Some interesting things.

Adam was able to get through the basic World Almanac facts about the nation of Rakorama. "Their progress is even more pronounced than in India. In India you do indeed have a tech-savvy upper class but they tend to still be very much a tiny minority. In Rakorama that class is more widespread. They may actually pose a small but interesting competitor to India."

"What are your own feelings about Rakorama?"

"The history fascinates me, and for rather personal reasons. Its founder may very well have been a too-male."

Linda was amused. "You think?"

"It's a serious historical thesis. The ruling dynasty in that region was known as Manthingh, and they tended to do what maharajahs usually do, which was to simply live off their wealth and privilege. A few of them seemed sex-crazed, keeping harems around just for the sake of the occasional idle caress of a breast while lolling around in a pool that was being fed ice. The Manthingh dynasty might be little noted today were it not for the Maharajah Bhubhador Manthingh. Bububhador Manthingh was a true breast fanatic, and legend has it that he tracked down busty beauties from all over the world and had them brought to Rakorama."

"White slavery?"

"Black slavery, Latina slavery -- you name it. Bhubhador had women snatched from all over the globe, he had an obsessively devoted spy network dedicated to procurement -- but to hear the legend out, he never really exactly enslaved them. The claim is that he actually seduced them, one by one."

"History tends to write kindly about one's absolute monarch," teased Linda.

"That's what I thought. But I've seen photographs, and accounts by some rather astute foreign observers. Bhubhador's harem was evidently very happy with being his maids, his secretaries, and most especially his playmates."

"****, perhaps."

"They would have to be unusually good ****. No, by all accounts he really and truly was some kind of stud. The easiest explanation that fits is that he was a too-male, in which case he lived in perhaps the most enviable of all circumstances: a too-male born a maharajah. We know that he had two hundred wives, but no one can be sure how large his harem became, it's estimated to have been well over a thousand, perhaps as many as fifteen or sixteen hundred. But Rakorama claims Bhubhador as the father of their country. He insisted upon independence, and somehow, in 1947, he was able to get it. There have always been rumors that he bribed top diplomats with sex. He was also quite heroic in his way: he was the last Maharajah of Rakorama, and thereafter Rakorama was a constitutional monarchy but one in which the Manthinghs are now just ornamental, almost like living flags. Rakorama is very democratic, and oddly enough very feminist, easily more functionally democratic than India, as there's rather surprisingly little corruption."

Linda frowned. "Feminist? Isn't it Muslim?"

"Yes, but a very peculiar offshoot, really much closer to Sufi mysticism."

"That's a relief -- I guess. Very good, Adam. I have a feeling that these entrepreneurs will appreciate Westerners who are even a little enlightened about their country." She smiled at him. "We're dining at Indus Tree. Yes, I know, it's an Indian place, but the Rako seem at ease there."

"I always love what they do with chicken."

"Yes, you love the breast meat, don't you?"

Adam smiled. He was just glad that Linda was past her original bitchiness and was finally relaxing. he was also rather looking forward to boring business talk, an opportunity to wind down after one hell of a mind-blowing day.

(Originally posted to the BE Addventure by DruulEmpire)