The Texas Renegade Returns

Tuesday, July 22

Crack

A day which started mildly, with nothing but training with Fourth scheduled. Martial arts in the morning – everyone pairing off and trying to hit each other. I was paired with Sonn, and Kaoren left me to her while critically watching everyone else. Toren and Dae were paired to start with, and Kaoren didn't seem to pay any particular attention to them, just swapped them out after a while to fight Glade and Mori.

I still can't tell how good people are at fighting – certainly not when they're practicing rather than quickly taking their opponents down. Toren and Dae didn't seem to me to be obviously better or worse than Glade or Mori, but the way their expressions changed – Dae acting intense and determined and Toren going all grimly quiet – I guess there must have been some kind of difference. Kaoren spoke to them briefly – five terse words – during a rest break and both of them looked like they wished they were anywhere else.

Most of Fourth Squad are twenty (I refuse to think of Kaoren as sixty), while Toren and Dae are a couple of years younger. You can't actively serve as a Setari until you've hit fifty – nearly seventeen – which is the 'qualifying age' on Tare for trying to pass the adulthood exams. Most Kalrani aren't promoted until they're closer to eighteen. Toren and Dae no doubt knew Kaoren's reputation, and Fourth's generally as a squad which focuses on close combat, but I think they were expecting less of a gap.

Still, with me around they never had to worry about being the worst in the room. I was genuinely trying, and I am a little better than before, but I always seem to make absolutely the wrong choice in response to an attack, and I think Sonn was having to spend a lot of effort to not wipe the floor with me.

The best part of martial arts training for me is seeing everyone in the martial arts training outfits. They apparently wear these because the nanosuits give too much cushioning, and can sprout weapons. They do training using the nanoliquid blades as well, of course, but work on the basic combat moves separately. Mori seems to be the best fighter in the squad beside Kaoren – or at least he sparred with her seriously toward the end of the session.

After that we changed and jogged over the stairs. I dropped far behind, unsurprisingly, but Kaoren stayed with me while the rest of the squad went ahead, and fortunately he didn't turn into a drill-sergeant, letting me rest halfway up the longer flights of stairs. I told him it would be a great workout for him if he carried me, but he just asked me deadpan if I thought he wasn't getting enough exercise.

"Am I going to be babysat for long?" I asked. "Haven't failed to notice that Halla keeping close to me even when getting changed."

"That will depend on the Nuran," Kaoren said, not bothering to pretend I'm not under full-time guard. It was pretty obvious I'd been switched to training with Fourth because it has two Place Sight talents.

"Would Nuran really have any chance of wandering about undetected inside? Doors wouldn't open, elevators wouldn't work."

"And scanners are harder to guise against. But shielded rooms won't necessarily keep a teleporter out, though it increases the risk." He tucked a straying strand of hair behind my ear, adding: "Very likely we will be relocated to Muina ahead of schedule, since even Nurans would find the Ddura an insurmountable obstacle. And, yes, that won't change the fact that you are going to be constantly guarded for the foreseeable future."

"I don't like that it was a different Nuran than Inisar," I said, sighing at the thought of constant guarding – for all that a large part of that constant guarding is going to involve just me and Kaoren and probably not a lot of clothing. "Do you think they found out he gave me that book?"


"It's a possibility." He asked whether my legs hurt, and we had a brief, serious discussion about the conflicts between supervising me and sleeping with me. Kaoren prefers my training to be with First, but that I be assigned to Fourth whenever I go anywhere risky. I'm fine with either, just so long as no-one decides to station us on different planets again.

The afternoon was mixed combat training with Fourth and First, with Nils from Second along to make illusions for everyone to attack. He was being oddly quiet again, and didn't even tease me about Kaoren, though I could tell he knew by the way he watched when Kaoren was talking to me. Surprisingly, I don't think the gossip has spread very far. Other than Kaoren and I having lunch together one day, we haven't been seen out publicly, and I guess those who know haven't been telling.

Even Toren and Dae aren't in that loop. Fourth Squad have been politely welcoming toward their two new members, but weren't being relaxed and 'themselves' during break times with them. They were well aware that Toren and Dae didn't like that they'd been assigned to Fourth, and naturally they weren't pleased with that. Or it could be they were still being quiet and non-chatty on account of me sleeping with Kaoren, but I don't think it's quite the case. Sonn seemed a little more like I was an accepted part of the team than she usually is, and I even had a bit of a conversation with Halla about Nurans and what they thought they were achieving by not joining forces with the other ex-Muinan civilisations.

And then, halfway through the two squad training session, the swoops Nils had been projecting abruptly disappeared. The look on his face, when we turned to find out why, was such straightforward shock that First and Fourth reacted by gathering as if to fight off an attack, but then Ketzaren said: "Unara."

I was a beat behind everyone else checking the news feeds, and the first channel I went to only seemed to be showing me a waterfall. A waterfall and a chair. That was from a scanner, but the feed switched almost right away to someone's personal vision. They were in a triple-tiered atrium full of plants and there was water pouring down from a gash, a long, wide crack, in the whitestone ceiling. And there was a woman hanging down, tangled in, I don't know, some kind of cable, with the water pouring past her.

It had only just happened, too recent even for the bluesuits to have worked out any orders, but First and Nils ran anyway, so they'd be ready at the nearest lock. Kaoren said: "Take lead," to Mori and she, Par, Glade and our two Kalrani went, while Kaoren, Halla and Sonn stayed to protect me from Invisible Nurans. I had a couple of moments' angst about that, then realised that they probably wouldn't have been sent anyway. Sight talents and Lightning wouldn't be very useful when what you were fighting was Tare's weather.

It's only now, hours later, that any sort of clear exterior view of the damage has been available. It doesn't even look like that much, just a tiny crack in the endless blocky meringue of Unara. Other than some falling injuries, it's likely that it wouldn't have been anything like so bad, except this is Tare, and the daily mega-storm was dumping half an ocean on Unara's roof.

I called the crack tiny, but it exposed over two thousand Unaran apartments to one of Tare's full-scale storms. Bad enough, but add to that the countless gallons of water draining over the vast expanse of the roof, some diverted into water collection channels, but most following whatever was the easiest course down to the ocean.

In the first few minutes after the crack opened, a lot of people evacuated, thankfully. But others moved to inner rooms, or were stopped by exit corridors split in two or elevators not functioning. The Unaran authorities, finding corridors and atriums suddenly awash, had little choice but to seal the area as best they could. And the person who was transmitting on the news channel I'd linked to – it was a teenaged kid named Konstan Trabel – drowned.

Tarens can't swim. There's no lakes on Tare, no rivers or beaches, and the only swimming pool is in the Setari facilities. When you live in permanent air-conditioning there's no particular drive to get wet as a form of recreation, and Taren cities don't really have the space to spare for lots of water-sports. I'm not sure many people could have successfully swum out of a room filling with furniture and pot plants even if they'd been raised in the water.

Back when the 2004 tsunami hit I remember staying glued to the TV, watching over and over sequences filmed from balconies, of walls of mud and village sliding past. Knowing that people had to be in that churning mass, glad not to see any, unable not to look. On Tare, the interface lets those people transmit direct to their families, or social network, or news channel, and unless they block you, you can watch and hear and shudder until the images fill with grey or wriggling sparkles of light, and stop.

I switched to a channel which wasn't live-streaming death.

It didn't take very long for the Setari squads to reach Unara. The biggest delay was getting from their entry space to the particular 'suburb' being flooded. The Telekinetics and Teleporters and the Levitation talents joined various drones and emergency rescue workers and a handful of middle-strong civilian talents working to get people out. Every Ice talent KOTIS could send went to the roof and, with the strongest of the Telekinetics bracing them against the gale, formed dams and channels and barriers to route the water away. That was immensely frustrating to watch, knowing how much quicker they could do it if I was there.

Still, they got it done, and the ice held more or less despite the driving rain. There's four squads still stationed at Unara, helping with the job of putting up a temporary seal before the next storm hits.

Far fewer people died than during the Dohl Array attack. But Tare is – I don't know how to put this – wounded in a way which it wasn't when the problem was a massive which the Setari could fight and kill. Because the crack was caused by a gate. Not even a huge gate. A gate the size of a car tyre.

Even though the Tarens have refined their whitestone nanomaterial so that it can take a lot of weight, Unara is still a huge, heavy place. I got a bit lost among Taren terms more complex than 'load-bearing' and 'distributed force', but the diagrams made clear enough that far bigger parts of Unara could split or collapse if only a relatively small part of its core structure was damaged. The news channel I was watching had a fine old time showing projections of what would happen if gates opened at dramatically critical points. And then there was the question of air routes, the possibility of one of the tanz clipping a gate, and countless graphs plotting the increase in gate openings, and estimates for what Tare would be dealing with in ten, five, even one Taren year. Open statements on every channel that within four Taren years life here will have changed substantially, and that's not even factoring in the continual increase in Ionoth numbers.

It's like Tare has abruptly woken up to a nightmare which has been happening all along.

Kaoren is a wreck – Sight Sight had shown him way too much, and he's been off talking with Mori, who had a person die just as she was teleporting him. We've been discussing our own anti-nightmare strategy, just to get to tomorrow, and after I've finished writing this up we're going to watch the next preview episode of The Hidden War together, and after that hopefully we'll both be too exhausted to stay awake. Then we'll step through a Sights exercise together, and I'll try not to drown us both in my inevitable reaction projection.

Wednesday, July 23

Keep on keeping on

They've moved up our departure for Muina to the day after tomorrow, whether because of the Nuran or because yesterday pushed them into being not so reluctant to use me. I think everyone's looking forward to heading back, overwhelmingly keen to do something, anything, which might result in a solution. It'll just be exploration at first, and I'll probably actively work with First and Fourth.


What I need to focus on is no more meltdowns, no more injuries. I can't do anything about being irreplaceable, but at the least I have to stop putting myself in medical.

Despite all that went on yesterday, First and Fourth went ahead with their scheduled dual eight-strength squad rotation today. Kaoren warned me ahead of time that they'd likely be out for a long stretch – one of the huge advantages dual squads give exploration teams is the extra Ena manipulation to ensure gates are locked, so they can go further without tiredness making it too dangerous. If they'd been able to get permission they would have taken me with them, since I represent the ability to cast very deeply into the Ena, and Kaoren's hoping that some time in the future they'll be able to work with me again, attempting to locate Pillars. But no go.

They were out most of the day, too – nearly six hours, which is an immense amount of time for Setari. I was 'adopted' by Third again for the day, since Tol Sefen has Place Sight. Taarel kept us busy, and the conversation away from Unara, but there was a level of stress sitting under everything. It's not like anything's really more urgent than it was two days ago, but it sure feels like we can't waste any more time training.

Third were a good group to distract me, though. Third's two new members, Shin Morel and a girl called Elory Tedar, plainly can't believe their luck in being made part of the squad and are quite ready to worship at Taarel's feet, which of course means the regular squad members consider them people of taste and discernment. Eeli continued on with being totally fascinated by the idea of me and Kaoren, and though she did try not to pry too openly, she really really wanted to know what drew us together. I don't know what Taarel said to her, but she seems to have completely accepted that Kaoren isn't someone Taarel wanted a romance with.

It must be so weird for Taarel, defending the girl who made off with her convenient lover. Although, if she really is in love with Maze, then it might have come as a relief to her to know that whatever people have been saying about me and Maze wasn't true. No-one's actually told me that there was gossip, but I've started to realise there must have been some, that the direction they're taking in The Hidden War is what some people thought was happening. The episode Kaoren and I watched last night follows my first rotation with First Squad, and it's again hinting that the Maze-equivalent character is feeling all conflicted about me. I'm pretty sure Maze has never even considered it.

After lunch, since Third was scheduled to do elementals training, Taarel assigned Tol and Eeli more obviously as my babysitters and we went back to my apartment to find a huge pile of packages waiting – the result of a post-getting paid spending spree.

Tol thought it hugely funny that I'd been getting the equivalent of pocket money, and the mood lightened considerably. I think babysitting me, helping me unwrap packages, was a handy distraction for them as well.

Fortunately I'd opted against buying a whole heap of racy nightwear. I could just imagine Eeli's reaction to that. Along with clothes I'd picked up another couple of blank books, and a big pack of imported Kolaren permanent markers, which I spent a lot of the afternoon putting to good use on my coat while we chatted. Tol had seen the copies of my coat for sale, and asked if that was why I was altering the pattern, but it was mainly that I'd never finished it in the first place because my permanent marker had run out of ink. I extended it about halfway down the back and a little onto the arms, and although it's not perfect I do like it.

When Kaoren walked in we were all three sitting on the floor around my coffee table, me trying to even up the wobbly bits of my coat's pattern, and Eeli and Tol trying to write their names on pieces of paper. They both hastily got to their feet, though I suspect Eeli was mainly hoping for a better view of Kaoren's expression, but he simply told them they could go and waited till they had.

He brought dinner, and after eating made a valiant attempt to finish off his reports, but has fallen asleep on the couch.

Thursday, July 24

Getting serious

There was a fantastic thunderstorm last 'night'. I turned down all my lights and watched it while Kaoren slept, and eventually fell asleep myself. It was still going when he woke me with kisses in the pitchy dark, and we undressed each other between flashes of lightning. That was impossibly intense, overwhelming, and I was shaking afterwards and clung to him.

And Kaoren said: "You need to spend more time on your studies."

"What?" A whole world of incredulity went into that word, and he wouldn't have needed Place Sight to tell him exactly what I thought of him saying something so...so prosaic right after something I'd found so amazing. I don't remember ever being more furious.

To my shock he laughed, a surprised spurt. "That sounded very out of place didn't it? The tail-end of my thoughts." He paused, and lightning showed me his expression, a combination of dismay and amusement and something rather more. "I can't marry you unless you pass the adult competency exams," he explained, and then moved forward so he was talking directly into my ear, his voice soft and completely serious. "Are you certain yet, Cassandra?"

"Yes." I was breathless, dizzy with the sudden reversal of fury, but totally sure. It hasn't even been two weeks, but all the past days have done is confirm what I've felt for months.

My Mum would be silently screaming about now, and working out how to convince me that getting married at eighteen is a terrible idea, and that really I need to spend a lot more time before I could decide if Kaoren and I are a permanent thing, and that both of us were probably just reacting to the drama at Unara, and should take things much slower.

But this is Tare.

Tare doesn't have an equivalent to Vegas. To get married, Kaoren and I both have to have passed the adult competency test, and then register an intention to marry, and then live together for five Taren years before applying for permission to hold a commitment ceremony. And if we break up temporarily in the middle of that, we have to wait longer. I'll be twenty by the time we can consider arranging for the ceremony.

So, yeah, super-romantic place, Tare. The Paris of the stars.

It was late into our shift when we stopped to shower and eat, and then Kaoren spent a while celebrating our not-quite-engagement by finishing his reports. Even with he and Maze sharing the work, going into new spaces means he has a ton of post-rotation work. I spent the time researching what the adult competency test involved. It wasn't an ultra-brainy sort of test, more like social studies: knowing laws and customs, and basic biology and health care. Not very much in the way of sciences, but some history. The laws and customs are the ones which are most likely to trip me up – Tare has a by-law for everything, particularly about babies and who can have them. All the red tape about marriage and so forth is designed to delay when people have babies. There's just not enough room on this planet. Which makes them sensible laws, I guess, but they're also irritatingly weighted toward smart, talented people. People like the Ruuels, or Isten Notra's family, are more likely to be given permission to have second and third children.

This got right up my nose. I can recognise the reason for it, but I kept wondering about all the people I knew who wouldn't exist if Australia had a law like that, and furiously resenting the idea of ever having to apply for kids myself, even though I'm sure the Supa Speshul Magick Gurl will be encouraged to have lots and lots of babies, even without counting the value of Kaoren's Sights.

At least Mum would be pleased to know that I'm planning at least ten years of pouncing on Kaoren before even thinking about interrupting our sex life with kids. After reading all those by-laws, I'm considering doubling that to twenty.


Once I stopped being irritated I continued ploughing through the recommended reading for the test, getting a little distracted by the laws for when two men or two women want to have babies, and how advanced genetic engineering can open up lots of possibilities. And then I watched a hysterically funny documentary called: "No, We Will Not Raise The Ceilings" from back when Tare first began to make real advances into genetics and the first thing vast numbers of people did was tweak their kids for 'taller'.

After he'd done with his reports, Kaoren asked me to read some more of my diary to him. It's becoming an important ritual between us, and doing wonders for my ability to speak Taren – my grammar is improving, though my pronunciation is still bad and I miss a lot of the nuances of word meanings. That session, though, I felt so small describing how horrible I'd been to Mum, and I'm really not looking forward to reading out a few of the things I know are coming up. We went off onto a tangent, though, circling around Kaoren's relationship with his own mother. He says all his family are too alike not to recognise the same fault in each other. An awareness of superiority. He curled the words off his tongue, sounding amused.

"It's an easy trap to fall into. Sight Sight can make the preoccupations of others seem such useless things. My mother, my brother, taught me what it feels like to have what is important to me dismissed. It's a lesson I'm glad I learned, but I am not likely to forgive them for it."

"Yet you keep your brother's pictures in your room."

"He made them for me." Kaoren took a deep breath. "For a long time Arden was to me what I am now to Siame, but he was furious with me for choosing to treat being Setari as my art. The pictures are an apology of sorts, since he has come to see that doing this is something I value. My parents continue to push me to resign once I have served the minimum tenure."

Kaoren is not very detached about his family, and seems to deal with it by having little to do with them. And a lot to do with Siame, who he has taken out into the city again because he won't see her for a while. He wants to tell her in person that we're going to get engaged. I'm not sure if he's going to even tell his parents, and doesn't seem keen on introducing me to them. I'm not going to push.

I was hoping I could study during the morning and take the adult competency exam while he was gone, but I did a run-through on a mock exam and while it's not hard – I nearly passed – the random and broad nature of the questions means there's a big chance I won't pass if I try and rush into it, and I can't take the test again for a full Taren year if I fail. I'm not sure if I can take it on Muina, or apply to get married while I'm there, for that matter.

I know it's silly to be impatient. All getting engaged immediately would do is get me a bunch of people asking if I really want to rush into things. I think I just want everyone to know that he's mine. Very shallow.

I've been stuck in medical all afternoon with Jeh from Second being babysitter. Jeh doesn't have Place Sight, which I guess means they're getting more relaxed about the Nuran. My legs look almost normal. There's some faint patchiness, but they're going to give me a break before doing any more work on them, so that the new skin can settle. The new patches are obvious because they're hairy – baby-fine hair though, which is good since the medics tell me I can't use the depilatories on them yet.

Tons of brain scans and needles, which never puts me in a good mood. And–

...

Back in my room now. Maze dropped by medical to visit me and take over being babysitter. He was looking outright exhausted, his mouth dragging down at the corners, since unlike the rest of First and Fourth he hadn't had a free day, and had been attending meetings and working on balancing squad assignments for the push forward on Muina.

I haven't really talked to Maze for ages. I was glad to see he's his normal self with me, and answered my questions about the things First and Fourth have been assigned to do while on Muina – and which ones I'll be allowed to participate in. Then I asked him if he thought I'd be able to take the adult competency exam while I'm on Muina, and he spent a few minutes researching that, and said no, not yet. Because it involves a secure environment hosted by a particular government department (basically child welfare), it can't be done within Muina's environment.

Maze paused after he told me, because there's not many reasons why I'd suddenly want to do the adult competency exam, then gave me one of his super smiles and said: "It's been good to see you so happy, Caszandra. And you have until we reach the gate tomorrow to do the exam, if waiting until we return from Muina seems too large a burden."

He spent the rest of the afternoon chatting to me about Tare's laws, coaching me in questions I was likely to encounter on the test. I think he was glad to concentrate on something other than Unara, and tearing gates and hordes of Ionoth, and whether we'll find any way to fix it all.

We leave for Muina late morning tomorrow.

Friday, July 25

Making it official

I passed! I did the exam during the pre-flight preparation and take-off. It was a bare pass – I hit a run of questions which I couldn't even guess what might be the right answer – but I still passed.

The exam environment makes it so you can't receive any communication (even almost completely blocking what you can see or hear in real-space) and it took about half an hour to complete. When I opened my eyes I could see Kaoren sitting on the seat beside mine, watching me steadily. I think he watched me the entire time, reading my body language to see how much trouble I was having.

It takes about five minutes to get the result, and since we were alone I snugged myself next to Kaoren. We didn't say anything at all, but he was unusually tense, and when I got the email with my result, he knew straight away from my reaction and half-crushed my hand before he leaned down and kissed me – something he's not done before anywhere there was a chance random people could see us. I wasn't the only one all impatient.

The complete absence of squads was kind of suspicious – you're allowed to go to the lounges during flights, but it's common for at least a few squad members to just hang around on their pod-seats. Still, the interface would have told everyone I was taking an exam, if not which exam, so they could have left just to give me some quiet. But I suspect Maze.

Kaoren sent me the link to the form we had to fill out, and since the interface knows all the form-filling stuff about me already, I only had to read through the getting engaged version of 'terms and conditions' and choose 'Yes' a few times and then Kaoren and I were engaged. A far cry from a fancy ring, but certainly more official.

We went and told everyone then; a rare occasion for Kaoren to bring his personal affairs into discussion with his squad. It's really embarrassing to do things like that, though everyone seemed pleased and not particularly surprised and I was hugged a lot, and Kaoren's squad at least briefly treated him like a peer and congratulated him. We got into an interesting discussion on different types of ceremonies, and then Lohn started laughing and said to check the news and of course my name showing up in the intention to marry register hadn't passed unnoticed for more than a few minutes. The best headline was "Devlin to marry Lastier!"

Good timing for the trip to Muina so I can start ignoring the news again. Almost through the rift. Eager to get things done.

New digs

Muina's first set of Setari quarters have sprouted since my last visit, with accommodation for six eight-strength squads (or eight six-strength squads, as originally planned) and a few spares, as well as support staff accommodation, kitchens, medical, training areas, and common rooms. Someone's plainly been having fun playing architect. Instead of yet another big white box, they've produced a round step pyramid with windows and balconies everywhere. It's built into the hill at the southernmost tip of Pandora, and I mean that literally. The hill is still there, but with expanses of whitestone and glass between the grass and trees – or snow at the moment. It reminds me of a cross between a hobbit hole and Parliament House in Canberra (no giant flagpole though). All this in less than a month. Nanotechnology is amazing – they basically injected a building into a hill, no digging required.


The structure is the easy part, and they've had people installing fittings and big pumps and generators (I don't in the slightest understand the technology behind Taren power generators, except that it's not fossil fuel based) and the like so that there's power and water and lights and heating. It's still missing windows and equipment in a lot of places. The Litara brought a massive amount of cargo with us, including the first shipment of furniture for the Setari quarters, and when we arrived late afternoon Pandora-time the Telekinetics helped unload the ship and then everyone carried furniture and stores and supplies about, and moved in.

The pinksuit in charge of the fit-out really annoyed me by being shocked because I picked up a box. She really expected me to sit there and watch everyone else lugging stuff around. I told her that it was a requirement of my culture to help, heh.

The main common room is fantastic, with the most incredible view west out over the lake, and glimpses north and south thanks to this huge curving patio and floor to ceiling window/doors (though doubled-glass 'airlocks' and way too cold to want to have open at the moment). Once we'd unpacked the furniture and had something to sit on, we all (First, Fourth, Twelfth, Fourteenth, and Squad Three from Kolar, who have been traded in for Squad One) sat about having an informal meal and chatting, catching up on the latest developments of three planets, all the while watching a gorgeous wrap-around sunset.

Squad Three has one guy (Noran) and five girls (Brez, Olan, Mittaha, Tuse, and Turian). Turian's their captain, and comes across as amiable and polite, but not quite ready to be friends with a bunch of Tarens. But it wasn't a bad atmosphere. Compared to the recently-promoted Kalrani, and Squad Three, Zan was relaxed and talkative. Of course, Twelfth and Fourteenth weren't exactly casual, except for Lara, who is always chilled out. Even Fourth, working with First so closely lately, is still a bit 'on duty' when sitting about chatting with them. I've come to realise Maze and Zee are basically the junior Setari's peer supervisors, and First sets the standard for the other squads, so they're really caught up in not making a fool of themselves in front of them.

And Kaoren, for all he accepted a further round of congratulations, is never going to be casually social with vast hordes of people. He just isn't interested, I think. But, still, it was a nice meal (a sampling of local plants mixed in with the standard fare, product of the greenhouse) and everyone ended up looking pleased and upbeat, the shadow of developments on Tare finally lifting. Like me they're eager to get back to hunting solutions.

Picking out rooms came next, and was fun. There's several circular floors' worth of quarters around a central atrium arrangement – accessible by both stairs and elevators. Those with Levitation or Telekinesis really like this because they just fly up to the floor they want to get to.

Not all of the rooms have balconies – those poke out of the lakeward face of the hill, but the hill itself rises a little higher than the building and joins up with other hills to the east, and on each floor there's a couple of rooms with no windows at all, for those Tarens who just aren't comfortable with having so much outside in their living area. These went pretty quickly, after the squad captains chose floors. Fourth ended up second floor from the top, mainly because I liked the trees which flanked the balconies up there. Kaoren and I have just the one room, since we're now officially cohabiting.

Like on Tare, a good deal of the furniture – kitchen benches, wardrobes, the baths and showers – is formed directly out of the whitestone, and just need doors and things added. The beds are indents in the whitestone walls – huge nooks – and the mattresses are nanotech responsive ones which try to mould themselves around you. Building the beds into the walls apparently makes it easier to accommodate additional shielding, on top of that already on the living areas.

I'm propped up in the corner of mine, waiting for Kaoren to come back from all the captains being summoned to a meeting by the bluesuit in charge of Muina, Tsaile Staben. I think I was introduced to Tsaile Staben when Pandora was first established, but I can't for the life of me remember anything about her, and I'm too lazy to go searching through my log. It must be quite something to be put in charge of an entire planet.

The meeting is about what the Setari will be deployed to do over the next few months, and I was surprised to hear that a lot of that will involve settlement work rather than exploration. There's a huge demand for the Setari here, even with the standing about guarding duties mostly being performed by greensuits now. Tsaile Staben isn't shy about using them for anything which will make the job quicker or easier. I know Kaoren wants First and Fourth to go hunting Pillars, but it sounds like the Setari are mostly going to be working in real-space.

Research-wise, KOTIS is gradually making progress, though very slowly because the paper records found in Kalasa are so incredibly fragile, and turning a page without destroying it is a real challenge. Zan told me that Twelfth has been spending a lot of time going room to room locating anything and everything that looks like writing and doing all these complicated preservation procedures to try and stop the documents from crumbling on sight (or breath, usually). Still no handily-complete explanation of how the Pillars were built or the best way to get rid of them, just tangential mentions.

But tons of books about being psychic. Telekinesis 101. Reading Minds for Dummies. The Psychic's Guide to Finding Your Inner Self.

The Lantarens seem to have had a very spiritual approach to their powers, and as Kalasa was a teaching city for the talented most of the books there seem to relate to philosophy and techniques for psychics. Kaoren is understandably fascinated by this, and has been devouring the translations which have yet to be released even to KOTIS on Tare. The translations I've read have all sounded a bit Zen, and it looks to me rather as if the psychic is supposedly drawing power from nature, not simply generating it themselves. 'Embraced' by Muina. That's totally not how the Tarens approach their talents.

There's more than two thousand people living on Muina now, a number which does my head in. And they're planning a big expansion as soon as they've finished some of the larger infrastructure projects around Pandora, like the major recycling and waste facilities going up in the hills to the east. Tarens are seriously into recycling and have the nanites to really make it work. I can't get over the astonishing pace of it all.

The Setari squads will likely stay the same for a month or so. Twelfth is one floor up and First one floor below. I can pretty much tell where everyone in the building is now, if I push myself, despite all the shielding.

Before their meeting, Kaoren and Maze double-teamed me for a Serious Discussion (having both of them tell me was deliberate to push home that they were really serious) about my security arrangements. Given that I'm now being guarded from random monsters, random people, Cruzatch, Kolarens and the Nurans, there's not a lot of scope for me wandering around freely. Kaoren's my main security detail, of course, but there will be two other Setari assigned as backup at all times. When Kaoren's not with me, and I'm not in the Setari building, they'll go into full babysitter mode. In the Setari building, though, they'll simply be available nearby rather than sitting on top of me, so long as I have no hesitation using my alert.

The challenge with that, of course, is the Kolarens, who I don't officially need protection from. Being engaged to a Taren does make it unlikely that the Kolarens will think they can buy me, and Maze doesn't think it very probable that they'd try and force me to work for them, but of course we can't be absolutely sure. At least the Ionoth situation on Kolar seems to have improved, and the Ddura means that the Cruzatch and the Nurans aren't a threat so long as I'm in Pandora. But they'd rather be safe than sorry, so I have to make sure I have a Taren with me, or stay in my room.


Pandora's day ends later than the sleep cycle I was on, so it's not even sunset and I'm already beyond tired, but no sign of Kaoren. I haven't actually been asleep when he's not there since we got together, and I'm starting to get all fretty about it – and annoyed at myself for needing him there to be comfortable going to sleep. I think I'll go bug someone rather than get all worked up.

Saturday, July 26

Southern Expedition

Long day today, but a good one, and I feel far more settled than I ended up yesterday, when the evening turned into a severe downer. I hadn't wanted to bug anyone from First and Fourth, since I knew they'd be as tired as me, so went down to the main common room and was chatting with Dess Charn from Twelfth and Pen Alaz from Fourteenth when I fell asleep and had my first projective dream for ages.

The problem is I'm aware of people around me when I'm asleep, so falling asleep while talking to people meant I wasn't immediately aware that I was asleep. And I dreamed that I was in the common room talking to Dess and Pen when Dess' Combat Sight alerted her to a threat, and Pen stared upward.

Strands of black were descending through the whitestone ceiling, growing longer and longer while Pen stared up at them, and it was only when the forehead emerged that it was clear that it was hair. Then the face came through, a woman, upside-down. Eyes closed, she looked calm, beautiful, but then she opened them, black pits, and smirked.

I think it was from a scary movie I saw once. Or manga. I half-recognised the scene anyway, and that made me realise I was dreaming, and I woke myself up. And Dess and Pen were both on their feet, combat-ready and staring at the exact spot on the ceiling, and then everyone nearby with Combat Sight swarmed to the room, and even though I explained, they still immediately informed their captains. Unlike the Cruzatch, this projection was completely visible in real-space, and registered very strongly as a threat, and I really hate the amount of fuss I can cause just by falling asleep.

Plus I felt that everyone was looking at me differently, some understanding for the first time what a problem I might be.

Maze and Kaoren both spoke to me to make sure I was okay, and Zee took me back to her room until Kaoren returned. I put a good face on it all, apologising and being wry and annoyed with myself, which Zee didn't challenge, opting instead to give me a shoulder rub for the short time until the strategy meeting finished. Kaoren took very much the same approach, distracting me with a hot shower and then stroking my back after we curled up together.

I understand more and more why Kaoren would avoid a committed relationship with anyone, let alone an enhancement talent. When he's holding me he can't completely block what I'm feeling, but he wanted to comfort me, so last night became a demonstration of the price he's going to pay for being with me. It didn't help that I kept trying to force myself to not be upset because I knew it was keeping him awake, and failing only made me more upset.

I felt like it was my fault for letting my guard down, and I hate having to be on guard about something as straightforward as sleeping. And I hate being the cause of fusses, and especially making Kaoren feel he can't go anywhere without me immediately having a drama. But, most importantly, it meant the bluesuits would think I hadn't gained enough control, and make them more doubtful about using me in missions.

After way too long of neither of us getting any sleep Kaoren gave up, obviously deciding it was better to talk it out with me: "You're upset because you didn't immediately recognise it as a dream?"

"Thought I was past this," I said, trying not to sound whiny and failing. "All this training, all the time everyone's spent helping me avoid this, and I had half the building running the first time I stopped paying attention."

He raised the lights a little, enough to see my expression, then touched my cheek. "Cassandra, I have been trained to prevent my nightmares since I was fifteen. Yet I still have them."

"That's–"

"Different?" He leaned forward to kiss my forehead. "I don't see how. While your nightmares have the potential to do considerably more damage, they are a product of talents you are still discovering." He paused, then added: "You're now capable of waking at will, so the issue is those times you don't recognise that you're dreaming. The simplest solution would be to attempt to wake yourself whenever there is an attack, or unusual phenomena. To assume, at least momentarily, that anything could be one of your projections."

I liked that idea, and he could tell, and smiled. [I'm collecting his smiles. I've built a little image gallery out of my log. A very small gallery.] Then he took me through a visualisation exercise, which was effective in sending me off to sleep once I stopped feeling guilty at the touch of croakiness in his voice which underlined how much he needed to sleep.

Kaoren and I talked it over when we woke this morning, while we were waiting for it to be dawn. Whether it would be better to have separate beds, or for one of us to sleep on the couch sometimes. Neither of us are keen on that option, but given how dangerous it is for him to be tired, we're going to have to consider it. That discussion somehow segued into whether he would change his name to mine, or I would change my name to his, given the conflicting customs of our planets. We're probably just going to leave our names alone. And we talked about children, and how we aren't opposed to the idea, but aren't in a hurry to have them, especially not while we're so very much under the control of KOTIS – and not when I'm potentially facing situations like enhancing large groups during massive attacks, where my system gets so stressed out.

I'm really engaged to be married. It feels very odd to have discussions about when to have children, and to watch Kaoren's reaction. He said he finds the idea "interesting in theory".

Today's assignment was exploration and greysuit escort duty, and while the expeditioners were assembling I had the opportunity to drop in to see Isten Notra and say hi to Shon. Isten Notra's looking very well, eyes sparkling and full of life. And whether or not she really had thought about setting me up with Shon, she seemed genuinely pleased for me and Kaoren – and said one or two things to him that I couldn't hear which made him develop a faintly wry expression.

Islen Dola and Islen Nakano (the greysuits in charge of flora and fauna research) were leading a joint expedition to Mesiath, which is the platform city in the southern hemisphere tall forest. Mesiath is the old Muinan name for it – one of the discoveries made at Kalasa was a number of maps, and all the 'correct' place names have been adopted. The old town at Pandora has been renamed Aversan, and the lake is Tai Medlar (tai is old Muinan for lake).

It was primarily a sampling expedition – seeking out plants and animals and bringing them back for cataloguing, tests, maybe even cultivation. They don't bring back lots of animals – they capture them, take images and tissue samples, then let them go, unless they think it's a really interesting specimen. A huge number of people were going – about a hundred – most of them belonging to flora and fauna, but also greensuits, a small group of archaeologists, device technicians, geology, survey. Mesiath has been designated a primary site, which means they're likely to establish a settlement there, partly because it's on the opposite seasonal cycle to Pandora, but mainly because it has a platform, but isn't a pattern-roof village.

My job was a mild variation of 'poke Devlin at it': I was simply to let the Setari know if I saw or felt anything unusual. And enhance if necessary.


I gave Islen Dola and Islen Nakano the couple of minutes of the Planet Earth documentary which I'd recorded during my last testing session since I'd worked out how to subtitle it. The consequence of this being that I spent half an hour being minutely cross-examined about mass migration, something which a non-seasonal planet doesn't really see – at least not in the numbers shown in the documentary. Of course, they want the entire documentary now, which I'm quite happy to do, except being something like thirteen hours long it's going to take me an age to reproduce it.

I guess this makes me the psychic space pirate? No-one tell the BBC's copyright department.

Today was by no means a particularly dangerous expedition. It was overcast, and drizzled briefly at one point, but it was a gorgeous forest and full of birdsong and little scampering animals. Because there was a platform, the area was clear of Ionoth, and since the Ddura was one which is used to Muinans, it even shut up pretty quick. There were still native Muinan animals which might be a danger, particularly poisonous bugs, but otherwise it was a nice outing. I stayed with Fourth, who were helping the archaeologists hunt out significant locations. It was a very spread-out city, with little which was undamaged. The trees had had centuries to work on the whitestone – we were lucky the platform was intact.

First Squad was working with survey and geology – soaring up for aerial views. Every so often the fauna group would get a Setari to come capture an animal for them – Telekinesis and Levitation make that ridiculously easy. A complete lack of drama day, and since Mesiath is in a time zone a couple of hours behind Pandora, when we headed back in late afternoon we arrived just as sunset was fading.

The structure of the new Setari building really makes for a very social set-up, especially when everyone gets back from missions at roughly the same time and sits around the big common room to chat and eat and watch the lake. I belatedly gave Zan the bit of music I'd recorded for her, and quite a few of us watched the latest documentary about the Muina settlement ('latest' as delivered that afternoon by the several ships which are basically on daily shuttle duty between the Muina, Tare and Kolar).

I think I might avoid the news for a while again. My engagement is still all screaming headlines, and there was some annoying talk about undue influence and whether Kaoren was really who I would have chosen if I wasn't kept on such a tight leash by KOTIS. And some irritating 'expert' saying getting engaged was a symptom of my isolation and loss, and that I'd no doubt fixated on Kaoren as a saviour. That was rather balanced by a lot of people thinking it terribly romantic, and there's an increasing number of Kaoren Ruuel lust-sites. I learned a good deal more about the Ruuel family, and saw pictures of his parents and brother.

There was also a lot of discussion about what I could do, and what I should be allowed to do. The Kalasa projection was interesting to a lot more people than historians, and plenty of people were pointing out my potential as an industrial spy.

Devlin. Cassandra Devlin. Shaken, not stirred.

Kaoren fell asleep while I was reading him my diary, thanks to all the exploring after a not particularly good night with me. I've got to figure out a way to not work myself up over things.

Sunday, July 27

Nature documentary

Another day in the forest. Gloriously sunny – which in a forest that tall means incredible columns of light beaming down. Mesiath is a very peaceful place. There's apparently some cat-type predators busily hiding from us, but nothing else anyone's spotted which might think of actively hunting humans.

The city edges on a lake (it's pretty hard to find a city which doesn't edge on a lake on this planet), and I stayed with First and Twelfth Squad today while they did a little landscaping in preparation for 'seeding' a settlement, since even with Zan's level of Telekinesis, enhancement really helped deal with trees that tall. Meanwhile Fourth hunted down gates and explored in near-space.

It was not at all what I'd been picturing that we'd be doing, but managed to combine practical work with a balm of wonder. Everyone was enjoying themselves, glad to be away from the snow, and to see more of their home planet, and Alay disturbed this cluster of butterflies (rather like Monarchs, but with more red and gold) which spiralled up around her into one of the columns of light and she stood in the centre of them, lips parted and eyes bright. I felt like I'd never seen her happy before, and the Unara crack felt like centuries ago, lost to sunlight and iridescent wings.

And then the butterflies settled down over everyone and that was a different kind of fun. Tarens and bugs don't mix, and it was hard not to laugh at the greysuits ducking and scattering.

On a less entertaining note, much of what we were doing was being recorded for another documentary, part of the increased 'openness' demanded. I avoided the scanners as much as possible, especially when anywhere near Kaoren. I don't know if documentaries will lower the number of people sneakily capturing images of us, though.

Monday, July 28

Prescribed privilege

I met two other strays today, people from a planet called Solaria. Despite the name, Solaria's apparently an icy world, snowy everywhere except at the equator, and the two Solarians – who've both been on Tare for over twenty years – had been brought in to give advice and feedback on cold climate living. Very sensible of the Tarens, since my dim memories of a skiing holiday really haven't been very useful.

Solaria's another planet without a marked 'seasonal tilt'. Can seasons really be that unusual among habitable planets? The Solarians were called Denasan (a really wrinkled, white-haired man) and Purda (a woman in her thirties). I spent quite a while chatting to them, learning about their planet, which was in the throes of industrialisation when they were displaced, and asking about their experiences after turning up on Tare. The technological differences were of course the biggest adjustment –more so for Denasan than for Purda, since Purda was only fourteen at the time. Interestingly, the Solarians' Muinan origin has been overtaken by a creation myth involving an ice-god. Stories of Muina are still told, but 'Homeworlders' are persecuted by the priesthood of the ice god, and a lot of Solarians don't believe Muina exists.

Denasan really misses his home planet, and loves being on Muina because it reminds him of the region south of his home on Solaria (at least currently, while Pandora's still having buckets of snow dumped on it – Spring never comes on Solaria), and he's really struggled with living on Tare and pretty much hates it, so far as I could tell. Purda's much more 'typical Taren' and adjusted. She worked on the Solarian version of a farm and even though she was only a teenager when she found herself on Tare, she remembers a whole heap of agricultural information the technicians seem to be interested in.

Although Earth is a good deal closer to Tare technologically, it was pretty clear that without being a touchstone I would have faced a lot of the same issues the Solarians have struggled with, trying to make a 'normal' life as a stray on Tare. The average Taren really does think everyone not from Tare (including, quite possibly, Kolarens) is just a bit slow. Adjusting to a different dialect, and all that advanced technology, makes it very hard to get out of 'Base Level' (which is a Taren term for subsistence living via social security).

There's also a 'stray network' called Tare Displaced Channel which get together for mutual support and complaining about Tarens. Denasan and Purda gave me a formal invite to one of the get-togethers. The Channel apparently has tried to invite me before, and Denasan was rather huffy about it. I explained about me not getting mail from people outside KOTIS, and not being allowed to go out on my own, which I think may have changed Denasan's attitude toward me a little. To the 'average' stray I must seem hugely pampered.


I hadn't really thought about the impact of the opening of Muina on other strays. Suddenly skills which were completely irrelevant on Tare are becoming valuable, and Denasan and Purda aren't the only strays being recruited.

Tuesday, July 29

Urban Design

KOTIS is seriously gearing up settlement preparation. Today we skipped Mesiath and instead all five Setari squads spent the day assisting in the seeding of entire suburbs for Pandora, deep into the hills east of the old city and then along the lake to the north. Five squads of highly-trained killers clearing snow and lugging vats of whitestone 'seed' and computer-constructed models and bits of equipment and chasing off hungry native wildlife.

I was along for enhancement, and learned all these details of urban planning and design which I'd never really thought about. It's not just a matter of plonking houses and streets down. For the past five months, ever since they worked out that people could survive here, a fleet of technicians back on Tare and Kolar have been designing the city layout in terms of water and power and food production and drainage and waste and hospital services and fires and police and schools and transport and industry and shops and entertainment and defence and – my head just starts reeling when I try and think through the whole process. They're preparing initial infrastructure for fifty thousand people, and have expansion plans for long into the future. I just can't get over the idea of fifty thousand people living here.

Before the snows came the survey and geologist types had had a pretty thorough go at mapping the topography of Pandora's surroundings. They selected sites for factories (an industrial hub inland along a river which lets out north of here) and the residential sections will checkerboard with farmland, which in the very long run will probably become parkland. The bit north where all the sheep live is going to be a particularly farmy area since it also brushes along the northern river – the sheep are being 'redomesticated' and already have their personal set of highly technological shepherds – lots of Kolarens involved there, since Kolar deals with animals far more than Tare does. The old city (Aversan) is going to be part historical site and part working gardens. They don't want to pull it down or alter it greatly, but it is a biggish chunk of land, so they're going to use all the gardens either for produce, botanical research, or as a wildlife habitat for animals that they want to study. The plaza/piazza areas will be used as exactly that by the inhabitants of the wider area, and certain selected buildings will be converted to functioning use, particularly around the amphitheatre.

I'm very impressed by their plans. I would never have expected the Tarens, with their closed-off and blockish cities, to switch so immediately to creating a sprawling park with balconies. Given the pictures I've seen of Kolar, the Kolarens have definitely been a big influence – because of the heat, Kolarens sink their buildings, and only have parts of them out in the sun. Like the Tarens, Kolarens lived in caves when they first evacuated from Muina, at least in part because water on Kolar either drains underground or evaporates very quickly.

The Setari building is a prototype of what the buildings of this phase will be like, though most of them will be larger, built to accommodate dozens of families. No individual houses at this stage, just half-buried apartment blocks. The Kolarens and the Tarens have had to work together a great deal on this, both to avoid the Kolarens feeling excluded again, and because neither of their planets really fit the Muinan environment.

Back on Tare and Kolar they're having huge arguments ('discussions') about who gets to move in to all these buildings we've just planted – they've been having them for months, struggling over the big questions raised by two distinct cultures trying to settle the same home world. Is Tare or Kolar in control? Is KOTIS the right group to be leading the settlement? Will there be separate Taren and Kolaren settlements? A unified planetary government? Whose laws will be used? Which dialect? Whose technology? Do they build for complete interface integration, or actually step back in terms of technology? If all settlers have to have the interface, will it be the interface on Tare's terms?

There are plenty of people on Kolar not keen to have the 'internal policeman' which the Taren interface represents, and they find many of their laws horrifying. Of course, Tarens don't think much of some of Kolar's laws either.

Tare is winning a lot of the arguments, though. Nanotechnology is a difficult advance for Kolar to turn down, and it at least sounds like the Tarens are getting rather less anal about sharing their technology now that Muina can offer them the resources they're currently dependant on Kolar to provide. Part of what they're deciding will be temporary, just an initial structure so that they can get moving.

I just realised that all this rush and hurry mightn't be down to population pressures or being so keen to embrace their home world. Tare and Kolar might be thinking of Muina as an ark. Because the Ddura will protect the platform towns even from massives, and a gate in the wrong place on Muina won't bring a city tumbling down.

At least, not unless the gates get bigger than cities.

If that is the reason, they're not saying it out loud. All the news stories about Muina are extremely cheerful and upbeat, and so are the KOTIS staff concentrating on getting whitestone seeded and design models placed. Over the next few weeks, with only a bit of monitoring from the technicians (who need to be sure the growing buildings don't run out of readily-available 'food'), a small city will quietly be reproduced. Lacking all the glass and fittings and furniture and energy generators, but with the bulk of the work done. Whitestone even extrudes certain metals and minerals, rather than absorb them. They don't even have to dig to lay the connecting pipes. They're going to grow a subway system.

I definitely chose the right name for the settlement. This isn't a box I can close. I think all the Setari assisting were overwhelmed as well. Happy, though. Maze, particularly, really loves doing positive things rather than endlessly killing Ionoth, and it showed in everything he did.

Kaoren's getting his way about returning to our main mission though. Tomorrow First and Fourth will take me into the Ena for a combination of me doing more testing and them trying to find Pillars. The fact that we can settle this world, that the Ddura will protect the sites, hasn't removed the need to fix the tearing of the spaces, or found the reason why the Ddura started killing Muinans, and what exactly the Cruzatch have to do with it all.

The fact that they're intending to go ahead with the settlement without answering the question about the Ddura scares the hell out of me.

Wednesday, July 30

Back on Track

Kaoren's very pleased. First and Fourth took me on the Ena mission he wanted (having stolen Fourteenth's strongest path finder, Sanya, as well) and they all enhanced and immediately detected a Pillar.

Since they were under strict orders not to take me into combat, but also had the advantage of the immediate near-space and connecting spaces being wiped clear by the Ddura, they could take me along partway, tracking through two gates before they encountered a space which was populated. They then sent me back to wait by the gate with Zee, Halla and Mori as escort, and I got to do tests while the squads pushed on.

A very simple test today – Zee told me to project remembered music or television until I could project no more, and they would measure how much that cost me. I recorded another piece of classical music for Zan (this rather pretty thing done with recorders, slow and spiralling, no idea who it's by), and then a song for me, and then I did an episode and a half of Planet Earth which I now get to subtitle. I couldn't do all that in one go – I have to rest every few minutes – but it's nothing like so difficult a task as doing it in real-space. I stopped when I was totally wiped, and spent much of the afternoon asleep, carefully doing a visualisation exercise before going to bed. Zee stayed in the living room of my apartment, but I managed to not have a nightmare.


When I woke up it was late afternoon, and Kaoren still wasn't back, but I was determined to stay drama-free and asked Zan and Dess if we could go for a walk along the lake. That wasn't bad: we chatted about parts of Muina we've visited, and then built snow sculptures on the very top of the Setari building/hill until, finally, First and Fourth came back, exhausted but whole.

They'd had to travel ten spaces to get to the Pillar, and had run up against a few tough battles which made them glad they were dual-squadding, especially since the Ena manipulation talents had had to stabilise an awful lot of gates. Par was levitating Sonn, who'd passed out. They sent Squad Three and Fourteenth out to place a couple of drones, and put some extra stabilisation on the gates, and they made it there and back in about an hour and a half. Kaoren and Maze both waited until the other squads were safely back before getting some rest themselves – working their way through dinner and getting a start on their reports. Kaoren pretty much fell into bed once we got back to our room.

I like these bed nooks. The beds themselves are ever so slightly cup-shaped and the nanomaterial mattress makes sleeping on rock a lot more comfortable than you'd expect. Need more pillows, but the walls are great for propping yourself against.

Kaoren gets restless if I'm not in contact with him. I probably shouldn't be pleased about that. I probably shouldn't keep experimenting to see how he reacts when I move my leg away.

We've only been together two and a bit weeks. It was a shock to flip back through my diary and realise that. I've stopped being so wary of doing or saying the wrong thing.

Thursday, July 31

At the movies

All of the Muina-stationed Setari, except for Kiste and Halla who are babysitting me, are back in the Ena today trying to do the tests which had been planned for the last Pillar. The mood was mixed when everyone left: they've been wanting to properly study a Pillar for so long, but given what happened last time, no-one was exactly cheerful. And, even though the aether isn't fatal to them any more, it does make them drunk, which is not a good state to be in any part of the Ena, let alone areas frequented by far too many deep-space roamers. So today's a serious day.

It's the Cruzatch which are the biggest concern. It's all too possible they might try to sabotage the mission again, so the squads plan to use a drone to lock the outlet levers before they venture close to the Pillar themselves.

At least Kiste and Halla are in the exact same boat as me, worrying about their squads. Though interestingly calling each other Tahl and Charan when they think I'm not listening. Kiste's elbow is almost fully healed now, but he says he's facing a lot of training to get it back to former strength.

It was a nice day outside, so I decided to see how tolerant they'd be of me wandering about. There'd been a big dump of snow the previous night, but the skies had cleared, and there was no wind. Snow drifts did make it a little hard-going in spots, but I figured this could count as me getting some exercise, and tramped my way all the way in to the old town, up to my old tower, only to find I couldn't get in. They really have preserved it as a historical site, fitting shields over the windows and doorways.

Annoyed by this, I headed back to Setari quarters and told Kiste and Halla that I was going to spend the rest of the day working on subtitling. So I'm in my bedroom being sore from forging through snowdrifts, and taking a break from translating David Attenborough.

Hm, the Litara just arrived with another massive supplies delivery, and also Third, Eleventh and Thirteenth. More squads here than on Tare at the moment. I guess this is because of the Pillar.

--

Yep, they're going to have all these squads here for a few days. They don't quite all fit in the Setari quarters, but along with the supplies were a bunch more mattresses and couches, so people are sharing apartments. The Pillar experiments are going to be performed in shifts because there's one gate which they aren't going to be able to hold for more than five days, and they can't tell when, if ever, it will come back. KOTIS wants to get as much information as possible before they lose the path.

Why the Lantarens couldn't have stuck these things somewhere easier to get to I don't know.

The Pillars team returned not long after the Litara showed up, having had to kill a fair number of roamer Ionoth, but not otherwise troubled. No Cruzatch. They'd successfully sent a drone into the Pillar and obtained bunches of useful scans, and positioned it to block the levers from moving. I don't know if the scans will really tell them anything – ancient Lantaren devices seem to me more on the level of magic than science. They certainly haven't figured out how the teleporting platforms work.

Still, everyone's very pleased that there's been no disasters so far, and the afternoon involved more helpful unpacking and lots of chatting and, since Third is here, great bursts of Eeli excitement. Eeli is totally overjoyed by the new Setari building. A big central socialising area is her idea of heaven, and the sunset over the partially iced lake was glorious enough to brighten the eyes of even the most serious of the Setari.

We had a big group meal, bringing down the new couches out of the apartments to fit the extra people. It was a full-on banquet – the pinksuits are having a great time experimenting with making meals out of some of the plants they've been cultivating. And there were a few different meat dishes courtesy of one of the hairy sheep. Slow-cooked mutton. Kolarens are used to meat, but the Tarens had to be careful. Their regular diet includes some seafood, but red meat is an exceptional luxury for them, like a $1000 bottle of champagne. Eeli was horrified when I told her that people from Earth usually eat the baby sheep.

Then Zee insisted I do a 'screening' of Planet Earth with the subtitles so that she could make sense of what she'd seen during the testing session. And the channel she created to watch it kind of snowballed to all the Setari, and then our resident support greysuits and pinksuits, who told their section heads about it, which meant Zee was asked if other people could watch, and then practically everyone in Pandora was. It's pretty disconcerting to suddenly be throwing a video party for three thousand people.

I should have expected the interest. Earth is not only an alien planet, but it's also (relatively) similar to Muina, which is the main focus of research for most of the expeditionary force. Since Zee had control of the channel, she shifted it into two groups – people who could text me questions (Setari and a few of the department heads) and people who could watch if they wanted. I tried to ignore all the extras and pretend it was just the people in the room with me.

Eeli was fun to watch, round-eyed and delighted most of the time, though there's a scene where a wolf hunts down this baby caribou and Eeli was so upset when it caught it. And didn't much like sharks eating seals, either. The first episode is a really useful one to have done, because its subject is seasonal change, which the expeditionary force is particularly interested in. Fortunately it mostly explains itself. There's a short mini-documentary at the end of each episode, which I'd included (since I'm basically just recalling the DVD set Mum owns), and even though I'd only gotten halfway through the next episode, Zee played it too because there were a couple of bits she'd particularly wanted to ask me about – namely how freaking huge the mountains on Earth are, what was the burning red stuff (lava) and what was with all the snow knocking down trees (an avalanche).

That caused some excitement, and I was bombarded with questions by the section heads when I ran out of subtitled recording. Earth's geologic instability is something none of their planets have, which means their mountains are more worn down (if they exist at all). Muina does have mountains, but I don't think they're at Everest level, and there's no sign of flowing lava. I fumbled my way through explanations of continental drift, the Ice Ages and dinosaurs until Isten Notra (although very interested herself) eventually called a close to my inquisition and said that the discussion could be continued at a later date, as could further helpful documentaries.


It was, Kaoren said, a useful demonstration that no matter how much I thought I'd described Earth, it was too large a topic to ever assume a proper understanding. I hadn't properly explained dinosaurs before, apparently, and the avalanche got them all worried about the settlement at Kalasa. Both the Solarians knew about avalanches too, but hadn't mentioned it because they were very rare on Solaria (again, a fairly flat world) and nobody had asked exactly the right question.

Kaoren wasn't absolutely exhausted tonight, only tired. It was nice to have a night when he didn't pass out.