Gratuitous Epilogue [Touchstone: Extras]

2 - January

Thursday, January 8

ET

The gate to Earth opened!

The monitoring drone gave us two days' warning of a probable alignment, sufficient for me to get completely worked up about the whole thing. I must have re-read my letter to Mum about a million times, and I swear Maze brought Nils and Zee back from the Oriath excavation just so I’d be distracted by the way they look at each other[1].

They did distract me a fair deal, and I was only a little beside myself when the drones suggested the critical time was approaching. KOTIS Command (rather warily) allowed Kaoren and I and the kids to go, with First Squad and a bunch of technicians as escort, to spend a day there waiting for something to happen. I couldn’t see any difference when it did align, and Alay was the one who tossed my (carefully wrapped and stamped and protected by a plastic wrap) parcel through. A fist-sized skitter-drone followed, just for a quick view and safely back again.

Kaoren kept his arm firmly around my waist the entire time the greysuits were taking readings, and looked a great deal more relaxed after the gate had closed. I know he didn’t think I was going to try running through it, but he may have been worried the gate would somehow reach out and snatch me away.

The thing was, it took FIVE MINUTES to close.

"I could have just turned around and gone back," I kept repeating.

"Well, I’m glad you didn’t," Mara said, amused at me.

"So am I. But still feel like an idiot." Then I went and hugged my kids, and even Ys let me.

Five minutes! It’s not just the amount of time it stays open, either. The skitter-drone had brought back some perfectly ordinary images of a Sydney footpath – no more than a few metres further along the same street I’d been walking down on my way home. And the gate realigned exactly one Muinan year (and ten minutes) after I stepped through from Earth. The implications of that, of a predictable alignment to almost the same place, just floored me.

Of course, we aren’t certain it really is predictable, and there was damn little I could do about it right away except give Kaoren a few sleepless nights with my worked-up tossing and turning. I was glad, at least, that I’d recovered enough to do some carefully rationed projection work, which meant a week later I got to go into the Ena and try and visualise Mum to see if the parcel had reached her.

I knew the answer to that straight away because she’d put the photos I’d sent in frames and set them on the bookshelf next to the TV. Pictures of me and Kaoren and our new family, right there on Earth.

Jules was playing games with one of his friends, and leaped up shouting: "I told you so! I told you so!" and then to me: "You get to do all the good stuff, Cass!"

Mum had been in the kitchen, but came out at the fuss and looked around at all the black-clad figures, then walked straight to me and hugged me hard.

"I only just finished reading them," she said. "Your handwriting is so tiny – my eyes may never recover." Then she pulled back, blinking away tears, and examined me. "No more injuries?"

"Not even a headache."

I introduced her to Kaoren again. He’d had me teach him how to say a few things in English in preparation – his accent is so cute – and Mum smiled at him and said: "I gather this is our second introduction, and so I’ll say the same thing I apparently did before: I’ll be glad to welcome you to the family when one of us isn’t a projection. But – thank you, for so much."

"Would you come here, Mum?" I asked anxiously. "If it were possible?"

"Who wouldn’t, dummo?" Jules put in. "Are you nuts?"

Mum had given me a sharp look. "You’ve found a way?"

I explained quickly about the realignment of the gate, and how we wouldn’t even know for another year whether it really was a predictable pattern, and that I’d be trying to send her another letter then, and I started to talk overly fast and nearly lost the projection.

Mum distracted me by catching me up on the news from home. Aunt Bet is having another baby, and Nan has sold her house and moved into an assisted care place. And Nick and Alyssa have hooked up! Mum said they bonded over being able to talk about me possibly being on another planet (which is not a story Mum has encouraged be spread far and wide). I think I must have been a bad friend to Alyssa to not realise that she liked Nick.

I couldn’t maintain the projection for much longer – looking at Earth takes way too much out of me – but before I dropped it Mum hugged me again and said: "Who wouldn’t? Are you nuts?" and laughed in a wide-eyed way and then was gone.

It will be more than a year before we can send another letter, and then it will be another year’s wait and KOTIS Command has to consider the idea of telling people on Earth the location of an occasional gate to Muina, and might not give me permission, and I’m going to go do a lot of swimming in the hopes that it will stop me ping-ponging off the walls.

Wednesday, January 21

We’ve been in our house three days now. It’s a big adjustment not having so many people around me, not having the constant background awareness of support staff, and the greensuits and technicians on the floors below, and of squads in the surrounding rooms. Plenty of small animals on Arcadia to catch my attention, but I’m really liking the relative quiet.

After approval, the seeding of the house was quick and easy – the only concern being whether we could avoid disturbing the spring which feeds the waterfall – but it took a fair chunk of time before all the support systems and fittings were installed in the excessively large chambers we’d grown underground.

The house is on the west side of the hill, and Pandora is to the east, so our view is full of uninterrupted lake and will have magnificent sunsets. In Winter when the leaves have fallen we’ll probably be able to see First Squad Island to the south and slightly west.

Maze helped a lot with the landscaping – scooping away the part of the hill on the south-east side where we want a big, enclosed grassy backyard, and shaping the face of the hill which forms a rear wall to the roof garden. Both areas are mostly still raw dirt at the moment, though we have marked out garden beds and planted a lot of seeds which the botanists tell me might produce the kind of lawn I described. Maze and Rye spent hours together in earnest discussion about which trees to remove and which to transplant so that we have a lot of sunlight, and selecting just the right trees for the backyard, and finding the perfect rocks to split and turn into stepping stones for a path. Maze thoroughly enjoyed all that, and says he’s going to study botany and design so he can build gardens. I think he’s serious.

Since most everything we had at the Setari building belongs to KOTIS, we had a lot of shopping to do. Linens and kitchen equipment and chairs and tables and curtains (which at least the Kolarens understand) and dozens of things which we kept realising we’d need. With the industrial sector expanding by the day, and the variations which nanotech allows, even the few production companies which have formed offer a surprising amount of variety. The interface made it easy to compare options, and we held family voting sessions to pick the designs.

We also went on an actual shopping trip to the mall/subway station which you can enter through Moon Piazza, which is where most of the handcrafted items are displayed. Amazing stuff – many of the early approved settlers were arts and crafts type – and I bought some really nice glassware and plates, and this incredible woollen tapestry which is deep green with mostly white flowers arranged in intricate Art Nouveau-ish lines inspired by the Kalasa decorations. I had the greatest difficulty getting the man at the shop to accept payment for any of it. We had lunch at one of the new restaurants, and I wish I could figure a way to take the kids out without having people showing up where we’re eating, to cheer when they catch glimpses of us. Even Sen went all shy at that one (or possibly was just overtired from all the excitements and the challenge of sampling everyone’s desserts).

Images of our house didn’t show up on the news until after it was nearly complete, which makes me like our architect even more. It was inevitable that pictures would leak once it reached the construction phase. And then the technicians were gone, and it was suddenly our house, very white and sprawling and new, and all we had to do was put our clothes away, make the beds, and figure out a way to keep the mud off the floors because we forgot to get mats.

Alone at last! Except for Ketzaren and Jeh, who were my minders for the day. KOTIS Command was willing to let us not live in the Setari building, but Lira and I are just too valuable, too potentially dangerous, for us not to have minders, particularly since Kaoren has more assignments away from Pandora than I do. When Lira goes to the talent school each day, a second pair will be on call for her. Babysitting is a permanent condition of our existence.

Not that I mind when it’s Ketzaren and Jeh, and now that months have passed with no sign of Cruzatch, babysitting duty is more a matter of being on the same island, rather than in my lap. And Setari are certainly useful to have around when you’re trying to arrange a party.

It was a housewarming and thank you rolled into one. Most of the food was pre-made by one of the restaurants, but I did a little cooking myself, even though many of the ingredients are still fairly unfamiliar to me. Lohn and Mara helped a lot, even when they weren’t assigned babysitters. Their house is going to be seeded soon, the first on their island, and I’m going to enjoy returning the many favours I owe them.

The party’s guest list was a bit of a struggle, because I really owe all the squads, even Fifth, but though Fifth have been behaving well, I’m not suddenly going to start liking them. And much as he tries to hide it, I think Kaoren would prefer that I never spoke to Els again. There were also the huge number of medics who’ve spent a lot of time keeping me alive, and a few of the kitchen staff that I’ve been chatting with about food, and – well, eventually Kaoren told me I couldn’t invite half of KOTIS, and no-one would expect me to. I ended up just inviting First, Second and Fourth and Squad One and Isten Notra and Shon, since these are the people I’m closest to[2].

The party was last night, and I think everyone enjoyed it. It was a fairly warm night, but there was a balmy breeze, and the terraced patios worked really well as I introduced everyone to the Aussie tradition of the barbie[3].

By now it’s not too hard to get meat and vegetables (instead of algae-blocks), and I managed a nice lamb steak with (somewhat purplish) fried onions with a salad of non-poisonous green leaves. All the squads pretended to be astonished to discover that I’m capable of cooking. I’m teaching Kaoren to cook as well, since it’s something he’s never had any need to do.

The surprise of the night came from Kaoren, who produced two tiny black scraps after dinner. Kittens! He said he remembered me saying that kittens are supposed to come in pairs. I was just as excited by them as the kids, though I’ve had time since to realise that they’ll represent a drastic change to the island’s ecosystem once they’re big enough to hunt. I’m trying to think of a solution to that which doesn’t involve giving up the kittens.

The cat colony of Pandora is still mostly feral, but some of the adults have been semi-tamed, and there’s been a great deal of kitten-napping going on. Our pair (which we haven’t named yet) weren’t the least bit afraid, but did get stressed by there being so many people, and went and hid behind Nils, which everyone thought was hugely funny.

Zee leaned down and said something to him which actually made him go pink, and Ketzaren and I exchanged amused glances. I’m not the only person pleased and fascinated by Nils and Zee. First and Second are full of plans for the future, of adjusting to being planetary Setari instead of constantly working in the Ena. And of the details of Lohn and Mara’s upcoming wedding, and First Squad Island, and the question of how they felt about some of the children at the talent school.

I must admit I invited Squad One not only because they’re fun to talk to, but because I suspect Sonn (I still haven’t reached the point of calling her Fiar) of being more than a little interested in Arad Nalaz, and trying not to let herself be. Fourth, like most of the younger squads, haven’t thrown themselves into a welter of romance and plans for houses, but they seemed to enjoy the party well enough. Mori’s been down lately because she misses both her family and Ro Kanato from Eighth, but otherwise Fourth has been rather focused on not losing their edge. They’ve been pathfinding through the Ena, charting courses from Pandora to places without working platforms, like Oriath and Arenrhon. This leaves Kaoren rather tired in the evenings, but I was fairly successful in keeping the bulk of my party-planning from landing on his head as soon as he dropped down onto the patio.

I haven’t just been playing house and planning parties, but my day job has been relatively stress-free. KOTIS Command has kept me to light training, irregular visualisations, and enhancing the Setari assisting the Mesiath construction. The only thing which I’m currently annoyed about is my hair, which is growing out super-slow. At the moment I have all these feathery wanna-be curls and look like a fuzzy duckling.

I’m up in my eyrie right now, with the wind blowing the super-sheer gauzy curtains about. Jeh and Grif are guarding me by sitting down on the patio chatting. Kaoren is at Kalasa, and the kids at school, so there’s no-one else in range of my senses. The kittens are chasing the curtains, which I should probably teach them not to, but I think it’s too cute to stop. The next important task on our schedule is voting on names for them.

Guess I’ll go make Jeh and Grif some lunch.