The Touchstone Trilogy (101 page)

They were followed by a boy a year or two their elder, half-heartedly herding them and looking like he wished he was anywhere else.  And bringing up the rear, one of the adult Nurans, a plumply pretty woman who looked about anxiously, then said something sharp and soft to the two kids in front.

I was on my feet so quickly I might as well have levitated, despite the not-inconsiderable weight latched around my neck.  In another second I might well have teleported across the room.  I never thought the way someone was
standing
could have such an effect on me.

Fortunately the woman spotted me, took one look, and simply turned and walked away, quickly followed by the unhappy older boy.  And the younger boy and girl became people again, heads coming up, shoulders straightening.  They didn't exactly look pleased to see me holding the younger girl, but they picked their way across the room without hesitation, and my new neck ornament let go and clutched them instead.

Kaoren, and the conscious parts of First and Fourth, had watched this mini-drama in silence, and shifted so the little trio had a corner to tuck themselves in, where they promptly pretended to be asleep.  But the interface means you can always talk about someone right in front of them, with no worries about them overhearing.

"Pandora is about to become extremely...complicated," Lohn said, in the channel we made.

"There is a great deal we do not know about Nuri," Maze agreed, and added to me: "We'll flag this trio for a higher level of monitoring.  Although–"  He paused, then said to Lohn.  "Complicated is an understatement.  It was a struggle to get Kolar to accept the interface.  Nuri...traumatised Nuran children...that's not an issue we can force."

KOTIS' well-oiled colonisation plan has gone out the window.  "Was that woman related to them?" I asked Kaoren.

"I don't believe so," Kaoren said.  "Since we are likely to be hosting most of this last ship-load in the Setari facilities, we'll have a day or more to establish some form of oversight, even without the interface."

He was right about that.  There weren't nearly enough completed buildings at Pandora to house over eight thousand Nurans, even squeezed in together, and all the Setari ended up with guests on their couches.  Given KOTIS' usual efficiency, it'll only be a day or so before they bring in fittings for some of the scads of windowless buildings waiting to be completed.

The language barrier isn't too bad.  None of the flower girl's trio has said a word to us – or to each other that I've heard – but they follow instructions quickly enough to show that they're catching the meaning when we speak Taren.  While Kaoren was fetching food, I showed them all how to use the bathroom, and Kaoren and I gave them (terribly oversized) clothes to change into and after they'd eaten settled them on our couch for the night.  Three of eight thousand orphans.

We left our bedroom door open in case they panicked in the night, and when I woke around dawn, hours before anyone else seems inclined to get up, both Kaoren and the flower girl were sleeping on top of me.  I had to wriggle out from beneath them for some quality time with my diary.

I don't know what to do about her.  Why does she keep coming to find me?

She's sweet, in an imperious little princess kind of way, but the most I can do is make sure that she's "flagged for monitoring".  With my hospitalisation rate, it would be stupid to try and keep some kind of connection with her, or her frowny sister and brother.

Assimilation

When Kaoren woke this morning, yesterday caught up with us in a big way, and we locked ourselves in the bathroom for an extra-long while.  Kaoren is struggling with all that his Sights are battering him with, and I don't even want to think, let alone talk about the suggestion that it was a touchstone who was responsible for the disaster on Muina.

Three pairs of eyes greeted us when we emerged: one curious, one embarrassed, and one scornful, but at least we were primly dressed in our nanosuits.  And then my flower girl presented herself, arms uplifted commandingly.  I had to laugh.

"Sweetheart, you're going have to tell me your name if you want me carry you about all the time," I said, picking her up obediently.

"What sweetart?" she asked, wriggling about to see my face.

I still drop the occasional English word into speech unconsciously, so translated, pleased to have proof she was capable of speaking, though her shadows reacted with stifled shock and displeasure.

Kaoren handed each of the shadows a mug of juice, and stood considering them.  "Not siblings," he said.  Which was news to me.  All three of them – like the majority of Tarens and Nurans – had black hair and brown-black eyes and though they were by no means identical it hadn't occurred to me that they weren't family, since they so obviously came as a set.

"Ys and Rye," my flower girl said helpfully.

"And you?"

"Sweehart?"

"Sentarestel."  The boy said it, pink and unhappy.  He's proving more a blusher than a glarer.

"Someone got all the syllables.  I call you Sen, okay?  Name of girl in one of my favourite ever stories.  You three can call me Cass."  I put Sen down on the couch, and noticed the girl (Ys) immediately helped steady the mug of juice Kaoren handed the younger girl.  Relative or not, she was very used to playing Sen's minder.

I was debating little speeches to make to them when I heard a familiar "Hhhiiiiii" and stiffened.  "Ddura is hunting," I told Kaoren urgently.

He immediately started speaking to someone over the interface, while those three pairs of eyes watched us curiously, widening in astonishment when Ghost came tearing out of nowhere and leapt into my arms.  I'm relieved about that in retrospect – I'd forgotten I'd left her on the
Litara
.

"Not Ghost it's hunting," I said, feeling sick when the cry continued.  "They missed someone security clearance."  But just then the Ddura made the query noise, then stopped.  "Gone."

"Signalled to a different platform.  Someone will be posted to keep calling it there, but you need to report immediately if you hear it again."  He gave Ys, Rye and Sen another evaluating look.  "There will be a general assembly of all of Nuri at the middle of the day.  Until then, you will stay with the group in this building.  Do you understand?"  All three of them nodded, though I won't guarantee they had more than a vague idea of what he'd told them.

After they'd dressed, we took them down to the common room, where a communal breakfast had been arranged, and asked two of the Setari who were helping out to keep a special eye on them since Kaoren and I had to go off to a meeting of the senior bluesuits.

It was a big meeting – not just bluesuits, but Isten Notra, the senior Taren and Kolaren Setari, and all nine of the surviving Nuran Setari, along with a half-dozen Nuran adults who had been suggested as representatives.  We met in the fancy hotel, and the first person I saw was Inisar – obviously ill, but rested and clean and dressed in what looked like part of a greensuit uniform.  I was very glad to have it confirmed that he was alive, and he gave me one of his ultra-formal nods in response to my relieved smile.

It was a breakfast meeting, and Tsaile Staben had everyone collect food from a buffet arrangement, then gave a short speech about what KOTIS had been doing on Muina in terms of settling and trying to uncover a solution for the tearing spaces.  Korinal translated this for the Nurans, and I got enough of the gist of what she was saying to be fairly relaxed about talking to Nurans without a translator – it's not as if every word of Nuran is completely different to the Taren version, though there's going to be a lot of guesswork for a while.

After that, Tsaile Staben introduced 'her side of the table' very briefly (including me as "Caszandra Devlin of the world known as Urth or Gaia) and Korinal introduced the Nuran side of the table.  Two of the Nuran representatives were 'landholders' (so far as I could tell this is a particular type of moderately wealthy farmer), one was a scholar, one a smith, one a cook and one what I'd call a (very young) priestess if Muinan planet-reverence used the word.

There probably wasn't a single one among them who hadn't lost almost everyone and everything they cared about, but only their red-rimmed eyes gave it away as they listened intently.

After introductions, Tsaile Staben said: "Both Tare and Kolar are of course willing to aid you as much as possible.  But it is from you we need to know which direction to take.  We need a decision, for your people, whether to remain as a group on Muina and become part of the colony at Pandora, or to be sent to Tare and Kolar to be housed with host families."

That got an immediate and very definite answer: Muina was their home world and it would now be their home, and there could be no question of splitting up the survivors of Nuri between other worlds.  But one of the landholders, equally as definitely, objected to the idea of Pandora.

He wasn't nasty about it – he actually came across as one of the nicest people there – but he spoke really eloquently about the differences between the Nuran and Taren/Kolaren ways of life, and how becoming part of the Taren/Kolaren settlement would mean abandoning being Nuran, as well as risking becoming a lesser, subservient underclass.  That though they would be grateful, of course, for temporary shelter, the best thing for them to do was choose a relatively safe part of Muina and create a settlement of their own.

Even though I don't think the bluesuits liked the idea of a Nuran-only settlement at all, Tsaile Staben simply nodded and asked the other representatives if they agreed.  And it was clear all the Nurans were far from keen on living with Tarens, and wanted nothing more than to go somewhere Tarens weren't.  But the idea fell in a heap when they even began to think over the practicalities of eight thousand children and six hundred adults trying to build a settlement, no matter how much outside assistance they received.

The cook, a woman named Eran, let the others talk back and forth, then summed it up by saying: "No matter what we want, how fair is it on them?  Even if we treated the oldest as adults, we would be raising ten youngsters each.  And
they
would be the ones doing most of the work."  Then, after Korinal had translated, she turned to Inisar and said she wanted the Setari's view.

Inisar's voice was still really ragged, making it obvious why Korinal had been doing all the talking for the Nuran Setari.  But croakiness didn't undercut the power of his words: "We are at war."

Korinal took over, very briefly pointing out that both the increasing fracturing of the spaces and the machinations of the Cruzatch were active threats which could not be ignored.  That whatever decision the people of Nuri made, all the Nuran Setari's energies must go into fixing the bigger problem.  And that while they might settle at a platform town with the protection of the Ddura, Ionoth were far from the only dangers a Nuran settlement would face on Muina.  Even the landholder who had initially objected had to concede when the cook added that it was better to try to retain some sense of identity as part of Pandora, to contribute to what kind of people would be known as Muinan, than to be dead.

Once the representatives had made a unanimous decision to stay at Pandora, Tsaile Staben moved on to the question of leadership, and whether the rest of the Nurans would accept further decisions made on their behalf by the representatives in the room, or whether some kind of election needed to be facilitated, or if there was a person or group of people who leadership could be expected to devolve to.  This was another twisty question for them to answer.  Nuri had a ruling class, but most of them were dead.  Of the representatives only the scholar and the priestess were these elite 'Zarath', and neither of them had been close to actual leadership.  A small percentage of the children were Zarath and while there were no members of Nuri's last ruler's immediate family, there were a handful who would debatably be 'next in line for the throne' – though they hadn't had a chance to work out exactly who was among the survivors.

But, even though everyone who had reached Muina had been together in the same shelters, it was clear that now the initial shock was passing there was a lot of anger growing about who on Nuri had been working with the Cruzatch.  The representatives very much doubted that a Zarath-dominated leadership would be accepted.

"There is only one who I know all would follow," said the cook, again cutting short the debate.  "Because we have followed him already, to keep our lives."  She bent her head briefly in Inisar's direction.

"No."

Inisar's very good at being absolute.  The most they could budge him was that he would advise the council when necessary, and eventually the council decided to temporarily keep the current group as representatives, until some form of election could be held.

That settled, Tsaile Staben moved on to the agenda for the rest of the day: first to gather all the Nurans in Moon Piazza, announce the provisional representatives, and have them explain the decision to stay at Pandora.  Once that was done, the Nurans would be grouped into temporary 'residences', distributing the adults first, so that every apartment had at least one adult.  And their ten kids.

Everyone needed to be shuffled for a second time through the platform room to try to ensure the whole group had security passes.  There would be information sessions on screens set up at different parts of Moon Piazza to give Korinal-translated statements of what had happened on Nuri and what was going to happen over the next few weeks at Pandora.  Supplies had been urgently sent from Kolar and would hopefully reach Pandora in time to be distributed, so that everyone would have a couple of changes of clothing, underwear, and things like hairbrushes.  There would be very cursory health checks.  Most importantly, names would be collected in the hopes of matching surviving family groups back together.

And that brought us to the big sticking point.  When Tarens find strays (which I guess is kind of what the Nurans count as), they immunise them, put them on birth control and, unless they're Kolaren, inject the interface.  Birth control they weren't going to worry about at the moment, but the immunisation had to be mandatory, which meant explaining what immunisation was.  But it was the second needle which was going to divide Pandora in two.