The Touchstone Trilogy

by Andrea K Höst

  Not quite left to my own devices however, since a greysuit had obviously been assigned to make sure I didn't go off the rails during the trip. There always seems to be someone now: usually one of the squads, or a greensuit or a greysuit who will pop by and pretend they're not checking me over for signs of imminent meltdown. It's hugely annoying, but I guess they felt they'd been forgetting my psychological aspects too much lately. Why they think reassigning the useful stray without warning is a good way of dealing with me is another question.

  Not just a useful stray: I'm a multi-purpose stray. I enhance, hear LOUD noises, act as a key to lost civilisations, and see blurry! From the looks of my calendar, I'm going to be Third Squad's babysitting problem now. Pass the bloody parcel.

  There was one good point to counter my gloomy morning. Tsur Selkie had organised a techie guy called Voiz Euka to recreate Earth's calendar, and I spent an hour with him after my inevitable medical exam, explaining the way Earth measures time, letting him measure the time units from my phone, and working through all the variations of the calendar. He seemed to think it not too difficult an exercise, once we'd properly compared my phone's seconds and minutes to Tare's time units, and so now I won't have to fret about losing my phone. A whole clock and calendar program, written specifically to keep me happy. I even remembered leap years.

  And as soon as First Squad heard I was back, they arranged to meet up. They were heading out on rotation soon after I arrived, and I was on a slightly earlier shift to them, but we met at Mara's quarters when they finished their rotation and had nuna (crepes) for dinner.

  It was great to be off-duty and off-record. As off-record as second level monitoring lets me be, anyway. Also fun to not have to wear my uniform, and to eat food which involved a lot of sweetness and not a lot of attention to nutritional value. To be teased by Lohn and hugged by Mara and have Maze be kind and a little worried.

  I wasn't even close to surprised when Zee took me back to my room and interrogated me mercilessly about the whole thing with Ninth Squad. And, to my dismay, about what exactly Fifth and Seventh Squad had done to make me not want to work with them. But she said that my squad preferences weren't general knowledge, that Maze gets told stuff like that because he's senior captain, and that she was asking on his behalf.

  I really didn't want to bring Zan into it – I don't think she'd be at all happy about me talking about the way they bully her – so I just said I'd seen how nasty Kajal and Forel were toward other Setari, and explained about the testing session I'd had with Fifth Squad.

  "It's not that I think they do anything to me," I said. "Just that I think they find it funny if I scared or embarrassed. Going into spaces, need to trust squad more than that."

  Zee was more than a little annoyed after reviewing my testing session with Fifth, and said I should have told someone, at least about the part where they went ahead of me in the Ena. And then she asked me if anyone or anything else had made me uncomfortable or unhappy. I gave her an entertaining description of my meeting of Squad One, and she seemed satisfied that I was getting along with most of the Setari.

  I'm so glad Zee's okay. They all looked tired, but I couldn't spot any new injuries. It's so messed up that when I meet up with my closest friends here, I check them for damage.

  Oh, and it's Jules' birthday. Happy birthday, brat. Hope you scored lots of loot.

  Monday, April 21

  Something a little different

  Taarel from Third had me meet her for breakfast, and explained what we'd be doing for the next few days. One of the gates from near-space to real-space is in a tremendously inconvenient spot on Unara: a major travel junction. Over the past few decades it's slowly been growing, and they've continually had to increase the size of the lock around it. It's nearing the point that they're going to have to do some major infrastructure rejigging if it grows any further, and it already causes a huge amount of blockage and trouble.

  Ever since they figured out that with my enhancement there was a possibility of actually closing gates, there's been an increasing amount of pressure to assign Taarel and me to "closing really annoying gates" duty. The 'mayor' (Lahanti) of Unara, one of the most powerful people on Tare, finally ordered KOTIS to give this particular gate highest priority and get it done. Guess that explains my abrupt reassignment.

  The problem was that even with my enhancement, it's exhausting work and they estimated it would take just Taarel and me weeks to get this Rana Junction gate closed. They decided multiple talents assisting would speed it up, if Taarel initiated a closure, but they couldn't take off rotation every strong Ena manipulation talent, particularly now KOTIS is posting squads to Muina as well, so they're using the strongest of the Kalrani Ena manipulation talents instead.

  Today was a test day, to see whether a mass effort would work, so after breakfast we met up with the Kalrani who had been selected for the experiment. There were ten, all very correct in their brown and cream uniforms. The youngest looked about twelve and the oldest the same age as me: probably one of the candidates for Fourteenth Squad. Thirteenth Squad has already been chosen and is on 'pre-rotation training' and has moved into the rooms on the same floor as me, though I haven't seen any of them about yet.

  They all seemed to know Taarel, at least to say 'good day Tsee Taarel' to. I hadn't thought about it, but the 'graduated' Setari would be the logical candidates to give the Kalrani some expert tutoring. And of course before the Setari had qualified for their squads, they'd been Kalrani as well. Since it was Taarel, I wasn't surprised that most of them couldn't quite hide being awestruck by her presence, and were more than a little nervous and determined to be excellent for her.

  They didn't know how to treat me. I'm a curiosity and the prospect of a massive increase of power. I wondered if they'd heard about Ninth Squad, and politely said hello back when they greeted me, and otherwise kept my mouth shut, even when I saw that the test session was in my old room in the medical facility, and the gate they were testing closure techniques on was the one I'd torn into near-space. It was very strange seeing my old room-with-a-view with a thick metal gate-lock built around where my bed had been. They'd removed one of the walls, but there still wasn't much room for the twelve of us, and I had to be careful about where I was standing.

  Taarel took them through the touching-the-stray rules, then enhanced herself and started the closing process. Once she'd demonstrated, she had each of the Kalrani enhance and try in turn to close the gate just by themselves. I found this very dull, even with a projection of the gate for me to look at, and so it was simply a procession of serious kids frowning at the air. One of the Kalrani, a boy about fourteen called Dayn, managed to start it closing. It meant so much to him, and he was trying so hard not to show it that he went white and then red when Taarel gave him one of those brief, approving nods which Ruuel does so well, except Taarel adds a warm smile. Taarel is definitely charisma-plus.

  After that, she enhanced again and started working on closing the gate properly, telling each of the Kalrani to enhance and join in one by one. They can't work on it continuously, needing to rest sooner than the five minutes my enhancement lasts, with long recovery times. But still, in less than a kasse they'd completely closed the thing, and were all looking tremendously exhausted. But very pleased.

  After that were medical tests for all, heh, and Taarel told me that we were likely to be cleared to head to Unara tomorrow. Then I slept all afternoon and for the second time since I came back to Tare I dreamed of wandering around KOTIS, through endless empty corridors, looking for Ruuel.

  Back in Year 10, Alyssa fell for a guy named Kyle Marcus. He was the sort who ends up Dux of the school, playing violin recitals, and winning debating prizes, but fun enough that hardly anyone hated him for it. Alyssa and Kyle were both on the student group helping organise the joint Year 10 Formal with Agowla and the Boy's Tech, and she spent the entire term being her brightest, funniest self: chatting with him, putting up all the signals. But when the term was o
ver, and he'd passed up going to the after-party she'd arranged, she gave up. She said it would be embarrassing for them both if she ran after him like a dog in heat.

  I don't want to run after someone who doesn't want me. And I've been trying very hard not to think about Ruuel, or write about him, and I try to avoid sitting around looking at log images of him because I'm sure what files I access is part of second level monitoring as well. But I keep having these dreams and when I wake up all I can think about is that he's not there. That he's not just one pod over. That he's not even on the same planet as me, and if I cried out for him he wouldn't come. It's so pathetic.

  Ruuel has never encouraged me in the remotest way, never shown any interest in me beyond carrying out his captain-duties. Unfortunately, I can't simply make a sane, logical decision to not want him, and so I've spent the past couple of days feeling miserable and being frustrated with myself. Because Ruuel, who has never sat down to chat with me or spent any effort trying to socialise with me, isn't here. I miss just being near him.

  Taarel is too good a captain not to notice I'm down, but she's also smart enough not to push. She keeps an eye on me, treats me with consideration, but otherwise just gives me opportunities to talk to her. Of course, Taarel's the last person I'd tell about my feelings for Ruuel. Too humiliating if she had to gently break it to me that she's engaged to him. If Taarel and Ruuel are a couple, right now I just don't want to know.

  Ghost was with me when I woke, which helped considerably. I have as much hope of smuggling her with me to Unara as I did to Muina, but I wish I could. Even though she's only the echo of a memory, she's such a normal cat: smart and mischievous, loves being scratched behind her ears, purrs and acts like she missed me. And she's mine, in a way very little is here. Petting her was the best stupid thing I ever did.

  Tuesday, April 22

  What would Wikipedia say?

  In among the make-believe there seems to now be a handful of truth about me in the public domain. I read all about myself this morning, finding dozens of interface 'spaces' devoted to me, just like the Setari watch sites. And I have an encyclopaedia entry. No 'real' pictures of me at all, thankfully, although there's some quite accurate drawings. I wasn't surprised to see that some of Nenna's friends had recorded meeting Nenna's guest stray, but it seems that you can't record images of strays any more than you can images of Setari. Strays count as 'protected incompetents' until they've passed various tests. But they could record my voice, and the 'outline' of me, and it was squirmy awful hearing me trying to speak in Taren back then. I was so slow, and my pronunciation was dreadful and I kept using the wrong words and totally wrong grammar. It's a wonder anyone could understand me at all. I'm still not close to fluent, and wouldn't be able to speak it properly without the interface, but I'm clear enough now.

  My encyclopaedia entry says:

  "Kaszandra Devlin. Born approximately 15 Denn 3732, city of Oztralya, planet Urth. Passed through natural gate to Muina approximately 40 Ord 3785. Located by Setari exploratory team on 2 Arn 3785, at ruins site Goralath, and processed as displaced person. Identified as enhancement talent and assigned to assist Setari. On 32 Nayz 3786 provided identification clearance to Setari squad under attack by Ddura at Goralath, effectively unlocking the planet of Muina for resettlement."

  I had a good laugh at the 'city of Oztralya' and read through the entries for 'Urth' and Pandora, which sadly did not include anything about releasing all the evils of the world. There was tons more on the less official sites. A good deal of the initial hostility toward me seems to have died down after the 'sister planet' explanation, but it's a thousand percent obvious I'm never going to have anything remotely resembling a normal life on this planet. If I were at all unclear on that point.

  KOTIS has released a handful of statements about my discovery on Muina, and how I'd been working with the Setari, but what I'd been doing recently was definitely not public knowledge. In fact, there was nothing on the public networks about the Arenrhon installation at all, let alone the Nuran. I'm betting they'll keep it quiet as long as they can.

  Tons on Pandora, though. The settlement has grown enormously: multiple buildings up and running, and more under construction. Even some that aren't blocky squares. Pandora's focus has become more about learning to live on the planet, rather than unlocking the secrets of its past, and they're cataloguing the plants and the animals and testing out crops. It looks utterly gorgeous, with the leaves vivid reds and golds and the lake a slate-blue colour. Everyone not too freaked out by the thought of being outside really wants to go there. There's even a competition, where the prize is getting to visit.

  We're starting for Unara late this afternoon. I've been in a very non-talky mood. I need to deliver Pollyanna instead of Gloomzilla.

  Into the breach

  We didn't start out for Unara until quite late in my day, and it felt very much like a school outing with the Kalrani in their cream and brown uniforms lined up before the entrance of a small arrowhead-shaped tanz. Space-aged school bus. The Kalrani were, if anything, even more stiff and upright than yesterday, making Rite Orla and Tol Sefen from Third look positively laidback as they strolled up just before me. The half of Third without Combat Sight gets to go on leave, but Orla and Sefen are stuck with helping baby-sit – guarding against any Ionoth which have been missed by the sweeps and come lurching out of the gate at us. There were also a handful of greysuits and greensuits, but Taarel was most definitely in charge, and started us out with a crisp briefing about the arrangements for getting us to and from the gate-lock, and what we should do if anyone somehow gets separated. She thinks the job will take one to two weeks (twelve days).

  One of the oldest Kalrani, a girl named Pen Alaz, piped up at the end of the briefing and asked Taarel if it was true gate closure would become a regular task. I could see from the way a few of the Kalrani leaned forward that this was an important question to them. I expect, given how long they've trained to go into the Ena and fight Ionoth, the idea of a career in world-wall repairs was as dull as it sounded to me.

  "It won't happen," Taarel replied, clear, crisp and serious. "Rana Junction is a useful exercise for us, but those who propose more have not fully appreciated the current situation. New gates are tearing at increased rates. Ionoth numbers are multiplying. On some rotations we're facing doubled, even tripled populations. That is a situation which is only going to get worse, and we need to throw everything we have into a solution, because if the current rate is maintained, in a five-year KOTIS will be building locks not around gates, but around the few places without gates."

  "Is the increase because of the shutdown of the Pillar?" Alaz asked.

  "No," Taarel said, before I could do more than mentally flinch. "If anything, turning off that Pillar appears to have bought us a minor reprieve, as well as giving us the first real evidence that the Pillars are connected to the continuing fragmentation of the wall between near-space and real-space. In all the time we've kept exact records of them, there has been a slight yearly increase in the number of new gates formed, and the widening of existing gates. Fractional amounts, but undeniable. This past five-year there's been a marked rise, accompanied by a surge in Ionoth population. Inconveniently located gates are nothing to the need to arrest this deterioration, so don't concern yourself with talk of gate-closing assignments. There isn't time for that."

  Taarel doesn't pussyfoot around. Though the increase in gate and Ionoth numbers isn't a secret, and has been reported in the news outside KOTIS, this was the first time I'd heard anyone be quite so blunt in their assessment of what it meant. No wonder they're throwing everything at Muina, pouring people and resources onto a planet they wouldn't even set foot on a few months ago. KOTIS is racing disaster.

  Wednesday, April 23

  A bit of an audience

  Taarel's talk yesterday put my he-doesn't-like-me whine into perspective, and I at least partially succeeded in throwing off my gloom. It helped that Orla and Sefen from Third are wi
lling to chat to me while they sit around being vaguely alert for attack. The Kalrani all listened intently to our rambling conversation, but for whatever reason they haven't said a word to me other than when we were introduced.

  Rana Junction went way beyond my expectations of busy. Located in the very centre of Unara, it's a mega-city's worth of Grand Central Station. If you want to get from one major segment of the city to another you travel in to Rana Junction and then out to wherever. All roads lead to Rana Junction, basically. So having a metal box the size of a two-story suburban house crowding out one of the main concourses in the Junction – where people travel from one line to another – is a complete pain in the ass for everyone involved. While their nanotech allows the Tarens to reshape sections of their city comparatively easily, changing Rana Junction would make for major headaches.

  There's little private transport in Unara: it's all 'trains' and elevators and travelator walkways. Emergency and military services and a few very rich people have these zippy individual carriages which can whiz around on any of the lines in between the normal services, and shunt off into special short slots to get them out of the way. We travelled from the place we're staying – a weird 'government' hotel – in one of these solo carriages and walked fifty or so metres under an escort of Unara's police force to where the lock around the gate was waiting for us, the entrance under a little tent. They hadn't officially announced anything about Setari trying to close gates, but we were all in uniform and the reaction from the crowd was intense. Unlike the Setari's home island, most people on Unara have never had a chance to glimpse a flesh-and-blood Setari, and even on Konna it's rare to see them in uniform. Usually the only time the Setari go out in Tare's cities in uniform is when they're killing Ionoth which have reached real-space, and that involves a lot of alerts and evacuations.