The Touchstone Trilogy (104 page)

Kaoren took over again and gave the kids the same rules about multiple people touching me which all the Setari have to live with.  This sparked a rare question from Rye, and I explained how First Squad had accidentally sent me into seizures and now there were all these rules about not touching me.  Kaoren was very serious about this with Sen, since she's so inclined to climb on me, and into bed with us – even though it's the strength of Setari talents which seems to cause me the most problems, Kaoren feels it's safer not to risk group  contact.

So we've set up some ground rules for living together, and made clear that we have no intention of separating them, and the main thing we expect from all of them is to be kids, and become part of Muina's settlement.  That involves attending the school when it's built, but for the moment they can set their own pace and explore the interface as they like.

Ys and Rye have done nothing but school lessons since.  I guess Sen really meant it about them wanting to learn to read.  Sen, while she tried the alphabet lessons, was far more interested in opening a channel to me roughly every ten minutes and collapsing into giggles when I answered.

I can look at their interface activity, since I count as a 'guardian', though I won't be able to read their emails and voicemails and so forth, or listen in on personal conversations.  I feel so utterly unprepared for this.

I can't even remember reading any books about people being parents – kids always seem to be part of the happily ever after.  I've read lots of books about kids without parents, or with parents who need to be avoided.  All my favourite TV shows seem to have involved magical pregnancies which are over in a week and then the baby is an adult and trying to destroy the world.  The only useful thing I can remember watching is
Supernanny,
and I'm not sure a Naughty Corner will get me far with Little Miss Sight Sight.

I'd love to know what Mum would make of me being engaged to get married AND fostering three children.  I really want to ask her.  Tomorrow I'm back on my schedule of visualisation testing, and I think I've waited more than long enough to try and visualise Earth.

Sunday, August 24

Behind the news

Tsur Selkie says I can try and visualise Earth during my next testing session, the day after tomorrow.  Really excited about that, but trying not to get too worked up.

My visualisation session today was about Cruzatch, and was very unsuccessful.  Tsur Selkie supervised me, and wanted me to visualise Cruzatch, particularly the Cruzatch's home space.  I wasn't keen at all, and found it very difficult, eventually ending up visualising the space I'd gone to on rotation with First Squad, the Old West town with the Cruzatch on frames.  That gave me an awful headache, and took a huge amount of energy.  The problem, I think, was that it was a big outdoor space, and I tend to reproduce way too much when I'm visualising somewhere outdoors.  And it made my eyes go all blurry, leaving me with another afternoon in medical, all headache and frustration while Kaoren was off with Fourth and Squad One trying to track Cruzatch through the spaces, but finding no sign of them at all.

Lying on the scan-bed with my eyes shut did give me an opportunity to catch up on all the news stories for the last few days.  I browsed through them in chronological order, taking a little journey from delirious enthusiasm, teetering abruptly into The Sky Is Falling, and ending up deep into conspiracy theory.

The early stories have tons of stuff about me, of course – every journalist at the signing ceremony seemed to feel they had to give their impression of what I'm really like, regardless of whether they spoke to me or not.  They mostly say I'm sweet, shy, cautious, but surprisingly articulate.  So still
suyul
.  Endless tedious stuff about how Kaoren and I looked together, and how he seemed more bodyguard than partner.

Someone had also interviewed the actors playing us in
The Hidden War
, which brought out the story of their impromptu picnic.  They both described how mortified they were to discover how very unlike our portrayals we actually were, and how they'd asked me at the time what I thought about the Lastier character.  I'd said: "You don't play him as a Sight talent."  Which is perfectly true, and which Kaoren thought very funny, but was perhaps not the strident defence of his good name I should have mounted.

There was one reasonably good impression of us, from someone who apparently spent the entire three days trying to get an interview with me and only catching glimpses of me as I was leaving.   The article had a really great picture – one I like enough to keep – showing me and Kaoren through a doorway leading into the back part of the lecture-hall type place where we'd watched one of the presentations on screens so that the Kolarens could see it.  We'd obviously just gone through the door, and I was smiling up at Kaoren in open relief while he said something to me, and he'd reached out to touch my hand or I'd reached out to touch his and our fingers were just brushing.

There were quite a few interesting articles about preparation for settlement, for a local currency, a stipend of basic essentials, a local wage system.  There were also profiles on certain people who had already been approved as settlers – a couple of expert chefs from Kolar who are going to run one of the restaurants at Moon Piazza, three 'media technicians' who are going to set up a local news service, a couple of high-profile craft-types itching to start making fancy furniture with all the wood which is being cleared aside on Muina – it's such a rare and precious resource on both Tare and Kolar. 

And then all the settlement stories are completely derailed by Nuri.  I'd had no idea that the fact that Nuri had exploded had leaked before KOTIS had any real idea what was going on, leading to a near-riot in one section of Unara.

Things calmed down a little after Maze had forwarded a preliminary summation of Korinal's story, emphasising that it wasn't an attack which could be turned on us.  Not that this really stopped anyone from being frightened, but the lack of shielded underground bunkers made the threat seem less immediate.

Reaction to the Nurans seems mostly sympathetic.  KOTIS released some images of the refugees being threatened by the massive, and I read a nice story about how the little care packages were assembled – incredibly quickly – and though there's been occasional suggestions that Nuri contributed to its own destruction, none of the stories I've read lose focus on the terrible betrayal and loss.

I feel bad for laughing at a story that said Muinan settlement "comes with free orphan!", but it's true enough.  Anyone wanting to settle here is going to have to be vetted on their potential as foster parents or willingness to adopt.  Though, given how many hoops you have to jump through to get permission to have more than one child on Tare, I don't think that's going to be a big drawback with Taren settlers.

Once the medics had cleared me, I found my own orphans on the edge of the common room patio watching Nils – who had offered to look after them for the day – trying to write the Taren alphabet in the mud with a stick.  He wasn't doing too badly, and said he was using a tracing program in the interface to show him the best method of forming each letter.

After thanking Nils I took them upstairs for dinner, asking – in approved Mum fashion – how their day had been.  Ys tightened her lips stubbornly.  Rye blushed.  And Sen told me, in glorious and partly comprehendible detail, all about watching the new school building goopily growing, and their walk to the lake's edge, and the bee in the flower, and the little speckled fish in the water, and the duck, and the stick vegetables for lunch, and Nils flying them to the top of the Setari building, and the 'fake lady' called Tsana Dura who wanted to play games in her head.

Tsana Dura still wants to play games in my head, too, though she's morphed into a slightly different fake lady – sterner and less fluffy – as I've progressed through the school years.  She shares her lessons with a fake man named Tsana Ridel, and Dura and Ridel are these incredible institutions to Tarens – the entire planet shares the same two automated teachers for basic lessons from kindergarten to the end of high school.  They were apparently created by averaging the voices and appearances of a few million Tarens.

There's tons of Dura-Ridel smutfic.  Rule 34 never fails.

Monday, August 25

Denied

The Nurans held a memorial service today.  Not just for their dead, but for their world, and all that they had built and created for a thousand years.  All of Nuri's plants and animals, all their books and art and instruments.  I didn't understand the speeches very well, but I felt the raw loss in the voices of those who spoke.

Ys, Rye and Sen, who I've come to realise haven't been as upset as most of the Nurans because all their care is tied up with each other, were still very grave and quiet, and sat with me and Kaoren at the edge of the crowd.  Even though I'm furious about Ys and Rye's injuries, I don't want to keep them away from Nurans generally – or let them isolate themselves, as I'm fairly sure they'd prefer to do.  I'm not sure if the talent school is the best way to go about it, though.

For the moment my parenting efforts have mainly involved keeping Sen occupied so Ys and Rye can learn to their heart's content.  They've been attacking learning to read with such grim determination that I'd been starting to worry I'd have to put some limits on their lessons, but they stayed off the interface for the service, and took a break afterwards, distracted by the paper planes I was making for Sen.

I've still yet to see either of them smile or laugh, but it was the most relaxed they've been with me, totally absorbed by the mechanics of paper airplanes, and reproducing the other origami shapes I created for them.  They're tremendously interested in everything, but seem to consider it vital not to show it.  Kaoren says they're approaching learning like a starving man gorging himself on food: racing to swallow everything before it's taken away.

Late this afternoon I took the flower Sen had given me, all limp and flopping, and gave it to Islen Dola over at Botany.  He was very pleased, and said that even though the seeds weren't fully matured, there was more than enough genetic material to reproduce it.  So one more tiny bit of Nuri will survive.

We ate dinner down in the common room this evening, with Sen wandering about charming everyone within reach, and Ys and Rye sitting together enduring being looked at by Setari from three worlds.  Since Setari do training with Kalrani, it's not as if they're not all used to dealing with children, but playing foster parent is an entirely different matter, and of course Fourth Squad don't know what to make of the whole thing.

Even with so many orphans needing care, I doubt the kids would be allowed here if it wasn't for the combination of the rarity of Sen's Sight, which Kaoren is one of the few people ideal to nurture, and my involvement.  I sometimes imagine the conversations KOTIS Command has about me.  I'm mostly shielded from my own uniqueness by the Setari, who treat me with more pragmatism than deference, but I'm well aware that I could trade on my own importance to get an awful lot of things.  And that as often as not it doesn't even have to occur to me to try, because KOTIS now watches me very closely and tries to make sure I don't even have a chance to get unhappy.

Today I'm glad of that, and I mean to take advantage of it.

Friday, August 29

Over There

Having to do a bit of catch-up.

Tsur Selkie's been conducting my visualisation sessions, usually with Zee along, and a couple of other people for guarding purposes.  Kaoren usually isn't involved, but came for my attempt to visualise Earth, mainly because he correctly expected me to be upset.  Lohn and Maze were along as guards, and two Nuran observers as well, Korinal and Inisar.  Inisar's recovering steadily – although his burns were painful, his main health issues were due to being chained to a wall and not fed much.  He's still not close to fighting fit – or even 'good brisk walk' fit – but he was able to come and watch me having family moments.

And he was wearing a Taren Setari nanoliquid uniform, which was highly disconcerting, but the best thing to ensure he stays warm in the Ena.  All of the Nuran Setari are going to have the interface installed, even though they all seem to share Inisar's opinion that it's a "distortion".  I find that fascinating – they think it will make them less human, but they're going to have it installed anyway because they know it will make them more effective in combating the Cruzatch.  Like someone drinking demon blood so they can fight monsters.

They're taking turns to have it installed so they won't all be out of commission at the same time.

The Nurans were there because they want to observe me being a touchstone, but it was an awkward audience for me while all keyed up and emotional about the possibility of seeing my family.  I'd had a lot of trouble sleeping, too, and been fretting all morning while Kaoren was off on another Cruzatch-hunt with Fourth and combined First-Second.  I'd nominated a particular time for the session, to coincide with 7.00 pm Sydney time (hoping I was right about it not currently being daylight savings time) because at 7.00 Mum usually kicks Jules off the X-Box and watches the news.

Even though Earth is the furthest I've attempted to look, it was one of the easiest visualisations I've ever done.  What could be easier than my own living room?  Mum's not exactly into redecorating, either, so the most it changes is more books, different games, and whether she has the ironing board out.  She was exactly where I was expecting her, barefoot and dressed in her usual semi-casual work clothes.  Jules was a bit of a shock – he's jumped at least three inches in height and gone all gangly.  Thirteen's obviously his year for Dad's stork genes to activate.

It took a moment after me opening my eyes for them to react, to notice that more than half a dozen people had appeared in the living room (or, in a couple of cases, in the kitchen – where most of the 'audience' partially retreated).  Mum seemed to see only me at first, and then was off the couch and squeezing me to death.  I started crying, of course, even though I knew it wasn't really Mum, but a projection of Mum, and when she said: "You're home, you're home" over and over I had to try and explain what was really going on.  It's pretty hard to tell something that looks just like your Mum that she's really just a psychic version of a holodeck projection of your Mum.