Page 17 of His Human Believer

“For the impression testing.” None of this is true. I have soil references and a full regional set in a labeled case in the lower quarters that I brought with me. “Also, the gourds will be heavy,” I add.

Margaret looks at Emberstone, who is roughly the size of a domicile door.

Riley Touchstone does not say one word. She looks at Avery. Avery looks back at her. Something passes between the two of them that I cannot decode and do not care for at all.

And then all of us exit the domicile and load into Hogen Emberstone’s vehicle.

Dagr comes with us after all.

The schooling assessment was delayed, so he gets in the back with me. And then Hannibal orders the wulver to accompany us and the beast gets in the back too with all three heads out the far window. I’m squished between a boy and his wulver.

Margaret sits in the front passenger seat, next to Emberstone.

I have a very clear view of the back of her head.

“So what’s the process for the gourds?” she asks him, as we pull out. “Are you growing them or only selling them?”

“Both. The shell is grown, the interior is fabricated out to spec. This is a new type I’ve never made before, to Riley’s human specification, which was interesting. These will all be orange, with a wall thin enough to carve and thick enough to hold a flame inside.”

“Huh. Are they strong enough to handle all of that?”

“They are now, but the first batch collapsed.”

“What’d you change?”

And he tells her, at length and without once talking over her while she asks more questions.

The wulver’s center head shifts and his tongue hangs out. He puts his full weight on my thigh.

I look out the window.

My entire adult life has been spent in labs, lecture chambers and field camps. I am not given to strong feeling. A recent peer review described me as temperamentally inert. The Fellow who wrote it meant it as an insult and instead, I had it framed.

And yet, here I am chasing after a human female I have very, very strong emotions about. Never in my life have I been jealous of another male over the companionship of a female.

My fists clench. It must be the vow. It is driving me crazy. Two months without any relief whatsoever and my regulation has degraded. This is a physiological problem with a physiological cause and it will resolve when the year is out.

“Vidar.”

Margaret has turned around in her seat.

“Sorry…the soil thing. If the ground under the wall never dries because it’s shaded, does that mess up your depth readings? Like, is a print in permanently damp soil going to read deeper than the same print in soil that dried out?”

“Yes. Considerably. It is the largest source of error in the measurement.”

“So how do you correct for it?”

“Moisture content at the point of impression. I sampled at four depths last night before I cast.”

“Okay.” She nods slowly, thinking about it. “So if you had a second track line further in, and the canopy’s thinner and the ground actually dries⁠—”

“Then I would have a comparison and the correction would be real rather than estimated. Yes.”

“Right. Okay.” She turns back around. “Sorry. Carry on about the gourds.”

Emberstone carries on about the gourds.

I lean back in another male’s vehicle, underneath a wulver, pleased that she has turned around to ask me something two separate times since we left the domicile.