landscape

[isthisart]

Linya avoids haring off to do things much while Miles's arms are unusable. Once he can feed himself comfortably enough to prefer to do so, though, she makes plans with Ekaterin to go with her and little Nikki on a hike in some nice woods of mixed-origin fauna. She packs a picnic and takes the lightflyer and flies out to pick up the relevant subset of Vorsoissons.

Comments

[isthisart]

"It took me twenty-four days to get from Earth back to Barrayar."

[first_loyalty]

"That's a long time," says Nikki. "Longer than two weeks!"

[isthisart]

"Yep. Two and a half. But I was on Earth for months, so it seemed worth it."

[first_loyalty]

"What did you do there?" wonders Nikki. "Did you have fun?"

[isthisart]

"I had lots of fun! I saw interesting Earth things - there's so much pretty scenery and so many old buildings! - and I got lots of work done and I convinced a friend to move to Komarr so I could visit him without spending months in jumpships."

[first_loyalty]

"How far how long is Komarr?"

"A week, I think," says Ekaterin.

[isthisart]

"Just about. Some of the ships go a little faster if nobody on them gets jumpsick."

[first_loyalty]

"Getting jumpsick sounds like no fun," says Nikki.

[isthisart]

"It does sound that way. I don't know what it's like, I don't get sick on jumps at all. My friend from Earth does, though. He had to make the trip back extra slowly so he wouldn't be jumping every day."

[first_loyalty]

"Is jumpsick throw-up sick or sneezy sick or yucky sick?" he asks next.

[isthisart]

"Mostly the first kind," says Linya. "Yucky sick sometimes too, if it's really bad. I have never heard of jumping making anybody sneeze."

[first_loyalty]

"Neither have I," says Ekaterin.

"Sneezy's not so bad. The other ones are worse," says Nikki.

[isthisart]

"Are they?" Linya's not entirely sure she can recall ever suffering any of the above, so he's the expert here. "Well, I hope you don't get jumpsick if you ever go to another planet."

[first_loyalty]

"I hope so too," says Ekaterin.

"I bet I won't," says Nikki, optimistically.

[isthisart]

"Do you want to go to other planets, Nikki?"

[first_loyalty]

"Yeah!"

"Maybe someday we will," says Ekaterin.

[isthisart]

"I think Komarr's nice. Everybody there lives in arcologies."

[first_loyalty]

"What's an arcology?" inquires Nikki.

[isthisart]

"It's a big dome that keeps the air inside. Komarr doesn't have nice air on the rest of it."

[first_loyalty]

"Is it like vacuum?" he wonders. "Or is it smelly air?"

[isthisart]

"It's not vacuum, and I don't know how it smells. It doesn't have enough oxygen in it."

[first_loyalty]

"So people can't breathe it," Ekaterin clarifies.

"Oh! That's weird," says Nikki. "Why does Komarr have bad fake air?"

[isthisart]

"Well, it started out that way, and people are working on making it have good real air instead, but it's taking a long time."

[first_loyalty]

"Why's it take so long?" he asks. "Can't they just get it from somewhere that has lots?"

[isthisart]

"Most of the places that have air want to keep it all for themselves. Even if they didn't, you'd need so many ships to hold all the air that you'd need to cover up a whole planet. Ships are pretty small compared to planets."