In Arcadia

Chapter Twelve

"No, I’m not surprised at all," Cass said. "Something similar happened when, oh, I forget which of the documentaries I subtitled it was, but there were horses. I got asked about it, produced some images from the Olympics—show-jumping and dressage and whatnot—and suddenly half Muina desperately wanted to re-enact National Velvet."

"Are there no horses in all the Triplanetary?" Sue asked, leaning around Laura.

"Not on Tare or Kolar. They did find some herds on Muina, but they were the short, fat pony type of horses. And really unfriendly, though I gather some Kolaren smallholder has actually managed to bribe a few into letting her pat them. Don’t mention that you can ride, Aunt Sue, or you’ll have her sitting at your feet."

"I like people sitting at my feet," Sue remarked. "All my horses have come pre-bribed, though."

"Fortunately I could just tell everyone I’d never even been on a horse, and they left me alone," Cass went on. "Alyssa isn’t going to have a moment’s peace after this."

They all paused as Alyssa, who had been making slow circuits of Pandora Shore’s ice-filled indoor swimming pool, leaped into the air, executed a single twist, and landed neatly. Everyone who had been allowed in to watch the preparation—two teachers, the Arcadian contingent, and assorted senior Setari—promptly applauded.

Shaking her head, Alyssa skated to the end of the pool where Laura, Julian, Cass and Sue were standing on specially-laid rubbery matting behind a pair of benches.

"I’m so totally out of condition."

"Show off for five minutes and then offer someone your skates," Cass advised.

"I need to be ready in case Maddy tries to—" Alyssa began.

"Even if she tries to do a handstand, we’ll be surrounded by Telekinesis talents. She’s not going to get hurt."

Alyssa looked doubtful, then sighed and sat on the nearest bench, looking around the generously-sized hall at the various Setari who were settling down in the modest bleachers, and then at the semi-translucent fence that had been grown around the pool to give new skaters something to hold on to.

"All this just so Maddy can make a point with a couple of kids in her class."

"All this so Zee can try it out," Cass said, nose wrinkling. "She’s the driving force behind things actually happening. Though Mara’s helping it along because she bet Zee that she could stay upright longer than Zee could. Why do you think most of the skates they made are in adult sizes, and all the senior Setari are here?"

"Not sure I’d invite all my friends—and a bunch of schoolkids—to watch me on skates for the first time," Sue said.

"I think the gorgeous, naturally-athletic psychic will survive publicly falling on her ass," Cass said, grinning. "Besides, Zee’s one of the Telekinesis talents, so I don’t think for a moment she’ll actually fall."

"But using a talent will count for losing the bet," said a throaty voice behind them, and Laura turned to appreciate Zee’s husband, Nils, who was exactly as described in Cass' diaries: a 200-proof combination of beauty and sensuality that raised the temperature of every room he entered.

Cass smiled at him, unabashed, and said: "I would never have helped with that translation app if I knew it meant I’d have to stop snarking about people in English."

"Who needs translation when your expression makes everything so clear?" Nils said, tweaking her nose.

Cass swatted him away, then waved at further new arrivals, including Zee and Mara. "Are you going to try?"

"Apparently," Nils said, eyeing the waiting line of skates with a mischievous quirk of his lips. "I must admit dancing on knives is almost as unexpected as your melted rock spouts."

"Skating’s a bit more common," Cass said. "Here comes the horde: we’d better go snaffle some seats. Good luck Alyssa!"

"I’m going to need it," Alyssa said, dubiously eyeing Maddy’s class streaming through the door, although she brightened when Nick came in with Maddy.

Cass had similarly lit up because Kaoren had appeared with Ys, Rye, Lira and Sen, and Mara’s husband and two older sons as well. They settled into the bleachers next to the cluster of highly amused Setari, and listened as Alyssa—her voice transmitted to the audience through the interface—began to set out basic ice etiquette and safety while Nick helped her three tall students with their skates.

Rather than watch the show, Laura studied her daughter as she answered additional questions from Kaoren and her children. Content, settled, and unlikely to cause KOTIS difficulties. Not precisely in a gilded cage—Cass had made a deliberate and clear-eyed choice to stay on Muina—but Laura wondered if it was possible for her to not look at every treat, extravagant or small, and think of it as placation. Kaoren’s position was no less complicated, especially since he would be more aware of the apparently fractious internal politics of KOTIS, and the debates over how Touchstones were to be managed.

How much of a conflict of interest Laura represented for Gidds she could not guess.

Reminded, Laura studied Maddy’s class, and spotted Haelin easily: not only because she was one of the few in Kalrani uniform, but because she was sitting relaxed but upright, with her hands neatly arranged on her knees. Too cute.

Quite possibly because of her Sights, or because she had also been paying attention to Laura, Haelin turned her head and they looked at each other. Laura smiled faintly at the girl, but was saved from any awkwardness by Maddy, finally permitted onto the ice. Maddy promptly sped around the pool, then reversed the direction she was facing and did a circuit backward, smiling triumphantly at her classmates while she did so. Haelin joined in the applause, apparently pleased. Zee, Nils and Mara, in the meantime, were clutching the circling wall.

It would not do to go too much longer without a proper meeting with Gidds' children. Even without Sight Sight the girls might be hearing rumours through the KOTIS gossip channels. Speaking of which…

"Did you want to go with us on this trip to witness a moonfall, Cass?" Laura asked. "I know you had more than enough aether early on, but we’ve worked out a way around that."

"Yeah, Kaoren said Tsur Selkie had agreed to line up Exclusion Suits for you. They didn’t even have those a couple of years ago, but they had to figure out a way to deal with looking after people who kept heading into the platform towns during moonfall and passing out."

There was no hesitation at the mention of Gidds. It seemed either word hadn’t reached Cass, or she was going to follow Julian’s lead and not ask questions. Which, frankly, suited Laura, who didn’t have all her answers yet.

"I want to go," Lira said, from where the kids sat in a line on the lower tier of the bleacher.

"Can we?" Rye asked, looking from Cass to Kaoren and back again.

"They wouldn’t have told us about it if we couldn’t," Ys commented, but then seemed to recall herself and added: "But I would like to too, please."

As they discussed technicalities—and a timeframe that now did not depend on passing adulthood exams—Laura reached back and touched Julian’s foot. He had gone quiet as soon as they’d reached Pandora Shore, and Laura could not help but contrast his silence with the chatty boy who had interrogated Gidds a short week ago. Was it just his bashfulness around pretty girls, or had Gidds' presence last night been more of a shock than Laura had expected?

Laura: Muina has enhanced reality gaming locations—and a few nightclubs—that disguise identity. You could be thoroughly anonymous if you still wanted to meet your guild friends—and any minders would be a lot more inconspicuous.

Julian: Knowing my luck, they’d assign Siame to me.

Siame, Kaoren’s delicately pretty and highly disconcerting sister, had recently been made captain of her own Setari squad—for all she was only a few months older than Julian. With the Ruuel plethora of Sights, she was one of the people Julian avoided most assiduously.

Laura: I think her squad’s going to be assigned to Tare soon. Maybe wait until after she’s left?

Julian: You’d let me go?

Laura: I don’t technically get a say in it any more. Now that you’ve passed that exam I can’t even monitor your school work or do half the parental rights related things the interface used to let me do. I’d prefer it if you didn’t try to ditch your minder, but I don’t expect you to give up every freedom just because it’s easier on KOTIS. Though if you do go to a nightclub, think about inviting Nick and Alyssa along.

Laughter drew her attention back to the ice. There she saw Zee and Mara holding hands for balance, while Nils spiralled gracefully around them, as adeptly as a lifelong skater. He sped to the far end of the pool and turned into a jump, twisting five-six-seven times before landing feather-soft and coming to a halt in the very centre of the pool. Here he bowed to the jeers and applause, then finally set himself down on the surface of the ice, and promptly fell over.

"He has superb control," Kaoren remarked. "That level of fine, complex movement is far harder with Levitation than Telekinesis."

"What happened with the boy who was trying to juggle rocks the other day?" Sue asked, as Alyssa skated over and showed Nils how to stand up without the assistance of any psychic talents.

Shar, who had been watching the skating intently, glanced first at his father, Lohn, who didn’t seem to have heard the question, then answered himself: "He has promised not to use his talents unsupervised, and might keep his word if he can resist being goaded."

Lohn heard that, and responded with a puzzled frown. "Why did Sema feel he had to prove he could enhance his connection to the Ena? It wasn’t common on Nuri, was it?"

"No, but Nurans—possibly because we travelled unprotected through deep-space—have shown a greater capacity for increasing our talent strength that way," Shar replied. "There’s…" He hesitated.

"There is a belief that true high Nurans are naturally adept at focusing their connection to the Ena," Kaoren finished for him.

Shar nodded, and rubbed the back of his neck. "On average Nurans are stronger than either Tarens or Kolarens, and we have usually trained our talents, though not as intensely as the Setari. When we can also achieve the enhanced power that comes from focusing the link to the Ena…it is something to hold on to, that strength."

Pandora Shore was a complicated school. It had been built to accommodate the strongest psychic children who had survived the destruction of Nuri, and then had added the relatives of the senior Taren Setari who had taken land grants in the islands to the west of Pandora. The next wave to be included were the children of wealthy citizens and officials immigrating from Tare and Kolar, most of whom had only minor, untrained talents, but who required a school with extra security. And now Kalrani, whose natural strengths had been honed to their highest pitch, outmatching the original students.

A wide mix of cultures and social backgrounds, in other words, and the Nurans one of the largest groups in the school, and yet—with less than ten thousand survivors on all of Muina—also the most negligible politically, and furthest behind in the Taren-based education system. Understandable that there would be a push among the Nurans to prove their worth in other ways.

"Stupid," Ys said, not turning around.

Shar glanced at her back, then smiled wryly and said to Lohn: "I don’t think the idea of true high Nurans will come to anything—there’s too many inconsistencies over who actually manages to focus their connection to the Ena. Those who were members of the Great Houses are being pushed to prove themselves, but I think—hope—they’ll all get tired of it soon. He paused again, then said: "Perhaps this will distract everyone. Do you think they made any of the knife-boots in my size?"

Not making several dozen pairs of skates had definitely been an oversight, judging from the fascinated attention of Maddy’s class. Since she still tired quite quickly, it was not long before Maddy called down Haelin and another girl, and took a break while they tried on the two pairs that had been made for her.

Laura checked Gidds' schedule and saw that while he was still working, he was using the colour code that indicated interruptions permitted, so she sent him a text.

Laura: I’m not sure I have the rights to record this, but can you see what I’m looking at?

The complex rules for what could or could not be recorded or transmitted over the interface meant that Haelin would very likely appear as an outline, but Laura still included a link to her visual input in hopes Gidds would be able to watch Haelin take her first steps onto the ice.

Gidds: You’re in an image-restricted area, but I can by-pass.

Laura kept her attention on Haelin as the girl glided along beside the outer wall, one hand on the translucent surface for balance. She was an athletic child—no surprise if she’d been learning Setari combat techniques—who looked like she’d grow up quite tall. After only a little time clutching the wall, she allowed her forward momentum to take her toward the middle of the pool, arms held out from her sides.

Gidds switched to voice communication, asking questions about learning to skate. It was truly fantastical to share a companionable chat with a man while allowing him see through her eyes. That was the world Laura now lived in. She would never stop appreciating the wonders every new day brought her.

"I have a feeling Alyssa’s plans to join KOTIS are about to be thoroughly derailed," Laura sub-vocalised.

"There will certainly be others wishing for lessons," Gidds replied. "Although it’s difficult to predict how long the enthusiasm will last. On that point, Allidi and Haelin are interested in sampling Red Exchange. If they enjoy it, would you be comfortable with them joining our next session?"

"We could form our own band," Laura said, amused by the idea.

"We could."

The response came heavy with unspoken meaning. Laura felt the weight of it, but the moment to respond passed when Haelin, who had picked up a little speed, tried to stop herself and tripped, falling forward. The neatness of her landing hinted at her combat training, and she was back up on her skates almost immediately.

"Don’t use the toe pick to try to stop yourself," Alyssa instructed, gliding over to demonstrate correct technique. Haelin listened intently, and tried again, smiling when she succeeded.

"She’s a quick study.”

"Yes."

Outright pride in his mental voice, and as they continued to watch he told her of Haelin’s love of sport, and her disappointment that she was unlikely to be able to raise her Telekinesis to the point where she could participate in Tare’s most popular sport, Tairo. It was clear to Laura that he did not often speak to people about his daughters: that need to not show favouritism had gagged him.

"All right, Mum?"

Cass had noticed her abstraction. That blow to the chest sensation struck Laura all anew, to have her daughter here, being worried about her.

"Just thinking about how lucky I am," she said, squeezing Cass' hand. "And how I’ve been most considerate not mentioning the number of times you went down to the skating rink with Alyssa."

"Hey, if Nick can wriggle out of showing his beginner-level moves, I can too," Cass objected. "I never got past figure eights anyway."

This produced a lively debate that did not budge Cass in the slightest, and Laura listened with half her attention, while settling a gaming date with Gidds. He and his daughters would be in the southern hemisphere city of Meziath—a remarkable place of ruins beneath trees the size of giant redwoods—but that would be no bar to a virtual meet-up.

"Do the girls get to spend much time with their mother?" Laura asked, tentatively. She still wasn’t sure if the woman had moved to Muina.

"Allidi and Haelin have had no contact with their mother for over twenty Taren years," Gidds replied, without noticeable hesitation, but with an inordinate amount of precision to the words. "When we ended our marriage, Elezin broke legal ties with our daughters as well."

"You can…divorce your children on Tare?" Laura asked, failing to keep the shock from her mental voice.

"The laws came about following the rise of machine-assisted gestation," Gidds replied. "It is uncommon but not unknown for them to be employed during the dissolution of a marriage. And Elezin is not the only person who chose complete separation when KOTIS took their children."

He paused, and Laura was suddenly quite sure that he was searching for words, that his calm had briefly failed him.

"I am the reason the Setari program exists," Gidds went on, finally. "I disliked intensely the decision to continue the program through conscription, but I couldn’t argue against the logic. As the Setari grew in strength, my Sight suggested they would produce the results KOTIS sought. That lives would be saved. Elezin—her Sight told her that the program was a death sentence."

"Sight Sight can be that contradictory?"

"Sight Sight gives knowledge and certainty not omniscience. I can be certain your hair is brown, but this morning you brushed it and it was green. Neither colour is wrong in the correct context."

"You mean you were looking at it from different angles? But—" Laura stopped, not knowing when Gidds had met his ex-wife.

"When Allidi was six—the age mandated for conscription—the senior squads had only been venturing into the Ena for a Taren year, but were already proving very successful at preventing incursions into Taren real-space. Elezin saw in this the start of an endless cycle of attrition, of Setari sent into the Ena to fight the same Ionoth until error and ill luck finally killed them." He paused. "And that was exactly the situation we faced. The Setari, when we found Cassandra, were a dam cracking before a rising flood."

"But very handy to have around once Muina had been unlocked," Laura pointed out. Then, very carefully, she added: "This didn’t become obvious to your wife until Allidi was due to become a Kalrani?"

"Our marriage’s crisis point was my refusal to find a way for Allidi to be passed over," Gidds replied. He was fully in command of himself again, his tone only factual. "Elezin and I saw each other more clearly then. I was someone who would not find a special exemption for my own children. Elezin was someone who had expected no other possibility."

"That must have been incredibly difficult for all four of you," Laura said at last.

"It added to Allidi’s burden. Haelin does not fully remember her mother, but Allidi had rejection layered on top of separation when she started as a Kalrani. Elezin…her choice was at least in part because she knew she would not be able to hide from Allidi and Haelin’s Sight her absolute certainty that the Setari Program would kill them, but she of course could not explain that to our daughters."

"Do you—now that the crisis is over, and the Program has changed so much, do you think their mother will want to see them?"

"It’s possible. But she has not thus far."

And it had been years. Laura surprised herself by feeling intensely sorry for this unknown woman, who had chosen a clean break from her own children.

"Thank you for telling me, Gidds," Laura said, keeping her mental voice quiet and clear. "I would have hated to have said something entirely insensitive when I met them."

"They are stronger than I am on the subject," Gidds said.

In an outright change of subject, he moved to talking about taking the girls to different parts of Muina, and the progress of settlement. Laura asked questions, and watched Haelin, and thought about the parents of children conscripted into the Setari Program.

Some of the Kalrani had died. Even before becoming Setari there had been accidents, tragic and impossible to predict, and what argument about the greater good could ever change what it felt like to trace a line from your choices to a dead child? And then to set your own children on potentially the same path?

Of course, Gidds had faced first-hand the urgent need to deal with the tears into the Ena. Partially eaten. That was more than a physical fact. The Ena had eaten Gidds' life, swallowed him up. He had still been a child himself when KOTIS first sent him there to try to find solutions, and clearly held himself responsible for all that followed. What had the past couple of years been for him, with the urgency gone and the rest of his life to discover?

No point denying that he was working on fitting Laura into that future. Meeting with his daughters would be the biggest step they’d taken so far, although a virtual family outing seemed slightly less challenging than a proper meeting—not least because the girls' Sights would not be quite so large a factor.

Chances were high that Allidi and Haelin would prefer their own mother back in their life, rather than someone new and unknown. Trying to build a relationship with them would be far more challenging than playing grandma with Cass' brood.

Laura wasn’t running in the other direction, but she found herself most definitely nervous. A sign, she supposed, that she’d moved past wibbling and now really hoped that she could make things work with Gidds.

They still only knew each other at a surface level. But she would not let herself run away: she wanted this, wanted to know him fully, for them to truly trust each other. She wanted to believe in belonging with a Serious Soldier.