Gratuitous Epilogue : Touchstone Extras Read Free Page A

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