The Touchstone Trilogy (89 page)

It must be so weird for Taarel, defending the girl who made off with her convenient lover.  Although, if she really is in love with Maze, then it might have come as a relief to her to know that whatever people have been saying about me and Maze wasn't true.  No-one's actually told me that there was gossip, but I've started to realise there must have been some, that the direction they're taking in
The Hidden War
is what some people thought was happening.  The episode Kaoren and I watched last night follows my first rotation with First Squad, and it's again hinting that the Maze-equivalent character is feeling all conflicted about me.  I'm pretty sure Maze has never even considered it.

After lunch, since Third was scheduled to do elementals training, Taarel assigned Tol and Eeli more obviously as my babysitters and we went back to my apartment to find a huge pile of packages waiting – the result of a post-getting paid spending spree.

Tol thought it hugely funny that I'd been getting the equivalent of pocket money, and the mood lightened considerably.  I think babysitting me, helping me unwrap packages, was a handy distraction for them as well.

Fortunately I'd opted against buying a whole heap of racy nightwear.  I could just imagine Eeli's reaction to that.  Along with clothes I'd picked up another couple of blank books, and a big pack of imported Kolaren permanent markers, which I spent a lot of the afternoon putting to good use on my coat while we chatted.  Tol had seen the copies of my coat for sale, and asked if that was why I was altering the pattern, but it was mainly that I'd never finished it in the first place because my permanent marker had run out of ink.  I extended it about halfway down the back and a little onto the arms, and although it's not perfect I do like it.

When Kaoren walked in we were all three sitting on the floor around my coffee table, me trying to even up the wobbly bits of my coat's pattern, and Eeli and Tol trying to write their names on pieces of paper.  They both hastily got to their feet, though I suspect Eeli was mainly hoping for a better view of Kaoren's expression, but he simply told them they could go and waited till they had.

He brought dinner, and after eating made a valiant attempt to finish off his reports, but has fallen asleep on the couch.

Thursday, July 24

Getting serious

There was a fantastic thunderstorm last 'night'.  I turned down all my lights and watched it while Kaoren slept, and eventually fell asleep myself.  It was still going when he woke me with kisses in the pitchy dark, and we undressed each other between flashes of lightning.  That was impossibly intense, overwhelming, and I was shaking afterwards and clung to him.

And Kaoren said: "You need to spend more time on your studies."

"What?"  A whole world of incredulity went into that word, and he wouldn't have needed Place Sight to tell him exactly what I thought of him saying something so...so prosaic right after something I'd found so amazing.  I don't remember ever being more furious.

To my shock he laughed, a surprised spurt.  "That sounded very out of place didn't it?  The tail-end of my thoughts."  He paused, and lightning showed me his expression, a combination of dismay and amusement and something rather more.  "I can't marry you unless you pass the adult competency exams," he explained, and then moved forward so he was talking directly into my ear, his voice soft and completely serious.  "Are you certain yet, Cassandra?"

"Yes."  I was breathless, dizzy with the sudden reversal of fury, but totally sure.  It hasn't even been two weeks, but all the past days have done is confirm what I've felt for months.

My Mum would be silently screaming about now, and working out how to convince me that getting married at eighteen is a terrible idea, and that really I need to spend a lot more time before I could decide if Kaoren and I are a permanent thing, and that both of us were probably just reacting to the drama at Unara, and should take things much slower.

But this is Tare.

Tare doesn't have an equivalent to Vegas.  To get married, Kaoren and I both have to have passed the adult competency test, and then register an intention to marry, and then live together for five Taren years before applying for permission to hold a commitment ceremony.  And if we break up temporarily in the middle of that, we have to wait longer.  I'll be twenty by the time we can consider arranging for the ceremony.

So, yeah, super-romantic place, Tare.  The Paris of the stars.

It was late into our shift when we stopped to shower and eat, and then Kaoren spent a while celebrating our not-quite-engagement by finishing his reports.  Even with he and Maze sharing the work, going into new spaces means he has a ton of post-rotation work.  I spent the time researching what the adult competency test involved.  It wasn't an ultra-brainy sort of test, more like social studies: knowing laws and customs, and basic biology and health care.  Not very much in the way of sciences, but some history.  The laws and customs are the ones which are most likely to trip me up – Tare has a by-law for everything, particularly about babies and who can have them.  All the red tape about marriage and so forth is designed to delay when people have babies.  There's just not enough room on this planet.  Which makes them sensible laws, I guess, but they're also irritatingly weighted toward smart, talented people.  People like the Ruuels, or Isten Notra's family, are more likely to be given permission to have second and third children.

This got right up my nose.  I can recognise the
reason
for it, but I kept wondering about all the people I knew who wouldn't exist if Australia had a law like that, and furiously resenting the idea of ever having to apply for kids myself, even though I'm sure the Supa Speshul Magick Gurl will be encouraged to have lots and lots of babies, even without counting the value of Kaoren's Sights.

At least Mum would be pleased to know that I'm planning at least ten years of pouncing on Kaoren before even thinking about interrupting our sex life with kids.  After reading all those by-laws, I'm considering doubling that to twenty.

Once I stopped being irritated I continued ploughing through the recommended reading for the test, getting a little distracted by the laws for when two men or two women want to have babies, and how advanced genetic engineering can open up lots of possibilities.  And then I watched a hysterically funny documentary called: "No, We Will Not Raise The Ceilings" from back when Tare first began to make real advances into genetics and the first thing vast numbers of people did was tweak their kids for 'taller'.

After he'd done with his reports, Kaoren asked me to read some more of my diary to him.  It's becoming an important ritual between us, and doing wonders for my ability to speak Taren – my grammar is improving, though my pronunciation is still bad and I miss a lot of the nuances of word meanings.  That session, though, I felt so small describing how horrible I'd been to Mum, and I'm really not looking forward to reading out a few of the things I know are coming up.  We went off onto a tangent, though, circling around Kaoren's relationship with his own mother.  He says all his family are too alike not to recognise the same fault in each other.  An awareness of superiority.  He curled the words off his tongue, sounding amused.

"It's an easy trap to fall into.  Sight Sight can make the preoccupations of others seem such useless things.  My mother, my brother, taught me what it feels like to have what is important to me dismissed.  It's a lesson I'm glad I learned, but I am not likely to forgive them for it."

"Yet you keep your brother's pictures in your room."

"He made them for me."  Kaoren took a deep breath.  "For a long time Arden was to me what I am now to Siame, but he was furious with me for choosing to treat being Setari as my art.  The pictures are an apology of sorts, since he has come to see that doing this is something I value.  My parents continue to push me to resign once I have served the minimum tenure."

Kaoren is not very detached about his family, and seems to deal with it by having little to do with them.  And a lot to do with Siame, who he has taken out into the city again because he won't see her for a while.  He wants to tell her in person that we're going to get engaged.  I'm not sure if he's going to even tell his parents, and doesn't seem keen on introducing me to them.  I'm not going to push.

I was hoping I could study during the morning and take the adult competency exam while he was gone, but I did a run-through on a mock exam and while it's not hard – I nearly passed – the random and broad nature of the questions means there's a big chance I won't pass if I try and rush into it, and I can't take the test again for a full Taren year if I fail.  I'm not sure if I can take it on Muina, or apply to get married while I'm there, for that matter.

I know it's silly to be impatient.  All getting engaged immediately would do is get me a bunch of people asking if I really want to rush into things.  I think I just want everyone to know that he's mine.  Very shallow.

I've been stuck in medical all afternoon with Jeh from Second being babysitter.  Jeh doesn't have Place Sight, which I guess means they're getting more relaxed about the Nuran.  My legs look almost normal.  There's some faint patchiness, but they're going to give me a break before doing any more work on them, so that the new skin can settle.  The new patches are obvious because they're hairy – baby-fine hair though, which is good since the medics tell me I can't use the depilatories on them yet.

Tons of brain scans and needles, which never puts me in a good mood.  And–

...

Back in my room now.  Maze dropped by medical to visit me and take over being babysitter.  He was looking outright exhausted, his mouth dragging down at the corners, since unlike the rest of First and Fourth he hadn't had a free day, and had been attending meetings and working on balancing squad assignments for the push forward on Muina.

I haven't really talked to Maze for ages.  I was glad to see he's his normal self with me, and answered my questions about the things First and Fourth have been assigned to do while on Muina – and which ones I'll be allowed to participate in.  Then I asked him if he thought I'd be able to take the adult competency exam while I'm on Muina, and he spent a few minutes researching that, and said no, not yet.  Because it involves a secure environment hosted by a particular government department (basically child welfare), it can't be done within Muina's environment.

Maze paused after he told me, because there's not many reasons why I'd suddenly want to do the adult competency exam, then gave me one of his super smiles and said: "It's been good to see you so happy, Caszandra.  And you have until we reach the gate tomorrow to do the exam, if waiting until we return from Muina seems too large a burden."

He spent the rest of the afternoon chatting to me about Tare's laws, coaching me in questions I was likely to encounter on the test.  I think he was glad to concentrate on something other than Unara, and tearing gates and hordes of Ionoth, and whether we'll find any way to fix it all.

We leave for Muina late morning tomorrow.

Friday, July 25

Making it official

I passed!  I did the exam during the pre-flight preparation and take-off.  It was a bare pass – I hit a run of questions which I couldn't even guess what might be the right answer – but I still passed.

The exam environment makes it so you can't receive any communication (even almost completely blocking what you can see or hear in real-space) and it took about half an hour to complete.  When I opened my eyes I could see Kaoren sitting on the seat beside mine, watching me steadily.  I think he watched me the entire time, reading my body language to see how much trouble I was having.

It takes about five minutes to get the result, and since we were alone I snugged myself next to Kaoren.  We didn't say anything at all, but he was unusually tense, and when I got the email with my result, he knew straight away from my reaction and half-crushed my hand before he leaned down and kissed me – something he's not done before anywhere there was a chance random people could see us.  I wasn't the only one all impatient.

The complete absence of squads was kind of suspicious – you're allowed to go to the lounges during flights, but it's common for at least a few squad members to just hang around on their pod-seats.  Still, the interface would have told everyone I was taking an exam, if not which exam, so they could have left just to give me some quiet.  But I suspect Maze.

Kaoren sent me the link to the form we had to fill out, and since the interface knows all the form-filling stuff about me already, I only had to read through the getting engaged version of 'terms and conditions' and choose 'Yes' a few times and then Kaoren and I were engaged.  A far cry from a fancy ring, but certainly more official.

We went and told everyone then; a rare occasion for Kaoren to bring his personal affairs into discussion with his squad.  It's really embarrassing to do things like that, though everyone seemed pleased and not particularly surprised and I was hugged a lot, and Kaoren's squad at least briefly treated him like a peer and congratulated him.  We got into an interesting discussion on different types of ceremonies, and then Lohn started laughing and said to check the news and of course my name showing up in the intention to marry register hadn't passed unnoticed for more than a few minutes.  The best headline was "Devlin to marry Lastier!"

Good timing for the trip to Muina so I can start ignoring the news again.  Almost through the rift.  Eager to get things done.

New digs

Muina's first set of Setari quarters have sprouted since my last visit, with accommodation for six eight-strength squads (or eight six-strength squads, as originally planned) and a few spares, as well as support staff accommodation, kitchens, medical, training areas, and common rooms.  Someone's plainly been having fun playing architect.  Instead of yet another big white box, they've produced a round step pyramid with windows and balconies everywhere.  It's built into the hill at the southernmost tip of Pandora, and I mean that literally.  The hill is still there, but with expanses of whitestone and glass between the grass and trees – or snow at the moment.  It reminds me of a cross between a hobbit hole and Parliament House in Canberra (no giant flagpole though).  All this in less than a month.  Nanotechnology is amazing – they basically injected a building into a hill, no digging required.