"I wonder if we could use you as a storm detector," Sue mused. "Laura’s looking pea-green: better bring an umbrella."
"I’d enjoy that," Laura said. "A useful talent with no negative impacts so long as no-one strings me up to use as a weathervane."
"I’m more inclined to decorate you at Christmas. Does Cass do a tree here, do you know?"
"I think she said something about Year’s Turning?" Laura glanced over at Inika and Mara Senez, returning from a treatment that would make their riotous curls more manageable, and then at their second Setari escort, the truly spectacular Zee Annan, who had not felt the need to have anything done to the long, silky braid she wore down her back. "That’s the right name, yes? Year’s Turning, for the celebration at mid-winter?"
"Yes," Zee smiled and lifted a long, elegant hand. "It’s not something we track on Tare or Kolar, since there is not such a marked seasonal shift, but we’ve commemorated mid-winter and mid-summer these last two years."
"And because Cassandra decorates a tree in winter, much of Muina now does the same," Mara said, plopping down on the nearest chair. "In summer we give gifts of fruit and flowers. The years are so long here, so these mid-points are good to mark, and the small rituals make us feel we are honouring Muina."
The Muinans believed their home planet was a living being, and Laura was about to delicately delve into the question of whether they honoured Tare and Kolar similarly, but was distracted by an instant message.
Sue: Check this out.
Laura followed the link accompanying the message, and found herself watching the World Figure Skating Championships, with muted English commentary overlaid by a man excitedly speaking in Muinan.
"I wasn’t expecting Serious Soldier to share it around," Sue said.
"I expect Gidds attached it to a report," Laura said. "And from there the world, it seems."
In the periphery of her vision Laura noticed Mara and Zee lift their heads and then exchange a brief but significant glance. Laura felt caught out, and then shook the reaction off. Gossip was inevitable. Gidds' first stay had probably been dismissed due to the weather, but there was no way he could have himself delivered to Arcadia before midnight and picked up the next day without someone putting two and two together. And whichever Setari had been assigned guard duty that night surely would have done so.
Laura would absolutely not be happy if her sex life was the next thing to show up on Muinan news channels.
"What is it shared around?" Inika asked.
Sue provided the link and, while the three Muinan women gazed into the middle distance, settled back to allow the hairdresser to make some final adjustments.
"Is it good?" the hairdresser—a man named Teffin—asked, tweaking a last stray hair into place.
"It’s brilliant," Sue said positively, eyeing herself with satisfaction.
"Blue lemonade," Laura said. "With silver cachous floating in it."
"Yes!" Sue ran her fingers through what had been her blond-brown hair, and was now deep blue at the scalp, gradually lightening to a white-aqua. Whenever she moved, tiny white motes shimmered and faded. "Or stars reflected in the surf running up a beach at night, which is what I was aiming for. I love it."
"I do not at all understand what these people are doing," Anika commented. "They look like they’re dancing on knives."
"Is this common on Earth?" Mara asked. "It looks very difficult."
"More common in colder countries than Australia," Sue said. "There’s only a couple of ice skating rinks in Sydney."
"The floor really is ice? You walk on ice with knives?"
Sue explained as they finished up at the hairdressers.
"You can do this?" Zee asked, sounding fascinated.
"Me?" Sue laughed. "You won’t ever catch me doing anything so athletic. I can stay upright on skates, but stopping is enough of a challenge."
"I’ve never tried," Laura said. "Alyssa’s quite good, though I suppose she’s out of condition at the moment. She never reached elite competition level, but her younger sister is trying to qualify. For ladies' singles, though, not ice dancing, which is what they’re showing at the moment."
"If Cassandra had told us that Earth people dance on knives, I wouldn’t have believed her," Mara said. "Although most of the other things she said turned out to be true. The volcano and the tsunami."
"We ended up believing her about the psychics and the Ionoth, too," Laura said, amused.
"Ignore her if she starts talking about drop-bears, though," Sue said, but then her eyes widened and she said: "I wonder if drop-bears would turn up as Ionoth on Earth, if there were tears into the Ena there."
"I’m not sure it would be the highest-priority nightmare. Though, who knows?" Laura remembered all too well the single Ionoth she’d seen in person: a thing that looked like it had been made of nails and old tyres, attacking Cass and Kaoren.
"Only a small number of the Ionoth that come through have any relation to the local environment," Mara said. "Shall we get going?"
"Can we walk to the school?" Laura asked. "It’s not far."
Mara paused, eyes going distant, and then nodded.
Laura: I will never be comfortable with the fact that they have to ask permission for us to take a ten-minute walk.
Sue: A twenty-minute walk, Long Legs. But yes, they’re over-the-top. The vast majority of people here love Cass, or are at least grateful to her, and have no reason to attack us. And kidnapping us to try to get hold of a Touchstone just isn’t going to work. The most that they’d achieve is upsetting Cass if we got killed.
Laura: Which is exactly why KOTIS guards us. What a quelling thought.
Sue: Worst of all, having hot bodyguards involves far less sexytimes than the movies would have me believe.
Laura just managed to keep herself from laughing aloud as she followed their hot bodyguards out of the building and onto Moon Piazza, which was the ritzy section of Pandora, rimmed with buildings that could well have been modelled on the Royal Crescent in Bath—and featuring a statue of Laura’s daughter, sitting at the feet of Muina, which was never not going to fill Laura with complicated feelings.
Pandora was a wonderful city to walk through. The Tarens and Kolarens had approached building their first city on their home planet by constructing an extensive subway system at the outset: a simple matter when reinforced tunnels could be directed to grow themselves. Most of the residential buildings were submerged into the hills, so that the suburbs were miles of landscaped slopes with windows, and since air and hover transport was in common use, there was no need for paved roads. Instead the city featured walking paths alongside winding roads of grass and flowers.
Since walking through fields of flowers—especially flowers she’d never seen before—ranked high on Laura’s list of favourite things, she enjoyed herself thoroughly, the trip only mildly marred by the small but increasing number of people who trailed along behind them. Fans of Mara and Zee, Sue blithely informed them, and repeated a few choice pieces of the running commentary that was apparently lighting up the interface.
"It’s difficult now that there are so many devices that do not have the same restrictions regarding image capture," Zee said. "The interest has always been there, and we knew it would inevitably include our children, but the spread of scans makes it feel more invasive."
"Speaking of which," Inika said, with barely a glance behind them, "do you have any more scans from the water picnic, Sue?"
They descended into an agreeable exchange of pictures as they walked through the most built-up section of Pandora, directly south of Moon Piazza. Here were large, blockish buildings, their stark white mass softened only a little by decorative patterning and the curving shapes of balconies. Pandora University, segueing into KOTIS headquarters, and then, at the edge of the lake, Pandora Shore School.