‘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.’
Nava shook her head. ‘No.’
‘They’re not a minority?’
‘Not that. The problem isn’t a warrior culture in the school. Felix Leavitt probably had no experience of the outside world when he gave those interviews. Clan Worlds society as a whole suffers from a glorification of the “warrior.” Not that most of them would know what the word really means. I’m told that the least discriminatory sector as far as sorcery is concerned is among spaceship crews. They rely upon magicians to survive. Both faster-than-light communications and transport rely on sorcery to work at all. Artificial gravity and antigravity may not be required, but they certainly are convenient. Without a magician, modern spaceships would be a lot less comfortable and it would take decades or centuries to travel between systems.’
‘Even in-system,’ Rochester said. He had his ketcom out and was tapping at the screen. ‘Using least-energy, Hohmann transfers to get from Shinden out to the mining stations in the asteroid belt, you’d be looking at three and a half years in space. With a least-time, brachistochrone transfer using a ship capable of one gravity of acceleration, the time is about a week. Magicians are indispensable for space travel in the modern world.’
‘And yet,’ Nava went on, ‘society as a whole views sorcery as a tool for war. Most of the populace aren’t interested unless someone can throw around attack spells.’
‘And, perversely, they consider magicians to be dangerous,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Because they only view sorcery as useful if it can blow things up, they see magicians as disasters waiting to happen.’ She shrugged. ‘Nothing much we can do about it. If they haven’t got the idea that sorcery is a good thing by now, they never will. Their power is generated using fusion reactors which couldn’t function without sorcery.’
‘Well, I don’t mind being considered dangerous,’ Nava said.
‘You don’t, but–’
‘Well, it’s not a prejudice. I really am about as dangerous as they think.’
‘No,’ Mitsuko said firmly, ‘you’re not.’
Nava gave her a look. It was more or less the same look as always, but there was more of a stare behind it. ‘You just haven’t seen me get angry, and I hope you never do. You really wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.’
~~~
‘That felt like a long day,’ Melissa said. It was, once again, after dinner and, once again, they were in the sauna. This time Rochester had actually suggested it, saying that his back ached from hunching over a terminal all day. Well, technically, he had said he was going to spend some time in there and the girls had trooped in after him, but he seemed less concerned tonight.
That said, his eyes were closed and his head was resting against Melissa’s hip. ‘I hope we get this all finished before Sunday,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll need a day to sleep it off.’
‘We can’t keep this pace up all week,’ Mitsuko said. ‘I think tomorrow will be lighter because we’ll be waiting for data to come through the FTL system.’
‘That’s a valid point,’ Rochester said.
‘And it’s Mel’s birthday tomorrow. We need to take at least a moment to celebrate.’
‘Not that sixteen is a big one,’ Melissa said. ‘I guess a little celebration would be good.’
‘Even I’m waiting for some data from another system,’ Nava said.
‘Oh?’ Mitsuko asked. She was back on the platform above Nava. Nava had her head resting against Mitsuko’s thigh. They had all just assumed the same positions as the evening before, like it was the right thing to do.
‘I asked for some news stories from Floridia Three.’
‘That’s the Orlando clan’s planet, right?’
‘Mm. Felix Leavitt Orlando has given a number of interviews to local news media. I’ve asked to see them.’
‘Okay. What about the other members of the panel?’
‘Well, the principal is going to be on it with us. That’s likely to be… interesting. However, I doubt he’ll say anything we fundamentally disagree with. There’s going to be an ASF representative. They haven’t announced who that’s going to be, but I’ve put together a basic profile of the ASF’s attitude to sorcery education. There’s someone on the assembly who’s part of the Special Interest Group on Education. That’s SIGED and his name is Oliver Barnes Garavain. I’m working his profile in the morning. And there’s someone from a research organisation developing educational techniques and technologies. Sarah Keifer Plank. I don’t know much about her yet.’
‘Should we really be talking about this during our relaxation time?’ Rochester asked.
‘No,’ Mitsuko said. ‘I apologise.’
‘Well, I was the
