In Arcadia (Touchstone Book 5)

by Andrea K Höst

  It was remarkable, though, how inadequate Cass' description of Gidds Selkie had been. How could she not have mentioned his poise? The fine delicacy of his temples? And that incredible, mesmerising voice?

  Laura's session of muted mortification finally ended, with Tsur Selkie saying: "I think that will cover what I need. Thank you for being so open."

  "We've made Earth sound thoroughly awful," Laura said, glad for the moment that he was keeping his opinions to himself. "But we...strive, I suppose I want to say."

  Before Tsur Selkie could respond—or Sue point out that Muina's chequered history involved mass sacrifice—a clatter and thumping on the stairs warned them that Julian had emerged from his 'cave'.

  "I just can't work out how you make so much noise on whitestone," Laura said, turning to smile at her gangling son. "That sounded like the descent of several wardrobes."

  Julian ignored the comment, bouncing over to the north patio doors. "Check out the storm that's coming! We're going to get smashed!"

  The glass doors slid open as he approached, and a low-level gale cut through the air-conditioned stillness of the room.

  "You'd think the kid had never seen weather before." Sue stood and followed Julian, saying to him: "We watched one of the storms of Tare. You really think this is going to compete?"

  "Tare's storms aren't as interesting 'cause there's nothing to blow away. You're lucky the patio furniture's heavy, Mum."

  The trees did look thoroughly wind-tossed, so Sue murmured apologetically to Tsur Selkie and headed out to make sure she wasn't about to donate any possessions to the lake.

  "The forecast said rain, not a storm," she said, discovering not so much a bank of clouds as a solid wall rapidly approaching from the west.

  And yet, this was not nearly enough to distract her from an overwhelming awareness of Tsur Selkie following her out, of an Event Horizon just behind her. The paradox of the man was how everything he did felt at the same time momentous, and yet calming. Laura kept finding herself holding her breath as she waited to see what he did next, and then relaxing in the face of his complete composure.

  "There is a theory that overuse of the teleportation platforms causes meteorological side-effects," he said, making an extended survey of the western sky.

  "Sounds like an excuse for when the weather people get things wrong," Sue said, then shielded her face as what felt like half a tree's worth of leaves pelted them.

  "Awesome," Julian said.

  "There will be hail," Tsur Selkie said, with the quiet certainty Laura had learned to recognise from Kaoren's Sight Sight pronouncements.

  "Double awesome."

  Muinan-language text appeared abruptly on Laura's internal interface 'screen'.

  Pandora Region Alert: Strong Winds. Hail.

  "Hey, did you do that?" Julian asked, turning to Tsur Selkie. "You can message the whole city?"

  "Kaoren reported the storm's severity," Tsur Selkie said. "He and the guard detail are securing the boat house."

  "Speaking of which, I'm going to run home before this hits," Sue said, and was as good as her word, dashing down the path toward her house.

  "Your strawberries are going to be mush, Mum," Julian said. "Let's move the table over them."

  Laura wasn't entirely certain how much Tsur Selkie had followed of a conversation that had bounced between English and Muinan, but he moved without wasting time on questions to help them prop the formidable whitestone table over the tiered strawberry bed.

  "The chairs may be best indoors," he said, with another glance at the sky.

  That said something for how severe he expected the storm to be. Nanite-grown whitestone furniture had a honeycomb structure and was not nearly as heavy as natural stone, but it was still solid stuff.

  "Is Mimmit inside?" Julian asked, as he brought in the last chair.

  Along with immunisations, Mimmit had had a sensor installed, and so her location could be tracked via the interface. Earlier in the week 'cat plus storm' wouldn't have been a concern, since Mimmit had taken a firm 'house cat' view on life as soon as the days had started to cool, but the unusually warm day had seen her out and about, probably engaged in her ongoing flirtation with Cass' two cats.

  "Moving very rapidly in this direction," Laura said, after the briefest pause. She turned and stared down the path to the boat house. The world was disappearing into greenish-black gloom, but the wind had dropped, as if the storm was holding its breath.

  A parti-coloured streak shot into view.

  "Go Mimmit!" Julian called, and cheered as the cat hurtled between their legs and disappeared into the house.

  Other movement caught Laura's eye, a flutter in the grass, and for a moment she mistook it for another cat. But then it repeated, again and again, and something struck the repositioned table and shattered.

  Laura sent the command to close the door, and shook her head in faint wonder as the slope was replaced by a popcorn-hopping cascade of chunky balls of ice.

  "Wicked," Jules said reverently.

  "The islands are a useful location," Tsur Selkie said, watching the scene with an analytical air. "But comparatively exposed."

  Laura's response was forestalled by a text from her sister.

  Sue: Not quite a cabin in a snowstorm but it'll do in a pinch. Ask him to dinner.

  Laura: Just he and I, a roaring fire, and my teenaged son? Nice story you're writing, Sue.

  Even so, she turned to the man beside her, refused to be distracted by the interesting combination of strength and delicacy in his profile, and said:

  "It certainly isn't weather for travel. Would you like to stay for dinner, Tsur Selkie?"

  Chapter Five

  It took the full measure of Laura's fortitude to stand shoulder to shoulder with a Pocket Event Horizon as he turned his head and looked directly into her eyes. His expression didn't change: he simply stood there, holding her gaze for far longer than was necessary.

  Sue was right. Sue was very very right.

  "Mum! Come see! The pool's turned into a giant slushie!"

  Laura couldn't help but laugh, just a little, and won a flicker of a smile in response.

  "I would be glad to," the Event Horizon said. "If you would call me Gidds."

  "And you can call me Laura," she responded, and found it quite easy to say, nerves dropping away. An unspoken acknowledgement had been made, and everything seemed uncomplicated. He was attracted to her. She was attracted to him. They would have dinner.

  "Winter here is going to rock."

  They would have dinner with her teenaged son. Entertained, Laura went to look at her hail-filled pool.

  "When it snows I'm going to sled all the way down the slope into the lake," Julian informed her.

  "I'm sure there's a reason why that would be fun," Laura said.

  "Well, it would be if I went down on a big inner-tube…though getting out of the lake might be a bit rough. Here comes the rain."

  'Rain' was an inadequate word. 'Sheets'. 'Vertical flood' rapidly becoming 'horizontal flood'. They watched in appreciative silence.

  "Living on top of a hill in the middle of a lake certainly tends to the dramatic," Laura said eventually. "Did you take a land grant in the islands as well, Gidds?"

  "I haven't yet been released for Muinan emigration," he said. "Even though I spend the majority of my time here. But after my daughters transfer to Pandora Shore, they plan to view all the possibilities of Muina before deciding how my grant is to be used."

  "Are they starting soon?" Pandora Shore was the special Setari-linked school that Laura's grandchildren attended.

  "After the Thanksgiving Ceremony." He glanced at her, then added: "I return to Tare tomorrow to make the final arrangements."

  "How long will it take you to finish this report thing?" Julian asked.

  "As much as possible I prepare reports as I go along—else I would never keep pace. I can't predict how long it will take for a decision to be made, since there's a great deal of disag
reement on the political side, but my part is done."

  Laura processed this very deliberate communication, then carefully corralled her scattering thoughts. More practicality, less palpitations. Dinner.

  "Is there anything you prefer not to eat, Gidds?"

  "I avoid non-cultured meats."

  Julian's eyes went wide. "Is that because if you eat animal flesh you can feel what the animal felt when it died?"

  "It's possible," Gidds said, unfazed by the question. "Or, occasionally, impressions of an animal's life. Vat-grown meats don't come with such complications."

  "Cheese would be okay, right? We can have fondue. I'll make the goop, Mum. You never do it stringy enough."

  Julian was an excellent cook so long as it involved cheese, for which he had an inexhaustible enthusiasm. Nothing had delighted him more than confirming that the Taren dish 'nymoz' was indeed indistinguishable from fondue, even if the milk was vat-cultured.

  "Fondue three days in a row strikes me as excessive," Laura said. "And we have quiche already. Set out something for us to drink."

  "Okay." But Julian was not to be distracted, asking: "What about eggs? Are eggs a problem?"

  "Not usually."

  "And it was vat-cultured egg, anyway," Laura murmured. Much of the Muinan settlements' food supply was artificially grown, since the new farms were not established enough to provide for millions.

  Laura heated and cut slices of quiche while Julian, apparently unaffected by Event Horizons, set out glasses and continued to pepper their guest with questions about the impact of Place Sight on food. Gidds responded with unimpeded calm, even to speculation about the emotions of bacteria.

  Would he have answered in the same manner, if she weren't a factor? Laura wasn't certain, but she liked him for his patience. And it was a real pleasure to see Julian's natural effervescence at full flow. He'd faced his own challenges following Cass' disappearance—not least of which had been the week Laura had almost entirely shut down, when the Police had started winding back their investigation. That and several years of bullying had meant unexpected walls had gone up around the chatty, gregarious child Julian had been, but Muina was undoubtedly a dream come true for him. He was flourishing.

  And helpfully moving on to questions Laura was thinking of asking herself, such as: "Did you come up with the idea of the Setari?"

  Gidds shook his head. "It would be more correct to say I was one of the first Setari. I was recruited into KOTIS by Isten Notra, who found drones inadequate for experiments that required entering the Ena. That was a very controversial program, since we only risked travel through deep space at the time, and had lost almost all knowledge of the other aspects of the Ena, which were considered too dangerous for living personnel. But the need to learn more had become a priority."

  "When it became clear the number of tears into real-space were increasing?" Laura asked, hoping he wouldn't find the continued interrogation annoying.

  "When it no longer became possible to deny," Gidds said. "There had been a great deal of opposition to official recognition of the problem. And, then, all in a month, Isten Notra's proposals for direct action were authorised, and an Ena exploration team assembled."

  "Were you Captain?" Julian asked, between quick mouthfuls of quiche.

  Gidds sustained a wry smile for several seconds, and Laura realised that rather than resenting the inquisition, he found Julian's enthusiasm amusing.

  "I was forty-seven—in Taren years," he said, "and my presence barely tolerated."

  "Why so young?" Laura asked, startled. There were three Taren years for each Earth year, so forty-seven meant he'd been not quite sixteen. Younger even than the Setari, who hadn't been permitted to participate in missions until full adulthood at 'fifty'.

  "Because I was the strongest known Combat Sight talent at the time. That, along with my Place and Sight Sight, made it worth the risk of bringing me on expeditions."

  "Strongest on the whole planet?" Julian asked, gleeful. "Are you from, like, a super-powerful family or something?"

  "Strong enough. But I had simply trained myself to a higher pitch at a time when talent training was not encouraged in pre-teens. Developing the elemental talents at a young age was regarded as highly dangerous. Pushing development of Sights considered simply cruel. But we have now learned that without early training, it is far more difficult to increase the strength of our talents—and that early training for Sights means more control to combat their difficulties."

  "Why were you trained young?" Laura asked.

  "I spent most of my childhood attempting to achieve Precognition," Gidds said, and though his voice was as unruffled as ever, Laura immediately remembered Sue's 'tragic backstory' comment, and regretted her question.

  Gidds made a small gesture with his left hand, something Laura read as a combination of comprehension and absolution. Sight Sight again, and she did not know whether to feel uncomfortable or relieved that, to this man, people were often transparent.

  "When I was very young, and Ionoth had started to come through tears into the Ena and kill widely, it seemed to me that the only way to prevent this was to know beforehand where a tear was about to open."

  "But it didn't work?" Julian asked, having entirely missed any by-play. "I didn't even know Precognition was a real talent."

  "It has never been confirmed, but is unofficially regarded as a seventh Sight. Although there are also theories that it is Sight Sight at a strength not achieved since the days the Lantar ruled Muina, or even that it is gained through all six Sights operating together. If it exists, I did not achieve it."

  "So you gave up?" Julian asked, pecking the crumbs of his demolished slice of quiche from the plate.

  After the most minute of hesitations Gidds said: "I am still training my strength. But when Isten Notra made her proposal—that I join the scientific expeditions into the Ena, and also train KOTIS members—I began to see an alternate path, one where professionals cleared the ionoth in the Ena near-space immediately adjacent to our cities, rather than unprepared citizens dealing with them in their homes."

  "I haven't heard anything about pre-Setari Ena exploration," Laura said, as Julian went to fetch slices of nut pie. "Was it successful?"

  "In that we made progress, and did not all die, yes."

  Over dessert he described the early days of KOTIS. Soldiers walking through invisible dimensional tears and learning the rules of the Ena. Dealing with attacks from an endless array of monsters. Mapping pocket dimensions, and discovering how unreliable the geography of the Ena could be. Carrying out experiments while refining strategies that would one day become Setari daily routine.

  Laura watched him, and did not drop her gaze when he met her eyes. His were steady as he kept to a factual and unemotional recounting of what had almost certainly been a grim and difficult time. KOTIS personnel had died, in far higher numbers than the powerful and extremely skilled Setari.

  "And after all that you got stuck being a teacher?" Julian concluded.

  "I am still assigned Ena missions," Gidds said, with another transitory smile. "And will join Kaoren in the site investigations here, once I've been permitted to relocate."

  "Can you beat Kaoren in a fight?"

  "Sometimes," Gidds replied. "But on the whole he has surpassed me."

  "Do—?"

  "I suspect that's enough interrogation for one day, Julian."

  "But I've barely started," Julian said, and added to Gidds: "I was only going to ask if you played Home or Five Ends or any of the other big online games."

  "I vet them occasionally," Gidds said, as unperturbed by this question as any other. "In order to decide whether they are permitted for the Kalrani. Virtual experience games sometimes trigger Sights in odd ways. For the most part I do not have the time—and would be unlikely to enjoy playing a game that involves fighting Ionoth."

  "Ha." Julian grinned. "I bet Kaoren's playing Home just because Cass likes it." He bounced up to avoid Laura's eye. "I'll do th
e washing up, Mum. See you Mister—ah, Tsur Selkie."

  Grin widening, he took their plates to the cleaning unit, then bounded back upstairs, and all of a sudden, Laura was alone with Gidds, with every scrap of her relaxed acceptance somehow vanished.

  What was she thinking of doing? This was not like the time Bet had set her up with 'Darvash from Accounting', nor the odd dates she'd gone on with Sue's vast circle of acquaintance. This was a man of considerable influence, one who made decisions about Cass' life, and Laura simply didn't know enough about him to be sure that he would take a lack of follow-through, or a waning of interest, gracefully.

  No. No, that wasn't true. She was quite certain Gidds Selkie would behave impeccably. It was more that he was such an overwhelming man. Formal and polite and restrained. Mild, even, and yet...an Event Horizon. So intense that whenever Laura looked directly at him she could almost see the world warping around him, and could feel herself being inescapably swallowed up.

  "What was it you called the first dish of our meal?" he asked—a completely innocuous question no doubt in response to her glass-clear fit of nerves.

  "Quiche," she said. "The Muinan spelling for that...ah, it's a little difficult. It's a French word and dish." She spelled it phonetically, and then explained 'French'.

  "You are perhaps missing the foods of your own planet," he said, rising from his chair and turning to gauge the sheets of water outside.

  "Oh, a few," she said, standing and following him to the north patio doors. "Cinnamon particularly. But mostly it's been a fun game trying new foods, and reinventing Earth dishes with Muinan ingredients. Some items aren't available at all, but there are very many similar ingredients. The flour I used is from a Kolaren grain and has a different taste, but I think it works well. And it's shocking how many vegetables are tremendously similar to Earth plants. The botanists who have been playing with the seeds I brought from home tell me more than a few are almost identical to Muinan plants—just different cultivars."

  She paused to consider the storm, which hadn't eased significantly. "I'm afraid this looks like it's going to continue for quite a while. I hope it hasn't thrown your plans off too much."