Head tilted, Lotta Alsnor looked critically at herself in the mirror, yet hardly noticed the freckled face and carroty hair, the skinny arms and legs. She'd dressed herself in what she thought of as her prettiest dress, a yellow print with small white flowers, that Mrs. Bosler had given her for Equinox. She'd worn it almost every weekend since, at Sixday mixers where you got to visit with the staff and the older children. Mrs. Orbig had showed her how to clean it—it was a kind you sprayed with a special cleaner, then rinsed with water and blew dry. At home she hadn't cleaned her own clothes. Her mama hadn't taught her, probably had thought she was too little. Things were different here, a lot, and of course she was seven now.
Lotta frowned. The dress didn't have as much body as when it was new. Mrs. Orbig probably knew how to fix that too, she told herself. She'd ask her. Her eye noticed a small scuff on a white shoe, on the toe. Taking a tissue from her desk, she knelt and spit on the place, wiped it as shiny as it would get, then threw the tissue away.
With a final glance in the mirror, she hurried out of the room she shared with two other little girls and an older girl, then down the hall, the stairs, through the vestibule and onto the side veranda, where she stopped to wait.
Sunlight was hazy yellow on flowerbeds and lawn; insects floated among clustered blossoms. It was seldom this quiet. Summer Solstice was the first holiday since Equinox long enough for children from far away to go home. Lotta couldn't, of course. Pelstron was 1,600 miles1 away, and her daddy didn't make enough money to buy the ticket. That didn't bother her though; she took it for granted. And her mother had written that they'd be able to fly her home for Harvest Festival.
A bee reconnoitered the bank of butterflowers at the veranda's edge, and Lotta wondered what it would be like to be a bee. Wisdom/Knowledge was her natural area; in a few years she'd be able to meld with a bee and find out. She gave the insect her full attention, intending that it happen now, that she suddenly slip inside it. Thus she didn't notice Mrs. Lormagen come out on the veranda.
Mauen Lormagen watched the rapt child for a minute or so without speaking. "Good morning, Lotta," she said at last, and the child turned and looked at her.
"Good morning, Mrs. Lormagen." The little girl's gaze was steady and direct. Mrs. Lormagen was old—forty-nine she'd heard someone say—but still pretty. She taught dancing as part of the T'sel. You knelt; meditated space, time, and motion; then practiced the forms; and finally you danced. Mrs. Lormagen could stand on one foot, put her leg out in front of her, her foot higher than her shoulder, and hold it there without falling down. Lotta could put her leg out like that too, either leg, but couldn't keep it there without holding on to the balance bar. She liked dance next best to meditation class, and Ostrak sessions with Mr. Bosler; actually she liked all her classes.
Mrs. Lormagen was going with them on the picnic, and Lotta realized now that the woman was wearing rough slacks, a plain shirt, and casual beach sandals. Of course. The boat's seats might not be clean, or the picnic benches. For just a moment the little girl considered running back upstairs to change, then dismissed the thought. She liked to wear her yellow dress.
Mr. Bosler came out then, and Mrs. Bosler. Each carried a large wicker basket covered with a towel. The Lormagens' grown son Kusu was with them. Lotta knew that Kusu was too old, twenty-two, for her ever to marry. Twenty-two was fifteen years older than seven, more than three times as old. Although . . . when he was thirty-five, she'd be twenty. But someone else would marry him by then. Kusu was beautiful: he was tall and had muscles, and blond hair with some red in it, but not nearly as much red as hers. And he laughed a lot. His area was Wisdom/Knowledge like hers, and he was home from the Royal University.
Kusu grinned at her, a flash of teeth, then hopped off the veranda and loped across the yard toward the boathouse, where the oars were kept. Mr. Bosler grinned at her too. He was sixty something, she'd heard, and didn't have much hair; none at all in front. He led them across the yard to the dock, where they got in one of the larger rowboats, and Kusu came down with two sets of oars, one for himself and one for Mr. Bosler. When everyone was seated, they pushed away from the dock and started rowing.
Lotta watched the oars push them through the water, making little whirlpools at the end of every stroke. Mr. Bosler was strong too, though not as strong as Kusu of course, and they rowed in perfect unison, as if they practiced together.
"How're you doing on the selection of your doctoral research?" Mr. Bosler asked over his shoulder.
"I've decided to open up the project I talked to you about," Kusu said, "and establish its feasibility. You and I are pretty sure it's feasible, but Fahnsmor and Dikstrel are positive it's not, so what I'm proposing is a study of the nature of hyperspace."
He laughed. "It's remarkable how long we've used hyperspace travel without anyone knowing or wondering about things like that. I'm sure that neither Fahnsmor nor Dikstrel got the real Sacrament when they were little, but they're at Work, on Jobs. And educated when they were, they don't have the faintest idea of what research is about. They want a study plan with no room for the unknown, so I'll give them what looks like one, and we can be surprised together."
Lotta wondered what Fahnsmor and Dikstrel were like. Fahnsmor she pictured as tall and lanky, Dikstrel as short and pudgy, and wondered if they really were. She knew the difference between imagination and reality, but she also knew that people sometimes knew things subliminally they didn't know they knew, and called what they knew imagination to account for it.
"You haven't been home for a few deks2," Mr. Bosler said to Kusu. "Have you heard the idea your dad's been playing with recently?"
"I guess not. Something in addition to translating the T'swa history of the old Home Sector?"
"Right. There's been a frequency increase, the last dozen years, in disorderly pupils in the public schools. It's not conspicuous, but teachers and school administrators have definitely noticed it. Varlik had a survey done on sample schools, and more than seventy percent of disorderly students belong in the same slot in the Matrix of T'sel."
Lotta saw Kusu's eyebrows arch. "Warriors," he said.
"Right. An unprecedented bunch of little warriors have gotten themselves born, with nowhere to fight." Mr. Bosler grinned, his mouth and eyes both.
Lotta knew a child at home like they'd been talking about: her older brother Jerym. He'd gotten in trouble at school for fighting. Once he'd told her he was going to be a T'swi when he grew up. She hadn't had the T'sel yet then, so she'd thought that was a dumb thing to say. The T'swa were born, not made; she'd already known that. Now she realized that T'swa meant different things to different people—a human species that lived on the planet Tyss, and the mercenary warriors from there. And that a long time ago, in the Kettle War, Mr. Lormagen, Kusu's father, was called "the White T'swi," which was wrong grammatically—T'swa was plural or an adjective—but that was how people said it on Iryala. Kusu was even named for a T'swa: Mr. Lormagen's sergeant on Kettle.
"What's Varlik's idea?" Mrs. Bosler asked. "Or was getting the statistics it?"
"Tell her, Mauen. He's talked to you since he has to me."
"He's proposed to Lord Kristal that regiments of children be formed and trained. Like the T'swa mercenary regiments: starting with six- and seven-year-olds."
Jerym's too old then, way too old, Lotta thought. Ten.
"Who'd train them? T'swa?" asked Mrs. Bosler.
"The first ones trained would be a cadre unit. T'swa would train them. Then the cadre unit would train the white regiments."
"Would they be mercenaries like the T'swa? If they were part of the Iryalan army, they could easily spend their entire career without fighting."
"He's thinking in terms of having them trained under the O.S.P. He doesn't think it would work to have the army do it; they'd want it done their way. Then, when an actual regiment finishes training, they'd become part of a special branch of the Defense Ministry. The Movement would hire them from Defense as a mercenary unit, and contract them out to warring factions on the trade worlds."
"Wouldn't they be competing with the T'swa?"
"Not really. The trade worlds would hire twice as many T'swa regiments if they were available."
They were just about to Gouer Island. Most of it was woods, but the end they were coming to was grassy, like a lawn with shade trees. The grass was even short like a lawn. Lotta could see two sets of outdoor picnic tables, far enough apart for privacy, and a big, open-sided shelter with tables of its own, in case it rained. Kusu had stopped rowing, and crouched ready to grab the dock. Mr. Bosler dabbed with his oars to guide them in. Lotta reached down, unbuckled her white shoes and took them off, along with her socks, so they wouldn't get dirty on the island. But her main attention was on the grownups talking.
"We can use the profits from the contracts to open more schools," Mrs. Lormagen was saying. "With the teeth taken out of the Sacrament, society needs a new and better glue. Or it will when the various centrifugal factors have been operating for a while."
Lotta understood almost all the words they'd been using, and being a Wisdom/Knowledge child, she knew pretty much what they'd been talking about, even what Mrs. Lormagen meant about glue: People who knew the T'sel liked other people more.
But Mr. Lormagen wouldn't have to worry about contracting his regiments out. They'd fight for the Confederation; she had a feeling about that.
The boat slid alongside the dock; Kusu grabbed one of the posts it was built on, and tied up to it. Lotta was the first one off, running barefoot up the dock to explore.