"Miles likes a challenge."

"I'm seeing that. Um -" What else, what else, she is reasonably sure that people are not supposed to know things about their children's sex lives so what else. "He likes it when I sing, and play the keyboard - he told me there's a piano here?"

"There is. And you're welcome to play it. I'll have to have somebody track it down, though - we don't use it often and it lives under a sheet in some dusty back corner somewhere."

"So you won't mind if I retune it to well temperament?"

"Go ahead."

"Is there tuning equipment with it or will I need to acquire some? I left my grand piano behind with its accessories and didn't know until I'd already done so that I was going to have access to another instead of just my keyboard."

"I'm sure there's tuning equipment somewhere. Whether you'll be able to find it is a different question. Maybe Miles can lead an expedition to the attics."

"Okay." And that seems to be the piano exhausted as a topic. Um. "He said he'd teach me to fly a lightflyer."

"Did he? Well, I hope you have fun. Please don't let him disable any safety systems... though I doubt he'll do that with you aboard. And he might have outgrown the practice by now anyway."

"Is there some purpose to disabling the safety systems?"

"Thrill-rides. The safety systems interfere."

"Ah. Yes, I will be sure to object if he tries that. At least my first few times out, anyway."

"I don't really expect it to be a problem, but I thought I'd mention it."

"Any other risk-seeking behavior I should be advised about?"

"He seeks risks," she says dryly. "In general. Although I'm sure you couldn't get him to admit it. It's not for the sake of the risk, anyway, most of the time... I think he just has a tendency to get caught up in his bright ideas and neglect to worry about trivialities like the consequences of failure. Whether it's pulling exciting stunts in a lightflyer or whatever mythical feat he accomplished on Eta Ceta. There was some sort of mythical feat involved, wasn't there?"

"I am entirely uncertain about your relationship to local classification procedures, but I'm sure no one on Eta Ceta would thank me for producing a detailed description. I can tell you that he earned me in a more or less plausible manner, for all that I had to put in a request in order for the relevant derring-do to bear fruit."

"I'm perfectly willing to leave it at 'mythical feat' for now. If the details are embarrassing or politically sensitive somehow, I don't need 'em. I admit, the fact that he earned you made me a little nervous when I first heard it... why did you marry my son?"

"I'm not sure if the answer you're looking for is more along the lines of 'he's cute' or a complete description of my history as a malcontent."

"If those are both reasons, then I'm looking for both of them."

"And what's 'this'?"

"I call it my pen." She plucks it from her necklace, gestures it on and in drawing mode, and draws a streak of white light through the air. "It can do most anything a comconsole can, except play audio without a peripheral." She woggles it again, defines a plane, and gets a flat desktop; calls up a blank text file and gestures letters into it at a rapid clip.

"Ooh. I want one," says Cordelia.

"Then you can have one, as soon as I've secured what I need to make consumer-version prototypes. What's your opinion on the form factor? Miles wants his to look like an old-fashioned pen, but I'm not sure I can do a nib-shaped end that works like these ends do."

"The jewelry aesthetic is fine by me. I might want something a little more, hmm, obviously technological - but I wouldn't complain if I got one that looked like yours."