Division Bells by Iona Datt Sharma

Author:Iona Datt Sharma
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Iona Datt Sharma
Published: 2020-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

___

Jules had promised to report back to Diggory and Eilidh, and was able to reassure them that Ari was alive and some values of all right without going into detail about the five hundred other things on his mind.

"Burnout," Eilidh said, understanding, when Jules called her. "I guess we'll all be over it some time."

She meant the Withdrawal Acts alone, without any further attendant grief. Jules didn't ask any more questions about that; he was starting to understand that he wouldn't understand it, not without having lived through it himself. But he was transformed nevertheless and still transforming: he was starting to feel, not useless or overshadowed, but part of something greater than himself. He'd half-expected his father to ignore him after the sharp words at the dinner party, but to his surprise, he'd had a sequence of badly-spelled texts, asking if he was doing well, hoping that he was. Jules replied blandly, without feeling anything in particular. At some point, he'd stopped caring about his father's good opinion.

What he cared about now, it turned out, was Ari. In his heart, Jules wanted everything that Ari had placed within reach, and in a strange alchemy of time and circumstance, it felt in reach: it felt like a natural culmination of what was happening to Jules here, now, in this place he hadn't understood, where he hadn't meant to stay. Two days later on his way into the department, he had it settled in his mind: he wanted Ari, and he wanted to stay.

What the universe wanted, on the other hand, was for him to be dragged into a meeting room the size of a broom cupboard by two overenthusiastic lawyers before he'd had a chance to take his coat off.

"We've been thinking about your question!" Eilidh said happily. She had a whiteboard pen threateningly in hand. Jules wanted Ari's respect, his friendship, and maybe much more than that, but right now he would settle for Ari in his capacity as local Bill manager to march in and deliver him from legal advice.

"My question," he said weakly.

"It was a very interesting question!" declaimed the senior of the two lawyers. Prashant was Eilidh's boss and he had the diction of a man whose brain had been laying down legislative sediment for decades. "It's really unprecedented in our post-Withdrawal Acts jurisprudential praxis."

"Is it," Jules said.

"This point, for example, of making co-extensive freestanding provision, poses a number of fascinating implications."

"Does it," Jules said, with a glance of entreaty at Eilidh.

"Yes, it does," she said. "Freestanding provision. That point. The point the minister asked you about."

"Ah," Jules said gratefully. "That point."

Despite everything else, Jules hadn't forgotten the request the minister had made at his parents' horrible dinner party. He'd written up the question for Eilidh, who had referred it to Prashant, who had responded gleefully to say they would do some thinking. Jules had learned enough to know that meant a memo of at least twelve hundred words. He ought to be thankful, he supposed, if this encounter in a broom cupboard was saving him from actually reading it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.