The Touchstone Trilogy (13 page)

The tearing allowed things from the Ena to more easily get to Muina, where they liked to throw themselves on people and eat them.  The Lantarens couldn't immediately undo what they'd done because the places where they'd constructed the main supports of their interplanetary superhighway had been flooded with too many Ionoth.  So they built these things called Ddura – the massives the Setari are so interested in investigating – which are artificial Ionoth whose job was to clear out Ionoth from the supports and from Muina.  But they immediately lost control of the Ddura, and the situation on Muina began spiralling into chaos: whole villages and cities of people inexplicably dropping dead, and more and more Ionoth coming through and eating people.

All the Lantarens on Muina had a big 'teleconference' (hehe!) and decided they had to leave Muina.  They couldn't all manage to go to the same place, and it doesn't sound like they wanted to either.  There were some who stayed behind on Muina, but no-one's ever found any trace of them, so they were probably killed.

If you stay too long on Muina, something comes and eats you, or you drop dead.  I'm glad I didn't know all this while I was busy boiling wool.

Stepping it up

The medics have decided I'm more or less recovered, so Zan says we'll have two sessions of training tomorrow.  So funny to be excited about exercising.  I wonder if the Setari have to earn TV privileges as well.

I asked Zan what the Ena looked like, and she said that it's incredibly varied, but that the nearest space looked just like Tare, except without the people.  It's a shadow of this world.  Now that's freaky. 

February

Friday, February 1

Frabjous

This morning was routine.  Though my lessons with Zan are getting a bit more complex, it's still repeating a set of movements over and over again.

But Zan didn't deliver me back to my room afterwards.  Instead we went to lunch in a smallish canteen.  It seems to be a Setari-specific place, though I think the kitchen handles more than just this one room.

It's funny how your aspirations change after being locked in a room for – how long has it been? – nearly a month since Nenna was hurt.  It makes small things like eating in a very plain canteen so exciting.  Being able to pick from a couple of options for my meal instead of having food delivered by a pinksuit under guard made me feel almost human again.  The illusion of choice.

Of course anything, even sitting in a room reliving kindergarten, is better than starving and alone.  Annoying as this place can be, I'm still glad to have been rescued.

The other Setari in the room weren't anyone I particularly recognised, though I guess they'd all been there for the demonstrate-what-the-stray-can-do session.  They pretended not to look at me, and didn't bother us.  It's hard to know what they'd think of me – a walking instant power-up that they've been told to stay away from.

After lunch, I was expecting more 'martial arts' practice, but instead we went down to a different changing room and Zan sent me into one of the shower rooms and told me to braid my hair up and strip and get into the shower.  And when I did, wondering what was going on, black goop sprayed out of the walls at me and that was enough to make me jump back and want out.  And then it started
wriggling
.  I sometimes forget that these people use nanotechnology.  I ended up with a light swimsuit, sturdier than those I'm used to, and going all the way to the knees and elbows.  Thinner than the Setari uniform, but I'm starting to understand how Zan gets changed so quickly.

After I'd recovered from my minor heart attack, we went into the next room and it was this HUGE pool.  A big square, maybe forty by forty metres, but incredibly deep, with this underwater obstacle course, all tunnels and circles and things.  I couldn't even see the bottom.

"This is something I need practice in, as well," Zan said, watching my disbelieving expression.  "The requirement for water manoeuvres only came in two years ago, when some of the nearest spaces became flooded.  The medics recommended this to increase your overall fitness, and it will prepare you in case they do decide to use you in the Ena."

"Not that good at holding breath," I said, extremely dubiously.  I figured I could make the top couple of tunnels and tubes, and that would be it.

"There's breathers for the deep work.  First will be surface swimming.  Are you taught swimming at all on your world?"

I gave her a funny look, then dived in and swam across the pool and back.  I was a little more out of breath than I expected when I reached her, due to my various medical dramas.  But I love swimming.  I'm not Ian Thorpe, but water sports are one of the things I've always been reasonably good at.

"If ever go my world," I told her, treading water.  "Teach you how to surf." 

I'm a better swimmer than Zan is.  And they don't use the freestyle stroke, just breaststroke, so she asked me to teach her.  And we're doing swimming practice every afternoon until further notice.  Today was a great day. 

Saturday, February 2

Ructions

Zan is now teaching me how to fall.  Or how to throw myself on padded mats without too much bruising or unnecessary giggling.  I find it hard to take seriously, and no matter what else I think or feel about Zan, I have to admire her patience.  I think that it's causing her a lot of trouble to babysit me, too, unless the Setari are just plain nasty to each other out of habit.

The nastiness came out during this afternoon's swimming session.  Zan's picking up freestyle quickly (Australian crawl, really, but everyone I know calls it freestyle), but it'll take her a bit to really get into it, so we were having a race with breaststroke.  I'm okay with short races, but if I try and do more than a couple of laps I run out of pep.

But I can beat her in a short dash, and was terribly pleased about it.  Problem was, so were the people watching us.  Three Setari, two guys and a girl, and one of the guys was standing right on the edge of the pool where we touched.  Gave me quite a fright, looking up and finding all this blacksuited leg and chest.  I pushed back from the edge, just as Zan reached it, but they were more interested in her than me anyway.

I don't know if Zan had managed to figure out they were there before she looked up, but from what I could see of her face, she didn't act surprised.

"Truly, Namara, I'm starting to feel embarrassed for you," said the guy.  He had an amazing voice, really beautiful, and so wasted on such a putz.  "Bad enough your squad's been pulled off rotation so you can demonstrate infant-level combat skills, but now you're actually being outdone by a stray."

Zan reminds me of a drowned kitten when she's wet.  Her hair sleeks down and makes her eyes look really big.  The guy was so tall, and Zan being down in the water must have felt at a real disadvantage.  But all she did was move to one side, haul herself easily out, and go pick up one of the towels.

"Can I help you with something, Kajal?"  she asked, once she'd dried her face.

"Not swimming, obviously."  The guy was irritated that he'd not managed to get a reaction out of Zan, but made out he wasn't bothered, laughing.  "Lenton's chances are looking better each day."

The Setari girl standing behind him touched his arm.  "It's an unfortunate situation," she said, in a much more reasonable tone.  "Twelfth Squad may have lost out on this rotation altogether, and Lenton does need to be taught to keep his temper.  Worse still, I doubt the stray will be assigned to Twelfth Squad, if they do use it in the Ena.  It's very unfair on you."

I was glad I'd kept moving away, was at least ten metres from the edge.  Not only was the girl enjoying a few sly digs at Zan while pretending to be nice, but she'd called me
it!
  I'm not totally incapable of understanding the nuances of spoken Taren.  Stupid idiots were acting like I was a performing animal, not a person.

It occurred to me then that I no longer had the function which displays all the names of people over their heads.  A full month after Sa Lents showed me how to use it, and I'd forgotten all about it since the accident.  I don't see what they achieved by making it so I couldn't use it, but it was probably related to me losing almost all the other 'public' functions.  I was able to call up the recorded memory of the Setari briefing, though, and work out that the Kajal guy was captain of the Fifth Squad, and the girl was captain of the Seventh.  The other guy was also from the Seventh Squad.  What they were trying to achieve with all the dick waving I couldn't guess.

At least they left after that, though another person showed up as Zan was turning back toward me.  I was too far away to hear what she said, since her voice was soft, but Zan smiled at her, and then shrugged.  So she's not totally without friends.  I practiced swimming underwater for a couple of minutes, till Zan told me that was enough for the day.  It's going to take a while to get used to people being able to talk in my head when I'm upside-down in a swimming pool.

I didn't bug her with questions while she escorted me back, didn't really feel equal to it.  Was even glad to be back in my room so I could get in the shower and cry myself sick.

I do almost all my crying in the shower.  I'm still not sure how much they monitor me while I'm in my room, and I'm really hoping that I get at least a little privacy.  The shower lets me pretend I'm hiding the bad days.  This was worse than usual.  It's going to be my birthday soon, and Mum had promised to organise a family and friends party at our house, and then Nick, Alyssa and I had permission to go out to actual nightclubs afterwards, so long as we stayed together and friends who hadn't turned eighteen yet didn't come with us.  Nick was coming along to 'protect' us, which I of course thought was a fantastic idea for all the wrong reasons.  Alyssa and I put so much effort into setting that up, all for nothing.

I will never be Cass here.  Even if I was still staying with the Lents, I would always be this 'stray' first and foremost and above everything else.  I have this label and there's no way to take it off.  Even if I adapt to the stupid language and the nanites, all the things I spent years learning, all the stories and people which shaped me aren't here.  No-one's read the novels I've read.  No-one likes the music I like.  No-one on this planet will be able to score people on the Orlando Bloom-meter, the way Alyssa and I used to do with all the cute guys.  The only thing which speaks English is this damn diary, which I guess is why I still keep it.

I'm so homesick I could scream. 

Sunday, February 3

A wan shadow

No training today.  Zan took one look at me this morning and sent me straight for medical exams.  I had to work very hard to convince them that the swimming wasn't the problem, and I look really exhausted and drained just because I couldn't get to sleep.  Leaving out the bit about crying half the night and giving myself the hugest headache in the process.  At least this let me know that they mustn't be monitoring me too closely in my room.

But I ended up spending almost all the day in the medical section, prodded and poked and sitting in machines while they got distracted trying to figure out how my enhancement abilities work.  They've decided that the number of abilities an individual Setari has might increase the strain on my system when I enhance them.  Which is why Zan is training me, since she has only the one.  The experiment enhancing three from First Squad at once messed up so badly because between them those three had seventeen talents.  Maze has eight all on his own, and apparently there's a couple of Setari who have even more.

I took the opportunity to have another argument with Ista Tremmar about why my interface had been cut back so much, and why I couldn't at least have the access I'd had before or straightforward things like being able to see names and so forth, but she just gave me a lecture about qualifying for privileges.  It didn't work to point out that standard access was hardly a privilege, and how stupid it is to run tests which are timed for someone who has been learning their silly language since they were babies.  Of course, my inability to speak that silly language with any fluidity made my arguments less than comprehensible.

Ista Tremmar is very strict and by-the-book about a lot of things, but she did say she would review the speed of the tests.  But she also told me the simplest thing would be for me to improve my language skills.  Bleh. 

Monday, February 4

Forward/Backward

Even though I slept quite well last night, swimming practice has been postponed for a few days, which meant Zan delivered me back to my box to sit around again.  On the up side, a few more of my interface functions were abruptly restored in the middle of stepping practice.  No entertainment, but the minor environmental things like the names over people's heads.  Still, dull day, especially since interface classes are trying to teach me subtraction now.  I wish I could pick and choose what the lessons are. 

Kanza

That was an infinitely better afternoon than I was expecting.  I'd only been back in my box a little while when there was a text popup in my head which is the equivalent of someone outside my room, knocking.  Rare consideration, let me tell you, for a visitor to not just open the door.

It was Lohn and Mara, come to kidnap me for lunch.  While this was probably their own version of 'not overlooking the psychological aspects', I had a huge amount of trouble not bubbling over with glee and going completely hyper.  Not only did I get to spend some time with the nicest people on this stupid island, but they even planned on taking me outside KOTIS grounds.

The island that the Setari use as a base is called Konna, and is about 20% military facilities and 80% supporting city.  The city's called Konna, too, and was here before KOTIS was established.  It was really nice to get out to see atriums and shops, and people not wearing uniforms, and there were plants and advertising and snatches of music and scents of cooking food and everything that the Setari base is not.  They even do fake skies, and internal parks and while it can't entirely escape Huge Shopping Mall Syndrome, it was such a nice change.