The Touchstone Trilogy

by Andrea K Höst

"No thanks."

  He left then, with a little wave and no words of reassurance. I didn't miss that he hadn't denied any of my little paranoid theories, but I was also sorry I'd made him feel bad.

  -

  And it's an hour or so later and my access rights have returned. Back to the way they were when I was living with the Lents. And because I appreciate the gesture I'll keep pushing through kindergarten, and will make sure I work before I play. Maze really is a nice guy.

  When the bell rings, drool

  It's a very odd thing to be able to record all your conversations so easily. I wonder if I'll run out of 'hard drive' to store them on. But I love that I can replay my conversation with my family, which was about the only thing that made up for having barely any interface rights for so long. Even going back to having a full interface – with all the news and television and entertainments I didn't even know existed – I replay pieces of my 'birthday party' over and over again. I can see all the nuances I didn't catch the first time, can look at their faces, look at the garden Mum loves. The Aunts are watching Mum, looking relieved. Dad bites his lip. Jules is just loving the whole thing, thinking it all so cool. Mum is...Mum.

  I'm exasperated, though, about other parts of that day I keep replaying. Maybe it's because he saved my life, or because I spent a good two hours holding his hand. I keep telling myself not to and then watching my log of the Fourth Squad captain gazing off at the stars. A stupid thing to do: he didn't make a positive impression personality-wise, not to mention calling me a stray right in front of me. Kaoren Ruuel. Not the usual type I daydream about, but I seem to be far more excited about him in retrospect than I was when I was clutching his hand.

  Other than not having enough willpower, it's been an eventful day. Mara came after breakfast, dressed in casual clothes instead of her uniform. We collected my belongings and she took me to my new box. Which wasn't a box at all.

  "This is the latest expansion of the Setari living quarters, intended for Thirteenth and Fourteenth Squad," she said, as we walked down a short, empty corridor. She stopped at the end, triggering the door. "The rest of us are on the floors below. Until the new squads are qualified, you'll be the only person here."

  It was a whole apartment, the same layout as Zan's, except no decorations displayed in the public space and incredibly neutral coverings on the whitestone furniture. Mara smiled at the expression on my face and said: "The doors will open to you. I'll take you on a tour of some of the areas you're permitted to go, and then into the city, if there's anything you'd like to buy. Outside KOTIS is completely off limits to you without an escort and clearance."

  "What change their minds?"

  "Maze suggested your intelligence be re-evaluated. Before you decided to stop being obliging and cooperative."

  They thought I was stupid. I chewed on that one for the rest of the day, but otherwise let myself enjoy the change. There was more to the KOTIS facility than I'd expected, including some actual leisure areas populated by large amounts of people my age and younger, making me realise just how many Setari they're trying to train. But the exciting thing for me was going shopping. I'm not exactly a mall devotee, but when you've had everything supplied to you for weeks, simply buying a dressing gown or choosing your very own bedspread becomes a big event. Fortunately my displaced person allowance had been accruing.

  Mara was really tolerant, and answered my endless, scrambled questions as if she had nothing else she'd like to do. We had lunch together and, just as I had back when she was showing me around KOTIS, I kept noticing people recognising her. A member of First Squad. Even if people outside KOTIS can't record her image, in the facility's support city there were a lot of people who knew who she was, or were from KOTIS taking a break. It put the Kanza game in a different light. I knew but hadn't really thought through how very much all the Setari are faceless celebrities on this world, the people everyone wants to know. And I get to spend all this time with them, and can't let myself buy into it.

  I'd told Maze that I thought First Squad were nice to me because they were nice people. But I am just as much an assignment to them as I was to Zan; they simply approach the task differently. Every time I start thinking about how nice they are and how much I like them, I hear: "Don't forget the psychological aspects," and remember that I'm part of their job. Helping them feels like the right thing to do, but it's not necessarily the right thing for me.

  I really miss Alyssa, miss having someone I trusted absolutely, and I wish I knew whether Nick has told her everything that happened, and if she believed him. Mum's not silly enough to announce to the world that her daughter is off on another planet, no matter whether they succeeded in videoing me. I'd give it a week before Jules posts that phone video on YouTube, though.

  I thanked Mara carefully when she delivered me back to my brand spanking-new apartment, putting a lot of effort into pronunciation. I might be an assignment to First Squad, but I appreciate that they don't rub that in.

  Mara told me where and when to meet tomorrow, since we had a lot of training to catch up on, and then left me alone. With a door I can open. It's a test of sorts, I guess. From practically no freedom to quite a lot, to see how I'll react. I went out straight away and up to the roof, where it was evening, and blowing an absolute gale – not raining, but super windy. Fortunately, I'd taken my brand new jacket with me, and found a corner to tuck myself in to think, and read through the instructions Mara had shown me on how to change the public spaces in my rooms. Simply loving that I was able to walk up there on my own, and I could go back when I wanted to.

  I don't trust them not to take this away from me again. So far they've chopped and changed their approach to me several times, and could easily decide it's better to keep me in a box. In its way this is just another bit of positive reinforcement training. But I'm happy enough to keep being cooperative in return for an unlocked door.

  I'm missing home a lot today. But I really really hope I don't wake up tomorrow and find that I've gone tearing off through the spaces again. I need a better understanding of just what the spaces are, what natural gates are, before I even begin to think of experimenting. There's an entire world of information which I've just been given access to, and I need to go do more kindergarten so I can hope to understand some of it.

  They thought I was stupid.

  Wednesday, February 13

  Settling in

  So, my apartment has three and a bit rooms. The bedroom is a little larger than my original box in the medical facility, with a lot more cupboard space. The bed's a double bed, too, instead of the narrower 'hospital-type' bed. I had a lot of trouble deciding on what kind of bedspread to buy, and ended up with a dark green one with a pattern of leaves and tiny white and pink flowers.

  The kitchen part of the main room has a small refrigerator and cooker and a sink, plus bench and cupboard. Given the Setari can get all their meals from their canteen, there's no need to do a lot of food preparation in the apartments, but at least it's possible.

  There's a 'coffee table' and a matched pair of two-seater lounges facing each other over it. All very plain, and nothing you wouldn't find in any Australian home, though made with a light, possibly hollow frame that seems vaguely related to whitestone. Wood is far too rare here to be used for basic furniture.

  I think I'd like to get some throw rugs to put across the lounges. There's no television or sound system or anything like that because all that's inside your head, which makes the lounge look rather bare. The study nook is not really a study nook, I think. After all, I haven't seen a printed book or file yet, let alone anyone writing by hand, so why would you need a table designed for writing? Maybe it's meant to be a breakfast table? An upright chair and a table, anyway. It's a good place for me to write in my diary, even if it's not what it's meant for.

  I really wish I'd brought my pippin statue with me. I only had it for a couple of weeks on Muina, but it was almost like having a pet.

  I love the fact that I have a ba
th, and I did a lot of soaking in it last night, trying to read one of the novels I found in the vast array in my head. I should have bought some bubble bath, presuming it exists here. Bath oils and bath salts and maybe a rubber ducky. The shower is both a shower and a nanoshower. When you tell your nanosuit to go away, it drains down to your legs then kind of spins together and shoots out a special 'drain'. It makes me wonder if all the Setari are all using the same 'pool' of nanoliquid, which is a grotty and funny and disgusting idea. One size fits all taken to new levels.

  I'm dressed in my uniform now, waiting for it to be time for me to go to training, and hopefully not get lost! Mara told me that if I have any kind of official assignment – training or meetings or even a medical exam – I'm to wear my nanosuit. I still wish it was a different colour, so people would know I'm not pretending to be a Setari.

  Combat Room 3

  Full day of training with First Squad today, both before and after lunch. We met at 'Combat Room 3', one with lots of shielding, and they borrowed a guy called Nils from Second Squad to make illusions of common sorts of Ionoth attacking us while they worked out the best way to use my enhancement while not putting me in too much danger. It was like an elaborate game of tag, and I felt so useless and awkward, especially when Nils had some really nasty illusion-Ionoth swarm the spot I was standing, and had to be rescued. Nils' illusions can't really properly show the effects of the Ionoth being hit, since they have no substance, but I didn't like a dozen of them pouncing toward me.

  Ketzaren is my 'primary minder', since she has strong Levitation. If they need to move me quickly, she gives me an order and I have to put my arm around her shoulder. She grabs me around the waist and binds our suits together and then she levitates herself and I get brought along, which overcomes the fact that they can't put Levitation directly on me when they're enhanced. Her other talents are Ena manipulation, which seems to be what they use when they're trying to lock the gates, and Wind manipulation. Wind is a slow-build talent, so only occasionally used in combat.

  First Squad was really pleased with how the training went, and they met up with some more of Second Squad for dinner afterwards and talked through strategies and possibilities. Maze was good at making this not an uncomfortable conversation for me, and I was okay with it anyway, since I'd decided that my role was like a caddie for a bunch of professional golfers. I don't do any of the hitting of balls, but I make the day a little easier for them.

  The leader of Second Squad is called Grif Regan, and he's a very serious type who likes to listen more than talk. Nils, by contrast, is overwhelming. If you took the lead singer of The Doors (forgot his name) and crossed him with Marilyn Monroe, you'd get something like Nils. A really pretty guy who oozes sex. He treats Zee like she's a particularly delectable mouse, but Zee just ignores him. He also asked me if everyone on Earth could speak with their hands and I explained about my aunt being deaf and we sidetracked into a long discussion about Earth and things which are different between the worlds.

  But the question was a useful reminder that everyone here can record everything they hear and see, and even feel, though that's an extra setting and not one I'm keen on using. And when Setari are on missions, what they record they put in mission reports, so everything Ruuel saw me do or say in the Ena has apparently been reviewed by whole bunches of people. It made me very glad I hadn't kept trying to talk to Ruuel, and hadn't done too much shrieking or squealing while panicking. And means I'm sure as hell not going to say anything during official assignments that I couldn't bear being watched by a hundred people.

  No wonder Zan wouldn't gossip.

  I went up to the roof again after dinner, just because I could, and because I could see stars up there now that the sun's fully set. Tomorrow will be more training, but Maze said that if they're happy with how it goes they'll consider going into the Ena with me again, this time to kill things.

  Must remember to work the conversation around to different types of gates.

  Thursday, February 14

  Bubble worlds

  Morning was dodging practice with Mara, which went well except for when I dodged in precisely the wrong way and got a ball in the face. I'm not very good at predicting where she's going to throw the things and that seems to be half of what dodging's all about.

  I asked her if I was allowed to go swimming just for fun instead of it being for training, and she laughed and said yes and told me where to look to see whether anyone had booked the pool. But then later she said that for now it'd be better if she just added the pool into our training schedule, so I guess she checked with someone who decided there was too much chance of me drowning or something.

  Over lunch, she explained a little more about spaces and gates. Spaces shift about. Some move only a little, bobbing up and down. Others apparently rotate, like planets. A few even zoom about: little comets on an astral level. And when they move, the connections which were the gates between them shift also, vanishing altogether, or linking up with other spaces, or just phasing briefly out of alignment. Setari with Ena manipulation skills are able to 'lock' the gates, preventing them from shifting, but unless it's between two relatively stable spaces, it's immensely difficult to hold them for more than a day or two, and there's even an argument about whether it's a bad thing altogether, given that it's similar to what the Pillars do.

  Four of the gates back toward the Pillar we found are stable, shifting only a little, and it's become part of the regular 'rotation' of the Setari teams to go and firm the 'locks' up. The gate into the space with all the platforms is gone. There's a different talent which allows you to 'read' the gates, and tell how long they will last, but they can't tell for certain if and when that gate will rotate back. They think (are hoping really hard) that the platform space is a rotational space, and that eventually the gate will realign again and they'll be able to lock it for another few days. Until then they check every day and puzzle over the readings they took from the space with the Pillar.

  I didn't want to press too obviously about natural gates, how they're different, and how hard it might be to find one.

  After lunch we joined up with the rest of First Squad, and this time all of Second Squad joined us. After testing the effect of me on their talent range, they worked with First Squad on a really big game of tag-team combat. They've been set a minimum time they have to wait between each person touching me, and then they have to keep track of how long the enhancement will last, which is a little over five minutes, always. Nils made illusory monsters again, and the two squads worked through fighting and enhancing while keeping to their rules. Then we took a break while Maze and the Second Squad captain, Grif, talked through different ways of managing me, and which talents it was best to enhance.

  I was sitting on a bench next to Lohn and Nils and asked: "Is worth it? Stronger, maybe, but so complicate."

  "Definitely, absolutely," Lohn said. "When I think of some of the situations we've been in, when the problem was sheer lack of fire power! The effect on some of the more esoteric talents, like Combat Sight, is incredibly hard to quantify, but I wouldn't give it up."

  "Just the speed alone is worth it," Nils added. "It almost makes the thought of doing Columns Rotation bearable."

  "Think how that last massive battle would have gone," Lohn said, and they glanced at each other and looked away.

  "Massive?" I repeated. The word they used was 'kadara', but it seemed to have the same meaning as 'ddura'. "Ddura?"

  "Different sort," Nils said. He lifted his hand and conjured an illusion of a four-legged black thing as tall as the three-story room, with swarms of miniature Setari buzzing around its long, spindly ankles. Everyone else in First and Second Squad jumped and gave him a look, but he just waved at them. "They turn up very occasionally, crashing their way between the spaces rather than travelling through them, and end up in near-space. It took eight squads to take this one down."

  "If we don't spot them, they can reach real space. That was a bad year." Lohn sc
rubbed a hand across his face, then smiled at me. "It's not so complicated, either – we're just taking turns patting you on the shoulder on a timer. So what do you say, Maze?" he called. "We going to do this for real tomorrow?"

  "Pending clearance by medical," Maze said, coming over. "And clearance by you, Caszandra. You've seen something of what we can run into out there, and that was neither the weakest nor the worst thing we might encounter. Are you ready to do this?"

  I'd seen enough by now to know that none of the Setari were completely confident of returning when they went into the spaces. Maze was asking a really serious question. And the spaces I'd gone through with Ruuel had scared me, had made abundantly clear that there was danger and horror involved. I didn't want any part of that.

  "Long as don't have ran up stair," I said after a moment. "That hardest bit."

  Maze smiled, but gravely, and nodded at me. "It will be one of the more straightforward rotations," he said. "I'll schedule it, dependant on the results of the medical."

  After the medics cleared me, Alay and Ketzaren took me to dinner. Alay's the most quiet and reserved of First Squad, but really lovely when she laughs. She's what people call 'gamine', and wears her hair short, though little random curls sproing out. I think Ketzaren, who is very dry and sardonic, was deliberately setting out to cheer Alay up, and it was only after they'd delivered me back to my apartment that I thought about why, about the reasons First and Second Squad often look tired and sad.

  I don't want to go into the spaces hunting Ionoth. I'm scared about the trip tomorrow. And of all the trips after that which I'll be in for if I let myself be conscripted by an alien military organisation to fight a problem which has been growing steadily worse. I fully intend to go home.

  But then there's First Squad. They've been doing this for years. Fighting nightmares. And getting hurt. I haven't missed that there were originally three senior Setari squads, but now there only seems to be two. I can't bring myself to ask what happened to the other one.