The Touchstone Trilogy

by Andrea K Höst

  "Nils dodge worse than I do," I said, trying to control my laughter enough to lob snowballs in something like the right direction for Third Squad and Squad One.

  "Depends who's aiming," he said with a super-sexy grin, wiping snow out of his eyes before following his squad back down the slope.

  Third Squad and Squad One managed to destroy each other, so that by the time I poked my head out of my fort, only Eeli was left to fight. Eeli's better at dodging than me, and her smile was at nuclear hyper-wattage for the rest of the day after making first capture.

  Taarel, looking highly amused, took the rest of Third Squad on a slightly different course back to base so that they couldn't confuse anyone coming after Eeli and me, and Eeli – huge-eyed and vibrating with excitement, but keeping very quiet – had me go ahead of her on a somewhat circuitous route in the same direction, using the cover of half-buried bushes. Since she's not telekinetic, we couldn't move very quickly, but the snow was broken up enough by then that it wouldn't be obvious which direction we'd gone. Combat Sight only shows threats, and the other squads weren't allowed to use Path Sight, so I actually had more of an advantage tracking than the Setari.

  First Squad effortlessly took me away from Eeli – though I did almost hit Lohn before Zee got me – but then there was a really tangled battle between fragmented bits of squads returning from their various bases, which First Squad managed to survive losing only Maze and Alay.

  Not letting your squad get fragmented was obviously an important tactic, as First and then Fourth proved. Just as First was approaching their base, Fourth ambushed – as much as you can ambush anyone with Combat Sight. Mori got me hard in the back as part of a relentless barrage which took out Ketzaren and Lohn. Mara immediately tried to capture me back, only to have her ball seemingly explode mid-air. I only realised what had happened when Zee's attack went the same way, intercepted by another snowball.

  "Nice tactic," Zee said, shaking her head at Ruuel as she picked ice out of her hair.

  "Be prepared to have it used against you," Mara added with a grin, and waved at me before they both headed toward their far-too-close base.

  Maze was already on his way back, and Ruuel signalled his squad to hurry up, before ducking down and blurring on ahead along a different route. He was smiling. Just ever-so-faintly. I suppose maybe it was more that he looked extra-alert and alive, with his eyes open wide, but definitely enjoying himself. The rest of his squad certainly was: even Sonn was bright-eyed. If Fourth's base hadn't been on the opposite side of the hill they might have won, but they ran up against Third, Squad One and Second, who held off ambushing each other in favour of taking Fourth down. With First coming up behind, there was an inevitable, suitably epic stand-off. I ended up tagged by Nalaz, and he and Taranza hastily hauled me off while Shaf guarded their retreat. And then Twelfth Squad pounced, having waited for the critical moment when almost everyone was heading back to their own bases.

  It was great seeing how proud Twelfth Squad were of Zan. Even though half of them are injured, it was her strategy which had let them win. And so funny watching Zan being so very correct, but with her cheeks so pink, as the other captains congratulated her.

  After that we had an every-man-for-himself game of hide-and-seek, where we tallied every time we hit someone, and every time we got hit. Ruuel won this effortlessly, which I don't think surprised anyone, although Nalaz and Mara came close at stages. Afterwards we all went and had a big, hot lunch and everyone looked so relaxed and happy and of course I fell asleep.

  Lohn and Mara are being my babysitters at the moment, though I've left them alone in the other room because I got the impression they wanted to snuggle. It was a really good day. I wish I could think of some way of thanking them properly in return.

  Toward the end of the hide-and-seek, I'd headed off to one side to get a bit of a rest and make a stock of snowballs. For ease I was lying on my back, deep in the snow, watching the sky growing greyer. And Ruuel came near me. I felt him before he knew who I was – he was following my tracks I think. But something must have made him realise. Because he stopped, and then changed direction away from me.

  "Too easy?" I said loudly. I was really angry, abruptly understanding just why Kajal is so infuriated by Ruuel's refusal to fight him. And then I was nervous because Ruuel stopped, and came back toward me.

  I didn't try and throw snowballs – I knew he'd dodge easily – just lay there and tried not to be too wide-eyed as stood directly above me, giving me an incredibly foreshortened view of leg and his face. He certainly wasn't smiling that time. My heartbeat went through the roof because it wasn't the efficient squad captain looking down at me, but the person I'd glimpsed during his fight with Kajal, arrogant and annoyed. For that moment he was entirely himself with me.

  Then he dropped a snowball directly on my face and walked off while I gasped and choked. But I had to laugh, and said: "Guess so!" as he walked away. I enjoy the oddest things.

  After I'd had my nap, Maze told me that I'll be heading back to Tare tomorrow. First and Second Squad's coming with me, and Mara's going to be whipping me into shape, and Zee overseeing my Sight and projection training. I don't know if Ruuel recommended the change of trainers, or if it's just they want the Sights squads here on Muina.

  I'm in an accepting kind of mood about it all, like I'm starting to be able to let him go.

  Saturday, June 28

  Fly-over

  I spent a nice relaxed morning with Zan and Dess building a snowman and then constructing some snow armchairs and making amateurish snow sculptures. Telekinetics are definitely very handy to have when you're trying to shift a lot of snow about. Zan's got a real flair for sculpture, too, and I was pleased that indulging me gave her a chance to do something she obviously enjoyed. Twelfth is going to remain assigned to Muina until further notice – their injuries don't prevent even Kiste from fighting, and they should be fine so long as they're not facing large numbers of Ionoth. And, thanks to the strength of her Telekinetic talent, Zan's got a lot of construction work in her near future.

  We're on the Litara heading back now, having narrowly avoided a bunch of civilians who were off-loaded at Pandora for an overnight visit along with, so far as I could tell, the fittings they'll be using in the new building that's been going up. It's the first time KOTIS has allowed anyone on Muina who was there just to look and exclaim: a one-off PR exercise for a bunch of VIPs, reporters, and contest winners come to 'experience the home world'. There'll be another group from Kolar in a few days, and no more for a while. Pandora's getting larger every day, but KOTIS is very reluctant to spend resources on tourists. Maze said there's a massive disagreement over the question of settling instead of exploring, mainly because of the Ddura. He doesn't want families, kids, here, but there's an argument that Muina might soon be the safest place on any of the planets.

  I hadn't known any of this when watching the Litara settling on the lake. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have stayed sitting outside when the shuttle went past on its way to the amphitheatre. KOTIS personnel don't as a rule point at you and wave. Fortunately Maze came down and collected me before any of them were finished at the platform. I don't think much of a career as a zoo exhibit.

  It's very weird to me that I think of people as 'civilians'.

  Snug

  So nice to be back in my own rooms. So nice not to have two people making sure they're always within twenty feet of me.

  Ghost showed up within half an hour of me being back, purring like mad. She missed me, or whatever my enhancement does for her.

  It made me wonder about Muina v Tare in terms of 'home'. I guess Muina would be as much home as here if I had my own quarters, not a glorified medical monitoring facility. Given the choice I'd probably live on Muina, just because there's so much more outside, but I'm feeling very comfy and settled here, curled into my window seat with Ghost purring on my lap.

  First and Second Squad are reverting to 'nightmare watch' instead of babysitting, whic
h is fine with me, especially since I'm not having too much trouble at the moment with my dreams. I think the manifestation part of me is still recovering. Tomorrow everyone has a day off, then I'm back on training.

  Sunday, June 29

  Nice means precise

  The Ruuel-not-there sensation has come back, but otherwise non-eventful dreaming. I spent a long time in the bath this morning, looking at my legs and being amazed at how ugly they are, and thinking back over the fifteen seconds or so that it took me to get them in this condition.

  It's really hard to go there. Waking like that scared the hell out of me, and it also hurt worse than anything else I've managed to do to myself. But waking aware of Ruuel's absence really brought it back to me. If I'd been less freaked out, I'd think about that night all the time, since I spent who knows how long with my arms in a death-lock around his waist and my face pressed into his stomach. He kept one hand on my shoulder and the other on the back of my head, and didn't even wipe the blood off his face until Mara came and he got me to clutch her instead. And it's only from looking at the log later that I know that he was grey-faced and sweating, battered by the raw terror I was blasting.

  Even if it was just because I'm his assignment, I'll always remember him doing that. And saying my name correctly. I have this increasing collection of special memories of things he's done, including dropping a snowball on my face, but my accepting attitude seems to be holding. My crush makes his job harder, a job which could easily get him killed, and I think seeing that has given me the impetus I needed to step back.

  I also caught up on the latest episode of The Hidden War. It was the confrontation scene, where Lenton discovered Zan wasting her time giving me baby-level training, and all the squads are introduced to me. Looks like Maze didn't put a word-for-word log of the explanation of my lab rat, which only meant the scriptwriters happily made up a scene where Lastier was quite directly insulting. There was also a scene which I wasn't present for, where he was being very smug and superior and insulting to the other squad captains, but also brilliantly competent and incisive.

  I wonder if that PR person had a thing about Ruuel, or it was just script decisions which are making them put the knife in. Lastier is close enough to be recognisable, but terribly distorted.

  Monday, June 30

  Irresolution

  Just physical training today, and that mainly in the weights room, since my legs aren't quite up to training which involves impact, and Mara says I need to work on upper body strength anyway. A couple of squads (Eighth, Tenth) passed through during the two long sessions we had, making me feel terribly self-conscious about my scars, since we were in the shorts and singlet arrangement. They were very good about not staring though. The rest of First Squad came and joined us for the session after lunch and demonstrated how much of a wimp I am. By the time Mara was done with me I was a limp noodle.

  She's booked me in for swimming tomorrow morning, which I'm allowed to do alone so long as I don't dive and are feeling up to it. Tomorrow afternoon after they're back from rotation, Zee will be resuming my Sights and other-weird-things-Cass-does training. If, that is, I can actually move tomorrow.

  There's a new news frenzy sparked by all the 'tourists' who've returned from Muina. Interviews with KOTIS staff and the contest winners and lots of shots of what Pandora looks like right now and tours of the buildings there and talk about making Pandora self-supporting. And KOTIS used their visit to officially release not only news and images of Kalasa, but to take a select few there and to explain the use of the platforms (although not, as yet, exactly how you get to be able to use the platforms). Other than a lot of extreme impatience at the time-frame of more civilians being able to go there, it's all been pretty joyous and exuberant news.

  They've named the settlement at Kalasa 'Kaszandra', which is something I find uncomfortable and highly ironic, given the 'inescapable doom' aspects of my name. And of course the reporters managed to get hold of a whole bunch of anonymous gossip about me while they were talking to people at Pandora, and there's images of the snowmen and snowchairs Zan, Dess and I had built. And someone told them I'd been injured (mysteriously), and about how protective the Setari were of me (devoted) and whole bunches of embarrassing stuff which is very much not about me at all, but this little mythos which is being built up around me (wise beyond her years). No-one mentions the amount of sulking I get through.

  I wonder if Tare has an equivalent of the tall poppy syndrome, and after all these unlikely stories about me being brave and wonderful they'll recast me for the feet of clay role. It's not that I don't think they should probably be glad I showed up and unlocked their world, but I hate this increasing tendency to build me up into something I'm not: improbably virtuous and clever and brave. The life I'm living is amazing, and I'm not unaware that I've caused a massive change to happen – I did name the settlement Pandora for that exact reason – but they've all tended to be things that have just happened while I was stumbling about trying not to die. And when I re-read my diaries I just sound increasingly whiney and edging toward certified nutjob. I've spent the last few months falling apart and moaning about it.

  I was really glad for Mara's training today, because there's no hint of 'fragile little half-insane princess must be placated' when she makes me do an extra ten repetitions. I'm going to go along with that attitude, and throw myself back into my rather neglected schoolwork, and that animal identification assignment. Every month that's gone by since I was rescued, I seem to have become less stable and lost more privacy. Yeah, I've had good reasons for freaking out, and a lot of the guarding has been necessary. But I don't like myself this way, and I'm looking to change how I've been behaving. To take comfort from the people trying to support me, but to get back to standing on my own two feet.

  July

  Tuesday, July 1

  Map of the brain

  Swimming was okay. It's been long enough, I guess, and it did help loosen up all my complaining muscles. I hope eventually it'll be fun again.

  Zee took me back out to Keszen Point, which had obviously reverted to being a warehouse during my absence, since the boxes were different boxes. Ista Chemie was very interested in the Kalasa projection, rumours of which are already rife on the interface, and also the fact that I feel like the manifestation bit of me is still tired. We started out small – another mug, in fact – and though I can picture a mug in my head very easily, I couldn't make one appear, full of cocoa or not. And I don't seem to be causing anything at all to happen in near-space. This is nothing but a good thing from my point of view.

  We moved on to a series of visualisations, measuring my energy output and my brain's electrical activity when trying to see a distinct series of rooms of around the same size at increasing distances around Tare. And then a visualisation of a fictional place for contrast. It was a pretty productive session, both for clearly identifying which part of my brain is responsible for the Sight talent, and for me to become more aware of the separate mechanisms. I kept accidentally trying to manifest things, and I could feel myself not able to, and eventually I began to anticipate the twinge and deliberately avoid it. So the Kalasa manifestation cost me a couple of days of unconsciousness, but gave me a little progress in return. And a chance to not be so worried about accidentally making monsters.

  This kind of training will be every second day from now on, with nothing but physical training on First Squad's off-rotation days until I'm fit and healthy. Only then, and if they've gained a proper understanding of the limits and costs of my talent set, will they even consider poking me at Muina again.

  Zee was very tired by the time we were heading back, and I made jokes about carrying her to her quarters. I told her, as we rode the elevator, that I had been trying in vain to think of a way to thank everyone for my snowball fight, but she thought this tremendously funny, and told me the snowball fight was them thanking me, and besides they'd all enjoyed themselves.

  Then I asked her didn't she think my b
eanie had suited Nils and she tweaked a strand of my hair and told me she'd make sure Mara left me too exhausted to remember what a beanie was.

  I much prefer training with the Setari to being babysat.

  Wednesday, July 2

  Ow

  Entire body hurts. Mara carries out Zee's instructions very well.

  Thursday, July 3

  In a galaxy far, far-

  The whole morning went to medical for the beginning of cosmetic work on my legs. Not too bad, though it left the skin feeling numb and oddly hot, and I have bandages again.

  This afternoon Zee had me try and visualise what's going on in Pandora. They wanted to do this test while I'm still not able to manifest, because the previous set of tests proved that distance does take more energy (no real surprise there). I could tell they thought it was an extra-serious test because Ista Chemie was very careful and particular about all the medical equipment being on-hand and ready for business.

  They'd decided on 'my' building as the target location, Zee carefully describing the already-familiar furnishings. Imagining something and 'seeing' it are very different experiences for me, so I knew that it was working. All that detail. Seeing things using this Sight makes it go almost 'super-real': every tiny smudge stands out, and all the colours seem special.

  Seeing Pandora was hard, though. Carrying a person on your back and trying to walk up a flight of stairs hard. My heart-rate skyrocketed, I started to breathe like a steam-train and my throat and chest felt hot, quickly followed by the familiar stabbing headache that tells me I'm pushing myself into new territory. Zee immediately told me to stop, and I lay still with my eyes shut until Ista Chemie's medications came into effect.

  "Building growing extra rooms?" I asked, once I felt closer to human again. I'd almost thought I'd visualised the wrong place, because all the furniture had been cleared out and the walls seemed to be wrong.