Ruuel went out of the room, leaving me alone, but he and Maze came back while I was still eating, and joined me sitting around the little table of food.
"Feeling better?" Maze picked up one of the chewy sticks of bread.
"Just tired. Are people from Kolar likely turn up and want talk to me as well? Can I pretend not speak language if they do?"
"They haven't focused on you, and will not if that can be avoided."
"Distracted by our failure to communicate any of these developments to them," Ruuel added. "Kolar heard that Muina was unlocked from the news services."
"Same Nuri, maybe? Think interface bad, but big coincidence if didn't hear about me through it."
Maze shrugged, and the faintest wince crossed his face: his shoulder was still hurting him. "Very likely they've cultivated local informants. We vastly underestimated the Nurans, had no idea they had the ability to travel through the Rift without vehicles. No wonder they were so disinterested when Tare announced that we'd located Muina."
"Will Tare unlock Muina for Kolar and Nuri?"
"Kolar, very likely. I've no idea how it will be handled. I don't like the idea of divvying Muina up into territories, but the trade agreements we've established are far too important to try and deny access to the Kolarens. I wouldn't care to guess what's going to happen with Nuri. They did just try to...rescue you."
"Can you estimate how much of what he told you was true?" Ruuel asked.
"No. Or, he seemed all 'my honour not permit lies' but then act pleased when I told him I thought Nurans stupid hypocrites. He didn't act like he lied, but guess he didn't necessarily agree with what ordered to do. Think he meant it about Setari."
Ruuel gave me a dry look – quite the most reaction I've ever had from him – then said: "Did you believe he would be able to return you to your home?"
"Believe he thought he could." Remembered anger made me frown. "Semantics, really. He said he here to offer me Nuri's aid. Was here to remove inconveniently located thing called touchstone from hands of people Nuri not want to have. Would still count as rescue, of sorts, but was for their benefit, not mine. Don't see that they'd think me any less corrupt and misguided than Tarens. Is Setari some sort historic title?"
"Not so far as I was aware," Maze said. "The word wasn't created for us, and has a long-standing meaning of 'specialist' with an overtone of 'special guard'."
"And touchstone?" Dalenset – dalen for touch and set for stone. I think touchstone is a word on Earth, too, but don't think it refers to people.
"Not even in the dictionaries. Though I can see how the name might come about for a talent like yours."
I sighed. One in ten generations was not something I'd been happy to hear. "Will I more restrictions because this?"
"I don't know. We made a mistake, letting the Nuran meet with you. He knows your face now." Maze wasn't happy about it.
"Think he try rescue me again? Risk teleporting?"
"It comes down to a question of what is more important to them." Ruuel had reverted to being super-shuttered, but opened his eyes properly as if I was a symbol he was trying to decipher. "Did they want to use you for some purpose we don't understand? Or simply ensure that we could not?"
Since I was falling asleep, Maze took me back to my rooms after that. He didn't give me any speeches about staying or going, just told me that if anything even slightly unusual happened I was to send an alert immediately. An alert is a personal panic button, sending a broadcast message to whoever is on security detail. I don't count Ghost as anything unusual any more, and was very glad she showed up after my nap, sitting on my desk shamelessly begging for attention while I've filled up the last of my diary writing this down.
So today I met a psychic space samurai called Inisar, who did me no favours by making it clear to the Tarens that I'm even more interesting than they suspected, and who may or may not be sent back to kill me. As a result I decided to not be 'just Cass' any more, and I know there'll be times I'm going to regret that so hard, just as I know that the people who are important to me here will have spent some of today discussing strategies for making sure I don't have reason or opportunity to leave, and finding a balance between me wanting some privacy and their wanting to keep watch on me at all times.
And after ninja and samurai, I'm wondering if next up will be psychic space pirates.
Continued in Part Two: "Lab Rat One"
Lab Rat One Description
Touchstone: Part Two
April to mid-July
In the months since Cassandra Devlin walked off Earth onto another planet, she has grappled with everything from making blankets to helping psychics battle the memories of monsters. Not able to find a way home, she has instead gained friends and a purpose. Unfortunately, that purpose brings with it the pressure of being more than a little valuable, and those she has befriended are also her guards, ordered to explore and control her abilities to find out just what it is a touchstone can do.
Test subject was not the career path Cass had been planning.
With no privacy, too-frequent injuries, and the painful knowledge that she must always be an assignment to her Setari companions, Cass can only wish for some semblance of normality and control.
And as her abilities become more and more dangerous, tests and training may be the only thing capable of protecting Cass from herself.
April
Tuesday, April 1
Fool
April Fool's Day. Totally appropriate for the idiot who turned down a chance to go home to Earth because she thinks she should play hero. Fortunately, all my contribution to the hero-ing business involves is standing where I'm put, ready to be hauled about by the people whose job it is to save the planet, or the galaxy, or however much of the universe is supposedly at risk. And what I've really signed up for is more labrattery, to figure out what 'touchstone' means.
I missed having a diary yesterday, and considered switching to an electronic version, but I'd have to use Taren script. Being able to write in English, to have a book filled with the things no-one here can understand: I think I need it even more now I've decided to stay. This new diary comes all the way from Kolar, and has thick, white-brown paper, and a picture of endless waving grassland on the cover.
Starting fresh like this made me feel like I should write down some missed-it-by-a-few-months New Year's Resolutions, but everything I've thought up so far is something I don't really have any choice about. I can't choose not to be on second level monitoring, and I don't want to resolve to not get injured, or save the universe, or anything completely out of my control. But the least I can do is try to is:
- Make more than a half-assed effort at training.
- Find a way to be Cass instead of Caszandra.
- Remember that even kittens might be evil.
Some of those will probably fall into the too-hard basket as well, but it's something to go on with.
After my meeting with the Nuran, I emailed Mara and asked if I should send her dress to laundry, but she said to just bring it down to her rooms the next morning and we could go on into the city. I was pleased, because I'd been expecting my security to be tightened, not relaxed. The invitation did make me remember "psychological aspects", but I think I'll go nuts if I don't take most things at face value, if I waste my time trying to decide if people like me or have been ordered to entertain me. I have to accept that it's probably both, and move on. Part of my strategy for coping with staying.
Besides, I was very interested in seeing Mara's apartment, which turned out to have the same layout as mine, just with a mildly cluttered and lived-in air. I liked the public space decoration: all the walls looked like gauzy curtains that shifted as if the wind was blowing them. Not what I was expecting for a world where hardly anyone has or wants windows.
"Lohn's just getting ready," Mara said, when I handed over the bag and dress. "Maze's description of your expression when he gave this to you has made me regret not going along to watch."
"Was wondering just exactly what wanted me to do with Nuran," I admitted.
"We're going to have to get you some clothes without unfortunate messages written on them. Sit down."
She took the dress off into her bedroom, and I sat down and was gazing about interestedly when the bathroom door opened and Lohn came out.
"Mar, did I leave my–" He stopped and we looked at each other for what couldn't have been more than a couple of seconds, but felt a good deal longer, and then he turned and went into the bedroom and I thought about how fit and good-looking the Setari are. Lohn's got an incredible body, and has the added advantage of being fun and easy to get along with. Of course, he and Mara are so obviously a couple that I've never spent much time thinking about him in terms of being an attractive male creature, but I gave the question some serious consideration just then.
"Sorry about that," he said, coming out a minute later with Mara, this time with clothes on. Very pink in the face.
"Now you don't get to tease me about dress," I said, trying not to laugh or display any recollection of thoughts about attractive male creatures.
Mara, once she saw that I wasn't going to act like a twelve year-old about seeing a hot naked guy, smiled and said: "I don't think he's capable of that. He's been thinking up silly questions to ask you all morning."
"Is going to be very disappointed then." But I knew he'd ask anyway. I don't mind Lohn's teasing. He's never mean. "Can we really go out into city? Was worried I end up confined to quarters."
"For the moment the rule is that anywhere outside of the core Setari areas you must have at least two people escorting you, and one of them must have Combat Sight." Mara led the way out of her apartment. "If we take seriously the idea of the Nurans having a reason to kill you, then you're a good deal safer anywhere with us than alone in your rooms. Fortunately you were already in a suppression room, but we don't have any real idea of the limits of the Nurans' abilities or whether they'd be able to locate you through the suppression."
"Maze said he didn't have any threat sense from your Nuran," Lohn added. "But called him 'beyond formidable', which is Maze-speak for 'I don't think I could take him'. Still, this idea that they might decide to eliminate you rather than, ah, rescue you is just speculation. For one thing, it doesn't match what little we know of the Nurans' philosophies. And if your talent set really is that rare, it doesn't seem likely that they'll give up on the rescuing option."
I wondered if the Setari would be sent to try and rescue me back, but didn't ask, only hoped it didn't come to that. I sure as hell don't want to play Helen in a space-aged Trojan War.
It was a great day out. We went to a Tairo match, had lunch, shopped a little, and toured some of the more scenic bits of the city. There was a wonderful flower garden, and we spent some time on this amazing game, where the aim is to get from one side of a room to the other, except the room is full of constantly moving platforms going in every direction, and a 'Levitation field' slows your fall if you miss jumping from one to the next. That impressed me immensely, for all that I spend my days with flying psychic space ninjas. I let myself enjoy it all. Lohn and Mara are great together, and they treat me like a younger sister. It was easy to forget they'd probably been assigned to me for the day.
I kept thinking about my decision to stay, about how immediate my refusal to go with the Nuran was. It wasn't just a fit of heroic self-sacrifice. I mean, I'm miserable a lot of the time, and I'll never stop missing my family, or real music, or all the things I liked to read and do which just aren't here. But now that I'm getting better at speaking the language I'm having fun more often, even when First Squad aren't going out of their way to entertain me. Enough to make me wonder if going home to be just another noob at university would be a little bland.
I think in part I've caught Mum's I-want-to-know-what-happens-next disease. And, seriously, visiting other planets, cruising around exploring lost alien civilisations. Working with psychic space ninjas. It's far from dull. I want to help the Setari win. To fix the problem, and stop monsters getting out and killing people. And play more amazing games, and see more planets. I guess, in a stressed, periodically lonely and uncertain of the future way, I'm happy here.
At the least I was in quite a cheerful mood when Zan came swimming with me today, and only briefly wondered if it was her turn on the Baby-sit Devlin Roster. She seemed tired and less Zen than usual. And I think she was curious about the Nuran, since she made a few oblique references to him without outright asking questions. I'm not sure how secret he's supposed to be, but since Zan's one of 'my' captains, I figured it wouldn't hurt to explain what had happened.
We had lunch afterwards, and I told her about April Fool's Day and hoaxes I'd thought funny, and then about that
War of the Worlds
radio play, where all these people thought Martians really were invading. Then our schedules for the next month were updated, and I'm being posted back to Muina, along with Twelfth, Fourth and First Squad.
When I asked, Zan said she didn't know how she felt about the trip; Muina was a nearly mythical thing in a way and the idea of being able to go there, to touch the past which was so central to her present, was something she wasn't sure she was equal to. That's the most open speech she's ever given me, and it left me pleased but also worried about her.
Twelfth are going to be boring themselves with guard duty at Pandora, and First and Fourth are forming an expeditionary squad with a small team of greysuits to start investigating the biggest of the big cities. This is a lot more dangerous than guarding Pandora, since the Ddura don't seem to sweep places without patterned roofs nearly as frequently. And I'm assigned to Fourth Squad, so a lot of enjoying looking at Ruuel in my future – not sure whether that's a good or bad thing. And Zan might get in a bit of enjoying looking at Maze, heh.