The Touchstone Trilogy

by Andrea K Höst

  "Try close door, best thing?" I asked, after stepping back through.

  "That doesn't effect you?" Haral sounded totally nonplussed.

  "Is – moonlight feel is alcohol. Light-headed, bit dizzy." I shrugged. "Not hurt, such. Is close door help?"

  Zan and Haral exchanged a long glance, then Zan said: "I don't see any other positive options," and Haral pulled a face and nodded.

  "Run," Zan said to me.

  That I didn't need encouragement to do. If any more Ionoth came along, I'd be the one with my face scraped off. And I hadn't properly worked out just how much time was left before people would start dying from exposure to the aether.

  I don't recommend taking on Serious Business while tanked. It's not so much that I was incapable of running (well, jogging) a hundred metres, even though I became ever more pixillated with each step. I saw Mara as I ran past and became madly convinced I was going to let her down, and I really didn't want to. It was a damn good thing that I wasn't out to do anything more complicated than close some doors. And I remember this whole obsession growing up about the size of the doors and that I wouldn't be able to move them when I got there, but then I was there. I actually collided with the right door, which was one way to learn that they moved really easily. I pushed it shut, suddenly feeling good again, and started for the other half, and that's when my head shut down altogether.

  As I was waking up, I was thinking that since I was waking up I must have shut the other half of the door. Then I was noticing a fuzzy fence which seemed to be holding the fact that I felt very very bad at a bearable distance. And a weirdness about my face, which made me lift a hand, and I found that one of my eyes was covered up. There was something else which was even weirder, but I couldn't immediately figure out what it was, so I turned my head and saw that Maze was on a chair beside me, but asleep, slumped against the wall.

  I heard someone shift on my other side, and that was harder to look at because of my covered eye. Without understanding why, I didn't want to move my hand, and kept it over the bandage, but eventually I managed to shift round enough to see Zan, who I think must have moved so I could see her. She plainly needed to sleep a lot too, but mostly she looked incredibly relieved and happy-upset.

  I wanted to say something about she should smile more often, but that's when I realised what was really weird. No interface. Not at all. Trying to talk and not having suggestions for words coming in my mind really threw me. I couldn't even remember really common words which I'd actually learned, my brain was so mushy. So I just tried to smile back at her, and said: "Stupid language," in English in a really croaky voice, and most sensibly passed out.

  Next time I opened my eyes, Zee was there instead, and I was a little more capable of stringing two thoughts together. And seemed to be in less pain, but also on fewer painkillers, so I felt it more. I was pleased that I could remember a few words of Taren this time, and managed: "No interface?" but my throat really didn't like me talking, and my chest felt all congested and my mouth tasted foul, so I coughed until Zee fetched a greysuit who helped me spit out black stuff and drink some water – from which I figured that the Setari again have orders not to touch me.

  I hate being in the medical section, especially anything which involves drips and catheters and tubes. Tare's technology seems to be pretty similar to Earth's in respect of tubes, and the greysuit sent Zee away and did a bunch of tests, and fed me about a half a cup of a horrible salty-sweet drink, but thankfully removed the tubes. Some time during this I caught sight of my arms, and was holding them up and staring at them when Zee came back with Maze and a different greysuit.

  "I look like the world's worst junkie," I said, still in English, turning my arms to better appreciate their purple and blue glory. I'd never seen anything like it. Even my palms were bruised.

  I couldn't understand what they said back, of course. Maze looked like he'd had a proper rest, so I'm guessing it was a lot later than the first time I woke. They were being pleased I was awake, but serious at the same time, and Zee said something to me slowly which had the word for interface in it a couple of times. I just shrugged, though I was finding that moving hurt and staying still hurt, which didn't really seem fair. Then I felt all tingly for a moment, and like I was catching up with myself.

  "Can you understand now?" the greysuit asked, and I nodded, but put my hand back over my bandaged eye because it had started hurting rather more than anything else. "Some lingering malformation there," the greysuit said helpfully, but did something which made it stop hurting. "It'll be a few days before the remedial work is complete and the remnant toxins are flushed from her system," he added. "But there doesn't seem to be any loss of function."

  "Mission log's intact," Maze murmured to Zee, and nodded to the greysuit, who gave me a last glance and went away.

  "Everyone alive?" I asked, and saw the 'no' in their faces before Zee answered.

  "Ammas from Sixth Squad died during the return to base," she said, and we all looked down at the same time, as if it was rehearsed. "You remember what happened?"

  "Up to door." I glanced at my arms again. "It fall on me?"

  "No." Zee wrinkled her nose. "Your interface started growing again, destructively beyond prescribed limits. It became non-functional and had to be shut down and pared back." She indicated the purple patterns beneath my skin. "That's partly the damage and partly slough from the repair work. Your left eye suffered the most, but they don't expect permanent problems."

  Nanotech. I sighed. Convenient as it is, I'd really appreciate it if my interface didn't keep trying to kill me.

  "We've only had the outside view of what happened after you reached the door," Maze said, passing me across a log file. From his faintly abstracted expression, I guessed he was reviewing mine, a thing which always makes me feel totally weird.

  The log file was Haral's, watching through the gate as I jogged with a curving wobble toward the end to the Pillar. It wasn't too obvious at that distance that I ran into the door rather than deliberately stopping, but I stood there for at least a count of five before my brain caught up and I pushed the thing shut. I turned to cross to the other door in a business-like way, but paused in the gap, looking inside.

  And then another wave of light came pouring out, filling the entire space with white, and I heard the Setari who'd been watching me gasp, and Nels said: "Tzatch," which Lohn tells me is a shortened version of Tzarazatch, a spiritual concept on Tare kind of like Ragnarok: the destructive end of everything. I can't get Lohn to tell me any real swear words, but he explains the milder ones.

  For about thirty seconds there was nothing but whiteness, and it didn't even look like it was going to settle as it had the first time, but then it thinned abruptly and was sucked away to nothing, back into the Pillar, leaving the space as clear and empty as it had been the first time I saw it, except for all the unconscious Setari. I was noticeably absent from the doorway.

  The fragment of the log finished, and I looked back up at Maze and then blinked, confused. His face was set and furious, a muscle working in his cheek. Zee was staring at him, as surprised as I was, and when she touched his arm he flinched away, then said: "Watch her log," and turned his back, getting himself under control.

  Of course, that immediately made me watch it myself, jumping straight to the last bit I remembered: closing the right half of the door. It's highly disorienting to watch things you don't remember doing. I only remember stepping forward, don't remember at all looking into the interior of the Pillar. Most of it was taken up by the central core, with empty space curving off to the right and left. There was a rounded rectangular hatch just about at head height on the internal column, with two big white levers set into the stone below it. By big I mean almost as long as my leg, sticking out of grooves that ran to the right around the Pillar's core.

  The hatch was designed to slide, and was open a crack on the right hand side, making a brilliant white vertical line from which aether drifted down. And as I looked
up at that, something interrupted the vertical line, a few black spots blocking the brightness. Fingertips, claws, curving around the hatch from the inside. Then it pulled it open, the movement accompanied by a shifting rumble from the levers, and everything went white.

  A black hand shape appeared in view: my hand, trying to block out the light and not really succeeding. And then I must have gone forward, under the main intensity of the blast into the drifting mist of aether falling down from it. The top lever had gone left as the hatch opened, and I seem to have tried pushing it back to the right but wasn't succeeding. Then I looked upward, into the spotlight glare of white coming out of the hatch, and there was this barely visible human shape, just the head, and shoulders, the arm hooked over the edge of the hatch, reaching. The scene dropped down abruptly – I must have ducked – and then moved right, pushing the lower lever instead of the top, with an accompanying rumble which was loud enough to suggest huge boulders grinding together, stopping with a nicely final thud followed by a hiss and a howling wind noise. The only thing I was looking at, at this point, was the floor, really close to my face. I levered myself partially upright, turned toward the door, and dropped again; must have fallen flat on my ass. Then my hand came up and covered my left eye and lifted away to show rather a lot of red and I bent forward, the scene becoming barely visible. I guess all that aether wasn't doing enough to block whatever having your eye self-destruct feels like. The last moments of the mission log don't show much, because I'd closed my eyes, but you can hear me panting and then I say, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light?" and let out this confused-sounding laugh and then the log stops abruptly.

  "Glad don't remember that," I said, after a moment. Maze had stopped looking upset, but Zee had taken his place: not so angry, but eyes wide and mouth pale. "Is thing in Pillar same Lights Rotation?"

  "Cruzatch," Maze said, and you could hear the hate in his voice, and see him make the effort to put it aside. The word means "burning", with overtones of destruction.

  "There are several spaces they appear, and they also roam. They're not the only human-form Ionoth we encounter, not the only ones which intelligently react to us. But we have – for a long time there has been discussion about the level of their awareness of the Setari, and whether they retain and learn from previous encounters with us."

  "The last massive to break into real-space was accompanied by a Cruzatch," Zee explained. "Almost as if it was riding it. Guiding it." She sighed. "The idea of there being organisation among the Ionoth is not accepted by many."

  And certainly hadn't been mentioned in any of the stories and movies I'd so far seen. "Organised not, that one bloody annoying. What happen it?"

  Maze made an equivocal motion with one hand. "No sign. We think you closed the intake of the Pillar's power stream. We're not entirely certain why all the aether was pulled back, but the entire Pillar seems to have shut down as a result." He smiled at the expression on my face. "No need to look like that: it's what we would have tried eventually, if not so soon, and the only thing we've really lost is the chance to study the Pillar in more depth. Everyone's off-rotation, only clearing near-space, because it seems that the surrounding spaces are shifting, and we can't trust the gates. But you did well, Caszandra. And were very brave."

  Although that was hugely gratifying, I doubted it was true. "Blind drunk panic more like," I said. "Don't remember either way."

  "What was it you said before the log cut out?" Zee asked, leaning forward to touch my leg and then stopping. Definitely orders not to touch me.

  "Is line famous poem about dying." I repeated it in English, because it makes it slightly easier to work out a translation, then did my best to render it in Taren. "Funny thing say but fit guess. Was really drunk."

  I must have fallen asleep then, and had uncomfortable dreams about what I'd seen in my log, and about Maze being angry, and of running and hiding from something chasing me. None of it pleasant, in other words. I keep having dreams like that. Otherwise, being in the med section is the same tedious crap that it always is. The greysuits say I have to stay here because all the bruising means I'm at risk of blood clots. I spent the first couple of days sleeping and coughing up black stuff – blood and phlegm and discarded bits of interface, apparently – and having to move about a lot because it's good for my circulation.

  Everyone from First Squad came to visit me, as well as Zan, still looking tired, but no longer all stressed out. I asked her if she would bring me my diary, and she did, and sat and talked with me a while and was all proper and Zan-like, but just that tiny bit more human than before. I think if I'd died she would have felt responsible, because she'd ultimately given me the order to go. And maybe that she does like me, a little bit anyway.

  I've been doing school lessons. I don't really feel like watching shows or the news because the news is full of the impact of shutting the Pillar down, even though it's been kept secret. The Setari squads have been distributed over Tare because that's the only way they can effectively patrol the near-space when they can't use other spaces as shortcuts to get about, which means that there's more sightings of them, and more outbreaks of Ionoth into the real world. I did that.

  I still feel pretty horrible too: tired and sore. Every time I get close to being fit, I nearly die and go back to the start again. And I look like a pirate junkie panda, with a patch and a huge ring around my uncovered eye. It was purple, but now it's going green with hints of yellow.

  This is the longest entry I've made in this diary yet, and I've passed the halfway point. Will have to do some research on whether there's any way I can get another one custom-made.

  Still alive.

  Monday, March 3

  Ghost

  When I woke this evening (for the second time today – I'm still doing a lot of napping) my chest felt heavy. I was half-awake noticing the weight and worrying that I was getting sicker instead of better and would be stuck in here forever. Then it filtered through to me that my chest was also purring.

  I didn't do anything stupid like jump or shout, but I must have moved, because the purring stopped abruptly. The weight was still there, though, and I lifted a hand carefully and felt the shape of the cat I couldn't see. The purring started again, and after a while it stopped looking like I was petting my own chest and there was the Ionoth cat.

  It was just like I remembered: dark green eyes and short, smoky fur. A half-grown cat, not creepy or scary in any way. For a little while I just let myself enjoy it, petting and playing with it, and establishing that it looked like it was a girl cat, but eventually I had to give in and be responsible.

  There's lots of different ways you can talk to another person over the interface, most of it nothing too different to Earth's internet. You can't just open channels to random people, unless you have certain rights, like squad captains during mission time. Usually you can only send a channel request with a text message and it's up to the people you want to talk with to accept or not, and for the Setari I think most normal people can't even do that: you have to be in their 'address book'. Or you can email, leave a voice message, or chat just by text. I'd never tried opening a channel before: I'm too aware of how overworked the Setari always seem so if I need something or have a question I send an email.

  Since, so far as I know, I'm still assigned to First Squad I sent Maze a channel request: "Is time ask?" Gods I hate my screwed-up grammar. I doubt the baby English I write in my diary even comes close to how dumb I sound to the Tarens.

  Anyway, Maze answered right away. "Something bothering you, Caszandra?"

  "Is visitor," I replied, and sent him an image of the Ionoth cat sitting on my lap. Then, before he could respond, I quickly went on: "If capture what happen her?"

  He paused a long time before answering, then said carefully: "They'll find a way to scan for it. Then I'll personally return it to the Ena, since I suspect you'll accept nothing less."

  Maze really is the nicest guy on the planet. "Is big thank you," I said,
and he laughed.

  "I'm out in the city at the moment, but I'll send someone to you. You're not feeling any negative effects?"

  "Purring cat good thing."

  "Won't be long."

  He left the channel active, in case I started screaming about evil kittens, and I took the opportunity to play with my temporary pet a little more. I've decided to call her Ghost, which definitely fits. I didn't absolutely believe that no-one would try and kill her, but I trusted Maze to do his best to make sure that didn't happen. I wasn't entirely sure she would cooperate at all, but I figured that if I stayed calm and no-one made any sudden moves, she'd probably at least not run off the second anyone showed up.

  I wasn't expecting Ruuel, and reacted all out of proportion, stiffening so that Ghost stopped purring, and probably going pink beneath my bruises. What Mr I-Have-Every-Kind-Of-Sight-But-No-Visible-Sense-of-Humour made of my expression I couldn't tell, but he took the container the two greensuits were carrying and shut them outside.

  "Place it in here," he said, moving the container so it was flush with the bed. It was an ominous-looking box, metal and plastic with a rare physical control panel on one corner. And warning signs about containment fields.

  I didn't move immediately, carefully stroking Ghost, who hadn't scrambled off, but mightn't like me after this. "Come back and visit me again," I told her in English. "I'm only going to turn you in this once." Scooping her up with a hand beneath her chest, I carefully lowered her into the box, saying, "Her name Ghost."

  Ruuel just turned the containment field on, which made Ghost look upset. She vanished, but I don't think she was able to get out. At least, he didn't act like he thought she had, turning and opening the door again and handing the box to the greensuits.