‘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 replied. ‘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.
