Stray (Touchstone)

by Höst, Andrea K.

  "The best analogy is an amplifying container. A limited number of talents fit into the container without any particular effect. Too many, and the container is torn. The different 'sizes' of the talents also appears to be relevant. Until further notice, multiple contact is forbidden absolutely. Surion, your squad will move on to testing the effects of enhancement upon each individual talent available to First. A controlled test within the Ena of that category of skills will be arranged. Namara, Twelfth Squad will cover First Squad's previously scheduled assignments for this rotation. Briefings have been transferred to your mission file."

  They all saluted, hand to chest. I just watched. Military equipment doesn't salute. After he had left, closely followed by Zan, everyone relaxed and Zee surprised me by hugging me and saying: "Now I don't have to be so anxious about accidentally killing you."

  I was glad for once that I was so bad at talking, since my immediate reaction was a sarcastic one about irreplaceable equipment, and First Squad don't deserve that kind of attitude from me. I was really relieved I'd been assigned to work with them, rather than Twelfth Squad. Zan I think I like, or would if she'd let me, but that Lenton guy isn't exactly high on my list of desirable people to be around.

  It was a long afternoon. No disasters, but between them they had a lot of talents and they examined them all carefully, finding occasional strange distortions, and drawing two tentative conclusions. If they try to use a talent on me when I'm enhancing them it will be distorted in some way, though they can use their talents on me so long as they're not enhanced by me. And the same if they try to use an Illusion talent while I'm enhancing them. They think that my supposed ability to make illusions somehow interferes with any projections they try while they're enhanced. I've yet to be able to produce anything like an illusion and though Alay tried to talk me through different methods people use, I still didn't get anywhere.

  Although they were cheerful and upbeat, First stayed relatively formal and correct and I took my cue from the way they were using their surnames and was careful to remember that they were on duty and were probably recording everything to put in reports, or being watched by who knows how many people.

  But when Zee, who had to go to medical to have her leg checked, was escorting me back to my box I took a chance to ask a few questions.

  "Twelfth Squad, what mean do First assignment? Pick which Ionoth kill?"

  "We're assigned particular sections of the Ena to patrol, and clear them of potential threats before they have a chance to find a way into real space. Twelfth Squad will be clearing the sections we would have been working."

  Something about the way she said it made me ask: "That not good thing?"

  She grimaced. "Twelfth is the newest of the squads, and have little practical experience in the more complex situations you can encounter in the Ena. Our assignment will be an extreme test for them."

  Hard to say whether Zan would be pleased about that or not. "Why rest Setari so different First Squad?"

  "Different?" Zee asked, but I'd bet she knew what I meant.

  "Too serious. Competitive. Less...human."

  She thought about it a long time before answering. "The senior Setari started the program later and early on lived with our families, attending KOTIS like it was a school. When we began to show positive results, the program was intensified, the talented living onsite and allowed few visits with their families. The younger Setari started earlier and were pushed harder and further and so are stronger than us. And we will need that strength. But they were given little chance to be children, and like us they're burdened by the magnitude of the task. Without the Setari program, Tare would be a world of street battles and lurking death." She opened the door to my box, and gave me an unhappy shrug. "The younger Setari, don't misunderstand them. They are weapons. But they are not so different from you."

  I thought about this for a long time after Zee left. Mainly about how much harder and further they'd be willing to push me. But also about growing up knowing you stood between your family and monsters.

  Wednesday, February 6

  Outfitting

  All my morning appointments with Zan have changed to morning appointments with Mara. For me last week revolved entirely around seeing Zan, and now for all I know I'll never work with her again, and I really can't see her showing up unexpectedly and taking me to eat fondue. The problem fidgeted around my head half the morning, and eventually I composed a little thank you note, doing my best to make it grammatically correct and everything – though I think that made it worse – and emailed it to her. She treated me as an assignment, but she never called me 'it'. And I really enjoyed looking at her apartment, which is something she didn't have to show me and something I bet she's pretty private about.

  Mara is far more of a taskmaster with my dodging training. I suppose they've decided I'm healthy enough to step it up a little. She started with stretches and steps and all that stuff, but then she brought out a basket of balls and said I had to dodge them and threw them at me, one after another, harder and faster each time. Not at all martial arts-like, but effective at making me want to dodge.

  And also very glad to stop, which we did when Lohn showed up to take us to lunch. I get the distinct impression that Lohn and Mara are a couple, for all they don't hang all over each other. Hell, for all I know they could be married. Even in the same canteen, it's very different eating lunch with Lohn and Mara – particularly Lohn. He talks non-stop and makes big gestures with his hands, sprawls back taking up two chairs, and chats with every person who passes by. He's the anti-Zan. All the Setari he talks to unbend to him at least a little. One of the people from Second Squad, a woman named Jeh Omai, joined us. Second Squad is the other 'senior' Setari squad, and Jeh is calm and relaxed and treats Lohn as if he's an overlarge but endearing great dane puppy.

  With me she was straightforwardly curious, and asked me quite a few questions about what it was like to live on Muina. She's actually the first person to ask me anything about that since Nenna's friends, so I told her about trying to make a blanket, and that one of the first things I did when I briefly had the wide-ranging interface access was to look up how to make soap (basically oil and ashes, which I don't see how it can turn into soap, but whatever). Mara said that very few of the Setari had even been to Muina, that it was considered so dangerous that even the squads who were cleared for an investigative mission there weren't allowed to stay for more than a few hours, and that I was amazingly lucky to have survived. Lohn said First Squad had won itself a good luck charm, and I told him that Devlin actually meant 'unlucky'. I think he thought I was joking.

  After lunch, Mara took me off to teach me about clothes. We went down to what I think must be a commissary, and I was given a light, stretchy black harness – a triangle at the back with two straps you slip your arms into and another which went around my ribs and joined like toffee when I held the ends together. Mara had me strip to my underwear in a cubicle and put on the harness and then 'assume the position' – the thinking about doing a star jump pose for spray-on swimsuits. This time I ended up in a Setari uniform.

  There's a mirrored wall in the cubicles, and I spent a long time staring at myself. Barely recognisable as the girl who walked home from her exams and missed her path. My skin had tanned on Muina, since I was outside so much, but that's faded a lot and other than a few acne scars and tiny freckles it's looking pretty good. I seem to have developed a jaw line, which wearing a tight throat-hugging collar certainly emphasised, but my figure isn't nearly up to Setari standards. I look like a gawky crow. My hair has gone blonder than I expected, with only the lower layers brown – again that's from being out in the sun so much – and it's grown a couple of inches. I've been wearing it in a loose braid most of the time to keep it out of the way. I haven't suddenly become beautiful or anything – my mouth is still too wide and I've always thought my nose a bit too long – but I was looking better than I expected and not really me at all.

  I feel like the long
er I'm here, the less chance I'll have of going back, and that putting on this uniform somehow made it nearly impossible. Like I've visited Faerie and stupidly eaten the food.

  Mara asked if I'd fallen asleep, so I came out, and something about the way she looked at me made me feel I was right about the Faerie food. No-one's ever asked me to join KOTIS or offered any kind of choice at all. They did rescue me from Muina before I was eaten, though. And they're fighting against monsters and I can help with that, in possibly the most passive way imaginable, but still apparently I might be useful. Just because I've never said yes, or been given the chance to say no, doesn't mean I haven't agreed to anything.

  Enhancing the Setari is a better option than washing dishes, which is where I'd probably have ended up as just another stray. They're more interested in finding Earth now, as well, and while I'm not keen on many of the possibilities of being useful to the Setari, I'm trying to focus on the day-to-day and not what the rest of my life is likely to be.

  Suits made of nanoliquid are beyond weird to wear. The harness is a specific control mechanism for the nanites which doesn't rely on the wearer's personal interface, and lets the Setari do all sorts of fun stuff with their suits. Make them thicker, give themselves kneepads, make the gloves cover the whole hand or go away altogether. Make pockets. You could probably even stick yourself to another Setari. Mara taught me how to manipulate mine and then told me to play for a while. Tomorrow we're going to go into the Ena to test out how my amplification works there, and to try a couple of talents which don't work in actual space. We're not going to be fighting Ionoth or anything, but it's still all a bit daunting.

  Thursday, February 7

  Glimpse

  The excursion into the Ena was scheduled for the morning, so no dodging practice. Mara collected me, made sure I brought my uniform harness, and took me to the nearest "nano-changing room". I think the Setari must have these in their own apartments, rather than having to leave their clothes in little lockers about the place.

  I didn't like walking through the facility in uniform, and almost wished they'd given me my own colour or something, for all that it would make me stand out more. But I'm willing to bet that the black nanosuit is something that these people earn, not just parade about in. I was glad I'd made the effort to do my hair really neatly in a French braid, but I still felt vaguely like I was going to be arrested for the equivalent of impersonating a police officer. And for a moment there it felt like Maze and Lohn and Zee didn't even recognise me. Lohn at least murmured "All grown up," before getting serious and professional. Going into the Ena is the most formal I've ever seen First Squad when a bluesuit isn't around. Because, even though we were going to the safest bit they could find, the Ena is dangerous.

  The blast doors emphasised that point. KOTIS was built on this island because it's a very 'torn' space and there are lots of places where it's easy to get from actual space to the Ena, and vice versa. Wherever they find one of these torn spots on Tare, they build a metal box around it, with doors that only the nastiest of monsters could hope to claw their way through.

  While we were waiting for clearance, Maze set up a group channel or 'space' in the interface for the squad, started a mission log which would record everything we did, and then talked me through what was going to happen.

  "We have three objectives today. To test your enhancement on the talents which are only effective in the Ena. To see if there's any variation with the talents we've already tested due to the different environment. And to orient you in the Ena, since you stepped directly from your world to Muina, and you were sedated when you were transported from Muina to Tare. The Ena is a very disorienting place, visually overwhelming in places, and at the same time it intensifies the senses. Tell us immediately if you start experiencing any kind of sickness or distress.

  "Annan and Gainer will accompany you at all times while we are in the Ena. Don't move anywhere without them. If we encounter any situation which requires moving quickly, they will move you. Do not run. Above all, do not enter any of the gates without clearance. Do you understand all that?"

  "Yes," I said, in such a small voice I sounded about five.

  Maze crinkled the corner of his eyes encouragingly at me before going on. "We are unlikely to encounter Ionoth in this section, but it always remains a possibility. Depending on the type, we may choose to deal with it. You'll be kept well out of the way if that's the case. Anything serious, and we'll return you to actual space before approaching it."

  By this time the big door had opened, and we moved into the spacious metal box. I couldn't see any sign of visible tears in the world, but then I hadn't when I walked from Earth to Muina either. The interface obligingly drew a triangle of light in the air in front of us, showing where we should walk. Maze and Mara went first and then me with Zee and Alay on either side of me. I was finding all the surnames confusing, so it's good that I'd been given back name display and could see Zee Annan and Alay Gainer floating over their heads.

  I didn't feel any sense of resistance walking through the triangle, but I certainly felt the cold. That was something they hadn't mentioned, that the Ena is perhaps 10 or 15 degrees Celsius. And the weird thing was, we were still in the metal containment box, and the door was closed, but most of the walls were missing – or, not missing. If you've ever seen a drawing someone's made, where they start with the line art and then colour it in, we were in a version of the box where the line art was there, but only half of it was coloured in. Kind of.

  Anyway, it meant we could walk out of the box through one of the 'uncoloured' sections of wall. I felt like I was walking into a half-complete animation for Setari: the CGI Movie. We were where we'd been before, but with all the people and lots of the 'textures' missing. This was the part of the Ena they call near-space, and it was truly weird.

  It did make me feel more alive. I don't know if it was the cold, or a sense that the gravity was lighter there, or just...mystic spooky stuff, but I felt hyper-alert and awake. Maybe the air there has adrenaline in it. Everyone was waiting to see how I reacted, so I smiled and shrugged and Maze nodded and started off.

  It took me a while to recognise the gates for what they were, scattered through the construction zone of a world. Some glinted and some were dark. It was only when we rounded the corner into a patch where there was nothing above us but a dark sketch of a sky and...thousands of them. It was like someone had taken an ocean's worth of mirror and shattered it and flung the pieces to spin in every direction, but every piece reflected not what was before it but some other place. Other space.

  We didn't walk far, stopping at a jagged rift about the size of a car: all brilliant green intensity. Through it was grass, and rolling hills, and a pale blue sky paling to white. Huge tumbled stones, like blocks for an ancient grey castle. Most of this was intact, coloured in, but the edges of the space were fading out into mist.

  "Try not to touch any edges stepping through. Gates can be fragile, and tearing them attracts Iono–"

  Maze stepped through as he spoke, lifting his feet carefully, and I noticed that passing through not only cut off the sound, but that 'no connection' had appeared in the group channel display where Maze should be. When I stepped through myself there was a soap-bubble sensation, and the air changed again, bringing an over-emphasised sense of grassiness. There were a lot fewer of the pieces of broken mirror here, which might be why they chose it.

  "Spaces what exactly?" I asked, realising how limited the horizon was. This wasn't what I'd pictured at all.

  "One day perhaps we'll have a definitive answer on that," Zee said, while Maze and Mara had a scan-the-area-for-enemies moment. "For now, my favourite definition of it is that they're the sloughed-off memories of living worlds, crystallised and decaying fragments of the past tumbling and interconnecting."

  I suppose if someone had taken a billion jigsaws and mixed all the pieces together and then had them connect up randomly so you could move from piece to piece you'd get the same effe
ct, but Zee's explanation was much more poetic.

  "Ionoth memories inhabitants of worlds?" I asked, and saw I'd managed to surprise them.

  "That's one of the possibilities," Lohn said. "Maybe part of Muina's histories survived on your world after all."

  "We lots entertaining fantasy," I said. No-one seems to believe me when I say Earth wasn't settled by Muinans.

  "Looks clear," Maze said, coming back to us. "Let's get started."

  The testing was much the same as all the testing we've been doing, with me contributing a lot of standing about. I wish I could at least figure out how to make these illusions. Still, it was entertaining watching Maze throw the stone blocks at one another, creating fantastic explosions of rock and dust. Most of the skills First Squad hadn't already tried seemed to work, and they were pleased about one which involved the gates, but I was more than glad when they decided it was time to head back.

  And then, as we were walking back to the gate we'd entered by, there was a small gate, twice the size of my head. And through it, something so familiar my heart almost stopped. I certainly stopped, and my internal recording shows me how quickly Zee and Alay reacted, shifting around in my peripheral vision, flanking me. At the time, all I could see was It.

  "That's what your world looks like?" Maze asked, eventually.

  I shrugged, feeling so betrayed I wanted to scream. "Some parts. Australia lots red dirt. Sky – that quality light – I forgotten how big sky is. That right sort tree." Then I scrubbed at my face and added in English: "Crying over a fricking gum tree. How pathetic can I get?"

  I made myself stop. Made myself say something that would get them moving. Made myself hold it in, at least until we were back on Tare and I could say I was tired and wanted a shower. None of First Squad were under any illusion about how I was feeling, but they had sense enough to know they couldn't fix it, and were kind enough to leave me with a short stop at medical and then to my room.