"What? How boring." Julian waved his fondue fork at his own face. "I’m on the next step up from basic monitoring, right? What would happen if I activated a location mask?"
"A security detail would be despatched to your last known location, acting on the assumption that a kidnap attempt was underway," Gidds said. "All available scanners would be used in an attempt to image-match for your face. Depending on distance and response time, it is possible all active transport would be temporarily suspended."
"Cool."
"Not quite the appropriate reaction, Julian," Laura said, but with a helpless smile.
"Once you had been located, attention would turn toward whoever had supplied you with the mask," Gidds went on, unperturbed. "They would likely suffer penalties."
"Take the fun out of it, why don’t you?" Julian asked, but without rancour. "Hey, Tsur Selkie, how come you don’t wear a nanosuit? If you were one of the first Setari?"
"Those weren’t developed until the senior squads were due to become active. I do wear one when I’m leading Ena training sessions." His smile made its momentary appearance. "The unformed suits remind me of the duct cleaner, and I find myself curiously disinclined to be in contact with it."
Since the viscous sludge that crawled out of the air-conditioning ducts to absorb dust was widely referred to as 'yanner'—'snot'—Laura could understand a reluctance to wear the stuff.
"Does nanite goop retain Place impressions?" she asked.
"I’ve rarely encountered that. Clothing often does, but the process of being reformed and repurposed appears to disrupt Place."
They wandered into a comparison of Place Sight and what was called psychometry on Earth, trying to decide whether psychometry could be very weak Place Sight.
"It sucks that no-one except Cass got to be psychic or a Touchstone or whatever," Julian said. "They scanned all our brains and said that we’ve got the same synaptic structures as people here, but none of us have been able to do anything fun."
"Except visit multiple planets, and play in virtual worlds," Laura noted.
Julian grinned. "Yeah, I guess. And Nils takes me flying sometimes, which is way cool." He paused, glancing sidelong at Gidds, then saying to Laura: "Next weekend maybe I will go to that café to meet some of my band from Red Exchange. I’ve been working on not sounding Australian when I talk."
"I wonder if they’ll think you’re someone trying to pretend to be you?" Laura mused. "Your friends seemed to be good players." And, in Laura’s estimation, relatively young. A meet-up—especially with some guards in the background—shouldn’t be anything to worry about.
"Tzatch and Corezzy have applied to join the same bit of KOTIS that Nick and Alyssa were going to sign up for," Julian said, with another glance at Gidds. "Apparently it’s hard to get in."
"Very competitive," Gidds agreed neutrally.
Julian paused, then shrugged and began collecting plates. "You all should join our band, because it would totally be the best laugh, one day years from now, to tell Tzatch who she kept ordering around."
"I think the plan is to form our own band," Laura said. "But perhaps we can meet up for another event some time."
"Spoilsport," Julian said, piling plates on the cleaning unit and starting for the stairs. "See you, Tsur Selkie."
"Remember you’re getting up early," Laura said.
"Tell that to Aunt Sue!" Julian called, and crashed up the stairs.
Gidds didn’t seem to be bothered by Julian’s ideas for amusing revelations. "You said he had been bullied after Cassandra’s disappearance?"
Laura nodded. "The worst were a couple of boys he thought were the best of his friends. Being able step back and devote himself to games has been a good break for him, but I’m glad he’s starting to want to meet people around his own age."
"Did you also regret not having a strong talent?"
She laughed. "Doesn’t everyone think it would be wonderful to be able to fly? Can you fly? I don’t even know your full talent set."
"Low level Telekinesis," he said, making his glass lift briefly from the table. "Place, Combat and Sight Sight, and Speed." He rubbed a hand across his eyes, then added: "I would have enjoyed flying, but hit my limit very early."
He looked like he was close to hitting a more ordinary limit, and she told him so.
Gidds nodded. "I have a meeting—interface-only—in a few joden, so I’m trying to stay awake. Then, I fear, I will make a very boring guest for you."
"Perhaps I’ll watch you dream," she said, with a faint smile. Then, longing to do something to help lift some of the shadows from his face, she stood and held out her hand. "Before your meeting, maybe you could show me what my workroom looks like in Place?"
Making Gidds Selkie catch his breath had become a main source of Laura’s spare, precious moments. And this time she’d even remembered to start a log so that, during times when she needed a captive fragment of joy, she could watch him go still, so completely focused on her.
"I would be glad to," he said, and his beautiful voice was husky.
He took her hand, and she led the way, reflecting wryly that it said something about her that showing Gidds her workroom felt more momentous than the sex.
"I’ve been guessing that the door probably signals private," she said, as they reached her room.
In response, he shared her the feed of his vision, and the plain white door was suddenly stitched over with silver tracery. Not quite bars, or chains, or ghostly boards, but a mass that held something of all these things, and which quite clearly warned intruders away.
Laura laughed, almost embarrassed by how truly she’d spoken. "My art supplies are the one thing I’m very organised about, and I was always having to lock the kids and the cat out, or find everything in chaos. And, when we were children ourselves, Sue and Bet would take positive joy in creeping up behind me. So I’m in the habit of keeping the door shut."
She opened it, and watched Gidds' face rather than his feed as he caught his breath for the second time in a handful of minutes.
Her own eyes showed only two stools side-by-side before an empty workbench, and a window looking out onto grey evening. Laura was very particular about wrapping and storing current projects, and putting her tools away, so there was nothing else of note from this angle. But Gidds' feed showed her a room filled with a riot of whorls and spirals, scrolls and arabesques.
For a moment Laura could only blink, overwhelmed by layer upon layer, but then sorted out two distinct sets of patterns. One, the blue of a twilight sky, covered the whole of the room, though concentrated most around Laura’s favourite spot at the bench. The other was less widespread, but darker, stronger: vivid threads woven through the larger skein.
"We’ve rather painted the room in silver and gold, haven’t we?" Laura said, awed and delighted. "Does everyone make different colours?"
Gidds shook his head. "Liranadestar has been spending time here? It looks like she has been using her abilities."
"We’ve been making models of our characters from Red Exchange," Laura explained. "Do…do you mean that Lira might have been making a version of her character in the Ena, as well?"
"Creative activities have been shown to leave a more marked imprint," Gidds said. "But it is not something we have tested in any depth with Cassandra." He took a step into the room. "There is a great sense of belonging here. Both yours and Liranadestar’s."
Laura flushed, shaken by a strange mixture of pride and tenderness. She had had numerous thoughts about abruptly becoming Unna Laura to so many children, but foremost among them had been a desire to live up to the role.