Gratuitous Epilogue : Touchstone Extras (10 page)

Since the governments
of three different planets were involved (which basically means
four governments, since Kolar is firmly differentiated between
North Continent and South Continent), there was a bit of a delay
while they decided how to handle a response. It didn't suit
anyone's purposes for four sets of laws to evolve. Since I was a
stray from Earth living on Muina, and Lira was Muinan, and we had
made a permanent home of Arcadia, Pandora was the obvious place for
an Inquiry Into Touchstones to be conducted. Each planet got to
have two members on the board of inquiry, and they would hear
evidence from KOTIS, and submissions from the petitioners and any
other interested parties, and then redraft the laws. And then I
imagine there would be some inter-government
negotiation.

They've only just
managed to get set up, and start to hear initial evidence (they
want complete details of all my assignments and training and test
results, and the medical information about Lira). Then they plan to
question the people who 'control' me, and then me, and then take
submissions from anyone who cares to make one. It's going to drag
on for months and I can already see that it's going to be even
worse than I feared. Anyone who had a plan or opinion about
touchstones will have their little say, and some of the proposals
which have already come up don't exactly acknowledge that Lira and
I are people.

It was tough keeping
Lira's spirits up. One of the news articles was about a person
questioning why I'd been given 'control' of Lira and whether I was
the right person to be in charge of her care and development
(being, after all, a traumatised stray prone to nearly dying). This
sparked the only uncontrolled projective-dream Lira's had since
she's been with us: she dreamed that she'd never escaped, that she
was back in a world controlled by people who were using her, and
would poke her with spears when they saw her. She made our house
look very like a Lantaren house, and conjured a bunch of people
with spears who promptly chased her out into the back garden to
flounder through the snow. Siame, whose window overlooks the back
garden, got it open and zapped the spear-carriers before they'd
managed to catch Lira, and Nils and Zee came boiling out via the
kitchen, closely followed by Kaoren.

Lira was absolutely
terrified, shaking and sobbing, and half-frozen after ploughing
through drifts of snow in her pyjamas. I took her into the shower
with me and calmed her down, and we had a 'touchstones-only'
conversation in there that I'm hoping doesn't get reviewed since
Lira was being very wild and angry in response to having been
afraid. We'd already had several conversations with the kids about
the gap between what people propose and what's likely to happen,
and been all very calm and reassuring, but of course we couldn't
say absolutely 100% that Lira wouldn't be taken away from us, or
that neither of us would ever be plugged into another machine like
the one which had destroyed her life. I did tell her that I
wouldn't accept such a thing, though, any more than Kaoren would,
and I think my tone made her believe me. Of course, she's also
aware that her claim of no longer being able to project is pretty
much busted, and we had to take her for a medical, but she's
valiantly pretending she hasn't given herself away.

Sen had been woken by
the fuss, and I settled Lira in the baby's room for the night and
took Sen in with us because she was upset by Lira being upset.
Since then Ys has been sleeping in with Lira, though not
advertising the fact. Nils once said that Ys' character could be
judged by Sen's, and I think that's really true. For a really
sensitive Sight Sight talent like Sen to be so full of love says a
lot about who raised her. The care and protection Ys and Rye
lavished on her were enough to overcome even the truly negative
environment she was raised in.

We'd all calmed down
more by the time it was Lira's birthday, in part because the days
had ground on without anything happening. I'd eventually decided on
jewellery for Lira's main present – good, expensive stuff that
would keep and look nice at any age. That went down well – much
like Sen, she likes pretty things, and dressing up, and jewellery
is something she recognises as a sign we consider her important.
And we all had a fun discussion about getting ears pierced, since
my ears are pierced, even if I don't wear anything in them. [I
wonder if the holes might have closed by now.]

Maze and Alay's wedding
is in two days – it's going to be at Keer's house at Mesiath (Keer
really likes the tall trees and is the only one of the Senior Taren
Setari who took his land grant somewhere other than the islands).
Alay's just starting to show, and she and Maze are so funny
together right now. She's been rostered on 'light duties', and
drops to only training at the talent school after the wedding. Maze
wants to wrap her in cotton wool, and you can see him making
himself not do that, and you can see Alay trying not to enjoy too
much how he's fretting over her. They've fallen so hard. I always
enjoy when they're rostered to guard us – Sen insists on saying
hello to the baby by wrapping her arms around Alay's waist and
kissing her stomach. Alay goes all pink when she does this, but
says that there's no need to tell Sen not to. I've been seeing
quite a lot of them both because Maze and Rye, having finished
preparing the place for Maze and Alay's wedding, have started
working on "The Wedding Garden" for Kaoren and me, and have been
pulling out trees and scooping out dirt and experimenting with
water features on the south side of the island. Alay comes and
watches and is highly amused and happy about how much Maze enjoys
it all.

I feel very protective
of them, which is silly of me, but I don't want their wedding
spoiled by the brewing shitstorm about touchstones. Between the
kids and the Setari I've been busy playing down any upset I might
be feeling myself. Kaoren's not fooled of course, and knows that
I've had to wake myself up out of a few projective dreams as well.
I make sure I don't dump all my stress on him, and after over a
year together I'm better at spotting when he's stressed or worn,
and knowing ways to make it better. His meditation garden is really
important to him that way: a space even I don't go into unless he
asks me. His sights are so overwhelming sometimes, and one of the
things we designed the entire house around was this quiet and
peaceful place. He'll go out there even when it's snowing when he
needs to de-stress.

But he smiles more
easily these days, and that makes me very happy indeed.

October

Grilled

Just finished being
examined at the inquiry. It wasn't fun – they had a Sight Sight
talent I've not met before who acted in combination with a medical
scanner as a lie detector. They started out by checking whether
there were any missions I'd done which hadn't been presented, and
then if anyone had ever asked me to use my powers for non-mission
things, and then whether I ever used my powers of my own accord for
non-mission things. Which of course was yes, and then they wanted
to know exactly what and when and why and spent ages trying to get
me to admit to doing anything which could be seriously disapproved
of. I'm so glad I resisted the temptation to peek on Nils and Zee
when they went off camping. They also wanted to know if I thought I
had any limits to what I could "make real". I said: "My tendency to
collapse after ten seconds, and then for whatever it is to fade
away." They wouldn't just leave it at that – particularly when Lira
is still non-faded. I still don't know if I made her or not, and
they weren't tremendously satisfied at my answer to whether I
thought I did: "I could barely think at all at the time. All I knew
was that the roof was falling in, and so I tried to stuff us both
into a corner. I'd completely forgotten she was projecting herself.
I wasn't trying to do anything more than stop bits of rock hitting
us."

The questioning wasn't
hostile, just a lot of polite, clever questions to go with the lie
detector, but I hated it all the same. When they'd run out of new
ways to try and trip me up, they asked if I wanted to say anything,
and I said: "Just that it's very uncomfortable being treated as a
potential criminal all the time."

That comment got a lot
of headlines (though for all the protests, people are thoroughly
enjoying all the information coming out via the inquiry, and the
viewing statistics of me being questioned are pretty much 99% of
the population – the other one percent being too young to watch).
Kaoren says it's lucky that I live such a blameless life, or at
least am too embarrassed at the idea of being found out to spy. We
talked about what would have happened if they had hit on the only
things that I
did
want to hide, which was my theories about
the creation of Muina, and the Kolaren government trying to buy me.
I'd spoken very briefly to Raiten to ask him what I should answer
if I was asked anything which touched on that, and he told me I
should just tell the truth. I'm still glad that the subject didn't
come up, though.

There was a lot of
discussion about whether Lira should be questioned, but fortunately
we won that argument by pulling the too traumatised card. The
nightmare worked for us in that respect, and KOTIS had mine and
Lira's main medic talk for a while about the anxiety attacks the
inquiry had caused her and how her loss of conscious control of her
powers could be psychosomatic given the extreme trauma associated
with them. Lira was very annoyed about any of this being public,
but pleased that she didn't have to front the inquiry. It would
have been damn interesting if she had – she would have given them
all an imperial dressing down, because her response to upset is to
attack.

It's the submissions
stage next, which should be even more annoying. I'm going to try
and ignore it, but I'm not sure I'll succeed in concentrating on
other things. I'm going to have to start properly planning for my
wedding, which is, gods, only five months away. It's weird – I feel
like I'm already married to Kaoren – but the idea of the wedding
itself makes me nervous. I wish Mum was here. No sign of the gate
to Earth becoming active again in the near future, which has
disappointed me a lot – I want to send more letters. Probably
January, if it really is a Muinan year between each
opening.

Maze and Alay's wedding
was glorious. Early Autumn, so that the heat had dropped away, and
there were berries on bushes, and birds everywhere and a kind of
gauzy haze over everything. And it smelled wonderful. Snow is all
very amusing and different for a Sydney girl, but it was so nice to
be away from it for a day. Keer's property is all ferns and beams
of light spearing down through the canopy, and edges around a
narrow bit of tea-coloured lake. Most of it hasn't been cleared at
all, except around the house. And the whole place is totally
infested with different varieties of deer – some where the adults
are no taller than Ys and some almost moose-sized. Mesiath is a bit
more dangerous to live in than Pandora – more snakes and poisonous
bugs, and there's already been a couple of incidents of people
finding the local hunting cats – daturs – stalking them or sitting
uncomfortably close watching them. And there are lots of smaller
hunting creatures like the martens (named for the pine martens
shown in the
Planet Earth
documentary) and hordes of little
nut-eaters, and too many birds to count. Mesiath totally seethes
with wildlife. It's always great fun watching Tarens deal with
'outside' – they're getting better at it, but the Setari families
had some real adjustments coming from Tare to live on the islands.
Mesiath is even more overwhelming for them, and there always seems
to be someone shrieking about bugs or lizards.

Part of the pre-wedding
preparation had been to sweep the area using Combat Sight, and
relocate a couple of snakes, and Keer and Maze had been having a
lot of fun finding and arranging big stones into natural seating
areas, and shaping stone benches to cover enough seating for the
wedding. Most of the benches they donated to other people once they
were done, but before then the lot of them arranged in two rows did
make it feel rather like an enormous cathedral. The ceremony was
different from Lohn and Mara's – not so strictly traditional. None
of the bathing and painting the bride and groom, or the thing with
the blindfolds. Still had the cake-making thing, except both the
bride and the groom's family made one (gi-normous flat brown cakes)
with incredibly intricate patterns on top made of a kind of dusted
sugar which were apparently luck-wishes – wealth, joy, fame,
family, all that kind of thing – and there's a great deal of
interest in which pattern you get on your piece of cake when it's
shared out. Alay wore a gorgeous filmy dress in shades of violet
and gold instead of the more traditional robe (somewhat Grecian
with a kind of laced bodice) and simply looked fantastic.
Completely radiant. Maze was so at peace, and didn't seem able to
take his eyes off her the entire time.

The after-wedding party
was fun – Maze's mother is a musician, and played nice music with a
couple of friends, and there was some light-hearted dancing – Zee
and Nils did an aerial slow dance and then everyone who could
manage to get themselves in the air followed suit and that was
pretty awesome to watch. Kaoren and I didn't dance because Sen had
been playing with Ketzaren's hair – she loves trying to do
everyone's hair – and Deal had run up and pushed her over and she'd
jammed her elbow. Deal used to get on quite well with Sen, but as
he's grown attached to his new parents, he's become very jealous of
them. And Sen's tendency to treat all the Senior Setari as adored
favourites, clambering all over them, makes him particularly
upset.