I'm a Buddhist. You might have a Christian obligation to catch pneumonia while you sit for two and a half hours listening to some twerp in a dress drone on about the virtue of wedded life but, dear as you are to me, I don't.

Six saw a caterpillar.''What kind?''Green, with purple and white zigzags.''I see,' Thaniel said slowly. Liking children did not keep him from being perplexed by them. He was recently too old to remember his own childhood with any clarity. 'I imagine that was exciting?'She glanced up at him warily. 'No. It was just a caterpillar.

It is not summer, England doesn't have summer, it has continuous autumn with a fortnight's variation here and there.

Mori made an unwilling sound. 'I don't like Western art.''No look at this.' He lifted it from its package. It wasn't heavy. 'It's clever, it looks like busy Mozart.''What?''I . . .' Thaniel sighed. 'I see sound. Mozart looks like this. You know. Fast strings.''See? In front of you?''Yes. I'm not mad.''I didn't think so. All sounds?''Yes.

Nobody wants a house in Osaka,' he said, and it was strange to hear him switch suddenly to foreign pronunciation in the middle of his English. 'It would mean you had to live in Osaka.''What's wrong with it?' 'It's like . . . Birmingham.

What's that?' Thaniel said, curious. The postmarks and stamps weren't English or Japanese.'A painting. There's a depressed Dutchman who does countryside scenes and flowers and things. It's ugly, but I have to maintain the estates in Japan and modern art is a good investment.

I'll give you a cake if you get him in the stream by the end of the afternoon,' Mori said to Six.'Hold on,' Thaniel said. 'No making criminals of the orphans, Fagin.''But I want some cake,' Six frowned. 'And his name isn't Fagin.

Is it white wine? Red tastes like vinegar.''Of course it's white wine, I'm Japanese.