Right now, another crisis was coming to a head. ‘No, I’m not going to dance with you,’ Nava said. ‘Not when the band has decided to play all their slow songs one after the other.’
Mitsuko was looking unimpressed. ‘Why not?’
Nava lifted a hand so she should could tick off points on her fingers. ‘I can’t dance,’ was the first.
‘You danced already.’
‘Standing around in a circle doing vaguely rhythmic wiggling while chatting with friends is not dancing. Secondly, we’d look silly. You’re taller than Naomi with those heels on.’ Nava went on quickly before Mitsuko could respond, but she also lowered her voice. ‘Lastly, what are people going to say if they see the two of us in each other’s arms out there? I know you don’t care about your reputation, but I do. I’ll dance with you at the winter ball, even if we do look stupid.’ Pause. ‘And by that time I might have worked out how not to stand on your toes.’
‘I think my reputation is mine to do with as I wish.’ Mitsuko was actually looking upset and Nava was beginning to worry a little about that. ‘I’m not going to find someone else to love before winter, you know. It’s still going to be you, and I’m going to hold you to your promise. I don’t see why we can’t just… throw caution to the wind. A-also, I don’t care how silly we’d look, and I have tough toes.’
‘Wait,’ Nava said firmly. Then her tone shifted to something as close to wheedling as she ever got. ‘Please?’
Mitsuko frowned. ‘I’m not happy.’
‘I know.’
‘I’ll wait. But nothing’s going to change.’
Nava nodded. ‘Just so you know, I’m hoping that nothing changes too.’
Mitsuko’s expression changed to one of mild confusion. ‘That’s… an odd way of putting it.’
‘Yes, well, I’m an odd sort of person.’
235/8/4.
Mitsuko marched through the door of her apartment and headed for the bathroom. The dance had finished. She had got up on stage and made a speech about everyone enjoying their summer holidays and coming back refreshed and ready for a new term. The various members of the student council had done whatever was necessary to wrap things up. It was close to one a.m. now and Nava would be turning up in a few minutes, invisible as she usually was when she came to Mitsuko’s bed.
For the first time in a long time, Mitsuko was not entirely sure that she wanted Nava to arrive. The whole business with the dancing had got to her more than she had expected it to. Intellectually, she understood Nava’s point. And her parents’ point for that matter. Emotionally, things were not that simple. The fact that she could be annoyed with Nava for being practical was probably a further sign that she was head over heels in love, she reasoned. Then she wondered whether she should be reasoning about things which were inherently not subject to reason.
She reached for the tap on her sink, intending to wash her face and then reapply her makeup, and that was when she heard music. Frowning, she straightened her back and turned toward the door. Music. Definitely music. A popular love ballad which the band had played a cover of just before the dance ended. She had not asked her entertainment system to play anything, so…
Nava was standing in the middle of the lounge floor, still in her party outfit. She lifted her right hand and held it out, palm upward. ‘Pardon me, but might I have this dance?’ she said, just as though she were a young man enquiring of a pretty young lady he had spotted on her own.
Mitsuko took a step forward without thinking about it. She stopped herself. She was still annoyed. Right? ‘I don’t know. My dance card is quite full.’
‘But you’re alone right now…’
‘I’m waiting for someone… But I suppose, while I wait…’
It was less dancing and more swaying. There was some rotation involved. Despite her protestations, Nava was too coordinated to step on Mitsuko’s toes. Nava rested her cheek against Mitsuko’s left collarbone and Mitsuko rested her cheek against Nava’s head. It probably did look silly, but no one was watching and they did not really care.
‘This isn’t the same as doing it in front of the school,’ Mitsuko whispered.
‘No. No one’s laughing.’
‘They won’t laugh. They’ll be too busy being jealous.’
‘Huh. Maybe. I’d be jealous of me if I were watching this.’
Mitsuko smiled. ‘Funny, I was thinking more or less exactly the same thing.’
Alliance City.
The Trentons’ ‘townhouse’ was the entire upper floor of a twenty-storey apartment building which had a helipad on top. Mitsuko’s father had sent a tiltrotor to pick up the symposium team from the school and fly them to Alliance City, so it landed on top of the building and all they had to do was take the elevator down one floor. The elevator went all the way to the ground, but it would only stop on the top floor if presented with appropriate identification. Mitsuko had, of course, appropriate identification.
Mitsuko stepped out of the elevator and into a reception room. ‘Father,’ she said in a mildly surprised tone.
Zackery Trenton smiled at her from across the room. ‘I was in town on business and I decided to delay my departure a little to provide a suitable welcome. Your pilot will be taking me back to the mansion shortly, so you don’t need to worry about me scuppering your plans for wild parties.’
‘Oh yes,’ Mitsuko said, raising an eyebrow, ‘the wild parties. When did we schedule the orgy for, Nava?’
‘Next Friday, after the conference,’ Nava replied. There was a squeak from Melissa who had apparently not noticed they were joking yet.
Zackery nodded seriously. ‘Just be sure to inform the cleaning robots that they need to sterilise everything afterward.’ He smiled again. ‘Anyway, welcome to the Trentons’ business home. Make yourselves at home. How are the preparations going?’
‘I have a battle plan worked out,’ Mitsuko replied. ‘We’ll get the details organised this week. You know Courtney and Kyle are arriving later?’ Zackery nodded. ‘We’ll get the final finalisations sorted then, but we’re hoping to have all the data ready to be quoted or presented before then. Mel is quite the wizard at finding things in the school databases and Chess can handle any programming we need done.’
‘You seem to have everything covered. This place has ultrafast, secure networking, so there shouldn’t be any problems, but you know who to contact if there are.’ Mitsuko nodded that she did. ‘Good. Your mother and I will try to get our hands on a recording of your panel. I’ll leave you to it. Good luck, all of you.’
‘Love to Mother!’ Mitsuko called out as the elevator doors closed behind him. Then she turned and headed for the inner door. ‘He was checking up on me. I swear, sometimes they seem to think I’m still twelve. I’m two metres tall in heels!’
‘I think it’s sweet,’ Melissa said.
‘You’re just saying that because your parents are light years away and can’t drop by for a visit.’
‘Yes. That would probably be annoying. And embarrassing. I already get emails telling me I just have to bring my “young man” to see them.’
‘You do?!’ Rochester asked, his cheeks reddening even as the rest of his skin went paler.
‘Don’t worry. It’s not like we can afford that many flights to Avorna and back. And they suggested I bring Nava to see them too.’ Melissa frowned. ‘I have this weird suspicion that they think I’ve made up friends so they won’t worry about me.’ She came to a grinding halt as the room they had walked into impinged upon her senses. ‘This room is bigger than my house on Avorna!’
‘I’m sure that’s an exaggeration,’ Mitsuko replied.
The room in question was very large. Apparently, the designers had decided to make the entire central portion of the floor into one big room with a kitchen in one portion, dining area in another, and much of the rest arranged for sitting down and entertainment. There were various doors leading off into other parts of the house and one window – at the side of the dining are
a – through which the Clan Assembly complex could be seen in the middle distance.
‘Okay,’ Mitsuko went on. ‘We’re going to need to get all your ketcoms registered with the security system and such. Uh, that door on the left is the master bedroom, which I hereby claim as the resident Trenton. Those two doors over there lead to the four smaller bedrooms. Just pick one. They all have their own bathrooms and there’s a sento-like setup with a sauna over through the door at the back there that we can use if we want.’
‘There’s a sauna?’ Melissa asked.
‘As Father said, this place is basically here for family members who need a place to conduct business from, so it has a sauna for relaxing after a stressful day.’
‘The door on the right?’ Nava asked.
‘Leads to the meeting room and offices. We’ll be setting up in there, but that can wait until tomorrow. Mel and I haven’t had a real chance to stand still in the last two weeks, so tonight we’re going to relax. Possibly in the sauna.’
Nava wandered over to a cabinet which was nearby and peered at it. ‘Drinks cabinet,’ she said. ‘Locked.’
‘That’s not actually because of us being here. If it’s not locked, Uncle Spencer gets in here and it all has to be restocked.’
‘Ah. Yeah.’
‘Okay, let’s get settled in and I’ll check the kitchen for supplies.’
‘You’re going to cook?’ Melissa asked.
‘If there’s something to cook. Father doesn’t, so we should be good.’
‘You don’t have–’
Mitsuko shook her head. ‘Cooking is relaxing, especially when it’s for friends. And I never get to do it at school. We’ll have a nice meal and forget about all the work we’re going to have to do in the morning.’
‘When you put it like that… Come on, Chess, let’s go find a room. I can’t wait to get on with the forgetting.’
~~~
Rochester had his eyes closed. It looked like they were closed because he was relaxed and enjoying the steam, and he had not objected when Mitsuko suggested that they use the sauna after dinner, but he did have a towel in his lap and no one had made any comments about any lewd thoughts he might have been having because they did not want to spoil the mood.
‘If I fall asleep,’ Melissa said in a drowsy voice, ‘someone will carry me out, right?’ The seating, all slatted wood, was laid out on two levels and she was stretched out on the top of it behind Rochester. His head was resting against her hip. Her posture was probably not helping with her drowsiness.
‘I’m sure one of us will,’ Mitsuko replied. She was basically in the same position as Melissa, but on the opposite side of the room.
Nava was sitting on the seat below with her head resting on Mitsuko’s thigh. Her legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankles and her arms rested along the ledge of wood behind her, and she suspected she might be much of the reason for Rochester’s closed eyes. ‘I’m sure Chess will be gallant and extract you from the dangerous, steamy room.’
‘If I don’t fall asleep first,’ Rochester countered.
‘You know,’ Mitsuko said as though she were just about to suggest watching a movie or something, ‘we could have an orgy.’
Rochester made a sort of strangled coughing sound.
Melissa said, ‘Whu?’
‘I don’t think you can have an orgy with just four people,’ Nava said.
‘Well, Kyle and Courtney will be here on Wednesday.’
‘And if they had sex with any of us, they’d have to arrest each other.’
‘Oh. Right. I forgot about that. Stupid law.’
Nava could certainly agree with that sentiment, though mostly because she thought it was illogical. ‘How did it get like that? You can have sex if you’re a young adult, and you can have sex if you’re an adult, but the two groups can’t do it with each other unless they’re married before the eldest becomes seventeen. It’s… too convoluted.’
‘History,’ Mitsuko replied.
‘That much I’d worked out for myself.’
‘Uh, back when the Clan Worlds were coming together, the rules on the age of consent each clan had were many and varied. The youngest was twelve. And that was old Earth years. The oldest was twenty-one, I think.’
‘Twenty-five,’ Rochester chimed in. ‘The Bishop clan. Well, twenty-five with conditions.’
‘Oh yeah, them. They were a huge part of the problem. They said you couldn’t have sex outside marriage until you were twenty-five, but you could get married at thirteen. They had the highest instances of matrimonial abuse, child abuse, child abandonment, and a few other related issues of any clan in the Alliance. Anyway, when they were forming the legal code the Alliance was going to follow, there were a lot of arguments about the age of consent. Actually, what age people were allowed to do things was pretty contentious all round. A lot of the colonies which were more into agriculture wanted their children to be able to drive tractors and such from a very young age. Eventually, the age-related laws were set as they are now, but the marriage laws were left to the clans. So, they had to put in the clause about adults married when they were young adults. Someone tries to change it about once a decade or so, but it never gets anywhere.’
‘Well,’ Nava said, ‘I know more, yet I don’t feel enlightened.’
‘Well, no, that’s politics for you.’
‘Hm.’
Silence fell once more, broken only by the hiss of steam as the automated system sprayed water onto electrically heated rocks. Until Mitsuko spoke up once more.
‘So, it’s just going to be a foursome then?’
235/8/5.
In the end, Mitsuko went without her foursome, but everyone was a little late getting up the following morning and Melissa was looking smug when she did. They made it into the meeting room by ten a.m., ready and mostly willing to get started on filling in the details Mitsuko thought were needed in their presentations and general knowledge.
The panel had been given the title ‘The Future of Sorcery Education.’ It was such a broad topic that planning for it was next to impossible. All they could really do was gather as much information on current educational theories and practices, and the results those practices produced, as possible and come up with a way to organise it all for quick and easy access. Mitsuko had decided that Nava should direct her attentions in a different direction.
‘I want you to profile the other panellists,’ Mitsuko said.
‘I’m no psychologist, Suki,’ Nava replied.
‘No, but you’re intelligent and you can work a computer efficiently. You dig up whatever information you can on the panellists and just see what kind of picture you get of them. This subject is a non-subject. Someone’s put it forward with an agenda in mind. They probably plan to control the discussion in a way that pushes their agenda forward. I’d like to go in knowing what they’re trying to do.’
‘Okay. I’ll see what I can do.’
~~~
‘Okay,’ Melissa said, ‘we have the academic statistics for SAS-squared going back a decade. We also have the stats for all the other sorcery schools on Shinden. I’m expecting the data for the other major schools in the Clan Worlds tomorrow or the day after. Certainly by the end of the week.’
‘And I have a first prototype of the database program,’ Rochester said. ‘Now that we have a mass of data to work with, I can begin testing. I’ve programmed a keyword indexing system, so you’ll be able to search by educational establishment, planet, type of establishment, and keywords.’
‘You did that already?’ Mitsuko asked. ‘It isn’t even lunchtime.’
‘It’s not really programming. This is basically database configuration. It’s point and click, for the most part. However, once I’ve got data in it, it may need redesigning. I expect to be tweaking it at least a little for as long as I have time to work on it.’
‘That’s programmers for you,’ Melissa said, grinning.
‘I suppose so,’ Mitsuko replie
d. ‘I wonder how Nava’s getting on.’
‘I think what you asked her to do is going to take longer to bear fruit.’
‘Probably…’ Mitsuko’s gaze turned to the wall which happened to be in the direction where Nava was working in one of the offices. ‘I’m going to make coffee. Who wants coffee? I’m sure Nava would like some.’
‘You know, you don’t have to make excuses to go be with your girlfriend for a few minutes.’
Mitsuko started for the door. ‘We’re working here, so… Yes, I do. Coffee?’
~~~
‘It’s actually an interesting exercise,’ Nava said over lunch. She did not sound especially excited, or even interested, but then, that was Nava for you. ‘I may need to borrow Chess to help with the research. Some of these people are a little harder to find information on than others.’
‘Anything of note coming up?’ Mitsuko asked.
‘Felix Leavitt Orlando.’
‘I don’t know him, but he’s part of a powerful family.’
Nava nodded. ‘He’s the proposer, the guy who came up with the idea for the panel. He attended SAS-squared, graduating eight years ago. Support stream. He was the student council vice president for the last three years of his time there.’
‘Well, at least he has some idea of the current state of things.’
‘Yes, but I found some old recordings of him in the News Club’s archives. Despite getting the VP position, he doesn’t seem to have enjoyed his time at the school. He was especially critical of the attitude of combat students and blamed the school for not stamping down on the “warrior culture” he claimed is prevalent.’
‘Well, it is,’ Melissa said. ‘The combat students do think the rest of us are a lesser species. Uh, present company excepted.’
‘There’s a vocal minority,’ Mitsuko said. She frowned. ‘I admit that they might not be a minority by very much.’
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