Allan crouched over his desk once more, pen in hand and mind blank. He contemplated a story, an outline he had laboriously constructed some time ago. He had filled his pen and raised it, the nib descending towards the paper, before the sound came: the gentle, persistent tapping of the gnarled, primeval willow touching the window with long, insistent fingers. His eyes awoke with a passionate, determined flame, though the only light came from the glutted moon. Allan filled page after page, the words escaping from his mind onto the paper. Where before they had marched in regiments, practiced in ranks and followed their leaders' commands, the words now escaped in their true forms, unhindered by any stricture. He continued long into the night, until the eldritch orb had sunk into the waiting hands of the willow, raised perpetually skyward. Arthur looked up from the results of a night's frenzied labors and looked Allan in the eye. "What is this?" he queried, indicating the pages he held in his left hand. "I decided that since I wasn't having much success with more traditional stories, I might see what sort of work I produced if I let my imagination go freely," Allan replied, somewhat less self-assured than he had been the previous night. "What in G-d's name could have possessed you to do such a thing," cried Arthur, nearly raising his voice. "After all I said the day before, why have you abandoned centuries of literary progress for some self-indulgent fantasy?" He shook the papers at Allan, raising them like a belt above the head of a disobedient son. "This is nothing but a glorified Grimm's tale, a miscarried child of Stoker, a creation less fit to be published than to be told around an open fire at the hovel of some peasant!" He spoke the last word with such heavy intonation that Allan shrank back before the physical wave of sound emanating from Arthur's throat. "Do you hate the modern system of literature? Do you personally despise the works the Enlightenment or the progress made since Shakespeare?" For a moment, Allan could hardly do more than shake his head. "No, of course not I " "Then why," Arthur barreled on, "do you disregard them all and return to this superstitious babble, this morbid, paganistic drivel?

What was Allan's reasoning to Arthur for his paper?

Let me begin again. I like life on the resort worlds -- always have and, after the upcoming mindwipe, always will. Last year, I rented a small house on Vega IV, a sea world, all islands and reefs and archipelagos, turquoise waters and aquamarine skies, sunrises like symphonies and sunsets like stars gone supernova. There's only one city: called Nuevo Acapulco in La Enciclopedia del Empirio de la Humanidad, it's N'apulco to the locals. The N'apulcans are mostly emigrants from Polaris II; the only difference between them and their Carribbean ancestors is that the ancestors fleeced NorAm tourists. Now the N'apulcans profit from their Hispanic siblings. I don't mean to sound cynical. I suppose I wish to show that I'm still capable of a certain authorial distance, a semblance of dispassionate observation. The following events may indicate otherwise. In fine tourist tradition, most homes on Vega IV are named. Mine was The Sleeping Flamingo, and its outer walls were coral pink. Were they mood-sensitive, they would have changed as I first viewed them. The rental agent, an attractive N'apulcan named Tasha Cortez, was not mood-sensitive either. She said, "It's beautiful, isn't it, Senor Flynn?" My instinct was to gesture curtly with a cupped hand that she lift the wind boat and take me elsewhere. But she was young and attractive (as I have said and may say again) and eager and so happy to be assisting the infamous Bernardo Flynn that I merely raised an eyebrow in mild scepticism. And then, because a playwright cannot resist a promising line, I said, "Your Sleeping Flamingo should be put to sleep."

Who rented a small house on Vega IV?

Washington (CNN) -- The Pacific island nation of Palau has agreed to take in 17 Chinese Muslims held at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the country's ambassador to the United States said Wednesday. The map shows the Pacific island nation of Palau in relation to China. Details of the transfer are still being worked out, Ambassador Hersey Kyota told CNN. But Kyota said his country, a former U.S. Pacific trust territory, has agreed to take in the ethnic Uighur detainees "for humanitarian reasons" and because of the "special relationship" between Palau and the United States. U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly would not comment on the announcement, telling reporters, "We're still involved in ongoing discussions." The agreement includes some U.S. aid for Palau, Kyota said, but he said those details remained to be worked out as well. The country, with a population of about 20,000, is about 1,000 miles southeast of Manila, Philippines, and about 4,600 miles west of Hawaii. Palau has received nearly $900 million in U.S. aid since independence in 1994, according to congressional auditors, and depends on Washington for defense. The "Compact of Free Association" between Palau and the United States is up for review, but Kelly said any additional aid offer "is not linked to any other discussions we may be having with the government of Palau." The Uighurs were accused of receiving weapons and military training in Afghanistan.
What is the name of the nation holding the prisoners?