The Touchstone Trilogy (115 page)

Having said that, Kaoren gently detached me and had me lie down so Ista Mezan could take better readings.  Another technician, and Maze, Inisar and Zee were in the room, all of them grim and tense.

"It hasn't ended," Inisar said, watching me narrowly.  "What did you dream?"

My throat hurt – I really don't recommend tubes – and I had to swallow a few times.  Maze brought me into a channel (which had Isten Notra and the settlement commander and another bluesuit in it) and I spoke in there instead.

"I was somewhere I hadn't seen before, a dark misty place, and I couldn't move.  I don't think–" I struggled to understand the whole thing.  "I don't think I was dreaming.  That was nothing like my dreams."

"I'm not finding physical damage, but energy output is significantly elevated," Ista Mezan said.  "She's actively using a talent."

"I'm trying not to go back.  I feel like there's a heavy weight pulling me," I said, wanting to clutch Kaoren some more.  He slid his hand into mine, and I risked a glance at his face and saw that it was like stone, his eyes nearly shut.

"Recommendations?" Tsaile Staben asked, voice very clipped.

"It seems more likely to me that it is a response to the second exposure to a power stone, rather than some form of attack," Isten Notra said.  "In either case, distance is the only obvious response.  Get her as far from the power stones as possible."

Tsaile Staben told the other bluesuit to arrange a ship, while Isten Notra asked: "Caszandra, can you describe the place you saw in any more detail?"

"Not properly."  I thought about it, then: "Can we go outside? I want to try and project where I was, and there's not enough room here to see it."

"But–" Ista Mezan started, but stopped.  What could he tell me, after all?  That I needed to get some rest?

Maze was looking sick, and Zee's mouth was a flat line, because they could see why I didn't want to wait.  Kaoren just picked me up.  He knew I wouldn't suggest something like that unless I thought it was important.

The nights are still cold at Pandora, and the sky was very clear.  Maze brought along a drone and we followed the path down to the lake's bank.  I was struggling with feeling dizzy – moving about didn't agree with me – but at least the dizziness made it easier to resist falling back asleep.  The projection was unexpectedly easy to do, and not as distressing as I'd feared since Kaoren kept me snug against his chest the entire time – and this time it wasn't me lying unable to move.

It was a big room, made of blackish stone and lit not only by the balls of light in the ceiling, but the mist which filled it, which I belatedly realised was aether.  The stone walls were covered in carvings, reminding me vaguely of circuitry, and there was only one thing in the entire place – an altar or platform or bed – a waist-high carved rectangle of stone on top of which a black-draped humanoid figure – tiny, no bigger than Ys – lay beneath a scattering of round, green stones.  Little malachite marbles.

"I think it's her dream," I said, shaking from the effort of maintaining the projection and just...sheer horror.  "It's the ceiling I wanted to show you."

"Spread out so we capture as much as possible," Maze said, and he, Zee and Ista Mezan moved, looking upward through the aether.  Inisar was staring at the shape of the girl under the dust-fragile black drapery, and Kaoren knew better than to shift about when I was projecting.  They didn't even make it to the far end of each room before I had to let the projection fade.  Isten Notra ordered Ista Mezan to give me stimulants and we went back inside.

"Ship will be ready in ten joden," said the second bluesuit, as I was getting another quick examination and a couple of injections.  I hesitated over the fortifier Ista Mezan handed me, since they always make me sleep, and Kaoren told me to drink just a little and to bring it with me.

"Let me wake the kids," I said, as Maze and Kaoren sent alerts to their squads, and Kaoren gently lifted us both back to our quarters.  I could stand on my own, though it made my bones feel achy, and Kaoren watched me carefully a moment, then went and packed with his usual extreme efficiency.

Ys woke at the slightest touch, and I told her to wake Rye and then sat myself rather heavily on Sen's bed and prodded her gently awake.  I think Sen knew straight away – she climbed into my lap and hugged me madly and then was quietly mature in the way she gets when she's being driven by her Sight.

"We're going to Tare," I said, once they were all awake enough to take it in.  "Mainly because my talents now acting weird, and best to get me away from Muina until better understand what's going on.  I need you three to get dressed and pack belongings – use your pillowcases to put them in – so that we're all ready to get on ship.  Can you do that?"

I hated to see Ys and Rye's reaction, all sense of certainty stolen away in seconds, and then their expressions shutting down.  But they nodded and hurried to do what they were told.  I helped Sen get dressed, and sent her to the bathroom while I packed everything I could reach without having to move about too much.  Kaoren was soon there with a proper tote bag to pack their crammed pillowcases in, and his calm and restrained approval swept them along.  Mara and Ketzaren showed up and whisked them and our bags away so Kaoren could pick me up again.  We flew inland to the flat acres of whitestone which was now Pandora's barebones spaceport.  First and Fourth, Inisar, Ista Mezan and a couple of his minions, all together in a hushed and grim group: Mori wide-eyed and dismayed, Lohn with his jaw set, no-one wanting to talk.  I couldn't pay a great deal of attention because I was all dizzy again and very nauseous.

The ship was the
Diodel
, and Kaoren took me straight to the small medical section.  He let the technicians have me so I could try to explain why I was looking so green, and went to make sure the kids were settled, coming back just before takeoff and dryly saying: "She understands that," to stop one of the technicians fussing about how if just getting to the ship had made me dizzy, ship travel would be worse.

I could tell that they were treating this as super-urgent because the tedious pre-flight checks were cut short to critical systems checks only.

The medical station has two 'sick-pods', and a room to one side with more ordinary pods, but Kaoren and Ista Mezan ignored the 'everyone strap in for takeoff' protocol and stood with me as the ship lifted, paused, then zoomed forward.  And I went grey, green, then vomited extravagantly in the well-placed bucket Kaoren had snagged from the medical supplies.  I don't remember much of the journey to Muina's rift, given that my brain seemed to be tumbling in free-fall the entire way and I spent all my energy dry-retching and shifting about because I kept having really weird muscles spasms.  It did mean that it wasn't difficult to stay awake, but by the time we reached the rift (it sounds like we went at record speed) all I wanted was to be knocked on the head.  The whole time I could feel something pulling me down.

Kaoren wouldn't let them close my pod when heading into the rift, and stayed standing with me despite a high chance of getting a dose of aether, which was fortunate because apparently I had a fit and passed out briefly – I don't remember that, just this incredibly awful sensation like my insides were all staying on the far side of rift.  By the time I was capable of noticing more than that, the technicians were talking in very relieved tones, and I no longer felt dragged down.  Awful in many other ways, but whatever connection I'd established to the malachite marble or whatever the hell was going on with me had been broken.

I was totally drained, and just lay for a while letting them give me injections and take brain scans, but then asked if I could have a shower (I stank of vomit and was mortifyingly sure I'd wet myself as well, which thankfully my nanosuit was containing).  Nanosuits are tremendously useful for having medical emergencies in, since the technicians can make bits of it go away and come back so easily.  Kaoren came and had a shower with me, which got around the technicians worrying I would collapse and gave us the opportunity to be all scared and upset with each other for a while.  He'd had to spend the entire time not showing how frightened he was, and we ended up sitting on the cramped floor of the shower cubicle, squeezing each other and shuddering.  We were still in the shower when we went through into Taren real-space, and I decided that, however exhausted I was, I'd rather try and stay awake until we were back at base because I really didn't want to face the possibility of more vomiting.

Ista Mezan (by then looking almost as exhausted as I felt) told me to finish the rest of my fortifier, but I bargained him into fetching me some real food, and Kaoren went to get my hairbrush, so I was (if you ignored the two other technicians in the side-room) alone when Ys found me.

She marched straight up to where I was sitting sideways on the sick-pod (the unsick pod, in this case, since I'd swapped to the one they hadn't had to clean vomit off) and said in this angry whisper: "You have to stop."

"Stop which?" I asked muzzily.

I could see she was shaking with anger, and my mild question was apparently the last straw because she had her own little volcanic eruption, all in the same stifled and furious whisper.

"How can you be so selfish?  If you're in danger all the time, why do you keep pulling them closer to you?  Don't keep hurting them just to make yourself feel better.  You can't just decide to be their family and make them love you, and then take it all away.  If you're going to die, then die!"

The enormity of the last one seemed to hit her – she'd gone further than she wanted to say – and she stopped short, gasping for breath.  Kaoren, Mara and Maze were standing in the doorway behind her, being very still so she wouldn't notice them.  I really wished I could ask Mum for advice, and touched Ys' cheek, but she jerked her face away.

"Every time Kaoren goes on mission in the Ena, I spend entire time convinced he's not coming back.  But does that mean I shouldn't love him because he has dangerous job?  Would it be better to find someone who lived safer life, even though I like them less?  I know that I'm in lot of danger, but if I spend all my time not doing things, not caring about people, because I'm caught up in knowing that I'm in danger, then I'm wasting chance I've been given to live.  I want to live while I can, even if it's just for few weeks, or day, or hour."

"Selfish," Ys repeated, voice strangled, and I worked not to look like I agreed.

"I know tonight has been scary.  But I don't think I'd be doing right thing by not hugging Sen, just because might be for the last time, any more than I think would be the right thing to not make sure that you and Rye have never-ending supply of books.  Do you know, one of the things I've enjoyed most this past week is watching expression on your face when you get explanation for something?  It's like the universe is one massive puzzle to you and thing you like above all else is to fit another piece in place."

That made her stare at me, as if she thought I could somehow have missed something so obvious about her.  I added carefully: "And I'm very proud of you for always trying to protect Sen and Rye.  You'll have to forgive me for being just little selfish about wanting to see you smile.  I am trying very hard to avoid dying, but if I can't then I hope all three of you will be able to remember the fun things we did together, rather than just the fact that am gone."

I slid off the over-tall med-pod so I could hug her – which made her go rigid and she beat her fists against my ribs (really hard too) and then briefly clutched at the front of my nanosuit and gulped because she was absolutely determined not to cry.  Kaoren came in and put a hand on her head, and told her Sen was looking for her, and knowing him he said just the right things to calm her down a little as he took her off.  Mara and then Maze came in and hugged me very painfully (I refrained from hitting them) and I could see that by making speeches about dying I'd succeeded in upsetting both of them rather a lot.  Too many of the people they grew up with and cared about have been killed.

Mara made me sit back down and tidied my hair while Maze filled me in on the things I'd missed while I'd been busy vomiting.  Isten Notra had begun analysing the images from my projection straight away, and said the patterns on the ceiling were almost certainly related to the patterns we'd seen on the diagram of the Pillar placement.  It didn't seem to be, as I had half hoped, a map to the location of all the malachite marbles, but she said it was important anyway.

Ista Mezan came back with a cup of hot green soup at the same time as Kaoren, Inisar and Zee, and I sipped it cautiously as they tried to coax more information about the not-my-dream out of me.  I hadn't mentioned the whispering before that, and they're going to try and enhance the drone's audio pick up enough to maybe make out what the stones were saying.

"That another touchstone, yes?" I asked Inisar.  "The one think was involved in disaster."

"Most likely.  You said you didn't think that was your dream.  Could it have been hers?"

I didn't know the answer to that.  "It felt like trap," I said.  "But she's the one caught in it."  Thinking about it, remembering what it was like, started to upset me a lot and I nearly dropped my soup down my front until Kaoren steadied the cup.  "She can't be any older than Ys," I said, and was glad when they decided that it wasn't a good time to push me any more.

Left for the moment alone, Kaoren and I sat together on my med-pod, hands locked together, and I opened a channel to him.

"Sen's Sights led her to the wrong person."

"No."  Kaoren frowned at me.  "For what she wants, you and I are exactly right.  It becomes, now, a matter for us to protect you.  And for you not to fail her.  Promise me that, Cassandra.  That you will think, and take care, and not surrender to this."

"Live up to her?" I said, and thought he might as well be asking for himself.  And probably was.

"Promise me," he repeated, and I did.  And I'll try.  But this thing, that room, it scares me.  I don't know if it's something I can just push on through.