The Touchstone Trilogy (121 page)

I'm trying not to show how hugely entertained I am by the idea of Siame's first 'mission' being looking after three children who think they're well able to look after themselves.  Not that, with all her Sights, Siame is probably in any doubt as to me finding the situation funny.  She's being very self-assured – she really has a phenomenal poise, which only the drastic alteration to her close relationship with Kaoren has come close to upsetting.  She decided to be coolly professional with me again, polite with a hint of Kaoren's dryness, not pretending to like me, but careful not to be hostile either.  I can live with that.

It's been fun watching the squads react to her, particularly Fourth and Eighth, who have probably seen her before when they were Kalrani, but not had that much to do with her and thus see her entirely as "Tsee Ruuel's sister" and are rather wary.  Most of the senior Setari are encouraging, but Lohn and Nils seem to regard her as Kaoren's 'mini-me' and are longing to tease her.  They've taken her, Ys and Rye on a tour of the ship (it's the
Litara
this time – considerably larger than the
Diodel
).

I'm hoping they turn my interface back on soon, so that I'll be able to chat to the kids even though they're in a different settlement.  Sen is particularly fond of sending a channel request to me at random moments, and it bothers her that it currently won't connect.  She's not very happy at all right now.  I've been taking the opportunity of the flight to be reassuringly well and alive, but the eye patch makes it a little unconvincing, and she's been latched on to me as much as possible.  She's half-asleep in my lap 'helping' me write.

Theoretically we left Ghost behind, but I can feel her wandering about the ship.  Since there's no Ddura at Atanra, I figure it should be okay.  Nearly at the rift entrance, so it's time to go back to our pods.

---

Atanra is basically barracks, warehouses and a big landing spot for ships.  One single building for all the living areas to make it easier to protect, furnished with very solid shielding.  I spent my time being scanned while the Setari swept the area and checked the drone set in near-space for signs of Cruzatch activity.  Ghost kept me invisible company, but is otherwise maintaining a low profile.

Thankfully the medics decided it was okay to turn my interface back on, and so I was able to read the kids their bedtime story and ask them what Pandora was looking like now (most of the flowers have moved on, lightning-quick, and all the trees are leaf-dusted).  I'm feeling a little 'over-observed', since my room is a medical observation area.  It's not too bad, I guess – it has two beds so that Kaoren can sleep in the same room as me – but I'm feeling like I should dig out one of my lab rat shirts.

Saturday, October 11

Ghosts

No dreams or projections of any sort last night.  With four squads assigned to look after me, I'm going to spend my time feeling perpetually guilty about wasting their time.  They've broken into a dayshift and a nightshift, and are busy clearing the area of nearby Ionoth and obligingly pretending they're not sitting around waiting for me to do something interesting.  I'm not even scheduled for testing at the moment, until my eye is back to normal.

Atanra might be an interesting place to visit if I was allowed to go outside, but between health and safety issues I have a choice between the mess hall and my medical observation unit.  I spent the day doing a lot of schoolwork, sleeping, and trying not to cringe during an examination of my eye.  I was unconscious for a lot longer the last time my interface went haywire, so I missed the sensation of my eye not feeling 'right'.

I was in a bit of a mood most of the day.  I always feel embarrassed when I'm feeling grumpy, given all the people who're stuck babying me, but I dealt with it by telling people I was feeling grumpy and was going to concentrate on schoolwork.

The highlight of my day was an actual conversation with Ys – who sent me a channel request after discovering an interface site devoted to "Caszandra's children", which had a lot of detail apparently culled from conversations with some of the Nuran survivors.  About Ys and Rye they only seem to know that they were servants who had been assigned to look after Sen, but they had quite a bit of information about Sen's parents – Fiionarestel and Durenatar.  The story (as retold) sounded a bit Romeo and Juliet – Fiionarestel was a highly respected scholar (and Sight Sight talent) and Durenatar some kind of architect.  They'd been close childhood friends, but their families (or Heads of their Houses, rather) had a disagreement and they were forbidden from seeing each other.  And had anyway, and had Sen, and were totally cut off from their families until they were found dead following what was widely believed to have been a murder-suicide.

Ys desperately doesn't want Sen to know any of this.  She hated asking me, but her need to protect Sen trumps everything, and so she wanted me to find a way to suppress all information about Sen's parents.

Having finally reached this point, I asked very cautiously: "Does Sen not know anything about her parents?"

"She knows they were killed.  She does not talk about them."

Ys sounded angry, which is her way of being very upset.

"You don't need me point out that Sen's Sight probably means she knows far more about this than you do," I said.  "And you know perfectly well you can't control what other people say.  If there anything to do, it's to see if there is truth to their deaths, rather than gossip.  I can ask Inisar if he knows any details.  Would you like me do that?"

She's decided she wants to think about it first, and went back to not wanting to talk to me.  I'm tempted to ask Inisar anyway, especially given the conspiracies complicating Nuri over the past few years.  But I think right now Sen's more likely to be upset by Ys' anxiety than what happened to her parents.

Sunday, October 12

Mind's Eye

I didn't dream of my ghost-girl last night.  I dreamed about Nils.  Well, to be exact I had a series of dreams about Helese Surion and Nils.  The first dream was Nils and Helese on her fiftieth birthday (which is sixteen and two-thirds, when you shift to 'young adult' status according to Taren law and can take the exam to be granted adult rights).  They'd gone out to dinner together, and then they made love (for the first time, I think).  She and Nils looked fantastic together – Helese was tall and handsome rather than what I guess would be called beautiful on Earth, and she teased Nils about being prettier than she was, which at that age he was.  He called her 'Lese' and so plainly lived and breathed for her that I could barely stand knowing that things wouldn't work out for them.

The dream shifted, and an older Helese was holding a party to celebrate her engagement to Maze.  Nils was there, and was very gracious and happy for them, and flirted more than successfully with Mara, who took him back to her quarters.  But after she'd fallen asleep he lay in her bed looking devastated.

And then another shift, to Nils sitting alone in what I guess was his apartment, conjuring an illusion of Helese and talking to it about Zee, about how she'd become so important to him even though he'd promised himself he'd never let himself really care about anyone again, and how fun it had been giving her the lowest possible opinion of him to keep her safely at a distance.  But that he was feeling so tired of it all lately.

I was crying when I woke up, and was then in an extremely awkward position because my energy output had made it obvious I was having some kind of talent dream, and there I was with tears running down my face and not wanting to admit why.

Kaoren was sitting watching me, so I opened a channel.  "Can I just say that my dream wasn't anything to do with Muina or Cruzatch or anything that needs to be talked about?"

"What was it about?"

"Senior Setari private lives."

My day would have been far less uncomfortable if he'd been willing to leave it at that, but Kaoren gave me a searching look and then asked, "If you were dreaming something like that, why didn't you wake yourself up?"

And the problem was that I hadn't been able to.  Admittedly I hadn't tried immediately, fascinated when I realised that Nils had been dating Helese Surion, but I'd tried to wake up when she and Nils started making love, and hadn't been able to.  It was just like when I was trapped in my ghost-girl's dream.  And as soon as I told Kaoren that it hadn't been
my
dream exactly, he immediately wanted to know whose it was.

It didn't seem possible to avoid answering that, and after a quick interface conversation Kaoren confirmed that Nils had been sleeping – and dreaming – at the same time as me.  But I was very firmly of the opinion that there was no way in hell I was going tell anyone what Nils had been dreaming, and escaped into the shower to buy myself some thinking time.  Kaoren told me later that he could mainly sense overwhelming guilt from me, which wasn't easy for him, but he decided that the simplest thing to do would be for me to talk to Nils and confirm that we'd been dreaming the same thing, and that there was no need to record the actual content of the dream.

Talking to Nils was the absolute last thing I wanted to do – closely followed by talking to anyone in First Squad (who were fortunately still asleep) – but I knew that saying that would only compound an already mortifying situation, so I forced myself to go off to a neutrally boring little meeting room where Nils was waiting.  He was looking down at his hands when I arrived, his expression remote and stern, and I instantly pictured him naked and miserable and wished I was anywhere else.

Nils glanced up and saw me cringing in the doorway, and the stern look went away as he smiled.  "If you go about acting like I might eat you, I might be tempted to try."

"I'm sorry," I blurted out in response.  "I didn't mean to do that to you."

For a second something harder came into his eyes, but he sighed and said: "I know.  Sit down.  Your very annoying boyfriend has given me a list of questions to answer."

I sat, and said, "I can guess.  No I wasn't thinking about you or, uh, any other Setari before I went sleep.  I was thinking about Sen's parents.  It very much like the dreams I had when Lira dreaming of talking to Kaoren, though not nearly as tiring.  Like I was there, but not.  The dream went from birthday to engagement party to your apartment."

He lifted his eyebrows, amused, but I know now that Nils is not nearly so carefree as he makes out, and I cringed all the more inside.  I've never done anything before which made me feel so completely in the wrong.

"Lohn and I are going to have to increase the scale of red we can try to make you turn," he said lightly.  "Did you know that today is 'Lese's birthday?  She would have been eighty."

I shook my head.  "No-one talks about her."

"No.  Helese, Cham, Senere, Mede, Suzlein.  And two of the younger squads, all gone in a single blow.  Alay was deeply involved with Suzlein.  She plays around with some sour squitch of a technician now, I think to punish herself for being alive.  Regan and Mede had been on and off for years, but they were on at that time and he – I barely recognise him.  All of these people we'd known since our twenties, almost a third of all the people who we relied on to understand us, lost.  We barely functioned in the aftermath.  Kisikar retired.  Do you know what the most frightening thing about you is?"

That I couldn't answer, but he wasn't expecting me to.  "Not that you can cause someone to relive their past – for that was far more than a dream for me – but that you could far surpass me in conjuring up people to chat to.  I've talked to 'Lese on every one of her birthdays since she was fifteen – I knew her before the Setari program began – and didn't let a little matter like her death end that.  But it's just an image of her, and I'm not sure I'd make the image talk back even if I could achieve that.  But you – you could create something which
was
'Lese."

"At least until I passed out," I said.

"Mn, and I doubt 'Lese would appreciate being made an Ionoth, no matter how briefly.  This isn't likely to be the last time you do something which hurts someone.  That's why you're working to learn how to control it.  The sheer scope of what you might do is undercut by your tendency to nearly die in the process, but if we ever get past current dramas you're going to have to expect people to realise you are frightening as well as amusing.  And prepare for those who would use you, or remove you, because you are unutterably dangerous.  I suppose it's fortunate you think someone like Ruuel a wonderful thing."  He paused, considering me, then added with a sheerly wicked grin: "And I am going to
enjoy
telling people that you were having an erotic dream about me."

My horrified reaction to this made him laugh, and he stood up, opening the door.  "The correct response to that should be 'And not for the first time!', but I'll forgive you the lapse.  We've covered enough for me to write this report, anyway."

He left, but I sat there for a while, thinking about how different from the usual Nils he'd been, how he'd given me a lecture, and a warning, and calmed me down at the same time.  And that he hadn't tried to pretend that I hadn't hurt him.  Kaoren came to check on me, and since the meeting room is more private than my medical room, I climbed into his lap and kissed him a lot, then told him how awful I felt about invading Nils' privacy like that, and wanted to know if he had any suggestions for how to not ever do that again.  I wish he'd said yes, that there was something instant and immediate and certain.  He did say it shouldn't be overlooked that Nils is an extremely strong Illusion talent, which is a thing not completely dissimilar from my projection abilities, and suggested that I should think over any distinctive aspects of the dream so that I can try to escape it as it forms.  I spent the rest of the day trying to find a big enough rock to crawl under.

But there's no place to hide in a facility designed to observe you, and I had little chance of escaping Maze, though he did give me until lunchtime, after First came back from a morning patrol.  He took me up to eat lunch on the roof, which would otherwise be a treat given that I'm not allowed out of the compound.