The Touchstone Trilogy (66 page)

I let out a little relieved breath when he told me that was enough for the day, which I should have known better than to think he wouldn't notice.  Probably he'd had a fair idea all along how I was feeling, but that made his eyebrows draw together slightly.

"Your dreams are too potentially destructive for you to not fully engage with this," he said, going into extra-captainly captain mode.  "While I did not agree with the approach to yesterday's testing, I did carry it out.  If that isn't possible for you to overcome, I can arrange for another person to oversee your training."

I'd hate to get into a real argument with Ruuel – I get the feeling I'd be outmanoeuvred at every turn.  As it was, I felt my face burn, but I managed to meet his eyes steadily.  "What was making me upset supposed to achieve?"

"Stress is a primary trigger to talent development."  He was channelling his inner humourless robot, with no hint of expression.  "In your case it mixes very badly with how you came to be here, and why you choose to tolerate being used by us.  Do you want me to arrange for a different trainer?"

"Would they be more likely to disobey orders than you?" I asked, and was glad my voice was dry instead of hurt.  Then I shook my head and stood up.  "No.  But thanks for the offer."

I left, needing to think about how I felt, somewhere away from Ruuel and all his Sights.  I still haven't decided, really, other than to know I was happier for the explanation.  For Ruuel that probably passes as an apology, too, and I wonder if that was the reason he'd seemed in such a bad mood: knowing that playing games with me would make me angry, and yet told to do it anyway.

I thought Selkie understood me better, too...and I just looked up his schedule, and saw that he'd been away on Muina again, and arrived back a few hours before he emailed me the report to complete.

Ah well – hopefully I won't have dreams about arguing with Ruuel tonight.  If my visualisation works properly, I should dream about being in my room, cleaning it up.  I'm kind of looking forward to that. 

Tuesday, June 3

One Thousand Cranes

It occurred to me before going to bed last night that trying to dream about home was probably not a good idea.  I really don't want to end up in Earth's near-space needing to be rescued.  The otters really are the ideal 'safe place' visualisation for me, but I either have to disassociate it with Ruuel, or fully get over being upset with him before I use it again.

I decided to go with the 'think of making something' example, and went to sleep remembering Noriko Yamada teaching me how to make origami cranes.  She was making a thousand of them, which she sewed onto long strings and was going to give as a present to her grandmother.  I didn't make that many, but I remember the pattern well, and so I curled up in my window seat and thought through the steps of making origami cranes, and I had a dream about the day I met Noriko in the library at school, and made cranes over lunch.

After a while, Mori and Ruuel came and stood down by the far end of the table, but then Ruuel went away again almost immediately.  I made cranes and listened to Noriko telling me about how the strings of cranes would be strung up in her grandmother's garden and as they fell to pieces they'd take the wish she made for her grandmother on the wind.

Then Ruuel and Taarel came in together, standing by my chair.  "Do you want me to show you how to make one?" I asked Ruuel, handing him the crane I'd just made.

He held it up for Taarel to look at, and she touched a wing and said: "Impressive.  Caszandra, do you know where you are?"

"The library?"  I looked around, but started to think at the same time and said: "Oh, I'm dreaming," and woke up, still curled on my window seat.  The lights were on, about three-quarter strength, and Mori was standing watching me.  "But it wasn't a nightmare," I said.

"No.  You were pouring out energy at an excessive rate, and that triggered the alert." She perched on one arm of one my couches.  "What were you dreaming about?"

"Doing one of the sleeping exercises, making things."  I sat up and looked around the room, surprised Ruuel and Taarel weren't there, because they'd felt very real to me.  "Kind of have a headache," I said, finding that movement didn't agree with me much.

"We'll head down to medical in a minute.  Just waiting on the captains to return."

"Ruuel and Taarel were here then?" I actually found their absence very disorienting, and my head pounded more as I tried to reconcile them talking to me and then not being there.

She smiled.  "They went into the Ena, to this point in near-space, to follow a theory.  They shouldn't be long."

I went and dressed, since even though I'd added long pyjama pants to my nightwear after my excursion to Earth, I still felt at a disadvantage dressed for bed when people came to talk to me, or when I had to go to medical.

Mori was watching the rain pounding steadily down outside the window.  "What was the theory?" I asked her, but she said it would probably save repetition to wait till the captains were back, and instead we chatted about the last
The Hidden War
episode, and I found myself explaining a little about how I felt about hurting Nenna.  Mori was in great agreement with this, and said that the main fear of practically every Setari was letting their squad down and getting them killed.  Then Taarel brought me and Mori into a channel with her, Ruuel, Selkie and (to my mild pleasure) Isten Notra.

"This is the location in near-space," Ruuel said, and gave us a fragment of his own log, a rapid ascent up the outer wall of the KOTIS facility, Taarel just visible in peripheral vision, and then something very odd ahead – a swirling blurriness centred around the outlines of a building apparently poking out the whitestone wall.  I recognised it immediately.  My school library building.

It didn't have the sketchy quality of near-space – there were no holes in the walls – but there was a soap-bubble intangibility about it, like it was a mirage which would pop if you touched it.  Still, Ruuel and Taarel had to push open the heavy swing door to get inside.  There was a suggestion of a library assistant behind the front counter, but she didn't seem to see them, and they turned right and went past long rows of shelves to the tables at the back of the main room, where a ghost of me was sitting with a ghost of Noriko, folding origami cranes.

There were two me's.  One sitting there folding cranes, and a glowing outline of me in roughly the same spot, curled up in my window seat.  Ruuel and Taarel had to detour slightly to get inside the Taren near-space room as well as the library room, and Ruuel did a lot of Sight-switching, which really didn't help my headache.

"Do you want me to show you how to make one?" the ghost me asked Ruuel, handing him one of the cranes.

He switched through his Sights again, and held it up for Taarel to look at, and she touched a wing and said: "Impressive.  Caszandra, do you know where you are?"

"The library?"  The ghost me looked around, then said: "Oh, I'm dreaming," and then the whole thing vanished and Ruuel and Taarel were standing alone in the near-space version of my apartment, looking at a faint afterimage of the sleeping me fading away, and a dozen origami cranes scattered across the floor.

The log extract ended and I opened my eyes to find Taarel and Ruuel had arrived, each holding a handful of cranes of all different colours, some patterned like the fancy paper Noriko had been using.

"What do the paper birds represent?" Isten Notra asked.

"A wish of good luck," I said, closing my eyes again because my head was pounding.  "Noriko, the girl who was with me, is from a part of Earth called Japan.  They have an art form there called origami: making things out of folded paper.  The bird is called a crane, which is considered a kind of magical beast in Japan.  Japanese tradition to fold a thousand origami cranes, as a luck-wish."  I opened my eyes again, and since Taarel was within reach I leaned forward and took one of the cranes she was holding, and unfolded it.  "It feels like ordinary paper," I said.

"Analysis will tell us more on that level," Isten Notra said.  "Caszandra, we're going to place a drone in near-space at the location of your room to monitor the development of your dreams on the Ena."  Before I could be more than totally horrified she went on: "The visual component will be locked to my viewing only, unless I deem there to be some critical value in releasing it further, and otherwise deleted after my review.  Is that acceptable to you?"

I couldn't hide the DO NOT WANT on my face, and there was a long, painful pause before I could say: "I guess," sounding anything but happy about it.  The idea of anyone watching my dreams is beyond awful.  But that it would be Isten Notra made it just, just bearable, so I added: "Yes."

"Good girl."

"Medical now," Ruuel said, and I was dropped out of the channel.  He gave Mori his handful of origami cranes, and waited to see whether I was going to walk myself or needed to be carted about.  I managed to walk, just a bit slow and wobbly, but getting to medical mainly involves elevators anyway.

"Do you sleep there because of the window, or because you're frightened of the other room?" Ruuel asked, just before we reached my home away from home.

"Both," I said shortly, knowing it would be useless to lie to him.  "Getting better about going into the bedroom though."  I no longer had to nerve myself up to fetch my clothes, at least.

He didn't comment.  Ruuel's good at knowing when to shut up, and he left me to the familiar routine of having my brain scanned and mapped to the last neuron.

I don't seem to have dreamed at all the rest of my sleep shift – no doubt Ista Chemie was privately relieved about that – and was collected by Maze this morning.

"You're having fewer unbroken nights," he said, after we'd settled in the canteen over breakfast.  "And I know you must be far from happy about this latest development."

"Would you want anyone watching your dreams?"

"Not for a moment," he said, so firmly I immediately wondered what he dreamed about.  "I'm glad Isten Notra found an approach which is bearable for you, since it's clear your talent development is accelerating.  What you managed last night is well outside what we would call Ena manipulation, startling enough that the details are being kept within the squads working directly with you."

"Dream talent might be what a touchstone is?"

He nodded.  "We haven't found anything like you mentioned in any of the histories, but it's becoming apparent that enhancement is the least of your talents.  For the moment we're going to concentrate on trying to understand more about what it is you're doing, and helping you learn to
not
use it."

"Was easier just watching First Squad fight," I said, with a sigh.  "Did you watch my shooting training session?  So hopeless."

"You'll improve with practice."  He gave me a captain-look to underline that I better take the sessions seriously, but then couldn't help but smile.  "Though I concede that you're not a natural fighter.  It doesn't sit well with me that we're even considering you having a need for weapons training."

"Are there lots arguments?"

"Little but.  For the most part over timing, about how urgently we move forward on Muina.  I can't pretend that there isn't a huge amount of pressure to find a way to the city you visited."

"I get to say I told you so?"

"Perhaps.  The argument isn't settled yet."  He studied my face.  "You've had a run of difficult weeks, Caszandra.  I can push to delay the decision, give you more time–"

"Would rather get it over with," I said, feeling oddly cross and embarrassed.  "Don't want to do it at all, but Ionoth numbers still increasing, yes?  Thought of someone I know dying more horrible than standing on platform.  And won't have to worry about it once it's done, can go back to being enhancing stray."

"I'm not sure that's possible," he said, seriously.  "What you did last night is something with wide-reaching implications, and it can't be left uninvestigated.  Fortunately the tie to the Ena brings you into Isten Notra's domain.  Now that Notra has assumed direct control we should be able to be more consistent with you, and avoid idiocies like subjecting you to one of the standard Sights tests."  He made an exasperated face, then waved a hand to dismiss that train of thought, adding: "Today we're going to take you into the Ena to see whether you can directly manipulate it."

So instead of having Sight training with Ruuel, I spent the rest of the day with First Squad.  Ketzaren tried, completely unsuccessfully, to teach me to do the most basic Ena manipulation while Alay guarded us and the rest of First Squad cleared whatever space we happened to be in.  They did what they considered basic spaces – what apparently is called a 'scatter rotation' because they don't follow a string of joined spaces, but keep going in and out of near-space.  I've been given some Ena manipulation homework, with a little cube smaller than a fingernail which I have to will into being green instead of yellow.  Changing colour is apparently one of the easiest things to do, but I feel a complete idiot glowering at a little cube while nothing happens.

And I have very particular orders from Maze not to do 'making things' visualisations tonight.  I should really do my otters 'safe place', but I don't want to risk anything Ruuel-related.  Even if it's only Isten Notra watching, I know the only real secret is one you keep yourself. 

Wednesday, June 4

Do Androids Dream?

I dreamed of counting sheep.  It was a 'real' dream, but didn't last long enough that people had to come stop me from exhausting myself.  While it felt very real – me sitting in the grass on a beautiful sunny day watching these hairy sheep leap over a fence barely bigger than their knees – counting sheep is such a sleep-related thing that I just knew that I must be dreaming.

And there was a drone there, lurking incongruously in the middle of a bush.  I found this funny and annoying at the same time, and I waved at it when I noticed it, but for some reason it made me wake up.  No headache, and I feel calm and rested, which I'm very glad about.  I've hated these days of feeling like I'm barely keeping it together.