The Touchstone Trilogy (125 page)

The question of whether there are spies for the Cruzatch here is also causing a headache.  It's obvious to suspect the Nurans – and unfortunately this suspicion seems to be focused on the Nuran Setari – but it could be anyone on Muina, Tare or Kolar.  Someone, after all, told the Nurans about me after I unlocked Muina.  Thankfully practically no-one knows we've made contact with Lira – not that she's probably able to manifest at the moment with my talents taking a time-out.  KOTIS Command hasn't decided whether to move me, pretend to have moved me, or even use me as bait.

At any rate, the kids are out of school for the moment because their presence reveals mine, and all of us are confined to the Setari building.  They're quite happy about this.  Sen because it means she spends more time with me, Rye because he gets to spend more time with Kaoren, and Ys because she doesn't have to spend any time with the children at the school.

The Setari building feels so deserted with only Fourth in residence.  Mila, Orial and Korinal aren't tremendously social, and are often away mediating issues with the Nurans.  Having the common room to themselves (windows set to be one-way) turned into a great game for Sen, who gleefully collected every cushion and made a massive mound of them, and kept climbing on top and rolling down the sides.  Ys and Rye didn't try to stop her, just made sure there wasn't anything to hit.  I sat on the table watching all three of them, not failing to notice how Ys and Rye would occasionally check the entrances of the room for annoyed adults.  I'm pretty sure if someone had been mad they would have pretended it was all their idea and taken any blame.

I know they'll always be ready to do anything for Sen, but I am hopeful that one day the shadow of House Renar won't sit above them so strongly.  They are improving.  When it's just Kaoren and me with them, they're more inclined to show preferences in what to do each evening, and even Ys now asks questions if she can't work out an answer using the interface.  Though that's becoming rarer – she's formidably intelligent.

It's so fun to watch Rye light up whenever Kaoren arrives, although today with a brief double-check to make sure that playing with cushions was allowed.  It's also pretty damn cool watching Kaoren's response.  I think the outright worship embarrasses him a little, but he really enjoys encouraging Rye, and says he has to keep resisting a temptation to show off for him.

It was a quiet day.  Fourth had the morning free – or as free as they're allowed to be when they're the only squad on site – and Kaoren was in interface meetings, which is why I took the kids downstairs.  In the afternoon we trained together.  Since Halla is mildly injured, she was assigned to training with me, and Kaoren delighted Rye by having her include the kids in our training as well.

Isten Notra is coming to the Setari building tomorrow to discuss the conclusions she's come to from all the data my projections and dreams have given her.  Of course, she could just tell us that over the interface, but since it appears that Lira can observe me, Isten Notra is hoping to tell
Lira
what she thinks happened.

Which is a cruel, hard thing, but I completely agree with Isten Notra that only the truth will do.

Friday, October 24

Planet Drac

Last night's attack on Oriath involved a full force of Cruzatch, plus a massive and attendants.

This time Taren and Kolaren technology ruled the day.  Tare has tremendous problems fighting massives, because almost all their land surface is covered by buildings.  Kolar has huge amounts of land surface, though all their cities are in two relatively small regions (parts of which are in permanent night, or permanent twilight, which leads to some
great
stories about things living in the dark), but while Kolar has difficulty dealing with small and medium Ionoth, with massives it usually just bombs the shit out of them.

KOTIS had expected exactly this tactic from the Cruzatch, and had been preparing launchers for missiles, which they promptly used to rain fiery destruction from the skies after checking that it wasn't the type which could reflect missiles.  The Cruzatch plainly don't want to do any damage to this site, and hadn't brought the massive through right on top of it – hoping no doubt to lure the Setari away into battle.  So a nice, comprehensive victory (which still involved a lot of mopping up work for the Setari at Oriath, but hasn't been nearly as fraught and injury-intensive).

This is by far the most protected of the malachite marble installations, and the shielding continues to delay further exploration.  I'm still holding out hope for
Our Secret Plan and How to Foil It
, but I think it's no longer critical to find it, because we have Isten Notra.

The meeting was down in the common room, giving Isten Notra a chance to view the smoky spots and gouges on the walls which the pinksuits haven't quite found time to erase.  The physical attendees were limited to Isten Notra, Tsur Selkie, me and Kaoren, with not even any of Isten Notra's minions along, but the audience over the interface surprised me.  Not just Pandora's most senior bluesuits and the senior Setari representatives – Maze, Zee, Grif, Raiten, Inisar and Korinal – but about a dozen people whose names I had to look up: highest-echelon representatives from Tare and Kolar.

Isten Notra had brought one of the tablecloth screens with her, and started out by displaying a map of Muina with the platform towns highlighted.

"While much of what I'm about to discuss is not currently provable," she began, "we now have enough pieces that we are prepared to treat it as a working assumption.  Given the increasing urgency of the situation, the recommendations I make today cannot wait for certainty, for the kind of expertise of those who built this system.

"The platform and Pillar system is a magnificent achievement, layering function upon function.  The feed towns do not turn moonlight into aether, as you once suggested Caszandra.  Instead they are drawing the substance of the Ena into real-space, and refining it – patterning it, if you will – so that it can be used as a power source: one so versatile it can even recognise and heal Muinans.  The presence of the moon appears to be a control mechanism, to manage the volume produced, although there is some suggestion in the documentation recovered that the gravitational pull of the moon assists in safely thinning the wall between real-space and the Ena.

"The amount of aether needed to power the shielding dome at Kalasa, the teleportation platforms, and the Pillars is a fraction of the total aether produced by the feed towns, and the Pillars themselves appear to serve the dual function of stabilising the near region of deep-space and providing a storage channel for the excess aether.  The whole system is integrated, and while it is likely those who built it intended to create further platforms, and to use the aether for other devices, maintaining a delicate balance would be paramount, for drawing and using the stuff of the Ena in real-space poses a monstrous risk, as we are all now well-aware."

Isten Notra glanced at the tablecloth screen and green dots appeared, showing the locations of the malachite marbles.

"Enter a parasite system," she said, sounding exactly like Agowla High's headmistress that time half of Year 11 held a panty-shot scavenger hunt.  "When the platform and Pillar network was activated, the wall between real-space and the Ena began to tear like a cloth under strain, despite all the calculations of its creators.  This secondary system is most likely the cause."

She changed the display again, this time to a schematic of the site at Oriath – the outline of the underground rooms revealed by the scanners – and highlighted one in particular, at the very centre of facility.

"This room is the exact proportions of the aether-filled chamber Caszandra was trapped within, and projected for us."  She zoomed in to the room, and though the scan was a little blurry, it was clear that the central pedestal was there.  She replaced the image with a scan of the room I'd projected.  "The diagrams covering the walls and ceiling appear to be symbolic references to the aether inflows – the platforms – and you will see from this projection that the aether is not simply contained in the room, but is slowly moving through it on spiralling paths from ceiling to floor.  Scanner readings taken from the projection are not to be relied upon, but their measurement would suggest that the visible aether is merely leakage, and that a vast amount of aether is being channelled by this structure.  It is probable that half, or even a majority of all the aether collected on Muina is being consumed by this room."

The image shifted to a close-up of the pedestal and the shrouded figure weighed down by tiny malachite marbles.  I flinched a little inside, having no way of knowing whether Lira was watching, hating the thought of what was beneath that shroud.

"We believe these orbs represent the power stones placed across Muina," Isten Notra was saying.  "You will note that if that correlation is true, we have three still to uncover.  Those diagrams on the walls which do not relate to the platforms are considered likely to represent the large power stones.  While the platforms are the power inlet, it appears that these power stones – large and small – are an outlet channel, drawing away and also consuming part of the aether output.  Using the placement of the smaller stones in this projection, we have identified areas recommended for scouting."

Then she held up a small audio player and I winced, recognising the creepy whisper from my dream.

"We have spent considerable time attempting to enhance and separate the auditory component of Caszandra's projection.  Multiple voices are speaking at once, and we are working with the theory that each voice is transmitted by one of the stones.  We have separated the clearest."

She played one of the whispers, almost incomprehensible to me still since it was old Muinan and mostly names.  Isten Notra had a translation which basically said "In [place], the immutable [person] has dominion over [this particular area].  The immutable [person] and [person] are as his left and right hands.  No power is greater than the immutable [person] in [place], and nothing has strength to wound or weary or naysay his will.  Beneath his power will dwell the immutable [person]..."  And so on and on and on.  I hadn't projected long enough for them to capture the full length of it, but it was all about the immutable this and that and how they lived at the pleasure of the person in charge of that area.  Some of the whispers are male and some are female, and so far as they've been able to tell all the whispers are along the same lines, but with different areas and different people.

Isten Notra continued to speak aloud, even when directly addressing our interface audience: "It is believed that the shrouded figure in this room is the previously known touchstone, a child at the time of the disaster.  Those of you who have observed the logs of Caszandra's testing sessions will be aware that a touchstone is able to create a projection of any object or place described to her, including fictional places."  She let out a faint sigh.  "The Ena is not a realm governed by simple physics.  Our histories and our investigations suggest it is an expression of the minds of – not necessarily sentients – but of the living.  It is the memory of hunters and hunted, of places etched strongly in thought and hopes and fears.  In each of these power stone installations, barring the lack of sarcophagi at Kalasa, we have found a combination apparently of the willing and the unwilling, all of whom may have been consumed.  We believe they were using both the touchstone, the aether, and the lives of those within the installations to attempt an act of creation."

"Something more than becoming Cruzatch?" asked one of the bluesuits.  "Surely they could not have done all this for such an existence?"

"No.  A grander ambition altogether.  These are the projections of the location Caszandra has repeatedly visited in a dream state, where it appears some remnant of the previous touchstone's consciousness has been trapped.  Our initial belief was that this was Muina's past, but I am now inclined to believe that what Caszandra has glimpsed is instead the end product of these machinations.  A space perhaps in the Ena or possibly even separate to it – sealed and unreachable, maintained by the power system of the platforms.  Created by their will, and by fixing their description of this place in the mind of a child whose connection with the Ena is profound.  They tailored themselves a world."

"Then what are the Cruzatch?" I asked.

Isten Notra brought up the image of the weird balloon-tent room from my dream.  "This has been interpreted by Sight Sight talents as a gate.  It is obviously not a physical throughway.  Still, to those who created a world which depends on this one for survival, there is an obvious need to access real-space.  For decades we have been confused by a number of spaces where Cruzatch have appeared to belong to those spaces, generating regularly, but with the advice of our Nuran partners we have concluded that those spaces were a consequence of living creatures reacting to incursions of Cruzatch into their worlds – a secondary instance of them.  The true Cruzatch are outside our experience of traditional Ionoth, and we believe they are either aether 'devices' controlled by those living on the parasite world, or even projections of their minds."

She displayed an image of the impossibly tall and golden people.  "These are almost certainly the rulers of that world, and perhaps even the originals of the conspiracy on Muina, remade and sustained by the power stone system.  To them, our activities must pose a direct and absolute threat.  As we have grown more active in the Ena, so have they become more active in attempting to prevent our expansion.

"The fact that they are so eager to gain control of Caszandra suggests that just as we are experiencing increasing problems with the tearing of the spaces, the world they have created is not stable.  Clearly they were unable, with a single touchstone, to create a world which existed independently of Muina.  Now, the instability their system created in real-space is threatening their parasite world.  It is probable that their activities on Nuri were an attempt to bolster their world's existence, spending lives to create stability.  It is possible that Nuri is not the first world the Cruzatch have used so."