urge to. I didn't even have a body until, well, last night I guess,” he grinned. “I just sort of floated, like a free spirit.”

 It simply hadn't occurred to him to look at himself. He certainly had one now, he was dressed in thin light brown slacks and a long-sleeved shirt to match. His shoes appeared to be the same as those he had always worn, but looked like they had been replaced by a new pair.

 “Did you have a body when you first arrived? You certainly did when I first saw you. I have to say that I began to adore you from that moment,” he squeezed her hand.

 “I don't know,” Estelle replied, responding in kind. “I was so confused about being suddenly here it didn't occur to me to look. Nor was I in the mood to wander round and explore, with that storm. So I just snuggled up with a large Polynesian woman and her family because they just happened to be near me when they collapsed their hut. Not that they noticed of course. So, believe me, when I finally felt able to emerge I was just as pleased to see you.”

 “My first two days were rather different from yours,” he said as he began to describe his experiences back on Raratonga. He decided it would be best not to leave out the gory details. He didn't see how he could, anyway.

 “Oh Barkworth,” she clutched his arm. “How could you endure being a witness to that? If that sort of thing goes on in this era on Earth, I'm not sure I want to be here.”

 “Believe me, it's no better in certain other parts of the Universe, those that somehow remain outside of Torsyne control. But I guess there's a certain logic to it, the Polynesians have always been as good at finding solutions to problems as anyone else. After a typhoon like that, everything is gone, their food sources, their crops, canoes. There's nothing to eat. Meanwhile, small islands always have an excess population problem, and in such a situation...  Solution: Cannibalism - eat each other. Dressed up with as much religious ritual as possible to make it easier for themselves - and for the consciences of the survivors. That's my theory anyway.”

 “You know,” he said into the silence that followed, “with this wonderful dawn light, and these,” he indicated the larger more ornate buildings nearby, “this whole raft is beginning to look just as much like a Medieval city as an Oriental one. - Do you know very much about Earth's history?” he asked Estelle then.

 “A little. Much of it was contained within my library. One of my four young companions, Errol, showed me much when we toured Earth itself in - my car. Oh - memories are coming back. it was a Model A Ford Open Tourer, but it only looked like one. It was also - capable of flying in space - as indeed, my home was. Oh gosh...”

 She blushed helplessly as she gave Barkworth the most pleading look.

 Barkworth didn't know what to say. All he could do was put his arm around her waist and kiss her lightly on the cheek.

 “You told me you thought I might find you stranger than I imagined. But I have encountered many strange and wonderful people on my travels. Quincey - my closest friend - was one of them. I am sure you are too.”

 He felt her stiffen in his arms. “Quincey... so that's her name. You loved her. What was she like?”

 Barkworth was surprised at what appeared to be her jealousy.

 “That's a long story, and perhaps as strange as yours,” he responded as best he could. “We wouldn't have described ourselves as having been in love, she was too cynical for that, and she wasn't really the kind of woman I would have chosen. But we came together and, now that we have parted, it's clear that we loved each other more than either of us knew. I'm sorry... Have you never felt the same way about someone?”

 “I loved my four young companions, and perhaps they knew that too. But we were so busy, visiting other worlds after I evacuated them from Earth as it was being destroyed.”

 He heard her sharp indrawn breath even through his own astonishment.

 “Barkworth..!” she shouted in his ear as she hugged him with all her strength. She was quivering with fear.

 Barkworth's blood began to run cold. He adored Estelle, he knew she was a woman he could love, even now he felt a prickling of lust. But she was clearly deranged, and he had no idea what he was going to do.

 “I know you don't believe me, Barkworth,” she then said. ”I scarcely believe it myself. But that's what I remember. Please, don't distance yourself from me, Barkworth. There has to be a reason for why I remember as I do. - Didn't Earth perish in 1968? From what you've told me I just assumed there were some survivors and that you descended from them.”

 “I can assure you Earth was not destroyed in 1968. It just didn't happen. But I accept there is a reason for why you remember the way you do. It might be related to why you look more like mid-forties years old rather than a hundred plus. You're a puzzle alright - and I am a sucker for puzzles, especially one as lovely as you. But we'll figure it out in time.  - Now, come on, let's explore the other really big puzzle here, this center raft. Come on.”

 He took her hand and led her up through the avenue towards what he assumed was the meeting house right at the center of the raft. The houses they passed were only slightly more elaborate than those of the other rafts, the only real difference was that they had little fenced-off courtyards in front of them. These houses too of course had to be collapsible. Whether they housed families, or were some sort of administration buildings, was impossible to tell at this stage. They would look into them later on.

 There were only a few people about, all had that look of gravitas about them which suggested that this was indeed the administrative center of the entire raft. Even the colors and cut of their clothing seemed suitably subdued. Barkworth wondered what the population of the entire raft actually was, a few hundred or a few thousand? Again that was something they would try to establish later.

  After he and Estelle stepped up onto the low platform of the meeting house, which was made up of the most wonderful inlaid woods in what looked to his eye amazingly like a Celtic pattern, Barkworth pecked her on the cheek and gave her a playful squeeze.

 There were four benches spaced evenly around near the edge of the platform, with people of all ages sitting on them. Barkworth assumed they were there to see the view out over the raft with its crazily wonderful buildings and those immense sails, all eight of them, spaced equally around that middle raft. In the distance he could see what appeared to be a `bow', where the outermost rim of the outermost raft was raised slightly; he could just see the faint trace of a bow wave in front of it. He turned slightly to see the stern and its wake directly behind. It was hard to estimate the raft's speed, but he guessed it would be no more than a few knots at the most.

 “Do you think this might be where they navigate the raft from?” Estelle asked him.

 “Could well be,” he had to agree. “That could be what all these people are here for. But how do they then steer it? Send message boys down to the stern to move the rudders?” He looked stern-ward again, but could see no sign of any. “There's also no captain. Do they somehow steer by consensus?”

 “Considering the size of this raft, it would take a while to respond to command anyway, so it mightn't matter if - “

 Just as she spoke, one of the adults issued what sounded like a command to the boy sitting next to him. The boy then quickly got up and ran off in the direction of the stern.

 “See where he goes, if you can,” Estelle said.

 Barkworth wasn't sure, but he thought he saw the boy appear at the mast in a direct line with the stern. He then spotted what he at first thought was a large tiller somehow lashed to it until he realized it was a steering oar of the kind common in the South Pacific.  Two young men then took of towards the two neighboring masts, or so Barkworth assumed. He couldn't have imagined a slower chain of command if he tried, but perhaps it didn't matter so much in open sea. He didn't even try to think how they would have maneuvered the raft into Raratonga during that storm.

 “You've certainly figured it out, Estelle” he had to laugh. “ - You know, perhaps I shouldn't tell you this but, as it happens, this building could almost be a primitive model of the spacecraft my friend Quincey and I traveled between the Stars and Galaxies in.”

 “You traveled in a spaceship,” Estelle looked at him in sheer delight. “So did we. It was my ship - except that it was more than my ship. Oh dear, I'm not sure I can say why.”

 “I'm sure that, when you remember,” he laughed. “I won't `distance myself from you', as you so delicately put it. I'm past caring whether you're crazy or not. You're just too lovely.'

`Ever the bloody diplomat,' he thought to himself. But he knew it wasn't entirely untrue.

 She kissed him and rubbed up against him in a way that gave him no doubt what was going to happen next.

 But he was wrong.

 “Barkworth,” she caught his arm. “If this is all an illusion, as you say, then illusions come to an end, don't they? What about us?”

 He didn't know what to say. The thought had been at the back of his own mind.

 “Estelle,” he turned to her, “there's no real answer to that right now, is there? You could be part of my illusion, and you might think I'm part of yours. Worse: so far there's only the two of us. Others might turn up. You might want that, but I don't. I only want you, for as long as I have you. I can't dare think past that.”

 “Others..!” she shouted. “No, I don't want that either. Though I would like to see my four young friends again, perhaps after this all - ends.”

 She flung her arms around him and hugged him close.

 “Come on, let's try again to explore our little love nest,” Barkworth laughed as he cuddled her again. “Paradise is full of puzzles like this raft. A lot of the people we knew - we called ourselves `Conversationalists', by the way - thought such puzzles had been put there by the Torsyne as a way of titillating the intellect of people like us. Keeping us amused. I mean this raft could have happened in Earth's ancient history, and left no traces of its eventual demise. Guess I'll have to look it up in the Rolodon when we...

 “Get back?” she said.

 “Why are we here, exactly?” he said to her gently. “I came in because I attempted suicide over Quincey because we had been parted by the most disgusting act of evil I had ever experienced. And I guess you're here because something - an accident, perhaps has somehow replaced your old memories with some odd ones indeed. We are probably here to help each other - and you are certainly helping me. I don't yet know how I can help you, but I certainly hope I can find a way.”

“Perhaps I could become a `Conversationalist' myself,” she smiled at him. “What exactly do they do? - Beyond the obvious, I mean.”

“Well..,” he began, suddenly realizing he had never really tried to describe them. “There's basically two kinds of people in Paradise: Bodies and Minds. Bodies are total hedonists, play lots of sports, indulge in all sorts of devious social games, and have lots of sex. Us Minds on the other hand are more interested in making sense of the universe; we swap ideas, mostly derived from science which most of us study as best we can, and generally entertain ourselves that way. It's probably just as pointless as being a Body in the end, but it stops us going mad, which ends in certain death in Paradise.”

 “That sounds horrible,” Estelle stared at him. “Isn't there some other way of life?”

 “Not really, I have to say. All the other ways of life come down to one or the other in the end. Take religion for instance. Some religions actually look as though they have an intellectual appeal, but they all boil down to emotions. Which are Body, right? Us Conversationalists had a favorite phrase when it come to defining Paradise as a whole: `Resistance is Futile'. I've no idea where it came from. Probably as old as time.”

 “Being here is now beginning to look really good,” Estelle said, snuggling up to him. “Let's be both, shall we? Body and Mind. You and me.”

 “Sure, why not?” He said as he kissed her as mock-passionately as he could.

 They stepped back down off the platform and walked round it a little way to look at one of the other radial avenues that led from it. They stopped at the first of the larger buildings they encountered to take a closer look.

 Built from fitted and caulked planks, it looked far too substantial to be collapsible. Barkworth also noticed that both the windows and door were not only framed in highly-crafted wood, but were actually glazed in a thin sheet of what looked like translucent paua pearl.

 He could also hear the sound of children's' voices chanting within, as if they were learning something by rote.

 Estelle smiled at him as she gestured towards its door.

 “Good idea,” he smiled back as he passed straight through the wall instead.

 From the inside the paua shell windows and doors with their softly iridescent colors looked like oil-slicks on water captured in stained glass,  

 The children really did look like they were in class. All from different parts of the Pacific just like their parents, they sat on their own tiny little tapa cloths. Each of these `sitting mats' had different patterns weaved into them so far as Barkworth could tell. Their teacher, who looked Korean, held up what appeared to be a vertical scroll with writing on it. Barkworth could make no more sense of this than he could of the raft's spoken language.

 “Heavens - they have a written language,” Barkworth whispered. “That's something the Polynesians never had - or anybody else on Earth at around this time, for all we know.”

 “Those could be numbers,” Estelle whispered in his ear. “And that chart a times table.”

 “Good heavens, you're probably right,” he had to agree. “That would be even more amazing, because it would put them well on their way towards science and technology as well. Guess we'd better go and see if we can find a few more classes. We might learn a lot more too.”

 The next hut they came to was similar to the first, except that here slightly older children appeared to be learning about molecules, something which Barkworth would have thought impossible in this long-ago era.

 “Do you see what I think I see?” he asked Estelle. “Molecules? That's flat-out impossible.”

 “Unless that diagram is about something else,” she whispered. “An organizational chart perhaps. But, when you look at those wonderful plastic windows, molecules could be exactly right. Obviously we need to keep an eye out for more items made of plastic. Wonder what they use for raw materials apart from wood and their various fabrics?”

 “Shark skeletons are made of cartilage. That's about all I can think of right now. Though whether that's possible...”

The next class was somewhat larger - and looked more like a laboratory, which completely astonished them.

 “Good heavens...” was all Barkworth could say.

 “Seems to confirm your molecule theory,” Estelle looked around at the extraordinary sight. “It looks like they've discovered glass - or a heat-resistant polycarbonate. And there's a lot of ceramics and - is that some sort of voltmeter over there?”

 She pointed at a small box made of the same mother-of-pearl as the windows, but its face was covered in the same `numbers' as they had seen in the first class, but these were flickering and moving...  

 “That tells us a lot,” he said, astonished. “They've got electricity and electronics, both analogue and digital. There has to be alien minds at work here,” Barkworth said.

 “Not necessarily,” Estelle replied. “ After all, this raft may have been cruising the Pacific long enough for its people to have developed their own culture and language. - Can you understand their language, by the way? I can't.”

“No,” he replied. “We can hear them and see them, but that's apparently as far as it goes.”

 “Clever though they are, there's something rather important that they don't seem to have discovered yet,” Estelle said, poking him in the ribs. “I'm sure you can guess.”

 Try as he might, he couldn't see it. He saw multicolored chemicals boiling in flasks, crucibles suspended over what appeared to be Bunsen burners, cabinets along the far wall of the laboratory containing what appeared to be precision balances - made of plastic.

 “Sorry,  Estelle. Just can't see it,” he replied.

 “Come on, Barkworth,” she laughed in a way that couldn't help but remind him of Quincey.

 She put her arm around his waist and nibbled at his ear. “Metals...” she whispered.

 “Oh heavens, why didn't I spot that,” he couldn't help feeling angry with himself. “I don't know about these folk, but the Polynesians had no metals! None of the ores were to be found on any of the islands of the South Pacific, so they were restricted to stone, wood fiber, shell or anything else they could find. New Caledonia had some, but so far as I know the Melanesians there didn't use them either.”

 “Doesn't look like their cultural evolution is going to be impeded in any way though, does it?” she said. “it'll just be based on plastic and ceramics instead. - Did Polynesia have ceramics?” she asked him.

 “No, they didn't,” he replied, “though their predecessors did, the Lapita culture of New Caledonia. I think it petered out because their islands lacked suitable clays, but I'm not sure. Or maybe they just didn't need pottery, so they stopped making it.”

 Once again Barkworth was amazed at her grasp of abstract issues, in this way she was just like Quincey. She really only lacked the knowledge of how Paradise worked, because she had never apparently stopped there on her way into the Lalleldil. That was going to his job to remedy that as far as he could while they were on this raft at least. He could only hope that, at the end of their stay here together, they would emerge into Paradise together.

  And the hope of that was all he had.

“And that's something else that doesn't fit,” Barkworth replied to her. “A building science and technology feedback loop can can only arise in the presence of numerous preconditions: a politically stable society, good separation between church and state, stable social institutions like law, finance and education, and above all, a free democracy. We haven't really seen anything of how they do things here.”

 “Could it be that their science is their religion?” she asked him simply.

 “Heavens, it's possible I suppose,” Barkworth said. “That might also explain their obvious precociousness in it. Though I've never come across a single instance of anything like that either in reality or the Teklanmeh.”

 “Teklanmeh..?” she poked him in the ribs. “You'll have to be more careful with what you say to me, Barkworth.”

 “OK. It's a bit like the Rolodon, except that it's a library that contains all the knowledge ever gained about the Universe since its birth, and across all its Mansions. - And Mansions is the word  we gave to all the various classes of intelligent beings that evolved since that birth, 9327 such classes in fact.”

 “Gosh, that sounds inconceivably immense...” Estelle gazed at him.. “I had a library too, aboard my ship. I thought that too was immense, but not like - that. It too contained all sorts of things, including knowledge of uncountable worlds and how to navigate to them. I have no idea where my library came from at all. Perhaps that will come to me one day.”

 “If these folk have science, they will almost certainly have a library of some sort too,' he instinctively looked around. “Hope we find it.”

 “They certainly appear to be very civilized, don't they?” Estelle said. “From what we've seen so far, they really get along with each other, whatever their original cultures might have been.”

 “As you say, `from what we've seen so far'.  But these people are also human, and the history of the universe makes it clear that us humans always get up to trouble when left to our own devices. - You say you've visited several worlds with your friends. You must have seen that.”

She laughed. “We certainly did - it was almost non-stop. Even the first world I took them to as a training exercise was nothing else but, and its denizens weren't even human.”

 “Not human?” Barkworth was surprised. “You mean, you could visit non-human worlds? We can only see into those through the Teklanmeh. We are forbidden from visiting them. Most would be poisonous to us anyway, and their cultures beyond our comprehension.”

 “We were only able to visit one such world in the brief time my friends and I had together. I don't know how many of them were in my library.”

 The next class they came across was a puzzle to Barkworth. Unlike the previous classes, all the children appeared to be of different ages.

 “Gosh, a language class,” Estelle said in a way that made Barkworth feel less than bright. “See that scroll she's holding up? They are pictures of things, with their names written underneath. These kids might be the children of the raft's newly acquired citizens.”

 Barkworth then noticed that the little girl from Raratonga was a pupil in the class, though she looked a little more grown up now. He hoped she was fitting in to life on the raft as well as she appeared to be.

 A picture of one of the sails that propelled the raft then appeared on the scroll as her teacher rolled it further round.

 “Talle..” the teacher said. “Talle...”

 “Talle...” the class said in unison.

 Then a diagram of what appeared to be the raft itself appeared, with its three concentric components.

 “Aotere,” the teacher said. “Aotere...”

 “Aotere ...” the children repeated.

 “Good Heavens,” Barkworth said. “That's the name of this raft.”

 “Could be the name for a raft,” Estelle gently reminded him.

 “Guess we can't really know just yet,” Barkworth replied. “Are their any other rafts just like this one cruising round the South Pacific? Or is this the only one? Could be a while before we find out.”

 “It reminds me of the schools I created,” she said as she gripped his arm and gazed into his eyes with an expression almost of disbelief. “Every time my four companions and I visited a new world, I would send down what we called `flies' - tiny remote flying TV camera - to scout it out. I would then create a scene derived from what my flies had seen so that my friends could learn something of it before they risked visiting in person. - Oh dear,” she gripped his arm even more tightly, “you are not going to like this. While I created that scene and most of its people using holograms, I also used those flies to take samples from the human population and used them to create `artificial' citizens from the material from which my ship was made. After guiding my friends around the simulation, I would then send them down to prepare the ground for their visit.”

 Barkworth once again felt a cold hard knot form in his stomach. Was Estelle here to cure him of his sexual addiction of Innisheer, or to punish him for it? Once again he could feel the erotic warmth of her body so close to his. Though Estelle certainly had none of her evil - very much the reverse - he wondered if she was instead close to insane.

 “As it happens,” he tried to sound calm, “Although Quincey and I traveled through space in a spaceship, most people in Paradise actually travel from world to world using what we call Nessiks, which were like gates except they connected Worlds, not paddocks.”

 “ - I had those too” Estelle said, eyes shining brightly. “I had several inside my ship, plus two which allowed us to enter and leave. We never used such gates to travel from world to world though, we always moved through Tachyonic Space.”

 “So did we,” Barkworth said, relieved to find at least some sort of common ground. “Eve, that was the name of our ship, used to enjoy creating the most wonderful scenes for us as we moved through that Space. She was originally a science research ship, but a theater troupe took her over and converted her into a stage set for their plays when they visited each World. She was perfect for that, she had a circular stage with a circular parapet supported by fluted columns, and was about the same size as that – navigational dias,” he glanced back towards it. “But she had the soul of an artist, and was as much of a performer as her human companions were. But somehow that all came to an end, and when we found her she had been abandoned on one of the strangest worlds we ever visited. 'Far Pranrana,' I remember now.”

 “Did Eve look anything like me?” Estelle asked.

 “What, how do you mean?” Barkworth had to ask.

 “What did Eve look like, as a person. I assume she was a woman.”

“Oh - I see,” he laughed. “No, she was not - a separate being as you apparently were with your ship. She was the ship, what we call an artificial consciousness. We could converse with her verbally, and we imagined her as being like a wonderfully indulgent old lady, like a great aunt, but that was all. She had no independent existence as such. - Tell me, were you actually created by your ship? That could explain a lot.”

 “I - don't know.” It was her turn to be taken aback.

 “What was your childhood like,” he asked her gently. “Or did you not have one?”

 “I did have a childhood, but I can't tell you much about it because I had nothing to compare it with. I grew up solely within my ship, and the house I lived in seemed to grow with me, then kept growing until my four friends arrived. By then it had four bedrooms, I heard them describe it as being like a wonderful colonial old villa.”

  “A villa? You grew up in a colonial villa in your spaceship? Was it surrounded by grounds of some sort? How big was your ship?”

 “It grew with me. It was two miles wide and one mile high in the system of measurement they were familiar with in - their time. That's about three kilometers by one and a half.”

 “Good Heavens,” was all he could say.

 “I know what you're thinking,” she pleaded with him. “Please, Barkworth, I don't know if I am deluded or not. All I can say is that it's all I know.”

 “I have to confess I thought you were. But now that you've told me more, its all beginning to make sense. - Though God knows how those four friends of yours managed to take it when they first met you.”

 She smiled her widest smile up at him in total relief.

 “They had to watch their world being destroyed shortly after they came aboard. I hate to say it, but it distracted them from their totally new situation. They adapted very quickly, but it has to be said they had no choice because they had nowhere else to go. I was relieved to find that we all became friends very quickly.'

  He drew her in closer.

 “Now I know you're the most wonderful woman in the world,” he whispered into her ear. “Well, this world at least.”

  He was suddenly overcome with an immense urge to make love to her, which she quickly sensed and responded to.

 “Let's look for somewhere...” she said. “Obviously we can't … we can't risk these children somehow seeing us, even though I'm sure they can't. - There,  there's a small room..” she pointed.

 He knew then that Estelle was way beyond Innisheer as he once more felt that familiar pink mist descend.

 He then passed out.