The Touchstone Trilogy (107 page)

Fourth and Seventh couldn’t find a path back to Pandora at all through the spaces they'd been lured into, but eventually managed to work their way to a different part of Muina.  Fortunately there's much better satellite coverage now, so they could simply signal their location, and a ship's gone to pick them up.  They should be here by dawn, and other than being really tired are completely fine.

Kaoren opened an interface channel to me as soon as he was in real-space – not a channel request, but using his Captain privileges to not have to wait a moment longer to say: "Are you injured?"

"No – not much," I said, and after that we could barely talk to each other.  A few more short sentences and then we've just kept the link open and streamed our visuals to each other so we can see and not try to put anything into words.

And there is no doubt left at all that the Cruzatch badly want to get their hands on me.  KOTIS Command has ordered the Ddura be kept in constant attendance at Pandora until they decide what to do (which means Ghost is in constant attendance on my lap).  I'm sore and very tired, even with my drugged-out nap, but there's no way I want to sleep till Kaoren's here.  Not long now.  Zee's agreed to spring me from the infirmary.

September

Monday, September 1

Reasons

Nils was asleep on my couch when Zee brought me back to my apartment, but she shifted him to the couch in her room, and I'd love to know what he felt about waking up there, or why Zee didn't take any of the many other couch options available.  Zee is way too good at not giving anything away.

While she was gone I checked on the kids and found that Sen had climbed in with Ys, but they'd otherwise slept through.  Zee came to look at them too, and told me she'd arranged for Mara to come make sure they got breakfast and off to class so Kaoren and I didn't have to worry about getting up in the morning.

I think I'm proving a pretty inadequate foster parent, and asked Zee if she thought I would do the kids more damage than good taking them in when both Kaoren and I lived such weird and dangerous lives.

"I should hope you asked yourself that before now," she said, but not harshly.  "Would it have been better for them if you made clear that you were too caught up in other matters for them to be a priority?  Have you discovered why Sentarestel was being pursued?"

"Korinal and Inisar think it likely that her Sights make her valuable enough to want to control – that some remnant of House Renar wanted her to regain part of the status they've just lost.  Though at least she's apparently not anywhere near what would count as next in line to the throne of Nuri.  The main candidate for that
is
in the talent school, along with one of the children from House Renar, and–"  I sighed.  "Anyway, I'm sorry First Squad has had to pick up my slack."

"Don't be – you're not alone in seeing something in that trio.  And it's a refreshing change to deal with children as children rather than Kalrani."

I think the conversation made Zee sad, but I'm glad she sat with me and helped me stay awake until Kaoren arrived.  A couple of months ago I would have been firmly encouraged to go to sleep, or kept sedated in the infirmary, but they've worked out that I've got a better chance of nightmare control if I wait.

Zee mentioned that it was lucky Seventh was the squad with Fourth and I guess that's so – whatever else Forel might be, she's determined to do her job well, and her squad has a massive amount of elemental firepower.  Thanks to Seventh's strength, Fourth and Seventh paid for their marathon in the Ena only with exhaustion.

Kaoren ate and showered on the flight back and spent the rest of his time listening to me talk to Zee and getting through a fairly epic report so he was free to come straight to our quarters to kiss me breathless and examine the blue jelly bandages across my stomach and side, and let himself for a few minutes just be really upset that I'd been hurt and he hadn't been there.

Kaoren's such a very decisive and in-control person, and after he'd guessed what reason the Cruzatch would have for cutting off their path back to Pandora, he hadn't been able to do anything about it.  For all of the long journey searching for a path through the spaces he'd had no way of knowing whether I'd been brought out to try to find the missing squads, and if there'd been the ambush he anticipated, and whether I'd been taken.  Even once we were back together he couldn't properly speak to me.  He'd had to stay cool captain in charge for all that time in the Ena, and he'd done that, but he'd wound himself so tight inside that he started shaking when he finally could hold me.

Neither of us were in a state to do anything but clutch each other, and my burns made it awkward even to snuggle together properly – they're comparatively minor, but I'm going to have to sleep on my back for a few days.  We rearranged pillows, and Kaoren propped me up against his chest, and finally relaxed enough to pass out.

I'd only been asleep a couple of hours when repeated tugging on the hem of my pyjamas dragged me awake.  I felt like complete shit, headachy and heavy and itchy hot and tender about the middle, and I'm sure Ys and Rye now have a very strong impression of me as not a morning person.  It was Ys doing the tugging, while Rye stood behind her at the door, and I squinted at them blearily for a long moment.  It was the first time they'd ever sought me out, so I wasn't about to just send them away, but I could have asked for better timing.

"You okay?" I asked – not very coherently.

"It wasn't true, what you said," Ys said.  Firm statement, though with a suggestion of sword-at-throat.  The first time she's spoken to me.

"Which thing that I said?" I asked, struggling a little more upright while trying not to disturb Kaoren.  It's not often anyone could walk into our room without waking him.

"We had the machine in our head because Sentarestel told us to," Rye said, chin high.  "Not because we understood what it meant.  Not because of what you said."

I really wasn't up to two kids making what they seemed to think was a firing-squad confession.  It took a bit of processing time, which I covered by glancing back at Kaoren, and discovering that my stomach really wasn't liking me doing anything stretchy.  Then with some more cautious levering I managed to sit up.

"Do you always do exactly what Sen tells you to?"

"Sentarestel only ever tells us right things."

"So she told you to get the interface install because would let you learn how to read, and because you trust her Sight you did?"

They both nodded, as if it was a great admission of guilt.

"You were intelligent enough to trust Sen's Sight, and brave enough to do something new and strange on her word.  How was I wrong?"

Ys looked stymied, and Rye near tears.  "It's – you shouldn't–"

"I think I should," I said, standing up gingerly, but deciding it was a bad time to try hugging.  "I see you and want you to feel you're safe and you belong.  It's not complicated thing."

I headed into our lounge-kitchen, and set out breakfast just in time for Mara to show up.  She gave me one of her assessing looks, and summoned a greysuit to give me a nice dose of painkiller.  Kaoren half-woke when Mara sent me to bed after the greysuit's visit, but just rearranged us and went back to sleep until late afternoon.

I'm back in medical for a stomach inspection and entirely unnecessary brain scan, and Kaoren's off at a meeting which he tells me is about what to do about me.  Lohn is keeping me company, and I guess I'm always going to have someone keeping me company from now on, even in the Setari building.

Having fifty Cruzatch come after me has made being babysat seem like a very minor thing.

I hope I said the right thing to the kids.

Tuesday, September 2

Settling In

One bit of good news Kaoren passed on when I was released from medical yesterday afternoon – they were able to find their way back to Muina because Par had succeeded in focusing his connection to the Ena.  He's only able to do it in short bursts, but he can reliably enhance himself now.  I went and found Par and hugged him, and he gave me one of his slow smiles, knowing exactly what I was thanking him for.

Kaoren's other bit of news was that my projection training in the Ena has been cancelled till further notice, which was no news at all.  The possibility of ambushes, and the discovery that the Cruzatch can mess around with the gates, means that even the doubled Setari squads are going to be limited in the kind of missions they undertake.

Eighth and Squad One and one of the Nuran Setari went out to examine the gate which was blocked to try to figure out exactly what happened to it, and brought back a bunch of readings but no clear answer.  The Ddura is going to be summoned to Pandora three times daily on a random schedule in an effort to prevent ambushes in the immediate area, and some greensuits will be permanently stationed at the amphitheatre to call it on a moment's notice.  More drones will be set into near-space, to try to track any Cruzatch movement, and they're looking at some kind of breather which can be used to counter another gas attack (unfortunately our underwater breathers don't work out of water).

The dealing-with-Devlin meeting had been argumentative, with the senior KOTIS representatives disagreeing about what to do next.

"We have more pieces of this puzzle," Kaoren told me, "but as yet no way to put them together.  Without any direction, we are left reacting instead of acting."

It's rare for Kaoren to let himself sound so frustrated, but a going-nowhere meeting on top of yesterday had really got to him.  We are all pretty much running about like headless chickens, not even able to see a way to a solution.

The rest of the day was a complete contrast – determinedly focused on the business of resettling a world, which has been powering on despite the plots of burny floating people.  When we took the kids down to the common room for dinner, the chatter was all strictly kept to the expedited intake of some of the approved settlers from Tare and Kolar, including a small group who are basically the newly-created 'Muina Broadcasting Corporation'.  They'd arrived that morning and lost no time setting up, and even did an evening broadcast which the Setari all watched and discussed.

To a degree the 'MBC' is going to be a mouthpiece of KOTIS – they have some strict rules they have to follow while the settlement remains under military command – but they're otherwise independent and took a friendly, chatty sort of approach to their stories, which were mostly about the school structure and housing set up for the Nurans, and the progress of the construction of the industrial complex, the completion of which will truly make Muina independent, because so long as it's operating, technicians can with time, care and nanotech produce pretty much anything.

The MBC crew had also done a series of interviews with the people who had been selected for early settlement, and it was fun to see the mix of joy, ambition and nervous excitement the new arrivals brought.

I particularly enjoyed an interview with a family of Kolarens who were related to one of the greysuits working at Pandora, and were going to operate a store at the edge of the residential complex, close to Moon Piazza.  It will be a mixture of café and trading post and luxury import service.  Their hugely excited teenaged children seem to be founding members of the Raiten Shaf Fan Club, one of the girls announcing that he and all the other Setari (but especially Shaf) would always be given a free cup of fahr (a treacly tea) whenever they dropped by.

Of course all the Setari found this very funny, and teased Shaf about needing to take a bodyguard with him to save him from his fans.  Kolaren Setari don't have an image shield, so are much better known on their home world.

After dinner Kaoren and I played an interface game with the kids.  Many Taren games, particularly for children, have a big physical component – necessary when so much of their lives can be conducted sitting down.  This one was a spelling game which created an overlay of plants and statues in our lounge room, and then hid letters all over the place, which you had to hunt and touch to spell words.

It gave the kids appropriate challenges for their learning level (basic letter recognition and 'cat' and 'dog' equivalents) and Kaoren incredibly complex polysyllabic words which he collected without an error, and me moderately advanced words which I kept almost spelling right but not quite.  Even Sen beat me.

Ys and Rye are trying to return to not talking to us, but Rye slipped a few times, caught up with the game.  After they were settled in bed, Kaoren and I sat on the grassy slope outside our balcony, listening to the sounds of the early evening out over the lake, and just being glad to be alive and together.

The kids are aware that I've been injured (Sen unceremoniously lifted my shirt at breakfast so that she could inspect my bandages), and we've been trying to set up systems to cover the times our routine is interrupted by emergencies.  Kaoren created calendar icons and stepped the kids through viewing and interpreting our schedules.  This was a pretty large conceptual leap for children from a sundial time system.  Sen followed in only the most general way, but it was some measure of Ys and Rye's capacity that they were able to interpret the blocks of colour to discover that I had an appointment this afternoon (more medical), that Kaoren had morning and afternoon sessions (squad training) and that tomorrow both Kaoren and I are booked for almost all day (going to Kalasa).  They can't read the explanations yet, but Kaoren showed them how to run a text-to-sound facility, producing a kind of frozen amazement as he put entries in their own calendars for school, story time, and bedtime and the interface obligingly read them out.

He also showed them how to use the Taren dictionary function – which combines nicely with the text-to-sound facility.  Hard to imagine being so tremendously excited about a dictionary, but it briefly broke Ys' control: she was obviously delighted at having a book which told her the meaning of all the words.