The Texas Renegade Returns

Sunday, March 30

Touchstone

I made sure to be early down to Red Lock for the rotation with Fourth Squad, and then had to wonder if I was trying to impress Ruuel, and what I thought that would achieve. I need to be sensible where he's concerned. Anyway, turning up early was more about not being on the receiving end of one of those brief glances he gives people when they waste his time. Just a momentary look, not even a change of expression, and I know I'd shrivel.

The point was moot this morning because I was there in plenty of time and Ruuel was almost late. That gave me a chance to chat with Ferus and Eyse about the kinds of missions they usually do and how they're still playing catch up from when the Pillar's deactivation shifted so many spaces about. Both of them are really easy to talk to, with actual and apparent senses of humour. They're looking forward to going back to Muina, to do exploration work in the larger cities.

Ruuel brought us all into mission channel and gave us the two sentences he considered a briefing just before he came into view. "In addition to on-going goals, we'll be looking for the new type of roamer which First Squad encountered. Tracking their source space has been marked priority."

Triggering the gate-lock to open, he passed us to collect the usual rotation gear, and was back just as the lock was fully open. His black eye, sadly, had receded to a faint yellowish shadow, and he didn't seem to be favouring his knee. But mission efficiency hit a snag before we'd even stepped into the Ena. Ruuel paused as the gate-lock was closing behind us, and then Selkie joined the mission channel.

"Devlin," Selkie said, making me feel exactly like someone called out of class by the school principal. "Does the word 'Gea' mean anything to you?"

"Gear?" I repeated, since that's how he'd pronounced it. "Part of machine?"

"Specifically, 'child of Gea'."

"Oh. Gaia, maybe? Gaia is the same as Earth, or Terra. Different names for my planet in different languages. Gaia is Greek mythology mother-planet-goddess, a bit like how Muinans think of Muina. Child of Gaia would either be myth people called Titans, or anyone from my planet, depending on which way look at it. Did you find record Earth in histories?"

"No. An emissary from Nuri has walked out of deep-space and asked that the child of Gea be brought to speak with him."

Even Ruuel reacted to that one, frowning, and there was a little pause while Selkie was probably talking to someone else. Then he said: "Continue your rotation, but return within a kasse." He dropped out of the channel, leaving Fourth Squad looking at each other and at me, very startled.

"Focus," Ruuel said, eyes narrow, and sent us through the gate. I don't think he was at all pleased to have such a big distraction waved under his squad's nose at the beginning of a mission. It was lucky that the most I have to do is stop and start in time with my escorts because I'd certainly been given plenty to distract me from the rotation.

Nuri is the moon world with the Luddite ex-Muinans. It was located around eighty years ago and when the Tarens turned up the Nuran response was pretty much: "We don't want to have anything to do with you. Go away." Since then they'd unbent only enough to say the same thing in rather more detail. They felt the Taren use of technology, particularly the interface, made them a corrupting influence and they could not risk exposure. No, they would not join an alliance to find or investigate Muina. No, they did not want to share their knowledge of Muina's disaster. The last time Tare had sent a delegation to discuss the apparent increase in the severity of Ionoth incursions, the Nurans had barely stopped short of accusing the Tarens of being responsible.

So having a Nuran turn up on Tare asking to talk to me was big news.

I had a couple of hours to stew on that while Fourth Squad headed back through the same spaces First Squad had cleared last rotation. Ruuel was taking an extreme-caution approach to each space, since traps had been encountered last time, but we reached the container space without any sense of threat. And once in there, we found only the little greyish people watching us from a fortification they'd built.

There were over a dozen gates out of that space, and Fourth Squad examined every one. Although the one which the hairy people had run through had shifted out of alignment, they were able to detect signs of them at three other gates, and Fourth chose the most-travelled gate and headed through to the next space. It was a small island, no bigger than a couple of house-blocks, with exposed sandbars around it. Lots of sand-coloured mice lived in burrows beneath the tufty grass. And there were sharks in the water, given the stinking pile of butchered carcasses we found.


Again Fourth mapped the gates, and picked the one which was the most frequented. The next space was big, some kind of multi-story car park full of vague memories of cars, which made it very confusing. From what I could make out of the blurs, they were low and large, with what looked like chimneys in swirls of chrome. Ruuel and Sonn paused a long moment before gesturing us through, and when we were in Ruuel said over the mission channel: "Next level up, perhaps a dozen. There was a lookout."

There was a trap, too, but Ruuel could tell it was there before it was set off. He had Sonn send an enhanced ball of lightning up the ramp to the next level and we all stayed well back listening to the noise. Then Ferus pulled the trap apart with Telekinesis, and we went up. Eight stories of car park, and scads of gates, but once we'd tracked down and cleared the last of the hairy people and mapped the gates Ruuel said: "Not their home space either. We'll pick this up another day."

I've no idea how long they would have gone on if not for the time limit caused by me and my Nuran visitor. They didn't seem particularly annoyed about stopping, at any rate. We returned, not neglecting caution just because we'd been through the spaces already, and stepped back into real-space about ten minutes short of the full kasse.

I wasn't altogether surprised to find Maze waiting for me. He nodded at Ruuel as we came through the gate-lock and said: "You and I are on escort duty," then added to me: "Put this on." He handed me a white dress and a carry bag with shoes and things inside, which I accepted automatically, then realised what they were.

"Serious?" I said, far too aware that even Fourth Squad weren't capable of not staring.

"The liaison branch is very eager to ensure that the Nurans continue dialogue with us, and they've decided it might be impolitic for you to be wearing our uniform. The clothes are Mara's."

"Lohn somewhere right now laughing a lot, right?"

"Very much so." He smiled, amused. "Don't worry, we'll be with you."

"Wearing dresses?" I asked, but decided it wasn't worth arguing about. Sighing, I went and had a shower, keeping my hair dry, and then put on Mara's sundress and sandals, which were only slightly too big for me. She'd included a hairbrush, and some nearly-clear lip gloss which I smoothed on, then let my hair out of its tight braid, pulled it up into a high ponytail and looked at myself in the mirror.

I really loved the style of dress, and will have to remember it next time I go shopping, but I didn't understand why a dress at all. Why not any of my own clothes? Yeah, the dress looked better than my casual, practical outfits, but I felt like I was being set up on a blind date and I seriously didn't like the implications of that. Alyssa once told me that I'm too obliging, that I objected to things way too late, but that dress handily jumped me straight to stubborn doubt.

Then I remembered my lab rat.

Trying not to smile at the idea of showing up to an important diplomatic meeting wearing an "experimental animal" label for anyone with Symbol Sight to read, I stuffed my uniform harness in the bag and went out.

"Does know yet what Nuran want talk about?"

"Your planet, apparently." Maze brought me into a channel with him, Ruuel and someone called Tarmian, ushering me toward the nearest elevator. "He hasn't been waiting long. It took some time to convince him that he'd have to come here if he wanted to talk to you, and the flight landed just before your return."

"If you can succeed in getting him to speak at all it will be progress," said Tarmian, who was a woman with a deep, husky voice. "The most I've managed is to be told I don't need to know his name."

Selkie and someone called Ganaran joined the channel, and I had a sinking realisation that I was supposedly going to have a conversation with a planetary emissary while a bunch of people made helpful suggestions to me in my head. It made me wonder if Alyssa was right about the whole too obliging thing, because it hadn't seemed to occur to any of them that my interests in such a conversation might not coincide with theirs. Or maybe it had, but they were hoping no independent thought would cross my mind. I listened without comment to Tarmian and Ganaran, who are from KOTIS' liaison branch, telling me to let the Nuran lead the conversation, but to try and encourage him to expand on topics he was willing to discuss. Maze and Ruuel kept quiet, though they did both enhance themselves just before we went in, something I should be used to, but which was really disconcerting with my arms and shoulders bare.

Preconceptions are fun. I was expecting someone like a Buddhist monk, complete with bald head and orange robes. The closest I got were the robes, and they were more maroon and white, and not really robes. He had the same sort of colouring as Ruuel and Taarel and Selkie, but wore his hair long, with the sides caught back in a high tail except for strips before his ears. He looked like a manga samurai, complete with two swords tucked into a belt sash.

The other person in the room was a curvy and sweet-faced woman with a lot of curly black hair which kept trying to escape her hairclips. She was wearing a reddish-plum uniform, a new type to me. Liaison branch.

"This is Caszandra Devlin," the woman – Tarmian – said and the Nuran turned and looked at me. His expression was appraising, not particularly warm or pleased or anything, and he bowed, barely more than a nod of the head.

"Hello," I said, in English and then in Taren. I wasn't going to attempt bowing.

"I am indebted for your time," said the Nuran. He spoke with an accent, and just enough hesitation to suggest that Taren was at least a different dialect to his own language.

"Sit down, please," said Tarmian, gesturing to a coffee table and couches arrangement. The room also had a more formal table and chairs, and a couple of corner clusters of seats and smaller tables, and even an actual long window giving an excellent view of a massive storm outside. That was disorienting; weather is so separate from daily life here.

The couches were the firm, solid sort. Maze and Ruuel stood behind my couch, Tarmian had a smaller chair to my right and the Nuran sat in the centre of the couch opposite.

"How did a child of Gaia reach this world?" he asked. And then there was a tickly feeling in my head and I could hear his voice add: ~Are you able to reply this way?~

~Yes?~ I tried thinking, all too conscious of Maze and Ruuel standing behind me, neither of whom were likely to have missed me suddenly sitting up much straighter. I've no idea what Ruuel's Sights would have shown him, and I stumbled on into answering the verbal question to buy myself time. "Walked through a gate from my planet to Muina. Was there until people from Tare found me, brought me back here."

~My name is Inisar.~ His eyes, long and dark, were watching me very steadily. "Can you tell me what knowledge Gaia retains of Muina?" ~I have been sent to offer you Nuri's aid.~

~Aid?~ "None. I had never heard name Muina before Tarens told me it. There are no stories, no recognisable stories, about people my planet going to other planets. Were Muinans first from my planet?"

"I do not know." ~Aid in the form of haven.~ "That Gaia and Muina shared a bond is remembered. It is an ancient one, stretching far beyond any record." ~I see that the distortions the people of this world inflict on themselves have been passed to you.~

~The interface?~

"The path to Gaia had long been lost, however, even before we departed Muina. Had there been any unusual events in Gaia's Ena preceding your arrival on Muina?" ~I am sorry that I am unable to undo their distortion, but I can offer an escape from this place. First to Nuri. And then to your own world.~


Both Tarmian and Ganaran said something over the interface at this point, but I didn't pay any attention to their suggestions, just giving Tarmian a blankly distracted look.

"The...my planet, psychic talents are considered fiction. We have forgotten everything, if ever knew. Don't know Ena, don't access it." I felt unreasonably angry. Holding two conversations at once while someone else talked at me was beyond stressful, especially when my home was dangled under my nose as some sort of bait. I could feel Maze shift behind me, and didn't know whether to feel comforted or threatened by his presence. ~Nuri able locate natural gate my world?~

"How greatly are the children of Gaia troubled by Ionoth?" ~With a link of both birth and heart to Gaia, a path can be found. Natural gates are not constantly open, but if you were able to travel to Muina, it will be possible to find that gate and return you.~

"Ionoth not able reach real-space on my world. Their existence, existence of spaces, none of that is known. Are spaces memories of worlds, or nightmares of worlds?" ~Nuri wants something in exchange?~

"Both." ~You have opened Muina to Tare. That cannot be undone, although we would ask you to balance the act.~ "Memories, nightmares, dreams. They are the expression of the living, imprinted on the Ena." ~Beyond that, we prefer not to see a touchstone in such misguided hands. Returning you to Gaia will remove the risks you pose.~

~Touchstone is me?~ I paused, because it was getting really hard to keep track of the conversation, and the person called Ganaran was saying something excitedly about some theory being validated. "Do you know if all people my planet have this enhancement talent?" ~Why does Nuri think Tare people so bad?~

~They repeat the arrogance of the past, seeking to reach beyond what is born to them. Without balance, without wisdom, they are twisting themselves outside nature.~ "You are something which appears perhaps once in ten generations. Not unique to Gaia." ~Will you allow me to remove you from this place? You need only take my hand.~

~Are you Nuri equivalent of Setari? Protect Nuri from Ionoth?~ I was struggling to decide how I wanted to react, the idea of perhaps being able to go home shrieking at me, along with a great deal of resentment that they couldn't just offer to do it openly. But I at least realised that he probably wasn't going to be able to do what he planned. "Do you know why it is some talents I enhance strength, and other talents I make different?"

He hadn't expected it. He was Ruuel-level in terms of difficulty to read, but when he heard that he drew back his hands from where they had rested unmoving on his knees.

"I first found out was enhancement talent when someone tried teleport me," I went on helpfully, glad to be sticking to just out-loud talking for a minute. For one thing the in-my-head talking itched. "We ended up in totally wrong place. Fell down. Most talents, stronger, but some go very strange."

"The distortion inflicted on you by these," he said, lifting his eyes past my shoulder. "Calling themselves Setari with no understanding of what that title means."

~Even if could go with you,~ I told him silently while he gave either Ruuel or Maze a long survey, ~I do not think could accept offer. I miss my home, but it would be selfish of me to place homesickness above helping stop people be eaten by nightmares. Although I know Tare not place my interests above theirs, they mostly treat me as civilised people should. Also, I think Nuri not helping fix problem by acting as if Tare people too stupid to learn. If child is about to walk off cliff, what point saying they lack wisdom and watch them fall? And interface is a tool. No less unnatural than those two blades you wear.~

~Well said.~

To my surprise he was looking at me with something approaching approval. Then he stood up.

"I will communicate your answers to the elders. Thank you for speaking with me."

And he vanished. Teleported. I guess he had no reason to stick around once he knew he had little chance of getting me out of there. I would love to know whether my refusal would have counted if teleporting me away had been an option.

"Nurans even weirder than Tarens," I said, wishing I could scratch somewhere just behind my frontal lobe. I accessed my own log, but wasn't really surprised to see that, unlike the Ddura, the Nuran hadn't been 'audible'.

"That was a shorter conversation than I expected," Tarmian said, blankly.

"You couldn't hear rest," I said, with an internal sigh. "I make transcript, give me minute write."

"He was speaking using a similar method to the Ddura," Ruuel said, as expected.

"That would explain why your heart rate kept spiking." Maze leaned forward to examine my expression.

"What was his true purpose?" Selkie asked, the first time he'd spoken.

"Came rescue me from misguided and corrupt Tarens," I said, risking a glance up at Ruuel, but he was more expressionless than ever. "Let me concentrate now or will forget bits." I dropped out of the channel and shut my eyes, relieved when they obediently moved away. I was actually really upset and stressed and didn't want to talk to them or even see them while I thought about turning down going home.

Ever since my jaunt to Earth's near-space, I've had this plan to work out what I'd done, and find a way to do it properly. As I'd told the Nuran, I know that the Tarens won't put my interests above theirs. Going home isn't just about homesickness, it's about choosing the best option for me.

I blame Doctor Who. Mr Spock. The Scooby Gang: both the ones in the Mystery Machine and the ones with the stakes. I've spent my life with stories of people who don't walk away, who go back for their friends, who make that last stand. I've been brainwashed by Samwise Gamgee.

Even though I'm no longer critical to unlocking Muina, I still made a difference to First Squad's encounter with those roamers, and the way things are going, it won't be the last time my enhancement could save lives. There's just no way I can cut and run simply because I'm an assignment, and a test subject, and I can't absolutely trust the entire hierarchy of KOTIS. Even second level monitoring isn't a big enough reason to abandon First Squad. They matter to me, so much. I can't go back to being me if I have to spend the rest of my life ashamed of myself.

So when I wrote down everything the Nuran said, I didn't leave anything out, and by the time I was done and had re-read it a few times I'd calmed down and accepted that I was choosing to do this, that I wasn't trapped, hadn't lost my only chance. Good or bad idea, I mean to see this out.

Something cold touched the back of my hand at the end of all this decision-making, which nearly had me leaping out my skin, but it was only a glass. Ruuel ignored my expression, and made me take it, saying: "You haven't eaten since before the rotation."

Ever the captain. Drinking did make me realise I was really starving, though, and I was glad to see a tray of food at one of the corner clusters of table and seats. Giving in to the inevitable, I forwarded Ruuel and Maze the transcript in return and went and picked over the food while they, and probably every bluesuit in KOTIS, read it through.

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.