The Touchstone Trilogy

by Andrea K Höst

  I'm in 'my' pod again, comfortably surrounded by First Squad. Alay's on the mission, although she's still walking with a pretty pronounced limp. She'll be on limited duty until she can move about properly.

  Ruuel is in the opposite corner from me, in the pod Taarel used last time. The pods all face forward, so all I can really see is a bit of arm and a leg right now, but that's probably all to the good. I'm currently in one of my wish-I-didn't-like-him moods. Mainly because of a dream I had last night, where I kept following him around until he gave me this irritated, long-suffering glance and I woke up feeling absolutely mortified.

  I guess that counts more as a nightmare than a dream, and I can put it down to a pre-Setari era show I started watching in preparation for working with Fourth Squad called Super Sight Six. Psychic detectives! The main character is a nightmare-ridden Place Sight talent, who is recruited by this hilariously 'New Age Guru' Sight Sight talent. There's a good-looking but temperamental Combat Sight talent, who I bet is going to turn out to be the love interest; a Gate Sight talent constantly distracted by distant, undiscovered gates into near-space; a Symbol Sight talent who loves puzzles; and a Path Sight talent who prowls about restlessly, then bounds off on the track of something. These are the Taren stereotypes of what the various Sights are like, but I'm particularly finding the Place Sight talent's story useful, because it helps me understand both Ruuel and Halla far better. The feelings, even the thoughts of living creatures leave the strongest impressions for Place Sight, and that can be as wonderful as seeing 'patterns of joy' as a musician plays, or as horrible as a brush against someone's arm bringing a flood of hidden hate or lust or resentment. It's considered rude to touch Place Sight talents, and if you do, whatever you're feeling strongly at that point is likely to be very clear to them. Fortunately the visual component isn't as clear-cut, and the touch component usually needs direct contact, meaning the gloves shield most of it. And back when Ruuel and I had our handholding marathon, it hadn't occurred to me to lust after him.

  Unfortunately Sight Sight is very visual, and whether through Place or Sight, he is no doubt completely clear on the fact that the enhancing stray thinks he's hot. And who knows what Tsur Selkie has seen watching mission reports?

  Cringe factor 9.

  Architectural Fail

  The Setari squads on this mission are all very upbeat. They like this assignment. Even those who simply consider Muina a part of the past hope that by being able to properly explore it they might find records and explanations and solutions. They so rarely get to do anything except fight an unwinnable war.

  I'd wanted to talk to Zan during the flight, but she and Ruuel and Maze went off to be captainly at each other. Still, I had a nice chat with Mori Eyse from Fourth, and Dess Charn and Sora Nels from Twelfth, about our various assignments on Muina. Since I mainly knew Twelfth Squad from the grim race of the Pillar retrieval, I'd been curious to know if they were as temperamental as Lenton, and whether they seemed to resent Zan as much as he does. But they were unexpectedly normal – overly serious as almost all of the Setari are, but polite and with hints of personality behind the rigid professionalism. Very few of the Setari are willing to be 'off-duty' around me, but Twelfth unbent enough to ask questions and have non-controversial conversations.

  Pandora looks horrible: a big white blot on the landscape. The main building is up to its third story and still growing, though most of it hasn't had the interiors finished. No sign of balconies, though there's more windows than I feared. There's a bunch of smaller outbuildings which are in use, though – amazingly quick construction. Sora was telling me that they don't dig the foundations, that the buildings send down roots (like teeth, given what they look like) and that fittings like pipes and ducts grow themselves, all based on an immensely detailed scale model. Around the construction site are tents and vehicles and people and dirt trampled to mush, and the beginnings of paths spreading like white filigree.

  "How many people are here now?" I asked, as we took one of the floating sleds across to what had become a place I barely even recognised.

  "Over two hundred and fifty." I'd asked Mori, but it was Ruuel who answered – since I'm assigned to them, it means I travel with Fourth Squad rather than First, who were on a different sled.

  "For now this is Muina's capital," Ferus added. "I was very disappointed that the meaning of the name wasn't included in the announcements."

  "Meaning of name is gift," I said. "Or giver of gifts or something like. Been a while since I read Greco-Roman myths."

  "Do you know all the different beliefs of your world?" Mori asked.

  "Not even close. Earth has hundreds of different languages and cultures. Greco-Roman stuff comes from over six thousand Tare years ago – it's not an active mythology." At least, I'd be really shocked if anyone was actively worshipping Zeus and Hera and all them.

  We only spent an hour at Pandora, watching more supplies and people being unloaded from the Litara and waiting for the Diodel arrived. The Diodel's a smaller ship than the Litara, and has been off surveying, and is going to be our base during the mission. It 'beds' (pods) thirty and the crew, in addition to First and Fourth Squads, are a bluesuit called Onara who commands five greensuits, a pinksuit, a medic called Learad with an assistant called Vale, and eight greysuits who are the research team – mainly archaeologist sorts. The head greysuit is a woman called Rel Duffen, who doesn't seem keen on either the Setari or me, but at least isn't overtly hostile.

  The pods are in long lines down the centre of the ship rather than grouped in rooms. I'm between the two squads, with Zee in front of me and Sonn behind. And Ruuel one behind her. While I was waiting for the ship to take off I sent Zan an email which said: "On Earth, if someone seemed unhappy but not like they wanted talk about it, I'd send them a message which said *hugs*. If you get any free time, I recommend going to watch the otters." I attached a very badly drawn map, and was glad when she sent me a reply: "Thank you."

  I don't want to prod Zan too hard. I'm starting to accept how unlikely second level monitoring makes it for anyone to talk about anything sensitive with me. And how I've got Buckley's chance of being taken off second level monitoring any time this century.

  Today's going to be a long day. We're heading to the largest of the old cities, which is several time zones away from Pandora, and the sun will set in our new location well into what would be sleep shift for the squads who started out from Tare this morning. They think the city was once called Nurioth. Guess the Nurans named their moon after it.

  Once we were underway the ship captain, Tsel Onara, gave us a to-the-point rundown of what we would be doing that day. Over the last few days the Diodel has been making an air survey of Nurioth, mapping it and looking for a place which was both central and clear enough to set down. They'd located a patch where there were no buildings beneath the trees, so first up the Setari (and me) are going to go down and 'weed' a clearing. They want a very big area, as level as possible, with a large perimeter so they could see anything approaching the ship.

  After that, the Setari are going to tour the immediate surrounds and clear out any threats. Depending on what the Setari's threat assessment is, the greysuits may or may not be permitted to enter the nearest building, guarded by a mix of greensuits and Setari. Everyone is to be back at the ship before the sun starts to go down.

  Archaeology is a slow business, so I don't see how a team of eight can do anything more than a basic review. They're really just checking to see what the conditions are like here, and whether useful things like writing might be better preserved. We're flying over the city now and it's seriously huge.

  Thursday, April 3

  Demolition

  We levitated down into the park, both Setari squads together, and me tucked under Par Auron's arm. It was a gorgeous park. Tremendously overgrown and neglected of course, but the whitestone paths were still in place, and the leaves were just starting to turn red and yellow, gem-like against black wood. Once the Diodel had s
topped hovering overhead and zoomed off to circle the city, birds began to peep and chirp cautiously. We'd come down in a relatively clear section in the very centre, and in one direction was an avenue of trees – the strength of the whitestone had kept all but a few trees to the outside of the path. The spot where we'd set down had a barely visible round shape – either a filled-in pond or a border of a garden – and the plants underfoot were fine and feathery.

  "Mark two," Maze said. "Distant."

  'Mark two' is a bit like saying 'ten o'clock'. When a squad enters a space, they count the direct left of the gate as mark 1, and continue around to nine for a semi-circle, or sixteen if the gate is central rather than on one side of the space. Since there'd been no gate involved here, they'd set a direction for mark one before leaving the ship.

  "Structure at mark five," Ruuel added. "Beyond that is out of range. Sweep?"

  Maze nodded. "Take ten to sixteen." First Squad enhanced before heading out, leaving me to trail along with Fourth Squad in a big semi-circle through the half of the park in the opposite direction to the big avenue. I think that half must have been more cropland than park, since there was barely a trace of paving and I saw occasional patches of some kind of grain plant, struggling in the shade of the trees.

  Just like with Pandora, the place was seething with life, except some of that life was Ionoth. I guess the memories of monsters are just another predator to deer and pippins, and the miniature pigs, and some things very like chipmunks which I hadn't seen at Pandora. Birds in every direction, especially a really annoying plump and hysterical type which stayed hidden in the grass until you were right on it and then shot up into the sky shrieking its head off. I was busy being guilt-ridden that we were about to level the entire area, and kept thinking of that old song – I've no idea who it's by – that goes "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot". It's not like we don't clear-fell on Earth, but having been fed environmental awareness since grade one, I couldn't help feeling responsible all the same. It overwhelms me at times: accidental or not, I changed a world. Worlds.

  First Squad took care of whatever was at mark two with a minimum of fuss, and it wasn't until we were at the mark thirteen that Fourth Squad found anything of interest, pausing.

  "Underground," Ruuel said. "Hold here, off surface. Sonn, with me. Stay unenhanced."

  That was an odd one. Auron and Ferus levitated those staying behind while Ruuel and Sonn walked to a patch of leaves which seemed totally unthreatening until these huge greyish tentacles whipped up out of holes and tried to grab them. Ruuel cut one in two, dancing back out of the spurt of blackish blood, and then lifted himself and Sonn into the air so she could blast the tentacles with bolts of lightning. Trap-door octopus. Other than that, there was only an encounter with a handful of toothy monkey things, nothing that made Fourth Squad even break a sweat.

  It was a big park and too overgrown to walk through quickly, so it was over half an hour later when we met back up at the central circle. Then the stronger Telekinesis talents – Maze, Zee and Ferus (whose first name is Glade, which I thought very ironic) – had a logistics discussion before enhancing and pulling trees from the area I thought had been fields, stacking them to form walls dividing the park into a half with trees and a half without.

  You don't just pick up a tree; they're too firmly rooted. Instead they quiver, and rattle from an invisible wind, raining leaves and bugs, then burst upwards in showers of dirt. We kept a respectful distance after the first one, and Lohn and Sonn followed along behind looking alert as scores of critters ran in every direction. Ruuel took everyone else on a little hunting trip after something which had strayed within his detection range, and I trailed along at Maze's elbow, trying not to fall in the holes, and thinking over how much Jules would love to be in my place.

  "What are you trying not to laugh at?" Lohn asked me, when we were about a third through the field half of the park.

  "Setari have great future landscape gardeners. Get Maze add nice water feature."

  Maze heard that, and shot me an amused look over his shoulder, but kept concentrating on uprooting trees.

  "Not our usual style of mission, true," Lohn said, surveying the destruction all around, but then giving the telekinetics a narrower glance. "More difficult, in some ways. We're not really designed for sustained output."

  That also got a look from Maze, but then he nodded and said over the interface: "This is sufficient clearance. Meet back at the centre point."

  We turned and walked back, Maze, Zee and Ferus occasionally filling in the larger holes left behind, or tossing boulders over at the stacked rows of trees. They looked extremely tired, and I was starting to feel that way myself. Enhancing people never feels like effort, until I abruptly fall asleep afterwards. We sat down on the rim of the central circle and waited for the Diodel to show up and kick up a lot of dirt and fallen leaves in our faces and make us really want the shower we were all looking forward to anyway. There's six to share between the Setari and the greysuits, and I wasn't at all inclined to object when Zee took me along for first shot at them, and then to eat and straight to bed. Even though it wasn't yet sunset, it had still been a long day for everyone, and I felt sorry for whichever of the Setari had to sit up during the sleep shift, since someone with Combat Sight has to be on watch at all times.

  It's still night out. I woke ridiculously early, well before everyone except the people who were on duty, but that's given me a chance to catch up writing this. I think it will be dawn soon. I'm sitting in the common room area, which has a window giving me a lovely view of darkness. It was a little eerie walking past everyone's pods, the covers all closed and opaque. They have good sound-proofing and I couldn't hear breathing, though there was a hint of someone snoring.

  Setari Summer Camp, day one.

  Very expensive guards

  It was starting to grow brighter outside when I finished writing about yesterday, so I turned out the lights in the common room (faintly chuffed that I could do something like turn the lights out – I still haven't fully recovered from my early days in medical purgatory when I didn't have access rights to do anything). The window wasn't facing fully in the direction of the rising sun, but I still had a great view down a slight slope to a flat area with a large number of buildings, and then a steep rise up a hill and some very impressive buildings on top of it. It's all very overgrown, but beautiful in the dawn, the whitestone gradually picked out in pink light. It must have been a very grand city once.

  It was still only half-light outside when I had an uneasy sense of being watched and turned my head to find Ruuel standing looking at me. I've no idea how long he'd been there.

  "Is watching the dawn a custom of your home?" he asked, coming over to where I was sitting on a window seat arrangement before one of the long viewing windows: my favourite spot on the ship.

  "Think I've seen more Muinan dawns than Earth's." I turned back to the window, since that was the easiest way to deal with how good he was looking just then. "Generally stay up a lot later on Earth, so don't get up as early. Is better when you can hear the birds."

  He didn't say anything, so I risked a quick glance at him. Ruuel has a way of gazing off at things – maybe using Sights, maybe just thinking – wearing this distant, contemplative expression which makes me want to stare at him in turn. I hastily looked back outside, and said: "More sensible roofs here."

  "Sensible?"

  "The trees are what Earth calls deciduous – they're losing their leaves in Autumn – so chances good it snows in this area. Flat roofs like those at Pandora must have needed a lot of clearing in Winter. These almost all seem to be sloped." Though I guess, since they were built out of whitestone, the weight of snow on the roof mightn't be a big problem. "Couldn't work out what they did for heating and cooking, either. Nothing that looked like a chimney or smoke vent in those houses. Only found a couple of kilns or ovens and those were separate from the other buildings. Could find very little information on Tare about w
hat daily life was like on Muina."

  "We have lost almost all that we were." He didn't sound particularly upset, but it made me wonder just how much the Nuran had gotten under his skin, saying that Tarens don't even know what Setari means. And almost as if he knew what I was thinking, he added: "If we are to believe the one calling himself Inisar, we are not to be trusted with the past."

  "Nurans as human as Tarens or people from Earth. Chances are just as fallible and ready do stupid things."

  "An observation almost equal to Tare mostly treating you as civilised people should."

  That made me turn around, but he was already walking away. And of course after that I spent the entire day thinking about him and being stupidly aware of everything he did, which was annoying. Being assigned to Fourth Squad is giving me way too many opportunities to look at Kaoren Ruuel, and my resolution to just sit back and enjoy the scenery isn't all that easy to keep.

  Otherwise it was an uneventful day for me. First Squad, minus Alay, roamed about killing Ionoth and mapping the immediate area, while Fourth Squad escorted the greysuits about as they uncovered and looked over a small pavilion in the park, and then moved on to the buildings nearest to the ship. The greysuits switch constantly between eager excitement, nervous glances at all that sky without ceiling, and avoiding creepy-crawlies. All of us were slathered in a very effective insect repellant, but every so often someone would turn over a rock and try not to shriek.

  I stayed with Fourth Squad, watching Ruuel not reacting to the way the leader of the greysuits, Islen Duffen, made it clear she wasn't interested in hearing the observations of Setari Sight talents. I guess it's true they don't have any formal archaeological or historical training, but Place Sight is a powerful tool, even factoring in the amount of time it's been since anything except animals and Ionoth were here to leave traces of self behind.