"It’s an easy trap to fall into. Sight Sight can make the preoccupations of others seem such useless things. My mother, my brother, taught me what it feels like to have what is important to me dismissed. It’s a lesson I’m glad I learned, but I am not likely to forgive them for it."
"Yet you keep your brother’s pictures in your room."
"He made them for me." Kaoren took a deep breath. "For a long time Arden was to me what I am now to Siame, but he was furious with me for choosing to treat being Setari as my art. The pictures are an apology of sorts, since he has come to see that doing this is something I value. My parents continue to push me to resign once I have served the minimum tenure."
Kaoren is not very detached about his family, and seems to deal with it by having little to do with them. And a lot to do with Siame, who he has taken out into the city again because he won’t see her for a while. He wants to tell her in person that we’re going to get engaged. I’m not sure if he’s going to even tell his parents, and doesn’t seem keen on introducing me to them. I’m not going to push.
I was hoping I could study during the morning and take the adult competency exam while he was gone, but I did a run-through on a mock exam and while it’s not hard – I nearly passed – the random and broad nature of the questions means there’s a big chance I won’t pass if I try and rush into it, and I can’t take the test again for a full Taren year if I fail. I’m not sure if I can take it on Muina, or apply to get married while I’m there, for that matter.
I know it’s silly to be impatient. All getting engaged immediately would do is get me a bunch of people asking if I really want to rush into things. I think I just want everyone to know that he’s mine. Very shallow.
I’ve been stuck in medical all afternoon with Jeh from Second being babysitter. Jeh doesn’t have Place Sight, which I guess means they’re getting more relaxed about the Nuran. My legs look almost normal. There’s some faint patchiness, but they’re going to give me a break before doing any more work on them, so that the new skin can settle. The new patches are obvious because they’re hairy – baby-fine hair though, which is good since the medics tell me I can’t use the depilatories on them yet.
Tons of brain scans and needles, which never puts me in a good mood. And–
Back in my room now. Maze dropped by medical to visit me and take over being babysitter. He was looking outright exhausted, his mouth dragging down at the corners, since unlike the rest of First and Fourth he hadn’t had a free day, and had been attending meetings and working on balancing squad assignments for the push forward on Muina.
I haven’t really talked to Maze for ages. I was glad to see he’s his normal self with me, and answered my questions about the things First and Fourth have been assigned to do while on Muina – and which ones I’ll be allowed to participate in. Then I asked him if he thought I’d be able to take the adult competency exam while I’m on Muina, and he spent a few minutes researching that, and said no, not yet. Because it involves a secure environment hosted by a particular government department (basically child welfare), it can’t be done within Muina’s environment.
Maze paused after he told me, because there’s not many reasons why I’d suddenly want to do the adult competency exam, then gave me one of his super smiles and said: "It’s been good to see you so happy, Caszandra. And you have until we reach the gate tomorrow to do the exam, if waiting until we return from Muina seems too large a burden."
He spent the rest of the afternoon chatting to me about Tare’s laws, coaching me in questions I was likely to encounter on the test. I think he was glad to concentrate on something other than Unara, and tearing gates and hordes of Ionoth, and whether we’ll find any way to fix it all.
We leave for Muina late morning tomorrow.
Friday, July 25
Making it official
I passed! I did the exam during the pre-flight preparation and take-off. It was a bare pass – I hit a run of questions which I couldn’t even guess what might be the right answer – but I still passed.
The exam environment makes it so you can’t receive any communication (even almost completely blocking what you can see or hear in real-space) and it took about half an hour to complete. When I opened my eyes I could see Kaoren sitting on the seat beside mine, watching me steadily. I think he watched me the entire time, reading my body language to see how much trouble I was having.
It takes about five minutes to get the result, and since we were alone I snugged myself next to Kaoren. We didn’t say anything at all, but he was unusually tense, and when I got the email with my result, he knew straight away from my reaction and half-crushed my hand before he leaned down and kissed me – something he’s not done before anywhere there was a chance random people could see us. I wasn’t the only one all impatient.
The complete absence of squads was kind of suspicious – you’re allowed to go to the lounges during flights, but it’s common for at least a few squad members to just hang around on their pod-seats. Still, the interface would have told everyone I was taking an exam, if not which exam, so they could have left just to give me some quiet. But I suspect Maze.
Kaoren sent me the link to the form we had to fill out, and since the interface knows all the form-filling stuff about me already, I only had to read through the getting engaged version of terms and conditions and choose Yes a few times and then Kaoren and I were engaged. A far cry from a fancy ring, but certainly more official.
We went and told everyone then; a rare occasion for Kaoren to bring his personal affairs into discussion with his squad. It’s really embarrassing to do things like that, though everyone seemed pleased and not particularly surprised and I was hugged a lot, and Kaoren’s squad at least briefly treated him like a peer and congratulated him. We got into an interesting discussion on different types of ceremonies, and then Lohn started laughing and said to check the news and of course my name showing up in the intention to marry register hadn’t passed unnoticed for more than a few minutes. The best headline was "Devlin to marry Lastier!"
Good timing for the trip to Muina so I can start ignoring the news again. Almost through the rift. Eager to get things done.
New digs
Muina’s first set of Setari quarters have sprouted since my last visit, with accommodation for six eight-strength squads (or eight six-strength squads, as originally planned) and a few spares, as well as support staff accommodation, kitchens, medical, training areas, and common rooms. Someone’s plainly been having fun playing architect. Instead of yet another big white box, they’ve produced a round step pyramid with windows and balconies everywhere. It’s built into the hill at the southernmost tip of Pandora, and I mean that literally. The hill is still there, but with expanses of whitestone and glass between the grass and trees – or snow at the moment. It reminds me of a cross between a hobbit hole and Parliament House in Canberra (no giant flagpole though). All this in less than a month. Nanotechnology is amazing – they basically injected a building into a hill, no digging required.
The structure is the easy part, and they’ve had people installing fittings and big pumps and generators (I don’t in the slightest understand the technology behind Taren power generators, except that it’s not fossil fuel based) and the like so that there’s power and water and lights and heating. It’s still missing windows and equipment in a lot of places. The Litara brought a massive amount of cargo with us, including the first shipment of furniture for the Setari quarters, and when we arrived late afternoon Pandora-time the Telekinetics helped unload the ship and then everyone carried furniture and stores and supplies about, and moved in.