rix_scaedu | Entries tagged with taggery

This 441 word snippet follows on from Voted With Her Feet 3.

“Taggert! How nice to see you, I thought that perhaps you didn’t intend to call on us.” Haylen Rorge kissed her estranged daughter coolly on the cheek and went on, “Won’t you take a seat? We were about to pour the tea.”

Taggery looked around the room and realised that the only vacant chairs were the low status, backless but upholstered stools that could double as foot rests. “That would be delightful,” she replied cheerfully and crossed the room to push the stool sitting between her Aunts Merlen and Gannet back so that she could lean back against the wall once she’d put her betrousered rump on the padded seat. “I admit that I hadn’t intended dropping in before father and Tellin assured me that you’d be hurt if I didn’t. Our last meeting rather left me with the idea that you never wanted to see me again.”

“You did embarrass me by refusing the favour I obtained for you,” her mother calmly poured tea into a porcelain cup and passed it to her right.

“I chose to find out what I’m good at rather than spending my life being a rather bad third-rate Navigator,” replied Taggery.

“Oh, surely not as bad as all that,” protested Aunt Gannet from Taggery’s left, her tailored robed sitting gracefully around her.

“Worse,” corrected Taggery cheerfully. “I would have been an embarrassment to you all and everyone would have known that I wouldn’t have had a position if not for my mother’s intervention. My way created less enduring embarrassment for everyone.”

Haylen had been about to pour tea into a third cup but stopped tilting the teapot in her hand. “You believe that you acted in our common interest? How interesting.” She looked at Taggery and asked, “So what is it that you do to support yourself, Taggert? Teach – history is what you were going to study wasn’t it? Your father and brother said something that I can only think was rather garbled, because I could make no sense of it.” She resumed pouring the tea.

“I’m Pilot on the Farflung Yawl out of Sebastopree and owned by the Klaething Expeditionary Corporation. If you need confirmation, I’m sure our Navigator, Bartelen Jyrne, will vouch for me.” Taggery leaned back against the wall with just a little more attitude and crossed her legs, incidentally showing off her expensive, and comfortable, boots.

“You’re doing well then,” said Great-aunt Brennan from her high winged chair in the honoured corner of the room. “That is a ship whose progress has been noted.” Great-aunt Brennan’s robe had a rose lower front panel while everyone else’s was green. “Tell us more.”

Thanks to thnidu and his prompt and boosting words, we have a follow on from Voting With her Feet 2.

“Well, we could be hardwired to feel good while diving through a wormhole,” admitted Taggery, “and that would help us get over the sheer insanity of being the first into a newly discovered one. Or of going into any wormhole, really.”

“Your mother will be disappointed if don’t have children,” said her father gently.

“Why, so?” Taggery looked surprised. “She already has grandchildren and from what I read in the announcements archives this morning at least three of the others haven’t had kids yet.”

Tellin burst out with, “You read the all announcement archives since you were here last?”

At the same time his father started saying, “But she does want,” he paused to let Tellin finish then went on, “you to be happy. She thinks a family unit where you feel like you belong would make you happy and if it can’t be ours, then one with your own children would be the thing.”

Taggery pointed at her brother, “Tellin, yes, I did. Why not?” Then she turned to her father and went on, “The thing is diving through worm holes isn’t compatible with sustaining a pregnancy. I can explain the science to you, if Tellin’s squeamishness about biological processes doesn’t get in the way.” She flashed a smile at her brother who waved his hand in a way that either indicated ‘don’t mind me’ or ‘leave me out of this.’

“That could help explain why there are so few Pilots overall,” her father commented drily. “Not only do you have a recessive gene complex but half of you can’t have children.”

“It makes the traditional method inconvenient,” agreed Taggery, “but, as it happens, I’m currently considering a number of very interesting reproductive contracts being brokered by my current employer.”

Her father returned sharply, “Very interesting in what way?”

“In that I approve of all the proposed nurturing parents as people in whose care I would be prepared to leave my children.” She gave him a dry smile. “I’ve already rejected reproductive contracts because I didn’t approve of the nurturing parents or the mooted father.”

Tellin looked vaguely appalled and asked, “So have you ever actually entered into a reproductive contract? Do you have children that aren’t your children already?”

“No, to both questions,” Taggery told him as he gave a jerk that suggested their father had kicked him under the table, “and that’s not the legal relationship I would have with any of my children under one of the contracts I’m considering.”

“But if you’re giving up your eggs for donation-.“

Their father cut in warningly, “Tellin!”

“Not under this sort of reproductive contract,” added Taggery. “Really, Tellin, you should expand your horizons beyond maths, navigation and the tabloid newspapers.”

He looked surprised, “To what?”

“Law,” said Taggery.

“Manners,” added their father.

This is now followed by In The Face Of Disapproval.

This is brought to you by thnidu and the number six. Special thanks to thnidu because I had already written words to this and forgotten that I hadn't posted them. It follows on from Voted With Her Feet.

“Yes, two separate lines carrying the Pilot complex as a recessive, and neither breeding with another such line and throwing up a Pilot in all the generations since the Meddlers manipulated us seems unlikely,” mused Thornben Rorge.

“I believe it depends very much on how many people carry the Pilot complex,” pointed out Taggery, “but I agree it’s unlikely that you two are the first two Navigators carrying the Pilot complex to get married and have children. There should definitely have been more people like me.”

“Assuming that there were,” asked Tellin, “what happened to them?”

“I assume they took the jobs that nepotism offered them,” answered Taggery, “or simply walked away and never came back. Either way, there’s nothing to talk about from the Navigators’ point of view.”

“You never thought that they might have been – disposed of?” Tellin asked the question delicately. “One hears about how some manipulated communities deal with their aberrants…”

“The Foche warrior caste, you mean?” Taggery asked her counter question brightly. “No, that never occurred to me. The Foche reaction to aberration is coded into their gene complex and it only kicks in when an individual has an aberrant version. It’s triggered because the aberrant individual actually stinks to non-aberrant Foche.” She added off-handedly, “Apparently the Meddlers found it easier to engineer that complex to detect and destroy aberrant versions of itself than to correct the instability that produces the aberrants in the first place.”

“So, you know that by observation, do you?” Her father sounded amused.

“No. They’ve got a massive Meddler archive at Yorli and I started doing a history major before I was identified as a Pilot. Originally I thought I might come back here and teach at the Astrolabe.” She smiled. “Then life happened. I finished my degree by correspondence from on board ship.”

“You get that much downtime?” Her father raised an eyebrow at her.

“I have duties that occupy me for my shifts but piloting doesn’t consume your waking hours the way navigation does and it’s not like I was doing a full course load. Besides, piloting is all about what happens in the wormhole. They think that’s why the Meddlers were trying to make the two gene complexes co-dominant, so one person would do both jobs.”

“Why didn’t they achieve that?” Tellin looked puzzled. “They pulled off everything they set their minds to, or so I was taught.”

Their father looked around before saying, “That’s a bit of an exaggeration, Tellin, despite what the tradionalists tell us.”

“I suspect they would have achieved it, eventually,” acknowledged Taggery, “but the Pilots were still in testing and refinement when the Meddlers were overthrown. Essentially, we’re permanently stuck at beta whilst also being in production. Navigators, on the other hand, are definitely full production models.”

Tellin visibly preened.

“I have no idea how they planned to reconcile the personality differences though,” added Taggery.

“Personality differences?” Her father leaned forward, interested.

“Yes, I mean Navigators are meticulous, studious and, of course and although it’s not a personality trait, good at maths.” Taggery indicated her brother and father with her hands. “Pilots on the other hand, are all risk takers. A good adrenalin rush can make our day. I mean, it turns out the real reason I like terminal velocity cabinets so much is that it’s the closest you can get to the feel of diving through a worm hole without the right sort of ship and while staying in this dimension.”

“Ah,” said her father. “Is that actually about adrenaline or is it something else?”

Voting With Her Feet 3 is here.

I wrote this to a Thimbleful Thursday prompt.

They found her in the Lithium Flower, a bar off Macrency in the Denpanar district. It wasn’t the first time, it’d been one of her haunts before she’d left home. Just like back then they found her upside-down in a terminal velocity cabinet, the simulated wind keeping her in the centre of the space. Her eyes were closed and she might have been asleep.

Thornben Rorge looked quellingly at his son and cleared his throat. Her eyes opened then, surprised, she said, “Father! I’ll just get out of here.” She reached out, grabbed the handrails on either side of the door and neatly flipped herself upright so her feet were on the floor.

“Your brothers and sisters call me Dad,” he observed sadly.

“Well, you had to be the disciplinarian far less with them than you did with me,” she shrugged.

“Your mother and I didn’t adapt well to having, well, you as a daughter,” Thornben admitted. “You weren’t the typical Navigator child or teen.”

“That’s because I’m not a Navigator,” she sighed. “The genetic lottery gave me an entirely different life path, even if they can still trace it back to the Meddlers.”

“Taggert-,” her father began.

“Please, I go by Taggery or Tagger these days. Taggert isn’t a girl’s name outside Navigators’ circles. Do you want to grab something to drink and we can talk?” She smiled as her brother looked around uncertainly, comparing his tailored robe to the sarongs, fatigues and djellabahs that filled the room. “Don’t worry, Tellin, they can do you a pot of real Serangan tea.”

Ten minutes later the three of them were settled around a back corner table near the kitchen. Both the male Rorges looked uncomfortable but Taggery relaxed into the role of informal hostess, pouring the tea and handing around the plate of little cakes. When they all had tea in front of them she asked pleasantly, “So, what did you want to talk about?”

“You came into Serapas Port but you didn’t come to see us.” In response to Taggery’s questioning look her father added, “Your Aunt Renart saw your name on yesterday’s consolidated incoming crew manifest and told us that you were here and weren’t due to leave yet.”

“Yamma,” her brother used an affectionate name for their mother, “is hurt that you haven’t been by already.”

“She was the one who told me that I’d charted my own course and not to come back to her with my problems when I chose to go off to school in Yorli,” Taggery replied gently.

“You’d just turned down the position she got you when your application to the Astrolabe,” he named the Navigators’ trade school, “was rejected. She didn’t mean you should stay away forever.”

“Didn’t she?” Taggery smiled briefly. “I chose not to be a second rate Navigator who only had a position through nepotism and to instead go out and find something I could be good at.”

Their father interposed, “And did you?”

Taggery gave a genuine smile this time. “Yes, I did. I’m a Pilot. Mother’s right about the ancient family heritage: our lines go back to the Meddlers’ breeding studies for co-dominance on the Pilot gene-complex. It’s not, which is why you’re all Navigators.”

“We’re statistical anomalies.”

“Yes, there should’ve been more like me.”

Voted With Her Feet 2 is here.