Eventually my eyes adjusted enough to see shades of grey, and I worked out that the entrance corridor was almost completely blocked by sand. After I'd recovered from all the running and crying, I wriggled and dug my way out through the gap near the ceiling, and staggered up into too-bright sunlight.
My head felt all the better for getting away from the Ddura, but my heart fell the more I looked about me. After all that water, I'd ended up in one of the few desert areas on the planet. The town was almost completely swallowed by a drifting dune, with only a few roofs poking above the sand, and those were well-covered with a scatter of gold. The Tarens had been analysing years of satellite surveys and locating all the 'patterned roof' ruins. I was sure they would have immediately sent ships to the ruins they hadn't already stationed relay drones at, to check whether I'd ended up there. This was not one which was going to be visible from the air.
My interface still said 'no connection', of course.
It was baking hot, and dry, and just climbing up to the top of the tallest tower to get a good look around had me dripping with sweat. I converted my nanosuit to a rather scanty arrangement. You can detach bits and they'll hold their form, so I kept my boots – reinforcing them for fear of snakes and scorpions – and made the rest into a thin layer in shorts and tank-top form, with the rest of the nanoliquid in a pad on my back.
The village seemed to be on the edge of the desert, but the land which wasn't covered in sand was a parched wreck for as far as I could see. At one time it must have been a forest of long, thin trees, but I couldn't see any that looked even remotely alive, and very few that were even upright.
After that I went inside the top room of the tower and sat in the shade, waiting. I read a book, actually – one of the glories of the interface is that I'll never be short of entertainment while I'm stranded on alien planets, since I've downloaded a few decades of TV and books. It was perhaps early afternoon when I'd arrived, and after a couple of hours the extreme heat let up and I went back up on the roof to take another look.
I'd been thinking about what to do in between reading. There was no sign of anything green, of any hint of water. Not even cactus. It wasn't a place anyone would last long. But trailing off on a cross-country march in this kind of country would be suicidal. And, more to the point–
My ankle had been hurting more, and I reconnected my boots to my suit and withdrew my right one to inspect the bruises and burns and cuts. The entire area around them was swollen and flushed red. It didn't look up to a cross-country march.
I debated trying to use the platform to go back and get to another platform, but the chances of me avoiding any Cruzatch waiting for me was only marginally higher than a snowflake in my current hell. Instead, I relocated to the closest exposed building to all the dead trees, collected some wood, and made a fire. Sounds nuts, I know, and I didn't enjoy doing it, but I knew how much energy fire-lighting took from my attempts at Pandora, so knew I needed to start with it. It was also considerably easier than it was at Pandora – bone-dry wood, I guess. It caught within minutes, and I fed it up into a nice smoky bonfire, one which would last for hours. Then, after a little rest, I began hauling long, thin sapling trunks out onto the sand. Even at full size it didn't look like these trees grew that large, but I focused on the thinner ones because I needed to not exhaust myself lugging serious weight.
I made an arrow, the biggest arrow I could stand to complete, working until sunset. It was about half a metre thick for its entire length and it felt unbearably long. I was a wreck by the time it was done: covered in sweat, sunburned, limping and parched beyond belief. My ankle hurt so much, I had a raging fever, and struggled to keep myself focused until the sun went down. By then I almost couldn't bring myself to stand up again and limp along the entire length of that huge arrow setting the bushes I'd pinned under the logs alight – getting myself thoroughly smoked along the way.
I almost lost myself on the way back, too, which is quite a feat when you've built a huge burning arrow to point out the direction. But I started staggering off into the night and stood in the dark for a long time, not sure where I was. Eventually I managed to reorient on my original bonfire and reached the building there, and after that nothing much makes sense in my memories. It was endless nightmares of swimming and running and being trapped and then escaping and Cruzatch everywhere and constantly feeling cold and burning up at the same time. Ducking out of that Cruzatch's reach at the Pillar mixed itself in as well, and I actually remember that more than I used to now.
I didn't need to remember how afraid I was.
And then, running through an endless maze with Cheshire monsters always just behind me, I came face to face with Ruuel. He said "Devlin," and lifted one hand and pressed it – the back of his hand – to my cheek. I can remember that really distinctly, how cool his hand felt, and how he said: "You're with us. Stop running."
I blinked up at him. I was in a bed and could feel his hand against my cheek, and I said: "Thanks," and my log tells me I really did say that (in English), and sounded so completely astonished that it makes me laugh to listen to it. And he looked amused. Just faintly, barely a shift in the line of his mouth, but that's in my log too and it's very hard not to watch it over and over.
I passed out again, but was spared any more dreams, and next time I had anything resembling a coherent thought I was back in the infirmary at Setari headquarters on Tare, and that was two days ago.
And, eh, it's taken me all day to write this. I'll pick it up again tomorrow.
Tuesday, May 6
Strayed
From everyone else's point of view, I walked onto the platform at Pandora and vanished. I have to feel sorry for my two greensuit minders, and Jelan Scal, who'd had to report that I'd gone. I'm also rather glad I wasn't assigned to any of the Setari squads when this happened, because I guess it would count as a severe assignment failure.
So they started a planet-wide search for me. Like I'd thought, they'd assumed I'd been teleported to another village, or possibly to a sealed place like Arenrhon. It was a massive search effort and I'm glad that they treated my being off by myself as an absolute emergency, even though I'd survived perfectly well alone on Muina for a month. The first thing they did was visit the known pattern-roof villages which hadn't yet had drones planted at them, and put drones there. Then any known settlement. Putting scan and relay drones all over the planet was something they were intending to do anyway, but they brought forward the schedule on it by a factor of ten. Third and Fourth Squads were sent into the Ena to see if Path Sight through the spaces could locate me, and Second and Eleventh Squad were also sent to Muina, since they also have strong Path Sight talents.
Most of the time of the initial search, I was in the cisterns or asleep in that bathroom. After I woke up, played hide-and-seek across the centre of the city, and made my last-ditch dash for the platform, I'd been missing for nearly seventeen hours. I was just over twenty-four hours gone when I lit up my arrow and passed into fever dreams.
I'm not sure if my arrow would have been spotted if one of the technicians hadn't noticed that the placement of the pattern-roof villages had its own pattern. It wasn't a precise one, but it seemed that the villages are pretty evenly-spaced across the planet, so there were particular regions that the Tarens were concentrating on searching. And the satellites were looking specifically for fires, even though it seems there are an awful lot of natural fires. A satellite taking a closer look at a dying fire in one of the search regions found that it was, well, an arrow, and everyone celebrated. Arrows mean the same thing on Tare as they do on Earth.
The nearest ship was sent post-haste to that location: they were over an hour away, and from what I can tell reached me about three hours after sunset.
Eeli sent me a nice get-well email full of highly vivid descriptions of the drama of the search. Since she's the most powerful of the pathfinders, she'd been very determined to find me herself and it sounds like Taarel had pretty much needed to have her sedated to get her to get some rest during the middle of it all. Third had just returned from a second, very long attempt to locate me through the Ena when the nearest shuttle came within range of my interface and confirmed that I was there. The excitement was dampened by me being non-responsive and in really bad shape – dehydration on top of infection – and then of course they uplifted my log and saw what I'd been doing.
They took me to Pandora until I was out of critical condition, and then back to Tare. My only memory of the first two days was Ruuel telling me to stop running, and once looking up at the lid of a pod. The third day I kept waking for ten or so minutes, then falling back to sleep. Every time I woke, someone different was with me. Mostly First Squad, but Zan, Mori, Glade, even Nils from Second Squad. Lots of hugs, but I was too out of it to hold any real conversation – I'm surprised I managed to write anything in my diary. The medics were doing a lot of work with my leg and it seemed every time I could put two thoughts together they'd come and inject me with something.
The next day was better. My mind was a lot less fuzzy when I was woken by my primary medic, who gave me a 'follow this light with your eyes' test which is becoming very familiar, then took the tubes out of me, and let me eat mush. They checked how I was at sitting up, and helped me to the bathroom and back. I napped again after the medics had cleared me, and next time I woke Maze was with me.
"First Squad have roster to sit with me?" I asked, and he looked over and gave me one of his superb smiles.
"Not that formal, but we are taking turns, yes. You're more yourself than last time we spoke."
That confused me. "Don't remember last time." I reviewed my log later and Maze had been sitting with me very early on, and I'd said a few disconnected things to him in English which don't make sense even to me.
"Doesn't matter." He gave me another smile, and I could tell he was weighing up what kind of state I was in mentally. "The arrow was a very clever idea."
"I thought that until started building it. Too hot there. Luck not very good in picking which platform escape through."
"Anything that let you get away from the Cruzatch was a good choice," he said, looking away from me briefly. He hates the Cruzatch so much. "Do you feel up to answering some questions? Things the log couldn't cover."
I shrugged. "Nothing else in my schedule."
"All right. Did you actively try to use the first platform, or feel any sensation of effort when using it?"
"No. Was just standing there hoping the Ddura would be not as loud as usual, and then everyone vanished. Didn't feel effort at all." I anticipated his next question, adding: "When I got there, I looked into water, then tried to go back. Then Cruzatch turned up and I tried to go back more, and then I ran away. Not sure why didn't work. When on next platform, didn't feel any effort, but I was trying to make it work."
He asked me a few other questions – why I'd changed direction toward the bathroom, and how I'd decided where to look for the other platforms – watching me carefully the entire time. Very worried about me.
Eventually I said: "Not going to break down."
His expression was wry. "Do you know, just watching your log was an ordeal? You can't expect to come through something like that without after effects."
"If you sat through whole thing, will know did plenty breaking down already." But I sighed, and looked away from him. "Going to have more nightmares. And, that probably Lantaren school-city Kalasa, yes? Place most want find."
"Your grammar deteriorates when you're upset."
He said it with an air of discovery, which
did
upset me, and I gave him an angry glance.
"We're not going to let you get into a situation like that again, Caszandra." He touched my cheek and I realised I'd started crying without even noticing, and then of course I cried all over him, which I'd particularly wanted not to do. I ended up feeling thoroughly sick and exhausted, but somehow better.
Not that I believe for a moment that they won't stand me back up on a platform if they can't find Kalasa any other way. I know the Setari will be with me, but there's no way to be sure I won't end up in the same place, alone.
I'm working on not thinking about that, about being comforted and relaxed, since I'm hoping to be allowed out of infirmary tomorrow and they're not going to clear me if I act even a little like I'm scared to be alone.
Wednesday, May 7
Annivarming
A week with nothing but medical appointments and some mild training in my schedule. My skin is still peeling thanks to my thorough sunburning, and the infection took a day or two to kill off, but while I'm physically run down (again), and my ankle is covered in this blue spray-on bandage because of the deeper burns there, I wasn't badly injured this time around. They've been feeding me horrible-tasting nanite 'restorative' drinks which seem to have helped a lot, and thankfully Zee was allowed to spring me from the medical facility this morning. I'm so sick of constant monitoring. She also brought me a change of clothes and told me she had a surprise for me.
"What kind of surprise?" I asked. Not, to tell the truth, at all keen on surprises at the moment.
"How is it a surprise if I describe it to you first? Get dressed and you'll find out all the sooner."
The clothes were new – a pair of black Capri-style pants, sandals, and a really nice silky top with a gorgeous print of a bird with blue and black wings.
"Is this yours?" I asked, pulling open the door of the ensuite. "So pretty."
"It's yours," Zee said, pleased. "That's my part of the surprise."