The Touchstone Trilogy

by Andrea K Höst

  "That happen a lot?"

  "No. Many Ionoth do move to nearby spaces seeking food, but usually return to their own after hunting. Roamers that are systematic explorers, or make any attempt to dominate other areas, are rare and most will fade if they are too long away from their home space. Those were well-organised. Formidable."

  Mara has moved on from just throwing balls at me, and in today's lesson was trying to get me to block attacks. She'd told me that I had no instinct for combat but that that was no reason I couldn't be taught to defend myself. I still have my doubts, but I accept the value of trying to learn. She's not soft with me, but she doesn't ever say nasty things or make fun of me for being so bad, and in a painful way I'm enjoying being back with her.

  "Who is best fighter in Setari?" I asked, thinking over the battle between Kajal and Ruuel.

  "A question best not asked, as you apparently learned."

  "Did Kajal get punish for that?"

  "He would have lost privileges. The aether effect is not enough to excuse his behaviour, but does mean he's not likely to lose captaincy over the incident."

  "Maze doesn't like Setari competing against each other, because of scene like that? Ruuel could have defuse situation by agree to fight him. But Kajal would never been satisfied, right?"

  "Not unless he won," Mara agreed. "Maze doesn't like anything which focuses our energy on each other rather than the Ionoth. While we were still Kalrani it was useful, but it's becoming an unhealthy distraction for a few of the younger Setari."

  Ruuel's been on my mind a lot today (not that he isn't usually) because now that First Squad's on sick leave, I've been assigned to Fourth Squad for tomorrow's rotation. I wonder how the black eye's progressing?

  He was really annoyed about it. More being forced to fight than the injuries. And he didn't think Kajal had the slightest chance of beating him. That moment of anger, of disdainful arrogance, caught me by surprise. I've been putting a lot of thought into what Kaoren Ruuel is really like: whether he's a humourless robot with a rod up his ass, or the Taren stereotype of a Place Sight talent, all sensitive and haunted and needing always to keep control. That fight showed me that I don't know him at all.

  I need to spend more time practicing ways to get home.

  Sunday, March 30

  Touchstone

  I made sure to be early down to Red Lock for the rotation with Fourth Squad, and then had to wonder if I was trying to impress Ruuel, and what I thought that would achieve. I need to be sensible where he's concerned. Anyway, turning up early was more about not being on the receiving end of one of those brief glances he gives people when they waste his time. Just a momentary look, not even a change of expression, and I know I'd shrivel.

  The point was moot this morning because I was there in plenty of time and Ruuel was almost late. That gave me a chance to chat with Ferus and Eyse about the kinds of missions they usually do and how they're still playing catch up from when the Pillar's deactivation shifted so many spaces about. Both of them are really easy to talk to, with actual and apparent senses of humour. They're looking forward to going back to Muina, to do exploration work in the larger cities.

  Ruuel brought us all into mission channel and gave us the two sentences he considered a briefing just before he came into view. "In addition to on-going goals, we'll be looking for the new type of roamer which First Squad encountered. Tracking their source space has been marked priority."

  Triggering the gate-lock to open, he passed us to collect the usual rotation gear, and was back just as the lock was fully open. His black eye, sadly, had receded to a faint yellowish shadow, and he didn't seem to be favouring his knee. But mission efficiency hit a snag before we'd even stepped into the Ena. Ruuel paused as the gate-lock was closing behind us, and then Selkie joined the mission channel.

  "Devlin," Selkie said, making me feel exactly like someone called out of class by the school principal. "Does the word 'Gea' mean anything to you?"

  "Gear?" I repeated, since that's how he'd pronounced it. "Part of machine?"

  "Specifically, 'child of Gea'."

  "Oh. Gaia, maybe? Gaia is the same as Earth, or Terra. Different names for my planet in different languages. Gaia is Greek mythology mother-planet-goddess, a bit like how Muinans think of Muina. Child of Gaia would either be myth people called Titans, or anyone from my planet, depending on which way look at it. Did you find record Earth in histories?"

  "No. An emissary from Nuri has walked out of deep-space and asked that the child of Gea be brought to speak with him."

  Even Ruuel reacted to that one, frowning, and there was a little pause while Selkie was probably talking to someone else. Then he said: "Continue your rotation, but return within a kasse." He dropped out of the channel, leaving Fourth Squad looking at each other and at me, very startled.

  "Focus," Ruuel said, eyes narrow, and sent us through the gate. I don't think he was at all pleased to have such a big distraction waved under his squad's nose at the beginning of a mission. It was lucky that the most I have to do is stop and start in time with my escorts because I'd certainly been given plenty to distract me from the rotation.

  Nuri is the moon world with the Luddite ex-Muinans. It was located around eighty years ago and when the Tarens turned up the Nuran response was pretty much: "We don't want to have anything to do with you. Go away." Since then they'd unbent only enough to say the same thing in rather more detail. They felt the Taren use of technology, particularly the interface, made them a corrupting influence and they could not risk exposure. No, they would not join an alliance to find or investigate Muina. No, they did not want to share their knowledge of Muina's disaster. The last time Tare had sent a delegation to discuss the apparent increase in the severity of Ionoth incursions, the Nurans had barely stopped short of accusing the Tarens of being responsible.

  So having a Nuran turn up on Tare asking to talk to me was big news.

  I had a couple of hours to stew on that while Fourth Squad headed back through the same spaces First Squad had cleared last rotation. Ruuel was taking an extreme-caution approach to each space, since traps had been encountered last time, but we reached the container space without any sense of threat. And once in there, we found only the little greyish people watching us from a fortification they'd built.

  There were over a dozen gates out of that space, and Fourth Squad examined every one. Although the one which the hairy people had run through had shifted out of alignment, they were able to detect signs of them at three other gates, and Fourth chose the most-travelled gate and headed through to the next space. It was a small island, no bigger than a couple of house-blocks, with exposed sandbars around it. Lots of sand-coloured mice lived in burrows beneath the tufty grass. And there were sharks in the water, given the stinking pile of butchered carcasses we found.

  Again Fourth mapped the gates, and picked the one which was the most frequented. The next space was big, some kind of multi-story car park full of vague memories of cars, which made it very confusing. From what I could make out of the blurs, they were low and large, with what looked like chimneys in swirls of chrome. Ruuel and Sonn paused a long moment before gesturing us through, and when we were in Ruuel said over the mission channel: "Next level up, perhaps a dozen. There was a lookout."

  There was a trap, too, but Ruuel could tell it was there before it was set off. He had Sonn send an enhanced ball of lightning up the ramp to the next level and we all stayed well back listening to the noise. Then Ferus pulled the trap apart with Telekinesis, and we went up. Eight stories of car park, and scads of gates, but once we'd tracked down and cleared the last of the hairy people and mapped the gates Ruuel said: "Not their home space either. We'll pick this up another day."

  I've no idea how long they would have gone on if not for the time limit caused by me and my Nuran visitor. They didn't seem particularly annoyed about stopping, at any rate. We returned, not neglecting caution just because we'd been through the spaces already, and stepped back into re
al-space about ten minutes short of the full kasse.

  I wasn't altogether surprised to find Maze waiting for me. He nodded at Ruuel as we came through the gate-lock and said: "You and I are on escort duty," then added to me: "Put this on." He handed me a white dress and a carry bag with shoes and things inside, which I accepted automatically, then realised what they were.

  "Serious?" I said, far too aware that even Fourth Squad weren't capable of not staring.

  "The liaison branch is very eager to ensure that the Nurans continue dialogue with us, and they've decided it might be impolitic for you to be wearing our uniform. The clothes are Mara's."

  "Lohn somewhere right now laughing a lot, right?"

  "Very much so." He smiled, amused. "Don't worry, we'll be with you."

  "Wearing dresses?" I asked, but decided it wasn't worth arguing about. Sighing, I went and had a shower, keeping my hair dry, and then put on Mara's sundress and sandals, which were only slightly too big for me. She'd included a hairbrush, and some nearly-clear lip gloss which I smoothed on, then let my hair out of its tight braid, pulled it up into a high ponytail and looked at myself in the mirror.

  I really loved the style of dress, and will have to remember it next time I go shopping, but I didn't understand why a dress at all. Why not any of my own clothes? Yeah, the dress looked better than my casual, practical outfits, but I felt like I was being set up on a blind date and I seriously didn't like the implications of that. Alyssa once told me that I'm too obliging, that I objected to things way too late, but that dress handily jumped me straight to stubborn doubt.

  Then I remembered my lab rat.

  Trying not to smile at the idea of showing up to an important diplomatic meeting wearing an "experimental animal" label for anyone with Symbol Sight to read, I stuffed my uniform harness in the bag and went out.

  "Does know yet what Nuran want talk about?"

  "Your planet, apparently." Maze brought me into a channel with him, Ruuel and someone called Tarmian, ushering me toward the nearest elevator. "He hasn't been waiting long. It took some time to convince him that he'd have to come here if he wanted to talk to you, and the flight landed just before your return."

  "If you can succeed in getting him to speak at all it will be progress," said Tarmian, who was a woman with a deep, husky voice. "The most I've managed is to be told I don't need to know his name."

  Selkie and someone called Ganaran joined the channel, and I had a sinking realisation that I was supposedly going to have a conversation with a planetary emissary while a bunch of people made helpful suggestions to me in my head. It made me wonder if Alyssa was right about the whole too obliging thing, because it hadn't seemed to occur to any of them that my interests in such a conversation might not coincide with theirs. Or maybe it had, but they were hoping no independent thought would cross my mind. I listened without comment to Tarmian and Ganaran, who are from KOTIS' liaison branch, telling me to let the Nuran lead the conversation, but to try and encourage him to expand on topics he was willing to discuss. Maze and Ruuel kept quiet, though they did both enhance themselves just before we went in, something I should be used to, but which was really disconcerting with my arms and shoulders bare.

  Preconceptions are fun. I was expecting someone like a Buddhist monk, complete with bald head and orange robes. The closest I got were the robes, and they were more maroon and white, and not really robes. He had the same sort of colouring as Ruuel and Taarel and Selkie, but wore his hair long, with the sides caught back in a high tail except for strips before his ears. He looked like a manga samurai, complete with two swords tucked into a belt sash.

  The other person in the room was a curvy and sweet-faced woman with a lot of curly black hair which kept trying to escape her hairclips. She was wearing a reddish-plum uniform, a new type to me. Liaison branch.

  "This is Caszandra Devlin," the woman – Tarmian – said and the Nuran turned and looked at me. His expression was appraising, not particularly warm or pleased or anything, and he bowed, barely more than a nod of the head.

  "Hello," I said, in English and then in Taren. I wasn't going to attempt bowing.

  "I am indebted for your time," said the Nuran. He spoke with an accent, and just enough hesitation to suggest that Taren was at least a different dialect to his own language.

  "Sit down, please," said Tarmian, gesturing to a coffee table and couches arrangement. The room also had a more formal table and chairs, and a couple of corner clusters of seats and smaller tables, and even an actual long window giving an excellent view of a massive storm outside. That was disorienting; weather is so separate from daily life here.

  The couches were the firm, solid sort. Maze and Ruuel stood behind my couch, Tarmian had a smaller chair to my right and the Nuran sat in the centre of the couch opposite.

  "How did a child of Gaia reach this world?" he asked. And then there was a tickly feeling in my head and I could hear his voice add: ~Are you able to reply this way?~

  ~Yes?~ I tried thinking, all too conscious of Maze and Ruuel standing behind me, neither of whom were likely to have missed me suddenly sitting up much straighter. I've no idea what Ruuel's Sights would have shown him, and I stumbled on into answering the verbal question to buy myself time. "Walked through a gate from my planet to Muina. Was there until people from Tare found me, brought me back here."

  ~My name is Inisar.~ His eyes, long and dark, were watching me very steadily. "Can you tell me what knowledge Gaia retains of Muina?" ~I have been sent to offer you Nuri's aid.~

  ~Aid?~ "None. I had never heard name Muina before Tarens told me it. There are no stories, no recognisable stories, about people my planet going to other planets. Were Muinans first from my planet?"

  "I do not know." ~Aid in the form of haven.~ "That Gaia and Muina shared a bond is remembered. It is an ancient one, stretching far beyond any record." ~I see that the distortions the people of this world inflict on themselves have been passed to you.~

  ~The interface?~

  "The path to Gaia had long been lost, however, even before we departed Muina. Had there been any unusual events in Gaia's Ena preceding your arrival on Muina?" ~I am sorry that I am unable to undo their distortion, but I can offer an escape from this place. First to Nuri. And then to your own world.~

  Both Tarmian and Ganaran said something over the interface at this point, but I didn't pay any attention to their suggestions, just giving Tarmian a blankly distracted look.

  "The...my planet, psychic talents are considered fiction. We have forgotten everything, if ever knew. Don't know Ena, don't access it." I felt unreasonably angry. Holding two conversations at once while someone else talked at me was beyond stressful, especially when my home was dangled under my nose as some sort of bait. I could feel Maze shift behind me, and didn't know whether to feel comforted or threatened by his presence. ~Nuri able locate natural gate my world?~

  "How greatly are the children of Gaia troubled by Ionoth?" ~With a link of both birth and heart to Gaia, a path can be found. Natural gates are not constantly open, but if you were able to travel to Muina, it will be possible to find that gate and return you.~

  "Ionoth not able reach real-space on my world. Their existence, existence of spaces, none of that is known. Are spaces memories of worlds, or nightmares of worlds?" ~Nuri wants something in exchange?~

  "Both." ~You have opened Muina to Tare. That cannot be undone, although we would ask you to balance the act.~ "Memories, nightmares, dreams. They are the expression of the living, imprinted on the Ena." ~Beyond that, we prefer not to see a touchstone in such misguided hands. Returning you to Gaia will remove the risks you pose.~

  ~Touchstone is me?~ I paused, because it was getting really hard to keep track of the conversation, and the person called Ganaran was saying something excitedly about some theory being validated. "Do you know if all people my planet have this enhancement talent?" ~Why does Nuri think Tare people so bad?~

  ~They repeat the arrogance of the past, seeking to reach be
yond what is born to them. Without balance, without wisdom, they are twisting themselves outside nature.~ "You are something which appears perhaps once in ten generations. Not unique to Gaia." ~Will you allow me to remove you from this place? You need only take my hand.~

  ~Are you Nuri equivalent of Setari? Protect Nuri from Ionoth?~ I was struggling to decide how I wanted to react, the idea of perhaps being able to go home shrieking at me, along with a great deal of resentment that they couldn't just offer to do it openly. But I at least realised that he probably wasn't going to be able to do what he planned. "Do you know why it is some talents I enhance strength, and other talents I make different?"

  He hadn't expected it. He was Ruuel-level in terms of difficulty to read, but when he heard that he drew back his hands from where they had rested unmoving on his knees.

  "I first found out was enhancement talent when someone tried teleport me," I went on helpfully, glad to be sticking to just out-loud talking for a minute. For one thing the in-my-head talking itched. "We ended up in totally wrong place. Fell down. Most talents, stronger, but some go very strange."

  "The distortion inflicted on you by these," he said, lifting his eyes past my shoulder. "Calling themselves Setari with no understanding of what that title means."

  ~Even if could go with you,~ I told him silently while he gave either Ruuel or Maze a long survey, ~I do not think could accept offer. I miss my home, but it would be selfish of me to place homesickness above helping stop people be eaten by nightmares. Although I know Tare not place my interests above theirs, they mostly treat me as civilised people should. Also, I think Nuri not helping fix problem by acting as if Tare people too stupid to learn. If child is about to walk off cliff, what point saying they lack wisdom and watch them fall? And interface is a tool. No less unnatural than those two blades you wear.~

  ~Well said.~

  To my surprise he was looking at me with something approaching approval. Then he stood up.