Kaoren carried me out to the common room, where more hugging was had, and Sen planted herself in my lap and fell straight to sleep. I spent a little while telling Rye (and a highly subdued and stubbornly silent Ys) about how great the storms on Tare were to watch and how the planet only had two types of weather: storming and about to storm. Then I fell asleep, of course, but no dreams or heaviness and Kaoren must have pushed them to not keep me too long in medical because I woke in my apartment – with this heavy weight on my chest, which panicked me a moment until I realised it was Ghost. Kaoren was very deeply asleep beside me, and Mara was watching over the kids and pretty much treated me like one when I stumbled out needing breakfast.
My apartment now has four bedrooms and is even roomier than the Muina version. It's obviously been set up this way for a while: KOTIS thinking ahead. Having a big, strict military organisation trying to anticipate my every need is a very surreal sensation. Sen was loving it, as usual, especially Ghost reappearing, while Ys and Rye have been discovering that the interface is a lot larger on Tare than it is on Muina. It was very funny listening to Rye asking Mara questions about the Song Star Setari program.
The headlines are all full of speculation about me having died, or being near-death, so I guess it's not really possible to take urgent emergency health flights without
someone
gossiping about it. KOTIS has issued a denial, which has only produced conspiracy theories.
Although I was marched back to medical for scans, I had a fun time anyway playing interface games with Sen and doing my best to live up to my own speech.
Saturday, September 20
Ties
Great news yesterday. Lohn and Mara have registered to get married. Mara told me when she sprang me from medical. It's something that they'd always been putting off to 'after retiring from the Setari' (at least in part because of Maze's wife dying, I suspect), but they'd decided that there was no real reason to. They held a little celebration/announcement party in their quarters, with the 'old-timers' of First and Second Squad and a scattering of others (including Kaoren, me and the kids) which was a very cramped affair, making us miss the common room at Pandora.
Because they've been living together for a long time, Lohn and Mara only have to wait two Taren years instead of five, so they'll be getting married in approximately eight months. I noticed everyone kept a weather eye on Maze to gauge his reaction at first, but then relaxed into wedding talk and 'future talk'. Maze just looked happy and relaxed and pleased for them – and spent quite a lot of time chatting with Ys and Rye (explaining Setari squad structures from what I could tell).
Nils teased me about needing to limit my medical dramas – particularly because he'd woken up well after I'd come back and been hit by all these headlines about me having died, which he says totally put him off his breakfast. The persistence of the stories about me being dead or near death is getting a little silly, and we tried to work out why people were more inclined to believe I was dead than KOTIS' announcement that I wasn't. I thought the best solution would be a shopping trip, so I could introduce the kids to the wonders of mall life. Maze and Kaoren weren't very keen, but they did promise to suggest it. Later on Kaoren and I talked rather more seriously about introducing our new extended family to his sister. And then, kids safely in bed, we spent hours having mad, crazy sex, trying to banish the spectre of my heart stopping.
Never one to delay, Kaoren arranged for us to meet with Siame today, cleverly combining it with a trip to the roof to relieve my already-increasing feeling of being locked up. Ys and Rye particularly seemed to find the idea of meeting Kaoren's sister the most daunting thing about Tare so far. Ys dealt with it by spending a great deal of time making sure Sen was dressed beautifully, her hair carefully braided. She spent a lot less effort on herself, though I'm glad to see she's willing to wear the clothes I'd bought now that there was no risk of the other Nuran children seeing her. Rye just looked like he had a stomach cramp all morning.
We lucked out on the weather, which was the second sort – about to storm. The sky was clear above, with a huge black bank of clouds off in the distance, flickering with lightning. Siame met us outside the elevator entrance, wearing her Kalrani uniform. She's nearly forty-five now (fifteen) and looked totally in control and correct, every inch a Setari in the making.
Standing on top of the massive pile of blocks which is a Taren city is enough to take anyone's mind off social awkwardness. So was the full-on wind. I said it was kite-flying weather, and explained what kites were (though Kaoren wouldn't let me create a projection of one – I'm not supposed to use my powers for a while). Rye wanted to know whether there was any 'proper outside' on Tare and was I think less than impressed with a complete absence of visible plants and animals. Since the storm started rolling in in earnest we went back down to my apartment for hot drinks.
Siame's attitude toward the kids was neutral, unconcerned, as she asked them questions about their experiences with the interface, and about living at Pandora. But she didn't say one single word to me. Since she's such a powerfully self-confident person, the impression she gave was of forbearance rather than any upset, and I was surprised when Sen abruptly reached out and patted Siame's hand. It was a clear gesture of sympathy, and Siame broke off in the middle of a question, her face losing all expression.
"Why don't you show Siame your room, Sen?" I asked.
Sen jumped up eagerly – she's very proud of her room and particularly the mound of cushions she's collected from all over the apartment to bury her bed in. Ys and Rye followed, and I kissed Kaoren because he was looking worn.
Kaoren is as protective of Siame as Ys is of Sen, and his long absence on a different planet right on top of him making a major change of his life has shifted her from having a very close relationship to him to being on the fringes. Beneath all that composure she was miserable. He's spending the afternoon with her – giving her some combat training because he's now too well known for a casual trip into the city.
The kids and I watched the storm, which hit very spectacularly, with a lead-up of lightning followed by horizontal rain pounding at my window. That was a lot of fun, with all of us in my window-seat and the lights turned down and Sen pretending to be frightened, Ys forgetting not to speak to me because she wanted to know how lightning works, and Rye wondering how any animals on Tare manage to stay alive. I turned it into a research exercise, with all of us looking up information on lightning, and the small number of hardy surface-dwelling animals of Tare's islands (think armadillos), and the vast variety of cave-dwelling ones, and the efforts the Tarens have gone to to preserve Tare's land-dwelling wildlife once they realised they were in danger of wiping most of it out.
I love it when the kids get distracted and stop being defensive with me. Tonight, Kaoren and I are going to work through the legal documents for making them (and Siame) our heirs and naming Mara and Lohn guardians in the event of our deaths. Not that we're officially their guardians, or are likely to be able to qualify for adopting them on Tare, but it's a step we can make quickly, and next we'll start investigating the process under the provisional Muinan laws – which are having to deal with the issue of adoptions as a matter of priority.
Maze just emailed me an expanded summary of everything that's happened to me, and told me to edit in anything I'd like to include. KOTIS is going to add it to my official biography as well as providing it to the producers of
The Hidden War
.
First and Fourth are back on duty tomorrow (they've theoretically been on holiday these last two days), but it's a training day. It looks like I'll be training with them, but need to check the arrangements for the kids. Not that Ys and Rye aren't perfectly capable of looking after Sen and self-studying, but I want them to be children, not babysitters.
Sunday, September 21
Back and Forward
During my days the kids will be attending the Kalrani training school, which didn't sound like a good plan to me, but Kaoren tells me the school is more than flexible enough to handle them carefully. They'll spend some time in classes with Kalrani, but won't have the pressures or intense training intended to turn children into Setari. They didn't seem upset when they returned today, anyway – Sen is always happy to meet children her own age (or a couple of years older, in the case of the youngest Kalrani) and one of the older Kalrani appears to have been assigned to give Ys and Rye very basic combat training (those stepping exercises), which has delighted Rye to no end. He was so happy when Kaoren told him to show what he'd learned and then spent some time correcting his stance. Ys isn't nearly so interested in combat, but Kaoren put her through her paces as well, and she went a little pink when he gave her one of his tiny approving nods.
I was floatingly tired from the full-on training Mara put me through and declined the opportunity to have my ability to step back and forward corrected. We played the spelling game again, and all the kids are continuing to improve in leaps and bounds, but when we asked them what treat they would like they couldn't (or wouldn't) settle on anything. When it was time for me to read the next chapter of our story I had Ys and Rye each read a couple of paragraphs to start out with, helping them spell out the more complex words, and then finished off the rest myself.
I had to laugh at Kaoren, since I next went and read to him. His response was to have me write him out the English alphabet and start teaching him English as I read. We're reading through more of my period of being Zan's trainee, revisiting my struggles to understand the concept of the Ena and what the hell was going on. And just desperately wanting Zan to like me, since she was the only person I knew. It immediately made me email Zan and ask her if she was interested in going swimming together some time (possibly with the kids).
Today I have medical appointments again, while First and Fourth are on Ena assignment and I'm trying not to worry about Mara's first day back on serious active duty. I finished off reviewing the little history of me which is going to be made public. It's pretty dry, so there wasn't anything to object to.
Monday, September 22
Day Trip
Score! The bluesuits decided that some kind of public display of me was going to be necessary to quash the conspiracy theories, and so agreed to me going shopping. Probably the oddest assignment I'll ever have – a mall visit to foster public calm.
Maze, Kaoren and I had a sit-down after First and Fourth were back from mission yesterday and talked through the technicalities. It's one thing, after all, to take the kids shopping, but another thing altogether to expose them to the kind of crowds which turned up at Rana Junction. And a large, obvious number of guards would draw attention like a magnet, whether or not they were in uniform.
Eventually they decided on an escort of ten Setari, including Kaoren. We would take a roundabout way getting out of the KOTIS facility, dropping down to the 'basement levels' to a freight shuttle and then coming up straight into the middle of the prime shopping district on the island. Kaoren, Zee and Nils would stay with me and the kids, and the rest of the escort would shadow us in two groups while we shopped, joining up only when travelling between floors and then stopping for lunch. We rather suspected that after lunch too many people would have recognised me for the excursion to continue. The police would be given an hour or so's warning, but not too much because that would lessen the amount of time for word to leak.
I was all for wearing a blonde wig and dark glasses, except of course that would defeat the purpose and sunglasses are not exactly common on Tare. I settled for plaiting my hair in Sen's favourite twin-braid style, since it was a way I don't usually wear it. Mine isn't long enough to be half so impressive as hers, and I skipped the ribbons, but I still quite liked it and Nils said it was different enough that people would need to take a closer look to be sure.
Nils was part of my 'near' escort because he's such a good Illusion caster, and Zee because she's managed to be one of the least-photographed of First Squad. I longed to tease them about it, but since Nils seems to be pretending that he's never been one to flirt with Zee, or indeed with anyone much, I figured it was best to leave it alone. They're driving me batty showing no sign of particular interest in each other – I so want to pry and don't quite dare.
Sen was tremendously excited, of course, and I think Ys and Rye were at least curious. I'd prepared them with a few select kids' shows featuring Taren daily life so they had some idea what it was like. They're used to Taren-style buildings by now, but one of the big multi-level atriums is something else altogether.
I'd told them we were going to pick out some quilt covers for their beds (they all had standard-issue plain blue), and Kaoren had laid out the rules they had to follow in his usual clear and concise way. He offered up a few rules for me as well, and tweaked one of my braids when I suggested a couple for him in return.
With Nils and Zee taking lead, our trip up from the train was uneventful, with no-one spotting me at all – The Nils Effect means that most people don't at first glance notice anyone but Nils, and then they're often busy walking into light poles or rubbish bins. All the double-takes I saw were focused conveniently on him and Zee as we made our way to our first stop, an overwhelming multi-level toy store which stunned even Sen into silence.
"Since you couldn't think of a treat yesterday," I said, "I figured this would give you some idea. Pick something you like." Ys developed a stubborn look, and I gave her a stern one in return. "We can't leave till you do, so best get started."