Touchstone 1 - Stray

last of the hairy people and mapped the gates Ruuel said: “Not their home space either. We’ll pick this up another day.”
    I’ve no idea how long they would have gone on if not for the time limit caused by me and my Nuran visitor. They didn’t seem particularly annoyed about stopping, at any rate. We returned, not neglecting caution just because we’d been through the spaces already, and stepped back into real-space about ten minutes short of the full kasse.
    I wasn’t altogether surprised to find Maze waiting for me. He nodded at Ruuel as we came through the gate-lock and said: “You and I are on escort duty,” then added to me: “Put this on.” He handed me a white dress and a carry bag with shoes and things inside, which I accepted automatically, then realised what they were.
    “Serious?” I said, far too aware that even Fourth Squad weren’t capable of not staring.
    “The liaison branch is very eager to ensure that the Nurans continue dialogue with us, and they’ve decided it might be impolitic for you to be wearing our uniform. The clothes are Mara’s.”
    “Lohn somewhere right now laughing a lot, right?”
    “Very much so.” He smiled, amused. “Don’t worry, we’ll be with you.”
    “Wearing dresses?” I asked, but decided it wasn’t worth arguing about. Sighing, I went and had a shower, keeping my hair dry, and then put on Mara’s sundress and sandals, which were only slightly too big for me. She’d included a hairbrush, and some nearly-clear lip gloss which I smoothed on, then let my hair out of its tight braid, pulled it up into a high ponytail and looked at myself in the mirror.
    I really loved the style of dress, and will have to remember it next time I go shopping, but I didn’t understand why a dress at all. Why not any of my own clothes? Yeah, the dress looked better than my casual, practical outfits, but I felt like I was being set up on a blind date and I seriously didn’t like the implications of that. Alyssa once told me that I’m too obliging, that I objected to things way too late, but that dress handily jumped me straight to stubborn doubt.
    Then I remembered my lab rat.
    Trying not to smile at the idea of showing up to an important diplomatic meeting wearing an “experimental animal” label for anyone with Symbol Sight to read, I stuffed my uniform harness in the bag and went out.
    “Does know yet what Nuran want talk about?”
    “Your planet, apparently.” Maze brought me into a channel with him, Ruuel and someone called Tarmian, ushering me toward the nearest elevator. “He hasn’t been waiting long. It took some time to convince him that he’d have to come here if he wanted to talk to you, and the flight landed just before your return.”
    “If you can succeed in getting him to speak at all it will be progress,” said Tarmian, who was a woman with a deep, husky voice. “The most I’ve managed is to be told I don’t need to know his name.”
    Selkie and someone called Ganaran joined the channel, and I had a sinking realisation that I was supposedly going to have a conversation with a planetary emissary while a bunch of people made helpful suggestions to me in my head. It made me wonder if Alyssa was right about the whole too obliging thing, because it hadn’t seemed to occur to any of them that my interests in such a conversation might not coincide with theirs. Or maybe it had, but they were hoping no independent thought would cross my mind. I listened without comment to Tarmian and Ganaran, who are from KOTIS’ liaison branch, telling me to let the Nuran lead the conversation, but to try and encourage him to expand on topics he was willing to discuss. Maze and Ruuel kept quiet, though they did both enhance themselves just before we went in, something I should be used to, but which was really disconcerting with my arms and shoulders bare.
    Preconceptions are fun. I was expecting someone like a Buddhist monk, complete with bald head and orange robes. The closest I got were the robes, and they were more maroon and white, and not really robes. He had the same sort of colouring as Ruuel and Taarel and Selkie, but wore his hair long, with the sides caught back in a high tail except for strips before his ears. He looked like a manga samurai, complete with two swords tucked into a belt sash.
    The other person in the room was a curvy and sweet-faced woman with a lot of curly black hair which kept trying to escape her hairclips. She was wearing a