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.
Chapter Four
"Laura! Laura, listen to this." Sue made disbelieving faces as Laura stepped carefully over the pool’s outfall. "They have uterine replicators and they don’t use them!"
When Inika Senez, one of the Setari extended family, laughed, her riotous gold and black curls sparkled like fireworks. "Is it so strange to choose to experience in-body gestation?"
"Yes," Sue said firmly. "I particularly can’t believe it of your daughter, and these other highly trained senior Setari who have been filling the islands with infants. Why in the worlds have they gone and put themselves through all the things that pregnancy does, if there are functioning uterine replicators?"
"Oh, Mara wanted to know what it was like." Inika wrinkled her nose judiciously. "I doubt she’d do in-body again, even if she wasn’t now sufficiently supplied with children, since it was a difficult pregnancy for her. Me, I enjoyed all but the last month or so of mine. But all the Setari—anyone with strong talents—also have to weigh the impact for inheritance."
"What do you mean?" Laura asked, settling on the grass beside the two women.
"Children of machine-supported gestation gain many advantages—their nutrient balance is much better managed, and medical issues more easily addressed—but they rarely have quite so strong an immune system, and they never gain the full strength of their parents' talent set."
"They’re weaker psychics?"
Inika nodded. "That is a large decision to make. Though in the last few decades it is a factor that has pushed many toward machine-supported."
"Because of the Setari program." Sue glanced at Laura, but she wasn’t in such a teasing mood today—perhaps was reserving her ammunition for when Tsur Selkie arrived for his appointment that afternoon.
"Yes. It is not an enjoyable thing to see your child only on holidays. Although…" Inika raised a shoulder. "I would still choose in-body, and have Mara be the woman she is, even though I had less time with her as a result. I could not deny her the things I relish being able to do, let alone the chance for greater wonders."
She lifted one hand, and the air in front of her glimmered, and formed into an elaborate snowflake—which immediately melted in the muggy heat that had sparked an impromptu picnic around the cooling waterfalls of the Braid.
"Are the replicators expensive to use?" Laura asked.
"Not overwhelmingly. For a first child, costs are kept moderate so as not to prevent those on base level from accessing the option. Additional children, yes, the cost would be high—at least on Tare, where much was done to discourage us from multiple children. Didi and I were thinking of maybe a third child, now that we’re on Muina and don’t face the same restrictions. I am tempted—although with so many grandchildren, perhaps we will delay a while longer."