The Touchstone Trilogy

by Andrea K Höst

  It was also beyond confusing seeing as Ruuel does. Auras everywhere, and strange patterns where patterns shouldn't be: art nouveau heat hazes. And that was only visual input. Most of the Sights are far more than visual, so I hate to think how much information someone with six Sights is processing, and can better understand why Ruuel nearly collapsed staring at the Ddura while enhanced. I don't think all the Sights are on all the time, though, since there were times when my Muinan town looked entirely normal. Perhaps it's like changing channels, and he flicks through them.

  I felt no nostalgia seeing my tower again, was simply glad not to be there as my trackers easily cleared away my makeshift door and passed the clutter of junk I'd kicked down the stair, then the second floor I'd been in the process of clearing. Then they were on the third floor, Fort Cass, with my bowls of washews and red pears carefully lined up, and my pathetic collection of tools in their corner. My bag. My blanket. Me.

  Huddled in my stained and worn school uniform, with my hair greasy and lank, I looked bony and ill. 'Condition poor'. Ruuel looked at me with normal sight first, then one which made me light up in dull greens and blues and reds.

  "She's been here some time," said Ruuel's partner, Sonn, over the interface.

  "Weeks, not days," he agreed.

  "The time limit's close. What do we do with her while we look for a gate?" An edge of irritation had crept into Sonn's voice. They weren't there for me.

  But Ruuel didn't seem overly concerned, turning from studying the ceiling to look at me as I stirred groggily. "Put her down at the lake's edge for the escort to collect."

  I watched myself perform this magnificent recoil worthy of a scalded cat. So scared. Ruuel just changed whatever Sight he was using and started looking around the room again, seeing a strange overlaid image of rubble, and a few different fragmentary ghosts of me.

  "Do you understand me?" Sonn asked in Taren, then said almost the same thing, but pronounced the words differently.

  "Who are you?" past me said, staring back and forth between them.

  Sonn tried again. I swapped later to watch her log, and she was carefully sounding out the same question using a "Stray Encounter Guide" which had a little stock of useful phrases from the languages of strays which had been picked up in the past. They're all wildly varying dialects of Muinan, which is something I couldn't tell at the time.

  "Nothing you're saying sounds like anything I know," past me said.

  "Not getting anywhere," Sonn murmured.

  "Just use gestures," Ruuel said. "We don't have the time to waste with this." He left to go up on the roof, telling the rest of his squad to keep scanning for gates.

  The time limit for visits to Muina is strictly enforced. Looking over the whole of the mission report, they'd started out miles away, at the ruins of a major city where a network of scanning drones had been installed both in real-space and near-space.

  Robotics here are more advanced than Earth's but the AI is still nowhere near real AI, so there are limitations to tasks drones can perform. The news about the Ddura had involved a complicated chain of drone messages. They have drones seeded about the spaces near the big interplanetary rift on Muina which stay powered down most of the time, waking themselves up on a regular schedule to scan. Another drone wakes itself up and collects the scans, and yet another drone travels back and forth between Muina and Tare with the collected scans. A Ddura had passed by the scanning drones, and that was enough to get Fourth Squad hurriedly sent out, two days later, in the hopes that it was still about.

  Once they reached the city, they'd gone straight into near-space to get the latest information from the drones there and to try and track the Ddura. They were able to calculate the direction it had moved and had chased off after it in their ship, finding my town as a consequence, where they'd stopped to see if they could find a gate and look for it there. And found me instead.

  Leaving me sitting on the lakeshore, Fourth Squad had located a gate a short distance south of the town and gone through. After two days they weren't surprised that the Ddura was gone, but they'd been able to identify which gate it had gone through, though how something as big as that aurora 'goes through' those little gates I don't know. They'd tried tracking it until the constraints of their time limit had forced them to return.

  I think I'm going to have to go through the Muina files from beginning to end rather than jumping about. Why, for instance, aren't they searching that big city for records? Sssso much technical jargon: it's like someone gave me everything NASA has ever written.

  Friday, March 7

  tl;dr

  I decided, before I started on my file review, to read more generally about Muina and Tare, now that I had access to more than the 'primary school' textbook version of the past. Establishing a timeline will help. I'll write it down in Earth years because Tare years are just too stupidly short.

  @ 1500 years ago – The Lantaren caste on Muina screw up royally by creating Pillars which start tearing apart the fabric which divides real-space from the Ena. And then they're almost completely wiped out trying to fix their screw up. I missed this little detail before – the people who set up the Pillars died almost at the outset, leaving a serious information and leadership vacuum.

  @ 1500 years ago – Entire towns and cities begin dropping dead, and Ionoth plague the rest. The remaining Lantaren caste frantically evacuates everyone they can to other planets by walking thousands of people through the Ena (some through the kind of spaces I've been to on rotation, and others through something called deep-space).

  @ 1500 years ago – One group arrives on Tare, which is a wet rock constantly pounded by storms. They run for the nearest cave and struggle to survive underground. The Lantarens as a distinct caste disappear at this point, but the bloodline remains mixed into the general populace. Plenty of minor psychics about being useful, but they're treated as a necessary evil because for centuries it was considered a bad and tainted thing to be linked to the Lantarens, who are blamed and hated for what happened to Muina.

  @ 1400 – Muinans finally start to get the upper hand on Tare, and their life becomes less of a desperate struggle for survival. The population starts to go up instead of down. Proper written records start being kept, or stop being lost. Even at this point the Tarens have a kind of nanotech – all those white buildings on Muina are basically grown, not built, from a kind of 'living mud' developed by the Lantarens. The Tarens managed to bring some with them and maintain a seed stock of this mud and have built structures with it ever since, even though they had no real understanding of how it worked until the last couple of centuries. House-building here is ultimately bizarre: they start with a big vat of white goop which they feed with raw material to make more white goop which they then 'instruct' using little models to create big versions of the same. So long as they kept some of the white goop 'unformed' they could always make more white goop. Since the white goop hasn't absorbed the whole planet yet, I guess it has a mechanism to stop it spreading everywhere.

  @ 900 years ago – Tare has a strong and stable civilisation at this point, and is starting to branch out from the original island, Gorra, and establish on other islands. World exploration phase, somewhat hampered by extremely violent oceans.

  @ 300 years ago – The attitude toward psychic ability finally shifts enough that it's considered a good rather than a bad thing, and the Tarens actively try breeding for it. Later, once they figure out how to boost it with machinery, they find that psychic talent of some sort is almost universal in the population, although they don't have anyone who can even come close to the level of the old Lantarens.

  @ 200 years ago – Computer age begins.

  @ 120 years ago – Advanced nanotech age begins. At this point they've passed Earth's current level of technology and are beginning the first roll-out of the bio-powered interface.

  @ 100 years ago – Tarens build 'spaceships' which will allow them to travel through the interplanetary gate again. This gate (or rift) go
es to deep-space and is thick with aether and doesn't seem to be like either the gates I've travelled with First, or the gate which took me from Earth to Muina. The Tarens start hunting for habitable planets/Muina, which is by no means easy. They send off and lose a lot of drones.

  @ 90 years ago – A planet called Channa is located, which has an ex-Muinan population. It's a rocky, arid world and not very attractive as a colonisation prospect, so the Tarens set up some mines on an unsettled continent, and indulge in long ethical debates about what to do about the ex-Muinans who are living a harsh, nomadic hunter-gatherer life. Instead of stepping in and trying to take over, the Tarens disguised themselves, learned the dialect, and have been feeding them small technological advances, turning them into a more agrarian culture. Since Channa's Ionoth infestation was relatively minor, they've left it at that until recent years when, like all the other known planets, Channa started to suffer from much increased Ionoth numbers. Now there's a huge argument about whether Tare should lend more outright assistance or even try to remove several million Channans from the planet.

  @ 80 years ago – Located Nuri, a moon-sized planet with a small but stable population (tech level probably equal to the Romans). The Nurans seem to consider Taren technology a contaminant, and though there's been some diplomatic exchanges, the Nurans really don't want to have anything to do with the Tarens, and won't share information. They also seem inclined to hold the Tarens at fault for the recent increase in Ionoth infestation. The Nurans have the strongest 'natural' psychic powers of the known planets, and have been able to handle Ionoth up till now, but are thought to be struggling with the increase.

  @ 60 years ago – Located Dyess, which has the remains of Muinan-type habitation, but it seems Dyess was overwhelmed by Ionoth long ago. It's a watery world with a string of tropical islands crawling with things that consider humans tasty with ketchup. There's been quite a few expeditions there focused on collecting useful plant life, but the slivers of land mass are not considered worth colonisation.

  @ 50 years ago – Located Kolar, which is a dry but reasonably habitable world where ex-Muinans have been busy having wars with Ionoth and occasionally themselves. It's the most advanced technologically of those Tare has encountered and though they would have been more primitive than Earth at time of contact, they're now a little more advanced thanks to Tare's help. The Tarens and the Kolarens don't have a very warm relationship. The Kolarens really want the Tarens to share more of their technological secrets, while Tare likes Kolaren resources but not the prospect of them standing on an equal footing. Kolar has an internet, but the Tarens won't give anyone except the Kolaren Setari the interface. Of course, large portions of Kolar don't want the interface, and loathe all the potential violations of privacy it would bring.

  @ 30 years ago – Muina rediscovered. Much rejoicing till entire expeditionary force wiped out in an explosion. Repeated expeditionary attempts invariably wiped out, although in different ways.

  @ 30 years ago – KOTIS formed: theoretically a joint venture between Tare and Kolar, but in truth mainly Tare. This was in response to a noticeable increase in Ionoth presence across the known worlds, and also wanting to 'fix' Muina. Both Tarens and Kolarens consider Muina 'home' and there's this grand ambition to move back there.

  @ 18 years ago – Tare is suffering from more and more Ionoth coming through to real-space and has to devote a lot of time and manpower to fighting them. They begin a big push to increase the strength of psychic talents, formulating the Setari program in the hopes of moving the battle out of the cities. Which has been very effective, but in no way fixes the larger problem.

  So that's the interplanetary situation. I can see why Ruuel doesn't think there's much chance of them finding Earth, since it took them so long to find their own home world. Thanks to the strays which have shown up on Tare and Kolar, they know there's at least three other inhabited planets of Muina-descendents, and they haven't even been able to find them.

  Thirty years ago when they found Muina, the Tarens didn't know very much about why they'd had to leave Muina in the first place other than "everyone's dying, run away!". Why the Lantarens felt interplanetary travel was so important is a mystery, and so is how the Pillars were created. Not a single one of the 'core' group of people involved in setting any of this up on Muina made it to any of the known worlds.

  There are endless stories about the Lantarens, most of which make them out to be arrogant mystic masters, but beyond being really great psychics, the true scope and nature of their powers isn't known.

  So there's my context for starting Isten Notra's project, though I'm not sure how quickly I'll get that done when my mornings involve getting drunk and then sleeping it off. And still feeling tired in the evening.

  Saturday, March 8

  Early Muina Expeditions

  Thirty years ago a drone returned through the rift gate having charted a path to a new habitable planet. The exploratory ship Lonara was despatched with a crew of twenty to survey the find. As planets go, Muina's a juicy one. Large polar caps and a few arid splotches, but the rest a very habitable green and blue gem. Lots of lakes. Massive cities of empty, white blockish buildings. The Lonara did a quick aerial survey of the first big city they found, and could see no sign of human life, though plenty of animals. They set down on what looked like a parade ground, left a few drones, and reported back that the home world had been located at last.

  Both the Lonara and another ship, the Tsaszen, were sent to begin a more detailed exploration. Fifty crew altogether, a mixture of military and scientific specialists. The Tarens had known that Muina was dangerous – or had been when it was evacuated – so they'd expected to find it infested with Ionoth. But even before the Setari program began they'd developed plenty of effective anti-Ionoth weapons, and without their own cities and citizens in the way, that first expedition wasn't really expecting major problems.

  They didn't report back.

  A third ship, the Maszar, discovered only smoking rubble where the expedition was meant to be. The Maszar searched for survivors and found none, then returned to Tare. It was really sad reading the reports from that time. They had no idea what had happened. Had the ships been attacked by massives? Some kind of weapon? Sabotaged? There was a strong undertone in the reports that Kolar was suspected. The Maszar hadn't even been able to find the drones.

  There was a lot of debate about going back in force or sending a small and very quiet mission. Small and quiet eventually won out. A ship called the Danna, carrying ten people. They tried to be sneaky, staying in the air a long time, landing well away from the city, scanning, scanning, scanning, and deploying a dozen drones. Half of them stayed with the ship and the other half went on a sled ('sled' is roughly what 'deeli', their name for their hovering transporters, translates to) to the site of the other crash to investigate. They arrived without incident and began sifting through the rubble, performing scans and searching for what seems to be the equivalent of a black box flight recorder. They were making good progress, not troubled at all by Ionoth or any other sign of attack, when they lost contact with their ship.

  When yet another ship was despatched to investigate why the Danna hadn't returned, they found the five from the investigatory group camped beside the Danna's shattered hulk. They had no idea why it had exploded. There'd been no attacks in the two days since, and they'd continued to do their scans and investigatory work and were very glad to be rescued, thank you very much.

  It took another exploding ship, the Netz, before KOTIS instituted a rule about ships only being able to remain on the planet for twelve hours. For their next attempt they established a camp of people on-planet and left them there, with regular two-day check-ins. That worked really well for about a week, and they made good progress on exploring the city, looking for records and important structures and anything to unravel the mysteries of the past and present. It seemed smaller machines didn't explode as quickly. Drones tended to not last more than a few days, but their s
leds proved quite robust.

  Then a massive attacked them. About half the thirty people there died – were eaten. They tried again, a different site with more people. Four days later they vanished entirely, not even the bodies remaining, and no signs of battle.

  That all in the first year after Muina was re-discovered. And, twenty-nine years later, not much has changed. The Taren government reduced the permitted time on the planet to only three kasse. When they began to understand near-space a little better, they found that drones they set to power down instead of being constantly active usually didn't stop working. The drones trundle about, a bit like the Mars Explorer, recording everything they see for an hour or so, and then transmit their recordings to a collection drone and shut down for the day.

  Satellites in orbit don't explode, at least, and they've one up making a complete aerial world map. GoogleMuina! I could even look up my village. I still haven't scratched the surface of the reports, just skipped through the main details. There's too many for me to ever hope to read everything. And I haven't found a single thing that seems worth telling Isten Notra. I guess I'll keep glancing at the files, but I've lost my initial enthusiasm.

  On other fronts, more getting drunk in the morning to no visible benefit. They rather over-exposed me, and I passed out mid-session. There is a complete lack of fun in getting drunk while a bunch of serious people watch you and take notes.

  I did better swimming today: I'm starting to feel that exercise isn't a thing of horror. I sent an email to Zan telling her that if she's ever bored, or not exhausted, and wants more swimming practice to come join me and she replied with "I'll do that." But since she's on a different shift, I guess the chances are pretty low.

  Sunday, March 9

  Not Clint Eastwood

  This morning Tsur Selkie came to watch me be drunk. After observing through a viewing window, unenhanced and then enhanced, he had some poor junior greysuit stand next to me while they gassed us both. The greysuit was this short, very pretty guy who sweated and gritted his teeth even before the aether was piped in, and then shot me these outraged looks when I just lay there being bored while it was obviously hurting him plenty. He passed out fairly quickly.