In Arcadia

Chapter One

Laura Devlin’s first two months on her new world were full and hectic. There were a great many people to meet, particularly a son-in-law and five grandchildren. There were inoculations, medical examinations, and the injection of a nanotech computer interface that was followed by a dictionary download into her brain. After that came tours to view the grand wreck of the planet’s original civilisation: ruins that were quickly being overshadowed by technically advanced cities supporting the more than two million people who had migrated to the planet of Muina in a scarce few years.

In between, Laura fit in some infant-level virtual schooling, a generous dose of gaming, and a good dollop of time prodding at the empty garden beds that came with her brand new house. Most of all, she reaffirmed, over and over, the fact of Cassandra. Cass. Never Cassie. Her daughter, alive, safe, and happy.

None of this had eased Laura’s nightmares. Far too often she would wake from endless scenes of all the worst that could have happened to her funny, sweet, uncertain child after she had vanished on her way home from high school. It had been three months before Cass had been able to reach her family with a partial explanation of her disappearance, and that strange apparition had been in a large amount of danger, so Laura hadn’t truly deep down relaxed until a surprise package of detailed diaries allowed her to finally accept that Cass was alive, safe, but never coming home.

Thankfully, after three and a half long years, Laura had had the chance to make Cass' new world her own home, and finally been reunited with her daughter. But messages and reunions and many hugs could not erase the indelible mark left by those first months of despair.

Rising in the pre-dawn, Laura left the latest nightmare tangled in her sheets and pulled on a light dress and sandals before venturing outside.

To a lifelong Sydney resident, the Muinan summer around the city of Pandora was mild and pleasant, but Laura had maintained her habit of walking in the cool of early morning, tracing the paths of the island that was now her home.

An island! With all her daughter’s strange powers, large new family, and uncomfortable level of fame, for some reason Laura kept stumbling over the fact that Cass owned an island.

This was something less of an enormity than it would be on Earth, since the planet of Muina was going through a resettlement rush, and large plots of land were being portioned out to all manner of people. Cass had gained hers because she’d been key to unlocking the planet to habitation—along with some incidental saving of the galaxy. She’d named the island Arcadia, and built a secluded house that allowed her some privacy from several planets'-worth of crowds fascinated with her every move.

Then she had built a place for her mandatory guard detail to stay.

When Cass had learned that she would finally, after more than three years gone, be able to bring her family to her new planet, she’d added houses for Laura and Laura’s sister, Sue. They were rather impractically large, and felt empty and strange to Laura, lacking the crammed bookshelves that she had left behind. But the island itself was magnificent.

This morning was particularly still, and Laura paused on the north patio to drink in the hush, then started along the whitestone path that led past her sister’s matching mini-mansion, down the slope to the main path that circled the entire island. Left would take her to Cassandra’s house, with a stop on the way for the guard house where a pair of Setari—'psychic space ninjas'—would be stationed to watch over the island’s valuable inhabitants. To the right, the path traced the island’s eastern and southern shore: a part of Arcadia still completely free of buildings.

Laura inhaled deeply, the stillness entering into her. The lake was rarely so glass-flat: a mirror to drink the sky. She followed the path to the north-eastern point of the island, where a stone bench was set on a small spit, commanding an unimpeded view east over the vast freshwater lake to the city of Pandora. The new capital of Muina, a barely visible whiteness on the horizon, picked out in the rosy tints of dawn.

A bird sang sweet, fluting welcome, and Laura sat and listened, absently turning over the question that had been growing over the last few weeks.

What was she going to do with the rest of her life?

Part of the answer was obvious. Her son, Julian, was still only sixteen, and not quite ready to set up house on his own. And Cass, all of twenty-one years old, had become mother to five children: a little found family of four she had adopted, with an addition born seven months ago. There was a lot of grandmothering in Laura’s future.

As rewarding as this had already been, Laura felt the need for something more. She had gone from school to a career in IT support. When her marriage had fallen apart ten years in, she’d supplemented her income by selling handmade dolls and jewellery, and she’d worked hard to make time for the people she loved and the things she enjoyed. Now, there was no mortgage, no debts. Instead there was a strings-free house that generated its own electricity, and a formidable chunk of money gifted to her by Cass to cover any other bills, leaving Laura free to enjoy Paradise.

Was it taking too much for granted to do nothing but game, garden, and play with the grandkids? Or did she need to earn this futuristic happily ever after?

A ship lifted above the distant city. A sleek wedge of a thing rising on blue impellers. Laura watched with awe and appreciation. Inter-dimensional spaceships. Teleportation platforms, psychics, and cities that grew themselves. A computer in her head. An expected lifespan of a hundred and thirty years. And Cass.

No, she wasn’t taking any of that for granted. She was grateful every day.

It was such a lovely morning that she decided to do a full circuit of the island: a trek that took just under an hour and a half at Laura’s standard walking pace, but stretched to more than two hours because she kept stopping to collect unusual leaves and the occasional flower. And to take photographs using the interface installation in her head, which did everything a smartphone could offer, and a great deal more.

The most marvellous thing, though, was that her knees didn’t hurt going up and down the occasional steps. She felt like she could walk forever, with the easy energy of her early twenties. That was Muinan medical science.

"Unna Laura!"

Circuit almost complete, Laura was not surprised to be spotted as she paused on the bridge that crossed the natural pool below her daughter’s house. She waved up at Sen, who was hanging rather far over the railing of the main patio balcony. But only briefly, before the girl was hauled unceremoniously back. Then Cass was looking down.

"Hey, Mum! Come up, we’re having breakfast."

The sight of Cass, smiling and relaxed, still hit Laura like a blow to the chest. Not a bad sensation, but dizzying, and Laura took a deep breath as she circled the pool and climbed the broad, flat stairs to the partially covered patio Cass used as a breakfast area in summer. She was greeted with a warm clasp around the thighs from Sen.

"Unna Laura!" the girl repeated. Unna was a word she used only for Laura, even though it didn’t mean grandmother in any of her languages. "We’re making pancakes."

"Lira is, anyway," Cass said, heading indoors in response to a thin wail. "You’re setting the table, Sen."

"Then I can help with that," Laura said.

"It’s my job!" Sen said seriously, and tugged her toward a seat at the head of the table. "Unna Laura can be Guest of Honour."

That was another reflection of the strangeness of Cass' life: a great many people wanted to meet her, and she could not always wriggle out of the flood of official engagements. Sen, only six, had not been obliged to attend many of these, but they’d obviously still left an impression.

Sitting obediently, Laura absently twined her collection of leaves and flowers into a wreath as she watched Sen set the table with more enthusiasm than neatness. Once the last utensil was more-or-less in place, she dropped the wreath on the girl’s head.

"There. A reward for being so diligent."

Sen crowed, and spun in a little circle of delight. She was a pretty child, with masses of thick black hair, very dark eyes, and a warm gold-brown skin that was set off nicely by the green, bronze and white tones of the impromptu crown. But it was this joy, a radiant happiness that rarely faltered, that made her so engaging.

"What is diligent?"

"Diligent means hard-working," Laura explained. "You had a job and you made sure it was done."

"You should do today’s words, Mum," Cass said, returning with an armful of crotchety baby. She was dressed in the figure-hugging black nanosuit of the Setari, and frowning down at her youngest worriedly. "I think I might skip work and take Tyrian for a check-up. He won’t settle at all."

"His mouth hurts," Sen informed her helpfully, and Cass brightened.

"Must be another tooth. I’ve got some gel for that somewhere."

She headed back inside, and Laura wryly reflected on the usefulness of psychics when baby-wrangling. Sen—like Cass' husband and their son—was a Tenlan Kigh talent, which meant she had an ability to know. Psychic psychics, as Cass put it. Tenlan Kigh—which translated confusingly as Sight Sight—was the rarest of the sight-related psychic talents, and tremendously convenient.

The oldest of the children, Ys, demonstrated a different ability as she drifted slowly down from the upper patio. Telekinesis, one of the movement category of talents, allowed users to fly, although Ys' talent was only strong enough to let her take short hops.

"Good morning, Unna Laura," she said formally, before briskly tidying Sen’s table-setting efforts. She was a tall girl for nearly-fourteen, thin and bony, with short, somewhat wayward hair.

"So diligent," Sen said.

"What’s that?" Ys asked, pausing.

"A new word. Ys is diligent. Rye is diligent. Lira is sometimes diligent. And I…" Sen skipped around the table and grinned cheekily. "I am a sweetheart!"

"Tokki," Lira commented, arriving with a plate of thick, American-style pancakes.

Brat, the dictionary in Laura’s head whispered.

"How long did it take you to do the work for the translation app?" Laura asked Cass, who returned as Lira began unceremoniously portioning out pancakes.

"It felt like centuries," Cass said, grimacing. "I started trying to get through it in a big lump, which was stupid. I should have just done a few words a day, like I do now, but I was worried it wouldn’t be ready before you got here. I’m glad it makes a difference, though."

"Oh, absolutely—the auto-translate makes picking the language up quicker than I thought possible. Pronunciation is difficult, but I can make myself understood well enough, and don’t have any problem listening to people. It’s only when I hear a word where you haven’t entered a translation, and this vague multiplicity of possible meanings washes over me, that I have trouble. In some ways the conceptual translator is more confusing than simply not knowing what the word means."

"I keep finding words I didn’t get quite right the first time around," Cass sighed, rearranging her nanosuit to incorporate a harness for the still-restless Tyrian. "There’s a lot that I don’t completely understand, even after three years. And Muinan itself is changing: three planets' worth of language mixing together, with a bit of Earth’s as well."

"Not to mention neologisms like Unna," Laura said, and then had to explain what a neologism was to the three girls. "So when Sen decided to call her new grandmother Unna she created a neologism. You copied her, and if other people hear it and use it, it might even end up in a dictionary itself one day."

"There’s two words for today’s lesson," Cass said, for learning three new English words was part of the family’s daily routine. "Once you’ve got a better handle on Muinan, you and Aunt Sue and everybody can start adding words to the app as well."

"The pancakes will get cold," Lira said, grumpily. She spoke in Muinan, for she was the least enthused about the breakfast English lessons, though she seemed to follow the conversations well enough.

"They’re nearly at the dock," Cass said, and explained to Laura: "Kaoren and Rye went out in the canoes. Kaoren says not to wait."

"I’m not sure I could, it smells so delicious. What kind of berry have you put in them, Lira?"

"It is one from Kolar: hithal, it is called," Lira replied, this time in English, adding: "Something to try," with an affectation of indifference even as she closely watched for reactions to first bites.

Laura was suitably complimentary, for Lira was showing considerable promise in the kitchen—anything that involved building or creating interested her. "I’m so looking forward to some of the spice plants I brought with me becoming available, just to see what you’ll make of them," she told the girl. "Vanilla and cinnamon particularly, though it takes at least two years for cinnamon to grow into a useable tree. You’ll have fun experimenting when the biotechs send back samples."

"For all we know, a version of them might be growing somewhere on Muina anyway," Cass said. "But, yes, the techs can hurry up and produce vanilla, cinnamon, and especially chocolate."

"Have there been any new theories about why Earth and Muina are so similar?"

"There’s always theories," Cass said. "The official one is still that there was clearly a lot of back and forth travel and trade between Earth and Muina a really long time ago. After you six arrived they had some more Earth humans to do genetic comparisons with, and they still say we’re all genetically from the same stock. I try not to get drawn into talking about whether people started on Earth and came here or vice versa: it’s a bit of a touchy subject."

A step from below heralded the arrival of the last of Cass' new family: her husband Kaoren and older son Rye.

One did not perv on one’s son-in-law, of course, so Laura merely made her regular intellectual footnote that Cass had married a very tall, very handsome and very fit young man. Rye, only recently turned thirteen, idolised him, and when they were both dressed in knee-length swimming costumes and loose tank tops, with their hair cropped in the same short style, they displayed a bond that did not require a strict blood tie.

Kaoren, Laura reflected, straightforwardly enjoyed being a father.

"I am sorry we were slow," he said to Lira. "We’ll be ready as soon as we can."

Lira shrugged with exaggerated unconcern as the pair went to clean up, but then took the remaining pancakes inside to reheat.

"Diligent!" Sen proclaimed when the older girl returned, and stood on her seat so she could crown Lira with the wreath.

"Tokki," Lira repeated, but this time with a hint of warmth to the word. She touched the wreath lightly and then sat down, obviously pleased.

Cass and Ys had watched the exchange, but settled back to their breakfasts—and, in Ys' case, likely reading a dozen info-streams via the interface—without comment. There was undoubtedly a level of rivalry between Sen and Lira. Both of them possessed rare talents, had been much-cossetted in earlier years, and were consequently inclined to display temperament when denied coveted treats. The large difference between the two girls was Ys and Rye, who had always been there for Sen. Those three were all from a moon called Nuri, and had been bound together even before their world’s destruction.

Lira, by contrast, had suffered a long isolation, and among the Devlin Ruuel family that had settled onto Arcadia, Lira was the one who struggled to believe she belonged, and was wanted for her Self and not just the powers of a Touchstone that made her, like Cass, so valuable. Undeniable beauty and a figure already maturing at thirteen added complication upon complication, and that did not even touch upon the media who watched her perhaps even more obsessively than it did Cass.

Laura had many thoughts on encouraging Lira, but was keeping them to herself. Her own role as parent meant trusting in her daughter and son-in-law, supporting without pushing. Being Unna meant she got to follow their lead while focusing on fun treats, so she simply offered to teach them all how to make a wreath once they were back from school that day.

Hearing this as he and Kaoren returned, Rye said: "We can go to Middle Meadow. There are lots of flowers there I haven’t catalogued yet."

Rye was a born naturalist, and Arcadia his personal project. Whenever he spoke of it he shed his natural diffidence and glowed with enthusiasm. Laura had brought a great many seeds and plantlets for him from Earth, and had thoroughly enjoyed stocking her new flower beds with his assistance.

The family began to discuss their day’s rather complicated timetable, so Laura sat back and just enjoyed them, and marvelled at her daughter, who had survived a great deal, and was now proving to be not half bad as a working Mum-of-five. Of course her employer, the interplanetary defence force called KOTIS, made certain to accommodate Cass as much as possible, meaning she could take Tyrian with her for many of her current assignments. And Kaoren, who was easing back into his work for KOTIS as a Setari captain, could bring order to any level of chaos.

As the breakfast dishes were tidied away, a text box popped up in the screen inside Laura’s head. Standard English alphabet, which was another accommodation KOTIS had been careful to provide for Cass' convenience.

Cass: Jules is still in bed, I suppose?

Laura: I expect so. He’s found a new game he really likes.

Cass: Aren’t you worried about him, Mum? He practically gets up at midday each day.

Laura: Well, so does your Aunt Sue. They’re both night owls.

Cass: But Aunt Sue at least goes outside when she’s up.

Laura: Don’t worry, Cass. I make sure Julian’s cave is aired at least once a week. But if you’d like to revisit the occasions when I couldn’t get you up before midday on a Saturday when you were sixteen…

Cass: Blah. Okay, okay, whatever. I’m just…he isn’t unhappy, is he?

Laura: He is blissful. But also learning a new language, and dealing with all the Earth things that aren’t here. He puts in solid time in virtual school, and comes out of his cave when I ask him to. I think we can leave him to that, just for the moment.

Cass sighed heavily, but turned her attention to getting her collection of children down to the dock for their trip to school.

Mildly entertained, Laura enjoyed any hugs offered, and then strolled back to her house, choosing not to mention to Cass that she was fairly sure Julian’s withdrawal was related to visits to Arcadia by numerous pretty girls, combined with the presence of Sight Sight talents. The idea that Kaoren—not to mention Sen—could see his reactions to some of the island’s visitors had clearly occurred to Julian almost immediately after their arrival.

Sight talent etiquette meant Kaoren was highly unlikely to ever show any sign of noticing anything Julian didn’t say out loud, but Sen was still learning proper circumspection, and reticence didn’t change the fact that they would know. Laura certainly wouldn’t want to suffer teen pangs before an audience who could catch glimpses of what went on beneath surface composure. This was a dilemma Julian would have to resolve himself, and Laura would leave him alone to do it.

Setting aside the question of her own time, Laura spent the remainder of the morning wandering about her new garden, checking the growth of seedlings and thinking about what to do with the empty space out back. Her usual landscaping style was an enormous amount of mulch and a cottage garden denseness, but she’d never had an area so large: a long meadow rising a little way, and then sloping south and east from the little hill where her house had been planted.

This was an entirely pleasant aspect, and so she was tempted to just leave it be. But she also kept picturing it as a sheer mass of flowers, or all manner of complex garden rooms. Weeding wouldn’t be the usual deterrent, since she’d been gifted with a specialised robot drone that would take care of any plant she didn’t permit, and so she could consider establishing a really extensive garden.

Her main challenge in planning anything was that she didn’t know how to garden in a climate involving a couple of months of snow. She’d brought along a few ebooks covering the basics, but there would be considerable guesswork and experimentation involved in her garden, especially where Muinan plants were concerned.

So many factors. Unknown pests and diseases. A year that was forty-one days longer than Earth’s. Weeds that might turn out to be Muinan plants she would like to include.

Weeds that might eat you, given some of the things that had shown up on Muina.

A lifelong study of Earth-to-Muina gardening would no doubt be valuable, but gardens were something Laura simply liked, not something she wanted to devote every hour of every day to, so she hesitated to embark on anything really difficult. Perhaps for now she would keep the grassy meadow, and concentrate on the small beds around the northern patio, even though many of them would likely only work for shade-loving plants. Still, the strawberry runners she’d planted were doing very well in the sunniest spot, and she was looking forward to a small harvesting and sampling session before autumn kicked in.

A text message flashed onto her inner screen.

Sue: Clean up and come have second breakfast.

Laura: Sounds like a plan.

Susan—named for a Narnian Queen—was the younger of Laura’s two sisters. A photographer, Sue had always been the most adventurous of the family, and had happily upped sticks to follow Laura to a whole different planet. Laura, although she was enjoying Muina enormously, felt a little more whole to have Sue with her.

Out of habit, Laura greeted her sister with Auslan, even though Muinan medical science had effortlessly reversed the slow loss of hearing that had started in Sue’s pre-teens.

Sue signed back absently, then said: "Hey, did your boobs perk up after our last visit to the medics?"

"I…you know, maybe a little?"

"I suppose it’s hard to tell with those mosquito bites. I swear mine are sitting an inch higher. I was talking to Didi Senez about standard health care here and, unless they have a particular issue they just go once a year for damage repair. That seems to have been what we got over the last two visits—it sweeps out obvious cancers and works on worn cartilage and muscular issues. That’s why your knees don’t hurt any more. And, apparently, it helps with boob sag."

"Both results to appreciate."

"Didi is going to something she calls skin treatment next week, and says we should book in with her. It’s more cosmetically-focused—wrinkles, jawlines—but much the same process. They squirt nanites into you and then direct them to specific issues. Scar removal, moles, cellulite—all the little lumps and bumps. Growing hair where you want it and not where you don’t."

Laura thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, if it doesn’t involve surgery, why not, after all? I’ll think of it as a very intensive facial. Will it delay the trip to Telezon?"

"Not unless their nanites eat our noses off, or something. I swear, every second movie I’ve watched here involves nanites eating you."

"And the rest are about the Setari." The elite psychic soldiers Cass worked with were an interplanetary preoccupation.

"Hardly ever happens, though," Sue went on. "Being eaten by nanites. I looked it up."

"Hardly ever makes me suddenly far less inclined to see what skin treatment is like."

"I expect they could grow our noses back if they’re eaten off. Speaking of which, don’t wait for the kids. They’re cleaning up after painting Maddy’s room."

"How did it work out?" One of Sue’s three house guests, Maddy Caldwell, had wanted real decoration in her room, not the projected images common on Muina, and her sister Alyssa had designed an Australian-themed mural for her.

"Not bad. I took a couple of very nice shots of them in-progress, too."

They chatted idly about the complications of Cass' fame, which spilled over on to the handful of Earth immigrants who had joined her on Arcadia. Not only did it mean Sue felt she couldn’t publicly display her photographs, but jaunts like the planned trip to the region called Telezon inevitably required a security detail. Even a shopping trip required security.

Thinking this over, Laura began poking around the various options of the Muinan internet, and was deep in sub-menus when Sue said:

"Well, well. The infamous Tsur Selkie."

Laura looked out the door to the patio, but there was no sign of a visitor on the path leading down to the dock.

"Check your email," Sue murmured, and added: "I do hope he’s as flinty as advertised."

"I don’t think Cass meant that description as a positive," Laura said, checking her email. Tsur Selkie was a KOTIS officer Cass had described a number of times in her diaries. According to Cass he was short, abrupt, and like Clint Eastwood.

The email was certainly short, simply requesting a preliminary meeting in a Muinan fortnight—the first of a series to gather background in relation to Earth.

"I’m almost disappointed he didn’t just plonk an appointment in our calendars and expect us to show up."

Sue giggled. "If he’s half as humourless as Cass made out, I’m positively going to have to be restrained from spreading some high grade nonsense."

"Psychic psychic, remember?" Tsur Selkie was another Sight Sight talent. "Chances are high he’ll be able to tell when you’re lying."

"Yes, but what will he do about it? Will he just write it all down, and thank me? Will he look cross? Call me out? This," Sue said, definitely, "is going to be fun."

Laura shook her head in resigned amusement. "Try not to annoy him too much. We specifically want to prod the Muinans toward opening a trade relationship with Earth. I don’t really know how much influence Tsur Selkie will have over that, but alienating him hardly seems like a good idea."

"What is a Tsur anyway? Starting all the military ranks with Ts seems unnecessarily confusing, especially when Muinan uses Tsa for a general civilian honorific, and…" There was a short pause as Sue researched her question, then she snorted and said: "It just means Sight Sight Advisor. Doesn’t show where he is in the KOTIS hierarchy at all."

Shrugging, Laura sent an acceptance, made a note in her calendar, and turned back to her new project. "Check this out," she said, sending a link.

Munching on seaweed snacks, Sue reviewed Laura’s work, then said: "Is Tiamat supposed to be you?"

"Everyone needs an artistic alias."

"Because it makes so much sense to sell the things you create entirely anonymously, rather than cash in on Cass' ridiculous fame."

"Exactly."

"I was being sarcastic."

"Yes, I’m aware of your default state."

"I can understand not wanting to be dependent on Cass, but…well, no I do see where you’re going. I suppose I could do something similar with my pictures, at least those that don’t depict people. Unless I want to devolve into a paparazzi stalker of my own family, there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of money in photography, but there is a market for image sets for room décor. Screensavers for walls. Going to tell Cass?"

"I might have to, to be able to arrange anonymous postage. I’ll worry about that if I sell anything at the exorbitant prices I intend to charge."

They discussed possibilities until Sue’s three house guests arrived. Unlike Julian, these were new Muinan residents that did cause Laura concern. Maddy, Alyssa and Nick had not been part of the original move to Muina plan. Nick, who was Sue’s technically-ex stepson, and Alyssa, Cass' best friend from high school, had known the true explanation behind her disappearance, and of Laura and Sue’s plan to join Cass on her new world, but there’d been no suggestion of them coming along until Maddy, Alyssa’s younger sister, had relapsed, and her parents had gambled desperately on stories of nanite technology and cures for cancer.

That had worked. Maddy had been released from medical care a week ago, and—while not yet robust—was no longer in danger. But she and Alyssa were both desperately homesick. Nick was more difficult to read. He clearly embraced all the wonders of Muina, but he had spent such a large part of his life keeping an eye on his alcoholic father that Laura very much doubted that it was simple for him to walk away from that tie.

Since the dimensional gate to Earth only opened once in a Muinan year, the three could not even send letters to ease the homesickness, not even a message to let Maddy’s parents know that she had recovered.

Laura, who knew the struggle of waiting, simply said good morning, and suggested that they might like to join the wreath-making expedition that afternoon. Shadows inevitably crept into every paradise, and she would do her small best to lighten those touching these children, since it was not possible to just wave a wand and make them think of Arcadia as home.