foreteller

At the door of the Round-Tower I was met by a person in white hieb and crimson shirt, with a silver chain over his shoulders: Faxe, the Foreteller of Otherhord Fastness.

And out of that silence inexplicably rises the Foreteller’s voice.

He was slight, smooth-skinned, shy-mannered, and wore the gold chain of a Foreteller, one of the Celibates, “I’m a friend of one who befriended you,” he said, with the brusqueness of the timid.

Then the Inspector would turn into Faxe, with the Foreteller’s gold chain around his neck, and I would have long conversations with Faxe, very pleasantly, while I controlled the drip of acid from a tube into a vat of pulverized wood-chips.

Vision 2030 is a door-stopper rather than a foreteller of major economic and social reorientation. Awareness of the need to reduce dependency on oil means little in the face of dwindling subsidies and rising youth unemployment, conditions heralding a wrenching uphill climb in a society and an economy largely deprived of the talents of women.