Gratuitous Epilogue : Touchstone Extras (2 page)

He's looking
particularly gorgeous, lying there asleep. Can't
resist...

January

ET

The gate to Earth
opened!

The monitoring drone
gave us two days' warning of a probable alignment, sufficient for
me to get completely worked up about the whole thing. I must have
re-read my letter to Mum about a million times, and I swear Maze
brought Nils and Zee back from the Oriath excavation just so I'd be
distracted by the way they look at each other. [They behave almost
as if they're not together, except just occasionally their eyes
meet and – well, The Nils Effect triples.]

They did distract me a
fair deal, and I was only a little beside myself when the drones
suggested the critical time was approaching. KOTIS Command (rather
warily) allowed Kaoren and I and the kids to go, with First Squad
and a bunch of technicians as escort, to spend a day there waiting
for something to happen. I couldn't see any difference when it did
align, and Alay was the one who tossed my (carefully wrapped and
stamped and protected by a plastic wrap) parcel through. A
fist-sized skitter-drone followed, just for a quick view and safely
back again.

Kaoren kept his arm
firmly around my waist the entire time the greysuits were taking
readings, and looked a great deal more relaxed after the gate had
closed. I know he didn't think I was going to try running through
it, but he may have been worried the gate would somehow reach out
and snatch me away.

The thing was, it took
FIVE MINUTES to close.

"I could have just
turned around and gone back," I kept repeating.

"Well, I'm glad you
didn't," Mara said, amused at me.

"So am I. But still
feel like an idiot." Then I went and hugged my kids, and even Ys
let me.

Five minutes! It's not
just the amount of time it stays open, either. The skitter-drone
had brought back some perfectly ordinary images of a Sydney
footpath – no more than a few metres further along the same street
I'd been walking down on my way home. And the gate realigned
exactly one Muinan year (and ten minutes) after I stepped through
from Earth. The implications of that, of a
predictable
alignment to almost the same place, just floored me.

Of course, we aren't
certain it really is predictable, and there was damn little I could
do about it right away except give Kaoren a few sleepless nights
with my worked-up tossing and turning. I was glad, at least, that
I'd recovered enough to do some carefully rationed projection work,
which meant a week later I got to go into the Ena and try and
visualise Mum to see if the parcel had reached her.

I knew the answer to
that straight away because she'd put the photos I'd sent in frames
and set them on the bookshelf next to the TV. Pictures of me and
Kaoren and our new family, right there on Earth.

Jules was playing games
with one of his friends, and leaped up shouting: "I told you so! I
told you so!" and then to me: "You get to do all the good stuff,
Cass!"

Mum had been in the
kitchen, but came out at the fuss and looked around at all the
black-clad figures, then walked straight to me and hugged me
hard.

"I only just finished
reading them," she said. "Your handwriting is so tiny – my eyes may
never recover." Then she pulled back, blinking away tears, and
examined me. "No more injuries?"

"Not even a
headache."

I introduced her to
Kaoren again. He'd had me teach him how to say a few things in
English in preparation – his accent is so cute – and Mum smiled at
him and said: "I gather this is our second introduction, and so
I'll say the same thing I apparently did before: I'll be glad to
welcome you to the family when one of us isn't a projection. But –
thank you, for so much."

"Would you come here,
Mum?" I asked anxiously. "If it were possible?"

"Who wouldn't, dummo?"
Jules put in. "Are you nuts?"

Mum had given me a
sharp look. "You've found a way?"

I explained quickly
about the realignment of the gate, and how we wouldn't even know
for another year whether it really was a predictable pattern, and
that I'd be trying to send her another letter then, and I started
to talk overly fast and nearly lost the projection.

Mum distracted me by
catching me up on the news from home. Aunt Bet is having another
baby, and Nan has sold her house and moved into an assisted care
place. And Nick and Alyssa have hooked up! Mum said they bonded
over being able to talk about me possibly being on another planet
(which is not a story Mum has encouraged be spread far and wide). I
think I must have been a bad friend to Alyssa to not realise that
she liked Nick.

I couldn't maintain the
projection for much longer – looking at Earth takes way too much
out of me – but before I dropped it Mum hugged me again and said:
"Who wouldn't? Are you nuts?" and laughed in a wide-eyed way and
then was gone.

It will be more than a
year before we can send another letter, and then it will be another
year's wait and KOTIS Command has to consider the idea of telling
people on Earth the location of an occasional gate to Muina, and
might not give me permission, and I'm going to go do a lot of
swimming in the hopes that it will stop me ping-ponging off the
walls.

We've been in our house
three days now. It's a big adjustment not having so many people
around me, not having the constant background awareness of support
staff, and the greensuits and technicians on the floors below, and
of squads in the surrounding rooms. Plenty of small animals on
Arcadia to catch my attention, but I'm really liking the relative
quiet.

After approval, the
seeding of the house was quick and easy – the only concern being
whether we could avoid disturbing the spring which feeds the
waterfall – but it took a fair chunk of time before all the support
systems and fittings were installed in the excessively large
chambers we'd grown underground.

The house is on the
west side of the hill, and Pandora is to the east, so our view is
full of uninterrupted lake and will have magnificent sunsets. In
Winter when the leaves have fallen we'll probably be able to see
First Squad Island to the south and slightly west.

Maze helped a lot with
the landscaping – scooping away the part of the hill on the
south-east side where we want a big, enclosed grassy backyard, and
shaping the face of the hill which forms a rear wall to the roof
garden. Both areas are mostly still raw dirt at the moment, though
we have marked out garden beds and planted a lot of seeds which the
botanists tell me might produce the kind of lawn I described. Maze
and Rye spent hours together in earnest discussion about which
trees to remove and which to transplant so that we have a lot of
sunlight, and selecting just the right trees for the backyard, and
finding the perfect rocks to split and turn into stepping stones
for a path. Maze thoroughly enjoyed all that, and says he's going
to study botany and design so he can build gardens. I think he's
serious.

Since most everything
we had at the Setari building belongs to KOTIS, we had a lot of
shopping to do. Linens and kitchen equipment and chairs and tables
and curtains (which at least the Kolarens understand) and dozens of
things which we kept realising we'd need. With the industrial
sector expanding by the day, and the variations which nanotech
allows, even the few production companies which have formed offer a
surprising amount of variety. The interface made it easy to compare
options, and we held family voting sessions to pick the
designs.

We also went on an
actual shopping trip to the mall/subway station which you can enter
through Moon Piazza, which is where most of the handcrafted items
are displayed. Amazing stuff – many of the early approved settlers
were arts and crafts type – and I bought some really nice glassware
and plates, and this incredible woollen tapestry which is deep
green with mostly white flowers arranged in intricate Art
Nouveau-ish lines inspired by the Kalasa decorations. I had the
greatest difficulty getting the man at the shop to accept payment
for any of it. We had lunch at one of the new restaurants, and I
wish I could figure a way to take the kids out without having
people showing up where we're eating, to cheer when they catch
glimpses of us. Even Sen went all shy at that one (or possibly was
just overtired from all the excitements and the challenge of
sampling everyone's desserts).

Images of our house
didn't show up on the news until after it was nearly complete,
which makes me like our architect even more. It was inevitable that
pictures would leak once it reached the construction phase. And
then the technicians were gone, and it was suddenly our house, very
white and sprawling and new, and all we had to do was put our
clothes away, make the beds, and figure out a way to keep the mud
off the floors because we forgot to get mats.

Alone at last! Except
for Ketzaren and Jeh, who were my minders for the day. KOTIS
Command was willing to let us not live in the Setari building, but
Lira and I are just too valuable, too potentially dangerous, for us
not to have minders, particularly since Kaoren has more assignments
away from Pandora than I do. When Lira goes to the talent school
each day, a second pair will be on call for her. Babysitting is a
permanent condition of our existence.

Not that I mind when
it's Ketzaren and Jeh, and now that months have passed with no sign
of Cruzatch, babysitting duty is more a matter of being on the same
island, rather than in my lap. And Setari are certainly useful to
have around when you're trying to arrange a party.

It was a housewarming
and thank you rolled into one. Most of the food was pre-made by one
of the restaurants, but I did a little cooking myself, even though
many of the ingredients are still fairly unfamiliar to me. Lohn and
Mara helped a lot, even when they weren't assigned babysitters.
Their house is going to be seeded soon, the first on their island,
and I'm going to enjoy returning the many favours I owe
them.

The party's guest list
was a bit of a struggle, because I really owe all the squads, even
Fifth, but though Fifth have been behaving well, I'm not suddenly
going to start liking them. And much as he tries to hide it, I
think Kaoren would prefer that I never spoke to Els again. There
were also the huge number of medics who've spent a lot of time
keeping me alive, and a few of the kitchen staff that I've been
chatting with about food, and – well, eventually Kaoren told me I
couldn't invite half of KOTIS, and no-one would expect me to. I
ended up just inviting First, Second and Fourth and Squad One and
Isten Notra and Shon, since these are the people I'm closest to.
[And Shon's two sisters, partially because I wanted to see if the
youngest would scream and point at everyone. She and Sen got along
extra-well, despite the age difference.]

The party was last
night, and I think everyone enjoyed it. It was a fairly warm night,
but there was a balmy breeze, and the terraced patios worked really
well as I introduced everyone to the Aussie tradition of the
barbie. [It was easier than I expected to have a barbeque made.
Kolar has a lot more things like this than Tare, and so it wasn't
like I was asking for something extraordinary.]

By now it's not too
hard to get meat and vegetables (instead of algae-blocks), and I
managed a nice lamb steak with (somewhat purplish) fried onions
with a salad of non-poisonous green leaves. All the squads
pretended to be astonished to discover that I'm capable of cooking.
I'm teaching Kaoren to cook as well, since it's something he's
never had any need to do.

The surprise of the
night came from Kaoren, who produced two tiny black scraps after
dinner. Kittens! He said he remembered me saying that kittens are
supposed to come in pairs. I was just as excited by them as the
kids, though I've had time since to realise that they'll represent
a drastic change to the island's ecosystem once they're big enough
to hunt. I'm trying to think of a solution to that which doesn't
involve giving up the kittens.

The cat colony of
Pandora is still mostly feral, but some of the adults have been
semi-tamed, and there's been a great deal of kitten-napping going
on. Our pair (which we haven't named yet) weren't the least bit
afraid, but did get stressed by there being so many people, and
went and hid behind Nils, which everyone thought was hugely
funny.

Zee leaned down and
said something to him which actually made him go pink, and Ketzaren
and I exchanged amused glances. I'm not the only person pleased and
fascinated by Nils and Zee. First and Second are full of plans for
the future, of adjusting to being 'planetary' Setari instead of
constantly working in the Ena. And of the details of Lohn and
Mara's upcoming wedding, and First Squad Island, and the question
of how they felt about some of the children at the talent
school.

I must admit I invited
Squad One not only because they're fun to talk to, but because I
suspect Sonn (I still haven't reached the point of calling her
Fiar) of being more than a little interested in Arad Nalaz, and
trying not to let herself be. Fourth, like most of the younger
squads, haven't thrown themselves into a welter of romance and
plans for houses, but they seemed to enjoy the party well enough.
Mori's been down lately because she misses both her family and Ro
Kanato from Eighth, but otherwise Fourth has been rather focused on
not 'losing their edge'. They've been pathfinding through the Ena,
charting courses from Pandora to places without working platforms,
like Oriath and Arenrhon. This leaves Kaoren rather tired in the
evenings, but I was fairly successful in keeping the bulk of my
party-planning from landing on his head as soon as he dropped down
onto the patio.