In Arcadia

Chapter Four

"Laura! Laura, listen to this." Sue made disbelieving faces as Laura stepped carefully over the pool’s outfall. "They have uterine replicators and they don’t use them!"

When Inika Senez, one of the Setari extended family, laughed, her riotous gold and black curls sparkled like fireworks. "Is it so strange to choose to experience in-body gestation?"

"Yes," Sue said firmly. "I particularly can’t believe it of your daughter, and these other highly trained senior Setari who have been filling the islands with infants. Why in the worlds have they gone and put themselves through all the things that pregnancy does, if there are functioning uterine replicators?"

"Oh, Mara wanted to know what it was like." Inika wrinkled her nose judiciously. "I doubt she’d do in-body again, even if she wasn’t now sufficiently supplied with children, since it was a difficult pregnancy for her. Me, I enjoyed all but the last month or so of mine. But all the Setari—anyone with strong talents—also have to weigh the impact for inheritance."

"What do you mean?" Laura asked, settling on the grass beside the two women.

"Children of machine-supported gestation gain many advantages—their nutrient balance is much better managed, and medical issues more easily addressed—but they rarely have quite so strong an immune system, and they never gain the full strength of their parents' talent set."

"They’re weaker psychics?"

Inika nodded. "That is a large decision to make. Though in the last few decades it is a factor that has pushed many toward machine-supported."

"Because of the Setari program." Sue glanced at Laura, but she wasn’t in such a teasing mood today—perhaps was reserving her ammunition for when Tsur Selkie arrived for his appointment that afternoon.

"Yes. It is not an enjoyable thing to see your child only on holidays. Although…" Inika raised a shoulder. "I would still choose in-body, and have Mara be the woman she is, even though I had less time with her as a result. I could not deny her the things I relish being able to do, let alone the chance for greater wonders."

She lifted one hand, and the air in front of her glimmered, and formed into an elaborate snowflake—which immediately melted in the muggy heat that had sparked an impromptu picnic around the cooling waterfalls of the Braid.

"Are the replicators expensive to use?" Laura asked.

"Not overwhelmingly. For a first child, costs are kept moderate so as not to prevent those on base level from accessing the option. Additional children, yes, the cost would be high—at least on Tare, where much was done to discourage us from multiple children. Didi and I were thinking of maybe a third child, now that we’re on Muina and don’t face the same restrictions. I am tempted—although with so many grandchildren, perhaps we will delay a while longer."

Sue glanced at Laura, but did not pursue the subject, simply saying: "You have to tell me what it is you’ve done to your hair to make it sparkle when you move. I am completely envious."

They talked lightly of high-tech cosmetics, until Inika headed down the slope to help her wife corral a few of the children chasing each other around Braid Meadow.

"Thinking of cooking up a few?" Laura asked, watching Sen and Maddy run shrieking through a line of cascades.

"I’ve too much world exploration to do at the moment," Sue said. "But…it’s quite something to completely dismiss any phantom ticking of biological clocks. Not to mention that I could do it in a civilised and entirely sensible manner that doesn’t involve barely being able to bend over for months at a time.

"And you could probably get them custom-designed into the bargain."

"I wish Mum could have seen all this."

Laura glanced at her sister’s profile, then sighed, and lay back on the grass, gazing into the brilliant blue of the sky. "Mum would still be alive if she’d had a chance to see this," she said, because if the Muinans could get Maddy running down hillsides in three months, they’d certainly be able to handle breast cancer.

"And she would absolutely get herself a flitter," Sue said.

Laura laughed, because it was true. Redoubtable was only the most common word used to describe their late mother.

"Mum would want to do the wandering through abandoned alien ruins, too. We are but weak echoes."

"And she would be totally on board for some Serious Soldier seduction."

"I expect she would."

Sue leaned over and looked at Laura’s face. "That didn’t sound nearly hot and bothered enough. Only a few more hours until the Event Horizon. Where’s the anticipation?"

"You’re determined to make something out of nothing, aren’t you?"

"I bet you’re not even going to put on any makeup. Not that your failure to dress up is going to hide anything. He’s still going to be able to see that you think he’s tasty."

"Let him," Laura said, serenely. "I expect he’s used to people finding him attractive. But I, for one, did not see the slightest hint that he was dying to get into my pants, or any other item of clothing."

Sue frowned at her, then wrinkled her nose.

"I don’t believe this uncaring act for a moment, and I point out, again, that he won’t be fooled. Really, I can’t decide if Sight Sight is a pro or a con."

"You could consider it a convenience. No need to flutter eyelashes, or shake curls, or whatever counts as flirtation here. But even if Tsur Selkie notices any secret blushes, I guarantee he’ll be perfectly correct. You forget he’s working, and the sort who would consider romance a conflict of interest—at least until this report is done."

"You are so dull. And after that?'

"After that, well…" Laura shrugged. "For all I know, I’ll never see the man again."

They dropped the subject as Maddy and Sen raced up and insisted they join them in a race to the pool at the very bottom of the Braid. But Laura was not truly sanguine about the meeting, and did spend an excessive amount of time picking out a simple dress to wear that afternoon, while shaking her head at her own lapse into nerves.

Sue, returning shortly before the appointed time, peered about, then sighed exaggeratedly: "He didn’t show up early? And here I was trying to give you more alone time."

"I’m surprised you denied yourself the entertainment," Laura said, turning up the air-conditioning and putting some glasses on the dining table. "The patio’s not so tempting today. There’s still not a speck of wind."

"Are you disappointed? I think you’re disappointed."

"I think—." Laura paused as the Muinan equivalent of a doorbell sounded in her head. "Right on time."

She triggered the front door and turned, saying out loud: "We were just talking about staying inside today."

Tsur Selkie, as impeccable as ever, drew breath to reply, paused for a moment, and then said: "Yes. An over-warm day."

Laura flushed. She wasn’t even fully certain why she did it, because there could not be a more innocuous subject than the weather. It was, she decided as she turned quickly back to the table, the pause—a moment of complete stillness—before he spoke.

Sue: Told you.

Ignoring her sister, Laura poured cold water while he crossed the room, then said: "What would you like to cover today, Tsur Selkie?"

"Resolute opposition. Any groups who would have strong reasons to reject any contact from Muina—who would violently oppose a Muinan presence."

That was a complicated topic. On the whole, Laura thought the people of Earth would be cautious, but very interested, and keen for trade. She didn’t know of any specific anti-extra-terrestrial organisations or countries, and most religions were very adaptable. There were always extremists, of course, but which of these in particular might take against a Muinan envoy was difficult to predict.

"Race will probably be a factor," Laura said, a little reluctantly, and then had the uncomfortable task of explaining white supremacy to this very serious man. The vast majority of the inhabitants of Muina, Tare and Kolar appeared to have descended from Asian stock—though with an admixture of other races—and she could not pretend that this would have no impact.

Tsur Selkie, as usual, listened without commenting, and then asked a lot of questions. So they took a tour of Earth’s races, with a pass through evolution, a side-order of sexism, and a history of conquest, slavery, and cultural imperialism.

This was certainly not a conversation that lent itself to thoughts of romance, which made the session triply uncomfortable for Laura. She could not put Sue’s suggestion out of her mind, and had to keep fighting off thoughts that were extremely inappropriate to the topic of the conversation. All while trying not to feel disappointed to see in him only a very professional man conducting an interview. She couldn’t gauge how much of this his Sights made clear to him, but she felt transparent and foolish, and wondered how Cass and Kaoren had survived months of this IknowheknowsIknow business.

It was remarkable, though, how inadequate Cass' description of Gidds Selkie had been. How could she not have mentioned his poise? The fine delicacy of his temples? And that incredible, mesmerising voice?

Laura’s session of muted mortification finally ended, with Tsur Selkie saying: "I think that will cover what I need. Thank you for being so open."

"We’ve made Earth sound thoroughly awful," Laura said, glad for the moment that he was keeping his opinions to himself. "But we…strive, I suppose I want to say."

Before Tsur Selkie could respond—or Sue point out that Muina’s chequered history involved mass sacrifice—a clatter and thumping on the stairs warned them that Julian had emerged from his cave.

"I just can’t work out how you make so much noise on whitestone," Laura said, turning to smile at her gangling son. "That sounded like the descent of several wardrobes."

Julian ignored the comment, bouncing over to the north patio doors. "Check out the storm that’s coming! We’re going to get smashed!"

The glass doors slid open as he approached, and a low-level gale cut through the air-conditioned stillness of the room.

"You’d think the kid had never seen weather before." Sue stood and followed Julian, saying to him: "We watched one of the storms of Tare. You really think this is going to compete?"

"Tare’s storms aren’t as interesting 'cause there’s nothing to blow away. You’re lucky the patio furniture’s heavy, Mum."

The trees did look thoroughly wind-tossed, so Sue murmured apologetically to Tsur Selkie and headed out to make sure she wasn’t about to donate any possessions to the lake.

"The forecast said rain, not a storm," she said, discovering not so much a bank of clouds as a solid wall rapidly approaching from the west.

And yet, this was not nearly enough to distract her from an overwhelming awareness of Tsur Selkie following her out, of an Event Horizon just behind her. The paradox of the man was how everything he did felt at the same time momentous, and yet calming. Laura kept finding herself holding her breath as she waited to see what he did next, and then relaxing in the face of his complete composure.

"There is a theory that overuse of the teleportation platforms causes meteorological side-effects," he said, making an extended survey of the western sky.

"Sounds like an excuse for when the weather people get things wrong," Sue said, then shielded her face as what felt like half a tree’s worth of leaves pelted them.

"Awesome," Julian said.

"There will be hail," Tsur Selkie said, with the quiet certainty Laura had learned to recognise from Kaoren’s Sight Sight pronouncements.

"Double awesome."

Muinan-language text appeared abruptly on Laura’s internal interface screen.

"Hey, did you do that?" Julian asked, turning to Tsur Selkie. "You can message the whole city?"

"Kaoren reported the storm’s severity," Tsur Selkie said. "He and the guard detail are securing the boat house."

"Speaking of which, I’m going to run home before this hits," Sue said, and was as good as her word, dashing down the path toward her house.

"Your strawberries are going to be mush, Mum," Julian said. "Let’s move the table over them."

Laura wasn’t entirely certain how much Tsur Selkie had followed of a conversation that had bounced between English and Muinan, but he moved without wasting time on questions to help them prop the formidable whitestone table over the tiered strawberry bed.

"The chairs may be best indoors," he said, with another glance at the sky.

That said something for how severe he expected the storm to be. Nanite-grown whitestone furniture had a honeycomb structure and was not nearly as heavy as natural stone, but it was still solid stuff.

"Is Mimmit inside?" Julian asked, as he brought in the last chair.

Along with immunisations, Mimmit had had a sensor installed, and so her location could be tracked via the interface. Earlier in the week cat plus storm wouldn’t have been a concern, since Mimmit had taken a firm house cat view on life as soon as the days had started to cool, but the unusually warm day had seen her out and about, probably engaged in her ongoing flirtation with Cass' two cats.

"Moving very rapidly in this direction," Laura said, after the briefest pause. She turned and stared down the path to the boat house. The world was disappearing into greenish-black gloom, but the wind had dropped, as if the storm was holding its breath.

A parti-coloured streak shot into view.

"Go Mimmit!" Julian called, and cheered as the cat hurtled between their legs and disappeared into the house.

Other movement caught Laura’s eye, a flutter in the grass, and for a moment she mistook it for another cat. But then it repeated, again and again, and something struck the repositioned table and shattered.

Laura sent the command to close the door, and shook her head in faint wonder as the slope was replaced by a popcorn-hopping cascade of chunky balls of ice.

"Wicked," Jules said reverently.

"The islands are a useful location," Tsur Selkie said, watching the scene with an analytical air. "But comparatively exposed."

Laura’s response was forestalled by a text from her sister.

Sue: Not quite a cabin in a snowstorm but it’ll do in a pinch. Ask him to dinner.

Laura: Just he and I, a roaring fire, and my teenaged son? Nice story you’re writing, Sue.

Even so, she turned to the man beside her, refused to be distracted by the interesting combination of strength and delicacy in his profile, and said:

"It certainly isn’t weather for travel. Would you like to stay for dinner, Tsur Selkie?"