Stray (Touchstone)

by Höst, Andrea K.

  "If ever go my world," I told her, treading water. "Teach you how to surf."

  I'm a better swimmer than Zan is. And they don't use the freestyle stroke, just breaststroke, so she asked me to teach her. And we're doing swimming practice every afternoon until further notice. Today was a great day.

  Saturday, February 2

  Ructions

  Zan is now teaching me how to fall. Or how to throw myself on padded mats without too much bruising or unnecessary giggling. I find it hard to take seriously, and no matter what else I think or feel about Zan, I have to admire her patience. I think that it's causing her a lot of trouble to babysit me, too, unless the Setari are just plain nasty to each other out of habit.

  The nastiness came out during this afternoon's swimming session. Zan's picking up freestyle quickly (Australian crawl, really, but everyone I know calls it freestyle), but it'll take her a bit to really get into it, so we were having a race with breaststroke. I'm okay with short races, but if I try and do more than a couple of laps I run out of pep.

  But I can beat her in a short dash, and was terribly pleased about it. Problem was, so were the people watching us. Three Setari, two guys and a girl, and one of the guys was standing right on the edge of the pool where we touched. Gave me quite a fright, looking up and finding all this blacksuited leg and chest. I pushed back from the edge, just as Zan reached it, but they were more interested in her than me anyway.

  I don't know if Zan had managed to figure out they were there before she looked up, but from what I could see of her face, she didn't act surprised.

  "Truly, Namara, I'm starting to feel embarrassed for you," said the guy. He had an amazing voice, really beautiful, and so wasted on such a putz. "Bad enough your squad's been pulled off rotation so you can demonstrate infant-level combat skills, but now you're actually being outdone by a stray."

  Zan reminds me of a drowned kitten when she's wet. Her hair sleeks down and makes her eyes look really big. The guy was so tall, and Zan being down in the water must have felt at a real disadvantage. But all she did was move to one side, haul herself easily out, and go pick up one of the towels.

  "Can I help you with something, Kajal?" she asked, once she'd dried her face.

  "Not swimming, obviously." The guy was irritated that he'd not managed to get a reaction out of Zan, but made out he wasn't bothered, laughing. "Lenton's chances are looking better each day."

  The Setari girl standing behind him touched his arm. "It's an unfortunate situation," she said, in a much more reasonable tone. "Twelfth Squad may have lost out on this rotation altogether, and Lenton does need to be taught to keep his temper. Worse still, I doubt the stray will be assigned to Twelfth Squad, if they do use it in the Ena. It's very unfair on you."

  I was glad I'd kept moving away, was at least ten metres from the edge. Not only was the girl enjoying a few sly digs at Zan while pretending to be nice, but she'd called me it! I'm not totally incapable of understanding the nuances of spoken Taren. Stupid idiots were acting like I was a performing animal, not a person.

  It occurred to me then that I no longer had the function which displays all the names of people over their heads. A full month after Sa Lents showed me how to use it, and I'd forgotten all about it since the accident. I don't see what they achieved by making it so I couldn't use it, but it was probably related to me losing almost all the other 'public' functions. I was able to call up the recorded memory of the Setari briefing, though, and work out that the Kajal guy was captain of the Fifth Squad, and the girl was captain of the Seventh. The other guy was also from the Seventh Squad. What they were trying to achieve with all the dick waving I couldn't guess.

  At least they left after that, though another person showed up as Zan was turning back toward me. I was too far away to hear what she said, since her voice was soft, but Zan smiled at her, and then shrugged. So she's not totally without friends. I practiced swimming underwater for a couple of minutes, till Zan told me that was enough for the day. It's going to take a while to get used to people being able to talk in my head when I'm upside-down in a swimming pool.

  I didn't bug her with questions while she escorted me back, didn't really feel equal to it. Was even glad to be back in my room so I could get in the shower and cry myself sick.

  I do almost all my crying in the shower. I'm still not sure how much they monitor me while I'm in my room, and I'm really hoping that I get at least a little privacy. The shower lets me pretend I'm hiding the bad days. This was worse than usual. It's going to be my birthday soon, and Mum had promised to organise a family and friends party at our house, and then Nick, Alyssa and I had permission to go out to actual nightclubs afterwards, so long as we stayed together and friends who hadn't turned eighteen yet didn't come with us. Nick was coming along to 'protect' us, which I of course thought was a fantastic idea for all the wrong reasons. Alyssa and I put so much effort into setting that up, all for nothing.

  I will never be Cass here. Even if I was still staying with the Lents, I would always be this 'stray' first and foremost and above everything else. I have this label and there's no way to take it off. Even if I adapt to the stupid language and the nanites, all the things I spent years learning, all the stories and people which shaped me aren't here. No-one's read the novels I've read. No-one likes the music I like. No-one on this planet will be able to score people on the Orlando Bloom-meter, the way Alyssa and I used to do with all the cute guys. The only thing which speaks English is this damn diary, which I guess is why I still keep it.

  I'm so homesick I could scream.

  Sunday, February 3

  A wan shadow

  No training today. Zan took one look at me this morning and sent me straight for medical exams. I had to work very hard to convince them that the swimming wasn't the problem, and I look really exhausted and drained just because I couldn't get to sleep. Leaving out the bit about crying half the night and giving myself the hugest headache in the process. At least this let me know that they mustn't be monitoring me too closely in my room.

  But I ended up spending almost all the day in the medical section, prodded and poked and sitting in machines while they got distracted trying to figure out how my enhancement abilities work. They've decided that the number of abilities an individual Setari has might increase the strain on my system when I enhance them. Which is why Zan is training me, since she has only the one. The experiment enhancing three from First Squad at once messed up so badly because between them those three had seventeen talents. Maze has eight all on his own, and apparently there's a couple of Setari who have even more.

  I took the opportunity to have another argument with Ista Tremmar about why my interface had been cut back so much, and why I couldn't at least have the access I'd had before or straightforward things like being able to see names and so forth, but she just gave me a lecture about qualifying for privileges. It didn't work to point out that standard access was hardly a privilege, and how stupid it is to run tests which are timed for someone who has been learning their silly language since they were babies. Of course, my inability to speak that silly language with any fluidity made my arguments less than comprehensible.

  Ista Tremmar is very strict and by-the-book about a lot of things, but she did say she would review the speed of the tests. But she also told me the simplest thing would be for me to improve my language skills. Bleh.

  Monday, February 4

  Forward/Backward

  Even though I slept quite well last night, swimming practice has been postponed for a few days, which meant Zan delivered me back to my box to sit around again. On the up side, a few more of my interface functions were abruptly restored in the middle of stepping practice. No entertainment, but the minor environmental things like the names over people's heads. Still, dull day, especially since interface classes are trying to teach me subtraction now. I wish I could pick and choose what the lessons are.

  Kanza

  That was an infinitely better afternoon than I was e
xpecting. I'd only been back in my box a little while when there was a text popup in my head which is the equivalent of someone outside my room, knocking. Rare consideration, let me tell you, for a visitor to not just open the door.

  It was Lohn and Mara, come to kidnap me for lunch. While this was probably their own version of 'not overlooking the psychological aspects', I had a huge amount of trouble not bubbling over with glee and going completely hyper. Not only did I get to spend some time with the nicest people on this stupid island, but they even planned on taking me outside KOTIS grounds.

  The island that the Setari use as a base is called Konna, and is about 20% military facilities and 80% supporting city. The city's called Konna, too, and was here before KOTIS was established. It was really nice to get out to see atriums and shops, and people not wearing uniforms, and there were plants and advertising and snatches of music and scents of cooking food and everything that the Setari base is not. They even do fake skies, and internal parks and while it can't entirely escape Huge Shopping Mall Syndrome, it was such a nice change.

  We went to an 'outdoor' plaza, with cafés (no coffee or hot chocolate!) arranged around a plant-filled square where kids were running about and someone was busking. Actually busking. Being stuck with the Setari had me convinced that this was such a totally controlled society, though my time with Nenna should have taught me otherwise. I'm guessing there's little chance that they'll let me live out here.

  The place we went to eat was called "Mimm" and Lohn sat me in the corner of a big booth and then he and Mara sat either side of me with a careful gap so that we didn't touch. They bracketed me as we travelled through the city too, making sure people didn't bump me. I thought that pretty funny, since it's the Setari touching me which is the problem. Most ordinary people wouldn't have nearly enough talent to hurt me. The food was near enough to fondue as to make no difference (though I've no idea what they make the cheese from, and really would prefer not to find out), which seemed hugely out of place on an alien planet, but very yummy! The rest of First Squad showed up just as it was arriving, and I was sorry to see that Maze's hand was covered in a blue square of bandage tape, and that Zee was walking with a limp.

  Maze gave my shirt a quick frown – I'd forgotten about my mascot altogether – and then asked me lots of questions about Earth food and I ended up spending the entire lunch talking. About fondue and then Nordic countries and skiing, a thing they don't do here at all, and then we swapped different sports that there's no equivalent to on either world. Taren sports are mostly indoors, unsurprisingly, except for some kind of air races. There's so many Earth sports that don't fit well here. Golf and skiing and riding just for starters.

  They'd booked a Kanza court for after lunch. Kanza is a very strange game like hockey crossed with mini-golf crossed with Pac-man, except the pucks hover and skim and ricochet madly over the surface of three intersecting recessed circles. The court was in the centre of a grassy amphitheatre where people were eating picnic lunches and watching the games. You play in teams of three and you stand on the edge and hit your pucks all out at once and try and not go in any of the holes until you've passed over all the little floating balls of light. If you keep your puck in play you get bonus pucks. It's tremendously fast-paced and silly and Maze is idiotically good at it so I was glad to be on his and Lohn's team. Zee sat out because of her leg, and Mara, Alay and Ketzaren were the opposing team and Ketzaren turned out to be really dry and funny and made this hilarious commentary and Lohn really played up to her. I nearly fell into the rink a couple of times from laughing.

  After our final round, while Mara's team was playing, Maze and Lohn went off to get everyone something to drink. I was really tired from all the laughing, and sat with Zee watching the growing audience cheering Mara and Alay playing a duo game when I noticed a couple of people I recognised. The Third Squad captain's twirly hair makes her pretty hard to miss, even when she's not in the black uniform. She was standing up the top of the small amphitheatre with another girl, staring down with a really fixed lack of expression. I wasn't surprised that it was Maze she was watching – half the audience was panting over him or Lohn and most of the rest were drooling over either Mara or Zee. Really, there's hardly any of the Setari who aren't above average in looks. It must be a job requirement.

  I made sure to not be looking at the Third Squad captain by the time Lohn and Maze got back with the drinks, but I wondered if I'd earned myself an enemy because Maze handed me a drink and sat beside me and smiled and said I had to concede that this was better than a long walk occasionally hitting little balls, which is how I'd described golf. It's hard not to enjoy it when someone so gorgeous and nice pays me attention. But even though it's only six or seven years' difference, all the people I know on Earth who are in their mid-twenties are teachers, so I do feel out of place around First Squad. I'm fairly sure Maze doesn't mean anything, is just being kind and thoughtful. And there's a sense that underneath it all, he's unhappy. I keep feeling sorry for him.

  When I was delivered back to my box, I was on enough of a high to not let the Fourth Squad captain's 'psychological aspects' drown out my thanks. I think they all enjoyed themselves too and were genuinely curious about Earth, so it wasn't like the excursion was a total pity party. And then I napped for what was left of the day and woke up in the middle of the night and really I have the weirdest life right now.

  Tuesday, February 5

  A very busy day

  I had an early appointment with Sa Lents. And I knew about it beforehand! I had a further boost of my interface functions, and found I have an appointment calendar. I can look forward and see what they've scheduled for me for the rest of the year. I literally do have appointments an entire Taren year ahead. Almost all medical examinations. I don't know if the increase in function is down to Zan, or Maze, or even the conversation I had with Ista Tremmar, but it's a relief to almost be a person again.

  The appointments with Sa Lents are always uncomfortable. I ask about Nenna, and he assures me she's improving. She only wrote to me a couple of times, and then didn't reply to the last email I sent and I tell myself that she's probably in a lot of pain and not exactly in a chatty mood. It's hard to imagine Nenna not being chatty though, and whatever else happens, I've changed Nenna forever and I think about that all the time when I'm talking to her father.

  I tried to hide it by pressing him comparing dates on Earth to the things that are supposed to have happened on Muina, and he conceded that it sounds like Earth is very atypical. I think Earth is beginning to make him really uncomfortable. It's one thing for him to document another 'lost world' which fits the known pattern, and something altogether more difficult to try and fit a 'pre-dispersal settlement' into the mix. Especially when I gave him my theory for Muinans originally being Earthlings.

  Tarens clearly resemble both Asian and Caucasian people – or what you'd get if Asian and Caucasian people had babies for a few thousand years. Some people with pink skin and 'round eyes'. Some people with skin in golden shades and epicanthic folds on their eyes. And pink-skinned people with epicanthic folds, golden-skinned people with round eyes, or blue eyes, or darker skin, and every combination you can think of. I tried explaining to Sa Lents that he looks Japanese or Korean, but gave up the attempt because my language skills just aren't up to it, and he was smiling politely and not believing me at all. I'm not sure Tarens even have the concept of race as we do on Earth. Sa Lents acted as if I was explaining that red haired people were a distinct species from blonde haired people.

  I don't know. If the Muinans really come from Earth, why isn't Earth full of psychic people? Or why doesn't Earth have stories of cultures ruled by psychics? The Egyptians had their god-kings, true, but they weren't like those on Stargate. Hm – must watch Tarens carefully in case their eyes flash mysteriously.

  After Sa Lents, it was my regular session with Zan. If possible, she was even more formal and correct than ever, and not at all communicative. I thought about trying some p
ersonal questions afterwards, while we were eating lunch in the canteen, but there were a fair few Setari there and though I never saw anyone actually looking at us, I felt very centre of attention, so I played obedient student and asked what few questions I could think of about the training she was giving me. I don't know whether to feel sorry for Zan or not. For all I know she's done something to deserve people being nasty to her. But I don't see any reason to give them any ammunition.

  Next up was the big test chamber, this time with Zan, all of First Squad, and an in-the-flesh bluesuit, a man named Sur Gidds Selkie. Bluesuits definitely seem to be the military people in charge. 'Sur' is his rank. Squad captains are "See". Lots of ranks and titles start with an 'S' sound but with just the faintest 'z' overtone to it. Now that I can display names (title option on) again, I see I've been spelling them wrong. Not an 's' or 'z', so much as 'ts'. 'Tsa', 'Tsur' and 'Tsee'.

  Tsur Selkie was a slender, quite short guy who could probably do a great Clint Eastwood imitation if he had any idea who that was. All the wrong colouring and everything, but a totally 'chipped from flint' attitude. And I think he's the one making most of the decisions about me. First Squad were really correct around him, though not nearly as formal as Zan, who scaled new heights of expressionlessness. He didn't speak directly to me at all.

  This was the first serious testing of the effects of my enhancement since my health break. They started out with Zan, and I had the distinct impression that there was something about Tsur Selkie personally observing which meant they expected to get more information from watching her again. Once Zan had picked blocks up and moved them around for a while, they swapped to Maze doing the same thing. Then they very warily had Zan and Maze touching me at the same time, and using Telekinesis at the same time. I didn't feel anything, as usual, but Tsur Selkie seemed to find something significant in it all, because he nodded and said: