The Texas Renegade Returns

August


Friday, August 1

Cleared

Another test day for me – I'm scheduled for every second day to avoid overstressing my system. It was only a repetition of the projections we'd already run through on Tare, and then I finished off the rest of the 'Mountains' episode of Planet Earth. Zee wouldn't let me push myself to exhaustion this time, since the idea is to get a better understanding of my powers, not churn out BBC documentaries. Still needed a long nap afterwards, though. But I'm doing well. Fewer headaches, better control, and it's just so incredibly much easier to do this in the Ena.

The good news is that I've been stable and injury-free long enough that the bluesuits are willing to move on from David Attenborough. My next session will be a controlled attempt to look into Kalasa's past – visualising a single room.

The Setari have divided into a morning shift and an afternoon shift to perform experiments on the Pillar, examining the inflow of the aether and trying to work out what the Pillar does with it. No sign of Cruzatch still, fortunately, although they were having real issues with deep-space Ionoth, and are debating whether it would be safer to send fewer people in the hopes of attracting less of them. A couple of minor injuries for Eleventh.

Twelfth got to spend the entire day carting stuff about, which is what Zan gets for being the strongest Telekinetic. They've seriously stepped the construction and deliveries up a notch, and there are now four ships (the Litara, the Diodel, the Wharra and the Luim) devoted to daily ferrying of equipment. Kolar and Tare didn't have a bunch of spare interplanetary ships lying about, and couldn't simply abandon all the trade currently established, so it's taken a little time to get up to four ships devoted to Muina, and they're fast-tracking construction of more. I still love watching them land, though apparently they intend to construct some kind of airbase well inland past the industrial complex. They haven't quite finished designing that, though I'm not sure how hard it can be to design a big flat plain of whitestone.

This afternoon after he'd recovered somewhat from his session in the Ena Kaoren and I watched the latest episode of The Hidden War, which was me being idiotic during Maze Rotation and patting Ghost. The episode continues to build the idea of Faer developing some feelings for me, but otherwise is generally accurate in terms of me looking and feeling bad.

Saturday, August 2

End of Winter?

Ouch – combat training with Third this morning. And also a bit of friction between Squad Three and Eleventh Squad. I don't know the exact cause of it, just noticed the atmosphere. Since Eleventh is injured, they're not involved with the Pillars today, while Squad Three is on the afternoon shift. Endaran took the non-injured members of her squad out on a training run (it would be a training flounder, given the snow, but they've a strong Telekinetic and she had him to clear a path to the paths already cleared by machinery and they jogged around the settlement) until they were totally ragged and far too tired to even care that Squad Three existed.

I think it might be warming up. The snow's looking a bit slushy.

Kaoren's been having his post-Ena nap and now that I've finished my day's subtitling (carefully just making the damn episode available over the interface rather than having a video party), I'm going to wake him up and ravish him.

Monday, August 4

Looking in the wrong place

I was a little keyed up for my visualisation exercise yesterday. Wanting to prove myself, I guess, but trying not to show it. Eeli, part of my guard escort, was a useful distraction, and I could see Sefen of Third and Wen of Eleventh suppressing a couple of smiles in her direction. She always lifts the mood, as excited about watching my projection as she has been going to study the Pillar.

My projection tests have all been held just a little way inside the gate to near-space (not too close or my projection might react with the gate) and Zee brings both a drone to record, and a sense-chair for me to lie on. I settle in and then Zee reads out a description of what she wants me to project.

Yesterday it was a room in Kalasa, a small square with no windows and a single door, where the floor had cracked and dropped in the centre, and all the furniture had tumbled and jammed into it. Everything was smirched with grot and tarnish and mould, the way most of the uncleared rooms in Kalasa are, but this one was extra-damaged thanks to water leaking through the equally cracked ceiling, leaving a total rotten mess. The most obvious shape was a big, formerly solid desk, and I could make out a couple of chairs, a brazier, ornaments. Lots of books, or at least the remnants of their covers.

The projection was no more difficult than any other I've been doing in the Ena, and after Sefen and Wen confirmed I was projecting a single building rather than the whole of the Kalasa Valley, Zee said:

"We're starting with this room because the Place Sight talents marked it as important and worth investigating. Now that we've confirmed the energy cost of projecting it, we'll try to reconstruct it as it was before the Breaking."

"How?" I asked. I hadn't made any effort to look into the past last time, and had been asleep, which is when weirder stuff always seems to happen to me.

"I'm going to redescribe the room as we believe it looked before it was destroyed. It's very important that you try to confine the visualisation to this room, or at least this building."

I shrugged, willing to give it a shot, but not entirely convinced it would work. It seemed more likely that what I'd produce was a fiction of the past, since they were making up the details.

Zee began describing the room again, and I closed my eyes and tried to picture what she was talking about, although the image of what I knew the room looked like now kept creeping in and it was a long time before I got any result at all. Zee ran out of her pre-prepared script, but just started again and on the repetition I managed to focus and could properly see what the room looked like, and felt the extra energy cost kick in. Not too bad, but it was obviously taking more out of me than the current-time projection.

When I opened my eyes the room was crisply real, with bonus people. A guy in robes just in the act of spreading out this big piece of paper and weighting each corner. He was looking very worried, and having a discussion I couldn't make sense of with another robed guy. The most I could figure out of the Old Muinan was something had gone wrong, and things were unbalanced. The language experts have provided a translation, though, and it seems he was talking about the tearing of the gates into real-space and the incursion of Ionoth and how it didn't make sense and that there had to be some extra factor they hadn't calculated for, something which was pulling everything out of alignment.

Zee stayed by me, keeping an eye on my vitals, but gestured my escort guard forward to get a better view of the piece of paper. Eeli and Sefen were both practically leaning over the table to get a full look at it, and the two Lantarens were kind of noticing their shadows and being startled.

I was already starting to tire, and when Sefen and Wen picked up a couple of the books on the desk and flipped rapidly through them, recording the contents, I noticed another jump in my energy output. The Lantarens looked thoroughly freaked out, but still couldn't quite properly see us.


And then – it's really hard to describe, but I felt suddenly like my brain was being pulled out of the back of my head, and it was as if there was a really bright light somewhere nearby – I think the best analogy I could have for it is a neighbouring sun had gone supernova and was turning into a black hole. The two Lantarens – and Sefen – also reacted as if something major was going on. The nearest Lantaren ran to the door and threw it open, yelling something about madness. Zee was yelling too, telling me to stop, shaking me. And then she slapped me.

I did some face and chest clutching then. Face because Zee hadn't held back – my eye's still a bit swollen – and chest because it felt like my heart was trying to kick its way out. I gasped and shuddered, convinced I was having a heart attack, and Zee kept telling me to take deep breaths, which reminded me of Kaoren and the last time I'd nearly killed myself. It was pretty close, I gather – my system had gone far beyond its tolerances and I was shaking and dizzy and had a horrendous headache, but Zee had snapped me out of the projection before I'd done any real damage. I'm not allowed to do any strenuous exercise for a few days, just as a precaution, but at last I've managed to come through one of my dramas without any major injury.

It wasn't till Zee was ready to move me that I noticed that Wen, Sefen and Eeli were all clutching books. I'd made them tangible, though not nearly as well as the origami cranes, since they started fading even before we were back to the gate, and there was a pause while the three Setari madly skimmed through them, capturing visuals of the pages to be translated later. Two of the books weren't related (one was a book of poetry), but the one Sefen had picked up was the latest volume in a meticulous set of observations regarding the activation of the Pillars.

The greysuits are most excited about the piece of paper, though, since it was some kind of hugely complex metaphysical map of the placement of the Pillars. I don't even begin to understand what they're talking about when they start foaming over it – it sounds as comprehendible as the Fifth and Sixth Dimension to me (perhaps quite literally?). This and the journal have produced some ecstatic reactions.

When we went through the gate (Wen was levitating me) absolutely everything in real-space was blurry, which produced the usual needle-to-the-brain sensation. I spent a while barely able to pay attention to anything until my first dose of painkiller, which is when I realised that the settlement had been in an extreme flap when we returned. Zee was staying with me, and told me sternly to calm down when I realised that she'd sent the second shift of Setari to check on those at the Pillar. But she let me clutch her hand until everyone had returned safely.

I'd started projecting the event which wiped out the majority of Muina's Lantarens. And when that happened, every platform in real-space reacted with a huge power surge, as did the Pillar. I hadn't killed anyone, thankfully, or caused the Ddura to stop recognising people as Muinan, and very interestingly the drones stationed with the two malachite marbles detected a power surge from them as well, suggesting that they're somehow linked. I'd given the settlement a big scare, though, for all that the greysuits are overjoyed at the information recorded from the projection. Even the power surge is considered overall a good thing, because it's a clue to what happened, and they got lots of interesting readings from it.

Kaoren was very quiet when he got back, and though I had my eyes shielded at the time, I could hear the way he was being remote and super-polite to people when he did talk at all. Zee apologised to us both for not seeing the implications of the test, which I found embarrassing, and I wish I'd thought it through more myself, because it seems obvious in retrospect that the room as it appeared just before the disaster wasn't a very safe thing to try and project. It took me a while to work out that Kaoren was angry at himself, and when I finally talked everyone into letting me rest in my own room and got a chance to ask him why, he said it was because he hadn't read more than the outline of my test, that he'd let himself be distracted by the investigation of the Pillar.

It didn't help at all that for the rest of the day I couldn't open my eyes without seeing a completely blurry world and getting insta-crushed by the headache from hell. I completely refused to let them hold open my eyelids and shine lights at my pupils after the first bout, thank you very much. Maze told them to tape shut and bind my eyes, and to hold off further examination till today and fortunately this morning they were back to normal, with just very occasionally the faintest quiver out of the corners of my eyes.

Kaoren had Fourth shifted to babysitting duty for the day, and is making me sit somewhere he can see me while he trains his squad mercilessly into the ground – combat training where he actually fights each of them. He's not beating them up or anything, but he's forcing them to look deeply at any of their combat weaknesses and really strain to correct them. He's trying to regain his focus. He had nightmares all last night, and kissed me madly when I woke up this morning and could see properly again. And then went and had a cold shower, heh.

I shouldn't laugh. Worrying about me could get him killed.

Tuesday, August 5

Sturdily fragile

This will be the final day of Pillar investigation. One of the gates won't last beyond tomorrow. I spent much of the morning over at the sciences building, answering questions about cheese-making and tidal waves (and sealing wax and string?) and then I had lunch with Isten Notra and Shon (and Sefen and Chise from Third). Isten Notra tried to explain what she thought the Pillars were doing, which took a bit of work since the terms she was using kept going into the 'does not compute' box. But eventually I sort of got where she was coming from. Because they're called Pillars, and look like towers, I'd been thinking of them as columns propping up the 'roof' of deep-space. But they're more like segments of a single long needle piercing a series of folds in the Ena. Not an artificial wormhole. The Pillars stop deep-space from moving about completely freely.

So it's not so much that the Pillars are holding deep-space open, as that they're holding it in a certain alignment. Deep-space itself sounds terribly complicated: a space shaped like a huge drifting fishing net of teleporting portals. The Pillars make it relatively easy to cross because although there's still a lot of shift further away, in the more 'central' areas around the Pillars everything wobbles only slightly. It's funny: I've been picturing the crossing of the rift as involving a short, straight flight, but really the crew of the Litara and Diodel have been following this precise and complicated course around all these 'reefs' of gates. And figuring out what's through the gates involves going through them. Wormhole lucky dip. No wonder they have little real hope of finding Earth, especially since it's away from this central 'line' and thus everything moves and shifts about, just as the spaces do.

The main thing Isten Notra wanted to talk to me about, though, was precisely what I'd felt when I'd recreated the disaster. She showed me an interesting simulation – a map of Kalasa, and the location of the room which I'd been visualising. Then she included the scan of the testing session, aligning my test chair up exactly on the map. I hadn't even realised that when the test had gone bad I'd started staring off to my right, back and forth between the people in the room and one of the walls.

"That's the direction that it was coming from, yes?" Isten Notra said. "The heaviness?"

"Ye-es," I said, rather doubtfully. "I think too big to have a real direction, like asking what direction the sky is. There was–" I paused, struggling to pull together any kind of proper impression, because nothing really quite fit what I was trying to say. "Is like that's the nearest part. Like a massive was walking over the top of me, and that was the closest leg."


Isten Notra did something to the simulation, drawing a line in the direction I was looking, and then moving back to a city-wide aerial view as it continued to extend. It crossed one side of Kalasa's circle, and a little down, and landed squarely on the barricaded building with Kalasa's malachite marble.

"Green balls were what was pulling Pillars out of balance? Is what happened next planned, do you think, Isten Notra? Everyone dying and the Ddura not recognising anyone? Or did it all go wrong for whoever built those things as well?"

"Major questions. Particularly regarding the Ddura. One thing we have not yet been able to test is whether the Ddura properly treat Cruzatch as Ionoth. Although their conspicuous absence from any Ddura-guarded settlements suggests an answer."

The rest of the day I've been with Kaoren – we went for a short walk, and then have been curled up in our room being overly mindful of the fact that I'm supposed to avoid strenuous exercise. We talked a lot about the Pillars and what Isten Notra had shown me, and what the Cruzatch might or might not be – and about deep-space physics, which he understands far better than I do. He's recovered fairly well from my latest near-death experience, but made me promise to be more cautious.

I read a great deal of my diary to him, and we're almost up to the point where I get rescued. It wasn't at all fun reading about my adventures in kissing-guys-while-drunk, but Kaoren was more interested in whether I missed being able to drink. He's never been drunk – and I suspect would find being at all not in control of himself horrifying – but he wanted to know if I resented the restriction. The aether tests put me off even the thought of drinking for a while, but I don't really like KOTIS being able to say I'm not allowed to drink.

I miss chocolate FAR more.

Most of the teams are being sent back to Tare tomorrow afternoon, after being suitably worked into the ground helping with the settlement again.

Wednesday, August 6

On the Menu

The first of today's ships – a Kolaren delivery – arrived while a group of us were sitting around the big flat steps outside the common room enjoying a patio breakfast and the increasingly warm temperatures. Lohn, who always keeps up with the news as the ships come in, said: "So that's why they're rushing getting these buildings done."

The Kolaren news feed was full of the prospective end of the months-long negotiations over the resettlement agreement, the complete detail of which would be made public at the official signing ceremony to be held in two weeks – at Pandora. Something which seems to involve everyone really important from two planets coming here for a big stickybeak. And lots of press.

Maze did some private communing with those in charge, then said: "The Council of Tare and the Rukmor. The Ormon of Nent, and the three Southern Ancipars. And their entourage and guests, estimated to be some two thousand people in all. A thousand various other dignitaries and a mere five hundred or so press. Arriving over two days, then the formalities and a grand celebration."

"Quite the timetable," Taarel said. "Do we take the role of guard or guest?"

"Tourist attraction," Lohn said, and grinned at me. "Hope you packed a pretty outfit. I'd wager you're listed as the main course."

"I'm going to be sick that week," I said firmly. They thought I was kidding. Well, Kaoren didn't, but I think he's waiting to see whether I get used to the idea.

The Council of Tare is the mayor (and some sub-mayors) of every major island. The Rukmor is kind of like the designated heads of a bunch of scholastic fields (Dean of Sport, Dean of Performance Art, Dean of Physical Sciences, except planet-wide). Together the Council and the Rukmor have a weighted voting system to make planetary decisions. The Ormon of Nent is the king of Kolar's north pole country, and the Southern Ancipars are the three elected leaders of Kolar's south pole country, which was only established after the Tarens showed up and raised Kolar's technological level enough so that they could travel past their burnt-toast equator.

Much unpacking of ships and hauling of cargo followed. KOTIS does have machinery which can do all this, but it's hard to beat the speed, versatility and flexibility of Telekinetics and Levitation talents – and everyone else treated hauling the small stuff about as weights training. The expansion is roaring along. It's quite something to look out over the growing streets of the settlement, and see balconies emerging in an eerie accompaniment to the fleshy green plants Eeli found poking through the snow (daffodils maybe?). The earliest buildings seeded will be ready for fitting-out by tomorrow.

The ships took away the extra squads, though Twelfth Squad's assignment here has been extended purely because Zan's strength is unmatched and she's considered too useful for the construction effort. I asked her if she minded, but she pointed out that it's giving her squad the opportunity to be involved in things like the Pillar missions. And she really loves it here. She hasn't exactly grown all chatty, but she seems far less separate and closed off and set apart than when I first knew her.

So, First, Third, Fourth, Eleventh and Twelfth now, as well as Squad Three.

Thursday, August 7

Forest rest

Back to Mesiath today, joining the exploration and sampling there. Just with Third and Fourth, while the other squads continue to assist with construction.

Friday, August 8

Part of it all

Breakfast is becoming the big group chat time – most evenings the squads are a bit too worn out to want to hang around chatting. The hot topic of discussion the past couple of days has been the translations of Lantaren teaching material. Everything they've found goes on about the connection with Muina, becoming one with Muina, feeling the world as a primary necessary first step to strengthening your talents.

This is completely not how the Setari learn how to use their powers. Their strength is something they develop in themselves. They've been having endless debates about whether the idea of feeling the world is simply a philosophy, or truly has an impact. I'm pretty sure every single one of them has had a shot at trying to establish some kind of connection, just to see. I know the idea is taking up an increasing amount of Kaoren's spare thoughts – it's hitting him both in his perfectionism and his Sights' drive to understand.

This morning Maze wanted to know whether I felt any connection with my surroundings when I was visualising or projecting, but I'm really not aware of anything like that and said so.

"It could explain the large variance in results, though," Zan said. She was sitting cross-legged on one of the individual chairs, looking incredibly petite as she tucked into one of the huge breakfasts Setari need to fuel themselves when they're expected to haul containers half the day. "Especially the effects you've achieved in sleep. If in sleep you are achieving a greater connection to – well, not the planet, but to the Ena or the universe or however one wants to term it – that would explain your sometimes disproportionate achievements. Particularly travelling back to your own world's near-space."

"That one I think I know how I did," I said, and wrinkled my nose at the way everyone around me went still for a moment, then tried to hide any reaction. I know that KOTIS doesn't truly want to find a way for me to go back to Earth, not in the near future. And the Setari really, really don't want to be in the position of being my jailers.

Kaoren was sitting next to me, and he'd reacted the same way, because I hadn't discussed this with him, but then he relaxed. He knows damn well what 'certain' means. "How?"


"I think I must have made an Ionoth," I said, turning to look at him. "If it was possible for me to fly, I'd be flying by now because that would be so cool, and believe me I've tried. I know I can't do that. So something which can fly must have carried me."

"That makes sense," Kaoren said. "Do you remember dreaming of being carried?"

"No. Don't remember dreaming at all. But isn't the Ena the source of psychic powers? When I first got to Tare, I was sure I was told that all strays have a strong connection to Ena, and that's why end up getting displaced."

"Ena manipulation or Gate sight, perhaps," Taarel said. She was perched on one arm of the sofa Eeli was using, looking regal as usual. "Those are very common talents for the displaced to exhibit. But there's no established link between, say, elementals and the Ena."

They had a long discussion on whether they really could be channelling some form of external power rather than producing it themselves, and just not be aware of it. I talked it over with Kaoren much later, when we were taking a lunch break at Mesiath. It's really frustrating him, to simply not be sure, to feel he's missing something.

Mesiath's such a gorgeous place, just starting to edge into Autumn as Pandora lets go of Winter. We were sitting on some shattered whitestone which had fallen into the lake, paddling bare feet into the cool water. Most of the trees are pine, but there are a lot of the broader-leaf trees which are just starting to think about changing colour – much taller, grander ones than those at Pandora. Masses of birds and animals, and the lake incredibly deep, cold even in Summer.

"That's what you're doing freezing out on the balcony at dawn, right? Trying to channel your talents through a connection to Muina?" I only knew he was doing this because he comes back inside, chilled through and all wound up, and makes himself feel better by carrying me off into the shower. Which at least means we both feel happily relaxed when we go down to breakfast.

"It may be something the younger Kalrani can learn, even if we cannot," Kaoren said, philosophically. "I am only fracturing myself, trying to take a different approach to using my talents."

"Pandora isn't the right place to try and be all connected anyway," I said, leaning against him. "Since the temperature makes you want to lock yourself inside, to put on lots of layers of clothes. Plus, first step supposedly is to be connected, not to do anything with powers. We should just go skinny-dipping here, enjoy the world."

I had to explain what skinny-dipping is – definitely not a word Tarens have – and was surprised when Kaoren nodded and acted like I'd made a good suggestion.

"Perhaps not entirely without clothing, but you make a good point. I'll talk to Surion about scheduling."

That made me laugh at him, that he would schedule skinny-dipping, and he surprised me again by kissing me. We were in a relatively sheltered spot, but not completely out of sight, and Kaoren is so not into public displays of affection. I think it's a sign of how stymied he feels by the Lantaren teaching tracts.

Maze thinks swimming at Mesiath a reasonable idea as well – whether to attempt some sort of connection, as training, or simply for a fun break. He's said anyone who wants to can take a lunchtime swimming break there during the next week, but of course set a bunch of safety rules about not going off alone and not going too far from the main expeditionary force.

I think all the squads are planning to go tomorrow.

The part of my diary I read to Kaoren today was about what 'Cassandra' means. I could tell he thought that 'she who entangles men' was very funny, but he focused more on the prophecy stuff, of course. He said Symbol Sight hadn't shown him any precise significance to my name, and we turned over how my strange Sight seems to let me see everything except the future. And then whether I should try and see the future, which I said I'd probably refuse to try to do. Mainly because I just don't want to be able to do that, but it does also seem to be a far more dangerous thing to do, since I might end up seeing bunches of possible futures.

He asked if it would bother me if he reported the meaning, and I said "Yes," and I think he's going to leave it at that. I'm glad he asked.

Saturday, August 9

Quadrangles

I am increasingly convinced that it's a requirement to be in love with Maze if you're a female Setari captain. All the squads went to Mesiath today, and had a very good time away from the main expeditionary force. Zan came, but didn't swim, and fell asleep tucked against a rock on the bank and Maze found her still asleep and carried her back. She looked really tiny and young against his chest (and I got the impression that her squad wanted to rescue her).

Endaran, the captain of Eleventh, went really thin about the mouth and got ominously quiet. Taarel handled it better, just saying, "She's being overworked," to Maze, and nodding when he said he'd rearrange Twelfth's scheduling. But later on, after only Third and Fourth were left to continue assisting the sampling expedition, I saw for a moment that she looked very alone. Whether Zan woke up before Maze put her to bed, or if anyone told her, I don't know. Maze was looking pretty damn tired at dinner tonight as well.

I'm feeling very lucky to be me today. We had a really gorgeous day. Long walks in the forest, with just a bit of side-fuss due to the swarms of greysuits which need herding. Then swimming before lunch – very easy to get rid of the arms and feet of the nanosuits and set the cloth to a thinner, finer texture. After some initial noise and splashing, we spread out in a side-branch of the lake where we'd found all these drowned and shattered whitestone buildings mostly submerged, and everyone either sunned themselves on sticking-out bits of stone or floated on their backs in the water.

The day was very warm, and floating on my back in cold water with my eyes half-closed looking at the beams of sunlight was really the best way I could imagine spending my time. I have to admit I wasn't really trying to do any of this connecting with the world thing, just enjoying myself and trying not to distract Kaoren. Place Sight and Sight Sight make this complicated for him, but he was very thoughtful about it afterwards and said at dinner that he felt that it was a valuable exercise and one worth continuing. All the captains seem to be in agreement about that, whether because they think it a good thing for squad morale or whether they were succeeding in feeling all connected I can't tell. None of them were yelling Eureka, anyway.

Endaran was being ever-so-slightly catty toward Zan. Channelling her inner Forel.

I ravished Kaoren most forcefully after we went back to our room – I don't take the lead in bedroom very often, but I have great fun when I do – Kaoren seems to find it maddening and incredibly arousing at the same time and I love watching him trying to control himself. I read some more of my diary to him – all of the day I was rescued – and he's very amused that he made so little impression on me.

I love watching him sleep.

Sunday, August 10

Productivity

Today I was swapped to enhancing the Telekinetics lugging things about – assigned generally, but with Lohn and Mara being my bodyguards.

KOTIS has an assembly line of epic proportions underway to finish the handful of apartment blocks which are going to house the new guests. Each building is inspected after it's fully formed, cleaned of any residual muck and gunk, and then the primary installations are done: power unit, water system, and the really complicated nano-waste facility. The pipe connections are double-checked, and then they start on outer doors and windows, and the heating and air-conditioning and lights and the building's 'brain' (main node for the interface), followed by kitchen and bathroom fittings, inner doors. Then everything's cleaned again, and furniture placed – couch, rug, mattresses, pillows, blankets, kitchen utensils, waste baskets. There's a team for each separate stage, trailing each other from building to building, and once the ship unloading was done and I wasn't needed for enhancing I joined the furniture team and helped lay out rugs and mattresses and made beds and things in the first building cleared for them to work on.


The end result is sparse and samey, but of course that doesn't factor in the Taren interface public space. They're still designing those, but one of the technicians showed me some of the early designs, which are based on the decorations around all the windows and doors in the old town. It's really pretty.

While most of the buildings are exactly the same layout, they're really made different by the amount of ground which covers them – some are almost entirely aboveground, and some are almost completely buried by the rise of the land (must remember to ask why they don't get balconies opening out into the dirt for those ones). There are one, two and three-bedroom apartments, and a small section in each building which is more communal living with individual bedrooms but shared bathrooms, kitchens and lounges. The city layout is also very variable – they worked the placement in with the existing hill scape, rather than trying to keep to a grid structure, and the roads are rather winding. It looks like people will mostly be expected to get about by underground rail. There's even a huge underground warehouse near the HQ block.

Nanotechnology makes building so ridiculously easy for the Tarens. Ninety percent of the work is in the planning, and once they've done all the designing, they use nanotech to produce the model and then nanotech to transform the model to life-size. Whitestone is very strong and adaptable to almost every design, and if they make a mistake they can turn a section back into goo and adjust it. Most of the construction effort and expense then comes with the fittings.

Before heading to Mesiath, Lohn, Mara and I met up with the rest of First Squad to explore an area which will be called Desza Tohl (Moon Piazza). This is an open area designed to be the city centre, north of the science buildings, forming a crescent shape at the eastern base of the amphitheatre hill. The whitestone paving of the piazza is patterned – someone apparently spent months designing the model segments, which represent the light of the moon streaming down from the old city. Each radiating segment shows scenes of Muina's past and present and hoped-for future, and has incorporated the swirly floral designs which decorate Kalasa. It's really, really huge, and the pattern is interrupted by space for banks of grass and raised gardens, and these great whitestone benches which scoop up under your legs. There'll even be a couple of pool/fountains and a sunken performance area. I could have spent all morning wandering about looking at the design if it wasn't still mostly covered by snow, and Maze told me that if it hasn't melted by the time of the big party, he and the other Fire talents get to hurry things along.

Two sweeping balustraded ramps have grown up the side of the hill to the amphitheatre and they dance across each other to continue the theme of the piazza. They're going to put a 'vertical garden' and a statue in the gap in the centre (Lohn was teasing me saying it was going to be a statue of me), and there's some small buildings which will sell food and so forth tucked against the hill. And some elevators off to one side, which go up to the top of the hill, or down into a currently extremely empty underground whitestone cavern which is going to be a hub of the subway system when it's installed.

It took me a while to work out what the buildings on the inner rim of the piazza reminded me of – this place in England called Bath. A solid row of buildings stretching along the massive outer curve of the crescent. The Earth version has more vertical and horizontal lines, if I remember properly, while this swirled and flowed with the stylised outlines of trees (even etched onto the glass which had just been installed on the hotel parts). These buildings are going to be museum, hotels, some kind of theatre, galleries, shops and restaurants. It also extends underground, and most of it is empty whitestone shell without windows, except for the hotel, which is getting close to furniture and fittings stage.

Maze sat on one of the benches looking very at peace and using Telekinesis to brush away the snow so I could see more of the piazza's pattern.

"You really like all this, don't you?" I said, sitting down with him after I'd peered at everything in range. "Putting up a city."

"There's a great deal of satisfaction in making things, even if all I'm contributing is the heavy lifting. I'll miss the sense of accomplishment once this stage is over. Are you ready to go to Mesiath?" He smiled when I nodded. "You've overcome your issues with swimming."

"I guess." I'd forgotten I had them. "Everyone's there, so it doesn't feel the same at all. Do you really think it's useful? That there's something to talent training which has been missing?"

"The training I can't be sure about. Clearing the mind, getting some physical exercise – both are worthwhile, quite aside from whether we achieve further results." He looked wry. "At least that's what I told our training coordinators, who consider this whole approach unscientific."

"Did you feel at all connected to anything yesterday?"

"That's hard to say. I found myself very aware of the larger world, of the forest. Particularly when we all quieted down. Whether having an appreciation of my surroundings can make the slightest difference to my use of talent I don't know."

We gathered together and headed back to Mesiath – which was having a minor drama because one of the technicians had been bitten by a spider and his hand had swelled up very painfully, but Auron took him off to Pandora and everything soon calmed down. Another nice swimming trip. Kaoren was glad to see me, but most of his attention was caught up by puzzling out possible approaches to being 'connected', and I told him I was going to paddle about in a particular spot where everyone could see me and left to avoid distracting him. There were these fantastic miniature weasel creatures lurking about the roots of the trees along the bank and I had a great time with Zan just watching them. I think Earth has something like them, but I can't remember what they're called.

Tsur Selkie arrived back on Muina while we were doing this, and came and looked at all his highly-trained killers lolling about in the sun. He doesn't seem to have objected to the experiment, though, and Kaoren is definitely planning to continue. He says that he's having trouble compartmentalising the challenge though, and is struggling to keep focus outside the swimming trips.

All the captains are at a meeting with Selkie and some other bluesuits at the moment, and I am at least going to make sure that I don't cause any dramas.

Monday, August 11

Hunter

Ghost is here!

I was snoozing in my room after a morning testing session in the Ena (under the watchful eye of Tsur Selkie), and she woke me up with her purring and walking all over me and seems pretty damn happy to have found me. I could hardly believe it, and was so glad to see her, and petted and played with her while I decided what to do.

Not that I really had any choice. Kaoren would be hurt if I tried to keep her secret from him, and I had a snowflake's chance in hell of actually doing so. Not to mention that she was sure to materialise abruptly in front of someone. Kaoren is at Mesiath today (I slept through lunch-time swimming), while Maze is playing construction crew, but the new satellites mean I could send a channel request to both of them which said: "What's the Taren word for déjà vu – the feeling you get when you feel like you've done this before?" and streamed visual of Ghost sitting in my lap.

I think I managed to render Maze speechless. Kaoren laughed, and told me a phrase which means the same as déjà vu. After a bit of speculation on how she managed to get here, and double-checking that I was sure that it really is Ghost, they decided there really wasn't a great deal they could do since I wasn't willing to hand her over for experimentation ('testing'). Not that they're exactly keen, even when I pointed out that she was a great stickie detector.


Second Squad seems to be here, so I think I'll go down and introduce Ghost to them.

Filling up

After a bit of wide-eyed surprise, Second Squad (and Zee, Sefen and Eeli) proved to be a good start for Ghost. They were careful not to be too loud (even Eeli), and followed my instructions for introducing yourself to cats, and soon she was winding her way between their legs and allowing them to gingerly pet her. It's very weird for them, though, since she is an Ionoth and even the ones they don't kill they take good care to avoid. Eeli was in ecstasy, of course, but I noticed that not wanting to scare Ghost meant she was well able to stop herself from being noisy. Ghost, in turn, decided to adore Nils. She purred herself silly and ended up sitting on his shoulder poking her nose in his ear.

Second Squad found this hilarious, and teased him about being irresistible, but he just smiled and set Ghost on his lap and played with her until the other squads started drifting back and she went off and hid in one of the unoccupied bedrooms. Nils is still being unusually serious and subdued, but doesn't seem unhappy or anything. Totally non-flirty, though, which is probably a good thing given that the two Kalrani assigned to Second, Nala and Joen, are taking turns going bright red or drooling whenever he's anywhere near them. They seem like okay people despite that – even when Nils is being mild and polite he just oozes smex in a way which is hard to ignore, so I can hardly blame them for being flustered.

I wonder if Nils and Zee have had some kind of huge argument? They weren't ignoring each other or anything, but just didn't have much to do with each other. I'm very curious, but don't dare ask anyone. Zee's made it clear that I should stay out of her private life.

I did an entire episode of Planet Earth during testing – Tsur Selkie ran me through a simple visualisation and then had me tire myself out making TV – but because I spent so long sleeping and chatting and playing with Ghost I didn't get any subtitling done. I also did some random requests – dinosaurs (excerpts from Jurassic Park, mainly) and more populous bits of Earth (I did that ad for Qantas where all these kids are singing I Still Call Australia Home in different places, and then just random fragments of bits of movies which show famous buildings).

We sat around in the evening talking about the signing ceremony. Just one week away, with people starting to arrive from two days before. It's an insane timetable, even with Setari doing the heavy lifting and a thousand or so people (greensuits, pinksuits, greysuits) working on the actual fitting out of the buildings. All the main Telekinetic and Levitation talents are going to be devoted to construction and construction alone from now until then, although they're still allowed to go swimming at Mesiath or back to their rooms to rest at lunch, since a long day of heavy talent-based lifting is really bad for their health. Their bodies can't keep up with the energy output. The rest of the Setari will be doing what I was doing – helping out with whatever.

They're planning to cycle all the active squads through Pandora again to make sure all the extra members have their security clearance. Eleventh will head back in a couple of days, and then they'll have three staggered cycles of squads coming through, each staying a week. [Which means Fifth will be here soon, but I guess I'll survive. Twelfth will go just after the signing ceremony and be replaced by Sixth, and then Third will be replaced by Seventh, Second by Eighth and so on. First and Fourth are the long-term Muinan assignment for the moment, mainly for the cause of keeping me somewhere it seems the Nurans can't go.]

I asked what would happen to the agreement if the Nurans changed their minds about wanting to have nothing to do with us, or some other Muina-descended group showed up and wanted to live on Muina. Which of course is something no-one can answer, since it all depends on circumstances. The Nurans still have knowledge KOTIS wants and although Inisar's history book showed they don't have any more idea than we do on what went wrong, they might be useful with suggestions on how to fix it. But nothing Tare's done has convinced them to even talk about it. Tare made another attempt to send a diplomatic vessel through the rift to Nuri, and again some of Nuri's strong psychic talents showed up almost immediately and made them turn around, and wouldn't say anything to them except variations on "Leave now or be destroyed".

People from other Muinan-descended planets are something no-one really wants to see right now. Of course, the Ddura would try and kill them all, so the Tare-Kolar alliance is pretty safe in that regard. But saying "No, we were here first, go away" is an attitude which opens up an ethical minefield. Muina itself is so enormous and fertile and welcoming that they can't really argue that there's no room for other groups of descendants. Hell, if you transplanted the entire population of Tare, Kolar, Channa and Nuri to Muina, it would still be mostly empty. Channa only has about one million people (drifting about in nomadic tribes, suffering more and more from Ionoth attacks) while Nuri's this tiny moon with maybe between two and four hundred thousand people. You could move all of Earth here and there'd still be room.

But it sure would get complicated.

Tuesday, August 12

Open your mind

I liked this morning a lot more than this afternoon.

This morning was more 'instant town' work, with Lohn and Mara as my guards. Lohn and Mara are always worth spending time with, full of energy hauling mounds of mattresses and sheets and pillows everywhere (up all the stairs, since the elevators weren't operational yet) and making beds. I lost count of how many beds we did, and it was amazing how tiring something so simple can be, but it was fun too. KOTIS personnel everywhere, really busy, but cheerful with it, and they get a real kick out of seeing Setari carrying about mounds of pillows. And I seem to have turned into the village mascot (which I don't particularly like, but it's hard to resist how pleased most people seem to be to see me).

That was this morning. This afternoon has been brain scans and people being all 'you did it once, try harder to do it again'. And blood tests, because I needed more needles. So not in a good mood right now.

For all that, I guess it's worth it, since Kaoren is very happy. Not understanding what the Lantarens meant about connecting with Muina was really getting to him, to the point that when we all went to go swimming today, he came along since I wanted to go, but decided he was going to take a break from attempting to puzzle out the meaning. Which was very fine with me. We went swimming about together, exploring the tumbled and drowned city. I don't know what happened to make the lake rise to cover that part of Mesiath, but it's a really neat place to swim through – especially when you know that there's nothing lurking in the shadows of the buildings which registers as a threat.

We found an excellent ruin which was sheltered on all sides, and where the stone was just the right level to sit half underwater while still enjoying the streaming sunlight. We dozed in the sun for a while, until I got curious about – well, mainly I was curious as to whether Nils was anywhere near Zee – so I pushed out with my knowing where people are sense to find them. But Nils was with Lohn, Mara and Ketzaren, while Zee and Alay and Jeh seemed to be chatting. I amused myself tracking where everyone was, and then finding the little weasel things, and then all different sorts of animals, and the fish in the river – some right underneath where we were lying – and then there were birds and snakes and bugs and these large windy spaces which I eventually realised were the trees and it was really very enjoyable and relaxing doing that. I felt incredibly calm, and very pleased with myself, but then I noticed that more and more of the bright, sharp presences which were the Setari had gathered around Kaoren and me, and so I sort of drew back to myself and looked up at them.