Caleb Sighwater. (an extract from Understanding the Past by Professor Mufudazi Flowers.) "Caleb Sighwater was an Exian born before the Exians began their southward expansion and so, by definition, he hated persons from Gum Gooloo Gum Jublet. Neither he not his peers had ever met a Goolooian but the stories that had been passed down to them were legion. Goolooians were staid, they heard, and repressive. Goolooians were forbidding creatures, but also pathetic because they were afraid to go beyond the boundaries of their city. They had driven the founders of Ex into the forest, secretly jealous of their bravery. How much worthier than they were the bold children of Ex, the outcast visionaries who would one day subdue them! In all these things the young Sighwater was a wholehearted believer. "When a cynical friend of mine enquired, "If we are wonderful explorers why do we never leave the forest?" I am ashamed to say that I punched him in the chin and knocked out one of his teeth," he wrote later. When the gut-call to war came he felt a deep sense of pleasure, "a really ferocious feeling of rightness," but the eventual victory over Gum Gooloo left him dispirited. "What was I going to do now?" he wrote. "The question tortured me. In the end I talked to them. (Goolooians) This led me to talk to more of them and quite soon I had spoken to a great many of them and we were friends. The thought of my prejuduces embarrassed me, and I became determined to put them aside." Armed with this determination, he told the departing army that he was going to remain in Gum Gooloo Gum Jublet as the Exian ambassador and proceeded to do so without anybody's permission. "Within half a day I was the lone Exian voice in an alien crowd - I, who had never heard any accent but Ex's for almost all of my life - and I wondered if I had been wise." He set out to make friends with the local authorities ("diffident toward their conquerers, they believed they were doing me a favour") thinking that this was the way to understand the Goolooian people, but "Oddly enough, my first friends turned out to be the most useful. Most of them were apprentice chefs." He travelled to and fro between the two cities for the rest of his life, spending the majority of his time in the south. His chambers in Ex were passed on to one of his sisters and he established himself in Gum Gooloo, preferring to move from the home of one accommodating friend to another rather than stay in a house of his own. (nonetheless, he owned a small set of rooms in the District of Revived Loss.) Of the Goolooians, he wrote, "I found them industrious, friendly and not nearly as unavdenturesome as we have been told. Understand that in their view 'exploration' does not mean journeys through forests and mountains. Instead they channel their investigative energy into the development of clockwork machines, food and horticulture. They are not great travellers, bound as they are by their hereditary fears. Indeed, they view travel as a frivolity. This may help to explain their condescending manners toward the Exians. They think of us as children, still spending our energy on childish pursuits, and therefore persons to be treated kindly but not taken seriously. I believe that they expect their conquerers to tire of their game soon and rush away to pursue some other diversion. Our involvement with the aristocratic country estates only exarcerbates this impression. I know that Masayuki and Baltasar think that it impresses them. Believe me, Masayuki and Baltasar are wrong." There is little doubt that the relationship between Ex and Gum Gooloo would be angrier today if there had been no Caleb Sighwater. With newly discovered diplomatic skill, he persuaded the Exian leaders to treat the conquered city leniently, defeating (among other things) a proposal that all of Gooloo's chefs should be transported to Ex. In the end a single chef named Ang Li Discus travelled north to teach the Exians how to cook in the Goolooian style. "Both cities should learn from one another," Sighwater wrote. "What would you prefer? Good food or frustrated snobbery?" It seems fitting that when Sighwater finally died in old age after a spate of dreamless nights, the most famous tribute to his memory took the form of an enormous cake. "He could be difficult," wrote Li. "I think one of the reasons why he took to the Goolooians so well was that he was so stubborn, like us. If he put his mind to somethig then that was it, there was no way you could dislodge him, even if the idea was maybe not so well planned as he thought it was. Lucky for this city, though! We'd have been in a lot more trouble if he hadn't been such a great man when it came to getting his own way." "