"Is the name Ruvord significant to you?" she asked, as they climbed the intricately worked ramp-bridge that led up to the Plateau.
"A famous Taren explorer. From the Caverns Era."
Tare was an extremely unhospitable planet, all oceans and storms, and the early Taren settlers had lived almost entirely underground. A lot of Tarens still weren’t at all comfortable with concepts like 'outside'—let alone animals or insects.
"I hope he didn’t end up meeting a grue," she said lightly, and then explained the game ZORK, and the Great Underground Empire, and monsters that attacked only in the dark.
That conversational tangent was the result of long deliberation. Sue was right: even if he tried, Gidds could never catch up, just as Laura did not expect to ever be really well-versed in a thousand years or so of Taren-Kolaren-Muinan history, literature, and social conventions. She could build new experiences with Gidds, true, but simply leaving out of their relationship all the things that made Laura her very own self did not seem to her any better an idea than ignoring things that were important to him.
There was no way she could ever have a conversation with him like those she shared with Sue, but she had decided the only way to bring him into the frame of reference through which she habitually viewed the world was simply to explain as they went along. He gave ZORK the same focused absorption he’d brought to her description of Earth’s political complications.
"It doesn’t sound a very enjoyable game," he said, after she had outlined one of the first computer games she had ever played: a text adventure puzzle that required hundreds of replays to solve, and forgave not a single misstep.
"I’m not sure I’d have the patience for it now," she agreed, as they began following a rutted road across the broad, flat plateau that functioned as farmland for the town. "But back then…computers are less than a Muinan century old on Earth, and computer games only started to become widely available when I was in my teens. Everything was fascinating. And though they were far less complex, and often a good deal harder, they still involved a lot of things I really enjoy: puzzles, exploring new places, experiencing incredible stories. Even just the idea of what they represented fascinated me. I spent endless hours in Elite, a space merchant game that involved very little story, simply because I loved imagining myself with my own ship, flying from planet to planet." She glanced at the unfamiliar, square-cut profile of his avatar. "What part of these games causes negative reactions for Sight talents?"
He side-stepped a large puddle before answering. "For Sight Sight, the layering of false on real. Enhanced reality games are the most problematic, perhaps because they usually attempt to make the projections of the game seem true, but this sort of game feels more like watching an entertainment so long as interactions involving touch are minimised. Touch can still lead to a sensation like vertigo, while sight and sound are not so difficult. And it’s a very bad idea to try to eat anything."
"I tried to eat a piece of fruit and didn’t need Sight Sight to think it a bad idea," Laura said, grimacing. "It tasted exceptionally odd. Of course, it was glowing green, so possibly it was meant to be a bad idea. What about Place Sight?"
"Place Sight is in some ways easier, since for the most part there is no difficulty touching virtual objects or people. But Place can react to the ideas or intentions of the game’s creators. Someone, for instance, was inordinately proud of the design of the bridge up to these fields. And games which include depictions of torture or suffering, or other very negative extremes, can be more than unpleasant. This…I will need to evaluate it longer, but I think I will be able to safely approve it for the Kalrani." His brief smile surfaced as he glanced at her. "And I also enjoy exploration and puzzles."
He’s well aware that I’m evaluating him, Laura thought, as she smiled back.
"Did your daughters inherit your Sights?"
"Combat and Sight Sight," he said. "And Path Sight from their mother. Neither has Place."
"Do you regret that?"
He hesitated. "A little. Place Sight has many challenges, but it is also the most profound Sight to experience. It adds so much richness to my life."
They had reached a signpost, and Gidds paused to fish a card from the pocket of the simple tunic his avatar wore. Laura had received a card of her own during the game tutorial, and been instructed to follow it to her first teszen.
The four-way signpost was decorated not with words, but with simple pictures. Gidds' compared the sketched symbols on his card, and turned in the direction of sheep. Then he glanced at her, and she suspected that he had caught the sudden flash of hilarity she’d experienced, at the idea of him making a contract with some kind of sheep spirit.
"Does it feel limiting to be in a virtual environment?" she asked, to cover herself.
"For Place Sight, it is a matter of constantly reaching for something that isn’t there. Sight Sight, which is more subtle, does not feel so absent—and also triggers more reliably on images alone. Although I don’t need any talents to tell me you’ve hurt your leg in some way."
"Really? How can you tell?"
"You keep limping. The impulse controls for your avatar are responding to the pain you feel outside the game."
Laura hadn’t noticed. A little embarrassed, she explained her excursion onto Arcadia’s rocky southern bank. "It’s nothing serious: a bruise."
"Would you find it intrusive if, for instance, Kaoren visited in a few kasse? Not entirely coincidentally."
She laughed, pleased that he’d been upfront instead of just trying to organise her. "He’ll be doing that anyway—I’m having the whole family over for dinner. And then Cass will probably try to mother me, which I find wholly disconcerting. She’s matured so much."
"She has grown into herself," Gidds said, considering another signpost, and then turning in the direction of the painted outline of a house.
The road took them past a number of the hairy sheep clearly based on those found on Muina, and into a tidy farmyard. Here Laura was entirely distracted from hunting spirits by Zylat Island’s version of a chicken: banded brown and white feathered creatures that reacted to their arrival by scampering up trees and the sides of the farmhouse, and filling the air with excited glock noises as they goggled down at the intruders.
"These were in the book I read," Laura said. "They’re called goo-glucks."
And the thought of Gidds making a contract with a spirit representing the excitable climbers produced another jolt of hilarity, followed by a second glance. No matter how muted his Sights, he could definitely tell when she was being amused at his expense.
"Perhaps a contract with their teszen would offer speed," he said, unfazed. "Or claws."
He turned over the card, checking for further symbols, but—unsurprisingly for a newbie quest—they’d already arrived at their destination, and so he held it up in accordance with the instructions given by the representative of the Weaver. Nothing happened.
"How long did you wait?"
"It only took a moment for me. I was led to a pond, and when I held the card up there was an immediate ripple, and a voice that managed to be both very wet and very crotchety snapped No talking until you give me what I want most. I’m not even—oh, I think something’s happening."
Around Gidds' feet, motes of dust stirred and lifted. A fragment of straw whirled upward and stopped directly in front of his eyes, spinning gently.
"…is a man?"
The words were barely audible, a whisper on the wind. Gidds tilted his head ever so slightly, then said: "It is."