In Arcadia

Chapter Nineteen

Laura had never lived anywhere colder than Sydney, and while she was finding the advance of the Pandoran autumn fascinating, it was not nearly so amusing with the addition of pre-dawn rain.

Should have worn a heavier jacket.

But this was only a brief consideration as her patio door slid open, and then it was her turn to step up onto a strut, and settle into the curving seat of a flying machine.

"Skimmers and flitters, oh my," she murmured.

"Tsa Devlin?" the pilot said.

"I’m envying your transportation," Laura told her.

The pilot grinned. "Today, I am envying yours," she said.

Laura started to ask what that meant, but then they rose into the air, and she was too busy gazing appreciatively at the island and the lake, and the view of a sleeping Pandora as they crossed it.

Since Muinan aircraft landed more like helicopters than jets, Muinan airports did not require long runways, and so the whitestone landing zone to the south-east of Pandora was relatively compact. They settled next to a bulky-looking tanz with what seemed like a severe excess of technicians giving it a final check. The pilot helpfully pointed Laura toward Gidds, surrounded by grey-suited technicians beneath the shelter of one of the tanz' wings, and then lifted her agile craft back into the air.

Expecting to have to wait until the cluster of senior technicians had finished giving Gidds' what looked to be several peremptory sets of orders, Laura had to suppress an instinctive step back when they immediately abandoned their discussion in favour of competing to be introduced to her. Fortunately, the flight had a strict schedule, and so she was rescued by the need to board

"I hope I didn’t look too overwhelmed," she said on a private channel to Gidds. "I can barely follow Muinan when so many people talk at once, and I never know what to say when people congratulate me on being someone’s Mum."

"You smiled and nodded in roughly the correct places."

Laura shot him an amused glance, then added: "Did I hear correctly that the installation we’re heading to is named after Isten Notra?"

"Yes. Its primary purpose is moonfall research, and Isten Notra is heading that team."

"I thought she was heading the teleport network team."

"She is. Muinan installations are so interconnected that Notra is effectively acting as Chief Technician for everything Ena-related. The naming of the base is recognition of the role she played during the crisis, for we certainly would not have come through it without her."

The main cabin of the tanz was organised into two rows of pods divided by a central aisle, and Gidds led Laura to the pair at the very end. She settled into the one on the right with all the pleasure only memories of cattle class could produce, and wriggled a little as the cushions of the dentist’s chair style couch moulded around her and a net of safety straps snugged themselves into position. Long-distance tanz gave all passengers their own, aether-proof pods: endlessly comfortable, with bubble-like lids that slid over the top for privacy as well as protection.

"I’ll be in conference for most of the flight," Gidds said. "And there’ll be several periods where we won’t be able to leave the pods, so only a small meal will be served after launch, and a larger one when we arrive at Sel Notra."

Laura nodded, but then did a quick search over the interface.

"Muina would not have come through the crisis without the Setari program you pioneered. But there aren’t any bases named after you."

He produced his flicker of a smile. "That lack is not something I object to."

"No? Well, I reserve the right to be highly partisan."

This time, instead of smiling, he went still. Then, with complete gravity, he said aloud: "Thank you."

Laura found herself flushing, which was silly of her, but it was impossible not to react when Gidds was at his full intensity. A safety announcement began to play in the interface, and she took the excuse to look away from him to consider the diagram of the tanz, with exits marked, but also the direction that they stay in their pods during emergencies. Flight time would be a little under two kasse—roughly four hours—which, with Muinan technology, could take them to the other side of the planet although the location of Sel Notra base was, entertainingly, not something Laura could look up. Her security classification wasn’t high enough.

Secret KOTIS bases. Laura grinned, but—mindful that this was work time for Gidds—only settled back to the vast array of entertainments available over the interface, and ended up reviewing the items she had for sale as Tiamat. She had only made two sales in the months since she’d set up her online store, and though these had been for gratifyingly high prices, it was not exactly a going concern. Still, she didn’t have a lot of stock to sell, either, for the elaborate, diorama-style pieces she had been experimenting with took days, even weeks to create. She had the luxury of time.

Laura glanced at Gidds, and then allowed herself to be distracted by a small, bland breakfast, followed by the next book in the series that Red Exchange was based upon.

At least, that is, until the ten-joden atmosphere warning.

Startled, Laura frowned at the notice floating as an interface projection ten inches in front of her face, and then turned to stare at Gidds. He was watching her, smiling.

"Atmosphere warning?"

"We have ten joden until movement is restricted. Would you like to see?"

Gidds could hardly look more thoroughly pleased with himself, and Laura had never been so inclined to gape blankly. But then she nodded, and followed him through the doors at the rear of the passenger section, and up a curved stair to an oval area at the top of the tanz that was mainly open, with a few chairs built around the edges. The front was clear of obstruction, however, and as they approached some kind of outer shielding drew back.

Darkness. Stars. And a distant, rounded shape, marked by a comma-shaped hole.

Laura absolutely was gaping now. And then she reached out, and took Gidds' hand. She didn’t want to speak, not at first, and found herself taking deep, gulping breaths, as if she’d been running. They’d used up at least half of the ten joden before she managed, in a shaking voice: "Yes, the views are spectacular."

He slid his arms around her, very briefly, and then said: "We cannot linger. The transition from atmosphere is a critical point in the journey, and when we switch to solar speeds we must be in our pods."

Laura was having to work on not crying, and made a quick visit to a restroom to wash her face thoroughly. When she settled back into her pod, she opened a channel with Gidds, but only to say: "I’m too incoherent to ask sensible questions. Are we really heading to a secret moon base?"

"As secret as anything so large can be within KOTIS. Since the chasm was formed during the two attempts to reshape existence, and is clearly linked in some way to the whole aether network, this is considered an important avenue for research. The secrecy is very temporary, more to keep the planning stage free of any proposals regarding recreational sites."

"Space resorts!?" Laura did not consider this a thing to be postponed.

Gidds smiled. "They will happen soon enough. Since Tare does not have a moon, and our focus has been more on Ena travel than vacuum travel, KOTIS only has experience with small orbital stations. Before we can permit commercial operators on Esune, there is considerable data to gather. Today is the first structural inspection following the activation of the environmental system. If I clear it, then the non-drone occupation stage will commence."

As their pod lids closed as a safety precaution, Gidds showed Laura how to access the external cameras of the tanz, and then returned to his meetings while she busied herself with further freaking out.

The moon. The moon, Esune. Space. Stars, brilliant and cold and clear. Muina, vast, and greener than Earth, because the proportion of land to water was roughly equal, and the distribution more even. Like a vast lattice pie crust, Laura thought, and fought down a giggle. She was flying from there to the moon.

The contrast to Earth’s level of technology had never been sharper. No fiery thrust to escape the gravity well. No discernible change in her weight. No cramped cockpit, or bulky spacesuit, or astronaut nappies. And a four hour trip! She’d read that it took days to reach Earth’s moon, though a good portion of that involved deceleration and not turning passengers to mush. But four hours!

Laura walked onto a spaceship with no more preparation – less, in fact – than a Sydney to LA flight. With the help of the interface, she found distances and then did some quick calculations and shook her head in awe. Because the Muinans stuck to the Ena for interplanetary travel she’d never really looked into what they were capable of in real-space. Solar system travel was entirely practical at these speeds, and though the other planets in Muina’s system weren’t exactly colonisation prospects, the Muinans were perfectly capable of sending drones and whitestone nanites, and the raw materials for dome cities.

Sel Notra Base clearly showed this to be true, for as it rapidly came into focus, Laura could see the place was big: a wide central dome surrounded by a ring of whitestone buildings, and then radiating spokes. It sat close to the point where the downstroke of the comma joined the original circle, and Laura eventually gave in to disbelief and—mindful of his meetings—sent Gidds a text.

Laura: How can this possibly be secret? It has to be visible from the surface of the planet.

Gidds: The structure was only formed five days ago.

Laura: But…believe me, if anyone planted something like this on the surface of Earth’s moon, a half-dozen amateur astronomers would be melting down the internet within the first hour.

Gidds: The telescopes most use are interface-enabled. Everyone on Muina has an interface installation.

Perplexed, Laura stared at him. Then, remembering how she could set her own privacy settings to prevent people taking images of her with interface-enabled devices, she understood. They’d edited it out. The people on Muina literally couldn’t see Sel Notra Base, because all the telescopes—potentially everything they saw—ran through the filter of the interface.

It took a long time for Laura to manage to respond.

Laura: The Triplanetary truly is only two steps from a dystopia.

Gidds: One of the reasons we have so many oversight committees. We could so easily slide into nightmare.

Laura found herself unspeakably glad that he’d said that. That someone with the power Gidds wielded saw the potential for horror in the system he had been raised within. It took her a while to shake off the chill, but it was impossible to resist the rapid approach of an Actual Moon Base. And landing, with a light billow of dust that took an age to settle while they waited through the post-flight checks. Then their pod lids lifted, and two green-suited security personnel walked along the aisle distributing helmets.

These were fascinating, with a solid section that curved a little like a hawk’s beak pointing up and out over the forehead, providing a frame for a clear substance that could raise up from a heavy-duty ring collar. This gave a reasonably broad area of view, but it wasn’t until they were ushered into a shower-like cubicle that Laura realised the ring had a similar function to the control unit of the Setari nanosuits. She managed to mostly not flinch when goo sprayed from the walls, and it was only moments before it formed into an incredibly fine blue-grey coverall that joined up with the control ring of the helmet. It did not strike her as particularly sturdy protection, but Gidds assured her that the suits would hold against full vacuum, although their air supply was very limited without an extra pack. They were simply a precaution in case any environment seals failed during the inspection.

Laura now needed to exercise considerable self-control, as she and Gidds were conducted on a tour of An Actual Moon Base, being handed from senior technician to senior technician as Gidds inspected each of their areas of control in turn—including a kitchen and refectory where they were shown how food would be produced before eating a sample meal.

Laura had never been closer to starring in her own Disney movie, wanting to skip and dance and sing from the sheer joy of An Actual Moon Base. She controlled herself by spending a lot of time peering out of view ports at vistas that spectacular truly undersold.

Her only disappointment was that the gravity was Muinan-standard: artificially generated just as it had been on the tanz. They didn’t need to keep their helmets sealed, for the air was perfectly breathable, if a bit swampy thanks to a slight imbalance in the atmosphere system, located in five of the radiating spokes. Great big vats of algae that had been steadily producing oxygen for the last few days, but now needed some balancing.

After she had calmed down just a little, Laura checked Sue’s status, saw she was still asleep, and ruthlessly sent an override.

Even with an alarm clock playing in her head, it took next to forever for Sue to respond, and when she did, it was with: "This had better be good."

"He took me to the moon."

"Laura, hon, interested as I am in your sex life, I really don’t need a daily update. At least not without more interesting details, and at a more reasonable time of day."

"No. You’re not listening to me. He took me to the moon. I. Am. On. The. Moon."

"…serious?"

"Serious." Laura shared her visual stream, panning from the current algae bed to the clear curved ceiling, with half of Muina a magnificent spotlight in the sky.

"But how?"

Laura explained, letting all her reaction stream out until Sue said: "You’ve started to repeat yourself."

"I needed to babble."

"Hmph. Well, my opinion of Serious Soldier has gone up several notches. He’s not so stick-straight after all, if he’s pulled the kind of strings that would have to be involved in taking you along. And just to win some brownie points! I wonder if he could have done that with any old popsy, or if you being Grendel’s Sainted Mum made it possible."

"I don’t think Cass would appreciate that comparison. Still, it’s…something of a revelation, watching the way the technicians behave toward Gidds. A couple are like the Setari, all deep respect and a tendency to stand straighter. Others are this weird mix of dismissive and resentful. They can’t go forward with the base until he gives the okay and they’re so annoyed and nervous at the same time."

"Maybe you’ll give him a bump in the opinion polls. So when’s the wedding?"

"Sue…"

"Don’t even pretend you’re not going to marry him. I know you. And he obviously does, too, inside and out. His deep dark secret turned out to be a couple of years of mooning over your picture—and that totally was a deliberate reference—and you were wavering on heading back to burnt before territory about shacking up with him, so he decides on a big, romantic gesture. Not gifts, not dinner, not even flowers: he’s taken you on a business trip. To the moon. Because of all the things it was in his power to do, that’s the one that would reduce you to incoherence. Face it, the man knows what makes you tick. Now ask yourself: would you be half so happy without him around?"

Laura didn’t respond immediately, then said: "I don’t think I can answer that right now. There’s no room in my head for anything except that I am On The Moon."

"Bosh," Sue replied, succinctly, and broke the connection.

But being in space was a dream come true for Laura, and the next location they visited was especially overwhelming. The central dome: a wide bubble with no floor but the surface of Elune, and no artificial gravity. They sealed their helmets before they went in, just as a precaution, and had to work to stay upright.

"Can I bounce?" Laura asked, long past caring about adult dignity.

"I do not see why not, Tsa Devlin," said the most senior of the technicians, who was apparently Isten Notra’s second-in-command.

Laura bounced. She fell over quite a bit, too, and her hair fell all in her eyes and wavered in odd directions, while her suit was smeared with Elunan dust. She had to go get decontaminated afterwards, just in case, but that was just another new and interesting experience.

Mindful that this was actually work for Gidds, Laura had refrained from throwing her arms around him every few minutes, and instead paid rapt attention to the technicians. Her plan was to wait until the flight back to start to try to put into words the things she wanted him to know, but after settling into her couch and delighting in watching take-off, she somehow lost nearly all of the four hour flight back and woke to a half-heard snort and an internal clock which felt like a lie.

But perhaps it was for the best, for when she turned her head to look at Gidds, she found she didn’t want to talk at all. She wanted to kiss those delicate temples, and trace that jaw, and—

Gidds turned his head and looked at her, and she would swear for the rest of her life that he went pink. He definitely knew without doubt or ambiguity exactly what line her thoughts were taking, and for all of the remainder of the flight they lay and just stared at each other.

The fortunate privileges of rank meant Gidds had a flyer waiting for them both, and Laura got to sit behind him and the pilot this time, and spent the entire time studying the fine hairs at the nape of his neck, picked out in the tiny dim internal light of the flyer.

It was well into the evening by the time they stepped back onto her patio, and she offered the pilot a barely-held-together smile of thanks, and walked inside.

Then, after an eternity of restraint, she took Gidds' hand.

Laura had never had genuine, clothes-tearing-off sex before. At least one button of her sensible shirt pinged off a wall, and it was to be hoped that Julian didn’t emerge from his cave, but Laura did not at that moment care overmuch for the sensibilities of teenaged boys. She and Gidds fell onto her bed and lost themselves in sheer urgency: a short frantic necessity.

"I’d apologise for making your job today very difficult, but I think you brought it on yourself," Laura said at last, panting in the aftermath.

"I underestimated you," he said.

They both laughed like giddy children, and then stopped talking again and just kissed until they could make love a second time, a slow, tender coming together, all bright around the edges with a startled joy that endured even into Laura’s dreams when finally they slept.