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.
I thought it was real. Just for that second, before I saw the fraying edges, I thought that was Earth. I can still feel the way my stomach twisted, the way every part of me leapt through stillness into roaring joy, and then crashed.
All the feelings I've been trying to hold back, all my struggles to resign myself to being this stray, this person out of place and never really belonging, they've risen up to drown me. And tomorrow's my birthday. For a brief second I thought I had a chance, that I could go home and be there for my birthday and I just don't know if I can stand this awful pit that's opened up in me after that moment of belief.
I want to go home.
Monday, February 11
Happy Birthday
I was sitting on my bed when I woke up. MY bed. My bed, my room, my world.
Just, not quite.
Somehow I'd ended up in Earth's near-space. The cold tipped me off immediately, even before I saw the great big sections of wall lacking any substance. I was horribly chilled, cold with a deep ache in my bones, like I'd been sitting outside in Winter. Sydney's Winters aren't exactly sub-zero, but you don't feel happy about life if you sit out in them wearing a pair of underpants and a thigh-length t-shirt.
But, oh gods, cold was the last thing I cared about right then. I had no idea how I'd managed it, but somehow I'd ended up THIS far away from exactly where I wanted to be. I jumped up, and staggered a bit since I was very stiff, like I'd been there a while, then pulled open the door. Touching and moving things in near-space was like being underwater. I could lift objects, but things which should be light needed more push, and things I expected to be heavy were buoyed up unexpectedly.
At first I was just looking. All those trivial domestic things which were familiar and right and how things should be done, instead of the way they're done on Tare. Which were MINE. I started recording it, a thing which is becoming more automatic with me. Storing memories to re-examine later.
A lot was missing. The walls and furniture, the bigger and more permanent objects, were solid enough, but most smaller objects were a haze where I could almost make out the outline of what should be there, but it was more a smudge than any kind of substance. The bookshelves were full of the impression of books, blocky and colourful, but there were only one or two shelves – the shelves where Mum keeps her favourites – where I could make out titles or pick anything up.
The back garden was unexpectedly real. Mum likes having a garden, but she doesn't spend a lot of time on it, and goes for a cottage garden look: masses of plants and no neat borders or parts which need to be constantly weeded. The plants, the leaves, flowers, were all there. It even had some of the scent, though everything was flattened by a tinny greyness. No blue sky, but a washed out watercolour slate.
I'd gone outside to look for gates. I'd been able to see the gate we'd used in Tare's near-space, so I figured my best bet was to look through all the nearby gates until I found one which led to planet instead of Ena and then see whether I was able to get through it.
No gates. None visible, anyway. I went out to the street and walked down it, looking for any sign, the bitumen very gritty beneath my bare feet but oddly warmer than most everything else. I knew that Muina and Tare were in an area that is considered 'shattered', which is why they have so much trouble with Ionoth, but it seemed Earth's near-space was signally lacking ways in and out of it.
I don't know why I wasn't more scared. I think the cold had blunted my common sense. I knew on a mental level that, rather than being right where I wanted, I was in serious shit. If ever a world 'memory' would have monsters, it would be Earth's. Monsters wearing the faces of people, monsters which did the most awful things to each other, and that didn't even count current and past non-human predators, let alone the creatures we liked to make up. For all that Australia's one of the safest places you could possibly live, plenty of bad things have happened there. And I was also cold and hungry and could die of that as readily as being eaten.
But I was numb to thoughts of danger, and just returned to the outline of my home and sat down on the back patio steps. I couldn't work out how I'd gotten there, but was sure it wasn't a dream. The most I could think of doing was to try and find something tangible enough to keep me warm, and then to wander around randomly hoping I could find a gate.
The spaces seem to be quiet places, and the only noise I'd heard had been something like wind or static, distant but ever-present. I don't think I heard anything else at all, but I felt a sudden tingle all through me and a sense of something passing. I jerked upright, realising I'd nearly fallen asleep, and stared over my shoulder at the familiar boards of the patio and the sliding door into the kitchen.
Shadows. The patio table and chairs, sketchily half there, and shadows. Just the faintest hint of shapes, of people, which seemed to get fainter or darker as I moved my head. It didn't occur to me for a moment that they might be Ionoth. Filled with hope, I stood and began casting about, walking back and forth until I found the best spot to see them, standing right in the frame of the sliding door, facing outwards. I knew Dad straight away – he's tall and he tends to stoop. Mum was sitting down. The short shadow had to be Jules. Just there, right in front of me.
I knew shouting was pointless – I'd already seen that sound didn't carry across. Reaching out with my fingers and trying to tear a hole did nothing. It was all just air, with no edges I could catch. But with just an odd thickness which reminded me of the gates First Squad had taken me through. I concentrated on that, on the idea of resistance, of there being something between my world and me, something that if I could only touch, I could push against. I didn't reach out again, but leaned, feeling that thickness against my cheek, watching and willing those shadows to take on form, to let me see them properly.
It became amazingly difficult really quick, like pushing against a rubber wall that resisted after only a little stretching, but with each millimetre came more details. The aunts were there, and Nick. It was overcast, but not raining. Everyone had come over for lunch on my birthday, even my Dad and Nick. Nick had bruises all down one side of his face. Mum had Mimmit, our calico cat, on her lap, and she looked so worn and tired and unlike herself and I knew that was all because of me and pushed harder and harder.
Mimmit suddenly arched and spat and scrambled off Mum's lap. And then Aunt Bet dropped her glass and Mum stared after Mimmit, then in the direction Mimmit had been hissing, and then she looked like she'd been stabbed.
Thank all the gods for sign language. I've never been particularly good at it, but what I can't remember I can spell. And I had no problems managing: "Not dead."
Jules reacted first, leaning forward and trying to touch my arm. He said something, while Mum squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. Dad tried to grab my shoulder, but other than a little tingling I couldn't feel him at all. I tried pushing against the wall, but I didn't seem to be able to go any further, and was feeling really exhausted just staying as far as I'd managed. But at least I could finally tell them what happened.
"Walk through wormhole," I signed. "Other planet."
That made Mum look totally incredulous and everyone started talking and trying to sign back at once. Aunt Sue grabbed her bag and pulled out her mobile phone, pointing it at me. I looked at Nick and signed: "What happen face?"
"Dad," he signed, which was enough of an explanation. When
Nick's Dad gets really drunk, he stops recognising people, and thinks he's being attacked. Nick can usually manage him, but it's not his first black eye. Yet he won't leave.
Nick gave me that grin which has always been one of my favourite things in the world, where bad stuff has been happening, but he's decided to sit back and make the most of the good. "WTF?" he added, pointing at me.
Explaining all of what had happened to me seemed so enormous. I tried.
"Walk home. Next, other planet forest. Walk days. Ruins. Empty. Then rescue psychic space ninjas." I shrugged at their expressions as I spelled, but it was the best explanation I had for the Setari. "Many world, monsters. Astral plane? They fight monsters. Found me, took me their planet. Tare. People me, strays. Gates – wormholes – everywhere. Monsters, people, walk through. Earth hardly any gates." I pushed at the air in front of me helplessly. "Looking for gate."
Mum's expression had slowly changed while she watched me sign. She'd decided she wasn't hallucinating, and being her took the story at face value.
"Monsters there with you?" she signed back.
"Not know. Not know how here."
"Why lab rat?"
I was beginning to regret my mascot: I wouldn't have told Mum that. All I could do was shrug. "Too many medical exams. But nanotech computer in head! Download language. Do school in bed."
Mum's expression – everyone's – changed in a way which made me look quickly over my shoulder, and saved me from being scared out of my skin by the Fourth Squad captain. He's even better than Zan at being all business, never surprised or impressed by anything. After glancing past me at my world and my family he just removed some black straps from his arm and held them out to me. My uniform harness.
I only just managed to say "Thank you," because I was being very surprised that the Setari had found me when I couldn't even guess how I'd gotten here.
"Space ninja?" Mum signed, as I slipped on the harness. I nodded and she looked him up and down a moment, then added: "Friend or enemy?"
Hopefully I didn't look too doubtful when I looked back. But luckily the Fourth Squad captain was drawing off a pad of solidified nanoliquid which had been attached to his suit, and not looking at my expression.
"There are no tears that I can see in this world's wall," he said. "If you succeed in breaking through here, Ionoth will flood to this point."
I flinched, because I hadn't thought about that at all. "Say I put you danger," I signed, and watched as Mum frowned and Dad looked suspicious. Then the Fourth Squad captain pressed the pad of nanoliquid to the centre of the harness where it crossed my back and the suit flowed over me, bringing immediate warmth. I hadn't realised how cold I'd been.
"Venom!" Jules signed, his face lit up. He loves the Spiderman movies.
I smiled at him, but then said: "Can find gate?"
"There are none in this area, possibly no tears at all into your world. There may be natural gates, but they are immensely rare."
This wasn't exactly 'no', but I doubted I could force him to do anything, even if he could find a natural gate. "What realistic chances Tare find way get me home?"
He was looking behind us now, that attentive survey familiar from my day with First Squad: searching for Ionoth. "Before today's excursion, I would have said none. Especially having seen how far from the centre of the fractures this is. But if you can reproduce whatever you did to track your world, quite obviously reaching this planet's near-space is possible."
The near-space, yes. But even if I could travel here at will, I couldn't get further, and there was absolutely no way I was going to be the first person to tear a hole in Earth's protection against monsters.
They must have seen it in my face, when I turned back. Dad said something, looking upset, and Mum's hands closed on the arms of her chair.
"Have to go back. Don't know ever find gate not hurt Earth. Chance low." It was getting really hard not to cry. "Miss you so much."
"Can I come?" Jules signed enthusiastically, and then gaped as the Fourth Squad captain turned – quite casually – and skewered some thing leaping at us from the outline of the lounge room door. It looked like a spider made of rusty nails and old tyre rubber, which really isn't what I expected Ionoth to look like, and as he held it up so he could get a better look at it I saw that he'd made a blade of nanoliquid grow out of the arm of his suit. I'd seen something like that in the movies I'd watched with Nenna, and it's not that different from Terminator 2, so I wasn't particularly surprised. The Ionoth spider was shock enough.
My Dad's face had changed when I looked back. He'd wanted to argue, but now he wanted me to get to safety as soon as I could, no matter where safety was. "Happy Birthday," he signed slowly. "Hugs."
"Love you," I signed back, then looked over at Nick and made an X with my arms to give him a hug too.
He copied me, and added: "Be happy."
"You too," I signed back carefully. "Tell Alyssa, sorry miss party. Miss her."
Nick grinned. "Will do."
I smiled at my aunts, then looked at my Mum.
"Live well," she signed.
It was exactly the sort of thing Mum would say. I nodded, thought for a moment then signed: "Thank you for being my Mum. Love you always."
That made us both cry and I tried to smile and then stepped back, wiping at my face as my family faded to shadows. I wanted to stay, to say more, to ask questions about a thousand things, but I wasn't silly or selfish enough. If one Ionoth had come to attack us, more would.
I turned to the Fourth Squad captain, who had gotten rid of the spider and who I really doubted wanted to stand around while I played happy families, but was at least managing not to look impatient. "Sorry," I said. "Ready now."
He just handed me a small flask and a wrapped food bar, and said: "Follow close."
It was almost ten minutes' walk to the gate, and I wondered how I'd managed to travel it while asleep, and how he had followed me. We met another of the spider things as we twisted a long path through the outlines of my neighbourhood, but it gave him as little trouble as the first one. Eating and drinking had succeeded in making me feel hungry and exhausted, but I did find a small amount of pleasure in being able to make myself a pocket to put the flask and empty wrapper in.
The gate was in someone's back yard, in what would be a swimming pool if the water had remembered to be there. I could see red earth through it, blue sky, a scatter of huge rocks. It wasn't a clean tear: the edges were surrounded by tiny fragments, thousands of glinting glimpses of red and blue. And at the bottom of the pool were a half-dozen of the spiders and a fraying shadow with claws. Dead. It was hard to follow down to stand among the bodies.
"Gates, particularly the ones you tore wider, are the most dangerous points in the spaces, because the threat on the far side cannot be clearly gauged. If this side is clear, I will go through and you will wait without moving until I signal you to come through. Do not come through without my signal unless you are in immediate danger of attack on this side. Should we need to run, above all things stay close to me, no matter where I run. Do you understand?"
"I tore gate?" I asked, staring down at all the monsters he'd had to kill, just at this one spot.
"You don't remember?" He looked at me, perhaps gauging whether I was lying. His eyes never seemed to show surprise; never annoyed or angry or really interested. "You tore a new rift in Tare's wall, and either struck or widened thirteen gates between here and there."
I stared. "Hole in medical facility?" I could feel my face heat, but rather than go into it further just said: "I wake here."
He'd gone back to scanning the area, then studied the gate for a very fixed and intent moment before stepping through it. Even though I'd been wandering about Earth's near-space by myself, the instant the Fourth Squad captain was on the far side of the gate I felt horribly vulnerable. A half-dozen examples of why I was vulnerable were scattered around my feet, and the edge of the pool was at eye-level so I could have a nice close look at anyt
hing scuttling up. That really destroyed any sense of pleasure I could gain from my last few moments in Earth's near-space.
Fortunately he signalled almost immediately, and I stepped out onto a red, flat plain where the sky was the biggest thing ever and there was plenty of distance between me and anything. The space was the memory of heat, and a ribbon in the sky that seemed to twist and shift, but was way too far away to be scary.
In all that space, I could only see two other gates. One was very distant, a glimmering on the horizon, and the other up a slope of rock that was no harder to climb than a flight of stairs.
"The next space is very populated," the Fourth Squad captain said as we approached the top of the rock slope. "They are tola type, not dangerous unless you remain among them, but both gates are thick with them and if enough gather it could be difficult to pass them. They are attracted to sound, so walk quietly and only communicate through the interface. Don't stop at the following gate; we're going to walk straight through."
Tola meant 'thin'. I stared through the gate at what looked to me like vertically striped shadows and couldn't see anything at all that looked like monsters. I remembered in time not to walk through the first gate until he signalled, but he did so almost immediately anyway. It felt like I stumbled into cold cobweb. The space was, I think, a shadow of a forest, so faded that there wasn't really even trees there, just darker stripes. The Fourth Squad captain moved forward, holding one arm before his face and I followed as best I could, though it was a little like when I'd been trying to push my way out of Earth's near-space, just that the resistance didn't get any harder. And it was damn dark. The gate we were heading for wasn't even visible to me, and I immediately lost sight of him. The only reason I didn't freak out completely was because my interface knew where he was and I realised if I turned on names I could follow him far more easily. So I followed a floating 'Kaoren Ruuel' sign through the forest of creepiness, and almost felt like laughing.
[Taren spelling continues to confuse – Maze pronounced 'Ruuel' as 'Rue-el'.]
The Touchstone Trilogy Page 12