line dance

[isthisart]

Linya settles thoroughly in. The rest of her Barrayaran clothes filter in and she mixes and matches in Alys-approved ways. Cordelia continues to be welcoming; the Count continues to be more or less awkward (though she does catch him stifling a laugh the first time she has occasion to scoop up her husband in his presence). Tsipis continues to be marvelously helpful; between them they pick a factory that will be able to make pens for a reasonable bid, and she goes in to visit and makes sure they have everything right and decides what colors the chassis ought to come in (four standard colors, a dozen more available as custom order with optional engraving). She asks Cordelia what color she wants hers; since she doesn't want a complicated nib-end she can have the first one off the production line. For the complicated-nib version, Linya is still studying optics. She writes a letter to a local manufacturer of holoprojectors to see if they have any insight. She wraps up her study of Greek and starts on French - French, she already knew, but this is a different dialect with peculiar Barrayaran Cyrillic spelling rules, so it still requires nonzero effort.

Oh, and she snuggles her tiny Barrayaran. And makes music and has groats for breakfast roughly every other day.

Setting a date for a groat-related wedding as opposed to a groat-related breakfast is a little complicated, but they are formally, as it were, engaged.

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

"He's not making an official Imperial appearance. He's still the Emperor, but he's not - actively empering. So people can address him as 'Count Vorbarra' instead of 'Sire', and he drops some of the more ostentatious security arrangements, and it's generally understood that he is present in a low-key social capacity."

[isthisart]

"I suppose it's nice to have the option if people will cooperate with the associated polite fictions."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes."

[isthisart]

Linya gives him a kiss.

The first batch-produced pen rolls off the line, blue with the custom transparent swirl in the colored enamel. Linya consults Alys and gets a little beribboned box to put the pen, its charger/external data storage object, its basic instructional flimsy, and its necklace collar into all together, and presents it to Cordelia at dinner the following day.

[greatcomposure]

"Ooh. Shiny toy," says Cordelia, gazing delightedly into the box. "Thank you, Linyabel."

[on_my_word]

Aral leans sideways a little to peer into the box and see the shiny toy for himself.

[isthisart]

"Will you let me know if there's anything that needs tweaking about the tutorial software? Most of the rest of it is imported directly from my pen, but the tutorial is new; I didn't need one."

[greatcomposure]

"Definitely," Cordelia assures her. "I'll go play with it right after dinner."

[isthisart]

Linya grins.

"I'm making progress on the optics for the fancy nib version," she adds. "I am now pretty sure it's doable."

[greatcomposure]

"Have you told Miles? Was he absurdly excited?"

[isthisart]

"I don't know about 'absurdly'. But yes."

[greatcomposure]

"I really hope these things prove to be as useful as they are charming. For once Barrayar could be technologically ahead of the rest of the galaxy on something."

[isthisart]

"One nice thing about them is that they will network with each other even if there isn't an underlying infrastructure. So if you distribute them to people who don't have comconsoles they will still be able to write each other notes - or send each other drawings, for that matter, though the current tutorial edition does presume literacy in English I could probably develop or contract out the development of a pictorial version. And they do have to have electricity, I didn't have a way around that part."

[greatcomposure]

"Interesting. That direction might have a lot of potential."

[isthisart]

"They are currently kind of expensive per unit, but the price point should drop over the next year or so as the supplies of relevant materials readjust to the demand."

[greatcomposure]

"It would sure be convenient if they could be made cheaply."

[isthisart]

"Yes. I might be able to simplify it further, the casing especially, but that would probably come at a cost of reduced performance - the casing is pressure-sensitive and will be able to learn how you hold your hand when you're making specific gestures, which lets you be a lot sloppier and faster," she explains.

[greatcomposure]

"Makes sense. Well, we'll see."

[isthisart]

"Mm-hm."

Time continues to pass - with the first edition of pen software awaiting reports from beta testing, Linya isn't doing programming, and she's learned all of her new planet's significant languages, so she plays music - mostly on the keyboard up in the suite to entertain her bored and flat husband - and she looks up everyone on the guest list so she'll know what they look like and a few things about them, and she downloads some miscellaneous textbooks to read with a view to seeing what seems most up her alley and maybe enrolling in formal classes at the university if they'll let her test out of what prerequisites she already knows.

She keeps a close eye on how much discomfort Miles seems to be in, and winds up snuggled less and less cautiously each morning as days march by.

[thisvorlunatic]

One particular morning, Miles is unusually chipper and fast-moving on his way back from the bathroom - less of a shuffle and more of an actual walk. He climbs into bed and snuggles up happily.

[isthisart]

Snuggle!

"You seem to be on the mend."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Thankfully yes. I would not have been pleased if the aching turned out to be a permanent feature. It's still there, but it has noticeably decreased."

[isthisart]

"I would hope the surgeons would be more competent than to leave you with permanent aches and pains," says Linya, "yes." Nuzzle.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Demonstrably, even the cutting edge of the cutting edge can't get it perfect every time," says Miles with a wry gesture at his own body. "For all I know maybe I have one of my weird reactions to the plastic they use in the synthetics, and I'd have to wait around for somebody to hunt up a different formulation and synthesize me a whole new set of leg bones and replace them all again. I'm not saying I actually thought that was happening, and happily it doesn't seem to be, but competence and effectiveness can sometimes be separated by a wide margin."

[isthisart]

"Did they not test you for allergies to the plastic first? Assuming it's not sufficiently hypoallergenic for that to be a guaranteed nonissue."