ACCELERATED HEALING MODE: Under normal circumstances, the body reacts against rapidly dividing cells. A Healer can temporarily suppress this reaction, allowing healing to take place much faster than normal. However, this state is not normal and can lead to cancer if not reversed within a few days.

ANCHOR: Long-distance teleportation requires a very precise set of coordinates and a great deal of work if one is going to a new location, and the range covered is limited. If a fellow telepath is located near the point aimed for, it is possible to arrange a "two-ended" teleport which greatly reduces the energy needed. The telepath at the destination is referred to as an anchor, and the process is called anchoring.

ARTIFICIAL CONSCIENCE: The R'il'nai literally share in the emotions of others, which they referred to as empathy. Riyan society evolved with the assumption that everyone had this trait. The rare children lacking this ability were considered badly handicapped and treated while young to react as if they felt the pain of others. In severe cases, this could lead to a treated individual actually convulsing or collapsing if he or she caused pain to another, but this was considered better than having one individual disrupt the whole society.

AUTOGROOMER: A robotic device that removes dust and mud from a horse's coat, brushes it, and combs out the mane and tail. Horses must be trained to accept it, and it does not work well on a really dirty horse, or on a tangled mane or tail.

AUTOMATED FOOD DISPENSER: An automatic feeder for an animal or a prisoner. 

CALENDAR: The Confederation calendar has slightly more than 364 days a year, with 4 of those days and whatever leap years are needed being considered outside the twelve 30-day months. "Day" and "year" are based on Central's orbit and rotation rate, so the Confederation calendar does not quite match that of any other member planet of the Confederation. Most member planets have their own calendars, though year and day lengths are close enough to Central's (and Earth's) that matching is possible over a few fivedays' time. The Confederation calendar is used to synchronize time across the Confederation as well as being the usual calendar on Central.

CHECK-IN BUTTON: A device, usually a button to be pushed, sending confirmation that a signal has been received by the person for whom it is intended. Starships use them for individual check-ins after an emergency.

CHIP BALANCING: No information storage device is perfect, and the spare chips for jump-ship control must periodically be checked against the main chips to be sure the information is identical. This procedure is known as "balancing" and must be performed regularly during a multi-jump journey.

CHIPS: a general term for information storage devices. They may be used for anything from image storage to operating a spaceship's navigation system.

CITRINE: The youngest tineral on the isolation satellite, a soft orange female.

COMPUTER INTERFACE: An electronic device which allows direct mental communication with a computer. In theory usable by non-telepaths, but generally telepathic ability makes use of such an interface much easier. A good telepath can communicate with a computer for light-duty tasks without an interface.

CONDITIONAL PRECOGNITION: An esper talent that allows a person to evaluate the probability of various things happening if the person follows various courses of action. Very useful in some situations (e.g., identifying the probable effects of attempting weather modification or whether a new species will be invasive.) Very little use if the person's actions have little impact on the future.

COUNTERSHOCK: a medication that suppresses shock symptoms, but by itself has no pain-relieving properties.

DECENCY: Virtually all Earth cultures have a common mindset that if a part of the body is hidden, it is assumed not to exist (at least by cultural standards.). Several Confederation planets, including Central, have the mindset that hiding a part of the body for reasons other than protection or warmth calls attention to that part of the body. Thus on Central a swimming suit would be seen as indecent. (Wet suits or the modern racing suits which act to reduce a swimmer's drag would fall under the warmth/protection/utility exception.)

EMPATHIC TALENTS: A group of talents based more on emotion than deliberate thought. The most important is the ability to experience the emotions of others, or more often to be unable not to feel them without training in shutting them out. Empathic talents also include the ability to feel, see, hear, taste and smell what another is experiencing without going through a language equivalent. Xenotelepathy and telepathic communication with animals generally requires a blend of empathic and esper talents, as does Healing.

EMPATHY:  In Humans, imagination-based: feeling what you think another must feel. In R'il'nai, genuinely experiencing another's emotions unless deliberately blocking them. Crossbreds can show either, both, or neither.

ESPER TALENTS: A general term for a group of mental talents which do not necessarily involve feelings or sensory impressions. The most important are telepathy, levitation, conditional precognition and teleportation. Individuals can be expert at one or two talents while being borderline on others, but on the whole these talents tend to be inherited together.

FIRSTDAY: First day of a fiveday. It is considered a holiday at Tyndall, but different religions and occupations take various days of each fiveday as being "special" in some way.

FIVEDAY: Five days, and may be considered the Confederation equivalent of a week, though shorter. Six fivedays make up a month, which has nothing to do with a moon—Central, for instance, doesn't have a moon.

FLAGGING: Placing a FTL beacon at a jump point. Transportation between flagged jump points is relatively easy and jumps of up to fifty light years are not uncommon. Finding an unflagged jump point, necessary for exploration, is a slow, difficult process.

FOCUS OF A MELD: The person who takes the lead in a mind-meld. (See Meld.)

GALACTICA (LANGUAGE): The common language of the Confederation. Although individual planets have substantially different accents, the written forms of the language are reasonably consistent, and two speakers of Galactica can generally understand each other with a little practice.

GARNET: Jewel tineral infant, the offspring of Ruby and an amethyst male native to Windhome.

GENETIC LATENT: An individual who carries a substantial number of R'il'nian genes which are not active, but which can be passed to that person's children. Genetic latents are under the Genetics Board's control as far as reproduction is concerned, and cannot marry without the approval of the Genetics Board.

GOODNEWS CLUSTER: A group of three suns circled by five habitable planets. (The suns are far enough apart that they do not disturb the orbits of each other's planets.) The cluster was settled by a number of different groups who wanted to practice their own beliefs without interference from others, and joined the Confederation as a group. Needless to say, the various groups have started to interfere with each other.

HEALING: A rare talent, involving both empathic and esper abilities. A Healer is capable of perceiving and correcting physical injuries and many illnesses (Kharfun syndrome is a rare exception) though Healing cannot correct genetic errors.

INTERFACE LOUNGE: A lounge with a built-in mental computer interface. They are designed to keep the body as comfortable as possible while working with a computer, especially for long periods.

ISOLATION SATELLITE: A satellite designed for complete biological isolation and used for study of potentially dangerous diseases. Part of the Riyan medical system.

ISOLATION SUIT: A suit, rather like a space suit, designed for complete biological isolation. Isolation suits are completely self-contained, carrying their own air and temperature control systems. Even with levitation circuits to take some of the weight, they are very uncomfortable to work in.

JUMP GATE: A small region with a preset mechanical teleport to another small region. Most commonly, they have the form of a door or archway, but it is perfectly possible to have a jump-gate with no markers, or with natural markers such as trees.

JUMP POINT: A point in space from (or to) which a properly equipped spaceship can make a mechanical teleport.

MEADOW: One of the nature tinerals attached to Roi. Laced feathers with bronze shafts shading out to copper, green and gold. All of Roi's pet tinerals came from isolated islands on Riya, and are quite young.

NATURES (TINERAL VARIETY): Tinerals with laced feathers (i.e., feathers with edges differing in color from the feather shaft.) Although somewhat coarser and more variable in appearance than the other two tineral varieties, this is because they were bred for their voices rather than appearance. See Tinerals.

OBSTACLE RACING: An equestrian sport similar to a combination of the cross country phase of a three-day event, a particularly fiendish trail riding class, a steeplechase and dog agility.

OUTER COUNCIL: An advisory body made up of those with Çeren indices between 108 and 120. They are normally assigned off-planet, working as part of the Outer Council when they are on Central. Since the Çeren index is normally distributed (bell curve) around the average of 72, there are far more Outer than Inner Council members.

PLANETARY ASSEMBLY: The ruling body on Central. The members are elected and are Humans (Çeren index less than 72), though a fifth of the seats are occupied by Humans with detectible R'il'nian traits.

PREDATOR WARNOFF: A device that transmits a signal interpreted by the brain as "I'm harmless, but I'll make you sick if you try to eat me or otherwise attack me." Very useful against predators with a central nervous system, and even helpful against biting insects if a high enough intensity is used.

RACEMIZATION:  Not science fiction, but a perfectly valid scientific dating technique. (Google it.) A simple explanation is that most living creatures produce amino acids of only "left-handed" (L) orientation. After death, some of the L amino acids revert to "right-handed" (D) form, and the tissue samples gradually approach an even balance of L and D amino acids. Expressing the L/D ratio as an age is complicated by the fact that the rate of racemization varies with the amino acid, the temperature, the pH, the humidity, and other factors, most of which may change over the history of a sample.  The sample in Homecoming was close to ideal—death in an anoxic submarine landslide—but the best guess at date was "fairly recent."

SCREAMER: an electronic device that emits a burst of telepathic noise. It is possible to use esper abilities through a screamer, but it is not easy, and it takes training.

SOUTHDAY: The intercalary day 273 days after Yearday, approximating the date of the southern solstice. At the time of Homecoming the actual solstice is a few days after Southday. Southday is the end of the first half-term at school, and the start of the month-long holiday vacation from school.

SPRING: Azure sky tineral, quite young, who adopts Lai. Her feathers shade from white at the base to sky-blue at the tips and edges. She is from one of the islands scattered across the Riyan oceans, as tinerals on the mainland, with no defenses against predators, died out in the two centuries following the plague, and those on Windhome and the isolation satellite were all jewels.

SUNDROP: Chestnut mare owned by Derik and trained for obstacle racing. Faster than KoKo, but less endurance.

SYNTHESIZER: A device that breaks down unwanted materials and then uses the atoms to make needed products. These products may include anything from food or clothing to furniture, but the atomic composition of the products made must match that of the waste material used. (Surplus atoms can be stored, but the input material must contain all the needed atoms.) Luckily most organic materials have a composition overwhelmingly dominated by hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, and it is relatively easy to add small amount of any missing atoms.

TACK-HEALING: In Healing broken bones, the growth of calcification tends to be much slower than aligning the bone fragments and forcing rapid growth of cartilage. The most common way of Healing such injuries is to use Healing to align the bone fragments and accelerate cartilage growth, known as tack-healing because the bone, while "mended," has only a fraction of normal strength. The patient is then instructed to avoid putting excessive stress on the damaged bone while calcification is occurring.

TELEPATHY: One person reading another's thoughts, or putting his thoughts into another's head. In general, used for sharing thoughts that can be expressed in words (or the equivalent for other intelligent species.) Telepathy can but need not involve any sharing of emotions; in fact some very good telepaths are completely unaware of the other's emotions.

TELEPORTATION, ESPER: Traveling or moving an object between two points without going through intermediate points using mind power alone or boosted by a mental link to an external source of power.

TELEPORTATION, MECHANICAL: A mechanical "jump" from one point to another. Mechanical teleports are generally carried out either in jump-gates or applied to a vehicle of some sort, such as a jump-van, as being teleported and realizing it is upsetting to most people not accustomed to the process.

WARNOFF: Generic term for any device that prevents a potential enemy from approaching. Two examples are predator warnoffs and plantary warnoffs.

XENOTELEPATHY: Telepathic communication with a member of a non-human intelligent species.