The Touchstone Trilogy (85 page)

It was a quiet time in the canteen, so only part of Eleventh Squad was around to give us curious looks when Kaoren sat down with me.  It's not as if our conversation (about Tare's history) would give us away, and I don't think Kaoren's ever likely to be at all demonstrative in public, but we did leave together, so I expect there's a bit of talk going around now.  By that time I was less bothered by the possibility of people knowing because I was caught up in the prospect of meeting Kaoren's sister – who is obviously very important to him – and worrying about how she was going to react to me.

We went to the area I'd waited in during the stickie lockdown and she was already there: a small, thin figure in a long skirt and a white shirt with a blue flower pattern.  I hadn't been entirely certain what to expect from Siame Ruuel, but I'd been thinking of her as a younger Taarel – a proud and commanding goddess, all antelope limbs and grace.  Siame is slight and delicate, with a sweet little rosebud mouth, a wispy-short haircut, and a very straight and upright stance.  She has Kaoren's eyes though, black on black, coolly evaluating me.

Kaoren had obviously told her he was bringing someone to meet her, but not who, since there was just a moment's surprise as she recognised me.  She looked from my face to Kaoren's as he introduced us, then nodded her head politely (Tarens don't shake hands) and said: "It is very interesting to meet you."  Siame's voice is soft and a bit 'little-girl', but she is only fourteen after all (well, forty-four according to Kaoren, but I just can't think in those terms).  She's also incredibly self-possessed and went on in a perfectly even voice: "Why do you want my brother?"

I at least had expected directness from someone related to Kaoren, and think I handled it reasonably well, for all my face went very hot.  "There never simple answer to that kind of question," I said.  "Other than 'because he is Kaoren'.  Best I can say is because he didn't ask me if I was so very selfish."  I looked at him, feeling rushed and exposed because I'd been finding it easier to keep our conversation away from deep-and-meaningfuls.  "And you didn't tell me to hurry, either.  Thought about you differently when we back from Earth near-space, anyway."

Because I glanced at Kaoren, I missed Siame's initial reaction.  She was only looking thoughtful when she said to him: "What about Meer?"

"Meer and I have never had this kind of relationship," Kaoren replied, not apparently annoyed by the question.  He bent and kissed my cheek, which I think may have been meant as something of a message to his sister, and said softly: "For me it was when you handed over that improbable pet of yours, covered in bruises and insisting on giving it a name.  I've had to fight against you ever since."  He straightened, adding: "I'll see you after dinner."

Siame nodded a farewell, though she'd gone rather white, and they headed off for the exit gate I'm often tempted to walk through, just to see what would happen.  I didn't find Siame at all an easy person to read, but I suspect Kaoren was perfectly correct:  she's not going to like me.

Speaking of which, Meer is Taarel.  I always think it's a funny name for her, because she'll never be a 'mere' anything.  However I want to interpret 'this kind of relationship', it's obvious that even Kaoren's sister considered them to be together.  I wandered up to the roof (
not
properly dressed for it) to have a bit of a sulk at not being allowed out into the city, and to chew over 'what about Meer'.  And be amazed that Kaoren seems to have fallen for me while I looked like a panda.  Awfully pleased, though, that it's been so long for him.  It was at the coldest part of the long night and windy so I gave up on sulking (still too many champagne bubbles for a proper sulk, anyway) and came back down to my room to play my game, making a heap of progress.  I'm feeling really sleepy now, but guess I should go get dinner

Still no sign of Ghost.

Friday, July 18

Pressed

Mara spotted me heading for dinner last night, and brought me back to her apartment to eat with her and Lohn.  Lohn was very funny, teasing me about "coming up for air", but also a bit pink and embarrassed about it all.  He and Maze are used to thinking of me as a child to be looked after.

We'd barely settled down to eat when Maze brought all of First into channel, along with Kaoren, to warn us that my Kalasa projection and details of the platforms were about to be made public.  Again KOTIS was pre-empting leaks from Kolar, and were a few minutes from a press conference.

"It will be a very full disclosure," Maze said.  "All the scans of the projection barring that from the drone stationed at your test point, scans of the Chamber of Passage, and some less complete information regarding your injuries and what it is you're able to do.  Setari images are not being blocked.  There'll be a half kasse delay before the transmissions from Kolar are released, and they are the reason there is no point blocking Setari images.  We are reaching the point where the image bar, at least while in uniform, is becoming pointless."

"Is – are they going to talk about the Cruzatch?" I asked.

"Yes.  It's inescapable – the building they fled through is sealed, guarded, and it's no secret among the expeditionary force why.  There has been some considerable debate as to how to handle the release of information about what it is becoming difficult to regard as anything but a direct enemy.  There has always been a certain comfort derived from Ionoth being essentially unorganised.  The Cruzatch not only pose an intelligent threat, but their appearance in Kalasa and use of the green stone lends itself to explanations no-one likes to credit.  It's been settled that we will disclose almost everything we know of them, barring only the trap apparently laid for you.  Half-truths on this point aren't likely to improve the situation."

"We may see another response from Nuri," Kaoren said, and the upshot of that is I'm now not allowed to go up to the roof by myself.  Super annoying.

Press conferences on Tare are just mass channels with three tiers of participants – watchers, talkers, and the moderator who controlled who got to speak.  Tarmian, the husky-voiced woman who'd been handling the Nuran's visit, was acting as KOTIS' spokesperson.  The reporters could barely decide which questions they wanted to ask her, they'd been flooded with so much new information.

The discussion about the Cruzatch was the thing that interested me most, and the first thing the reporters latched onto, asking if Muina's initial disaster may have been due to them, rather than the Lantarens – that it may have been an attempted invasion from the Ena.  Tarmian wouldn't be drawn into speculating, repeating that KOTIS was continuing to search for answers in both the Ena and in the written records found in Kalasa.  She happily announced that they continued to uncover references to the construction of the Pillars, along with a wealth of information about the Lantarens and their philosophies.  She even looked a little teary about that, adding that over the coming months Muina and Kolar could expect to access translations of these documents, to at last start reclaiming their cultural heritage.

That switched them on to me, of course, and the projection of the Lantaren ceremony.  Taren histories flip-flop about Lantarens.  They were a ruling class, incredibly powerful psychics, and they not only broke the planet, they brought Ionoth down on every planet in this area of space.  So they're usually depicted as foolish, or greedy, or outright evil.  Images of Kalasa at its height, and all those kids with flowers, messed with the way people were used to thinking about Lantarens.

"Is this a true glimpse of the past?" asked one reporter.

"As best as any of our experts can judge, yes," Tarmian replied.  "We of course cannot say with absolute certainty the ceremony occurred, but examination of the fallen structure of the bridge, for instance, has verified that it once functioned as a waterfall – a thing certainly not obvious from a simple survey of Kalasa in its current state.  We've cleared the central pool, which was completely covered by fallen stone and tarnish, and found the mosaic pattern visible in the projection."

"Then doesn't KOTIS now have the key to revealing the truth about the Breaking?  Have you other visions of Muina's past?"

Tarmian shook her head.  "This projection, of less than a joden, left Caszandra Devlin in a coma for two days.  The exact nature of her talent set is still being discovered, and even if we come to understand it, and she to control it, the energy cost is dangerous in the extreme."

"What exactly does KOTIS mean by a tangible illusion?  Is it true Caszandra previously injured herself?"  Most of the media here dropped my surname pretty quickly – I'm 'Caszandra' unless they're feeling formal.

"Illusionists create images.  Caszandra Devlin can create projections with not only a visual and auditory component, but substance.  If Tsa Devlin creates a projection involving heat, it can burn her, as we unfortunately discovered.  She is undergoing an intensive training course to strengthen her health and her control over her abilities.  No decision can be made on whether we can risk her until she is completely recovered."

They stuck with talking about me for a while, since the nearly full story of my security pass and how it had finally been transferred to everyone else took a fair bit of discussion and explanation, even with the press release laying it out in nice, sequential order.  The whole thing made me sound like a really persistent weed, cropping up everywhere no matter how hard you tried to kill it.

Kaoren arrived in the middle of this, and though we stayed in-channel, we went back to my rooms for the rest, settling into my window seat to enjoy the slow shift to dawn.  Kaoren's sister's opinion of me was a good deal more interesting to me than the press conference, so I asked him: "What do you and Siame do when you go into the city?"

"Visit exhibitions usually, then shopping and dinner.  Siame is torn between our parents' belief that the most important thing any person can do is create, to express, and the role her talents have brought her."

"Isn't it possible to do both?"  Zan had managed to find time to learn how to play a musical instrument, after all.

"Do, yes.  Do well?"  He shrugged.  "Our energy is divided enough as it is."

"Did she decide I'm a threat?"

"You are.  I will spend less time and thought on Siame because of you.  The question is more whether what I gain is worth what it costs her, and she can't judge that yet."  He was giving me one of those half-lidded surveys, as if he was trying to decide himself, looking very serious.  "She does not want anyone to be more important to me than she is, and she will hate you because of that, perhaps for years.  But she will recover."

I didn't know what to say to that, but Kaoren curled his fingers through mine, and that made me feel a lot better.

"The Kolaren transmissions are being released now," Maze said over the interface, as the press conference began to wind down.  "They don't add anything in regards to information – simply images."

We said goodnight to First Squad, then dropped out of channel.  I had great fun undressing Kaoren, rather than him simply telling his nanosuit to go away, and he was being particularly intense.  I waited till we were ready to go to sleep to record some more music for Zan, since I knew that would knock me out completely, and didn't even bother to look at the Kolaren images until today.  Lots of pictures of Kalasa, and tons of the Setari.  Very few of me, for which I'm glad, though I could have lived without the little movie someone had made of a greensuit being given the duty of carrying me when they were rushing me back to Pandora after the projection.  Not flattering.

There's an earlier shot of me looking over my shoulder, wearing my beanie and my newly drawn-on coat, which seems to be the media's new favourite image of me.  And one picture of Kaoren, a really beautiful one with him standing in the central Kalasa circle looking down, which for some reason has sparked immense speculation among fans of
The Hidden War
over whether he's the model for Lastier.  And hordes of them are salivating over him, which doesn't surprise me at all.

I've been stuck in medical all morning, having more brain scans and a new round of needles (tons of blood samples, which hasn't put me in the greatest of moods), but at least they've taken my blue bandages off again.  My legs still don't look normal, but they're a lot less uneven and seamed.

Joint training with First and Fourth soon – they want to try some two-team enhancement strategies.  Not that it ever seems likely I'll be sent out on rotation again.

Strategy session

Pretty straightforward combat training yesterday afternoon.  I'd asked Mara beforehand how she dealt with being all on-duty professional with Lohn, and whether there were rules about it.  She showed me the decorum-in-uniform rules, which are common sense, and I ended up behaving pretty much as I always do in these kind of sessions, the only difference being that I smiled at Kaoren when I arrived, along with all the other people I usually smile at.

After the session, Maze and Kaoren went off to have meetings as captains always seem to do – Kaoren arranging with me over the interface to meet at his apartment for dinner – and I spent a while sitting on the benches along one edge of the test room with the rest of Fourth discussing my projections, and Kalasa, and all the other news which had been released the previous day.  All of the first four squads are now very well-documented, and I asked how they felt about the possibility that the image ban will be removed from in-uniform Setari.

"Given that almost all our appearances in uniform are in KOTIS facilities or in the Ena, it won't make any substantial difference," Glade said.  "We've had this kind of commentary since we were Kalrani, since the 'gate-spotters' log everyone of around the right age coming out of KOTIS headquarters.  And obviously image-blocking on Muina isn't doing much."

"Is it correct that you are reviewing episodes of
The Hidden War
in advance?" Halla asked.  She usually keeps quiet around me.  Not because she's a quiet type like Par: I think she's just very cautious of what I represent.  Or of second level monitoring.