The Touchstone Trilogy (96 page)

But it sure would get complicated.

Tuesday, August 12

Open your mind

I liked this morning a lot more than this afternoon.

This morning was more 'instant town' work, with Lohn and Mara as my guards.  Lohn and Mara are always worth spending time with, full of energy hauling mounds of mattresses and sheets and pillows everywhere (up all the stairs, since the elevators weren't operational yet) and making beds.  I lost count of how many beds we did, and it was amazing how tiring something so simple can be, but it was fun too.  KOTIS personnel everywhere, really busy, but cheerful with it, and they get a real kick out of seeing Setari carrying about mounds of pillows.  And I seem to have turned into the village mascot (which I don't particularly like, but it's hard to resist how pleased most people seem to be to see me).

That was this morning.  This afternoon has been brain scans and people being all 'you did it once, try harder to do it again'.  And blood tests, because I needed more needles.  So not in a good mood right now.

For all that, I guess it's worth it, since Kaoren is very happy.  Not understanding what the Lantarens meant about connecting with Muina was really getting to him, to the point that when we all went to go swimming today, he came along since I wanted to go, but decided he was going to take a break from attempting to puzzle out the meaning.  Which was very fine with me.  We went swimming about together, exploring the tumbled and drowned city.  I don't know what happened to make the lake rise to cover that part of Mesiath, but it's a really neat place to swim through – especially when you know that there's nothing lurking in the shadows of the buildings which registers as a threat.

We found an excellent ruin which was sheltered on all sides, and where the stone was just the right level to sit half underwater while still enjoying the streaming sunlight.  We dozed in the sun for a while, until I got curious about – well, mainly I was curious as to whether Nils was anywhere near Zee – so I pushed out with my knowing where people are sense to find them.  But Nils was with Lohn, Mara and Ketzaren, while Zee and Alay and Jeh seemed to be chatting.  I amused myself tracking where everyone was, and then finding the little weasel things, and then all different sorts of animals, and the fish in the river – some right underneath where we were lying – and then there were birds and snakes and bugs and these large windy spaces which I eventually realised were the trees and it was really very enjoyable and relaxing doing that.  I felt incredibly calm, and very pleased with myself, but then I noticed that more and more of the bright, sharp presences which were the Setari had gathered around Kaoren and me, and so I sort of drew back to myself and looked up at them.

"Can't be that interesting to watch me daydreaming," I said, annoyed.  Finding a dozen people staring at me isn't my idea of fun.

"What were you doing?" Kaoren asked.  He was sitting cross-legged just out of reach of me, and his eyes were open very wide.  It was a bit disconcerting seeing him with that expression, because it's what he looks like when he's trying to contain himself, which he usually doesn't need to do.  Most everyone was wide-eyed.

"Just seeing how many things I could sense, and how far.  If I push out really far even the trees start to be there for me."  I wrinkled my nose.  "And, yeah, I guess that does sound like this connecting to Muina thing that everyone has been trying to do, but it doesn't explain why you're all here staring at me.  I don't feel like I was pouring out a lot of energy or anything."

"It's the mechanics of your enhancement."  Kaoren made a brief, meaningless gesture with his hand – a sign that he was almost beside himself with excitement, since he rarely moves without purpose.  "The technicians have yet to find any physiological explanation for how it operates.  What you were doing then – deepening your connection to your surroundings – resulted in a considerable increase in the strength of your enhancement.  I called Surion and Namara so that I could study how the increase was effecting them."

While he was enhanced himself, of course, and the rest of First Squad had come along to watch, along with Taarel, Regan, Endaran and the Squad Three captain, Turian.

"I could clearly feel the shift," Maze put in.  "The best I can describe it is that you don't feel the air around you unless there's a wind."  He held out a hand to me and when I moved in response, brushed the tips of his fingers against mine.  "Even when your enhancement is at ordinary levels, there's a sense now of the shift."

"Why is being able to feel when I'm enhancing you so amazing?"

"Because it's still there when the enhancement wears," Zee said.  She smiled, with just a hint of wonder edging into her eyes, which is not what I'm used to from Zee.  "What you're doing is increasing something already present.  We are – we think that we have all already been connected to the Ena, all along, but our awareness – it's like when you have worn a scent every day.  You cease to be able to smell it, unless it grows stronger."

"When you enhance us, you are not channelling power to us," Kaoren continued, with the certainty which told me that this was something which had come from his Sights.  "It is more that because you have such a strong connection with the Ena, contact with you causes our own connection to come more into focus, to align correctly.  You aren't increasing our powers, you're triggering a state which we should be able to achieve on our own."

The upshot of which is that I got to spend the afternoon in the medical building, trying to reproduce my expanded state under clinical conditions for the benefit of the technicians.  Only Kaoren, Maze, Zan, Zee and Taarel had touched me while my head was off among the trees, and they all continue to be aware of this 'scent' or 'breeze' or whatever, even if they haven't figured out how to focus it.  Naturally I haven't been able to come anywhere close to doing it again, have just been giving myself a headache pushing myself to be able to detect everyone in Pandora and getting increasingly irritated at the group of people in the next room having a meeting about me.  I can't hear what they're saying, I just know that they're there.  Kaoren and the other people I extra-enhanced at least were stuck having lots of tests too.

He's so tremendously happy just being able to understand what he was missing, even if he can't reproduce the effect (yet).  We've been having a sporadic discussion over the interface about the implications, which are good for me in the long run, but suck in the short term, because every Setari on two planets would naturally appreciate having their connection to the Ena pointed out to them in the same way.  Lots of pressure for me to get into whatever you'd call today – a trance state, maybe?  Broadening of the mind?  They've decided the best thing to do is to have me repeat as much as possible of today at Mesiath to try and trigger the expansion.

I call that taking all the fun out of it.

Thursday, August 14

On Schedule

I surprised myself by being able to get all trancey again without a whole heap of frustrating days of trying.  Of course, Kaoren knows me more than well enough to work out the best way to achieve the result he wanted, making sure that I spent the morning doing more carting things about so that by the time it was lunch I really wanted a rest, and then getting me to locate and show him the miniature tree-weasels, and then chatting to me for a long while back in our secluded nook before telling me that I should attempt to locate all the Setari, but if I started getting the headaches and stress I was feeling yesterday afternoon to just stop – that the further expansion was quite possibly something I'd only be able to do on an infrequent basis.

Him and his psychological training.

At any rate, making beds and swimming about, and the early Autumn heat and sun had left me very drowsy, to the point where I almost fell asleep leaning against Kaoren's shoulder.  But – especially since I had really
liked
the sensation of being all expansive – I began looking about for different animals, and found it not at all difficult to follow the same route to expansion.  For a while I got caught up trying to sense smaller plants than the trees, but then just pushed out as far as I could.

I didn't exactly find a limit.  I felt I could keep going further, but I started to lose any awareness of what was happening immediately around me, which was a sensation I didn't like at all.  Kaoren and Maze had been staying with me the whole time, calling up squad members two at a time, and I got really confused when it seemed to me that I'd been left alone.  I had to kind of push back toward myself, and was relieved when my perception of my immediate surroundings came back.  Kaoren and Maze were still with me, along with Halla and Tsur Selkie, who had come along a little before I'd gotten confused.

Drawing back into myself made me realise I was really tired – and there was something on my head.  Maze had been talking – and it occurs to me to check my log, because second level monitoring does record sounds when you're asleep – Maze was talking about whether to try and move me, but broke off when I suddenly lifted my hand and patted at this sensor pad they'd fitted on me.  "Tricky," I said (unhelpfully in English) and promptly went to sleep until midday today.

There's this increasing list of things I can do which they're too scared to let me do.  This one because I stopped registering any higher brain function, and my breath and heartbeats were coming further and further apart.  They're planning another cautious expansion experiment, but not for a couple of weeks.

When Kaoren told me about the postponement of testing, I had to ask: "Is there some kind of order which says 'don't let Devlin do dangerous things until after the signing ceremony'?" and he told me "There is now."

He was looking terribly tired – he's sleeping on my lap at the moment.  Even after I came back to myself, I was showing abnormally low amounts of brain activity, so he sat with me until I woke up and had been cleared by medical – he says he had a backlog of reports to review anyway.  All my good intentions to not worry and stress Kaoren out aren't making any difference.

On the positive side of things, all the Setari on Muina are now aware of 'the wind of the Ena' or whatever analogy they're using at the moment.  They'd brought a drone along (without telling me) and were getting what readings they could off me and the Setari while I was trancing out.  The 'extra' enhancement only lasts while they're actually in contact with me – if they move away it drops down to the normal enhancement for the usual period.  The extra enhancement is also a bit too much for the Setari – it's not something they can endure for very long at all, and they think it might be dangerous for them to use high-energy talents while enhanced.

And I'm feeling really quite good.  No headache, very well rested.  Caught up with the latest episodes of
The Hidden War
(it's funny that Ghost showed up on Muina about a week after the episode where Ghost arrived in
The Hidden War
).  This new episode aired a few days ago and Mori had already warned me what was in it, but I'd not got around to watching it yet.  It was a big double-episode covering everyone getting knocked out by the aether at the Pillar, the retrieval mission, Ghost showing up in my hospital room, and then Kaoren asking me what I'd meant about aether being moonlight.  I think these were meant to be separate episodes and they were just showing them back to back because the timing ties up very conveniently with the signing ceremony.  The next episode, which will almost certainly be the Muina mission where I give the squads with me security clearance, airs on Tare in two days, which happens to be the day when everyone's supposed to start arriving here.

It's only four days until the signing ceremony.  And, urg, I just had about a million things added to my schedule.  Lunches and dinners with people, tours of sites, an open-air concert, and then the signing ceremony and the celebratory banquet.  I pulled my sickie a few days too early, though I suppose I could have a shot at 'experimenting' with mind expansion the day before the signing and then getting to spend the day in bed.  I get the feeling just pretending to have a sore throat isn't going to be enough to get me out of this.

At least, looking at his calendar, they've had the sense to schedule Kaoren to be with me all the time.  And Maze, it seems.

Bleh, and Fifth Squad's just arrived.

Friday, August 15

Comedic Set Piece

Woke up just before dawn because I could hear the Ddura making the hunting noise.  And then Ghost came pelting out of nowhere, dived under the covers and tried to hide underneath me, all shaking and trembling.  When she reached me the note of the Ddura's call changed, to the confused sound it makes when it's puzzled about new arrivals and their faked security passes.

I hadn't even thought of that, when Ghost showed up.  That the Ddura would hunt her.  I could tell Kaoren had, by the complete lack of surprise he showed when I woke him, and the faint hint of relief that I hadn't had to watch my cat get slaughtered.  I asked him why he hadn't warned me, so I could have sent her back to Tare, but he pointed out that it was more a matter of warning Ghost, since they had little chance of preventing her from simply returning, even if they managed to get her to leave.

Kaoren and I wrangled over whether it was a good idea not to warn me about things I couldn't do anything about (not an argument – we've managed not to properly argue with each other yet – we really don't want to).  Then I checked and found that Nils was awake, so opened a channel and explained what had happened, and asked if he could take Ghost back with him when Second returns to Tare.  He said 'Of course'.  I think he was really worried about her – she'd been sleeping on his stomach, and woken him up in a total panic and then bolted off.

I made an attempt to reconcile Ghost and Kaoren, but she was very busy trying to hide in my armpit, and didn't seem at all interested in forgiving him for levitating her.  Before this morning, Ghost wouldn't stay around at all when Kaoren is with me – she goes and rides around on Nils instead.  She's with him now, but she stuck with me obsessively while we were out and about today.