In Arcadia

Chapter Three

Tyrian was the infant equivalent of a mood ring. Much of the time he would make an excellent stand in for a Midwich cuckoo: solemn and staring and grave. But if you picked him up when you were annoyed or angry he would react to that immediately, no matter how gentle your touch or voice, for he had inherited both Sight Sight and Place Sight from Kaoren. These were Sights that developed early, and so anyone holding Tyrian required a lot of personal discipline in order to avoid transforming quiet baby into squalling baby.

On the up side, he responded very well to positive emotions and one of Laura’s new favourite things was to try to make him laugh. Lying on her back out by the pool, she hoisted Tyrian up above her, blew out her cheeks, and goggled her eyes. He let out a delighted squeal and waved his arms. Dropping him down on her lap, she tickled him, and then hoisted him up again and puckered her mouth like a fish.

Tyrian giggled, all happy smiles, burped, and vomited milk over Laura’s face and neck.

"Urk!" Laura had only barely managed to turn her head in time to spare her mouth and eyes. She sat up hastily, then tweaked her grandson’s chin as he briefly wavered on the edge of shock, and fortunately he laughed merrily in response. "I’m glad you find it funny, kiddo." She wiped her face with the back of one hand, and smiled down at him. "You look like your Mum when you laugh, you know."

"He does," a voice agreed, and she turned, steadying Tyrian, to find that Tsur Selkie had once again arrived early for his appointment. "I will watch him if you wish to clean up," he added.

Laura hesitated, then thanked him and climbed to her feet. "I won’t be long," she said, handing Tyrian over and relaxing fractionally when the KOTIS officer demonstrated that he at least knew how to hold a baby.

Even so, she showered and changed quickly, reflecting that he’d understood what she’d said to Tyrian, even though she’d spoken in English. Cass' translation app worked both ways, but Laura hadn’t realised Tsur Selkie was using it. At least she’d grown better at speaking Muinan, though her pronunciation remained far from perfect.

Still a little damp, Laura returned to find him sitting sideways on the broad rim of the pool with Tyrian on his lap, propped against partially raised knees. Playing pat-a-cake. Tyrian had returned to solemnity, but was managing to bat at Tsur Selkie’s hands with reasonable accuracy, and appeared pleased each time he managed it.

"You have children, Tsur Selkie?" Laura asked.

"Two daughters," he said. "Allidi and Haelin. This is a game they enjoyed at this age."

"He almost looks like he’s moving before you do."

"He is reacting to my decision on which hand to move."

Fascinated, Laura sat down cross-legged beside him, watching as Tyrian continued to almost appear to anticipate which hand Tsur Selkie held up for him to pat. "So guessing games are good for Sight Sight talents?"

"At this age, very simple ones only, preferably those where the correct choice is known to you. Two to three choices, and never continued if his Sights don’t trigger and he fails. Until Muinan age three or four he will switch between a state of strong certainty about his immediate environment, and occasions when Sight Sight isn’t triggering, when the world will feel threatening, and unknowns or new developments will upset him." He raised his right hand, and Tyrian again batted at it.

"As he grows older, more capable of abstract concepts, Sight Sight will trigger less and less, unless he is trained to focus it. That will be a difficult time for him, especially in combination with Place Sight. At the moment, Sight Sight’s certainty mitigates the distress that Place Sight often brings."

He paused and dropped his hand when Tyrian yawned mightily. "Games that trigger Sights are also tiring, so this is best played before a scheduled nap."

"When do the other Sights usually manifest?"

A discussion that expanded to the wide array of known psychic talents nicely filled the time until Kaoren returned Sue from an expedition to the northern shore of the lake. While Tsur Selkie managed to maintain an air of formality even with a baby falling asleep in his lap—and still threatened to steal the air from the room through sheer intensity—he was also a superlative listener, and Laura found talking to him paradoxically relaxing.

"Do Sight Sight talents tend toward careers like psychiatry?" she asked, as he handed the snoozing Tyrian up to her.

"It’s been known," he said, standing. "But it is rarely successful. The talent might offer extra insight, but insight also tends to bring a self-belief that mixes poorly with the delicate negotiation of someone else’s psyche." His flicker of a smile surfaced. "We are, as a group, too arrogant."

Laura glanced down at Tyrian, imagining him growing up too insightful to be wise.

"What does it involve, exactly, being a Sight Sight advisor?" she asked, moving inside as she heard Kaoren and Sue’s voices.

"During this settlement phase, it has primarily meant construction projects."

"Construction?"

Kaoren, hearing this, grimaced. "That is something I avoid as much as I can: assignments to look over large buildings, power generators, ships, checking for hidden flaws. Physical faults like that do tend to trigger Sight Sight, but we cannot guarantee safety—and it is exceptionally dull work."

"I thought Sight Sight talents went around solving mysteries," Sue said, clearing a bottle from Tyrian’s carry cot so Laura could put him down.

"Occasionally. It’s rare that there is criminal investigative work that cannot be better addressed by science," Tsur Selkie said. "Assignments like this are more common—gathering information toward large decisions."

Reminded that Tsur Selkie had not visited just to teach her about psychic infants, Laura gathered the inevitable scatter of baby toys and clothing, and saw Kaoren on his way. Sue, in the meantime, set out snacks and drinks on the northern patio, where they could fully appreciate the first few motes of gold, red and orange. Autumn in the Pandora region looked likely to be spectacular.

Tsur Selkie sat exactly as he had before: very upright, hands on knees, formal but without the curt, no-time-to-waste attitude Cass' diaries had suggested. Laura had not seen him as Cass originally had—in a command environment during a crisis—and she could not decide if this innately formal but relaxed version of a KOTIS officer marked the change from a period of extreme danger to the current peace, or if he was attempting to put her and Sue at ease.

"In this session, I would like to cover probable reactions on your world, should a delegation be sent—or a ship locate your world. I understand there is no designated leader of Earth. And the gate is located in a non-central part of the world?"

Laura produced a map of Earth from among her mass of scans, and gave him a short history of Earth’s major political divisions, and Australia’s current position.

"So at first you’d be dealing with the Australian authorities. Who will be bemused, but then…" Laura grimaced. "Well, they’re politicians. They will insist on many photo opportunities, but they’re likely to be extremely enthusiastic about any kind of trade negotiations."

"No, don’t forget you’d be dealing with whoever is waiting on the street, first," Sue put in.

"I suppose so," Laura said. "Our family and the Caldwells and Doctor Jamandre. But if word of the gate has spread to enough people, there might be press waiting."

"A circus," Sue said in English, then added: "Chaos and excited shouting. Which would continue without end, really. A bit like how Cass is treated here—so many people painfully eager to meet her—but rather worse because on Earth the Muinan delegation would represent two of the seven great villain motivations."

Sue was obviously feeling less tongue-tied today. Laura, who rarely failed to be entertained by her sister, had to admit she also wanted to know how this man would react to some high grade nonsense.

But Tsur Selkie took the opening volley without blinking. "Which are?"

"Money and living longer." Sue took a long drink of juice, watching him with immense interest. "The other five are revenge, saving or bringing back a dead loved one, world domination, good intentions, and just because."

"Would Muinan technology not also represent the potential for world domination?" Tsur Selkie asked, taking villain motivations entirely seriously. "It is an important consideration for us—that we might destabilise your planet’s political balance. Would other nations, for instance, make war upon your Australia to gain control of the gate to Muina?"

The question was a reminder that this was a conversation of consequence. Not that Sue would be easily quashed: she firmly believed that humour opened the mind to unexpected viewpoints.

"An attack on Australia isn’t likely," Laura said. "Too many allies with big guns. But control of any delegation is a different matter. The knowledge, the power they would represent is immense. And…" She hesitated, but there was no point hedging around something so obvious. "There might be attempts to kidnap them, to force them to share everything they know."

"Lots of aging billionaires out there," Sue muttered.

"Lots of aging government officials, too." Laura stared down at her hands, and then out at a lake framed in gold-specked green, before meeting the eyes of the patiently waiting KOTIS officer. "While I’m still very keen to have Muina open relations using the gate, I could not say that a delegation could visit in complete safety."

He nodded, as if this was only what he expected her to say. "The same problem occurs for the Caldwell children. They have the interface installation, which represents a large advance for your people. Could we allow them to return, and not be concerned with their safety?"

That was a depressing consideration, but neither Laura nor Sue could deny that anyone returning would likely be intensely studied.

"The possibility that we will locate your world through the deep space of the Ena has increased, however," he continued. "I would not care to predict an imminent discovery, but I now consider contact to be an eventual probability."

"What’s changed?" Laura asked, surprised and pleased.

"Exploration in the Ena’s deep space has long involved expensive drone losses, but we have recently been trialling sending out large groups of much smaller and simpler units. Their instruments do not have the same range as our original explorer units, but we are gaining data far more quickly than ever before."

"Finding Earth is still in the possibly never category, though?" Sue asked.

"It remains a matter of chance, but the use of drone shoals greatly increases the odds. To that point, we are beginning long-range planning for ship-based contact. Cassandra previously stated that if there is a rift opening from Ena’s deep space anywhere on Earth, it will be located in something known as the Bermuda Triangle. Would you agree with that?"

"The Triangle’s a story, nothing more," Sue said, firmly. "Earth is a heavily-travelled planet, and I think we’d have seen a whole lot more disappearances in recent years if there was an enormous invisible gash in the sky so close to a major continent. Unless not all rifts to deep space are so large as Muina’s?"

"Those we have observed all have similar proportions."

"Then, if there’s a rift into Ena deep space at all, it’s got to be somewhere completely outside the travel routes. Somewhere completely away from people, where even light aircraft don’t fly."

"Antarctica?" Laura guessed.

"Best option. Otherwise, I don’t know, northern Russia?"

They went through the likely locations, and the closest nations to them, and then moved on to the probable world reaction to a spaceship turning up and asking to chat.

"There’s plenty of precedent for that sort of thing in our fictions," Laura said.

"Oh, boy, is there," Sue said.

"Extra-terrestrial contact stories fall into a few distinct groups," Laura went on. "Aliens show up, and the people of Earth are brutal and cruel to them. Aliens show up and try to annihilate us. Aliens show up and make peaceful overtures, and…"

"And it’s all fun and games until the plasti-flesh masks come off." Sue grinned and mimed lifting away her face.

"Plasti-flesh?" Tsur Selkie repeated, sounding out the English carefully.

"I suppose Cass would know by now if Muinans were really lizard people in disguise," Sue added.

Tsur Selkie’s flicker of a smile made an appearance, but he only said: "We must account for a precedent for deception?"

"Trojan horse aliens," Sue said, and then explained Trojan horses.

For the remainder of the session, they told him alien contact stories. ET, War of the Worlds, Independence Day, The Thing, Space Battleship Yamato. Aliens drawing the people of Earth into intergalactic wars, aliens testing the worthiness of humans, or simply being mystic and vague and incomprehensible. It was an involved conversation, because Tsur Selkie would always ask for explanations when they fell back on English terms and phrases.

"Does all this fiction really help you, Tsur Selkie?" Laura asked, after they had explored a dozen different flavours of First Contact disaster.

"It gives me a frame for the psychology of your world. It appears that, while there are smaller groups that would react negatively, those who have weaponry that could reach us at a considerable distance are not likely to use it immediately, unless some major misstep occurs?"

They agreed that the chances of missiles being launched were low, with some caveats depending on exactly where the Muinan ship revealed itself.

"So then you’d need to decide which country to land in…" Sue said. "How complicated this all is."

"The language barrier is another factor. You speak one of the most widely-spread languages, but not the most spoken?"

"English is, ah, second or third," Sue said. "Mandarin is the most-spoken, but we don’t speak it. Laura could teach you Japanese, thanks to far too many years of anime, but I only have bits of French and German."

"I brought along a few English-other language dictionary apps," Laura said. "They’re very basic things compared to the one Cass has been working on, though."

She stopped as Mimmit, the cat she’d brought with her from Earth, leapt onto the table. Tsur Selkie, like more than half of Muina’s population, was originally from Tare. Taren visitors, raised on an island world of densely populated, hive-like cities with little open land and few animals, often flinched from sudden contact with small creatures, so Laura shifted in readiness for whisking Mimmit away. But Tsur Selkie merely looked down at the striking tortoiseshell, with her harlequin mask of black and orange, then lifted his partially gloved hand from his knee and rested it on the table.

"Perhaps you can set out for me the divisions of Earth by primary language," he said, as Mimmit briefly scented his fingers, then strolled down the table to Laura.

That task more than filled the remainder of their session, with Tsur Selkie concluding the discussion by setting their third appointment for a mere week away.

"Well, you have your answer," Laura said, after Tsur Selkie had once again politely taken his leave and departed. "Positively unflappable."

"I didn’t try anything really silly on him," Sue said. "But, yes, I don’t think even cinnamon rolls would have gotten more than that brief ah yes, humour smile. Sad."

Sue didn’t look sad. She looked smug, which always meant trouble. Laura eyed her sister thoughtfully, but was distracted by a vehicle strongly resembling a flying car zipping across her line of view and dropping toward the dock area. She sighed with unabashed envy, for personal vehicles were strictly controlled in an attempt to prevent citizens from joy-riding right out of the safe zones around the settlements, and into Muina’s still very dangerous wilds.

"Tsur Selkie travels in style. If they ever open those things up for civilian use I am absolutely going to get one, and I will refer to it constantly as my flitter, and pretend that I’m in an Andre Norton novel."

"Norton novels always seem to involve arduous journeys through abandoned alien ruins," Sue said. "Cass has done enough of that for all of us."

That was entirely true. And Laura thoroughly hoped that no-one she knew would ever endure such a thing again. Firmly putting Cass' trials aside, she continued to poke at the large and unwieldy prospect of Muinan-Terran trade.

"I wonder how much of their technology they’ll be willing to bring to the table? The Tarens are the ones who had all the advanced tech, and when they started trade with Kolar they deliberately kept them several steps behind so as not to lose an advantage. It might have become more relaxed now that they’ve settled Muina, and allowed nanotech on Kolar, but what if they take the same we’ll only give you so much approach to Earth?"

Sue, while continuing to smirk obnoxiously, said: "Just confirming the existence of non-terrestrial life is huge."

"So daunting to consider all the ways this could play out. Even if this doesn’t start any wars, think of the impact on the world economy. The interface would devastate mobile phone providers. Medicine—old age—would never be the same. Factor those vat-food factories into food production for drought-afflicted regions. And infrastructure that grows itself will alter so many things. Even gardening robots. All these wonderful things that will either lift Earth to a post-scarcity state or…" She shook her head and looked at her sister. "The Luddite rebellion multiplied by…everything."

Sue was now attempting to channel Spock, one eyebrow scrunched down and the other canted to her hairline.

"Are you going to sit there pulling faces? Because if there’s a shoe waiting to drop, you’ll need to untie the laces."

"You didn’t even notice, did you?"

"Notice what?"

"That he’s dying to get into your pants."

This was so completely outside Laura’s line of thought that she said blankly: "Who?" Then: "Tsur Selkie?"

"You are so oblivious where men are concerned."

Laura stared at her sister, then shook her head. "No. I was paying attention. He was entirely professional. You’re imagining things."

"I’ll give you the entirely professional. He was on duty, after all. But only you would fail to notice that you had ninety percent of his attention, and he only looked at me when I was speaking."

"I did talk more, didn’t I?" Laura said, dry now. "Really, Sue, are you ever going to stop trying to set me up with people?"

"Next week when he comes back, dress up a little."

"Sue."

"That whole most intense person in the universe thing he’s got going doubles when he’s looking at you. What’s a good name to call him? Is there a non-negative word for a black hole?"

"…gravitational mass?"

"The Pocket Event Horizon is a bit long—but it kind of works. It certainly feels like an event when he shows up, and you can see the whole room being reshaped around him. And he is too so totally hot for you, Laura."

"Now you’re just making things up."

"Okay, tell me this. How long had he been here before I showed up?"

"I don’t know. Maybe half an hour."

"And it’s not as if I was late back. This guy, by all accounts, is incredibly busy. Military big brass who gets chauffeured around to the point where his ride arrived to collect him the very moment he walked down to the dock. And yet he’s shown up early twice now so he could sit around waiting to start. With you."

"He hadn’t even met me last time. He wanted to talk to Maze and Alay. And today…maybe he wanted to look Tyrian over?" Laura thought back over the afternoon, and saw only a reserved but comfortable-with-himself man helpfully making sure she understood the complications of her grandson’s talents. She had enjoyed the talk, but had noticed none of the pressure she usually felt when someone was trying to chat her up.

Admittedly, she had occasionally felt breathless, but that was only to be expected talking to a man of such concentrated presence. A Pocket Event Horizon.

"Well, well. Who would have thought a serious soldier was your type? Always something new to learn."

Laura was not blushing. She was just annoyed. "The conclusion you’re jumping to is a mirage."

"Yeah, yeah. Stop playing oh no, not me. Let’s look at some pros and cons instead. First pro, he’s a total hottie. On the negative side, military man, might make you wake up at dawn and do push-ups."

"I already wake up at dawn."

"Pro: gainfully employed, and the job comes with a flitter. Con: minimal evidence of a sense of humour. But I suppose that might go with your tendency to be painfully deadpan."

"Isn’t playing straight man of one comedy duo enough?" Laura said. "This is silly, Sue. Let it drop."

"But you’re thinking about it! You’re picturing him naked. You’re remembering all those stories you’ve heard about Sight Sight talents and Place Sight talents and just what that means for sexytimes."

"Well, you’ve certainly now succeeded in making me self-conscious about talking to him again," Laura said, collecting their glasses and taking them back inside.

"This is awesome," Sue said, following her with the half-eaten snacks. "You hardly ever bite when I dangle man-bait. I’m going to have so much fun."

With considerable forbearance, Laura ignored this last and said, as she placed the glasses carefully on top of the cleaning unit: "Besides, I think he must be married. He has two daughters."

"So look him up. The man’s semi-famous—he’s sure to have an entry in the Muinan version of Wikipedia." Sue put her tray next to the glasses, and made good on her own suggestion. "Here we go…Gidds Selkie. Widely regarded as the architect of the Setari program. Does that mean he’s the one who had the bright idea of conscripting children? I’ll put that in the con column. Even if it did lead to saving this corner of the galaxy."

Laura, who had not been able to stop her thoughts from following through on the picturing him naked part of Sue’s suggestions, found this titbit a functional cold shower. While there had been opportunities to leave the program, and none of the Setari saw active service before adulthood, there had still been accidents in training. Children had died.

Could she ever really want to be with a man who had set that in motion, no matter how successful the program had been, or how many lives it had saved?

Turning the cleaning unit on, she listened far more equivocally as Sue continued: "Born, urgh, Taren, Earth and Muinan years require too much maths to convert. He’s around, oh, not quite forty. I didn’t expect that. Looks thirty, acts fifty. If he helped set up the Setari he must have started just out of school. And…here we go, divorced from someone called Elezin Zadel. Involved in early Ena scientific projects. Hm. Survivor of the Tasken Outbreak. What’s a…oh, one of the bigger ionoth-monster killing sprees, back when incursions from the Ena first started getting serious on Tare. I’m not sure if tragic backstory counts as a pro or a con."

They both paused, as the glasses, jug and plates began to be pulled into the surface of the cleaning unit. Laura did have a sink, and still ran the occasional dish under the tap, but the nanotech cleaner—basically a vat of nanite goop connected to the waste system—was a true wonder. She could put anything dirty—dishes, clothes, jewellery—on top, and the goop would absorb the object, remove foreign particles, and then spit an astonishingly clean object back out. It had been designed for the water-poor planet of Kolar, but Cass said it had quickly spread to Muina and Tare as well. Laura loved it with a passion that she would not normally direct toward kitchen appliances.

"I wonder if people on Tare stand around gawping at their dishwasher?" Sue asked.

"I bet they do on Kolar." The glasses, which had barely been dirty, were already emerging—Laura’s favourite part of the process.

"They should add a little ta-dah! sound effect for when they come out again," Sue said. "Kaoren, by the way, says that Selkie didn’t come up with the idea of conscripting children. Yes, yes, I know you’d rather have a reason to put the scrummy soldier out of your head, but then I’d miss out on you at the next meeting, sitting there with a Sight Sight talent, trying not to picture him naked."

"I think," Laura said judiciously, "that I’m going to go for a nice dusk-time walk."

"Exit our heroine, stage left, in a state of some confusion? At least admit you’re thinking about it."

Laura rolled her eyes, and went to find a light coat, then took a stroll down to her favourite bench. To think about Tsur Gidds Selkie, naked.