The Touchstone Trilogy (19 page)

I'm missing home a lot today.  But I really really hope I don't wake up tomorrow and find that I've gone tearing off through the spaces again.  I need a better understanding of just what the spaces are, what natural gates are, before I even begin to think of experimenting.  There's an entire world of information which I've just been given access to, and I need to go do more kindergarten so I can hope to understand some of it.

They thought I was
stupid
. 

Wednesday, February 13

Settling in

So, my apartment has three and a bit rooms.  The bedroom is a little larger than my original box in the medical facility, with a lot more cupboard space.  The bed's a double bed, too, instead of the narrower 'hospital-type' bed.  I had a lot of trouble deciding on what kind of bedspread to buy, and ended up with a dark green one with a pattern of leaves and tiny white and pink flowers.

The kitchen part of the main room has a small refrigerator and cooker and a sink, plus bench and cupboard.  Given the Setari can get all their meals from their canteen, there's no need to do a lot of food preparation in the apartments, but at least it's possible.

There's a 'coffee table' and a matched pair of two-seater lounges facing each other over it.  All very plain, and nothing you wouldn't find in any Australian home, though made with a light, possibly hollow frame that seems vaguely related to whitestone.  Wood is far too rare here to be used for basic furniture.

I think I'd like to get some throw rugs to put across the lounges.  There's no television or sound system or anything like that because all that's inside your head, which makes the lounge look rather bare.  The study nook is not really a study nook, I think.  After all, I haven't seen a printed book or file yet, let alone anyone writing by hand, so why would you need a table designed for writing?  Maybe it's meant to be a breakfast table?  An upright chair and a table, anyway.  It's a good place for me to write in my diary, even if it's not what it's meant for.

I really wish I'd brought my pippin statue with me.  I only had it for a couple of weeks on Muina, but it was almost like having a pet.

I love the fact that I have a bath, and I did a lot of soaking in it last night, trying to read one of the novels I found in the vast array in my head.  I should have bought some bubble bath, presuming it exists here.  Bath oils and bath salts and maybe a rubber ducky.  The shower is both a shower and a nanoshower.  When you tell your nanosuit to go away, it drains down to your legs then kind of spins together and shoots out a special 'drain'.  It makes me wonder if all the Setari are all using the same 'pool' of nanoliquid, which is a grotty and funny and disgusting idea.  One size fits all taken to new levels.

I'm dressed in my uniform now, waiting for it to be time for me to go to training, and hopefully not get lost!  Mara told me that if I have any kind of official assignment – training or meetings or even a medical exam – I'm to wear my nanosuit.  I still wish it was a different colour, so people would know I'm not pretending to be a Setari. 

Combat Room 3

Full day of training with First Squad today, both before and after lunch.  We met at 'Combat Room 3', one with lots of shielding, and they borrowed a guy called Nils from Second Squad to make illusions of common sorts of Ionoth attacking us while they worked out the best way to use my enhancement while not putting me in too much danger.  It was like an elaborate game of tag, and I felt so useless and awkward, especially when Nils had some really nasty illusion-Ionoth swarm the spot I was standing, and had to be rescued.  Nils' illusions can't really properly show the effects of the Ionoth being hit, since they have no substance, but I didn't like a dozen of them pouncing toward me.

Ketzaren is my 'primary minder', since she has strong Levitation.  If they need to move me quickly, she gives me an order and I have to put my arm around her shoulder.  She grabs me around the waist and binds our suits together and then she levitates herself and I get brought along, which overcomes the fact that they can't put Levitation directly on me when they're enhanced.  Her other talents are Ena manipulation, which seems to be what they use when they're trying to lock the gates, and Wind manipulation.  Wind is a slow-build talent, so only occasionally used in combat.

First Squad was really pleased with how the training went, and they met up with some more of Second Squad for dinner afterwards and talked through strategies and possibilities.  Maze was good at making this not an uncomfortable conversation for me, and I was okay with it anyway, since I'd decided that my role was like a caddie for a bunch of professional golfers.  I don't do any of the hitting of balls, but I make the day a little easier for them.

The leader of Second Squad is called Grif Regan, and he's a very serious type who likes to listen more than talk.  Nils, by contrast, is overwhelming.  If you took the lead singer of The Doors (forgot his name) and crossed him with Marilyn Monroe, you'd get something like Nils.  A really pretty guy who oozes sex.  He treats Zee like she's a particularly delectable mouse, but Zee just ignores him.  He also asked me if everyone on Earth could speak with their hands and I explained about my aunt being deaf and we sidetracked into a long discussion about Earth and things which are different between the worlds.

But the question was a useful reminder that everyone here can record everything they hear and see, and even feel, though that's an extra setting and not one I'm keen on using.  And when Setari are on missions, what they record they put in mission reports, so everything Ruuel saw me do or say in the Ena has apparently been reviewed by whole bunches of people.  It made me very glad I hadn't kept trying to talk to Ruuel, and hadn't done too much shrieking or squealing while panicking.  And means I'm sure as hell not going to say
anything
during official assignments that I couldn't bear being watched by a hundred people.

No wonder Zan wouldn't gossip.

I went up to the roof again after dinner, just because I could, and because I could see stars up there now that the sun's fully set.  Tomorrow will be more training, but Maze said that if they're happy with how it goes they'll consider going into the Ena with me again, this time to kill things.

Must remember to work the conversation around to different types of gates.

Thursday, February 14

Bubble worlds

Morning was dodging practice with Mara, which went well except for when I dodged in precisely the wrong way and got a ball in the face.  I'm not very good at predicting where she's going to throw the things and that seems to be half of what dodging's all about.

I asked her if I was allowed to go swimming just for fun instead of it being for training, and she laughed and said yes and told me where to look to see whether anyone had booked the pool.  But then later she said that for now it'd be better if she just added the pool into our training schedule, so I guess she checked with someone who decided there was too much chance of me drowning or something.

Over lunch, she explained a little more about spaces and gates.  Spaces shift about.  Some move only a little, bobbing up and down.  Others apparently rotate, like planets.  A few even zoom about: little comets on an astral level.  And when they move, the connections which were the gates between them shift also, vanishing altogether, or linking up with other spaces, or just phasing briefly out of alignment.  Setari with Ena manipulation skills are able to 'lock' the gates, preventing them from shifting, but unless it's between two relatively stable spaces, it's immensely difficult to hold them for more than a day or two, and there's even an argument about whether it's a bad thing altogether, given that it's similar to what the Pillars do.

Four of the gates back toward the Pillar we found are stable, shifting only a little, and it's become part of the regular 'rotation' of the Setari teams to go and firm the 'locks' up.  The gate into the space with all the platforms is gone.  There's a different talent which allows you to 'read' the gates, and tell how long they will last, but they can't tell for certain if and when that gate will rotate back.  They
think
(are hoping really hard) that the platform space is a rotational space, and that eventually the gate will realign again and they'll be able to lock it for another few days.  Until then they check every day and puzzle over the readings they took from the space with the Pillar.

I didn't want to press too obviously about natural gates, how they're different, and how hard it might be to find one.

After lunch we joined up with the rest of First Squad, and this time all of Second Squad joined us.  After testing the effect of me on their talent range, they worked with First Squad on a really big game of tag-team combat.  They've been set a minimum time they have to wait between each person touching me, and then they have to keep track of how long the enhancement will last, which is a little over five minutes, always.  Nils made illusory monsters again, and the two squads worked through fighting and enhancing while keeping to their rules.  Then we took a break while Maze and the Second Squad captain, Grif, talked through different ways of managing me, and which talents it was best to enhance.

I was sitting on a bench next to Lohn and Nils and asked: "Is worth it?  Stronger, maybe, but so complicate."

"Definitely, absolutely," Lohn said.  "When I think of some of the situations we've been in, when the problem was sheer lack of fire power!  The effect on some of the more esoteric talents, like Combat Sight, is incredibly hard to quantify, but I wouldn't give it up."

"Just the speed alone is worth it," Nils added.  "It almost makes the thought of doing Columns Rotation bearable."

"Think how that last massive battle would have gone," Lohn said, and they glanced at each other and looked away.

"Massive?"  I repeated.  The word they used was 'kadara', but it seemed to have the same meaning as 'ddura'.  "Ddura?"

"Different sort," Nils said.  He lifted his hand and conjured an illusion of a four-legged black thing as tall as the three-story room, with swarms of miniature Setari buzzing around its long, spindly ankles.  Everyone else in First and Second Squad jumped and gave him a look, but he just waved at them.  "They turn up very occasionally, crashing their way between the spaces rather than travelling through them, and end up in near-space.  It took eight squads to take this one down."

"If we don't spot them, they can reach real space.  That was a bad year."  Lohn scrubbed a hand across his face, then smiled at me.  "It's not so complicated, either – we're just taking turns patting you on the shoulder on a timer.  So what do you say, Maze?"  he called.  "We going to do this for real tomorrow?" 

"Pending clearance by medical," Maze said, coming over.  "And clearance by you, Caszandra.  You've seen something of what we can run into out there, and that was neither the weakest nor the worst thing we might encounter.  Are you ready to do this?"

I'd seen enough by now to know that none of the Setari were completely confident of returning when they went into the spaces.  Maze was asking a really serious question.  And the spaces I'd gone through with Ruuel had scared me, had made abundantly clear that there was danger and horror involved.  I didn't want any part of that.

"Long as don't have ran up stair," I said after a moment.  "That hardest bit."

Maze smiled, but gravely, and nodded at me.  "It will be one of the more straightforward rotations," he said.  "I'll schedule it, dependant on the results of the medical."

After the medics cleared me, Alay and Ketzaren took me to dinner.  Alay's the most quiet and reserved of First Squad, but really lovely when she laughs.  She's what people call 'gamine', and wears her hair short, though little random curls sproing out.  I think Ketzaren, who is very dry and sardonic, was deliberately setting out to cheer Alay up, and it was only after they'd delivered me back to my apartment that I thought about why, about the reasons First and Second Squad often look tired and sad.

I don't want to go into the spaces hunting Ionoth.  I'm scared about the trip tomorrow.  And of all the trips after that which I'll be in for if I let myself be conscripted by an alien military organisation to fight a problem which has been growing steadily worse.  I fully intend to go home.

But then there's First Squad.  They've been doing this for years.  Fighting nightmares.  And getting hurt.  I haven't missed that there were originally three senior Setari squads, but now there only seems to be two.  I can't bring myself to ask what happened to the other one.

And I've been writhing silently at the thought of saying: "Thanks for saving my life, but not my problem.  I'll go home now and try not to think too hard about whether you're dead yet".

But I want to go home.

Wearing the Setari uniform makes me feel so fake.

Friday, February 15

Rememories

I started out the day by spotting Zan in the canteen.  She was eating dinner – Twelfth Squad is on a different shift than me at the moment – but after I picked out some breakfast I asked if I could join her and she of course was polite and said yes.

"You look tired," I said, since I refuse to be all stilted and formal with her.  "Is rotation bad?"

"No injuries so far," Zan said, being her usual correct self.  But then she actually asked me a question, which is progress.  "You're scheduled to start a rotation today?"

I nodded, wondering if for the rest of my life people would know more about what I'm doing than I do myself.  "When Setari off-duty?"  I asked.  "Never know if what say go into mission reports."

"It would be truer to say we're off-shift, not off-duty.  All time in the Ena is fully logged, and most training sessions, but I would have no reason to report on this conversation, for instance.  Besides, you're on second level monitoring."