Andrea Höst: In Arcadia [Touchstone: Extras]

"And brought me three years of people telling me Cass was a horrendous brat," Laura said, with a faint grimace.

"Over and over," Sue said, with remembered annoyance. "Outside those who saw Cass in the Ena, we only told Alyssa, as per Cass' instructions, and our sister Bet told her husband, but otherwise we stuck firmly to the Cass is in Thailand story until her diaries showed up."

All of them in a thick parcel plastered in stamps, with Cass' so-familiar tiny writing sending a jolt of lightning through Laura, so that she’d sat right down on the front steps of the house and torn it open. Everything Cass had lived through for an entire year, three books worth of it, and photographs .

Even though Sue was still talking, describing how Laura had given photocopied extracts of the diaries to close family, Laura realised Tsur Selkie was watching her, quite as if he could see straight through her to the bittersweet joy that still welled up whenever she saw those photographs. Oddly, the sense of transparency didn’t bother her. There was no sense of judgment from the man, only observation.

"Still not proof," she said. "Other than showing that she was still alive, and looked well. The diaries could have been fiction, and so we kept them in the family still…except for Julian excitedly showing a few school friends, who promptly started bullying him. It had all quieted down when the second letter came, and Cass told us when and where the gate would open, and asked if we wanted to come here."

She stopped talking to look down over the slope of trees to the lake, and then across the deep blue water to the far northern shore.

"That was an easy decision for me, Laura and Jules," Sue said. "Not for our sister, Bet, who is very involved in a community organisation, and who is married to a man with a large extended family that he couldn’t imagine leaving behind. And Mike—Cass' father—was in a similar position, except his wife didn’t believe anything we said." She paused, then added grudgingly. "Which I suppose wasn’t that unreasonable a position to take. On Earth…you have to understand that on Earth there has never been any verified occurrences of dimensional gates, or psychics, or aliens, but there are countless stories about them. Stories that are complete fiction. If I hadn’t seen the ghost version of Cass on her birthday, I’m not sure I’d have believed either."

Laura took up the thread. "Most people, being told this story, or even getting their hands on a copy of the extracts from Cass' diary, wouldn’t for a moment believe it. Since we were sure, we pooled our resources and gave all our money to Bet. She bought the nearest house she could manage to the gate, while we put it about that we were going to move to Thailand . The gate is on a suburban street, and was going to open around midday, so it would inevitably be a relatively public departure, but of the people who knew and were going to watch us go, I think most of them would have kept quiet. But then there were the Caldwells."

"More to the point, there was Maddy’s doctor," Sue said. "The Caldwells arranged…" She stopped, then said: "Cass doesn’t have a translation for this word…just looking it up…ah, palliative care. They arranged for palliative care at home, and then brought her to Bet’s new house on the day we were due to depart. But they couldn’t just claim Maddy got better , let alone that she had moved to Thailand, and so they arranged for the doctor to witness her going."

"And Doctor Jamandre is a person whose entire career revolves around trying to stop children from dying," Laura said. "She’ll probably do what the Caldwells planned to ask: check up on Maddy occasionally, and report some improvement. But I have no doubt whatsoever she will be waiting the next time the gate is open, to see what’s on the other side, confirm that Maddy is still alive, and then to make firm representations on behalf of all her other patients."

Laura paused, trying to gauge some measure of response from this man who listened with so much attention and so little reaction.

"I do, very much, want to encourage the Council to open some kind of diplomatic exchange," she told him. "Even if it is sporadic, and complicated, it will mean a great deal to Earth."

"That is understood," was all Tsur Selkie said, exceptionally unhelpfully. "It is not clear to me for what reason the child’s parents did not join her here."

Not quite able to bring herself to push him about contact with Earth, Laura let the moment go, and explained.

"Their two other children, mainly. They’re both rather high-achieving, and Caitlyn in particular has a national profile—she’s an Olympic hopeful in figure-skating—while Rory had just landed a small ongoing role in a drama series. Neither of them could up and vanish without causing comment, even if their parents wanted them to abandon everything they’d worked for."

While Sue explained ice skating for the second time that day, and then the Olympics, Laura reflected that at least she hadn’t had to face such a terrible choice as Eric and Nina Caldwell’s. Julian had been as enthusiastic about the move to Muina as Laura, and it was only Bet Laura would really miss.

"Do you have any imagery with you of this skating?" Tsur Selkie asked. When they both blinked at him, he lifted his hands and became briefly less formal, producing a faint, momentary smile and saying: "That is Sight Sight. It creates a need to know, to understand, far more often than it provides explanations. It is not important."

"Alyssa might have one of Caitlyn’s competitions," Sue said. "Just a moment."

She gazed off at nothing for a minute, then said: "She’ll convert and send you a recording of a world championship—the pinnacle of the sport."

He thanked her, then said: "With Cassandra’s help we will be able to confirm whether conditions around the gate on your world alter. During our next meeting I would like to model probable responses from the people—the peoples—of your world. Would the next twelfth suit you?"

Laura double-checked her calendar and agreed, wryly reflecting that setting the next meeting a full Muinan month away revealed his opinion of their halting and inexact speech. She would have to make sure to spend more time in the virtual school.

Meeting done, Tsur Selkie rose, thanked them for their time, and departed down the path to the dock. Laura and Sue looked at each other.

"You were very subdued. What happened to your scheme for testing Tsur Selkie’s credulity?"

"I know! I couldn’t do it! Whenever I thought about being silly I got all tongue-tied. Tongue-tied, Laura. Me! And I was looking forward to this all week, thinking of all the things I could try to get him to include in his official reports. I was going to tell him that Maze is a beautiful cinnamon roll, too precious for this world, too pure. Just to see how he’d react."

"He’d probably agree with you. If you explained what that meant."

"But would he put it in his reports? In Cass' diaries, they’re always putting everything in reports. I was hoping to introduce all the KOTIS stuffed-shirts to Tumblr-speak, and convince them that’s how Earth people usually talk."

"At least until they work out you’re really introducing them to trolling? I’d start with someone other than a Sight Sight talent, if you really want to make the attempt."

"The main thing I want to do right now is force Cass to watch Clint Eastwood movies until she can point out what part of any of them reminds her of Tsur Selkie. He is very much not Clint Eastwood."

"I suspect that he’s being rather less commanding with us than he would be with KOTIS personnel on duty. But yes, I don’t see it, other than a bit of a man with no name vibe, which does fit Selkie’s watchfulness, and the unchanging expression. I don’t think Cass can have seen many Clint Eastwood movies, though. I wonder what she’d make of Every Which Way But Loose ?"